Bye Bye Bolton

 US President Donald Trump sacked his national security adviser, John Bolton, this week as “his services are no longer needed at the White House”. No one’s going to miss Bolton, least of all the Iranians who claim credit for the dismissal saying it was the result of their steadfast resistance to American economic warfare that led to the wretched old warmonger’s downfall.

            Without going into details Trump simply said: "I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation,”.

Some say that Bolton’s blinkered Cold War stance, which nearly led to open war with Venezuela and undermined Trump’s efforts to reach a rapprochement with Democratic Korea, was at odds with Trump’s thinking. Others believe that the last straw was Bolton’s opposition to secret peace talks between American, Afghan government and Taliban officials at the presidential retreat of Camp David that was called off at the last minute following a Taliban bomb attack in Kabul that killed an American soldier and a dozen others last week.

Bolton was a die-hard member of the “Deep State” that represents the most reactionary and aggressive circles within the American ruling class. This Establishment operates inside the Democratic and Republican parties within the corridors of power as a “war party” that has openly clamoured for US hegemony since the end of the Cold War.  They want to rule the world in the name of the “New World Order” or “globalisation” and they don’t care how much it costs or how many die in their drive to fulfil their American Dream.

Trump is something different. Trump represents American capitalist circles who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe, Afghanistan and south Korea so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south America.

The Democrat opposition portray him as some sort of mad, one-man band – a vulgar, corrupt racist unfit to hold public office. But he is so much more than that. The property tycoon turned president represents those who no longer want to pay for wars they cannot win – which has been virtually all of them since the Second World War. They too want American hegemony over the world but they believe it can be won through trade wars and unequal treaties which was the preferred form of US overseas expansion in the 19^th century. This is what Trump means when he says he wants to “Make America Great Again”.

Trump is turning the economic screws on Cuba, Russia and People’s China and he clearly supports the crippling sanctions regime against Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Trump has destroyed all hopes for peace in the Middle East with his “deal of the century” that gives the Zionists everything they want. And his government continues to support the feudal Saudi king’s war in Yemen that has cost tens of thousands of lives and brought the country to the brink of the worst famine it’s seen in 100 years.

Bolton’s departure will hopefully lead to the resumption of realistic negotiations between US imperialism and Democratic Korea. But only time can tell whether this marks a genuine turning point for the Trump administration.

Looking for America

Review

By Ray Jones

Interstate, hitchhiking through the state of a nation, Julian Sayarer, Arcadia Books 2016, ISBN 978-1-910050-93-4, pbk 314 pages, £8.99.

Julian Sayarer might be called by some a modern day adventurer having cycled across quite a lot of the world. In this book he writes about a hitchhiking trip across the USA from New York to San Francisco.

Sayarer makes no attempt at a dispassionate, sociological account. He tells it like he sees it and how he feels it and he does so from a position well left of centre. Annoyingly he blurs the perspective a little by not using his name for the narrator. However, his “Emre” is the same age as Julian and has also been brought up in London from a Turkish background.

He inevitably meets all kinds of people, red-necks, anarchists, gays, immigrants, white collar and blue collar workers, rich and poor. You feel it’s the immigrants he has the most sympathy with, perhaps because of his background but also because they can be less to blame for the state of the nation as he finds it.

At times he is ferocious in response to what he finds: “For the first time but not the last … I [feel] that I have nothing in common with these people. Here there is no public, no humanity, nothing to connect us. I’m somehow coming to understand killers, that sustainable feed of Americans willing to act on the feelings now rising in me, the whole country defending the right of those people to own the implement of murder that allows them to fulfil a cold, numb, destruction of others.”

Sayarer is understandably saddened by the fear Americans show of their fellow citizens but given the circumstances it is hardly surprising. He tells us: “Meat, Petrol and Guns are the rights Americans are now given … in exchange for all that might once have constituted freedom. The occasional mass shooting by a snapping sociopath … a man altogether haywire and yet more sane than any European would dare to believe … is only the cost of the American Way.”

He meets Americans who have a clear view of their society and are just doing the best they can to get by – they see no real alternative on the horizon. He despairs of the poorest he sees around Greyhound bus stations, “… poor fuckers … they won’t be helping themselves anytime soon”, he comments.

There are lighter episodes in this book and the friendship he strikes up with a Punjabi truck driver is warm but economic realities are never far away.

But perhaps over all Sayarer’s picture is too dark. After all Lenin tells us that for revolutions to take place the situation must be severe – both the ruling class and the oppressed class must not be able to carry on in old way.

I have some niggles with the style of this book but nevertheless it is well worth the read. Check your local library.

An English Uprising

 A review by Ben Soton

  

Peterloo by Robert Poole, Hbk, 480pp, illus., Oxford University Press 2019, £25.00

I was once told to read the book then see the film.  In this case I would be forgiven as the film Peterloo was released in 2018.  The book is a study of the period and gives an insight into the events resulting in the Peterloo Massacre.

The 1810s, or late Regency England coincided with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  Instead of women getting engaged to some posh bloke in tight trousers it was the time of the dark satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution.  According to Poole this era marks the end of the Long Eighteenth Century (1688 – 1832) in British history – a period beginning with William of Orange’s Glorious Revolution and ending with the Great Reform Bill. 

The Massacre took place in Manchester where the contradictions of this period were sharpest.  Manchester was an area of the expanding cotton industry, making it one of the most developed places in Britain if not the world.  Meanwhile administratively it had changed little for centuries.  Manchester was run by a clique of high-Tory landowners and clergy who lived outside the township.  These issues combined with economic hardship and even a period of bad weather created a perfect storm that led to the Peterloo Massacre.   

There are many histories about the good guys – Levellers, Chartists, Suffragettes and Communists.  Poole rightly gives coverage to the other side.  He discusses the political trend known as Loyalism; the idea of subjects actively supporting the Establishment.  Meanwhile there were occasions when Tory magistrates intervened to stabilise bread prices; Loyalism is paid for with Paternalism – think government handouts near election time.  It was also the ideological basis for the network of spies that reported back to the Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth.  Loyalism is the foundation of far-right and fascist movements to this day; a few years ago, the English Defence League threatened to attack public sector strikers.   

 Poole goes into considerable details about the opposition movements of the day.  He discusses their tactics, political theories and key figures.  The tactic of printing multiple petitions and distributing them across the country is still used by left-wing activists today.  The idea was developed by William Cartwright (1760-1824).  He also championed the idea of the franchise being extended to all tax payers; rather than just men of property.  As most goods were taxed this would have effectively meant universal suffrage; whilst property qualifications existed until the early 20th century.  

The book would be incomplete without an account of the massacre in which 15 people were killed and hundreds more injured when armed cavalry attacked a pro-democracy rally in the heart of Manchester, Poole uses a range of eye witness accounts and newspaper reports to describe the events of the day.  The attacking Yeomanry would later parade the reformers’ banners as trophies in the same way a victorious army would display enemy colours. 

The actual events of the massacre are best shown through the medium of film.  However, the book provides you with an insight into the background to the events and politics of the day making it a good companion to the film.  Although not possible in this case I now know why you should read the book first.