Guiliani, Trump, Clinton and Syria

Some workers get fooled by the hat.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

US Elections
My position that the big bourgeois in the US wanted Hillary Clinton in the White House was called in to question the other day. This surprises me, as  I can’t imagine how anyone could draw a different conclusion given the prominent figures, including right wing Republicans, even the raging misogynists among them, who publicly supported her.

The ruling class in this country, like all ruling classes, care about power, and in the case of the capitalist class, money is power. Trump was correct when he said he could kiss or grope women’s private parts whenever he wanted because he is rich and powerful.  That’s what freedom means to these people they can do that. It's why women or people in the these situations don't come forward. Their lives and careers can be wrecked.

The big bourgeois feared Trump throughout his campaign not because groping women or that he sexually abused women and young girls is against their morals, but because of his instability, his stirring of the pot, his racism, sexism, xenophobia.  The big bourgeois likes to keep these tactical issues on the back burner if they can, let them simmer, and bring them to prominence only when workers begin to move in to struggle and unite along class lines, in other words, when we threaten the economic interests of the ruling class.

The financial industry donated $737,000 to Trump, $78 million for Hillary, and $33 million for Jeb Bush, according to Gillian Tett in today’s Financial Times. I think that is somewhat revealing when it comes to the preference of Wall Street.

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, who waged war against public sector workers as mayor of NYC, is a possible candidate for secretary of state in the Trump Administration. Giuliani vigorously defended Trump’s right to grab women’s genitals whenever it pleased him and is known as a bit of a tough guy when it comes to the enemies of US capitalism abroad. Giuliani’s number one enemy is their old friends that make up the leadership of ISIS, “We must not be afraid to define our enemy…” he said, “It is: Islamic. Extremist. Terrorism….you know who you are and we’re coming to get you!”

What he actually meant is that some other folks kids will be sent to get you. The sons and daughters of workers will be sent to get you.  The imbecile Bush talked tough as well, so did John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone, all of them conveniently out of range of anyone’s sights except the cameras.

Giuliani's Qatar Connection

Giuliani doesn’t include the Saudi ruling class as Islamic terrorists apparently though they are among the most ruthless of all the US financed regimes in the Middle East though it’s hard to separate all US allies there as they are some nasty bunch, including the Zionist Apartheid state that Donald Trump loves so much. Giuliani doesn’t include Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the head of Qatar, a hereditary monarchy run by the Thani family, terrorists either. He has strong business ties to the ruling family and the US State Department just last week authorized a $21 billion sale of F15’s to these gangsters. The owners of the defense industry are doing well. Is that you my fellow worker?

Through the usual wheeling and dealing, the corrupt FIFA has chosen Qatar as the 2022 World Cup host. As most government jobs are dished out to ruling families and their offspring, most labor in these countries is imported from poor nations like Nepal, the Philippines, and Bangladesh etc. Hundreds of workers have died at construction projects related to the World Cup and living conditions for immigrant labor are atrocious and wages low. According to the UK Guardian, in 2014, Nepalese migrants involved in constructing infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup died at a rate of one every two days.

And as for the billions the US tax payer forks over to keep these ruthless regimes in power, it is blood money in the sense that it ensures the suffering of the mass of working people in the region and also the US working class pays for it in terms of cuts in social services, wages and benefits and a generally lower standard of living. And if we want to undermine what is referred to as Islamic terrorism, we need to put a stop to US state terror in the region.

Syria

Just imagine what life is like in Aleppo. The nearest I came to Aleppo was on a train in southern Turkey. The train split up as half of it went to Aleppo (Halep) to pick up passengers. We waited for what seemed like days in the hot sun until the two carriages came back and then we headed on to Mosul and Baghdad. After a week or so in Baghdad I took a bus to Basra.

There is a siege of Aleppo right now as the Syrian government with Russian backing is trying to drive what it calls jihadi groups like Jabhat Fatah al Sham, reported to be an al Qaeda offshoot, out of the city. It is not surprising that the Assad regime or the Russians would be wary of Islamic religious fanatics as the Syrian regime, like Hussein in Iraq are in the main secular Baathists or some version of it, and both Assad and Hussein opposed these Islamic religious types. There’s millions of Muslims in Russia and millions more bordering Russia as well, all potential recruits ,which probably makes Putin a little nervous.

