Category: USA

Now, the USA must court Mexico and shower it with gifts and apologies

close up of red white and green country flag

The USA must stop trying to dominate the world and instead form stronger, healthier ties with its southern neighbour

by Phil Hall

After the fall of the perfect dictatorship of the PRI in 2000, a progressive conservative came to power in Mexico called Vicente Fox. His rise to power was closely observed by the then governor of Texas, George Bush. George Bush understood the importance of Mexico to the United States.

Bush was less interested in preserving US global hegemony and in building US bases overseas in places like the Philippines and more interested in a strengthening regional cooperation and in imitating the European Union.

NAFTA heralded an economic union with Mexico and the countries to the south of the USA. George Bush wanted to take it further. He was interested in closer ties and integration and in recognising the contribution Mexico made and makes to life in the USA.

Vicente Fox, former Vice President of Coca Cola Latin America, while extremely proud of his Mexican roots, right down to his cowboy boots, was happy to embrace the good he saw – and many Mexicans still see – in the USA: the bonhomie of its people and its entrepreneurial culture and diversity.  Bush used Fox’s campaign slogan when running for President: Yes, we can! And he also wore cowboy boots in admiring imitation of Vicente Fox.

This was the great opportunity for the USA to consolidate itself in the western hemisphere. To promote regional development throughout the whole of the Americas. In doing so, George Bush would have avoided the rise of the left-wing populist dictators, rancid with anger about the USA’s imperial past. He would have spiked their guns. There would have been no Chavez, no Lula, no Morales. Now Latin America is not so well disposed. 20 years more of oppression, interference and coup attempts mean much of Latin America is no longer willing to let bygones be bygones.

The election of Vicente Fox represented an opportunity for the USA to form closer ties with Mexico

The terrorist attacks of September 2001 marked the end of that dream of hemispheric prosperity, peace and isolationism

The terrorist attacks of September 2001 marked the end of that dream of hemispheric prosperity, peace and isolationism, as George Bush senior, the former director of the CIA and his toxic cabal of globalists reoriented George Bush Junior towards the task of ensuring US economic, political hegemony in the world. We see clearly now that maintaining US hegemony has always been an unlikely and unsustainable long-term objective.

The historical opportunity passed. However, soon the war in the Ukraine will be over and Russia will win. It will impose a new security framework on Europe. Chinese and Russian relations will improve and expand and gradually the whole of the eastern hemisphere of the world, including the Middle East, will recede from the view of the US foreign policy establishment.

The USA will have to pull its head back in or perish in a global thermonuclear war. As Eddie Izzard’s joke goes: What do you want USA? Cake or death? In the case of such a war, the global south will inherit the future. Israel’s days as an exclusively Zionist state are numbered. The bad conscience of Europe will not be enough to protect it from having to negotiate with Palestinians when the USA withdraws.

Time for the USA to reorient its foreign policy strategies towards the western hemisphere again and forget about the rest of the world. Gore Vidal would approve. The USA must start by building up Mexico, by becoming a real friend. Mexico is the most important relationship the USA has with any country in the world. Certainly, the US relationship with Mexico is the most important political, social, economic and cultural relationship for the USA.

Billions of dollars cross the border each day. Mexico is the USA’s top trading partner. Most Mexican migrants to the USA, the ones who work in US factories and on US farms, the ones who clean buildings and do the hard graft and difficult work in many cities and regions of the USA, help build up that country.

the angel of independence in mexico
The Angel on the Reforma in Mexico City, Photo by Fernando Paleta on Pexels.com

Because 50% of Mexican territory was taken from it using a variety of different stratagems, the border with Mexico has been called Amexica. People there follow Mexican traditions; they speak Spanish and they are all experts in authentic Mexican regional cuisines: the cuisines of the border states, and the state’s of Michoacan Guerrero and Jalisco, above all.

The names of the towns are given an Anglo spin, but they are Mexican names, many of them owing more to the autochthonous languages than to Spanish etymology. In fact, the wine industry of California was founded by Mexican families and pockets of Mexican people remained in the United States even after the land was stolen from the United States of Mexico. Remember Bonanza? Much of the cowboy culture of the United States is derived and evolved from the cowboy culture of Mexico.

The Apache and other tribes crossed the border easily. The racial characteristics of the aboriginal people of northern America are shared by the majority of people in Mexico and further afield. If you want to meet a native American in Mexico, go to Mexico City. There is no need to go to a village in Tabasco, Chiapas, Yucatan or Vera Cruz. Your taxi driver is nut brown and from a village in Oaxaca.

While the Europeans, lead by the British empire brought their families, and eventually their slaves over to the USA and they carried out a genocide of the native peoples, murdering them and giving them blankets infected with smallpox, the Spanish mixed with the people of Mexico, as did the French and everyone else who arrived. Together they all created a new race: the mestizo, with its roots firmly in Mexican-American soil, indigenous to the continent, its inheritor.  

In the time of the Great Spain, when Spain was the most glorious European power of all, worlds collided and the Spanish empire smashed into the Aztec empire and into the empires of the Incas and created a new planet. The collision is not over yet. The collision continues to the north.

ornate interior of church
The Churrigueresque interior of a Mexicn church, Photo by Jhovani Morales on Pexels.com

Mexico, Europeans are also now discovering, is a cultural powerhouse on a par with China or India, it is the former centre of a vast and developed set of peoples who created their own unique super civilisation developing plants and foods that have colonised the entire world: maize, beans, squash, chilli, tomato, vanilla, chocolate, sunflowers, avocados – all domesticated in central America. There were many other civilisational achievements.

Detail from the Diego Rivera Mural on the Palacio national

The Mexican cultural powerhouse alone has the power to dissolve and absorb ‘the great white race’

In other words, Mexico is like a cultural blender. The power of its culture takes everything it encounters, all the random bits and pieces of Europe and the rest of the world and it blends them together to make a new mixture. Mexico and the rest of Latin America have the power to do this in the USA too. And they will! The Mexican cultural powerhouse alone has the power to dissolve and absorb ‘the great white race’ and truly make it a part of the continent, no longer an alien parasite, but an American hybrid.

You see it when you speak to US citizens about the shameful past of the genocide of the Native American peoples. Many of them, including Elizabeth Warren, quickly claim native American ancestry. It is a badge of belonging and entitlement.

Mexican culture is enjoyed and even owned by the USA. University department after university department specialise in the history of the Maya and the Aztecs and the Toltec. Articles are purchased and pillaged and looted from Mexican and Central American sites and fill US museums up to the rafters. But often the connection between Mexico itself and Mexican history is not made explicit. The Aztecs and the Mayas and the Toltecs are portrayed as different peoples, separate from the descendants of the Aztecs and Toltecs and Mayas who still live in the central Valley of Mexico and in Chiapas and Yucatan. The technical term for what these universities do is cultural appropriation.

And Mexico was connected strongly not only with Spain, but with old Europe through the Hapsburg Empire when France tried to set up a kingdom in Mexico with Maximillian. Maximillian was shot, but not before he had fashioned Mexico City into a reflection of Paris with its own Champs-Élysées, La Reforma, which leads up to Chapultepec Castle and park.

