The Sins of the Left

by Mona Shaw

There is no question that if Anita Hill had made the same allegations against a “liberal” nominee (say Stephen Breyer) to the Supreme Court, she would have not have been believed by even the same “feminists” who pushed her to make her experiences public.

There isn’t much I’d rather not do than write about this. To do so submerges me in days of pain while I think of women betrayed by “liberals” and “left-wing” activists.  Women who suffer at the hands of those on the “left” who dare to try to expose that abuse are far more often than not brutalized more by those who should have supported them.

Few will bother to read this.  Fewer will care enough to modify their behavior at all.  That’s a depressing truth that I don’t enjoy revisiting.

However, there is a tether here that goes to the core of misogyny.  It needs to be cut.  I.e., until we acknowledge this, the body count will go higher and hope for all women will remain lost.  Plus, the women we've casually thrown under the bus are human beings who matter.

Anita Hill provided a political payoff.  Most women don’t have that currency.  Moreover, the allegiance to class superiority is as dangerous to that woman as her abuser.  If a man is publicly identified as a champion of women’s rights, he can essentially do whatever he wants to women with very little risk to himself.

Anita Hill

The casualties are endless.  The betrayal leaves life-long agony in its wake.  Still, the “left” is just as inclined, if not more so, to cover it up.

One case is that of Anna Mae Aquash, an incredibly brave spirit and devoted AIM member.  Anna Mae was raped and murdered by fellow activists in 1975.  At first AIM blamed her murder on the FBI, plausible since the FBI is known to kill human rights activists.  And, it was likely the FBI that planted the false accusation that Anna Mae was an FBI informant.  Eventually two AIM members were convicted of her murder.

Anna Mae Aquash

However, darling of the left Leonard Pelletier, who many have said interrogated Anna Mae while holding a gun her mouth and knew of her murder during the time he was blaming the FBI, has never been charged in her death. This is excused with statements like, "Well we'll never know, and he is in prison for something he didn't do.  Let's just let sleeping dogs lie."

Sue Daniels

Susan Daniels was murdered by a fellow activist and former lover in 2004.  Daniels was a valiant peace activist whose stellar resume of activism included being arrested during a School of the Americas protest. It wasn’t only that popular activist Niklan Jones-Lezama murdered her.  For months his stalking behavior had left Daniels in fear of such an outcome, but was ignored and accused of “over-reacting” when she said so.  Even after her death, many insisted it was a set-up by the FBI.  "Sure, Niklan had some issues. but he was a kind and compassionate man."

It took 23 years for the anti-war activist Ira Einhorn to be brought to justice after he murdered his girlfriend Holly Maddux in 1977.  Many were aware that Einhorn treated Holly abusively, but dismissed at as a good man under great stress. 

Left-wing or progressive men, of course, don’t always kill women.  Most just torment and use them and destroy the lives of any women who tries to stand up to them. 

Brandon Darby a charismatic activist who was eventually exposed in 2008 as an FBI agent was given a pass for horrific misogynistic abuse. Later, Lisa Fithian wrote in a blog in 2010.

"There are many people in the activist community who have crossed Brandon’s path and have been hurt, demoralized, alienated, frightened, or run off by him. Those of us who were lied to or lied about, spied on, bullied, must deal with the trauma of his abusive behavior. We must also come to terms with the behavior of those who supported and enabled Brandon. And, as a community, we must deal with those parts of ourselves that were seduced, manipulated, and marginalized by Brandon so that we can defend each other, our political work, and ourselves."

When “leaders” lose people from the fold through a chronically revolving door, it should be regarded as a red flag.  Usually it's not.  These men are given passes because “no one is perfect. I prefer to focus on the good he does."  The abuser's accusations against those who leave or are forced to leave the “flock,” if not believed outright, are given undue credence, no matter how lumpy the rug becomes from sweeping people under it.

It’s characteristic for these men to go through women like Kleenex as sexual partners.  People will giggle about how many women had to be told about him when he went to jail or to the hospital, etc.

When a group of the women in leadership challenged Brian Darby’s sexual exploitation.  He gave a shameful, but common, response “I like to fuck women, so what.”

You can’t go to any leftist discussion group and not see blasts of misogyny.  I was recently threatened with being kicked to the curb when I suggested that “sleeping with underage girls,” was not only not a joke; it was rape.  “He didn’t mean anything by that.  You’ve gone too far.  Women like you give feminism a bad name.  I’m so sick of identity politics.”

Perhaps the most pernicious acts of all are those committed by those who want to be “fair” or “stay out of it.”  Fears of community reprisal or even looked at askance will leave those who should be the helpers refusing to get involved. The pain of that for woman abandoned is unmitigated.

