President Biden?
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If Malcolm X had that would have been unfair as none of Obama’s ancestors had been slaves working on a plantations in the US.
Democratic Party tries to bar the Green Party from the election
https://apnews.com/b9b6c55254bfbf9a2bd0d45ad3ecc4e9
Democrats had contended that the Green Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees did not properly submit candidate affidavits in August to go with paperwork containing voter signatures to get on the ballot. As a result, Democrats argued, both must be barred from the ballot. Commonwealth Court Judge Drew Crompton, a Republican, disagreed, and dismissed arguments that the presidential nominee, Howie Hawkins, should be barred from the ballot. But Green Party’s vice presidential nominee should be barred, he said.
Yes politics is a dirty game. Also another example of the point Marcos is always making that, as far as elections are concerned, the US is a banana republic — that ruling applies only in one state. Other states can make different rulings.
The Past is Prologue
It is September 2020. Americans are focused on an election between an Orange Fascist criminal and an old-school right-wing Democrat war criminal. Where Donald Trump projects chaos and disorder, Biden projects stability, order, and a return to normalcy. If Trump is the virus, then surely Biden is the cure.
It is September 2020. Libya prepares to enter its eighth year of civil war. Slave markets like the one in Bani Walid are as common as youth literacy centers were in Gaddafi’s Libya. Armed gangs and militias wield power even in areas nominally under government control. A warlord regroups in the East as he looks to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates for support.
It is September 2020 and the US-NATO war on Libya has faded to a distant memory as other issues like Black Lives Matter and police murder of Black youth have captured the public imagination and discourse.
But these issues are, in fact, united by the bond of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. The Libya once known as the “Jewel of Africa,” a country that provided refuge for many sub-Saharan African migrant workers while maintaining independence from the US and the former colonial powers of Europe, is no more. In its place is a failed state that now reflects the kind of vicious anti-Black racism forcefully suppressed by the Gaddafi government.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/08/the-plot-against-libya/
We tend to forget that Gaddafi although a dictator was very much a stabilising factor in the region, making a deal with the EU and with a booming economy it could incorporate the many African migrants trying to make their way to Europe, rather than lock them up inside inhuman detention camps.
Another aspect is the ecological progress he was making to irrigate vast parts of desert which has stalled when Libya degenerated into civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/libya-has-worlds-largest-irrigation-project
But we should be wary of too much left-wing praise bestowed upon Gadaffi.
But we should be wary of too much left-wing praise bestowed upon Gadaffi.
I wasn’t doing this. The thread was mainly about the war criminal running for president.
Americans are focused on an election between an Orange Fascist criminal and an old-school right-wing Democrat war criminal.
httpshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo//www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCoAlb
Malcolm X used that term because there were two types of slaves, one working for the house of the master who protected their master, and the other one working in the plantation who hate their master and wanted to kill the master. Obama ancestors did not work in the plantation,( and he was mixed ) but he served to the ruling class of the USA and he protected them, similar to the slaves living in the house of the master, that is what Franz Fanon called: Colonial mentality
We omitted another term that was once used politically to refer to Mexican Americans – Chicano
But the Chicanos do not consider themselves as Latinos (as, X) but as Chicanos, o La Raza ( the race ) the white supremacists call them Mexicans who speak English, but others sectors of the USA society call them Mexican Americans, and many Chicanos support the nationalist point of view of Donald Trump, and some have participated in the activities of the Minutemen, but during the Vietnam war they had a different type of class consciousness when they opposed the Vietnam war and the discrimination against the immigrants, the Mexicans and themselves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicano_Moratorium
The USA is one of the few countries around the world who place a national prefix in front of all its citizens such as Italian American, German American, Cuban Americans, etc etc etc, in others countries they are just citizens of that particular country and does not make any difference where the ancestors come from. There are thousands of Japanese,( Peru ) Chineses ( Cuba ) and Arabs ( Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic ) in South America, Central America and the Caribbeans and they are just citizens of those countries, and their cuisine is mixed with the cuisine of that particular too, and sometimes they provide better flavours, like the Chinese food mixed with Caribbeans seasoning.
All those national prefixes are created in order to keep the workers divided by national and ethnic groups, the USA working class is one with the same interests. In the USA peoples also confuse culture with traditions, the prevailing culture in the USA( and around the world ) is the bourgeoise culture which is part of the capitalist ideology
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-22-me-59558-story.html
Matt, my comment was not yourself, but the author of the Counterpunch article. We all know how Chavez and Madura were and still are hailed as saints by the Left. I was also merely indicating that Gadaffi was much like Bashir Assad and even Saddam Hussein, in that they countered the splintering of their countries and tried to avoid civil war
I agree with you Marcos that the US has an identity problem and it is not a new thing, merely the same age-old problem re-labeled. Nativist V. Immigrant.
In his earlier years even Eugene Debs expressed the racist views of the Know-Nothing Party. Nor can we ignore the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow which means that its effects don’t miraculously end with emancipation or a Civil Rights law. The wealth of one community remains in the negative because of such a simple thing as red-lining when it comes to Federal aid in home-ownership.
