MSH: Real versus Fake Universal Health Care for Women

From Monkey Smashes Heaven on the state of global health care:

MSH: Real versus Fake Universal Health Care for Women

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

The debate over “universal healthcare” dominates the political landscape in the US. Obama’s administration and the Democratic Party have committed themselves to healthcare reform. This has caused a firestorm, splitting Amerikans on the issue. Michelle Obama has stepped into the fray over Amerikan healthcare reform. The first lady’s presence in the debate brings attention to the implications of healthcare reform for women. Amerikan feminists argue that “universal healthcare” is a feminist issue because women are disproportionately affected by the costs of the current system. Even though women make up the majority of the population in the US, recent polls indicate that most Amerikans oppose “universal healthcare” as it is currently being advanced by the Democrats. However, the reality is that all Amerikans, even Obama, oppose real universal healthcare. This is because real universal healthcare means health care for all of humanity, not just Amerikans. Real universal healthcare means focusing on those who need healthcare most. It means addressing the health issues of those in the Third World who have little or no healthcare at all.

Real universal healthcare would address the plight of Third World women. Third World women suffer in great numbers from conditions that hardly exist in the First World. First World so-called feminists shrilly advocate expanded healthcare for Amerikan women but are silent about those who truly need health care reform.

Vaginal fistulas are a prime exapmple of the disparity between the healthcare available to First and Third World women. Vaginal fistulas are tears in the vaginal lining resulting from complications during childbirth. This can cause urine and feces to leak from the vagina or chronic incontinence. An estimated two million women in the Third World suffer from vaginal fistulas, with an additional 50,000 to 100,000 occurrences a year. With proper obstetric care this is a highly treatable and preventable medical condition. Most women in Africa have little or no access to such care. Often help, most needed during a prolonged and painful labor, is several days walk and unaffordable. However, vaginal fistulas in the First World are almost unheard of. Women in the First World have easy access to basic levels of care that prevent and treat such conditions.

Another reproductive health issue that plagues women in the Third World, particularly Africa, is HIV/AIDS. Women in sub-Saharan Africa are disproportionately affected by the virus: 12 million women were reported living with the virus in 2007 while approximatley 127,000 women in the U.S. were infected in 2005. Management and treatment of HIV/AIDS is similarly disproportionate. Risk of mother-to-child transfer of HIV/AIDS can be mitigated in the First World by the administration of anti-retroviral drugs which are rarely available to women of the Third World. Testing and prophylactics are widely available in Amerika, slowing the rate of infection, whereas sub-Saharan Africans have limited access to such preventative measures. Women in the First World have access to preventative measures that have kept the number of women affected by the virus relatively low. Post-infection care has greatly  improved the prospects of those few women who are infected in the First World. Women of the Third World have severely limited access to preventative measures and post-infection care and are suffering in great numbers.

Imperialist exploitation allows for women in the First World to have first-rate access to reproductive medicine while the women in the Third World are denied basic levels of care. Sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the Third World, has been ravaged by imperialism and the people are left hungry and poor. Real feminists and advocates of universal healthcare place a priority on the healthcare of  the peoples of the Third World. The superior health care available to First World women comes at the high cost of compromised health of women in the Third World.

Sources

1. http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=6941&edition=2&ttl=20090903070545

2. http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=6941&edition=2&ttl=20090903070545

3. http://www.endfistula.org/q_a.htm#q6

4. http://www.avert.org/women.htm

RAIM Global Digest # 5

RAIM Digest 5 PDF

Contents:

1,013 Afghan Civilians Killed in First Half of 2009

Pigs Deny Ward Churchill Job and Damages

Movie Review: The Rise of Cobra

Obama: More Troops, More Imperialism, More of the Same

Amerika’s Fierce Appetite

Movie Review: District 9

Amerikan E-Waste Poisons Chinese

Amerikan E-Waste Poisons Chinese

(raimd.wordpress.com)

E-waste increasingly flows from the U.S. to the Third World. E-waste is made up of computers, cell phones, and other electronics that have been thrown away. For example, Amerikans throw out 133,000 computers a day and 100 million cell phones a year. Electronics contain harmful, toxic materials such as lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and polyvinyl chlorides. These materials are known to cause cancer, brain damage, kidney disease, etc. This toxic e-waste is the fastest growing part of the municipal waste stream in the U.S.

