Health Debate Heats Up As Obama Weighs in

If people wants to read my article on 12 August 2009 Re: America's Right Turns Its fire On NHS

it now turns out that the Tories are being two-faced is usually a bit like criticising the ocean for being too salty. But Gordon Brown's right to use the word, when his rivals have excelled themselves with their twisting and turning over the NHS.

David Cameron insists that "we love our NHS." Of course he does.

It would be political suicide for him to say anything else when British voters overwhelmingly back a public health-care system.

No matter which party they support, the vast majority of Britons know that the NHS is a national treasure.

It's cheaper and more efficient than anything the private sector could ever manage. It works wonders daily in healing the sick, caring for the elderly and bringing new lives into the world.

It means peace of mind for each and every one of us, from cradle to grave - in stark contrast to the sorry failure that is the US system.

The US spends more than twice as much per person as Britain - but about one-sixth of the population still has no health care at all, except what little they can glean from charity.

Hundreds of thousands of people every year are driven into bankruptcy by the cost of a medical emergency.

And just about everyone lives in permanent terror of losing their job, because it also means losing whatever barely adequate health insurance they might get from their bosses.

A scared worker is a compliant worker, one who won't stand up and fight for anything, be it better pay, shorter hours or the right to join a union.

In short, exactly the kind of worker the Tories want us all to be. That's why the Thatcher government worked so hard to weaken, undermine and underfund the NHS.

And it's why Cameron's cronies are happy to cuddle up to the US extremists and free-market fanatics who are peddling a pack of lies about the NHS in a desperate bid to stop any health-care reform in their own country.

If they could get away with it, the Tories would happily smash the NHS and take us back into the US-style Dark Ages.

US President Barack Obama has accused health insurance profiteers of holding the nation hostage by denying coverage to sick people.

At a town-hall meeting in Montana at the weekend Mr Obama emphasised that expanding coverage to the 46 million US citizens without health insurance, which is expected to cost $1 trillion (£606bn), is his administration's top priority.

"We are held hostage at any given moment by health insurance companies that deny coverage or drop coverage or charge fees that people can't afford," he said, noting that it was "bankrupting families and businesses."

Mr Obama vowed to "fix" the US health-care system "when we pass health insurance reform this year."

The president blasted sections of the media for only focusing on his reforms.

"These are the stories that aren't being told - stories of a health-care system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people," he stormed.

Republicans, right-wing sections of the media and the insurance and medical companies who make mega-profits from private health care have been accused of being behind a series of rowdy and disruptive demonstrations at recent town hall meetings.

The AFL-CIO union federation recently called on trade unionists to attend meetings to fight back and show support for Mr Obama's health-care plan.

At one such afternoon meeting last week in Pittsburgh, United Steelworkers members from their Women of Steel organisation attended a meeting where Democratic senator Arlen Spector was due to speak.

Throughout the meeting Ms Spector faced booing, taunts and orchestrated interruptions.

She was called a "a socialist, fascist pig," by one man who stormed out, accusing Steelworker union members who made pro-health care contributions of being "plants."

Others in the audience decried the health-care plan as "socialism" and equated it with other measures that Mr Obama has introduced, such as the economic stimulus package.

And there was another worrying development.

A Steelworkers official took a photo of a man who was part of the orchestrated opposition to the health-care plan which clearly shows that he was carrying a gun.

The man also brandished a flag bearing the legend: "Don't tread on me."

British National Party Causes Panic Vs Anti- Fascist March In Derby

The mere fact that nearly million voters voted for the British National party in June's Euro-elections are certainly angry and no doubt racist to varying degrees, but how many of them would really be up for sending a gunboat down the Liffey? Very few, because there are surely not a million people so lunatic that they would want to start a war on these islands. Yet that would surely be the result of the BNP pledge of "welcoming Eire as well as Ulster as equal partners in a federation of the nations of the British Isles".

