Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Italian General Election + Results of SPD Groko Vote This Sunday

Italians hold their general election on Sunday. The Five Star Movement (M5S) has been leading in the polls all year. The problem is this lead likely won't translate into a parliamentary majority. Conventional wisdom is that the Berulsconi-led right-wing coalition, which includes the Northern League, will form a government. But it is unclear to me that they will have the votes.

One thing seems certain. Matteo Renzi and the establishment Democratic Party will do poorly. This continues the trend across Europe where the mainstream political left is collapsing. U.S. Democrats should take note.

Also on Sunday results of a membership vote will be announced in Germany as to whether the Social Democratic Party (SPD) should renew its grand coalition (Groko) with the Christian Democrats.

Given the stakes of both the Italian election and SPD Groko referendum the lack of coverage in "the newspaper of record" has been noteworthy. Peter Goodman wrote a good story for the business page the other day, "Italy Is Having an Election. Most Italians Are Too Depressed to Care." The elements of malaise he describes -- youth unemployment; long-term joblessness; lean, capital-intensive production; political apathy -- could be applied to any Western nation.

One thing can be gleaned from NYT's sparse Italian reporting, even from the sneering Jason Horowitz -- M5S is on the rise.

The Times doesn't have a Macron to fluff in Italy or Germany. So rather than really report on what is happening -- we live in an age when there is remarkable broad-based disdain for the governing political parties and said parties are collapsing -- the Times mostly prefers to say nothing.

Which says a lot.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Janus: Beginning of a Real Labor Party in the U.S.?

In "Key Voice Is Silent in Supreme Court Case on Unions" Adam Liptak provides the write-up of the Janus arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday:
WASHINGTON — A crucial voice was silent at Supreme Court arguments on Monday in a case that could deal a sharp blow to public unions. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who almost certainly holds the decisive vote, asked no questions, leaving some doubt, if only a glimmer, about whether he would join the court’s conservative majority to rule that forcing workers to support public unions violates the First Amendment.
Justice Gorsuch generally votes with the court’s conservatives, and he is likely to do so in this case. But his silence during the argument meant that observers knew no more about his thinking by the time it ended than when it had begun.
I took it the opposite way, proof that it is a done deal. Gorsuch kept his mouth shut because it is broadly accepted that his appointment to the court was predicated on his support for overturning Abood:
The court’s more liberal members said that states should have broad leeway in managing public workplaces. They added that a decision against the unions would require overruling a 40-year-old precedent, striking down more than 20 state laws, creating confusion about thousands of union contracts and disrupting the lives of millions of workers.
“I don’t think that we have ever overruled a case where reliance interests are remotely as strong as they are here,” Justice Elena Kagan said.
A decision overruling the precedent would conclude a decades-long political and legal campaign by conservative groups aimed at weakening public-sector unions. Those unions stand to lose fees from workers who object to the positions the unions take and from those who simply choose not to join while benefiting from the unions’ efforts on their behalf.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflected on the consequences of ruling against the union in the case before the court. “It drains it of resources that make it an equal partner” with the government in negotiations, she told William L. Messenger, a lawyer for Mark Janus, an Illinois child support specialist who objected to positions taken by his union in negotiations. “And then you’ll have a union with diminished resources, not able to investigate what it should demand at the bargaining table, not equal to the employer that it faces.”
Near the end of the argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the case represented an existential threat to the labor movement. “You’re basically arguing, ‘Do away with unions,’ ” she told Mr. Messenger.
The case was a challenge to an Illinois law that requires government workers who choose not to join unions to “pay their proportionate share of the costs of the collective bargaining process, contract administration and pursuing matters affecting wages, hours and other conditions of employment.” More than 20 states have similar laws.
The Supreme Court ruled that such laws are constitutional in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a foundational 1977 decision that made a distinction between two kinds of compelled payments. Forcing nonmembers to pay for a union’s political activities violated the First Amendment, the court said. But it was constitutional, the court added, to require nonmembers to help pay for the union’s collective bargaining efforts to prevent freeloading and ensure “labor peace.”
We have very few fair-share payers in my union. Whether and how much this changes once the court rules in favor of Janus remains to be seen.