I can’t join groups anymore.  I just can’t.  I’ve given up trying to find one that will hold their “leaders” to the very standards they espouse. 

Let’s face it most “progressives” would not have risked life and limb to hide Anne Frank’s family.  Most don’t want to risk losing cocktail party invitations.  Betrayal of these women isn’t simply lying about her to cover up wrong doing.  It’s expecting her to meet you in an out-of-the-way cafe so you won’t be seen with her.  It’s coming up with a contrived excuse for not supporting her, e.g. “She’s not qualified” or “I’m not comfortable with how she brought this forward. She's just not a good poster child for this issue.”

There is a bottomless reservoir of conscious-numbing salve used by those who just don’t want to get any of the pain on them.  A lot of people like to quote Martin Luther King that character is shown by what you do in times of controversy.  It’s just not something they want to do.  People like to say they’ve done the best they can, but only if their “best” won’t cost them anything.

Our enemy isn’t the right wing.  Our enemy is our delusion that we’re any better than any of them. That log in our own eye requires our attention now.

You Have Been Warned

I’ve been here before.  It was 1989.  I stood in Nollen Plaza in Des Moines, the state of capitol of Iowa, and said:

“Terry Branstad (my governor) is a murderer!”

People had a real problem with my saying that, even after I explained I only said it because it's true.  By the end of that year, the death count due to complications from HIV/AIDS would reach nearly 90,000. The first reported case was in 1981, and 618 had died by 1982.  There was no federal or state funding for research or treatment of the disease.  (Contrast this, if you will, to the all-out federal government and CDC response when 34 people had died from Legionnaires Disease a few years earlier in Philadelphia.)

I had a clever friend name named Rick Graf who would, tongue-in-cheek carry around a chart showing AIDS/HIV funding in “thousands of dollars” with a huge “0” next to it.  It killed Rick in 1995.

It was because people hated gay people, and they were okay with letting gay men die.  To object to these deaths was considered “being political” or being supportive of homosexuality.  A position even only a fraction of gay people wanted to take in public then.

But, I’d had it.  I’d begun to lose friends, good men, gifted men, and no one seemed to care.  The red ribbon I wore was problematic at my job.  I was accused of being “disrespectful” and “in your face” of those who thought it was wrong to be gay. 

“But people are dying,” I’d say.

“I know,” they’d say, “but….”

The “buts” were always stupid and thinly veiled in bigotry and self-interest.  It wasn’t as if I was without self-interest.  I didn’t want my friends to die--one in particular, my soul-mate and life’s best friend a gay man named Michael.  I made a secret pact with God, that if I took any sling or arrow thrown my way to stop this travesty, that he would spare Michael.  It killed Michael in 1996.

However, the truth has a way of winning, and justice won’t shut up.  Little by little, by too damned little, people joined the few; and the few became the many.  It took a little boy named Ryan White dying of AIDS to shift the paradigm.  Still, in 1991, when the Ryan White bill was finally passed, my “liberal” Democratic senator Tom Harkin, made a point of announcing that the bill was for those “who didn’t get AIDS on purpose.”

Michael and I went to one of the last showings of the AIDS Quilt in 1992 on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C.  He was sick by then and gaunt.  It ripped my heart in ways I can’t talk about much without weeping.  I still hoped he would live, you see.  We joined an Act-Up Demonstration and helped wrap a red ribbon around the White House.  We sat on the wet grass behind the White House on Xeroxed photos of George H.W. Bush.   Bush the first, would lose the election in a few months.  We prayed for that.  We believed Bill Clinton would do everything for gay people.  He didn’t.  He passed laws against us, in fact.

I sometimes sit alone in my living room and become very quiet.  I allow myself to feel the vacuum of the presence of all we lost because of an irrational hatred that is still given too much berth.  I imagine Michael’s clothing designs, Kevin’s musical gifts with children, Kerry’s exquisite talent as a concert pianist, Allan’s magical fiber creations, David’s beautiful baritone voice, Bill’s compositions….  I literally could go on all day.

We have no comprehension of the beauty that was stolen from our world because we let these men die.  It gutted the artistic community in a way that’s never been acknowledged.  Our souls have been irreparably damaged by this, and we don’t know have an inkling as to the totality of that damage.

Still, I survived.  But barely.  I’d struggled with clinical depression my whole life, but I didn’t know it yet.  I self-medicated with booze and a lot of it.  My emotional immune system was so worn down, that even a relatively mild blow would leave me in total darkness.  I didn’t know how to take care of myself and instead let my passion do the driving.  I would dovetail quixotic efforts for justice rather than rest in between.  I was furious with people who wouldn’t help.  I was flattened by good friends who, out of self-interest, would be betray me.  I attempted suicide six times.  It would take a good decade before I was properly diagnosed and received the treatment I needed. 

