A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

It appears that President Obama will soon achieve his health care triumph â and an unmitigated disaster for the public. âBoth Clinton and Obama planned to shanghai the vast bulk of the public as captive consumers of the insurance cartel,â but only Obama could have pulled it off. He  is bringing into existence a privatized health care system that will be ânearly impossible to dismantle absent a general political upheaval in the United States.â

Obama Hustles the Public for the Insurance Industry

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

âThe insurance industry will emerge vastly more powerful, buttressed by newly-created public-private structures.â

How was it possible, that at the height of the Great Recession, one of the nationâs most despised industries succeeded in getting the United States Congress to force nearly every American citizen to purchase its shoddy and crooked products on pain of penalty of law. The Insurance Industry Bonanza of 2009 could not have happened had Barack Obama not been elected president. It is inconceivable that a President John McCain could have pulled off such a coup, even if he wanted to â which he did not. McCain favored the usual Republican fare: tax credits. But nobody would be forced to sign up with the insurance companies.

No, that was Hillary Clintonâs idea and, as with most issues, she was soon joined by her political twin, Barack Obama. In hindsight, we now see that real health care reform was doomed as soon as the Democratic presidential race narrowed to two candidates. Both Clinton and Obama planned to shanghai the vast bulk of the public as captive consumers of the insurance cartel. But only Obama could have pulled off a miracle for the insurers, mesmerizing the masses into believing he was opposed to corporate dominance of health care even as, one after the other, he struck deals with the drug, hospital and insurance barons â a pact made in Hell that only a popular, sitting Democratic president could have imposed on his congressional party.

The final vote has not been bought or sold but the fix has been in ever since Obama set foot in the White House and immediately went about marginalizing single payer supporters. As Business Week magazine titled its cover story back on August 6, âThe Health Insurers Have Already Won.â

The 57 congresspersons that vowed to vote against any health care bill that does not include a ârobustâ public option, will shrivel to a few handfuls of men and women when the crunch comes â a defeat made more ignominious and unnecessary when it is considered that single payer health care is still supported by two-thirds of the public. However, with the health corporationsâ guy in the White House, the country faces years of the âtwo percent solutionâ whereby only about 6 million people, or 2 percent of the population under age 65, will belong to the puny, overpriced public plan.

âThe Insurance Industry Bonanza of 2009 could not have happened had Barack Obama not been elected president.â

This should have been the year for single payer, or something close enough to it that the real deal might be achieved in another year or two. Some optimistic folks still think real health care reform can be resurrected sometime soon to replace Obamaâs disastrous legislation. But that would be extremely difficult. Obama is establishing a private system backed by the federal government that will envelop virtually every citizen. The insurance industry will emerge vastly more powerful, buttressed by newly-created public-private structures nearly impossible to dismantle absent a general political upheaval in the United States.

The Obama bill is not the lesser of evils. It is not a matter of allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good. The establishment of a privatized state-backed monopoly on health care is an unmitigated evil that could require a vast movement many years of struggle to reverse.

What, then, has Obama has wrought? He has delivered to the bankers every available bit of the nation's wealth and its full faith and credit. And to the insurance industry he has entrusted the lives of 98 percent of our citizens. All this, in less than a year. Is he not a great man?

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, to to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The historical African American desire for peace clashes with the warlike policies of the first Black president. Something's got to give â and in the end the Black anti-war tradition will make itself dramatically felt. Let's start the process with the Black Is Back rally in Washington, November 7.

Black Peace Sentiment and Obama's Wars

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

âThe Black American image has been tarnished among peace-loving peoples of the planet.â

When the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations rallies this weekend in Washington DC, it will be expressing the sentiments that have historically made African Americans the most anti-war ethnic group in the United States. Black Americans have been most consistently opposed to U.S. military adventures abroad ever since the major polls began tracking Black opinion. Black opposition to the Iraq war registered most strongly in February, 2003, when the U.S. invasion was only a little over a month away. While majorities of white men and more than a third of white women told pollsters they would favor an invasion even if it killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, only seven percent of African Americans agreed. Hispanics also opposed the invasion back in 2003, although not nearly so strongly as Blacks.

More than 40 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali opposed the Vietnam War and remained icons in Black America because they reflected the views of large segments of their communities, including majorities of Blacks serving in the military.

The outside world had long recognized that African Americans were historically and politically different than their white fellow citizens. In a dramatic example, Iranian students freed their Black captives, along with females, when they seized the American embassy in 1979.