Noam Scheiber and Kenneth Vogel penned an excellent article, "Behind a Key Anti-Labor Case, a Web of Conservative Donors," about the principal conservative financial backers of the assault on unions. Not only is there the legal attack, but there is also the outreach effort to rank'n'file members prompting them to opt out:
During 2015 and 2016, the foundation also substantially increased its contributions, totaling well over $1 million, to groups like the Independence Institute of Colorado and the Freedom Foundation of Washington State. Those groups have used such tools as direct mail, phone calls and door knocking to persuade public-sector workers to give up union membership.
Richard Graber, the chief executive of the Bradley Foundation, said the foundation avoided short-term tactical considerations in its giving. But he acknowledged that the increase was driven partly by the recent Supreme Court developments, which promised to make such opt-out campaigns more compelling for union members. (Some conservative groups are currently raising money for even more ambitious opt-out campaigns to take advantage of a favorable ruling this year.)
This is the real problem. Most union members, even the virulently conservative ones, are satisfied leaving well enough alone. They might grumble about the union, but they don't want to be seen by coworkers as free riders. Suddenly if millions of dollars are being spent to organize them to leave the union, that's a different story. The Walker attack on unions in Wisconsin had a devastating impact:
In 2011, Wisconsin rolled back the right of most public unions to bargain over anything other than wages and eliminated the requirement that nonmembers pay fees. The portion of unionized public-sector workers in the state plummeted from half to just over one-quarter within five years.
There is no way to sugarcoat this. There is going to be loss and disruption. But if there is a silver lining here it is that now shop-floor organizing is going to be unavoidable for public-sector unions. Regular people are going to have claim an ownership stake in their union locals rather than being passive fee-for-service consumers. Otherwise the gravy train gets derailed.

Another potential positive -- this is more of a long shot -- is that organized labor might start asking more of the Democratic Party. If the Democrats can't prevent Doomsday from arriving, why pledge allegiance? Maybe after weathering the worst that the right can muster a shrunken but hardened union movement can launch a real Labor Party.

That's the question the McResistance needs to be asking. The Democrats have failed to deliver on DACA. They are about to fail to deliver on gun safety. (I don't think Dems in congress are even talking about an assault weapons ban.) They have been unable to protect public-sector unions from right-to-work. What is the point of the Democratic Party?

Monday, February 26, 2018

Stasis and Super Bowl LII

"The Schiff memo released Saturday is in every respect a right-wing document. It graphically illustrates the fact that the Democratic Party has shifted so far to the right that it has become the most subservient defender of the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the entire repressive apparatus of the American capitalist state." 
Barry Grey, "Democratic memo defends FBI’s illegal spying on Trump campaign"
"Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are also back, after a weeklong recess. They face intense pressure to act on gun control, but, as our reporters note, 'If the past is prologue, Congress will do nothing.' "
Chris Stanford, "Xi Jinping, Winter Olympics, Weinstein Company: Your Monday Briefing"
Stasis is stagnation. It is usually called "gridlock." One of the first great works of Western literature, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, was devoted to it. A society will collapse if stasis goes on for too long.

That's where we are now. We are in our fourth decade of neoliberalism. It is well past time for a change, but the rich don't want to change, don't even want modest reforms. So we're headed for, are actively experiencing, a crackup.

It has been three weeks since Super Bowl LII, a wonderful game that had a wonderful outcome. The match-up featured the stalwarts of the corporate ruling class, the very white New England Patriots, versus the upstart, and very black Philadelphia Eagles.


The Eagles ran on the field Super Bowl Sunday to Meek Mill's "Dreams and Nightmares." "Dreams and Nightmares" is the number one track off the album of the same name released in 2012. New England ran on the field to that hoary headbanger classic "Crazy Train." The Patriots have been making their field entrance to Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" for years. "Crazy Train" is a single off Osbourne's debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, recorded and released in 1980.

It would have been as if one of the teams at the first Super Bowl in 1967 ran on the field to a song by Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees, while the other entered to the sounds of "Good Day Sunshine" by the Beatles.

It said everything about the stasis gripping our society. The corporate exemplars clutching their totem from the outset of the age of neoliberalism; the upstarts, a hip hop anthem of the underclass.