Then, one day in late 2012, a weird, miraculous drop of grace tickled my soul while I was having a goofy memory about myself, and I fell in love with me.  I’d never loved myself, but suddenly I did.  I became very protective of me in every way.  I became whole enough to know what being whole meant.  Ironically, this dissolved my resentments and left me better able to love and forgive.  Who’d have thought?

I’ve been here before.

Hillary Clinton is a murderer.  So is every member of Congress who is not a co-sponsor of HR676, the Single Payer Bill in Congress, which includes my congressman, Dave Loebsack.  Yes, David, you’re a murderer.  So, is every supporter of Health Insurance companies, an enterprise that every second of every day commits genocide with glee.

Others may not call it murder to let people die when the resources exist to save them, but I do.  So, there you have it.  Why mince words?  I really doubt the insurance companies will close shop or politicians will stop capitulating to them if I ask them nicely.

Only this time it’s poor and low-income people we hate.  I believe Hillary Clinton is of brilliant intellect, and I don’t believe Dave Loebsack is stupid.  They know we can afford Single Payer.  They know, in fact, it would cost us less than how we’re doing it now.  They know that until we have a Single Payer system that guarantees healthcare for everyone that some will suffer and die.  They know it.  God help their souls, they’re just lying about it to protect their own self-interests.  I’m truly sorry if this offends Hillary or Loebsack supporters, but it’s the God-blessed truth, and lives depend on someone telling it.  Imagine holding your dying friend and having some politician say we might get to your problem by 2020.

"Incremental change" or "doing what we can" is a lot hooey for not doing what needs to be done.  Or, at the very least being square with people about the reality of this mess.

Obamacare may have helped a few, but it’s not even a drop in the bucket that needs to be filled.  Don’t worry, the GOP isn’t going to get rid of most of Obamacare, especially the subsidies.  Stop believing the Bullshit Partisan Food Fight Theater.  The empirical evidence of what I’m saying is pretty easily available if you care to look.  The insurance companies want that cash, and their toadies will make sure they get it.  They’ll just increase the premiums and deductibles and the fines for not having insurance until we’re paying hundreds each month to them for nothing.  What a God-forsaken racket.

America hates poor people.  Americans make fun of how they dress, what they eat, how they talk, where they shop, and the music they love.  We’re just not that bothered if they suffer and die.  It’s not as if it’s happening to people who matter.  Admit it.

As I type this, I am keenly aware that there are millions who are suffering and in pain but afraid to go to a doctor. 

“What if I spend that money, and it’s only a virus?”

“I can’t miss work.”

“I wish there were a free or cheap clinic where I live.”

“I can’t spare the $50 to get in at the online clinic right now.”

Most will live.  Some will not.  They’ll have something serious that needed immediate care or an infection will turn to sepsis that a $4.00 antibiotic would have cured if they could afford to see a doctor to write the prescription.  The least consequence they’ll suffer is being terrified (actually terrorized), and feel pain longer than that should have.  That is inhumane and wrong by any standard of decency.

The number who are killed for being poor looks like an afternoon in the park compared to the AIDS/HIV epidemic.  Approximately 26 million Americans can’t afford the healthcare they need.  A little more than 100,000 of them will die this year. I believe these people are human beings who matter.

Therefore, I intend to do all in my power to make a living hell of the lives of anyone who stands in between me and an end to this holocaust.  I survived.  And, I’m much better now at taking care of myself.  And, I’m old now anyway.

Let me be perfectly clear, I want health insurance companies to die, and I’ll do anything I can to make that happen.  They are evil.  It’s past time to call them that.

AIDS taught me something.  If I yell loud enough, long enough, people will start to listen.  Oh, they may hate me.  They may say dumb-ass drivel like, “It’s not what she says, it’s how she says it.”  They may form bullshit committees and project that I’m not allowed to join. I don’t bloody care.

You have been warned.  I’m going to keep screaming my head off until Single Payer is the law of the land.  You know sort of like every other industrialized nation in the world?  As my friend Rick used to say, “Silence=Death.  So, I’ll just keep talking, thank you.”

Mona Shaw is a grandmother of six and a high school graduate who lives in the low-rent district in a small town in Iowa.

For Whites Only

I remembered this morning, in disturbing detail, listening to a group of white college students, in 1970, singing “Colored Spade” from the musical “Hair” at the top of their lungs and giggling because it gave them permission to say racist epithets. 