Mexico won its independence from Spain and much later it had its revolution and entered modernity, in 1910. It swirled with the ideas of communism, fascism and socialism. It became a nexus for progressive causes. Citizens from the United States trekked down there to witness the changes in Mexican society. After the revolution, there was a cultural revolution where the Spanish inheritance was downgraded and the native cultural inheritance upgraded. The socialists from fascist Europe escaped to Mexico. Mexico became a ferment of ideas. Mexico has never been an insular country, at least not at its great metropolitan heart.  

church with majestic volcano in background
The Church built on top of the Pyramid of Cholula with Popocatepetl,
Photo by Felipe Perez on Pexels.com

Leave to one side its 64 different languages and other associated dialects and Mexico’s 20,000 (approx.) archaeological sites and the fact that the biggest pyramid in the world in Cholula was so big (and overgrown) that the Spanish mistook it for a hill and built a small church on top of it.

Leave aside the huge expanse of coastline to the West along the Pacific, and the long coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean and the jungles to the south that contrast with the deserts of the north, and the temperate volcanic lands of the centre and the fringe of coastal vegetation, and huge volcanos like Orizaba, Colima, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl.

Forget for the moment that Mexico is the fourth most biodiverse country in the world, or that the meteorite that hit the word 65 million years ago bit into Yucatan, leaving big tooth marks called cenotes.

Mexican musician on the banks of the Cupatitzio, photo credit Eve Hall

Forget the architecture and the art and the cathedrals and monasteries from the 16th-17th-18th-19th and 20th centuries. Forget the music of Mexico: Son, Huapango, Norteña, Baroque, Ranchero, pop, rock and all the other cultural richness. Forget Mexico’s rich history of cinema, its television, its vast literature, its painters and sculptors. Forget it all and remember this.

Remember that the blending of Mexico and the United States and Canada represents the future, and it will result in the peaceful rescue and redemption of the whole north American continent.

Irritating American spell checkers

Was Noah Webster right to try to rationalise the spelling of English?

By Phil Hall

How terribly irritating it is to be forced into a decades long struggle (35 years and counting) with US English spell checkers. Some programmes enable you to select a preference for British English, but others do not. I have wasted so much time adding English spellings to American spell checkers. The Microsoft paperclip was irritating, but how much more irritating and oppressive are those phones, programmes and social media sites that try to force us into using US spellings. They get my goat.

Misunderstanding the sytematicity of the English language, Noah Webster (1758-1843) tried to ‘rationalise’ the spelling of English. Not all of his suggestions were adopted, though some were: ‘Colour’ changed to ‘color‘, ‘defence‘ to ‘defense‘, ‘centre‘ to ‘center‘.The unpronounced ‘u’ s were discarded and ‘s’ was substituted by ‘z’ for the voiced /z/.

For Noah Webster, these discards were clearly linguistic leftovers; they were the useless bits that remained

Webster easily disregarded the broader question of dialect and accent. He was primarily concerned with standardisation. He was an educationalist.

If you stipulate that spelling should dictate pronunciation, or that there be an equivalence between the spelling and the pronunciation of a word, then you are tending to enshrine one variant of the language to the detriment of all others. So, what at first sight looks like a rational act quickly becomes an imposition. Noah Webster’s dialect of choice was the English they spoke in New England in the late 18th century.

Noah Webster’s dialect of choice was the English they spoke in New England in the late 18th century.

For example. I pronounce ‘daughter‘ as /dɔːtə/, so it makes no sense for me to spell it as ‘dawter‘. Webster would advocate the spelling ‘turnep‘ which only makes sense in places where the unstressed /i:/ goes to a shwa, as it does in Australia, South Africa New Zealand and the USA. In British, Received Pronunciation (RP) the sound changes to /i/.

So, by tinkering around with the spelling system to make it seem more rational, the spelling ends up by enshrining only one version of the way the language is pronounced. Of course this is not surprising, Webster was, ultimately, an intolerant, elitist 18th century American nationalist, with all the unpleasant connotations that being an American nationalist in the 18th century entails.

“Now is the time and this the country in which we may expect success in attempting changes to language, science, and government. Let us then seize the present moment and establish a national language as well as a national government.”

Noah Webster

Then you have inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the proposed spelling. For example, Webster proposed ‘Iland‘ instead of ‘island‘. But the ‘i’ in ‘island’ is a dipthong and so, if there were a correspondence then the spelling would be ‘ailand‘ not ‘Iland’. Using the letter ‘I’ shows a lack of understanding. It is the sound of the letter, not the sound of a phoneme.

In the UK ‘model’ becomes ‘modelling’, but in the USA ‘model’ becomes ‘modeling’. A ‘traveller’ for us is a ‘traveler’ in the US. What is ‘marvellous’ to us is simply ‘marvelous’ to them. But should the Americans say ‘super‘ instead of ‘supper‘? Are their ‘hatters‘ ‘haters‘?

Noah Webster, and Bernard Shaw after him, railed against the seeming illogicality of English spelling. However, this was partly because neither of them properly understood phonetics in general, or English phonology in particular. Shaw was a great writer, Webster merely a wonderful lexicographer.

(Bernard Shaw knew Henry Sweet and modelled his character in Pygmalion on Sweet. I wonder if Sweet agreed with Shaw. Sweet defined standard Received Pronunciation in his ‘A Handbook of Phonetics’ (1877). )

But there are reasons why English spelling is the way it is. In ‘Accents of English‘, J. C. Wells – the world’s greatest living English phonetician – gives an excellent descriptive and explanatory account of the English pronunciation system.

“Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus.” (Norman Rockwell, 1918)


Here’s an example. There are rhotic accents across Great Britain and non-rhotic accents. This just means that in some accents of English you pronounce the /r/ sound when it isn’t in the first position in a stressed syllable and in other varieties you do. Which variety do you now choose to favour by formalising the spelling system in your ‘logical’ way?

Take the word ‘hard’. In RP varieties, and some other varieties, we don’t pronounce the /r/ sound after a vowel in an unstressed syllable. But in places in the West country, Ireland and Scotland they do. There is dialectal variation.

Which variety do you now choose to favour by formalising the spelling system in your ‘logical’ way?

Then there is also the question of ‘r’ insertion, it’s a feature of connected speech in English. So, if you said Africa and Asia then the actual sound you made would probably be Africa /r/ and Asia. Should you make provision for that feature of connected speech in your spelling system?

When you take the decision to include the /r/ in your spelling in a ‘rational’ way – as if language were a formal system that could be streamlined – then the /r/ would have to be pronounced every time you used included it in a spelling.

The spelling system becomes proscriptive and starts to dictate pronunciation, in particular for wave after wave of non-English speaking immigrants. Of course you don’t include the /r/ insertion rule in your spelling system – rationality has its limits.

Spelling bees are important in the United States and irrelevant in the UK. That is because spelling ‘correctly’ in the United States is really an exercise in acculturation and a cultural levelling policy.

The mistake Noah Webster made was to assume that where the spelling didn’t correspond to the sound this was exclusively the result of a vestigial letter, or a combination of letters, that indicated the way people pronounced the language in the past.

Having said that, some of Noah webster’s innovations were universally adopted. For example ‘housbonde‘ ‘mynde‘, ‘ygone‘ and ‘montheth‘ were transformed into ‘husband‘, ‘mind‘, ‘gone‘ and month.

But while there is a case to be made for some reform and simplification of the English spelling system, Webster acted partly out of ignorance; his simplifications were pragmatic, but they were also bowdlerisations. Or, as the Americans now have it, ‘bowdlerizations’.

