Hilary Clinton's hypocritical concern for Syria's people has no credibility

Rumsfeld and Hussein

We live is a somewhat isolated situation here in the US. The media here as we have expressed many times, is perhaps the most controlled, censored media of all the advanced capitalist economies.  There are also powerful distractions here, after all, its the home of the international film and entertainment industry.  And there is the present economic crisis that has thrown millions from their homes, savaged social services, gutted health care and education etc.  The US is the worst of the advanced capitalist countries to be poor in and its jails are full of its victims; there are more people in prison in the US than in any other country. Being a war veteran, not unlike all countries, doesn't count for much if you have no money.  The flag waving and patriotism is for when they send you out there, not when you come back physically and emotionally damaged----fixing that costs money. The social safety net that could alleviate the effects of market savagery has lots of holes in it here; if you are in bad shape, "you're on your own baby".

US capitalism has bases around the world occupying numerous foreign countries either directly or through proxy's and its continued support and arming of the Israeli regime is the major destabilizing factor in the Middle East.  The increasing anti-American feeling that the 1%'s media finds very useful by lumping all Americans in to the mix as if Donald Rumsfeld, George W Bush and a transit driver from Detroit have the same economic interests and perspectives on life, has its roots in the role that US capitalism is playing on the global stage.  What must anger workers around the world most is the hypocritical lecturing about peace, democracy and human rights by its emissaries like Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama as US capitalism imposes, or attempts to impose its will through military might and economic blackmail.

Patrice Lumumba, assassinated by US and the Belgians

As a representative of the US ruling class, Hilary Clinton has repeatedly criticized the brutality of the Assad regime in Syria calling for its downfall and the US is increasing its financial support for the opposition which is somewhat an unknown, although increasingly a pole of attraction to Islamic fundamentalists of the Sunni variety according to some reports.  The US is occupying Iraq, occupying Afghanistan, assassinating all sorts of characters around the world the Pentagon/CIA says are "militants" "insurgents" "al Qaeda"  or just plain "terrorists", all of them "alleged" or "suspected" of course.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent men, women and children have died in the process as US unmanned drones have wiped out whole families, an act seen as extreme cowardice by most people in the world.

In Bahrain, US capitalism has armed and supported the absolute monarchy there having its trusted friends, the Saudi gang, send in troops to suppress the movement for reforms. In shouting distance of 30,000 US troops, protesters have been murdered and tortured by the Bahraini regime and even doctors and medical personal that treated the wounded have been imprisoned.  Same with Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq before the invasion, Yemen, Mobutu in the Congo, the former Shah of Iran.  US capitalism can count among its trusted friends some of the world''s most efficient killers.

The term "anti-American" is dragged out by the media here whenever there is a criticism of the US regime. But US capitalism's foreign policy is at the root of this anti-American feeling and what the US media calls "terrorism".  In the face of this activity on foreign soil described above (leaving out 3 million dead Vietnamese, the incineration of 100,000 civilians by dropping atomic bombs on a defeated Japan etc.)  Hilary Clinton's whining about Assad is given little credibility by the workers of the world.

The latest hypocrisy in the face of all this, is the attacks on the Russians for opposing western capitalism's opportunistic position in Syria.  The Russians along with the Chinese blocked a UN resolution condemning the conflict and Russia has been hammered in the media for supplying weapons to the Assad regime.   The US mind you buys helicopters from a company owned by the Russia government that it passes on to its puppet regime in Afghanistan.  Let's not forget that the US boycotted the Olympics in the old Soviet Union because of its occupation of Afghanistan. (It didn't boycott business deals).  There is growing opposition to the helicopter deals and doing business with Russia as the Russian government is supplying arms to Assad.

"We should not be using US taxpayer dollars to support a firm that is arming a regime in Syria that's murdering innocent men, women and children.", says Rosa DeLauro, a  House Democrat from Connecticut and the House passed an amendment sponsored by DeLauro that would ban dealings with the company.  "From 2006 to 2010....",  Bloomberg Business Week informs us, "...the US barred deals with Rosoboronexport because it allegedly sold arms to dictatorships including Iran"

After 911, the mood at my workplace initially was one of complete shock followed by anger and a desire for revenge.  I remember seeing those target pictures with an image of Saddam Hussein on them stuck on the walls and trucks and next to some folks' work stations. Flags were everywhere.
I remember trying to convince a coworker that Iraq, or Hussein, the former US stooge, had nothing to do with this.   "The first thing you should ask yourself...",  I remember saying to him, "...is what on earth has the US government been doing around the world for people to want to do this?".  Not only that, even though many of the people that carried out that attack were people the US had armed and paid to commit such atrocities on others, why would many people around the world although they loathe such actions, have some sympathy with the perpetrators?  But it was no use, the media machine had convinced more than 50% of us that Iraq was behind the attacks.

Iran's Shah: US ally, murderer and torturer

We are coming closer to another disastrous event, the real possibility that the Zionists will bomb Iran and the right wing thug, Netenyahu keeps saying that such an attack is imminent.  Who is threatening whom?  US capitalism has openly stated that if Israel attacks Iran and Iran defends itself, the US will also attack Iran. No Middle East country that wants to control its own resources and national wealth will be free of a US attack if it does not allow western capital to loot the region's wealth or possess a nuclear device.  The revolutionary potential of the Arab working class is always a threat to the interests of global capitalism in the region, the Israeli's are not. US capitalism would willingly support Iran's Mullah's if they were willing to share more of the loot and do the Pentagon's bidding, democratic rights be damned. 

Domestically, we are fully aware of the brutality of US capitalism as we have been forced to pay for its latest crisis through direct payment/bailout and the savaging of our living standards.  US foreign policy is carried out in our name although we have no role in determining it. It is our children that will be forced to defend it when its victims, fight back by any means at their disposal as we would do if the shoe was on the other foot.

We cannot allow this to happen; we ignore the world around us at our peril.  The most terroristic and disruptive force on the planet is within our borders as the 1% places profits and the accumulation of wealth above all humanity.  "Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." said Pericles, the Greek statesman and historian 2400 years ago and we would do well to heed this and act on it.  The US state machine has and is, increasing its domestic police apparatus that will be necessary to force the US working class to pay for this foreign policy including the use of small domestic drones. 

Business Week warned back in 1974 in the aftermath of the post war upswing that:
"It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow--the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more...Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must be done to make people accept this reality."

The thing is that the 1% cannot "sell" this idea to us, we don't buy it. They can only enforce their will through increased repression and violence as they are doing to their victims abroad and in face of any opposition to their austerity efforts at home as we have seen during the height of the occupy movement, as we saw in the aftermath of the Seattle events of 1999 and as we have seen throughout US history.  The working class will not willingly be driven back to the conditions of the past, it will not accept this reality.

As always, there will be a big push to elect the lesser of the two evils this November, some choice, the lesser of two evils. But a Democratic administration will not change this course.  If you believe that all politics amounts to is sticking a piece of paper in to a ballot box every two or four years then a vote for Obama is best for you, you might stay in your home a day longer.  But politics is about what we do day in day out; what we do every day of the year.  We cannot ignore the world, our lives depend on it.

A few of us have been discussing the coming elections and we will be commenting more on this in the days ahead.