What is truly noteworthy about Super Bowl LII is that the suits of the National Football League got it. They understood the dynamic at play. For all the scapegoating of Colin Kaepernick, they are aware that the ratings drop that has plagued the league the last two seasons is a problem of their own making.

So what did they do? They actively came down on the side of the Eagles. There were two booth reviews of touchdowns during the game that would have gone against the Eagles during the regular season but instead they were upheld. In other words, if Super Bowl LII would have been officiated like any regular season game, the Patriots would have won.

Prior to the game wherever I went whomever I spoke with wanted Philadelphia to win. I must have talked to 20 people. The league no doubt was receiving the same message.

Nonetheless ratings for the game were still down. But at least the league made a correction. There is no evidence that the political system is capable of such a move.

As I was telling a coworker last week, the Parkland massacre is a basic test whether we have a functioning democracy. We have a single issue that everyone understands, and a simple legislative fix that was recently on the books that everyone understands. If we cannot ban assault weapons, then we have concrete proof that we don't live in an open society.

There is an argument that congress will ban bump stocks and strengthen background checks, both of which were promised after the Las Vegas massacre, as a sop to the high school kids; that way leadership in the House and Senate can pretend to be responsive to the popular will.

On the other hand, why change anything when you control everything? That's the sentiment on high.

Under neoliberalism it appears that we have more power as consumers than citizens. Political reform appears impossible in the current dispensation. We know from Thucydides where this leads. And it is not pretty nor is it pleasant. A collapse is coming.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Let's Keep Our Eyes Peeled for Another Bogus Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria

The New York Times editorial board is calling for the leadership of Syria, Russia and Iran to be tried for war crimes (see "Who Has Innocent Syrians’ Blood on Their Hands?") as it laments the lack of a broader U.S.-led UN-backed regime-change operation to collapse the Syrian government.

Jordan Shilton of Word Socialist Web Site answers that the U.S. has plenty of innocent Syrian blood on its hands (see "Syrian government offensive prompts calls for intensified US military intervention"):
When the battle shifted to Raqqa last summer, US war planes were slaughtering more than 100 innocent civilians every week as they dropped high-powered explosives on residential areas. In the end, to pursue its broader strategic goals of preventing Iran from consolidating control of eastern Syria and opening up a land corridor from Tehran to Damascus, Washington allowed thousands of ISIS fighters to escape Raqqa so they could take on pro-Assad forces.
Throughout both of these shameful episodes, which international rights groups criticized as war crimes, the Times and other establishment media mouthpieces not only buried reports of civilian casualties, not to mention images or videos from the war zone, but positively praised the US military for its supposed restraint in carrying out air strikes.
Elijah J Magnier sees the ongoing developments in Afrin as the beginning of the end for Rojava:
Only one month after the beginning of the “Olive Branch” operation, the Afrin administration began to understand the reality of the power struggle- but yet not completely. Russia is teaching the Kurds a lesson so that these understand the price of plying for favors from the US. The US feels impotent towards the Kurds and exposed, forced to reveal its plans for staying in Syria and for occupying a piece of its territory regardless of the defeat of ISIS. The Kurds can’t yet fully grasp the extent to which they are wood for the Syrian fire, caught between two superpowers.
In Syria, there are only two alternatives: either Moscow or Washington forces will remain in Syria (if the game remains rough), or they will cohabit as they did in Berlin after the Second World War.
The Afrin administration doesn’t understand that for every day that goes by there will be new Syrian demands. If the Kurds continue to resist these demands, Damascus will ask for further concessions and further withdrawal of the Kurds to the east of the Euphrates, to join the US forces (and remain as a burden on them). This is also allowing Turkey to be more determined in allowing the Syrian army to regain control of Afrin.
Although the central government in Damascus agreed to send several hundreds of local militants from Nubbl and Zahraa and other national forces as a preliminary support, it is likely that the negotiations over Afrin will continue until mid-March in Kazakhstan between Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria (indirectly), discussing not only Afrin but also Idlib- unless the Kurds acknowledge without delay all of Damascus’s conditions. Otherwise, with every day that goes by Turkey increases its influence and occupies more territory in the enclave.
Russia is not expected to be satisfied with one hit against the US in Afrin but is accelerating the end of control by al-Qaeda and other militants (Faylaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam) over al Ghouta, east of Damascus. The Russians would like to see the US alone (Russia considers Turkey is the lesser evil in Syria and can deal with it later) in Syria to point out its illegal presence and therefore illegal occupation of north east Syria, particularly when the remaining of ISIS concentration is situated within the area on the Syrian-Iraqi borders which is under the US control. The US forces are now looking like a force protecting the terrorist group and allowing it to continue its existence and operations in Syria and in Iraq.
Erdogan is promising to attack Afrin city within days. If this happens, and Afrin falls to the Turks/Free Syrian Army, Rojava will not be able to deny that for all intents and purposes it is but a fig leaf for the outlaw U.S. occupation of northeast Syria.

