Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen: US capitalism's stooges under fire, a threat to US foreign policy

US stooge #1

“Egyptians court foes of the US” reads a headline in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. There are multiple causes for this concern from capitalism’s premier cheering sheet. Iran has appointed an ambassador to Egypt for the first time in 30 years, which ruffles feathers in Washington. And it gets worse, Egypt’s new foreign minister, Nabil Elaraby, is “considering” a visit to the Gaza strip. How dare they.

The US has declared Hamas, the democratically elected group that governs Gaza, a terrorist organization. That is a death warrant in itself. Initially, US capitalism welcomed democratic elections in Gaza as it assumed its stooges in the region, the Palestinian Authority would be elected. But the Palestinian voters did not choose US capitalism’s candidates. The Palestinian Authority had a reputation for corruption and subservience to the US and therefore Israeli interests, a view that recently released papers have confirmed. The elections that resulted in a Hamas victory were praised by independent observers as democratic.

US stooge #2

The US is worried that “determination to re-establish relations with Iran” is a reflection of Egypt’s changing foreign policy in the region since the uprisings there forced the removal of the corrupt and oppressive regime of Hosni Mubarak, a trusted stooge of US capitalism. Perhaps Egyptians simply want to live in peace in the area without the constant threat of nuclear war that is being stoked by the US approach to Iran. Until recently, Tehran has been “shunned” by Cairo, the WSJ adds. But this shunning is the price the dictatorship of Mubarak paid for millions of dollars of US taxpayer's funds and the arming of its military in order to maintain this dictatorship. Shunning Tehran and supporting the US and Israel in the blockading and starving of over one million Arabs in Gaza has not likely been the chosen foreign policy of the Egyptian masses.

The US mass media, is the most censored and controlled in the advanced capitalist economies, so when we read about who is “concerned” about what in the world we have to consider the source. The Gulf Cooperation Council is “concerned” about “flagrant Iranian interference” in Bahrain, for example. The GCC is a club of undemocratic regimes propped up by the US taxpayer (this is why we can’t fund education) and includes Saudi Arabia that has just introduced some electoral reforms that allow people to vote in some cases; women need not apply. The Saudi’s sent troops in to smash the protests in Bahrain and as we pointed out in earlier blogs, US taxpayer money is supporting absolute monarchies against uprisings that are demanding democratic rights and in some cases the forming of a Republic.  Iran didn't have to interfere in Bahrain, Bahraini's want rights that we have here in America and that they are slowly taking away from us. You couldn’t get a better recruiting tool for al Qaeda or the Iranian Mullahs than US support for these thugs.

US stooge #3

The rest of the world sees the sheer hypocrisy in the US position, not just with regard to Bahrain and Yemen but also supporting the European and US settlers in Israel/Palestine in their theft of Palestinian land. Iran issued a statement saying that the US criticism is surprising “while the military forces of some members of the council have cracked down on defenseless men and women” in Bahrain. The Iranian regime itself is guilty of such crimes  which lessens the credibility of its criticism but most workers in the region will sympathize as Iran has not historically been a destabilizing force in the region as the US claims, nor the source of instability and slaughter, this has been the role of US and British imperialism.

The WSJ also writes of Hamas that “the group seized power from the more moderate Fatah in 2007”. "Moderate" means pro Pentagon. This is why we tend to emphasize, too strongly for some, the corrupt role of the US and its stooges in the region. The US mass media chooses its words and descriptions of events carefully. Hamas was elected, in a more democratic procedure than occurs in the US. Al Jazeera, a news organization that puts the US news outlets to shame in most categories is still blocked access to the American public compared to CNN, Fox or other agencies. The US mass media convinced most Americans that Al Jazeera is a “terrorist “ network much in the same way that it convinced most of us that Iraqi’s were responsible for the 911 events. The US mass media is a few notches above Pravda when it comes to reporting events.

So when we hear on TV or read in the papers about Egypt or any other country's foreign policy changing from being pro US to anti US we should consider that the media is referring to the former stooges of US capitalism losing their iron grip on their populations that forced the Pentagon and the US oil industry capitalists interests and foreign policy objectives on them. The elephant in the room is the Zionist regime it's Apartheid system and the horrific blockade of Gaza causing untold hardship to the millions of Palestinians that live in this, largest concentration camp in the area.

US stooge #4

The roots of anti Americanism and acts of terrorism against Americans and so-called allies lie deep in US foreign policy. We allow the unelected rulers of the world, the few thousand people that sit on the boards of the major corporations and finance houses and who meet in places like Davos and Jackson Hole Wyoming to figure out how best to govern the economies they plunder, we allow them to speak and act on our behalf. The state funeral the young Italian activist just received in Gaza shows how unity and solidarity can be built across nationalist, religious and gender lines. As in any situation, of we want people to respect us we have to respect them.

As American workers we have to separate ourselves from those who also call themselves “Americans” as they plunder the economies of the world, slaughtering the men, women and children who dare try to stop them so they can have some control over their own lives and resources.

We have to speak with an independent working class voice in action and also in politics, both Republicans and Democrats represent these thugs. It should be remembered that the Democratic Party is the only political party in history that dropped nuclear bombs on highly populated civilian targets. It's come a long way baby,  from the party of the slave owners to that.