Author: R J Adams

Today it is the turn of the Times of London to hurl verbal rocks at the Russian government and defend that most noble of Soviet dissidents, Boris Berezovsky, though in a more muted tone than that of yesterday’s Sun newspaper.

Of course, this comes as no surprise considering both newspapers are owned by the same man – good old Rupert Murdoch – who, as reported yesterday is one of Berezovsky’s close friends and business associates.

Let’s stick together, boys!

The Times wasn’t totally silent on the subject yesterday, laying the groundwork for today’s piece with a nice little non-story about two Russian bombers leaving their Arctic base on the Kola Peninsula and flying towards Scotland. While RAF fighters were scrambled just in case Vladimir Putin had blown his mind and ordered an attack on the Gleneagles golf course, the bombers predictably turned back well before reaching UK airspace.

All-in-all, hardly worthy of news space, but a suitable prelude to today’s weightier article.

It’s hard to comprehend whether Berezovsky is taking the British government for a ride, or the latter – in conjunction with the US government – is using the Israeli/Russian oligarch as a pawn in some power game with the Russian president.

Given the state of play in the world today, with corporate power in the ascendancy and politics simply their instrument of control, it’s more likely the former. There is no doubt Putin’s demise is Berezovsky’s prime objective. His cosy relationship with the vodka-swilling President Yeltsin came to an end somewhat abruptly in late 1999 when Yeltsin resigned and Putin took over, immediately taking steps to curb the oligarchs.

Berezovsky is a man powerful enough to break governments, and there are too many like him. Their ruthlessness knows no bounds. Killing, just as much as corruption, is a convenient way to achieve their objectives. They have seen how in the US, the office of President can be kidnapped, the incumbent reduced to a marionette dancing to a corporate tune. Expansion is their goal, and Putin is fully aware they are after, if not his position, then certainly his political power. While George W Bush and other political leaders may court Boris Berezovsky and his like, they had best be aware that any moment an oligarch’s knife may stab them in the back.

In an interesting statement today, it was announced that the recently arrested would-be assassin of Mister Berezovsky was held for two days by Britain’s Scotland Yard Police Headquarters and then quietly deported without charge. Berezovsky himself, when questioned on the matter, informed reporters that the police had told him “…not to go into detail about the assassination attempt and therefore I will not do so.”

But surely, if there has been an attempt on a man’s life on British soil, the public has a right to know the details?

Not to put too fine a point on it – the whole business stinks.

Filed under: More political corruption

Most of us are at least aware of Michael Moore’s latest film, “SiCKO”. Some will already have seen it. Many won’t bother.

As one who has spent fifty plus years dependent on the British National Health Service for my medicine, and five years enslaved by the insurance companies and pharmaceutical industry of America’s “healthcare system”, I know only too well where my loyalties lie.

Let me put it this way. If my advancing years cause me to require extensive medical care, my fervent wish is that the cause will not be down to accident or mishap. Rather, I would prefer a gradually encroaching illness – one that would at least allow me to exercise my right as a British citizen, hop on a plane, and book myself into a British National Health Service hospital for treatment, rather than suffer the financial disaster of medical care in a similar US establishment.

When I first arrived on these shores, my initial visit to a family doctor was for a minor matter. I was one of the very fortunate ones. My wife has family health insurance cover of the very best. She works for the government. My new doctor seemed somewhat patronizing of my origins, and at the end of the visit he told me I would have no worries about my healthcare in America, saying, “We have good strong medicines over here, Mister Adams, unlike your National Health Service.”

To say I was perplexed by this comment would be an understatement. I had no idea what he was talking about. Of course, I now know he was simply another victim of the GAIM – the Great American Indoctrination Machine. He firmly believed the British National Health Service was akin to a collection of 18th century African witch doctors performing rites and incantations while their patient slowly expired before them. He held that view because he’d been taught that it was true.

Sadly, for gullible America, so have the majority of Americans.

A few weeks ago I developed a minor, though irritating skin complaint. I rang my family doctor’s office to make an appointment, only to be told it would be at least six weeks before they could fit me in. After a bit of the good old British tongue-lashing, I was finally told they would have to arrange for a nurse to contact me back and ascertain if my condition required an “emergency appointment”. Apparently, it did, and I was told to report the next day. What, I later wondered, if I had been a meek, elderly gentlemen without a Brit’s requisite hard-bitten cheek to demand my rights? How might I then have fared?

Six weeks to see a doctor!

No, I’m sorry, America, but if you don’t stand up and exert your rights as citizens, you deserve to be trampled underfoot by those with power and wealth who will watch you die in the gutter, for the sheer fun they get from it.

Michael Moore’s film really cannot be criticized. It speaks for itself. Of course, there are those who will call it all lies and deceit – rigged to appear authentic but in reality just actors paid to read lines. Let me tell you, America, I can stand with hand on heart and state categorically that at least 85% of what the film says is true. I have no knowledge of the Canadian Health System. I have, as a consumer, extensive knowledge of the British system, and as an observer, a working familiarity with the French healthcare system, which is better again than the British NHS.

The greatest objection to be raised in this country against an all-embracing, free, health service is that it’s “UN-AMERICAN”. I cannot argue with that. It most certainly is. But aren’t you ashamed to admit it? It’s un-American because no-one would make a profit! “Ah, but we can’t have our government expanding itself and running such things,” I hear the cry, “next they’ll be telling us what to do!”

The GAIM rears its ugly head yet again.