How does e-waste get from point a to point b? There are dozens of corporations that are contracted to dispose of e-waste. One such company is Executive Recycling out of Englewood, Colorado. Executive Recycling promotes itself as an eco-friendly corporation, sponsoring Earth Day events and a “Go Green” campaign in Colorado, for example. They are a corporation that is contracted to dispose of e-waste in an environmentally safe manner. The Executive Recycling web page even warns of the dangers to Amerikans that e-waste poses: “Here in Colorado, residential customers are not governed by law to recycle electronics; however by putting these items in the trash we are causing a larger issue, as these items leach mercury, lead, and other hazardous elements into our drinking water.”

So, how does Executive Recycling keep Amerikans safe from toxic e-waste? Rather than expose Amerikans to their own hazardous trash, Executive Recycling dumps it on Chinese. A recent story by the news journal 60 Minutes documents how toxic materials are shipped by Executive Recycling, and other First World recycling companies, from Amerika to destinations in China.

One destination is Guiyu, China. It is a city with a growing population, where peasants have come after being driven off the land. The ex-peasants breakdown and burn old computers and other electronics. They earn a few dollars a day dealing with highly toxic materials without protective equipment. They report that their lungs burn and they have trouble breathing. Their skin is damaged with scars and burns. The local water has become undrinkable. Drinking water has to be trucked in. Guiyu has the highest level of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. Seven out of ten children have too much lead in their blood. Miscarriages are six times more likely there.

The Amerikan high-tech lifestyle produces poisons that are forced upon the impoverished peoples of the Third World. Not only do Third World peoples slave away in factories producing consumer goods for Amerikans for pennies an hour, Third World peoples also have to recycle Amerikans’ toxic trash. Capitalist-imperialism poisons Third World peoples in order to maintain the Amerikan way of life. This is yet another example of how the First World lives on the backs of the Third World, exporting the cost of its lifestyle to the majority of the world’s people.

Amerikans have help in poisoning the Chinese population. The Chinese state turns a blind eye. In the 1970’s, Chinese self-determination and independent socialist development was replaced with brutal comprador capitalism. Today, the Chinese state sells the labor and health of its people to imperialism in order to make a buck. The First World and its Third World lackeys will continue to ruin the lives of Third World peoples until imperialism is defeated, until Third World peoples seize control of their own destinies.

Source:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4586903n

RAIM Global Digest Issue 4

RAIM Global Digest

Issue 4, July 8th, 2009

Contents:

-I-70 Expansion Indicative of Wider Imperialist Parasitism
- Review of “The Old Future’s Gone: Progressive Startegies Amid Cascading Crisis,” a talk by Robert Jensen
-RAIM-Denver: Class Today and the Struggle for a New World
-Arghiri Emmanuel: The North-South Division
-Pigs on a Rampage in Denver Area
-U.S. Troop Injured by Philippine Rebels
-Conflict Heats Up in Oil-Rich Niger Delta

Class Today and the Struggle for a New World

(http://raimd.wordpress.com)

“We want a better world. We want a world based on equality and mutuality. We envision a future in which the full potential of humanity is realized: one without unequal power relations and one of ecological harmony. Creating such a world is our common cause.” Such is the revolutionary refrain.

However pious the statements are, they stand disconnected from the world today: one full of inequality, oppression, coercion, violence, poverty and so on. If we really seek to create such a new, ‘utopian’ world, one thing is clear- we have a lot of work to do. Before we embark on this huge project, we need a plan or some sort of road map. Before we can chart a course towards the world we’d like to see, we must understand where we are now.

