10Dec
Category: News
You rarely get the heroes you need. The world of comic book superhero revenge fantasy doesn’t actually lead to anything good. I have no moral problem with what happened to Brian Thompson of United Healthcare. On a scale of good deeds versus bad – United Healthcare have rejected a third of claims in the last year, that’s not health care that’s theft by deceit and murder by policy – United Healthcare are on the “evil” side of the balance scale. But a lynch mob mentality sets everyone free to start lynching anyone they have a grudge against. Imagine MAGA with open licence to kill anyone they perceive as oppressing them?
The problem is not that the Rule of Law will target Thompson ‘s killer (it has to otherwise society further breaks down into the undesirable form of anarchy), but that it did not pursue Thompson or United Healthcare for putting profit above human life. Allowing these firms to rape and pillage set the scene for the killing of Brian Thompson. And, without justifying vigilante action, it can be confidently said that Thompson blithely participated in the causes of his own death.
But how do you get the system to actually take action on these companies? Politicians like Bernie Sanders have been calling for single payer universal healthcare for years now, which would cut out the middle man and give every American affordable comprehensive cover healthcare. But then you have Trump whipping up MAGA obsession with the idea that affordable public healthcare is the enemy. Calls for universal healthcare can’t gain ground because Republicans continue to portray public health as some kind of demon that robs from the pockets of struggling Americans to pay for what, Health care for other struggling Americans? They have Americans fighting Americans.
Further compounding the situation is sheer refusal of the Democrat leadership to take a stand against the excesses of capitalism; Tim Walz posted in response to the killing with “This is horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and health care community in Minnesota”. How must people who have had their life or limb stolen from them by United Healthcare despite having paid premiums their whole lives feel about Walz’s statement? How do Democrats expect to ever make ground against Republicans/Trump, when they continually show themselves to be part of the same privileged class? Drawing around their own rather than standing for the people.
Some Democrats and Republicans are standing up. Congressman Ro Khanna has, whilst decrying the violence, not been afraid to use the killing of Thompson as an opportunity to address the issue of access to healthcare: “We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured. Health care is a human right. We need Medicare for All.”
Josh Penner, Republican Mayor of Orting had this to say on X, after sharing a letter in which United Healthcare denied his son a doctor-recommended powered wheelchair; “If the response to a cold-blooded, pre-meditated execution is … “yeah I can see how they would do that.” Your corporate culture may.. need to be looked at!” and in a further post “To be clear, there’s still a special place in Hell for hired goon doctors that get brought in just to deny the prescriptions of the doctor’s and medical professionals that directly treat patients – And the executives who employ that strategy for quarterly gains.”
No doubt Penner and Khanna have different ideas about how to address the situation, but there is a shared recognition that something is not right and it’s not the killing of
Thompson that is the major thing wrong in all this.
Some sources for this opinion piece:
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-12-06/killing-of-unitedhealthcare-ceo-triggers-wave-of-health-insurance-outrage
https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-killed-outside-investor-conference-in-new-york-city/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rep-ro-khanna-us-moving-medicare-cure-inequities/story?id=116564621
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08Dec
The Free Syrian Army, headed by Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has liberated city after city from Assad’s forces, culminating in Assad fleeing the country and the rebels walking into Damascus. Who is Abu Mohammed al-Golani and what does he plan for Syria?
Assad has been a bloody and violent despot, but his despotism was not based on religious grounds. Abu Mohammed al-Golani comes with former ties to ISIS and radical Islam, will these colour his rollout of a new regime in Syria or will he be a moderate and allow Syrians to live free to choose their own way of life?
Abu Mohammed al-Golani was originally allied with Islamic State jihadists, but he has thrown off that image and broken ties with those groups. He claims to be a moderate interested only in Syrian freedom, and this moderate approach has also won him the support of US forces and resources. As he has fought across Syria he has imposed mergers between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Jihadist alliance he leads, and local Islamic militias as he has swept across Syria, forming a civilian government in the process. He has to some degree worked with the SDF (the Kurdish autonomous region forces), but the HTS is also allied with the Turkish supported Syrian National Army, who wish to end Kurdish autonomy.
On entering Damascus Golani ordered his forces to leave the public service alone. He seems to be exercising restraint and a wish to smooth the transition of power as much as possible, with continuity of Government. Unlike the forces of ISIS, this is not an army intent on sacking and pillaging. This is a liberation army and not one on a religious crusade, at least on current appearances.
What will the future hold for Syrian people? Will Golani and HTS establish a religious autocracy under the guise of establishing a moral society, or will Golani continue to see sense in pursuing moderate and somewhat secular goals? (He has indicated that Christians for example will be safe in the new government.) Will he be able to unify the various Syrian militias or will they devolve to a scrabble for power? Will the Kurdish Autonomous region be recognised by the new government?
Only time is going to answer these questions.
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In a move so ironic it beggars belief, South Korean President Yoon declares Marital Law to stop South Korea becoming a dictatorship. Parliament and The People say NO. Opposition leaders called on their MPs to get to Parliament, and for people to assemble and protest in support. MP’s were seen clambering over fences to get around barricades set up to prevent people entering Parliament. 190 members of South Korea’s Parliament were able to meet and the declaration of Martial Law was overturned.
Americans, be ready to stand up if Trump declares Martial Law, because Congress may not stand up against it.
More info: www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0lgw1pw5zpo
Hashflu, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Via Email
This is truly the approach we need to social media going forward. Jay Graber:
“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source. What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.” and “There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetisation. We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”
There’s a saying they have at Bluesky, “the organization is a future adversary”. Meaning they are building atproto (the AT Protocol bluesky is based on) to be resilient against being locked in and made proprietary by Bluesky itself in the future when or if it is owned by people who are focussed only on monetising the user base and not on what’s best for an open network protocol that serves people. So even the CEO herself (who has majority ownership in the company), wants to build out atproto as an independent network before it can be polluted by the pressure of investors wanting to capitalise.
www.cnbc.com/2024/11/21/bluesky-ceo-jay-graber-says-x-rival-is-billionaire-proof.html
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Jay Graber had the foresight to get Bluesky out from under Twitter on the basis that “captains can change” and just as Bluesky was separated from Twitter and made into it’s own company, Musk took over Twitter. Musk had no interest in an open source protocol that he wasn’t fully in control of, so Bluesky would have been killed off under Musk.
Watch this interview from Decoderpod
Andrew Willkie writes on The Guardian yesterday:
“Social media for many young people is a place to build community and ensure they don’t feel alone, and may be the only place some feel safe seeking support. This is particularly true for people in rural and remote communities, and those from more marginalised groups.”
Read the full statement at: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/27/why-ive-changed-my-mind-about-the-social-media-bill-and-why-other-parents-should-too
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“Social media for many young people is a place to build community and ensure they don’t feel alone, and may be the only place some feel safe seeking support. This is particularly true for people in rural and remote communities, and those from more marginalised groups.”
Read the full statement at: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/27/why-ive-changed-my-mind-about-the-social-media-bill-and-why-other-parents-should-too
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