Note: I wanted to put the short clip from X in here but cannot get the code and don't have the skills to get it. The bit in question on Ukraine that I respond to below starts around 12 to 14 minutes in or watch it all if you have the time. RM
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
11-28-24
The tragedy of Ukraine. The US openly admitted in the early stages that its arming of Ukraine had one purpose only, to weaken its rival, Russia. Antony Blinken, the war criminal and US Secretary of State (most of them have been war criminals. Kissinger?) made that clear. It's been a disaster for Ukraine and if the US has its way it will get worse because, as Mearsheimer says, it is a crushing defeat for the US and NATO.
Biden does not want to lose face after all the public statements about “doing whatever it takes” and being there for the long haul and all that, so he threw a few more billion dollars in weaponry to Zelensky, not enough to assure victory for Ukraine as the war is already lost, but enough to prolong the game a little longer in the hope that the ultimate defeat for Ukraine is blamed on the Trump Administration. He is fuming after being dumped by his own party after his mental state could no longer be denied by Party big wigs as most of the US population could see it daily.
I read yesterday that Biden has asked Zelensky to lower the conscription age further. This reminds me of the scene in Braveheart when Lonkshanks call in the archers against the Scots and one of his generals tells him “we’ll hit our own men”. “Not to worry Longshanks responds, “we’ve got more”. Biden’s game he is playing here will mean more Ukrainian and Russian workers will die. This matters not to the leaders of a rotten decaying system that is unravelling on a global scale. They are truly monsters.
In addition, despite arming the Zionist regime to the teeth and supporting the genocide Israel is conducting (and has been for decades) against the indigenous population of Palestine, the US backed settler colony has become a pariah state and has dragged the US down in to the depths with it. Killing possibly hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children has not improved US status globally one bit.
Both these defeats are indeed a crushing blow to the US as the world’s only hegemon and come after disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan; the truth is, despite its number one status on the global stage, militarily and economically, and as the world’s bully, the global power of the US rogue regime is declining which makes it a very dangerous beast at this point in time.
The US body politic is staffed by various right wing Christian religious fanatics, white nationalists, neo fascists and the like. Like their like minded believers whether Jewish Christian, Muslim or Hindu, religious fanatics are far more dangerous than the old Stalinists in the Soviet Union were as they long to visit their maker up in the sky. Mind you, it would be a little less costly for the rest of us and the planet if those holding these views would take immediate action to hasten their return to their creator.
What is missing here is the call for workers unity across borders, between nations. There is no global force that appeals to the working class internationally and for a movement that represents our interests and ours alone as has occurred in the past. Great US heroes like Eugene Debs are unknown to the youth of today. The leaders of the organized working class nationally and internationally have failed us as they support their own ruling class and pit worker against worker in defense of so called “national interests”.
Each national mass media waxes eloquent about the tragedy of the deaths on their particular side. For Biden and co the suffering of Ukrainians on the battlefield and in civilian life is a great tragedy, not so Russian workers and certainly not Palestinians or the African refugees fleeing western fuelled conflict in that great continent. The massive death count for Palestinians is blamed on the Palestinian resistance. Any movement that resists the predatory invasions by the imperialist powers is declared a “terrorist group” by the guys with the big stick in Washington.
Karl Marx who wrote for the New York Daily herald during the 1850’s commented extensively on the First Indian War of Independence when the Indian people rose up against the brutal English occupation of that country.* There were atrocities committed by the Indians as the Sepoy’s or Indian regiments the British used to protect its economic interests in India which were considerable, rebelled, and the uprising threatened to spread in to a national rebellion. British officers were killed, women and children murdered and so on. If the reader is unfamiliar with British rule in India, the land taxes, the brutality, the torture etc. it’s important to educate oneself in order understand why events take place. The British press naturally reported the atrocities and violence committed by the occupied against occupiers. The British in India were there to do good, to help people and ungrateful violence by the natives was their reward.
But Marx reported events truthfully and drew conclusions that arise by studying the history and objective facts. He wrote of the English rule in India: “However infamous the conduct of the Sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed an organic institution of its financial policy.”
Marx answered the British media’s portrayal of Indian violence against English officers and civilians during the rebellion writing: “There is something in human history like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged, not by the offended, but by the offender himself.”
In other words, the rebellion in India occurred after decades of exploitation and violence by the British occupation.
The same goes for Gaza. It didn’t start on October 7th 2023 but 70 years ago and actually beyond that with the rise of Zionism and it use by British colonialism to gain a foothold in the Middle East. For the perpetrator of the violence, the source of the events, it suits Zionism and its western backers to start on October 7th. It blames the victim not the perpetrator. It is not unrelated to the way rape is treated in society. Her clothes were provocative, her skirt too short. She wanted attention and had a lot of boyfriends etc.
Marx wrote of Britain’s role in India: “Divide et impera was the great rule by which Great Britain, for about one hundred and fifty years, contrived to retain the tenure of her Indian empire.”
Divide et impera is the golden rule in class society; it is the heart of the domination of the powerful over the powerless of the exploiter over the exploited. Tiny Britain’s rule over a huge sub continent like India composed of many different group’s religious, ethnic, etc. was made possible by getting one group to fight the other. Ten years before Marx wrote on this matter he published with his friend and collaborator Frederick Engels, the Communist Manifesto, a short pamphlet, a historical materialist explanation of the world up to his time. It contained the famous slogan and solution to the crisis of capitalism, “Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains”.
That advice is a relevant today as it was 176 years ago.
*If you don’t want to buy the book that has the collected articles in it you can read on line at the Marxist Internet Archive
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