I know white people are more racist than they’re willing to admit.  I know this because I’m white.  You see, when I’m in the room with only white people, they say things about Black people that they wouldn’t say if Black people were in the room.

I’ve never been in a group that was strictly white and when the subject of race came up that someone did not say something derogatory about Black people.  The least racist was, “I don’t feel sorry for them because…”

I’ve heard the jokes, the derogatory names, and the contrived reasons “Black people get what they deserve.”  I’ve listened ad nauseam to the too-quick assumptions that if a Black person was hurt that they “undoubtedly did something to bring that harm on themselves.”

I’ve heard the “nacho cheese” joke, the “Polack marrying the nigger” joke, the “impotent” joke, and witnessed countless Amos and Andy style impersonations.  When I objected,  I’ve been told, far more often than not, that I had no sense of humor—“It’s only a joke.”

I remember being cautioned as a child for holding coins in my mouth because “a nigger might have touched that.”

I heard a woman object to a Black woman in a Zest commercial who said “I don’t use soap, and I bet I’m cleaner than you.”  That white woman said, “There’s no way that nigger is cleaner than me.”

I heard a relative tell me to stare at an interracial couple in the car behind us, “They deserve to be stared at!”

I heard a preacher’s wife tell me interracial relationships were “sick.”  I heard an esteemed Christian elder in my church say the week after Martin Luther King was murdered, “That nigger got a better funeral than Christ.”

I heard a relative at the planning of my grandmother’s funeral ask about my bi-racial cousins, “Are the nigger babies going to be there too?”

I remember a sister giggling when she left a family gathering and announcing how she was “heading to Angular Street (Burlington’s Black neighborhood) to do some coon hunting.” 

I remember hearing endless griping about how Black people kept wages low, because “those niggers will work for anything.”

I remember hearing a man say, the morning after Obama was elected, "That nigger isn't my president."  He said that loudly at the breakfast buffet at the motel where I was staying.

Some of my memories are from the past.  (What memories aren’t from the past?)  But it hasn’t changed so much, not really. 

There is a sign now in my city’s buses that lists the rule “Don’t use the “n” word,” because, well, it’s been a problem.

Just like week, a pizza delivery person told me she didn’t like that Black people had been hired. “I’m not racist,” she said, “I’m just not comfortable around Black people.”

I’ll repeat what I said to her.

I grew up poor and working class, so I know that my people have been brainwashed by rich white people to believe that the Black man who’ll steal their job is their enemy.  I know how enduring the endless class epithets of poor people being stupid, lazy, and worthless, leads some to believe that “at least” they’re better than someone out there.

I’m more patient with the racism among poor and working class people because of this.  (Also, I’m related to some of these people.)  I try to be gentler because I need for them to see we share a common enemy: the wealthy class who pits us against one another to control us and keep us all subservient to them.  I try to tell them, “It’s wrong!  It’s bloody, deadly, ridiculously, masochistically wrong.  And until we get that piece (and more), our lives will never improve.  Ever.”

It’s also true, that many poor and working class people agree with me.  In nearly every situation of racism in an underclass gathering, one of them will have my back if I object.  Things can get pretty lively after that, but when I’m with more than five poor white people, I’m rarely alone.

That’s how poor and working class people are different.  I’ve never been a group of only affluent white people when I wasn’t alone in objecting.  Everyone else remained silent.  Oh, later, some would agree with me.  Some would pat me on the back for “speaking up.”  Just as many, though, would reprimand me for “making people feel uncomfortable.

One of more mendacious memes spread willy-nilly in our culture is when a “racist” is portrayed as a “hick” in a hard hat.  Poor people don’t have that kind of power.  They can be as ignorant as licking a frozen pipe, but they are not the Master.  The masters of racism sit in board rooms in $2000-dollar designer suit.  That’s the image that should be in those memes.

It’s not simply that I’ve seen racism no less among affluent white people.  It is, however, more threatening and dangerous.  These white people have power to hire, fire, and set policy.

Their racism has no oppressive circumstance.  They’re just aggrandizing another privilege in their already too privileged lives.  They seek to buttress their sense of social superiority.

I watched a university faculty member become indignant and offended (“I can’t be racist.  I married a woman from the Middle East!”) because a Black student objected to being told by that professor, “Buckwheat say ‘O-tay!’” every time he answered a question correctly in class.

I heard faculty endlessly claim that the reason there weren’t Black people on university faculty was because “they’re just not as good.”

I had a white, male, singer in a university opera--in spitting anger--accuse me of “kissing the ass of that Black bitch” because he thought I gave an African American singer more attention than I gave him.