The situation is Syria is also a product of the crisis of capitalism form the very creation of the country in 1916 to the destruction of Iraq and de-stabilization of the region by US imperialism over the past 25 years. The horrific situation in Aleppo was driven home to me by a report from Erika Solomon in Beirut. Writing in the Financial Times she describes the preponderance of body parts that lie all over the place as and relatives ttempts to identify whose parts belong to whom.

“As air strikes intensified…” she writes, “…so did the number of body parts scattered on the ground after the blasts-----gathered up and piled in to plastic bags for relatives to find at Bayan hospital, a doctor said.”

Let’s picture this vividly in our minds, Solomon continues, “Families sat together, determinedly picking out the pieces that belonged to their relatives.”  A doctor describes what happened this week as he was about to, “..help one elderly woman bury what she thought was a bag filled with her husband’s limbs.  But another woman tapped them on the shoulder and said they had mistakenly taken pieces of her son.”

, “One would say ‘this is my husbands leg’ and the other ‘that’s my son’s arm’” the doctor says.

Meanwhile a wealthy US capitalist politician with aspirations of becoming the president of the United States didn’t have a clue what or where Aleppo was. This is not the civilized era of human existence by any means.

The reality is that capitalism is in a deep crisis from which it cannot escape. The Syrian crisis cannot be solved within the framework of capitalism nor can the situation in Israel/Palestine. Neither Assad, Putin or Trump, can undo the mess in Syria. Sometimes there is no side we can support and the struggle lasts longer and becomes more savage until the working class enters the world stage in a serious way, and that includes the US working class without which, capitalism cannot be overthrown

Meanwhile, the degenerate Trump, a man who has never worked for a living, whose slumlord father left him millions of dollars, who is a serial abuser of women and young girls, insults and demeans all Muslims, Mexicans, blacks and workers in general. Minus those Muslims he has business dealings with no doubt, the people responsible for the conditions we see in the video above.  Trump, in short notice will turn on the very people at home who elected him.

I mean blue-collar workers in particular, victims of capitalist globalization and the assault on unions, will soon feel the affects of Trump’s market friendly policies. More attacks on social services, more cuts in living standards and the pensions and conditions of public sector workers in particular.  It is nothing but a fantasy that Trump can bring industrial jobs back home, unless the US worker is prepared to accept Cambodian wage levels.

We cannot judge the situation by elections alone; they are but a gauge, a glimpse of the mood that’s out there.  There are 150 million or so US workers who refused to participate in the electoral process as disgusted as they are at it all. They have drawn the conclusion that there is nothing they can do; they can’t win. This mood is fostered by the trade union leadership who have groveled at the feet of Trump in the hope that he’ll allow them to keep their jobs and the dues money coming in.

The other choice, the choice of the ruling class this time, Hillary Clinton, called for giving Trump a chance. We have to accept this vote as if it is divine intervention. Clinton understands about class solidarity. It is important for them to defend their system of governance, what we call bourgeois democracy. If they had to they'd resort to military dictatorship and Clinton would support that if the situation demanded it. The fear of the working class, acting cohesively as a class and vying for political power terrifies them, even fascism is preferable to that for these people.  Our task as activists, socialists and anti-capitalists in our communities and our unions, is the struggle for the consciousness of the working class, helping our class see itself as a class and acting accordingly.

The fraud Bernie sanders will work with Trump if he takes on the Banks and wall Street knowing very well he won’t. The quicker Sanders enters the garbage can of history the better.

When masses move, change takes place. Elections, dictators, entire societies cannot survive great movements. Someone asked me what could be done. Well what could be done is a leadership of the working class that was as intent on defending our class interests as the representatives of capital are defending theirs, would speak out, we would hear from them (they would have acted earlier of course). They would condemn these elections. They would call Trump what he is, a philandering, degenerate liar, an enemy of working people.  They would organize rallies in cities throughout the country. They would set a date a date for nationwide general strike against Trump and his Nazi and KKK collaborators. They would begin immediately the formation of an independent party of workers and youth that would call for jobs, free education, transportation and health care. They would include on its program an end to the corporate wars and the bringing home of our young men and women and instead appeal to workers in other countries on the basis of solidarity and cooperation through international unions and political formations.

The trillions saved through ending US military excursions would be made available for a massive social infrastructure program. They would call for the taking in to public ownership the financial industry, the banks and the top major corporations that constitute a dictatorship over public life. A corporation having the same rights as a person must end. Our relations with workers in other countries will be about cooperation and rational planning of the world’s resources rather than the plunder of them through imperialist wars.

Just a few thoughts for today.