Phil Hall is a college lecturer. He is a committed socialist and humanitarian. Phil was born in South Africa where his parents were in the ANC. There, his mother was imprisoned and his father was the first journalist from a national paper to be banned. Phil grew up in East Africa and settled in Kingston-upon-Thames. He has also lived and worked in the Ukraine, Spain, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Phil has blogged for the Guardian, the Morning Star and several other publications and he has written stories for The London Magazine. He started Ars Notoria in May 2020.

Looking back at US participation in the Iraq War*

I was very curious to hear the opinions of former US army people working in the Middle East on the war in Iraq.

By Phil Hall

Colleagues of mine working in the Middle East had retrained as English teachers. One of them had been a prison guard in Guantanamo and one of them was a tank commander. The third was a patriotic Puerto Rican American who joined the US army for an education and a wage. He was grateful.

I was very curious to hear the opinions of these former US army people working in the Middle East on the morality of the war in Iraq.


Now, these army veterans were not necessarily supporters of the war in Iraq, but they took my inquiry amiss. They thought I was attacking them. They responded by boasting about how great the USA was and by stating how proud they were to be US citizens. They were deeply patriotic people.

All the same, I was shocked. They didn’t seem to want to criticise their government for going to war in Iraq. At least not to a foreigner.

For most morally responsible, artificially naïve idealists, the ordinary SNAFU of US foreign policy has almost always been a mystery.

Any of these three people could easily have been sent to fight in Iraq, though none of them were. Surely, the whole war must have concentrated their minds. Surely, they had taken time to think their way through the morality of that war, the second Gulf War.

Even worse, when I mentioned it, all three of the veterans actually defended the US invasion of Vietnam. They said they regretted the fact that politicians had ‘prevented the US Army’ from achieving an easy victory and they laughed when I mentioned the destruction the US had caused in Vietnam. They laughed!

The US was responsible for environmental catastrophe in Vietnam, for the death of two million people and the maiming of millions more. It used napalm and agent orange. It carpet bombed North Vietnam with B52 Stratocasters.

A veteran protesting outside the Venezuelan embassy


As kids and teenagers, the news backdrop to our lives was the Vietnam war. Ho Chi Min and the North Vietnamese Liberation Army members (just like Fidel Castro and his party in Cuba) started out as nationalists trying to liberate their respective countries from US economic and political domination.

In Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, the Near East and even Europe, the United States actively opposed legitimate national liberation movements in order to support its own perceived interests.

why did the US support the Apartheid regime in South Africa almost to the death?

For most morally responsible, artificially naïv, idealists in the West the ordinary SNAFU of US foreign policy has been a confusing mystery. Why do they always take the side of the bad guy? For example, why did the US support the Apartheid regime in South Africa almost to the death? You could argue, I suppose, that it was because the USSR (and China to some extent) supported anti-imperialist and national liberation movements.

The explanation sometimes given for the immorality of US foreign policy was that it was ‘The Cold War’ and that US foreign policy was determined by its opposition to whatever the USSR and China did. But that is unconvincing. The US was gung ho against the ANC from the start. It wasn’t just being knee jerk and opposing. That was the era when the USA had its own Apartheid in the South. It was a CIA agent, Gerald Ludi who actually betrayed Nelson Mandela to the Apartheid authorities into his 27 year imprisonment.

But why would the US automatically support the forces that repressed legitimate expressions of anti-colonialism? Why would the United States step in on the side of the Portuguese colonialists against Africans struggling to liberate themselves in Angola and Mozambique? It doesn’t make immediate sense.

What was it in the US strategic interest that caused it to support almost every deeply evil, murderous, fascistic regime on every continent against the interests of its own people?

Why would the United States, with all its allies dragging along behind like tin cans, organise coups? They put Trujillo, Pinochet and Samoza into power. They put the Shah into power? The US was on the side of fascists, on the side of truly evil people.

Or, Suharto: Suharto in Indonesia was responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese. Any opposition to the Indonesian tyranny was annihilated. The United States supported Suharto to the hilt.

Why was it in the US strategic interest to support almost every deeply evil, murderous, fascistic regime on every continent against the interests of the people who lived in those oppressive countries?

Let’s not kid ourselves about the USSR, either.

Well, we can say that. We can say the USA supported many pseudo fascist dictatorships, but it is also important not to be blinded and one sided. The USA’s opposition to anti-democratic, nominally socialist nations like the USSR was powerful because it was legitimate.

There were some redeeming features of post and pre-Stalinist Russia, and many excuses for the USSR were made by fellow travellers. The whole world was grateful to the Soviets for defeating fascism. But the post Stalinist USSR was certainly not a workers’ paradise or a model for any other country to follow. It was a dictatorship of a party nomenklatura

One could – and should – argue that the USSR’s progressive and enlightened foreign policy went some way to offsetting its vile history of Stalinism and the Communist Party’s perpetual and tyrannical suppression of dissent and free thinking. But by how much did it offset it?

Most of the new born billionaires who fed on the carcass of the former USSR were part of the system. They were former party bosses, or the henchmen of party bosses. Immediately after 1990 the former nomenklatura of the socialist countries found their way into positions of power.


The Iraqi watershed

Perhaps the most interesting example of a watershed moment, where all these seeming US foreign policy contradictions came to a head, was the Iraq war. After the first Gulf War many people on the left attacked George Bush Senior for leaving Saddam Hussain in power after clearing the Iraqi army from Kuwait. They accused the US of colluding with Saddam.


So, initially, when the United States and the UK decided to institute regime change in Iraq in 2003, wasn’t this a good thing? Saddam was gassing the Kurds. Saddam was shooting relatives dead at the dinner table. Saddam extirpated the communists from Iraqi society. He acted ruthlessly against all opposition. He was an evil man.


There were tens of thousands of Iraqis in exile egging the US on to invade. Did we, middle class Brits who have never experienced sanctions or civil war or a murderous tyranny, have the moral high ground when we argued against war, or were those exiled Iraqis right who were arguing for liberal adventurism and an opportunity to get rid of a bestial mobster?

What had changed that made the left, and even the liberals say:

‘We don’t want to overthrow Saddam after all.‘?

Whereas, in the previous Gulf War, many on the left were arguing for regime change. Isn’t there a contradiction there? Why did we feel that it was the right thing to do to argue against overthrowing Saddam? Tony Blair and George Bush Junior were right, weren’t they? Getting rid of Saddam was a gift to the Iraqi people.

In retrospect, it seems relatively clear. Perhaps my conclusion is a little simplistic, but the intervention in Iraq was not intended to restore full democracy to Iraq and strengthen the Iraqi state in order that it defend the interests of its own people. The US foreign policy objectives instead, were to set up a puppet regime and to keep the civil war bubbling away on the back burner; a strong Iraqi state would have resisted US interests more effectively. Meanwhile, Iraq’s oil wealth would be stolen from under it. That was the hidden agenda. Hindsight is wonderful.


In fact, many of us who marched against the Iraq war to try and dissuade that lap dog, Blair from joining in with George Bush Junior’s oil war actually knew what was up.

Others on that march: centrists, liberals, Greens, might have been there because they were ‘against war and death in general’ or because they didn’t want British involvement in a war we had nothing to do with. But we on the left were there because we had a clearer idea of the motivations behind US foreign policy and we opposed it.

(It was too late to ask that Britain not be involved, by the way. The British created Iraq like a Frankenstein; from the body parts of different tribes and nations).