In succeeding decades, Black warmongers gained high profile positions in U.S. government, most notably Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. General Powell, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the televised face of the first Gulf War. As Secretary of State in 2003, Powell disgraced himself at the United Nations, the Black face of a lying government justifying the coming invasion of Iraq. Condoleezza Rice, while George Bushâs national security advisor, raised the specter of an Iraqi âmushroom cloudâ to stampede the nation into war. When Rice succeeded Powell as Secretary of State, she dutifully cited Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe as âoutposts of tyrannyâ in the world, and therefore justifiable targets of the United States.

âBlack America is caught in an historical contradiction.â

The Black American image has been tarnished among peace-loving peoples of the planet. Yet African Americans remain largely true to their traditional anti-war politics, despite having given overwhelming support to a Black president who has introduced the largest military budget in history, claimed the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his own, further militarized the continent of Africa, and expanded U.S. bases and subversion in Latin America.

Black America is caught in an historical contradiction: It is emotionally invested in the first Black president, even as Barack Obama pursues warlike policies historically opposed by African Americans. It's time to break the spell. The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations begins the process on Saturday, November 7, at Washington DC's Malcolm X Park. It's about time. Hispanics are now slightly more opposed than Blacks to President Obama's troop escalations in Afghanistan, possibly because Latinos now suffer more casualties than Blacks, but more likely because African Americans find it painful to face the fact that the first Black president is a warmonger.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Having forced Pakistan to launch a civil war to protect American interests, the U.S. dispatches Hillary Clinton to rub salt in Pakistani wounds. The Anti-Diplomat lectures the locals on tax collection and helping the poor while her government daily violates the country's sovereignty. âAmericans believe they are the only nation that deserves to have a sense of dignity â and so they relentlessly strip away the dignity of others.â

Hillary Clinton: A Very Ugly American

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

âThe Obama administration drapes itself in the ancient, bloody shrouds of 'just wars' and 'necessary wars.'â

If there ever was a country wholly unfit to play the role of global overseer, it is the United States, a nation utterly unequipped to treat other peoples with even the most elemental respect. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strode the Pakistani stage last week, insulting her hosts at every possible opportunity, the very picture of the Ugly American.

Clinton lectured Pakistani businessmen on the laxity of tax collection in their country, and feigned concern for the plight of the poor. It was as if she were a U.S. politician making the rounds of American television talk shows, rather than a visiting diplomat â a foreigner in someone elseâs house.

Clinton all but spat upon the hospitality of the host country, a Muslim nation of 176 million for whom hospitality is a cultural obligation. When confronted on her eagerness to critique Pakistani society, Clinton proclaimed that the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan had to be âa two-way street.â But of course, no such street has ever existed between Americans and Pakistanis â and everyone in Pakistan knows it. No Pakistani is touring the United States, commanding U.S. media coverage while pontificating on American corporate greed, economic inequality, or racial injustice. And no Pakistani has the power to demand that Americans plunge the United States into civil war.  Yet that is precisely what the Americans demand from Pakistanis â that they make war on each other, to please the United States.

âMuslim fundamentalist jihad in Afghanistan had three fathers: the United States, Saudi Arabia, and U.S.-backed Pakistani governments.â

The Obama administration drapes itself in the ancient, bloody shrouds of âjust warsâ and
ânecessary wars,â insanely believing it can reinvent history for Pakistanis just as history is routinely revised for the consumption of ultra-gullible Americans. But Pakistanis remember that the U.S. has always supported military regimes that served American global purposes, not the interests of the Pakistani people. They are intimately aware that Muslim fundamentalist jihad in Afghanistan had three fathers: the United States, Saudi Arabia, and U.S.-backed Pakistani governments. And they now see the current Pakistani government and military again bending to Americaâs will, toy soldiers for foreigners, who hardly protest when U.S. drone aircraft rain down death on Pakistani targets.

Americans believe they are the only nation that deserves to have a sense of dignity â and so they relentlessly strip away the dignity of others. Worse, imperial Americans like Hillary Clinton have not the least sense of loyalty to their dark servants. Even as Pakistani generals ordered their soldiers to kill their own countrymen at United States insistence, Secretary Clinton declared that she believed some Pakistani government officials are aware of where Al Qaeda is hiding, and won't tell.

The British were far better at running empires than the Americans. At least the Brits praised their colonial servants like Gunga Din, who sacrificed their lives for the white manâs sake. Imperial barbarians like Hillary Clinton publicly kick their Gunga Dins, the Pakistani generals, in the backside, and then wonder why the United States is so hated. And thatâs one reason why the American empire is doomed.

For Black Agenda Radio, Iâm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.