Just like the cheery talk of welcoming Ireland back into the union, the party's Derbyshire garden party over the weekend provides the flimsiest veil for a programme that is not only nasty, but rooted in delusion and paranoia. Alongside the tea, cakes and patriotic memorabilia – designed to create a "family" atmosphere and reinforce the half-respectabilty afforded by winning two Euro-seats – the Red, White and Blue festival featured a clutch of white crosses to commemorate people supposedly killed "as a result of anti-white violence". Persecution complex by day gave way to evening self-confidence, as far-right fanatics outside the camp gave fascist salutes and shouted "sieg heil".

We report today how the BNP shipped in fascists from overseas to address its gathering. The party leader, Nick Griffin, no doubt regards links with far-right parties abroad – many of which are much better established than his own ragbag outfit – as a way to make the BNP look serious. Tellingly, however, his attempts to form a grouping in Brussels failed, as even fellow extremists feared the damage that would be done by associating with the BNP.

It is not hard to see why. A handful of BNP leaders may nowadays don suits, but a large proportion of the activists, councillors and candidates remain boot boys, often with criminal convictions for violence. Mr Griffin's one fellow MEP, Andrew Brons, has a genteel manner but was, as a young man, involved with Nazi-style groups that engaged in arson attacks on synagogues. He has German, and quite possibly Jewish, ancestry making his embrace of the most exclusive form of British nationalism a source of psychological speculation.

The brutal mindset of Griffin himself was betrayed only last month, when he suggested that the Europeans should "sink several ... boats" carrying African immigrants. Mindful, perhaps, that few of those who had voted him would truly support drowning men, women and children at sea, he added as an afterthought that they might be thrown life jackets. The hope must be, as has already happened in some town halls, that the more the public gets to know the BNP the more they will lose patience with people who are as unpleasant as they are odd.

Four Charged As Far-right Festival Brings Chaos To Derbyshire Village

Far-right activists from Europe spoke at the British National party's annual gathering this weekend despite protests by more than 1,000 anti-fascists who blockaded the event for several hours.

Roberto Fiore, the leader of the Italian party Forza Nuova and a friend of the BNP leader Nick Griffin, spoke to several hundred people at the Red, White and Blue festival about the "threat to Europe from Islamic extremism" on Saturday night.

Fiore, who once said he was happy to be described as a neo-fascist, was joined by Marc Abramson, from the Swedish National Democrats.

Police arrested 19 protesters during the demonstration. The BNP said one of its members had been arrested.

Four people have been charged: three with public order offences and one with unlawfully obstructing the highway.

The annual Red, White and Blue event has been held on a farm owned by a BNP member near Codnor, Derbyshire, for the past three years, and is described by the far-right party as a family festival.

However, the mood at the event threatened to turn ugly on Saturday as far-right supporters outside the camp gave fascist salutes to protesters and shouted "Sieg Heil".

Weyman Bennett from Unite Against Fascism, one of the groups who organised Saturday's demonstration, said it had been a success.

"We managed to disrupt the event with peaceful direct action but the attendance of people like Fiore and the actions of some BNP sympathisers shows the real extremism that we are facing," he said.

The weekend-long festival and the subsequent protest brought chaos to the small Derbyshire village. Many residents said they were fed up with the festival.

Joe Osborne, 70, whose property backs onto the site, said that he feared there would be a repeat of an incident last year when he said men were goose-stepping down the street in the early hours of the morning and shouting "Heil Hitler".

"It really upset my wife. It may seem funny to them but the second world war is something that is very real to us."

Other residents blamed the disruption on the demonstrators. "We didn't have too much trouble with the BNP until the protesters came," said Simon Pitt.

Saturday's demonstration attracted trade unionists, teachers, students and anti-racist campaigners from across the UK.

Mubashar Yaqub, 18, who had travelled from Burnley with two friends, said: "Racism is a problem in our area and we just wanted to come and make the point that the BNP don't have any answers to the problems everyone is facing, and to let them know they are not welcome."