We on the left were there because we understood that US foreign policy is always conditioned by what it considers to be its strategic interests, the interests of US multinational companies and its military industrial complex and (almost) never by any form of altruism.*


The reason why the US supported Pinochet was because AT&T needed the copper. The reason why the US supported the Apartheid regime was because it had skin in the game. There were US companies making big profits in South Africa. There is always a reason that trumps the needs and rights of the people of the countries which the US dominates and controls. The US’s overwhelming economic and military power then comes into play and it is usually more than enough to crush almost any outbreak of independent action by smaller nations and ensure compliance.

Certainly, huge US oil companies won’t forgo vast profits for the sake of the impoverished inhabitants of a tiny speck of a nation.

Take the example of Guinea Bissau: huge US tankers slide up to the tiny country on the western bulge of Africa, long, fat bloodsuckers, and they suck out, almost unmetered and unregulated, enormous amounts of oil to take back to the US. If the islanders want to see more of that money from the oil, then either kickbacks or targeted assassinations are the result. Certainly, huge US oil companies won’t forgo vast profits for the sake of the impoverished inhabitants of a tiny speck of a nation.


I think it was Lenin who pointed out that when members of the European working class were sent out as soldiers in expeditions to repress and kill colonised peoples – and perhaps to die while doing so – they would try to understand their predicament and perhaps refuse to carry out orders. At the very least, they would begin to understand the mechanisms of imperialism.

In this way Vietnam radicalised a whole generation of US citizens sent out to fight an unjust imperialist war. Many became war resistors and they had to argue their corner.


Nowadays, despite the fact that the soldiers in the US military are all there by choice, earning a wage (mercenaries) there are still people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden who take a stand because they are forced into situations where they have to make excruciating moral choices, and they made the right ones. Then they are made to pay the full price for taking that stand against imperialist wars. This is the capitalist, and the mafia law of Omertà.

There are pictures of former veterans of the Iraqi war weeping and shouting and throwing their medals into a river saying things like:

‘This is for the innocent people of Iraq we killed.’


Mohammed Ali, perhaps the most famous Vietnam war resistor, put it best:

‘My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” . “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality…’

Mohammed Ali


But my former army US colleagues didn’t feel the same way as Mohammed Ali. Did they regard him as a hero or a traitor? Two of them were from very poor backgrounds, but neither seemed to feel any remorse for Iraq and certainly they felt absolutely no remorse or contrition for the actions of the US in Vietnam. They gloried in the destruction the US had caused in Vietnam. It’s unfair to say they were entirely representative.

Veterans For Peace (VFP) was founded in 1985 with 8,000 member, but it now has chapters in every U.S. VFP is an established NGO with representation at the UN.

*1Biden has is about to announce the Troop Drawdown from Iraq according to the NYT of 25th July 2021

*2My father, an editor of international magazines focused on the Middle East and Africa in the 80s and 90s, Tony Hall, argued that the exception was the US intervention in Somalia.


Phil Hall is a college lecturer. He is a committed socialist and humanitarian. Phil was born in South Africa where his parents were in the ANC. There, his mother was imprisoned and his father was the first journalist from a national paper to be banned. Phil grew up in East Africa and settled in Kingston-upon-Thames. He has also lived and worked in the Ukraine, Spain, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Phil has blogged for the Guardian, the Morning Star and several other publications and he has written stories for The London Magazine. He started Ars Notoria in May 2020.


Red and Blue October in the USA

We are alive in amazing times, and 2020 is a significant year, as significant as 1968 was in US history.

Mineappolis protests – By Fibonacci Blue https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90686854

By Isaac Flanders

Tasked with writing on the current situation in the US, it is tempting to merely itemize that country’s myriad underpinning flaws and state that any nation with those flaws as its shaky foundations needs to be pushed over.

However, for anybody reading this, there is likely little to be gained by mention of slavery, sundown towns, and ideologically vacuous Randian politics. It is also tempting to say something patrician along the lines of Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Although the current president does indeed have tens of millions of supporters, this sentiment still doesn’t quite cut it.

I’m just going to address some points that I think are important to understanding what is going on in the USA.

In the 2016 US presidential election, about 60% of eligible voters actually voted. It would be fair to say that the country was not extremely politically involved. That remains true, but we can expect higher percentages in 2020, and clearly some things have changed since then. What has brought about this change differs wildly from the two ends of the spectrum.

US conservatives may take this stance because of deep-seated psychological reasons that make them think they don’t want medical care, a belief in trickle-down economics; broadly, the doctrine that if the horse is fed amply with oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows, or whatever, but right winger David Hines has it that, for the right in the US, Guns are onramps to activism, as literally everything about guns mandates local activism and involvement, and he’s correct. This, combined with the national myth of individualism and conceptualized inflexibility in the constitution, has made firearms far more of a rallying point for the right than the left, Redneck Revolt and The Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club being notable exceptions.

the whole laundry list of madness that is 2020

Clearly, though, the primary issue is that the whole Obama presidency was an onramp to anger that energized the right, initially through the active and activist Tea Party movement.

For the left and — probably more importantly — the left-leaning with spare time through unemployment, the realization of the country’s extant racism and police brutality has meant that the Trump presidency in general and the whole laundry list of madness that is 2020 has been the onramp to anger. That together with the gross incompetence so clearly visible from the federal and most state governments,

Both the left and the right are becoming more active and energized. This, combined with the paranoid style in American politics and the lack of rationalism (prudentialism and falliblism) has massively reduced the amount of common ground shared by the two sides; something quite problematic in a two-party system.

Although far from cutting edge, Anthony Downs’ explanation is useful. The basic model has it that although parties have ideology, they are primarily concerned with getting elected, and are willing to adapt their policies for this to happen. The average (modal or median) voter here is otherwise disinterested, and will pick the party that best matches his wants. The two competing parties will both wish to make a lot of concessions to this voter, and so there will be a lot of crossover between what they offer and their policies.

because of the deep split between the two groups, each will feel more aggrieved when and if they lose, and will consequently be less likely to cede defeat.

At the same time, this voter doesn’t have a political preference beyond what benefits him, and so is unlikely to so much as join a party. The ideologically-driven and energized are precisely those who are likely to join one, or otherwise become politically active.

We now then have an energized, activist left, and an energized activist right, and the genuine average is not addressed (or pandered to, depending on your point of view) as much as otherwise. As such, the right-wing party becomes more right-wing, buoyed up by enthusiastic right-wingers, and — of course — the left-wing party becomes more left- wing, buoyed by enthusiastic left-wingers. This becomes an issue, not because of so called enlightened centrism viewpoint, but rather because there is less in the way of shared discourse and norms, and because it quickly becomes a numbers game.

Gerrymandering and electoral reform aside, if the left have the numbers, they win the election, and if the right have the numbers, they win the election. Crucially however, at this stage there is no mechanism keeping those numbers broadly similar to each other. Additional to this, because of the deep split between the two groups, each will feel more aggrieved when and if they lose, and will consequently be less likely to cede defeat.

the Democratic party is not nearly left-wing enough. The existing system does not offer a reasonable choice for someone who cares about actual left-wing politics

The next issue comes from the prosaic facts of the existing parties. For the activist or energized right-winger, the Republican party is sufficiently right wing for them to enthusiastically support, whereas for the activist or energized left-winger, the Democratic party is not nearly left-wing enough. The existing system does not offer a reasonable choice for someone who cares about actual left-wing politics and not merely business as usual with a distracting veneer of identity politics.

