This week the ruling Democratic Party in the oil-rich North American republic of the United States, one of the world’s top banana exporters, held a convention in the country’s third largest city, Chicago, to nominate its candidate in forthcoming presidential elections due to be held in November. The convention is being held months after ageing ruler, Joe Biden, who heads the country’s internationally recognised regime, was forced to drop out of the race following a disastrous debate with opposition leader and former President Donald Trump, who is three years his junior.

Biden’s attempts to cling to power despite his growing unpopularity had left many in the ruling party worried that the white-wing Christianist opposition – which already controls the House of Representatives, and has packed the Supreme Court with hardline religious extremists – could win back control of the country and implement draconian laws that would place further limits on the rights of women and non-white asylum seekers.

Biden, a white, has already named his Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black, as his preferred successor to lead the former British colony, which is riven by ancient ethnic and racial hatreds. It was therefore a foregone conclusion that she would win the nomination. Still, the convention presented opportunities for Harris to win back the support of groups that Biden had alienated, including those who object to the country’s policy of arming the extremist regime in Israel which is conducting a brutal genocide in Gaza. (Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been designated a terrorist by Pakistan, and is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.)

As international........

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