There was never a single faculty search during the 17 years I worked at the University of Iowa School of Music that I didn’t hear some white, male, faculty member gripe, “Affirmative Action is going to make us hire some Black or Puerto Rican lesbian.”  

I remember--40 years after MLK’s death--listening to a professional white woman explain to me the “difference between African Americans and niggers.”

Regardless of class, I have seen and continue to see racism so often in groups of white people that I’ve even wondered—though I know this is not true—if Black people know just how bad racism is.

The best evidence of our reluctance to look at racism may be illustrated by how perturbed white people can get when others want to talk about racism.  When something is really healed, it doesn’t bother people to talk about it.  It’s not talking about racism that separates people of a different race.  It’s when we refuse to talk, or discourage talking about it, that leaves us keeping each other at least at an arm’s length.  We white people might want to be more interested in learning if our words, thoughts, and actions exacerbate racism than our hurt feelings that someone might think we’re racist. 

I’ve done this.  Yeah, it really stings when someone thinks I’m racist.  But I lived through it, and I became a better person by listening.  It’s not about me, and it’s not about you.  We’ll never be the experts on when something is racist or not.  We’re white.  If you’re against racism, and I believe most white people at least want to be.  Let’s acknowledge the racism still present in our culture.  Let’s work together to end the cruel and bloody legacy of slavery and all of its tropes.

There is not a single epithet in the song “Colored Spade” that I’ve not heard come from a white person’s lips with derogatory intention from every white socio-economic class, and I still do.

So, please don’t try to tell me that racism isn’t so bad in the United States.  I know better.  I’m white.

Welcome to 1984

I was watching an interview this morning on C-Span from the National Constitution Center.  The interview was with Julie Angwin about her book, “Dragnet Nation” which is about how modern surveillance inhibits free speech, free association, and how the information we receive is custom tailored.  That’s right.  The content of articles you read online is revised according to your consumer and browser histories.

This waved my memory back to high school and the first time I read “1984” by George Orwell.  The novel pressed an ice-pack on my nerves.  The notion that something like that could happen obsessed me for the longest time.  The obsession led me to see the movie with John Hurt and Richard Burton, when it was released in 1984.  The big-screen TV’s that hung on the walls inside homes were thrillingly futuristic even thirty years ago.  I wondered if there would ever be such things.  The mind-numbing programs that people watched that were interrupted by “If you see something, say something” PSAs scared the daylights out of me. 

Still, it was like ghost stories, it tickled my spine in a fun way because I didn’t really believe it could ever happen.  I was certain that even if the technology developed, people would never so blithely accept Big Brother into their homes.
I was wrong, of course.  The technology has not only surpassed Orwell’s imagination, the depth to which we are tracked is deeper and tougher to escape.  Public acceptance was quicker and easier too.  Few object.  Most say, “I have nothing to hide.  Why do I care if the government and private corporations know what I’m doing all the time?”

We cheerfully carry tracking devices with us: cells phones and the GPS systems in our cars.  Most have at least two in our homes: personal computers and big-screen TV’s.  Every purchase we make, every bill we pay, every phone call we make, every doctor we see, every treatment we receive, every medication we take is recorded electronically.  (No the HIPAA act doesn’t prevent business or government from having access to these records.)  Surveillance cameras are everywhere: every business, every parking lot, most public intersections, and every mode of public transportation.

And, this doesn’t even touch the information we eagerly donate on endless social media applications like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, etc.

Even those who do care cooperate in this, because we’ve arranged our lives in a manner that we can’t function without these devices.  Even if you try to get off the grid a little, e.g., you decide to do your scholarship and research at your local public library.  Most of your activities there are processed on computers and tracked through your library card.  (Public libraries have been required to give that information, upon request, to Homeland Security since the passage of the Patriot Act during G.W. Bush’s administration.  This Act that was strengthened by President Obama.)

So, yes, 1984 is here, and it’s on steroids.  And, we don’t care.  How about that?

Ukraine: an analysis

by David McReynolds

(This is a column from Edge Left, an occasional column, written by David McReynolds. It can be reprinted without further permission.)

Before launching into my analysis of events in Ukraine, there are a few points which should be made for an American audience.

Putin:

Commentators are engaged in a campaign to discredit Vladimir Putin, dismissing him as nothing more than the former head of the KGB. I hold no brief for Putin, whom I consider the head of a state dominated by oligarchs. But it is worth remembering Putin is the head of a state with which the US needs to deal. Poisoning the water with personal attacks does not move us toward a dialogue on Ukraine or on other matters where the US needs to work with Russia.