On the one hand, the nature of the current US multiparty, representative, democratic system requires a certain amount of nose-holding come election time, and it is quite true that the vote blue (Democrat) no matter who side absolutely do exist. On the other is the analogy that you are a black American in 1940 in a sundown town and it is getting dark. The Democrats are a janky car that is almost out of gas; you’re going to have to hot-wire it and get to the next county. They offer less than the absolute bare minimum, but, tautology though it is, as there are only two options, there are only two options…

On the other is the analogy that you are a blackamerican in 1940 in a sundown town and it is getting dark. The Democrats are a janky car that is almost out of gas; you’re going to have to hot-wire it and get to the next county

If we are being generous with the Democratic party, we can say that their policies are good for the US economy. This, however, matters very little to the tens of millions of very poor USians, some of whom will have voted for Trump in 2016 based on his anti-NAFTA statements that offered hope for those employed or formerly employed in manufacturing.

Although we don’t have official measurement of poverty before 1962, the best his- torical estimates suggest that in the Great Depression (essentially the entirety of the 1930s), between 50% and 75% of US-ians were in poverty. By the end of World War 2, these numbers were down to between 40% and 50%. Into the 1950s, still about a third were in poverty. These numbers of course were for US-ians as a whole and were higher for blackamericans This was not relative poverty, but absolute, grinding material deprivation with next to no consumption of non-necessities. It is described, for example, by Michael Harrington and Gabriel Kolko.

The nature of poverty has changed, and wealth inequality is arguably the bigger issue now. Criticism should be directed at the 0.1% vis-à-vis the 99.9%, but with regard to activism in 2020, the fact that millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) make up around a quarter of the US population but hold just 3% of the wealth. is probably the bigger issue.

the fact that millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) make up around a quarter of the US population but hold just 3% of the wealth. is probably the bigger issue.

Although a simplification, the European post-World War 2 response to placate the proletariat, such that full socialism would be less attractive and demanded was to provide the working class with a minimum of support. The US government instead favored mortgages as the stakes to striking and protesting become that much higher when the people had houses to lose. A much higher percentage of people feel that they do not have a great deal to lose now. It is not the case that US-ians were not able to protest before 2020, but the realistic ability to do so presented itself to a large number of them for the first time this year. Of course the people are “half victims half accomplices, like everyone else” but, to their credit, it only took them a few months of lockdown and unemployment to take to the streets in large numbers against racism and racist, fascist police and policing.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the US right will not go quietly, but that demographic shifts will see them unable to gain a majority in the not-to-distant future.

We are alive in amazing times, and 2020 is a significant year, as significant as 1968 was in US history. I do not know that this is true, but I would guess demographics will soon necessitate a more left-wing party in the US than is currently on offer. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the US right will not go quietly, but that demographic shifts will see them unable to gain a majority in the not-to-distant future. Ultimately they are not the party of white supremacy, angry Faux news viewers, or evangelical Protestants. They are the party of “Fuck you. I got mine.”, and that message is going to remain attractive to a lot of people from that milieu. The antiracist protests of this year give us hope that people with that mindset will at least not be the majority going into the future.

1cf. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Section 20 of “On Old and New Tablets”

2http://sundown.tougaloo.edu/

3Mencken, Henry Louis. 1915 “A Little Book In C Major” 4Galbraith, John Kenneth. 1992 “The Culture of Contentment” 5https://status451.com/author/davidzhines/

6Renan, Ernest. 1882 “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?”

7Hofstadter, Richard. 1964 “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, Harper’s Magazine 8cf. Orwell, George. 1941 “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” 9Downs, Anthony. 1957 “An Economic Theory of Democracy”

10Harrington, Michael. 1962 “The Other America”

11Markovits, Daniel

12Markozits, Daniel. 2019 “The Meritocracy Trap”

13https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-youth/millennials-get-little-satisfaction-from-democracy-

cambridge-study-idUKKBN2742YE

14De Beauvoir, Simone

Dear Phil, Sorry for not writing…Trump got in the way

Will Biden get in?

By Stephanie Urdang


Dear Phil,

I haven’t forgotten about your request to write something for Ars Notoria.  Your faith in me and my ability to produce something worthwhile is gratifying.  But at the moment Trump and his lies and his sheer evil are messing with my head.  If it was just the Coronavirus and the impact on the lives of us all, I think I could be at my computer churning out something.  But those of us who care about justice and real democracy in America, know that we have been hit by two deadly forces.

Having been hunkered down in social isolation with John, my husband, and my cat for close to eight months and counting, I just can’t get up the energy, focus, inspiration to write anything.  We are trying to get through each day until the election, just under two weeks away as I write (panic surge).  Many of us are managing these last days, working in whatever way we can to help GOTV.  We are saturated.  I feel like I am gasping for breath in a room filled with toxic fog.

And anyway, everything and more, has been said, written, punditted, filled the news as if the rest of the world hardly exists.  Some of it enlightening.  Some of it horrifying.  Most of it frightening.  What could I possibly add that is worthwhile to the density of words being spewed out about the election?  About the president? About Biden? About the state of the United States.  About everything and nothing. Just sifting through it gives me a headache. 

… this deep distress about what is happening in the country and what will continue to happen even if Biden is elected, stills my fingers from writing something worthwhile for you, Phil

I envy those who can get up each morning and analyze and probe and yell and sound off at the mouth about what is going on with such eloquence while I wake every morning wishing I didn’t have to get out of bed and face the day.  Wake every morning angry.  Pissed off. Upset. Filled with fear.

But I do get out of bed, usually not before I have grabbed my phone, tuned into the news, read the roundup of The Guardian and The New York Times and other feeds that seem to believe they have been summoned like nasty Halloween clowns to scare the bejeebers out of me.   A word I hear often these days from friends when we commiserate with each other is ‘disoriented’.  ‘Untethered‘.  Another word is “overwhelmed”.  Not used lightly as in, “I am overwhelmed by choices”, but in a deep, existential way.  We feel overwhelmed by the barrage of Trump’s actions at all levels, moving through each day trying to cope with the effect of the pandemic on our lives, individually and collectively, trying to cope with the bombardment of news from which we can’t distance ourselves.

Trump has done irreparable damage to this country. The Administration’s refusal to develop a national policy for Covid has led to over 220,000 deaths and rapidly counting – possibly half of which could have been avoided – while at the same time stalling a new stimulus package for those rendered economically fragile.  Covid, the economy and the disaster of Trump are bundled up together, bringing chaos to this nation.

his [Trump’s] name will ever be associated with horror, disgust and pain.  His balcony appearance when returning the White House from his hospital stay for Covid was described as Mussolini-esque.  He is fascist-esque. 

There was a time in another era, just a very few months ago, when I would say to myself, “Things can’t possibly get worse.”  They got worse.  Now there is no room for getting worse.  Life in America is pretty much the worst.

Where is that country I emigrated to, to get away from the apartheid totalitarian, police state? When I arrived in New York City from Cape Town in my early twenties towards the end of 1967, I thought I was arriving in a democracy.  A good place, I thought.  With opportunities and freedom, I thought.  I could talk on the phone without out the clicks alerting me to the fact there were more than two people on the line.  I didn’t have to walk to the bottom of a garden or worry about bugs to converse about politics or about the work I was doing at Defence and Aid before it was banned.  I immersed myself in reading – nothing was banned!  I had vast choices! 