The world today is marked by extreme inequalities and stratification. The vast majority of people, around eighty percent, subsist on less than ten dollars a day. (1) Theirs is a world of poverty, toil and deprivation. Contrasted to this is a privileged minority noted for affluence, consumption and waste. Generally speaking, this social divide breaks down geographically: vast impoverishment being the norm of the ‘Third World’ and widespread affluence characteristic of the ‘First World.’

The scope and depth of this situation is unimaginable. In India alone, seven hundred million people live on less than two dollars dollars a day. (2) This is roughly equivalent to the entire English-speaking world. Around half of the world, about 3.5 billion people, live on less that $2.50 a day. (1) The human effects are devastating. For example, every year over 2 million people die of water born disease and every five seconds a child dies of starvation or malnutrition. (3) (4) All of these deaths are preventable: on a daily basis Amerikans alone have an average intake of 3,700 calories, throw away almost a third of their edible food and use 5.8 billion gallons of potable water just for toilets. (5) (6) (7)

The squalor of the of Third World and the squander of the First are directly related. Each world’s respective condition is the direct result of exploitation. The modern system of exploitation, whereby a global minority in a few rich countries lives at the expense of the impoverished global majority, is called imperialism. That is to say that in relation to the imperialist system and the Third World masses, those in the First World are beneficiaries of the former and a petty class of exploiters towards the latter.

Imperialism is currently the most widespread, fundamental form of oppression. This does not mean that other forms of oppression do not exist. Rather, imperialism is currently the dominant form of oppression: it touches the most people in the most fundamental way; it is the foremost determinant of life-options and class; and other forms of oppression are almost always negated, heightened, co-opted or superseded by imperialist exploitation. Imperialism drives social life today.

Attitudes and trends of thought, or ‘class consciousness,’ confirm this social reality. Whereas apathy and post modernism are common in the West, this is due to the lack of a functional need for a politically charged population. When First Worlders do express political views they are almost always supportive of imperialism. Mindless consumerism, a natural aspect of any society fattened on stolen wealth, is also a major phenomenon in the First World. On the other side of the social world, those in the Third World naturally resist their oppression. Radical Islam, the fastest growing social movement of the last thirty years, is in many regards an opposition movement against imperialism. This amalgamation of religion and anti-imperialism is no accident. Rather, it is evidence of two truths. First, the main social antagonism today is between the Third and First World. Second, oppression and resistance are inseparable.

Insofar as imperialism is the most fundamental form of oppression, resistance and revolutionary struggles are regular features in the Third World and at the margin. It is the Third World’s anti-imperialist struggle which is both the most widespread and common struggle amongst the global masses and by definition one against the core of global power. Containing amazing diversity, flaws and potential, the global anti-imperialist struggle is the struggle of the world’s exploited majority.

The anti-imperialist struggle is the modern day revolutionary struggle. The struggle of the global masses who are exploited by imperialism is of primary importance for those who seek a fundamentally better world: one that cannot freely evolve from the current one.

Anti-imperialist initiatives and revolutions in a single country or territory weakens the imperialist system as a whole and gives a new impetus for further, more widespread change.  It is as part of the global fight against imperialism that the foundations for a new world are built and of this process itself from which further revolutionary potential emerges. In our period, the complete abolition of capitalism, patriarchy, youth oppression and other unequal structural relationships as well as arriving at a state of mutuality and ecological harmony are directly tied the destruction of the current order via anti-imperialist struggle.

For revolutionaries around the world the current task is to advance and support the ongoing struggle against imperialism as part the advancement of our radical vision of a world free from all oppression. Those revolutionaries in the First World, who owing to class composition are few and far between and separated from the struggle of the world’s exploited masses, naturally find this task daunting. Nevertheless, for all those who desire a new world, this is the struggle we must engage in.

No doubt, the path before us is long and arduous. However, the place to begin is here; the time to start is now.