It is also worth remembering that Gorbachev, widely praised in the West (and in my view a major "good guy") was actually the KGB candidate when he took office.  It is in US interests to have a working relationship with Russia on matters such as Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan. And, beyond that, on issues of true nuclear and conventional disarmament.

How legitimate is the new Ukrainian government?

There is general agreement that the ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, was corrupt. The problem is he was elected by a clear margin. Dramatic as events on the Maidan were, it remains unclear what forces were involved, who "won," and what they represent. I've read several eye witness accounts of the dramatic actions in February--the problem is no two agree. The US insists the new government represents the people of Ukraine--but who makes that decision? (Younger readers need to remember that while Britain recognized the new Soviet government, which came to power in 1917, in 1924, the US did not recognize it until 1933. In the case of China, where the present Chinese government took power in 1949, the US did not recognize it until Richard Nixon's term. The US is very selective as to when it recognizes new governments that come to power via a revolution).


How nonviolent were the events at the Maidan?

I was more than a little surprised to find that the Facebook page of the Nonviolent Action Research Network (widely wide by American pacifists) termed the events in Kiev "nonviolent". That is nonsense. One can support or oppose the shifts that occurred in Kiev but one cannot call them nonviolent. Not only were a number of protestors killed, but so were a number of Ukrainian police. If people check the storming of the Winter Palace in Czarist Russia in October of 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power and the Russian Revolution became a reality, there were only a handful of people killed--far fewer than died in Kiev. I support the right of people to resist oppression by the methods they choose, but as a pacifist I will urge that resistance be nonviolent. For better or worse, Kiev was not nonviolent.


What happened at the Maidan? 

 The events in Kiev were turbulent. There have been reports--again, from eye witnesses that far right wing elements dominated the protesters, while other equally fervent eye witnesses insist far right wing elements were marginal. Steve Erlanger, in a "memo from Kiev" in the New York Times of Sunday, March 2, noted that the new government has few representatives of "what was the country's largest and most popular party, the Party of Regions, led by the ousted President, Viktor f. Yanukovych. Instead, the government is currently dominated by those associated with a former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who is widely blamed for the failure of the 2004 Orange Revolution to change Ukraine's corrupt political system." Erlanger's analysis suggests that Russian fears of the new government are valid--and, more important, that the fears of many Ukrainians, particularly in the Eastern Ukraine, are valid.

Andrew Wilson, a Ukraine expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that an early "mistake" by the new government was the overturning of the 2012 law that allowed regions of Ukraine to make Russian a second official language, "needlessly offending Russian-dominated regions like the Donbass and Crimea."

Commentators on events in Ukraine seem to break down into a kind of "left vs. right" pattern. William Blum, whose writing often makes good sense, argued in a recent piece that developments in Ukraine are part of the conscious pattern of the US to dominate the world, which has governed US actions for the last century. Much of what Blum has written has value, but this is nonsense - in 1914 it was Great Britain which ruled the world, WW I had just begun, and the US did not become conscious of its "new destiny" until after World War II. Other figures--Secretary of State Kerry, President Obama, and Hillary Clinton--are so off base it would be funny if it were not serious. What is one to say of Obama, speaking at a press briefing in the White House, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sitting beside him, when he spoke of international law, ignoring the fact that Israel has occupied the West Bank in violation of international law, with considerable brutality and violence, for more than forty years.

And of course what can one say about any Russian actions in Crimea (on which I'll comment in a moment) when they come from the leader of a nation which invaded Iraq, destroying it in the process, and has a bloody record of military interventions, some of which have never made rational sense (as in the case of Vietnam, where an estimated three million Vietnamese were killed).

There has been an almost complete lack of balance in media coverage. CNN has been happy to give extended time to interviews with John McCain, one of those rare veterans who seems to long for war, but little time to calmer voices.

To sum up what happened at Maidan, I'm fed up with some of the left telling me it was an anti-Semitic event, and everyone on the right saying it was entirely a democratic event. Clearly--if one can work through the reports--it was not just a "left vs right" event, but one in which many young Ukrainians, fed up with the corruption of the government, burst into a largely spontaneous and very exciting moment of revolt. However there is no question that the political right was there, and no question at all that it has been given key posts in the new government.

A note on Crimea:

 

Crimea is historically Russian. It does not have the independent history of Ukraine. It also has Russia's only warm water port. It was inevitable, once the events in Kiev took the turn they did, that Russia would move into Crimea, and it is not going to leave. Think back to our own actions--when Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1960 he posed no threat to the US--only to US control in Central and South America. Yet the US was so disturbed it launched a military attack (the Bay of Pigs), and has spent much of the past half century trying to assassinate Fidel and imposing severe sanctions. And we are surprised that Russia took steps to protect what had historically been part of Russia?