The Administration’s refusal to develop a national policy for Covid has led to over 220,000 deaths and rapidly counting – possibly half of which could have been avoided

Well, I knew about US imperialism, I wasn’t totally innocent.  My father, the Trotskyist he was, had railed against the belly of the beast.  But me, I thought that if Americans could just come to grips with how totally awful and oppressive the apartheid state was they would pressure their government to pressure the apartheid government to change its ways. 

I was that naïve.  My naivete didn’t last long.  1968 was around the corner. The assassinations of King and Kennedy.  The police riots against demonstrators as the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The student uprisings the world over. The 60’s slid into the 70s. I joined anti-Vietnam war marches and protests; I marched to demand the passage of the (unsuccessful) ERA – Equal Rights Amendment – and I threw myself with heart and soul in the anti-apartheid movement, into the solidarity movement with the peoples of the Portuguese colonies fighting wars of liberation; I reveled in and learned from the women’s movement, became a feminist; I marveled at the Black Power movement.

Where is that country I emigrated to, to get away from the apartheid totalitarian, police state?

I would soon appreciate that there was a price to the freedom that many Americans enjoyed; that racism was deeply rooted; that white privilege and white supremacy were the warp and weave of American life. That inequality was the bedrock of the nation.  America wasn’t going to change without ongoing protest, organizing, demands.  Our protests helped end the Vietnam war in 1975.  On the global arena, the liberation struggles in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau provided a death knell for fascism in Portugal. In the 1980’s the divestment movement took hold across the US, forcing corporations and the Federal government to end investments, trade and loans to the apartheid regime. We believed ‘we the people’ had power.  That ‘we the people’ could bring about lasting change and transformation. And we did win victories.  We just didn’t win the war.  And now that war is heating up.

Covid has exposed the core of inequality and injustice in the US and elsewhere that no-one can possibly deny.  Unlike South Africans who were ‘shocked’ when apartheid fell because they had ‘no idea’ how bad it was.  Or the Germans who denied what was going on under their noses.  Black Lives Matter has been a rallying cry for not only Black and brown people, but for everyone shocked anew by injustice in America, as police violence and murders have brought all generations but particularly youth out onto the streets in protest.  All this and similar actions give me hope.  As does the election of young men and women into Congress, into state assemblies and city councils; the organizing around climate change; the country-wide campaigns to get out the vote.

It is this that ultimately propels me out of bed in the morning even as my deadlines stall. Ideas stagnate.  What I do write are postcards to help get out the vote. I urge Texans to: “Pledge to vote early and avoid long lines on Election Day.”  In states where early voting ahead of November 3rd has already begun Americans are voting in their millions, but they haven’t avoided the long lines.  People determined to exercise their constitutional right to vote stand in long lines that snake around buildings for half a mile or more.  Photos remind me of images from South Africa’s first democratic election day in 1994.

Will Biden get in?

There is no Federal mandate permitting Americans to take time off from work to vote.  Whether you can get time off, and if so, whether you will be paid for taking that time off, is up to the state in which you happen to reside. Where it is allowed, the limit is two hours, maybe three. If you have to wait for four hours and counting – tough.  In New Jersey, where I live and vote, employers are not required to give their workers time off to vote.  Every registered voter was however mailed a mail-in ballot. I have already slipped the envelope containing my vote into the secure ballot box outside my municipal building. I voted for Biden. Of course.  He’ll be a so-so President.  We need a strong president not a so-so one. But he’s not Trump.  He needs no other credential. He’s in the category of the bumper sticker I saw the other day, “Any Adult, 2020.” 

I would have loved to have inked in the oval next to a name like Elizabeth Warren.  Now that would have given me a charge.  John would have chosen Bernie Sanders’ name.  But then he couldn’t have because John is a Canadian and has lived in the US for the almost fifty years but isn’t a citizen.  But that doesn’t stop him running off his mouth.  He fanaticizes (threatens?) going back to Canada if Trump is reelected.  Sorry.  I love him and all that, but he can go back by himself. Fleeing one totalitarian state in a life time is enough.

I would have loved to have inked in the oval next to a name like Elizabeth Warren.  Now that would have given me a charge. 

Will Biden get in?  This is the million dollar question I am constantly asked by friends outside of America.  Good question.  We’ll know the answer before too long.  Polls are looking very good for Biden. There is a sense of manic optimism in the US right now among many of those who want Trump gone. (Mind if I sprinkle some salt over my left shoulder?) Reminder:  Polls looked good for Clinton.  Reminder: The popular vote doesn’t count.  Only the votes of the Electoral College matter. Reminder:  Clinton won the popular vote by three million, and lost the election.  Reminder:  The United States of America is not a democracy. Only the eight ‘swing’ states, those previously democratic states that gave Trump his win, are important.  Reminder: If Biden doesn’t win these, the state’s electoral college votes will go to Trump even if he wins by just one vote. At the moment, Biden looks comfortably ahead in all polls.  Reminder:  Polls have been shown to be unreliable. 

People say they are going to vote Democratic, then don’t bother to vote.  People are hesitant to admit that they are voting for Trump.  And if the majority of the votes, including in the swing states, are for Biden, Trump has already indicated he will challenge the hell out of a “rigged” election hoping for a decision in the Supreme Court.  We know how that one will go.  And on top of this, if Biden wins but the Senate maintains a Republican majority, his efforts to turn his policies into legislation with be blocked. The Republicans did it with Obama.  They’ll certainly do it again. A Trump victory and a Republican minority make it harder for Trump to continue to destroy this country. So although I shave off slivers of hope from the polls, I still have difficulty facing the day.

There is another reason for my morning mindset.  I seldom see my two- and-half year-old grandson.  Since March I have seen Adam – FaceTime doesn’t count – perhaps eight times.  He lives a 50-minute drive from my home to his in Brooklyn.  We get together in Prospect Park, trying but not totally successfully to keep the advised social distance, using hand sanitizer constantly.  The touch of his little hand in mine as he pulls me towards the large climbing structure darts straight to my heart; the softness of his skin, the warmth of his fingers. I try to stop tears.  I am skin hungry for my little boy.  Cuddle hungry.  I envy my friends who are in a pod with their children and grandchildren. We can’t be. My daughter is a risk factor for us vulnerable parents. She is nurse practitioner working at a women’s health clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, one of the poorest NYC neighborhoods.  She has not been infected herself, but co-workers and patients have.  The leaves are glowing orange outside my window. Winter is fast a-coming.  No more park visits.  Until…?

I try to stop tears.  I am skin hungry for my little boy.  Cuddle hungry.  I envy my friends who are in a pod with their children and grandchildren. We can’t be.

In case, Phil, you are moved to feel sorry for me, don’t!  Don’t!  I know all too damn well how privileged I am.  I am literally moved to tears of emotion, as I drive passed the long, long line of cars – new vintage cars to cars needing body work and valve replacements, filled with families or a single driver as they line up to pick up free food at a distribution center in my town, where some of the most affluent families in New Jersey live.  Yes, I might be affected deeply and personally by this president and his refusal to confront the virus, but it is nothing, absolutely nothing in comparison to those who have lost their jobs, who are living in cramped quarters with children, worrying about where the next meal will come from.  To those who live alone in loneliness and despair without social contact. To those who have lost fathers and husbands, mothers and wives, children.

And thinking of children, my not seeing Adam can’t even begin to compare with the children separated at the border from their parents, the ultimate measure of Trump’s cruelty. To the millions worrying whether they will still have cramped quarters to live in because they can’t pay their rent and no help is coming from the government.  Worrying, if they are sick, whether to go to the hospital because they don’t have health coverage.  Those opening their mail to find bills for hospital stays in the thousands and thousands of dollars that they don’t and will never have. 

