President Trump started abruptly to address his personal promises; he attacked Obamacare, cancelled America’s part in the TPP, while maintaining views against NAFTA, and has called on Mexico to pay for his border wall, which Mexico President Peña flatly rejected. Trump retaliated, threatening a 20% tax on Mexican imports, but that only means an end to cheap tequila, avocado and corn, and good beer, which have fattened several American companies. Not to mention that NAFTA rules will allow Mexico to complain under its Ch. 11 Dispute Resolution mechanism.

Trump’s order may be the best thing for North America, but it is illegal under existing laws, however ill-conceived. The US record in NAFTA complaints against Mexico is nearly 100%, but if this gets there, it should lose. Trump should withdraw from NAFTA before changing rules. Just now GM has laid off over 600 workers at its assembly plant in Canada, as it plans to shift an SUV production to Mexico, where it has over 15,000 workers. The latest order is Trump’s ace, the ban against Muslims that he trumpeted during the campaign. He has ordered a ban against seven Muslim states: Syria, Iraq, Libya, Iran Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, to protect Americans from terrorists, but the countries that have so far supplied the US with terrorists were excluded: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Lebanon, not to mention the US itself. Of course, this may just reflect his and fellow Americans’ rudimentary knowledge of the world, especially its history and geography, and ignorance of peoples and their beliefs, including their own citizens. Iran promptly replied with a ban on Americans, and Iraq is contemplating the same. The immediate result was a hold-up of 11 Muslims at Kennedy airport, hundreds elsewhere, including an Iraqi who worked as an informer and interpreter for the US army in Iraq! The ban has been so sweeping that it threatens refugees and migrants, and those with valid ‘green cards’ and legitimate residents travelling abroad. Green-card holders are actually advised not to travel outside the USA for the duration of this ban. Meanwhile lawsuits are filed against Trump’s orders, in general terms against their breach of US and international agreements and specifically by those mistreated as a result of the travel ban. It is revealing that VP Pence, when governor of Ohio, had flatly pronounced against anti-religion policies a year or so ago, yet seems to accept Trump’s order.
So far, Trump has governed like a dictator, and older Guyanese will recognise the similarity with their favourite dictator, Forbes Burnham, and his rule by fiat. Trump has brought the US government to ridicule, and sees no inconsistency between his actions and evidence. How his Muslim allies, specifically Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the real nests of terrorism, will respond, remains in doubt, but will not likely result in any change. Trump has upset the world, at least the ones that have reacted. Even bosom-friendly Britain has recoiled a bit, Mrs May opining that US and UK will stop interfering in the internal affairs of other states, in efforts “to remake them to our image.” What a refreshing admission; it’s the devil shedding her horns!
With regard to the “Mexican wall”, border Americans call it foolish, expensive and useless. What he’s doing is the opposite of globalisation that US Governments (read Corporations) committed massive horrors to achieve, including ISIS, which Trump now wants a Defence plan within 30 days to end it. If that happens, who will buy American munitions? He has incredibly given his political strategist Steve Bannon key security positions; Bannon has already antagonised most media. One good edict however was the ban on US officials lobbying for foreign governments. Goodness, where does Israel stand in this? Fascinating times!
One of the ironies today is that while Trump is methodically turning the clock backwards to pre-WWII, former dictatorships in West Africa that the CIA helped to form and were lovingly known as the Brotherhood that studiously refrained from criticising one another’s internal policies are now changing to democracies, at least by allowing elected heads to take over, the last being Gambia, just this week. So West Africa could once again rise to the front of nations. And another irony: while Mrs Clinton is licking the wounds of failure to become head of state, just over to the south, a group of paradisiac islands, the Turks and Caicos boast not only a female premier but a female head of most major administrative and legal departments, including the deputy governor general, a British appointee!

The new girl came to our school and put cracks into what we had always known and taken for granted.
She arrived with her long hair done in curls, wearing polished shoes with straps, and knee-high, pink socks. She arrived at the front gate of our primary school each morning in a chauffeur-driven motor car, exiting with a dainty foot alighting toes-first from the back seat after the chauffeur came around to the side and officiously opened the door. We were young and carefree then, new to the routine of the classroom, and filled with so much energy it was important we burn out as much of it as early as possible before the start of class.

An occurrence as the car driving up stopped our energy-burn, the curiosity like a brake bringing us to a halt. Up to then we were running around, wild, careless, and free. Right away the car’s arrival stopped our game of hide-and-go-seek, the early-morning effort already making the sweat stream down the sides of our faces, leaving a dark and wet stain under our arms on the blue-coloured school shirts.
Silence descended throughout the school, where before our shouts and laughter were bouncing off the red-brick school walls and echoing under the eaves. We crowded at the front of the school, climbing over each other for a better look at the evolving event. From the vantage of behind the chain-link fence like so many uniformed prisoners being aired, we looked out to the brave new world just beyond the locked gates where this regally-dressed young lady had arrived like a princess into our midst.
Before the young lady had stepped out, we had wondered who was sitting behind the dark, tinted glass of the car’s back window. Was one of our teachers getting a ride to school by a rich relative? Or perhaps it was our head-teacher, who had worked long and hard enough to buy new car. Or maybe it was a school official arriving to be cloistered for the rest of the day in the head-teacher’s office, there to make decisions to affect our young lives way into when we were old folks, no longer capable of running like the wind while whooping at the tops of voices.
Someone said the prime minister had come to visit. Right away this suggestion was shot down with scathing and derisive scorn. We all knew in our little hearts this would never happen. A visit from such an important person from the capital city, coming to a rural school where the chickens moved in to roost after the school day was done? Not in our lifetime, young or old!
Then someone said a movie star had come to visit our school. We giggled nervously, examined beneath our fingernails, and combed out our coconut-oiled hair with a mix of fingers and spit.
Our visitor turned out to be this young lady who was passing through, who needed to temporarily attend school before moving on to a better life abroad. So it was she broke our routine, driving up the main street in our village so it brought out curious mothers from kitchens, or caused their heads to lift from being bent downwards with sweeping, scrubbing, and cleaning. It caused the early drinkers, already deep and lost inside the dark corners of their addictions, to stagger out and hold up a palm to shade eyes from the sun while staring at the receding vehicle in wonderment, before returning to descend and drown inside their cups.
Her visit put a crack in the mirror we had always looked into, and when this happened, we began to see outside the reflections of the world we had always known. It made us wonder about how little was the space in which we lived our daily lives, showing the bigger world beyond from where she had come.
Streamed into our classroom, one morning as the teacher stood in front of the class, he remarked as a casual aside to her, “Where you come from, away. Do you go out with your parents all the time for chicken and chips?”
Her reply stunned not only the class, but the teacher as well. She said, “Not all the time. Sometimes Daddy brings it home for us. Chicken and chips, and lots of ketchup!” The young lady then smacked her lips. It was a smacking of lips that was heard around the schoolyard.
Right away at recess, half the boys in the class vowed to marry this young lady, and to be taken away to the faraway land of milk, honey, and chicken and chips. It came to a point where fists where held up, and the threat invoked of whose father was stronger. The other half vowed when they grew up, this would be the only meal served in their homes – morning, noon, and night.
Times changed around us, bringing affluence and the choices for healthy or unhealthy lifestyles. The young lady moved a long time ago, leaving us behind with the merest morsel in a world filled with chicken-and-chips, with ketchup.

Guyana Focus >