Interesting events over the past few days prompted this excursion into the issues implicit in my caption above.

I made myself read another good provocative editorial in the Stabroek News of last week Friday - The triumph of nonsense (SN Nov 3, 06) Then of course this Tuesday saw America's electorate - those who actually are eligible and bother to vote - modifying significantly the make-up of their congress and senate. These are two powerful bodies which make laws and chart the policies, programmes, the very national life of the USA. Their work and decisions impact upon the world at large.

That's why we here should, at the very least, take note of America's political goings-on. But first my own background perspective.

During my childhood "going away" meant journeying - two weeks by large boats - to "Mother Country" Britain, the United Kingdom, England. As colonials those names were etched into our very psyche. I could not escape the context. Then by the seventies, "going-away" evolved into migration - to the USA - "America". America then came to us in a rush. When we couldn't go (normally, legally) to America. American music, movies, fashion, foods, language and accents - and products took the place of the no-longer- "Great" Britain. And the British.

The result - from say 1976 to now (three decades) - is that there are probably now more Guyanese living in the USA, legally or not, than there are in Guyana itself. The world seems to travels to the USA. From the greedy or ambitious vendor from economically-challenged nations, to wealthy, corrupt, overthrown dictators of Latin America or Africa, the world heads to the vast, allegedly rich America - the nation - power some states love to hate.

It's beyond my scope to attempt to describe how America assumed its stature, status and the many international roles and responsibilities it assumed or had thrust upon it. But, in a large nutshell we know that after the original native "Indians" had the land taken from them the new American "Pilgrims" pioneered and developed a modern state. Sure there was slavery - enslavement of Africans, separation of Native "Indians" - then a serious internal war or two. But America annexed more land from Spanish neighbours then gladly "accepted" the world's poor into its developing bosom. As well as the world's most brilliant!

Yes I always marvel at the method employed by the descendants of the settler-class, early Americans. They wooed the world with the promise of opportunity. And their competitive, open "feel" market programmes did provide the opportunities which many immigrants' homelands lacked. Middle-eastern and Asian minds enriched American entrepreneurial expertise. A German built them bombs, Japanese, Mexicans, Africans flocked to the democracy. Even as American rich became rich and poor seldom matched rich - in numbers - the American dream came through/true for enough - enough to encourage a continuous flow to that land. Truly a nation of immigrants - described thus by no less a leader than the Texan President LBJ Lindon Baines Johnson.

(Super) Power corrupts?

Once, the world spoke of a few "super-powers" - Britain, the USA, the Soviet Union, China, France. And then there was one - America.

Hot, Warm World Wars gave way to the Cold War between Russia/China and the USA/Western Europe. Suddenly America became unpopular amongst many. It became the World's Policeman - by invitation and by its own volition. It intervened around the world to take security and democracy where America perceived those necessary attributes were absent. The concept of the ugly American grew.

In the US capital Washington, it is claimed, a ruling elite, from whichever party was in power, planned the domination of the lesser world. Allegedly, wars were used to fuel America's economic engine of growth.

Charles Sullivan, who wrote "Fruit of the poison tree", and an American Social Activist from West Virginia with Socialist orientation put it this way as one of his country's most vocal critics.

"The impetus behind current US foreign policy is the same as it has always been, only it is becoming more overt. That impetus is, of course, privatized profit and insensate greet. Capitalists care about one thing - capital. And they do not care who they have to kill to get it. They did not hesitate to kill thousands of American workers in the strikes of the 1800-1900. So why would they think twice about sending our soldiers to die in the Middle East or anywhere else?

Militarism is the iron fist of capitalism. You can think of our Middle East policies as a way of socializing costs and privatizing profits because that is exactly what they do. The socialized cost is born by those who fight and die, while those who lobby for war - the chicken hawks and their corporate brethren - are raking in billions. I guess that makes the dead the cost of doing business.