In case, Phil, you are moved to feel sorry for me, don’t!  Don’t!  I know all too damn well how privileged I am.

Access to free or low-cost health care is taken for granted in Europe, where the virus has raged and is re-raging.  But not so in the US. This country is the only industrialized country that does not provide universal healthcare. It is a major source of bankruptcy and destitution for Americans who can’t afford health insurance.  Most get it through their employers but Covid has caused lay offs of an unprecedented number of workers. To buy health insurance is expensive and way beyond the means of most individuals and families. Across America families have used up their savings, if they had them, to pay for food and rent.  For those living from paycheck to paycheck savings are a distant dream.

Across America families have used up their savings, if they had them, to pay for food and rent.

Trump will go down in history conjuring up the shock and horror reserved for the names Hitler or Mussolini or Verwoerd.  I am not saying he is the equivalent of Hitler et al.  I am saying his name will ever be associated with horror, disgust and pain.  His balcony appearance when returning the White House from his hospital stay for Covid was described as Mussolini-esque.  He is fascist-esque.  We are in trouble.  Not only those living in America.  But the world.             

So this deep distress about what is happening in the country and what will continue to happen even if Biden is elected, stills my fingers from writing something worthwhile for you, Phil. Meanwhile I try to remember to breathe until the election results are known.

Stephanie J. Urdang is a writer and journalist. For many years she was a consultant on gender equality for the United Nations and UN agencies.  Her latest book is the memoir, Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa. Two previous books covered the role of women in the (now failed) revolutions in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. She lives in New Jersey, USA although still deeply attached to South Africa where she grew up.

https://www.stephaniejurdang.com/

Return the gold to Venezuela

by Francisco Dominguez

On July 2nd 2020 British Judge Nigel Teare, with regard to a Central Bank of Venezuela litigation for 31 tons of gold entrusted to the Bank of England to be returned to the Venezuelan state, issued a verdict in favour of ‘interim president” Juan Guaidó.

The real Venezuelan government has proposed that the gold was given to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to be administered so it was used to purchase food, medicine and vital health inputs. Such a guarantee has not been demanded of Mr Guaidó.

The spurious grounds on which Teare’s verdict is based are essentially that Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) of the UK, “whatever the basis for the recognition”, has “unequivocally recognised Mr Guaidó as President of Venezuela.” Thus the UK Court rules in favour of Mr Guaidó because HMG recognised him as ‘interim president’ because in turn he invoked Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution.

But Justice Teare’s verdict is based on a fabricated interpretation of Article 233 used by Guaidó to declare the Presidency “vacant”, hence his self-proclamation. Article 233 states:

The President of the Republic shall become permanently unavailable to serve by reason of any of the following events: death; resignation; removal from office by decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of his position, duly declared by the National Assembly; and recall by popular vote.

President Maduro is alive, has not resigned, has not been removed from office, is not physically or mentally incapacitated, has not abandoned the Presidency, and has not been recalled by popular vote. Furthermore, the very notion of ‘interim presidency’ does not exist in the Venezuelan Constitution.

HMG’s utterances on Venezuela’s domestic crisis are full of high-flying rhetoric (‘democracy’, ‘free elections’, ‘legitimacy’, ‘human rights’ and so forth) but the true reason for Guaidó’s recognition was revealed by The Canary journalist, John McEvoy, who, resorting to the Freedom of Information Act, reported on a secretive Foreign Office “Unit for the Reconstruction of Venezuela”, set up in collusion with the ‘self proclaimed’ and which involved his “ambassador to the UK”, Venezuelan-US citizen, Vanessa Neumann.

As early as May 2019, Neumann wrote to FCO officials that she had contacted Rory Stewart at DFID for a meeting that “will sustain British business in Venezuela’s reconstruction”; the discussions also included “Venezuela debt restructuring.”

Thus, HMG extended recognition for Mr Guaidó as laying the ground to fully participate in the spoils once and if US policy of ‘regime change’ came to fruition. The irony is that Jeremy Hunt, in his official Guaidó recognition statement – probably at the same time he said he was “delighted to cooperate with the US on freezing Venezuelan gold deposits in the BoE” – charged the government of President Maduro with being “kleptocratic”. A typical UK colonial pillage operation disguised as altruistic concern motivated by ethical political principles.

Marcha-Caracas-02-02-2019-Juan-Guaido-Presidente-Interino-Venezuela-Por-fotografo_Venezolano_AlexCocoPro_(813)_virgen_de_la_candelaria
Venezuelan presidential pretender Juan Guaidó speaks at a rally as part of his first failed coup attempt on February 2 2019, asis wife Fabiana Rosales holds up an icon of the Virgin Mary.

Mr Guaidó is not only thoroughly discredited in Venezuela, where he enjoys little support, but substantial sections of the opposition have publicly broken with him and have constructively engaged with President Maduro in creating the best conditions for the coming elections to the National Assembly on 6th December 2020, which includes a new agreed National Electoral Council. After that there will be not even be fictional basis for the UK, the US or the EU to continue recognising Guaidó. Thus, with sublime hypocrisy, Trump excepted, Europe and the UK de facto recognise the Bolivarian government: they all, including the UK, have ambassadors in Caracas who have presented their credentials to President Maduro in public ceremonies.

After a recent diplomatic spat with Maduro, the EU applied sanctions on 11 Venezuelans, including opposition politicians who favour elections, dialogue, and who oppose Guaidó’s sanctions, violent ‘regime change’ and external interference, leading the latter to expel the EU ambassador. A joint communiqué by Jorge Arreaza and Josep Borrell, foreign ministers of Venezuela and the EU respectively, resolved it. They “agreed to promote diplomatic contacts between the parties at the highest level, within the framework of sincere cooperation and respect for international law.”

Given his farcical ‘self-proclamation’, Guaidó’s democratic credibility has been highly dubious – if he ever had any. Since then he has associated himself with Colombian narco-paramilitaries; used paramilitary force to try and control Venezuelan territory in preparation for external (US) forces to invade; staged a failed coup seeking to oust the Maduro government by force; contracted US mercenaries to carry out an attack on the presidential palace and kidnap and/or assassinate President Maduro and high government officials; and he and his entourage reek of corruption, leading many to resign in disgust.

Guaidó’s “presidency” unequivocally controls nothing, not even a street lamp in Venezuela. He is just a device for the pillage of his country’s vast wealth. Does the UK government seriously intend to hand over Venezuela’s gold to such a felonious character? Likewise, why do European countries continue to recognise such a repellent and corrupt US proxy?

The Central Bank of Venezuela will appeal seeking to reverse Judge Teare’s decision so that the gold can be returned to its rightful owners (https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-mp-give-venezuela-back-its-gold) and through the UNDP can be used to continue saving lives against the pandemic. Retaining illegally these resources from Venezuela in the middle of the pandemic is denying the human rights of 32 million ordinary, Chavista and non-Chavista, Venezuelans.

Dr Francisco Dominguez
Dr Francisco Dominguez is a senior lecturer at Middlesex University, where he is head of the Research Group on Latin America. He is National Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Dominguez came to Britain in 1979 as a Chilean political refuge. Ever since he has been active on Latin American issues, about which he has written and published extensively. He is co-author of Right wing politics in the New Latin America (Zed Books).

 

Allow Me to Spit!

