Author: R J Adams

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

These things happen. You wake up one morning. All is apparently well with your world. You have breakfast, send the wife off to work, and then with no warning whatever you realize something is terribly wrong.

This morning, it was when I repaired to the den to commence work and noticed the little red LED light flashing on and off. With two desktop computers, a laptop, Tivo, and a VoIP phone system, the occasional flashing light from a myriad technological gizmos necessary for any state-of-the-art home network these days, is nothing to get concerned about.

But this one seemed somehow different. It blinked balefully and somewhat mournfully, like you’d expect an LED to behave if it had suddenly been issued with the unenviable task of announcing the end of the world.

Undaunted, I was certain it was just needed power-cycling. These things happen. There’d been a thunderstorm in the night. Probably, the electric had died momentarily, triggering this problem. I unplugged the gizmos, waited the necessary half-minute, then carefully re-inserted each power cord into its correct orifice. Slowly, the gizmos woke up, looked about them, and began settling to their steady rhythm of yellow-green LED chatter, just as normal. Until, the one turned from yellow to bright red and began its doleful, doom-laden blink once more.

It was the gizmo for the VoIP phone, so I picked up the handset and listened. All seemed well. The comforting burr of the dial tone gently assailed my eardrum. I dialed my wife’s work number. An answering machine picked up the call, as I expected. It was too early for the telephonists to be at their desks. I replaced the receiver. The little red LED still blinked unremittingly back at me.

Now, I’m the sort of person who needs conformity. If something is doing what it shouldn’t, even though all seems well, I have to find out why. Some people can happily drive their cars halfway around the world with the “Check Engine Light” glaring at them out the dashboard. Not I. It’s into the curb and call for a tow-truck if there is so much as a flicker.

Consequently, two seconds later found me punching out the number of the phone company’s twenty-four hour customer service desk. It wasn’t the first time. I was on familiar terms with some of the staff. As soon as I’d give them my phone number, the response invariably came back:

“Oh, it’s RJ, I thought I recognized that British accent.”

On this occasion, however, no cheery voice returned my greeting. In fact, I never got chance to offer a greeting. An answering machine, in that tone of voice indicative of someone in a desperate hurry to escape the office, stated briefly, and hurriedly:

“We are not taking any customer service calls at this time. Goodbye.”

A momentary picture flashed through my mind – the radio-operator on the Titanic, last to leave the ship, sending his final desperate SOS before dashing to the rail and plunging into icy seas, just seconds before the liner slid forever beneath the waters of the North Atlantic.

Three attempts later, I gave up on trying to beat that mercurial answering message. Something was very wrong.

Readers of Sparrow Chat from its Blogger days, may well recollect – about twelve months ago – how enthusiastically I ranted about my new VoIP phone service. An up and coming company offering great value, fantastic service, free gizmo, and the promise of more technological delights for its customers as they grew in business stature.

That company was SunRocket.

Today, after checking out SunRocket on the internet to discover why its customer support service was down, I found out SunRocket is also down, for good. Belly up. Bankrupt.

And then it struck me. Only last week I’d paid them another $200 year’s subscription. Darn it, I’d get that back! I paid with a credit card. Reaching for the phone, I dialed the card company’s helpline.

What’s up, here? Why isn’t it ringing? Don’t tell me they’re bankrupt as well! Damn it, there’s no dial tone!

Perplexed, I glanced up at the VoIP gizmo. For a moment all seemed fine. Then, as I watched, the little red LED light blinked very rapidly five or six times, like a dying man struggling for one final desperate breath of life, and, as I stared, it finally went out for good.

Filed under: And some you lose