by $
Monday, Nov. 09, 2009 at 7:15 PM
Imperialist USA is making much of the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the eve of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938, the latter being when the Nazis promoted a reign of terror against Jews, rounding up most who still remained in Nazi Germany, including this writer's grandfather, a 58 year old man in a wheelchair. Where was the US when the Nazis aided Fascist Franco in Spain in 1936 when fascism could have been stopped easily? And how does Germany compare to the backward USA today?
Imperialist USA is making much of the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the eve of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938, the latter being when the Nazis promoted a reign of terror against Jews, rounding up most who still remained in Nazi Germany, including this writer's grandfather, a 58 year old man in a wheelchair. Where was the US when the Nazis aided Fascist Franco in Spain in 1936 when fascism could have been stopped easily? And how does Germany compare to the backward USA today?
The US was busy being "neutral" as mandated by the Democratic Party liberal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The second front (the first being the Soviet Union defending itself from the Nazi invasion of June 21, 1941) was not opened until June 1944 by the US, and then only in a failed effort to beat the Russians to Berlin; the Red Army got there first, with a Red Army woman major planting the red flag in Berlin.
As backward USA sends its war criminal Secretary of State Clinton to Berlin on November 9, 2009, at home, it is engaged in a feeble attempt to pretend to reform the bankrupt healthcare system of Nazi USA. Germany has had universal healthcare for 126 years, and the German workingclass won unemployment insurance and old age pensions from Bismarck at the same time! It took the general strikes of 1934 in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Toledo to win unemployment insurance and old age pensions in 1935 from FDR, and he dropped universal healthcare because the Southern Democrats, known as Dixiecrats (they became officially Republicans in 1970) would not go for universal healthcare and the American workingclass was apparently not ready to fight for universal healthcare then. Of course, there was not a lot of healthcare then and life expectancy in 1935 was about 60 years, so having retirement at age 65 was unreachable for most of the workingclass. Since 1950, life expectancy went beyond age 65 in the industrialized world. The US is now last in the industrialized world because we do not have socialized medicine, or the compromise known as single payer healthcare, guaranteeing everyone who lives here free medical care from cradle to grave, all paid for with our tax dollars.
Thus, in capitalist unified Germany, while there is serious unemployment caused by the bankrupt private profit system that needs to be cast into the dustbin of history with all deliberate speed, there is a safety net of universal healthcare. In capitalist USA, 50% of personal bankruptcies are caused by being unable to pay for medical care, despite having insurance.
Then there is the death penalty. It was abolished in Europe, including Germany, most of Latin America, including Mexico, and many other countries such as South Africa and the Ivory Coast. It still exists in backward USA, along with a huge prison, concentration camp system, and is proudly supported by Democrat President Obama, one of the many reactionary positions of this reactionary, millionaire warmongering president.
To talk about greater freedom in Nazi USA is to lie. We have 17% unemployment, some 2 million people under the supervision of the police state prison system, a death penalty, 50% functional illiteracy, low life expectancy and high infant mortality. In the US, life expectancy overall is 75.3 for men and 81.1 for women. Infant mortality in the US is 6.3 per 1,000 live births. In the workingclass communities, life expectancy is less and infant mortality is higher. The majority of any given population is the workingclass, in the US, about 80%. In Germany, life expectancy is 76.1 for men and 82.3 for women and infant mortality is 4 per 1,000 live births. That is what 126 years of universal healthcare delivers.
The arrogance of the backward warmongering gang, the Nazi US government, in "celebrating" the end of the Berlin Wall is a disgrace to humanity. If you want universal healthcare and abolition of the death penalty, you have to vote Peace & Freedom or Green.