US planes shot fleeing patients at Afghan hospital.

US Bombed hospital

"You may not be interested in politics, but politics may be interested in you." Periciles.

by Richard mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Doctors Without Borders, not a communist outfit from what I can gather, had one of its hospitals bombed by US aircraft last month, I am sure most readers are aware of it. DWB has accused the US of a war crime, if it is declared as such it is one of US imperialism’s many. Countless civilians in Afghanistan as well as in Somalia and Yemen have lost their lives to US drone and air strikes.

But it get’s worse, in its latest report the group says patients were also shot as they tried to flee the building to escape the carnage inside. “Patients burned in their beds, medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs, and others were shot by the circling AC130 gunship while fleeing the burning building. At least 30 MSF staff and patients were killed” the report states.

This was not a “Taliban Base” the report affirms. 

The US claims it was a mistake, or perhaps it was collateral damage.  This sort of damage is frequent and for revealing the extent of this slaughter of innocents in our name, Chelsea manning languishes in a US prison for 35 years, Edward Snowden is in exile after calls for his execution for treason by such upstanding US politicians as Dianne Feinstein and Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for a three years or more.  US politicians have also called for Assange’s execution. During the hospital attack, which apparently lasted an hour, staff made 18 distress calls and texts to officials in both Afghanistan and the U.S. according to reports.

A patient in a wheelchair was also killed trying to flee the US attack. “The facts inside the hospital speak for themselves," Stokes said. "The facts, in our view, demand a reaffirmation of the basic rules of war."  (Huffington Post)

US foreign policy has been catastrophic for its victims as I have said before, but for us here in the US it is also a disaster.  A new contract for bombers to replace the ageing B52’s that decimated areas of South East Asia and wiped out entire cultures not to mention 3 million Vietnamese, (and 67,000 Americans) has been awarded to Northrop Grumman. The final tally is expected to be around $80 billion.  The US is $18 trillion in debt. For those of you that wonder why our living standards are declining, why we can’t afford to pay for a decent education as it's being priced out of reach, why our infrastructure is crumbling, look no further than US foreign policy and the murderous wars it wages on behalf of US corporations.

est.800,000 turnout for KC Royals

I say to the 800,000 that took a day off work and turned out for the victorious KC Royals who won the World Series, I love sport too, I’m grateful my Oakland Raiders are finally playing competitively, but for Christ’s sake. Where are your heads at? Wake up!  

US foreign policy is at the root of anti-US sentiment and the growth of terrorist groups. ISIS and the various Islamo-fascist groups are the creation of US foreign policy as was Pol Pot. If another 911 occurs and at some point it will, will you all respond to the calls from the representatives of Wall Street and the banks to “go get ‘em”? Will the millions of Americans who hate the government, hate the rich, think correctly that the US Congress is full of crooks and thieves respond to “United We Stand” as blindly as before rather than asking the question, “What the hell is my government doing abroad to cause such actions?

As things are going your children have no future but to become cannon fodder for the 1% as their kids go to college. But even worse, continuing down this path will eventually lead to the end of life as we know it on this small orb in the Cosmos.  Already, there are whole swathes of land and water that cannot sustain life. Instead of 800,000 turning out for the self proclaimed “World Champions” of a game that practically no other nation competes in, you should consider that for a few hundred miles out from the mouth of the Mississippi there is no life. The chemicals and waste from agricultural industry in the Heartland runs off down the river in to the Gulf. The BP spill will also intensify this death of living things.

Meanwhile, the elder Bush, looking to make some bucks from a book before he dies attacks the war criminals and mass murders Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Well, F&%#k him.  He kept his mouth shut all that time and on his deathbed opens it. Like all of the ruling class, they are a ruling class in decay, just like the old feudal aristocracy of Europe and the head of the Holy Roman Empire. But they'll take us all out if we don't stop them.

The global market is full of too many players and US imperialism is losing its influence. But they are armed to the teeth and consumed to the point of insanity with maintaining their position and their rapacious and inescapable quest for profits. Don’t fool yourselves, they will eventually resort to the nuclear option, or some mad grouping will gain access to it.

The heads of organized Labor, the hierarchy with its hands on the helm, is also complicit in this crime of theft and potential environmental destruction.  They are more secure than most CEO’s in their jobs and earn obscene salaries doing their best to ensure that a genuine rank and file movement that can challenge the 1% and the savagery of the market does not emerge in these potentially powerful organizations.

At the root of their refusal to fight for their own members and the working class as a whole is not that they are the Mafia or that they are corrupt in the criminal sense like taking bribes etc. It is that they are ideologically bankrupt. They have no alternative to the market, they are afraid of the potential power of the working class that moves in to action and threatens capital because we cannot continue to live in the old way.

We are somewhat isolated here in the US, almost a continental island unlike Europe which is being swamped with economic refugees from the Middle East, fleeing the US bombing and wars. The entire region is aflame, it is nothing less than a catastrophic situation and Turkey, the “stable” Muslim ally is under threat of breaking up as well. The modern Nation State, the creation of capitalism is coming apart. Capitalism’s future before it destroys us all is a world of failed nation states. The US cannot escape environmental degradation or attacks on its soil.

I was reading today about the Sheepeaters. This was the name given to Native American tribes that European settlers came upon in what is now Idaho and are presently called the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. You can read about them here.  They are still here and they are still celebrating their culture upon which a genocidal war was waged. But the unemployment rate among this community is over 17%. The conditions that prevail in many of these communities are as bad if not worse than in parts of India or Africa.

For many of them, the mainstay of the economy is Casinos. But to build Casinos you need money and the moneylenders have it. In one example, more than 40% of the profits from the Casino on their land goes to moneylenders, hedge fund managers and the like.

The truth is that Casinos offer not future for the Native people whose land this is. They offer no future to any of us.

As I read about their history which is naturally one of the defense of their culture against colonial violence, I thought how much I’d love to immerse myself in it for a while and learn about it. How different things could have been. How important for us all to share out traditions and cultures in a healthy a way in which we teach and learn from each other, but capitalism doesn't allow that. It can't, that breeds solidarity and solidarity leads to action from those who have come together.  Casino’s and selling cultural items in tourist outlets, in other words, the market solution, won’t guarantee any of us a future; the money lender still rules. I traveled to Iraq overland 40 years ago. I went to Syria, Turkey, Macedonia. I ate in the homes of people that lived their lives and they treated me like I was a king, I sat and ate with Goan traders in a little hotel in Basra. No Muslim threatened me once, from Istanbul to Basra, despite the filthy role British Imperialism played in the region.

I cannot go to any of these places now as the predatory wars planned in the Pentagon and Washington, their phony, “War on terror” has stopped all that. Iraq is basically not a country anymore.

I guess the reader figured out, that I am a bit perturbed today. But while the US working class is not the industrial powerhouse it once was, we cannot build a democratic socialist human world without settling accounts with the world’s most violent offenders, the US ruling class. If you have children you owe them that.