(1) http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
(2) http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia/countries/india/
(3) http://www.pacinst.org/reports/water_related_deaths/water_related_deaths_report.pdf
(4) http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y7352e/y7352e03.htm#P1_34
(5) http://www.pacinst.org/reports/water_related_deaths/water_related_deaths_report.pdf
(6) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18martin.html?partner=rssnyt
(7) http://www.fypower.org/res/tools/products_results.html?id=100139

Obama to Iranian Leadership: Let’s Make a Deal

by “Midwest RAIMster”

(http://antiimperialism.wordpress.com)

Marking the Iranian new year’s celebration, Nowruz, U.S. president Barack Obama released a video statement to the adversarial Middle East nation. While on the surface Obama offered his “best wishes” and the “promise of a new beginning,” such a statement can hardly be taken at face value.

The statement was aimed at three audiences specifically: the Iranian leadership, the Iranian people, and the Amerikan and Western masses. Lauding Iranian culture and making vague comparisons between Amerikans and Iranians, Obama both played into Iranian nationalism and invoked a false sense of fraternity between the Iranian and Amerikan people. Obama stressed that it was a “new day” and raised the false hope of a “greater peace.”

In truth, fraternity between the oppressed Iranians and oppressor Amerikans is a myth and Barack Obama is not in the position to offer changes to the basic relationship. Whereas Obama is a good orator whose words have an aire of credibility that George Bush lacked, the capitalist-imperialist system still demands the increasing exploitation of Third World peoples. Obama should be seen for the role he plays in this overall system.

Implied in Obama’s statement was a clear offer to the Iranian leadership: get with the program and there is a place for you in the imperialism system. Amerika’s desire to exploit Iran hasn’t changed. Now it appears as though the door is open for the current Iranian leadership to become the local managers for the Amerikan empire. While Obama emphasized dialogue and ‘mutual respect,’ if these tactics fail to bring about the desired result, Amerika will surely resort to covert destabilization efforts and direct military actions.  In previous statements, Obama said he would not rule out the latter option in dealing with the Iranian leadership.

The statement was also directed to the Iranian masses. By invoking the Iranian holiday, Obama hoped to especially connect to this group. The aim of this was to cast domestic speculation on the Iranian leadership’s current anti-U.S. policies. This is especially hypocritical in that Obama’s efforts are aimed at bringing the Iranian masses under the exploitation the Western imperialism. Amerika’s current stance towards the Iranian leadership is based solely on whether they will be an accomplice to this exploitation.

Amerikans also took in the statement by the millions, many with enthusiasm. For them, Obama represents an imperialist figurehead which they can be proud of. While not giving up the drive to bring every corner of the globe under its domination, Amerika is now better able to claim it is doing so in the name of peace. Such a proposition is no less a tactic of imperialism, albeit a more popular one. As RAIM has previously stated, Obama represents the velvet glove of imperialism. False rhetoric of “mutual respect” and “peace” are likely to be continuing tactics of Obama and Amerika’s never ending war against the Third World masses.

Sources:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/20/news/IRAN-transcript.php

http://raimd.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/obama-shocks-arabs-touts-imperialist-creditials/

http://raimd.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/obama-%E2%80%9Cblack%E2%80%9D-messiah-for-white-amerika/

Hamas Official Calls For International Justice Against U.S and Israel

Hamas Official Calls For International Justice Against U.S. and Israel

(raimd.wordpress.com)

Speaking in Malaysia, a senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, called for the United States and Israel to be brought to trial for widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip. The charges stem from Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza, which killed over 1,300 Palestinians.

Efforts are underway to gather evidence against the two criminal states, Zuhri said. During the conflict Israel used white phosphorus, which caused a number of structure fires including one to a food warehouse. In another example of Israel’s flagrant disregard for even bourgeois norms of war, a school received sustained shelling, killing 42 people including women and children.  Such occurrences and more were all too common.

While Zuhri’s proclamations are certainly righteous, they propagate a common misjudgment. Attempting to challenge the U.S. and Israel through their own institutions and by their rules is a dead end. The United Nations and International Criminal Court exist solely to perpetuate and reinforce the current order. Neither are conduits for justice for those directly under the boot of imperialist aggression. While Zuhri specifically encouraged private civil suits against Israeli forces and their backers, it is guaranteed such actions will lead to little long term success.