Have you, America, ever stopped to wonder why there is such a hoo-ha in this country about restraining the size of government? Who is responsible for spreading this fear? “Ah, but it goes back to our Founding Fathers and the Constitution,” I hear the cry. Yes, it does. Which must surely mean that your saintly Founding Fathers had no concerns for the welfare and health of the nation they had founded. Or, did they expect citizens to simply dispense their home-brewed medicine and remove their own perforated appendixes?

The men who wrote the Constitution had escaped from a Europe of the day, brimming with petty kings and dictators. Their experiences colored their vision. Also, they were most certainly not the near-deities today’s American youth are taught they were. The GAIM has probably been the most enduring and profit-making idea in all of America’s history.

Does it not strike you as strange that your government is opposed to a National Health Service? After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who said, “The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.” Surely, one way a government could gain lots of ground is by expanding into healthcare? Let’s make no mistake, healthcare has to be paid for. That means an increase in taxes – every finance minister’s dream. It makes sense to assume every US government since Lincoln’s would be straining at the bit to introduce its own universal health care program.

The nearest any came to doing so was when Bill Clinton empowered wife Hilary to set the ball in motion. It didn’t roll very far before being kicked out the arena by the drug barons.

Of course, that was before Hilary Clinton sold out to the insurance companies. It’s unlikely any whisper of universal healthcare will be heard from the Clinton platform during the 2007/2008 presidential campaign.

America, your politicians and your government have no interest in providing you with universal healthcare. In fact, it is utterly against their interests. A large percentage of your “representatives” already have other “jobs” – in, or associated with, the healthcare industry.

Are you finally beginning to realize you have been duped? Or is that all-American, self-consuming pride still preventing you from seeing the wood for the trees? Are you still too blind to recognize the light of truth, even when it sears your eyeballs like fifty million candlepower?

Until you open your eyes, your nation will continue to rank on a par with third world countries when it comes to infant mortality, deaths from preventable diseases, and a population mortality rate way behind the rest of the western world.

Alexander Hamilton, in his Federalist Paper No.23, 1787, laid out four principal reasons a government was formed:

1. The common defense
2. The preservation of public peace
3. The regulation of commerce, and
4. The supervision of foreign affairs

He wasn’t much of a “Founding Father”, was he? He missed out the most important reason any government is elected.

I’ll fill it in for him:

    5. Ensuring the welfare of the people.

Or, is it just about playing the GAIM.

NOTE: If you haven’t yet seen “SiCKO”, it can be viewed in its entirety online for free HERE.

Filed under: Winning the GAIM

The recent expulsion of four Russian diplomats from the UK by Gordon Brown, may well be seen as an indicator of strength and integrity in Britain’s new prime minister. After all, it’s hardly cricket for ex-Soviet spies to go around London poisoning other ex-Soviet spies at will, and Russia’s refusal to turn Andrei Lugovoi over to the British judicial system for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko can only be seen as the expected response of a dictatorial Soviet system.

At least, that’s what Mister Brown and his government would have us believe. The truth is, perhaps, a little more politically complex.

In the last few years, Russia has asked the UK for the extradition of twenty-one Soviet citizens wanted in their own country on various charges. Not least of these, is Boris Berezovsky. He is wanted on charges of embezzlement and fraud back in Russia, but is presently dividing his time between his luxurious “office” in London’s Mayfair district, and a $20,000,000 mansion in the affluent county of Surrey in southern England. This “pad” is equipped with bullet-proof windows, laser monitors, spy cameras, reinforced steel doors, and is guarded by ex-members of the elite French Foreign Legion.

Berezovsky has openly fomented revolution against the Russian government, stating violence is the only way to overthrow the Putin regime. It seems Boris Berezovsky is no stranger to violence.

In December 1996, a Russian journalist Paul Klebnikov wrote an article about Berezovsky in Forbes Magazine. It was entitled, “Godfather of the Kremlin?” In it, Klebnikov explains the methods that brought Berezovsky his millions, and names just a few who died in the process. Although Forbes was forced to recant the allegations when Berezovsky sued for libel, Klebnikov later expanded the article into a book of the same title. Berezovsky failed to sue Klebnikov on this occasion. Instead, the journalist was shot to death on a Russian street.

There seems to be a wealth of evidence suggesting Berezovsky’s involvement in many illegal matters, least of all the death of Paul Klebnikov, yet the British government refuses to deny him refugee status and allows him to live openly and freely in the UK.

Why?

Might it have something to do with his alliance to the Bush family of America? In 2003, the same year he was granted refugee status in Britain, Berezovsky became entwined with George W Bush’s younger brother, Neil, assisting in financing the educational software corporation, “Ignite! Learning” – the very same company that Barbara Bush, when she ungenerously donated to the Bush-Clinton Hurricane Katrina Fund, insisted her money be given to.

It would seem wherever he goes, Boris Berezovsky moves in the very highest of circles. By refusing extradition of just this one man alone, the British government has thumbed its nose at Vladimir Putin and shown its utter disrespect for a fellow member of the UN Security Council.

The expulsion of four Russian diplomats this week may be viewed by uninformed voters in the UK as the decision of a strong leader, but when the facts are uncovered it can also be seen as a sop veiling a weak government kowtowing to a rich and deadly criminal with good transatlantic connections.

NOTE: In late breaking news today, that king of British gutter-press newspapers, The Sun published an “Exclusive” story claiming Berezovsky was the near-victim of an assassination attempt by Russian agents at London’s Hilton Hotel recently. As yet, the story lacks both credibility and evidence to support it. Interestingly, The Sun is owned by News International, which in turn is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who just happens to be a longtime friend and business associate of Boris Berezovsky.

Filed under: Political corruption