a tale of two hearts

By Gordon Duff and Press TV

 
This week, a fifteen-year-old African American boy from Atlanta was told he would die. He could be saved, but a “transplant approval board” at a local hospital decided he would be a poor risk, citing that they thought he might not “take his medication in a timely manner.”
A few short weeks ago, the Zimmerman murder trial shocked some of America. It gladdened some of America, too.
Although the US has an African American president, racism is still the cheapest and most effective political tool for turning victims into victimizers.

No one can hate like a victim of oppression and there is no shortage of those in America. We call them “the 99%.”

Two hearts
This week, a fifteen-year-old African American boy from Atlanta was told he would die. He could be saved, but a “transplant approval board” at a local hospital decided he would be a poor risk, citing that they thought he might not “take his medication in a timely manner.”
Anthony Stokes will not get the new heart he needs. No one really believes their excuse. Criteria for transplants and other specialized procedures, those regularly denied minorities, the poor and military veterans in particular, are highly subjective. Henry Kissinger called these people, a group I belong to, “useless eaters.”
No hearts at all
The Malthusian principle that is the basis for neo-conservative philosophy is the elimination of non-productive members of society.
However, the term “productive” seems to have taken on an unfamiliar meaning. “Useless eaters” are typically defined as people who work, people who create, often people who aren’t easily controlled or managed. A “useless eater” typically doesn’t work for a “think tank” or isn’t a Wall Street banker of Washington lobbyists.
“Useless eaters” produced the food to feed your family. Chances are you are also a “useless eater.”
Why we miss Nixon
To Dick Cheney, the fewer than a few hundred people deserve to live. Thus, finding Cheney himself a “useless eater” based on my own subjective criteria, may not be all that unreasonable.
A year ago, Vice President Dick Cheney, 71 years old, a physical wreck, a man reviled around the world as a threat to humanity, got a new heart.
Few men in history have deserved an early death as much as Dick Cheney. Such a statement should seem extreme and even unkind. It is neither, particularly not “unkind.” Millions might well be alive that are dead today were it not for Cheney, and the damage he has done may well be eclipsed by the damage he still may do. The “kindness” of America’s greed-ridden medical establishment can be thanked for that.
15-year-old Anthony Stokes
Would he receive a heart transplant if he were white? The answer is obvious to me, “of course he would.” Is racism the only problem here? No, of course it isn’t. America’s sickness goes much further than race hatred, the mixture of Christian Evangelism, Zionism, xenophobia and ignorance that has convinced millions of Americans that living in misery and dying in slavery is just fine as long as someone suffers just a bit more than you do.
Fifteen-year-old Anthony Stokes, a compulsive chess player, often a poor student, not a perfect human being, in many ways like my own children, has been sentenced to death. The heart he would have gotten when to seventy-one-year old Dick Cheney, millionaire, someone certain to take his medication.
Was this the exact same heart? Actually, it may well have been though Cheney’s transplant was a year ago. Cheney doesn’t “do” waiting lists or suffer evaluations by committees.

Friends and relatives of Anthony Stokes publicly speak of discrimination based on his poor grades in school. No one will mention race, not yet. However, it will come.

The thumb on scales of justice
Let’s compare Anthony Stokes to Dick Cheney. Back in 2011, I traveled to Nigeria, meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan and top security officials. Later that year, the Nigerian president and key security officials came to America. There, I met with them in New York, accompanied by representatives of the Department of Justice.
Dick Cheney was part of the discussion. We were informed that $37 million in bribes were paid to save Vice President Cheney from a prison term in Nigeria for fraud. Similarly, his Nigerian crimes were also violations of US law but no mention of prosecution was made.
Then again, Vice President Cheney faces war crimes tribunals if he leaves the United States. Former aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said this of Cheney:
“He’s developed an angst and almost a protective cover, and now he fears being tried as a war criminal so he uses such terminology as ‘exploding heads all over Washington’ because that’s the way someone who’s decided he’s not going to be prosecuted acts: Boldly, let’s get out in front of everybody, let’s act like we are not concerned and so forth when in fact they are covering up their own fear that somebody will Pinochet him,”
Cheney has every reason to expect to be “renditioned” and every reason to believe it can never happen. After all, if Cheney is arrested and executed, most of America’s government will have to follow.
The Malthusian death sentence
The truth is more than race, far more frightening, more than even the “police state” that the majority of Americans believe they live in, watched, wiretapped, prodded and searched, now impossible to deny.
Basic medical care was supposed to have been a right. The language is simple, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as stated in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
Back in Britain in the 19th century, Charles Dickens spoke of the “safety valves” of Victorian culture, war, the workhouse, prison, disease and starvation, the manner Britain controlled its excess population that couldn’t be resettled in “the colonies.”
Ah, colonialism, the 19th century answer to flushing the people of the world down the toilet, one layer at a time.
By these standards, the Holocaust, the Nakba, even Stalin’s murderous gulag state or the endless cycle of wars, there is a certain elegance when you stand off and look at the end effect.
Macro to micro
Today it is one boy, one heart, one tyrant, not so “petty” and a people who have been rendered so soulless than almost nothing touches them.
Movies, television and the Internet have made anything seem reasonable, anonymous and remote.
One boy may well die. As it now looks, 250,000 Syrians will die, unseen, unfelt. Were Cheney to have his way, those numbers would expand a thousand-fold. This is a man worth saving, a man of the future, of vision. Is he a man worth murdering a child over?
This is what we have done.

Gordon Duff

Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.

Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

• Gordon’s Archives:  2008-2015
• Gordon’s Archives:  2016-2022