Hamas and all other representatives of people resisting imperialist oppression and exploitation must join together in creating a new international order. Only through the building of alternative institutions of the oppressed and the displacement of those championed by imperialism can the people of Palestine, and those of the world, come to fully realize justice and equality.

In the wake of Israel’s most recent attacks, support for Hamas, both in Occupied Palestine and internationally, has improved. Zuhri’s remarks came at a press conference after receiving a donation of over $250,000.

Sources:

http://210.19.40.5/ssig/news/fullnews.php?news_id=45695&news_cat=ts

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/02/03/65655.html

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Israeli-39phosphorous-shells39-incinerate-1000s.4883418.jp

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&Do=&ID=35536

Death 2 The West

Remember Oscar Grant: The Struggle Is Not Over!

This New Years Day 2009 in Oakland, California another tragic incident of police terror against a young Black man occurred.  Oscar Grant III, 22 years old, father of a 4 year old daughter, was shot execution-style by a transit cop.  Videos of the incident clearly show he was shot in the back while face-down on a subway platform, unarmed and posing no threat.

The incident was filmed by bystanders, and police attempted to confiscate most of the videos.  But a few made it to Youtube and were viewed around the world.  Outrage at this incident spread, with protests and rebellions happening in response to this atrocity in the Bay Area and elsewhere.

John Burris, a civil rights lawyer for the Grant family, called this murder one of the worst cases of police terrorism he ever witnessed.  Recently Johannes Nehserle, the pig shown on the video shooting Grant, was charged with murder after he quit the BART police force and fled the state to avoid questioning.  Along with calling for criminal charges against the cop, Burris is helping file a 25 million lawsuit for Grant’s family.

Although this case may be one of a few where justice is brought against a killer cop, it will be too little too late.  Terrorism and injustice are nothing new for Black people in Amerikkka.  It enslaved and killed millions of African people in one of the most brutal slavery systems known to man.  It subsequently lynched thousands of Blacks in its long history of colonial and neo-colonial oppression.  Other non-white peoples have been victims of Amerikkka in its long history of exploitation, land theft, and genocide.

With oppression comes resistance.  The Black Liberation struggle and the leaders it produced have long been an inspiration to oppressed peoples in every corner of the globe.  We take this time on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to remember that spirit of resistance.

This year’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day coincides with the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first “Black” president of the United States.  While objectively historic, it should be seen as it is, a reinvention of U.S. imperialism as a multicultural empire with a Black figurehead.  As seen by the murder of Oscar Grant, the Obama presidency will not end the police killings of non-white youth.  It will not end the huge incarceration rates of non-white peoples inside the United States.  It will not free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the hundreds of other political prisoners who are continually denied freedom and justice.  It will not end the U.S. instigated bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. support for Israel’s aggression against Palestine, or U.S. harassment against independent nations like Venezuela and Bolivia.  And it will not end the parasitic capitalism that steals resources and labor from the Third World to fuel Amerika’s opulent consumerism.

Even Martin Luther King Jr. saw the realities of the political, economic, and military imperialism the United States was inflicting not only to oppressed nations inside the country but all around the world:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just’” (“Beyond Vietnam”).

The investments they continue to use to take profits from poor nations were received from previous thefts the U.S. committed throughout its history.  This cycle must stop.

At the same time Oscar Grant was killed, over 1000 Palestinians lost their lives in Gaza by the settler occupation of Israel, funded by the United States.  True freedom and justice will not come by accepting a bigger part of U.S. imperialism but by rejecting and abolishing it outright.  Oppressed nations everywhere must gain their freedom and determine their own destinies.  These freedom struggles are in solidarity with all oppressed peoples in the world, in bringing about a truly just world where an end to oppression with no concessions is more than just a dream.

PDF Flier

RAIM-Denver: Stand With Gaza

PDF Statement: Stand With Gaza