Hilary Clinton's crude exploitation of the Ukraine crisis

Hilary and her family friend, the torturer Mubarak

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Hilary Clinton, one of the more aggressive representatives of the Bankers and other members of the 1% and who counted former Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, a family friend, has already embarked on the campaign trail.  Clinton expects to be the next US president and sees an opportunity, with the developments in the Ukraine, to situate herself atop the pinnacle of democracy championing the rights of the oppressed, and of sovereign nations.

Clinton compared Putin to Hitler a few weeks back, a comparison which is common over here when any number of the Pentagon’s stooges get out of control, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden have both been held up as similar examples. 

It makes one want to vomit does it not?

But it gets worse, "If he's (Putin) allowed to get away with that…”, Clinton said yesterday, “I think you'll see a lot of other countries either directly facing Russian aggression or suborned with their political systems so that they are so intimidated that in effect they are transformed into vassals, not sovereign democracies,"

And

"We're going to stand up against illegal acts and we're going to demonstrate that we have a better model, just like we did for 50 years.

Yep, Clintons running for President alright.

The present situation in the Ukraine is very complicated as Seamus Milne pointed out yesterday but we agree whole-heartedly with him when he points out that US Secretary of Sate John Kerry’s, claims that Russia invaded the Crimea on a "completely trumped-up pretext" describing the move as an "incredible act of aggression" is, “beyond absurdity.”

(my added emphasis)

Kerry, as a leading representative of US capitalism is complicit in his governments global activities which, as Milne points out include, launching,   “....the greatest act of unprovoked aggression in modern history on a trumped-up pretext – against Iraq, in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000, along with the invasion of Afghanistan, bloody regime change in Libya, and the killing of thousands in drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all without UN authorization.”

As is normally the case most Americans would not likely be able to point to the Ukraine on a map. We don’t generally travel to places where English isn’t spoken and we don’t like to watch foreign films where you have to read the damn stuff people are saying. What’s a voice for if you can’t understand someone?   People should speak English and that’s it.

The US ruling class, that has become known as the 1% and the rest of us the 99% since the Occupy Movement, (a rudimentary but class slogan nevertheless) likes it that way.  It is better if working class people fear foreigners, fear other tongues, fear alien ideas other than the view that the market is god and Bill Gates is a genius. What is important is what Kim Kardashian will be doing next or how the Baseball season might play out this is what we should worry about.

When we hear on CNN or Fox news that the “international community” says this or says that, it means the few thousand people who make the daily decisions that affect millions of people’s lives. The dominant force in this “international community” is the US bourgeois. In fact, the waning influence of US imperialism on the world stage in the wake of the rise of Russia, India and to a greater extent China, has made the US 1% an even more dangerous and violent force.

Despite the propaganda the US 1% spews out through its control of the media, millions of Americans don’t trust them and don’t believe their nonsense.  Most workers I know wouldn’t give too much weight to Bill Gates’ statement recently that "We're on this rising tide that's not recognized. It’s overwhelming how prosperity is spread around the world," Gates also stated in a conversation at the American Enterprise Institute that we live in the least violent era in history.  “The world has never been better” according to him. Having accumulated $76 billion off the backs of workers from the tech factories of the world Gates feels quite optimistic about the future.  When did you last see him at Trader Joe's?

Most Americans clearly would not agree with Gates’ optimistic scenario as inequality has reached levels not seen since the 1920’s. We are aware the government is rotten but the problem is that so many of us simply see no way out.  There are many movements here resisting the assault of the 1% on our lives as we have pointed out in previous commentaries but there is a need to draw these movements together.

The distrust of one’s own government though can be trumped by calls for national unity and all the nonsense about patriotism. With the collapse of Stalinist totalitarianism, the Somali warlords filled the void for a while becoming the new threat to our freedom, then Saddam Hussein, Iran, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and now Russian expansionism. The “united we stand” mantra wears a bit thin though after you lose your job and home to your friendly banker who looks and speaks like you.  The opposition to US capitalism’s present wars is very strong and only tolerated because the burden of these ventures on behalf of US corporations falls overwhelmingly on a small number of American families.

We will see what will happen in the Ukraine but there’s not much the US can do. The new government in Kiev includes some extreme right wing fascist elements that have mad it clear Jews and Russians are persona non grata in the new Ukraine.  Once again, US capitalism in its desperate struggle to maintain it global position in relation to its rivals is hitching itself to a very dubious wagon.

Marx was right when he wrote "The working men have no country. We cannot take away from them what they have not got.". There is no government of workers, no “Workers’ State”.  The Soviet Union was not a “Worker’s State”.  Workers have a very limited say in how Washington runs things, the decisions that affect our daily lives are made by the few thousand unelected people that sit on the boards of the major corporations and meet in private. 

What we have in common is our class, our role as producers, as wage-workers and as sellers of labor power and not buyers of it.  When we feel fondness and love for the land we grew up in it is different from how Bill Gates and the 1% look at it.  Their propaganda about greatness and the need for patriotism and national unity is simply a ploy to get us to do their fighting, their dirty work for them and to prevent class unity across borders.  The capitalist that rule all the nation states do the same. They don’t fight wars so they have to convince us that we have the same interests as they do because we’re all united as Americans, Russians, Germans or English so we will step to the plate. It’s the national equivalent of the Team Concept in the workplace.

Whatever happens in the Ukraine, neither Hilary Clinton, Kerry or Putin can resolve it in any permanent way and certainly not in the interest of US Russian or Ukrainian workers. The uprising that has taken place there has many elements within it including the destabilizing role played by US capitalism.  It is, due to the absence of a revolutionary leadership, a very confused situation and not an easy one to understand for those of us outside of it. Patriotic appeals to either side are traps for workers. There is a potentially powerful working class in Ukraine and it is her we must look for a genuine solution.

 Tennyson shared the results of blind patriotism in his poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade".  And lets not forget Johnson who reminded us that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel.  Don’t be fooled by the scoundrels

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.