 

The trigger for Russian actions:

 

Early in February, as events at the Maidan has created a crisis, with the death toll rising, Polish and German diplomats met with both the Ukrainian government and with the rebels, working out a series of compromises which would have left Yanukovych in power but would also have met many of the demands of those in the Maidan. It is probable that Putin would have lived with that, but we will never know, since the rioters continued the uprising, which had by then become a revolution, and Yanukovych was forced to flee.

 

The context of the Ukrainian Crisis:

Here I want to step back away from the immediate crisis of Ukraine, for a look at the history which dictates much Russian policy--under Putin as it did under Stalin.

Russia has no natural barrier--no river, no mountain range--to guard it on its Western border. It has suffered invasion from the West three times in recent memory - under Napoleon and then twice under the Germans. In the last invasion, under Hitler, between 25 and 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives. All the factories, dams, railroads, towns and cities west of a line from Leningrad in the North to Moscow to Stalingrad in the South were destroyed. Americans make much of 9.11 (and I don't make light of it) but for Russia it was not just a handful of buildings in one city which were destroyed--it was entire cities, leveled. And then with the wounded to care for, the orphans, the widows.

Americans have never understood what the war meant to Russia and why, after the war, the Soviets sought to build a "protective band" of territory between itself and Germany. This was Eastern Europe, which under the iron boot of Stalin became "people's democracies" or "presently existing socialism."

Something Americans (perhaps including our President and the Secretary of State) have forgotten was that Russia wanted to make a deal with the West. It had made peace with Finland, which (again, memories are short and we have forgotten this) fought on the side of the Nazis. The Soviets withdrew from Austria after the West agreed that Austria, like Finland, would be neutral.The Soviets very much wanted a Germany united, disarmed, and neutral. Stalin did not integrate the East Germany into the Eastern European economic plans for some time, hoping he could strike that deal. But the West wanted West Germany as part of NATO, and so the division of Germany lasted until Gorbachev came to power.

I would have urged radical actions by the West in 1956 when the Hungarian Revolution broke out--it was obvious that if the Soviets could not rule Eastern Europe without sending in tanks (as they had already had to do in East Germany in 1953), they posed no real threat of a military strike at the West.

What if we had said to Moscow, “Withdraw your tanks from Hungary, and we will dissolve NATO, while you dissolve the Warsaw Pact?”

But of course the West didn't do that. The US in particular (but I would not exempt the Europeans from a share of the blame) wanted to edge their military bases to the East. When the USSR gave up control of Eastern Europe, the US pressed for pushing NATO farther East, into Poland and up to the borders of Ukraine.

Pause for a moment and assume that revolutionary events in Canada had meant Canada was about to withdraw from NATO and invite in Russian military advisers. What do you think US response would be?

Why are we surprised that Putin has said, very clearly, "No closer. Back off."

In this case Moscow holds the high cards. Europe is not going to war over Crimea. And it needs Russian gas. Sanctions will cut both ways--Europe is very cautious and, irony of ironies, it is Germany which is behaving with the greatest diplomacy.

If, out of all this, US planners accept the fact that there are real limits to how far East NATO can push, then the crisis will have helped us come to terms with reality. It may even lead us to consider dissolving NATO!

The importance of civil society.

All states act in their own interests. States do not have moral values. What we need to count on is the civil society--and Russia has one--which will modify state behavior, just as civil society here can sometimes modify state behavior. We--folks in the American civil society-- need to reach out to the folks in Ukrainian and Russian civil society. There have been anti-war actions in Russia at this time. Great. Let's try to link with them. We need to worry when, as in Nazi Germany, civil society is silenced. To a great extent that has happened here, in the US. Of course we should hope for a fair referendum in Crimea, but I think the fairest possible referendum will still see Crimea returned to Russia.

Meanwhile, we need to tamp down the talk of military action, of sanctions, and of efforts to humiliate Putin. He isn't my hero, but most Russians are happy with him. He has restored to Russia some of the pride it lost with the dissolution of the old Soviet Union. Americans, of all people, should understand this, with our endless (and tiresome) insistence we are the great nation in the world.

David McReynolds was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1980 and 2000, past Chair of War Resisters International, and for nearly forty years on the staff of War Resisters League. He is retired and lives with his two cats on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He may be reached at: davidmcreynolds7@gmail.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thousands Will Still Die under Obamacare



by Mona Shaw

I am sincerely happy for those who can now have cheaper insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA/Obamacare).  I am happy for those younger-than-26 adults who are now covered on their parents’ insurance.  I am happiest for those who now qualify for Medicaid who had nothing before.