In all those countries you refer to, there does appear to be a hidden racism, (even in Cuba), where skin tone, darker or lighter, determine status with mestizo being on the higher rung of the social ladder with the indigenous at the very bottom, hence the need for the Zapatista movement to challenge the divide in Mexico. i once encountered English-speaking historically Caribbean blacks in Costa Rica who seemed to me to be the equivalent of the Roma in that country.
And talking of the Roma, do we deny them their history by insisting they assume the nationality of the country they live in?
Is assimilation and multiculturalism (or should that read monoculturalism, the McDonaldisation of cultures), really a solution socialists seek for the diversity of peoples?
Are we hoping to be color-blind when it comes to discrimination and prejudice? How do we say that in the America police brutality targets “human beings” when proportionately it is aimed at People of Color (i’m going to run with that word for now)
In the UK we say BAME – Black Asian Minority Ethnic…and it makes meaningless if we substitute a recent news headline with “Human Beings have lost trust in the Police”
In an earlier exchange with myself ALB brings up the France’s constitution which forbids any reference to ethnic origins for French nationals. Does that help the French Arabs or French Africans who are now statistically invisible and living with higher levels of poverty and unemployment because of the effects of institutional racism? Have not the suburbs of Paris become de facto ghettoised but because of a law we cannot identify or define it as so?
We have numerous social problems which cross over from the racial to class divisions. Our task is not to deny that race (or religion elsewhere in the world) is not part of the reason for inequality but to show that the fight for socialism is the solution, not a re-arrangement and re-alignment of various oppressions (or disadvantages, if you prefer)
Alan – “We have numerous social problems which cross over from the racial to class divisions. Our task is not to deny that race (or religion elsewhere in the world) is not part of the reason for inequality but to show that the fight for socialism is the solution, not a re-arrangement and re-alignment of various oppressions (or disadvantages, if you prefer)”
A view point I wholeheartedly concur with. We need to be pointing out that the actions of the Police in harassing minorities in London, is the same as the actions of the agents of the state at Orgreave and in creating a police state in parts of the UK during the Miner’s Strike and in smashing up communities throughout the North of England. That losing your home because your landlord throws you out is little different from having your home repossessed by the bank and the building society, that being belittled and bullied in the workplace is a factor of your social class and position of power in society. That arriving in the UK as a poor immigrant starved out of your homeland is the same experience your grandparents had as 19th/20th Century Irish immigrants, as a 21st Century Libyan or Afghani immigrants are experiencing now, being denied your cultural and linguistic heritage is the same if you’re a native Welsh speaker or a native Punjabi speaker.
Most importantly we need to be pointing out that it is possible that the divisions created by artifices such as “race”, gender, nationality, sexuality, ability/disability, etc. can be overcome and dealt with through reconciliation and mutual development, however the antagonism that exists between those who own and control and those who have no ownership and control, cannot be reconciled, but require the abolition of class ownership and the abolition of classes themselves. .
We need to be working to create working class unity, not working class divisions.
Further on words
The term “Chicano” had its origins among the Aztec Indians. “Chicano” is derived from a word used by the Aztecs which they pronounced ’Meshicano.’ Since the Spaniards had no ’sh’ sound in their language, they tended to write the word as ’Mexicano.’ However, the last part of the word as pronounced by the Aztecs has survived ’Shicano’ or ’Chicano.’
Another word for Mexican Americans is cholos
Marcos will be pleased to know that i am beginning to research the Mexican-American War of the 1840s and The Spanish-American war of the 1890s for a two-part article on US expansionism.
Links to online sources would be appreciated.
Recently i have become only too aware that the average American has little knowledge of its history. Later i will concentrate on the hidden history of the American labor movement.
David Rovics’ St Patrick’s Battalion is a musical reminder of the Irish deserters who fought for the Mexicans
The Republican-Democratic Consensus
Trump hasn’t said a word about the wildfires blazing across multiple states in nearly three weeks. Democratic leaders also have been slow to call attention to the fires in California, Oregon and Washington. Pelosi barely mentioned the fires, which are ravaging her own home state of California, until Thursday
“It’s not just the Republicans who are letting us down. It’s the Democrats who aren’t fighting for a better climate future either,”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/12/wildfires-democrats-climate-crisis
Multi-billionaire Bloomberg couldn’t buy the nomination so he is doing the next best thing – buying the nominated candidate instead.
He plans to spend at least $100 million to help Biden in the important swing state of Florida.
Yes, elections in the US are a farce from the point of view of formal democracy as those with money like capitalists and capitalist corporations can effectively spend as much as they like to support candidates of their choice. Previous attempts to limit this have been over-ruled by the Supreme Court. This from Wikipedia:
”On February 19, 2013, the Supreme Court announced it would hear McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case challenging the limit on how much individuals can donate directly to political parties and federal candidates. On April 2, 2014, the Court announced its opinion and maintained aggregate limits on campaign contributions were unconstitutional under the First Amendment”.
Marx once referred to Belgium in his day as a capitalists’ paradise. This title has long since passed to the US.
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