In essence, war is the most insidious form of corporate welfare ever devised by the human imagination. As General Smedley Butler said in the 1930s, `War is a racket.' Also I think there is a racist element to current Middle East policy and perhaps an ideological one as well. I know no other way of explaining the torture and humiliation of other human beings. I see it as a continuation of the same Manifest Destiny that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the American Indian. Either the world will unite and put a stop to this madness or the planet will soon be rendered almost uninhabitable.

The real terrorists are in the White House, in Congress and the corporate boardrooms of America.

What America is trying to do is rule the world by military force and economic policy. That is the wrong thing to do, and I doubt whether the majority of the people really support such imperialistic doctrine. Empire and democracy are mutually exclusive.

We have become a rogue nation that does not respect international law or treaties.

I do not believe that this issue can be resolved at the polls. It is going to require massive citizen involvement, serious economic disruption, boycotts general strikes, and acts of civil disobedience over a long period of time. We must throw our bodies on to the gears and levers of the machine and make it stop. The war makers must be driven from office, regardless of their political stripes. I doubt whether they will leave of their own accord. The same thing must occur not only in the US but around the world.

It is important to understand that men like George Bush, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Tony Blair, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu and all the others are products of the capitalist system. They are the fruit of the poison tree. You cannot change the result until you change the system that produces the result. Otherwise you are only treating symptoms as the disease continues to progress."

The above few paragraphs are pretty extreme rough assessments by Sullivan an avowed anti-establishment American. But I find that those sentiments are gaining ground amongst many of the world's current thinkers. As a sentimental pro-American fellow, it worries me that America is seen as warmonger and not as saviour or pacifier/peace-keeper.

Even the Stabroek News editorial, The triumph of nonsense, hit the George Bush administration and its strategy hard. Just one paragraph: "But even after 9/11 supposedly changed everything and the administration had swept into Afghanistan then blundered into Iraq, the Rove model delivered another victory. This time the Democrats were smeared as a party of quibblers. Fussing over 'enemy combatants', looking to change horses in mid-stream. Unsurprisingly there was little time left over to take a good look at those tax cuts for the wealthy, the privatization schemes for social security and the ruinous deferred expenses of the war on terror. But most voters didn't have time for the details, they just wanted a man you could trust. So it came down to choosing someone who would stand against that legendary axis of evil and continue the crusade against terrorism, or a flip-flopper - voting for the war and then criticizing it - as the Swiftboated John Kerry came to be known. The second victory deepened the president/s conviction that he is a Churchill for our times. And it emboldened him to follow his heart presumably with appropriate guidance from his higher father, wherever it led him."

I feel constrained, bound to return to these views, with a real attempt at analysis, before this year ends. Because I now have a gut feeling that Americans, by their vote this Tuesday are also coming around to the view that their country should not occupy another one at the cost of too many American lives - and to the detriment of their economy. All future administrations will have another battle to prove that American action is really against terror and to safeguard America's interests if not the world's.

It's all pretty intriguing stuff. I maintain my love for the American people and generally their way of life. Their harshest critics still run there. Claiming that the economic organization of the world compels them to do so.

Funny that I who favour America never felt any urge to live there. Stay tuned.

Consider…

1) Yes really consider: Study, examine the laws enacted to govern the staging of Cricket World Cup matches here - I contend that the control granted to the ICC - is unprecedented. Culturally, we are alien to those standards and regulations. Ideally, they are desirable.

2) Quote from Ian Mc: "My mind had always had trouble grasping the idea of God. When I was very young I remember I was told that someone must have made the world and that someone must surely be very powerful and so He must be God. But I remember even then dimly sensing a fallacy and I'm sure I must have soon asked the vital question - "But where does God come from?" and not long after, it became clear to me that the answer - "God doesn't come from anywhere God always existed" - really solved nothing because, after all an infinitely old God and an infinitely old universe are equally deep mysteries, perhaps indeed they are the same mystery.

3) Quote from Christopher Ram: "VAT is a major development and ought not to be done as a leap of faith, a show of strength or as an adventure. Taxpayers have a right to be heard given that in the final analysis it is taxpayers who pay for the poor judgment of the government and its various arms."

4) So both the West Indies and Gary St Clair lost! Pity about St Clair?