 

But I cannot celebrate this bill.  It still leaves too many without affordable care.  Obamacare (or the ACA) has a cynical and, for many, a cruel name.  The ACA does NOT provide affordable care.  It doesn’t provide care at all.  It only provides (and only for some) affordable insurance.  It does not guarantee care for anyone.  Care is still dependent on how much insurance someone can afford and how much they can pay out of pocket before they reach very high deductibles.  People who cannot afford it will still be denied care.

People will still avoid going to the doctor to avoid the high cost of a doctor’s visit.  People will still use Emergency Rooms when they become seriously ill because they could not afford that visit or any preventative or well care.  (While insurance companies are now required to OFFER coverage for these.  Only the very affluent can afford the policies that include this coverage.)

Also, if a patient has an outstanding bill or can’t afford the co-payment, patients can still be refused treatment, even if they have insurance.  I.e. a patient can still be denied chemo by a hospital if they can’t pay an outstanding bill not covered by insurance.

Hundreds, probably thousands, will die this coming year still because they can’t afford care.  To tell these people “Obamacare is a start” will be cold comfort to those planning a loved one’s funeral.  The people who will die matter.  It is immoral and heinous to regard them as collateral damage in a system that still only works for some.  They matter as human beings as much as the more affluent who won’t die.  Most of them will be low-income people who work hard for a living.

 

I can’t celebrate until I live in a nation where not ONE person is denied the healthcare they need to survive.  I don’t know how anyone can.  Demand Single Payer.

Cancer Treatment Centers of America

Every time Cancer Treatment Centers of America airs one of their syrupy commercials, I have to take a walk until I calm down.  I've taken to calling the outfit, "Cancer Club for Rich People."

You have to fork over at least 150k before they'll even see you, and that's if you have Medicare or insurance.  People in my life can't afford that.  Nor can they afford the Pink Lotus Clinic or the "red carpet" care they boast and where Angelina Jolie recently received cancer preventative treatment.  To Pink Lotus's credit they do have a philanthropic program that makes them accessible to a few low-income and uninsured women.  The problem is these women can't afford the test that informed Jolie she was at risk.  By the time these women reach out to Pink Lotus, they're usually already threatened with dying.

It's impossible for me to not compare Jolie's story with my cousin Annie who was recently diagnosed with cancer.  Annie isn't getting the "red carpet."  Annie is uninsured.  And, she didn't qualify for Iowa Care (barely) until her recent diagnosis.  Doctors tell her she has about two years to live with chemo and only a year without it.  She's taking the chemo.  They also tell her she'd have had longer if her cancer had been detected sooner. She's had symptoms for quite a while now, but was hoping they'd "just go away" because seeing a doctor was so cost prohibitive. 

"What if I'm well, and I'm stuck with this bill I can't pay?" she'd tell us.

Most people who are uninsured do this.  The odds are with you.  But sometimes you lose the odds.  Iowa Cares (Iowa's indigent healthcare program, which really only sort of cares) requires patients be treated in only two locations, Broadlawns in Des Moines or UI Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. The residence of the patient determines at which place one can be treated. 

For Annie, this is Iowa City, about a 90-minute drive each way from her home.  I'm given to understand that riding in a car for 90 minutes after chemo is not a "red carpet" experience.  There used to be a free shuttle that would take poor people to their appointments.  I remember people who'd recently had surgery or had a bone fracture traveling in the van with me when I went to appointments.  Some would only grimace.  Some wear be tearful and moan on the trip which took a minimum of four hours because patients were being picked up in a myriad of towns.  However, as miserable as the ride could be, you could get there for treatment.  The 50-year-old service was cut in November.  I was told you can save a lot on Iowa Cares if you discourage people from using it.  So, Annie also has to find the money to get to Iowa City.

Annie and I disagree about a bunch of theological issues.  Annie believes in a literal hell.  I don't.  However, Annie and I do agree that we love each deeply, and we don't want her to die.  She's only in her 50s and has children, grandchildren, and a passel of nieces and nephews who need her.  (Her younger sister died a few years ago due, in no small part, due to inadequate healthcare too.)  So, I find myself admitting it, I might be okay with a literal hell if it had a special place in it for those who let people suffer and die because they can't afford healthcare, places like the entire Heath Insurance Industry, the Cancer Treatment Center for America, and almost everyone in Congress.

As for those who tell me it's unseemly to talk about personal struggles like this in public.  I just want them to leave the grown-up table. 

For some reading entertainment, check out what Yelp has on Cancer Institute of America from people who aren't rich.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/cancer-treatment-centers-of-america-goodyear