Peekskill Riots in 1949

In the USA racism is the collateral damage caused by social inequality and injustice, and a history of slavery, segregation and discrimination.

By Phil Hall

‘Killer Mike’ in his emotional response compared the killing of George Floyd by a policeman in Minnesota to the killing of a zebra by a lion. What level of hate must the policeman have had to murder George Floyd that way? How shocking to Europeans – butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths – that a representative of the state could murder someone with such utter brutality, and that it should not be an isolated occurrence, but a regular pattern. A few weeks earlier, a young black man, Ahmaud Arbery, out for his regular morning jog was shot dead by two white rednecks driving a pick up truck.

USA, your problem is racism. But most of all it is social inequality. You will see, if you tax the wealthy and the corporations, if, regardless of race, you give everyone a good health service, good unemployment benefit, a decent job and a good pension – all of which they so deserve – then all your citizens will gentle down and be friends.

When Obama was elected the feeling of liberal self congratulation was overpowering, the USA was on the way to being a post racial capitalist society. But with the same bastard oligarchs in the driving seat.

I wrote an article praising Jesse Jackson and calling Obama, Black-wash, an Uncle Tom. Then Jesse Jackson was overheard talking about that fraud, that representative of US neo-liberalism, Obama. He said:

‘Obama is talking down to black people.’ and Jackson said he’d like to castrate Obama.

Of course Jackson apologised later, but every worst fear was later realised. Hope is the cruelest thing.

Obama went to war in Libya. Obama worked tirelessly for the likes of Goldman Sachs. Obama was to the right of Clinton. Obama proved black Americans could give the finger to the poor just like any white political corporate whore.

the USA was on the way to being a post racial capitalist society. But with the same bastard oligarchs in the driving seat.

When people voted for Obama they were not really voting for his race, they were voting for radical change and they didn’t get it. Of course the failure of Obama to make radical change lead directly to Trump’s victory.

Perhaps Obama, the smooth talking, quipping, cat-got-the-cream president, the handsome new friend of Richard Branson and any number of billionaires and millionaire celebrities really irritated the US electorate when he sniggered at Trump, regularly making fun of him at the White House Foreign Correspondents’ Dinner.

After Obama had failed to deliver jobs and social justice at almost every level and after he continued with US aggressive neo-imperialist policies across the globe. Basically, after Obama had failed to do what it said on his tin, he turned around to Trump and said something like:

‘One thing we can be sure of is that Donald Trump will never be president.’

Well, Trump was elected after that and it wasn’t because he was a racist, a recidivist who represented the worst in US society (whatever you may have come to believe in the interim) it was for the same reason that Obama was elected: the people of the USA wanted economic nationalism. They wanted their companies and jobs back from China, Mexico and Vietnam. They wanted to stop the flow of migrants that destroyed pay and conditions for whole sectors. They wanted government to whip the financial corporations into line.

Of course the failure of Obama to make radical change lead directly to Trump’s victory.

For God’s sake who are these fools who say immigration doesn’t affect pay and conditions? Do they drink their coffee with salt because to them it tastes sweet? Do they fly to work on bumble bees? Do they do their best thinking stoned? While there may be net benefits from migration, of course migration is used by bosses to undercut pay and conditions. Look at the history of the Chicago Stockyards.

The US electorate voted Trump in because they wanted radical change and, because the American story for so long has been a song with the title:

‘If we only had a businessman president.’

Well they got a businessman president. They got a sleazeball, a misogynist, a lazy golfer, an uneducated fool out for his own good, a wheeler dealer with no morals. They got him.

It turns out guys, surprise! A businessman makes a terrible president. We could have told you that, but you wouldn’t listen. Too much Ayn Rand rots your brains.

Anyway, Trump is a man with no scruples. He’ll take support from where he can get it. From the white, from the ultra-right, from the Cuban exiles, from the born again Christians, from the black bourgeoisie. Whatever, it’s all the same to him. And because he is completely uninterested in the structural problems of racism and inequality in any real way, he sees only to the surface of things.

I doubt if Trump has watched The Wire. I doubt if Trump has laughed at George Carlin’s jokes or read Howard Zinn. He’s a simpleton, a TV showman, an I’m-alright-Jack, utterly superficial, utterly ruthless money grabber. And if he is a right wing populist now that is simply because that is who he thinks supports him.

These are my observations, from the viewpoint of my ignorance as a foreigner. In fact, from the viewpoint of someone who has had the US viewpoint shoved down him in huge quantities his whole life, allow me to spit.

I doubt if Trump has watched The Wire.

To me, the USA is a complex place. It is not monolithic. I’d have to go there to understand it better. Racism is endemic and systematic, but not everywhere and not to the same degree. If the black community is disproportionately engaged in crime and incarcerated it is because after slavery there was segregation and after segregation there was discrimination. When there is no alternative, people go for making money illegally.

But the USA is not like Britain. I’ve been told that if you end up in Hollywood or the wrong side of Miami then you will be robbed or murdered, probably by black American or Latino gangs. I have heard that there are places like this in Chicago. One of my Mexican colleagues described how he saw from his window as his nephew was shot dead.

Now gang warfare over drugs and street crime is not morally equivalent to standing on anyone’s neck for nine minutes. Deaths caused by criminals are not equivalent morally to the racism that drives a lynch mob. Deaths caused by criminality are not morally equivalent to the terrible harm caused by Southern segregation to millions of black US citizens. By no means whatsoever are the actions of criminals, who happen to be black, morally comparable to the enormous historical crime of slavery. George Floyd was a completely innocent man. The anger about George Floyd harks back to historical crimes, it is not just about present day discrimination.

But imagine living in a society so crazy that you can’t get out of your car or walk down the street without being robbed and killed. Imagine that the person who will do it to you is probably going to be black or Latino. What goes through your mind as you are being robbed and stabbed if you yourself are not black or Latino?

‘Why are you happy?’ ‘Because I thought I was a racist, but I am not a racist.’

‘Oh, this is simply because of the historical roots of oppression and I shouldn’t take it personally. I shouldn’t become a racist just because the guy who fucked me over was black.’

My friend Paxton was from Oregon. He came with his parents to Nairobi and after three months in Nairobi he came to me and said:

‘I am so happy Phil.’

‘Why are you happy?’

‘Because I thought I was a racist, but I am not a racist.’

He explained how there were gangs in his school and that if he ever came across a group of black or Latino teenagers alone he was in severe danger and he hated them for making him constantly fear for his safety – for his life. But now that he was in Nairobi he found it easy to make friends with everyone regardless of colour.’

Racism is the collateral damage caused by social inequality and by a history of slavery, segregation and discrimination. USA your problem is social inequality and racism. But you will see, if you give everyone a good health service, good unemployment benefit, a decent job a good pension and equal opportunities – all of which they deserve – then the people will gentle down and be friends. Maybe then, like Obama, you could all chuckle together about racism as if it were a thing of the past.

People of the USA, maybe when you get your own comfortable, brand new air-conditioned, social democracy with all the safety features you’ll all be too cool for racism.

Phil Hall is a college lecturer. He is a committed socialist and humanitarian. Phil was born in South Africa where his parents were in the ANC. There, his mother was imprisoned and his father was the first journalist from a national paper to be banned. Phil grew up in East Africa and settled in Kingston-upon-Thames. He has also lived and worked in the Ukraine, Spain, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Phil has blogged for the Guardian, the Morning Star and several other publications and he has written stories for The London Magazine. He started Ars Notoria in May 2020.

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