Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Julian and Martin: Reflections on the Arrest of Assange
APRIL 16, 2019
Will someone please explain to
me why Martin Luther King, Jr. is considered a hero for violating laws sustaining
the system of racial discrimination, while Julian Assange is considered a
villain for violating laws sustaining the system of imperial war?
Democratic Party bigwigs are
celebrating the arrest of the Wikileaks founder in London and the request of Donald
Trump’s Justice Department for his extradition to the U.S. According to
Senators Chuck Schumer, Mark Warner, and Joe Manchin – and, of course,
ex-Senator Hilary Clinton – Assange deserves to be punished severely for
plotting with Chelsea Manning to obtain and release classified military
information, and for allegedly helping the Russians to influence the election
of 2016. These are War Democrats, of course, who never met a defense
corporation or armed intervention that they didn’t like. One is not surprised
to hear them howling for revenge against the “traitor” who revealed American
war crimes to the world.
Democrats calling themselves
progressives are more inclined to defend Assange – sort of – on the ground that
his imminent prosecution represents an attack on journalistic freedom that may
make it difficult for the media to publish classified documents like those
contained in the Pentagon Papers. More legalistic progressives aren’t so
sure about this, since they consider publishing classified info OK so
long as it has been “sanitized” to avoid exposing intelligence agents,
but obtaining the info by hacking into a government computer not ok:
i.e., a crime.
What neither camp wants to
talk about, however, is whether it’s ok to break securities laws in order to
expose the American Empire’s war plans, errors, and misdeeds.
Thus, my earlier question: why
is lawbreaker Martin Luther King, Jr. a hero and lawbreaker Julian Assange a
villain? Intelligent people whom I’ve asked about this give the most
convoluted and irrelevant answers! “Dr. King never threatened American
security the way Assange did.” “Dr. King submitted to arrest, but Assange
fled to the security of an embassy.” “King loved his enemies, but Assange
hates America.”
The assumption disguised by
these rather scholastic distinctions is that Martin attacked an obviously evil
system – American institutional racism – while Julian only attacked . . . the
American Empire. So if you don’t want to admit that the empire is evil
(or even that it exists), you talk about national security or journalistic
freedom or something. Anything but imperialist warmaking.
Dr. King himself did not make
that mistake. What he finally came to understand was that racism, the
oppression of the poor, and empire-building are co-dependent, interrelated
diseases that can only be cured by strenuous efforts to heal all three
conditions simultaneously. He called this a “revolution of values.”
On April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York, he delivered an address
called “Beyond Vietnam” that contained these lines:
A true revolution of values
will lay hands on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling
differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of
filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous
drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home
from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. Anation that
continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on
programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [sustained applause]
I think there is not the
slightest question that, were he alive, Dr. King would applaud the sort of
civil disobedience that exposes the empire’s secrets to the world and makes
people aware of the crimes and errors committed in places like the Guantanamo
and Abu Ghraib prisons, the battlefields of Iraq, and the drone-infested
provinces of Afghanistan.
Julian Assange is no saint,
and neither was Martin Luther King. They were very different
personalities, to be sure. But both put their “lives, fortunes, and
sacred honor” on the line in order to expose the inhumanity, violence, and lies
of the powerful elites that rule the globe. On the scale of human values,
both ranked Truth and Justice well ahead of Obedience to Authority.
Listen, Schumer and the rest
of you! If you honor Martin, you must also honor Julian. And if you
don’t understand why this is true, what is the difference between you and
Trump? If the U.S. government succeeds in extraditing Assange, let’s get
ready to celebrate his arrival with a protest recalling the 1963 March on
Washington. It’s what King would have done.
'The Greed of UnitedHealth Is Killing Americans': Progressives Hit Back as Insurance CEO Bashes Medicare for All
"We will 'destabilize'
UnitedHealth's ability to enrich themselves at the expense of our
healthcare."
The CEO of America's largest
private insurance company faced a flood of pushback from progressives Tuesday
after he launched a misleading attack on Medicare for All.
UnitedHealth Group CEO David
Wichmann said during a call with investors that Medicare for All would
"destabilize the nation's health system"—a common talking point that
has been deployed by the right-wing
media, Republicans,
and establishment
Democrats.
"And the inherent cost
burden would surely have a severe impact on the economy and jobs—all without
fundamentally increasing access to care," Wichmann said.
Under the Medicare for All
plans introduced in both the House and Senate, every American would be
guaranteed comprehensive health coverage. Two studies released over
the past year—including one from a Koch-funded
think tank—showed single-payer would result in trillions of dollars in
savings compared to the current for-profit system.
"As usual, an insurance
company CEO has got it backward—Medicare for All stabilizes healthcare for
people, as Senator
[Bernie] Sanders said last night on Fox News, and disrupts the
failed business model of the insurance industry," Michael Lighty, founding
fellow of the Sanders Institute, told Common Dreams.
"So yes, we will end the
insurance company denials of care, eliminate premiums, deductibles, and
co-pays, no longer allow our taxes to subsidize their profits," Lighty
said. "We will 'destabilize' UnitedHealth's ability to enrich themselves
at the expense of our healthcare."
Warren Gunnels, Sanders' staff
director, added that
he is not concerned about the feelings of health insurance executives.
"Whether the UnitedHealth
CEO likes it or not, we will no longer tolerate a system allowing him to make
$83.2 million while Americans go bankrupt when they get sick," Gunnels
tweeted. "The greed of UnitedHealth is killing Americans. Together, we
will end it."
Wichmann's comments came as
the stocks of UnitedHealth Group and other insurance giants tumbled to
52-week lows.
"Health insurers
including Anthem Inc., Humana Inc., and Cigna Corp. were down sharply Tuesday
morning, as were hospitals HCA Healthcare Inc. and Community Health Systems
Inc.," Bloomberg reported.
"Health insurance stocks have been rattled in the first few months of 2019
as Democratic presidential contenders have emerged to back variations of
Medicare for All. The sell-off has sent the S&P 500 Managed Care Index to
its lowest level in nearly a year."
Politico's Dan Diamond pointed
out on Twitter that UnitedHealth Group has lost $30 per share since Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced his
Medicare for All bill in the Senate last week.
As Common Dreams reported last
Friday, a whistleblower from UnitedHealthcare—a subsidiary of UnitedHealth
Group—provided a glimpse into the company's behind-the-scenes effort to
undermine Medicare for All as it continues to gain support in Congress.
"We are advocating
heavily and very involved in the conversation," UnitedHealthcare CEO
Steven Nelson said
in remarks leaked to the Washington Post. "Part of it is
trying to be thoughtful about how we enter in the conversation, because there's
a risk of seeming like it's self-serving."
The anonymous whistleblower
told the Post's Jeff Stein he leaked Nelson's comments because he
"felt Americans needed to know exactly who it is that's fighting against
the idea that healthcare is a right, not a privilege."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)