On the other hand, if the pro-Syrian Shiite militias entering Afrin are successful in blocking "Operation Olive Branch," then, as Magnier says, the Kurds will have to accommodate further Syrian demands.

So it doesn't look good for the Kurds. And if we accept Magnier's reasoning, what is bad for the Kurds is bad for the United States.

Anytime the U.S. is looking at the "jaws of defeat" it is always wise to consider the "make the problem bigger" scenario, a favorite page in the U.S. playbook. Here, as in the past, not to mention the signal offered by the NYT editorial, it would likely be in the form of an airstrike retaliating for alleged SAA chemical weapons use. Moon of Album warned of this last week.

There would be no support in the American electorate for such an attack. But people are distracted with the Mueller indictment -- we are being told basically that all social media is compromised by Russian bots -- and the popular uprising to ban the sale of assault weapons. So if McMaster wanted, and he was able to convince Trump to front it, he could get away with it now.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Sixty Percent Want a Third Party in the United States

FiveThirtyEight, a bastion of faux-hipster centrism led by Nate Silver, this morning publishes a round-table chat on third parties, "Does America Want A Third Party? (Or Is It Just David Brooks?)"

It is superficial and not worth the time. The writers and editors mostly take aim at New York Times columnist David Brooks, and they are largely on the mark:
micah: The column: “The End of the Two-Party System.” Can someone give us a fair summary of Brooks’ argument?
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): The summary is that we need the Reasonable Center Party, which happens to have exactly the same policy positions that Brooks has and would be enormously successful if only anyone bothered to create it.
The FiveThirtyEight crew has a hard time grappling with this -- "About six in 10 Americans think third major U.S. party is needed." They spend the most of their time talking in circles. They do briefly mention the structural barriers to third parties in the United States; they mention electoral reforms liked ranked choice voting before dismissing the possibilities for such change; they mention the flexible nature of the two-party system and its ability to accommodate populist surges; and they briefly mention the success of Emmanuel Macron in France.

Overall I think they dismiss Brooks' third party too lazily. I think a billionaire like Bloomberg fronting someone telegenic like Macron could run a successful third-party presidential campaign in the United States.

It won't happen as long as the Democratic National Committee stays in neoliberal hands, and, according to Kim Moody's On New Terrain, there is zero chance of it not remaining in neoliberal hands (which means no Bernie in 2020).

My guess is that it will be Cuomo in 2020, someone whom I think Bloomberg and Brooks are fine with. The question is, What about Indivisible?

We'll find out this year if  #resistance can stay together after repeated betrayals by congressional Democrats. My guess is probably, but only as another well-funded, top-down hollow organization.

Give Trump credit, his white supremacist GOP has the most active support of any mass political organization in the U.S.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

It is All Russian Trolls, All the Time

The Parkland massacre had already been bumped to below the fold by the Mueller indictment, but this morning we learn that national outrage at yet another school shooting is actually a subset of an all-encompassing Russian disinformation campaign.

The pattern by now is obvious. Whenever it looks as if the confused, apathetic American electorate is about to rouse itself and take action the media reminds us that it is actually a malicious Russian plot implemented by bots on social media. 

The reality is that the purported Russian disinformation campaign is actually a U.S. disinformation campaign. Support for the political-economic status quo has disappeared -- Trump's election is all the proof you need on that score -- and therefore a scheme is required to secure the allegiance of the electorate. How about this? "You are under attack, and Russia is attacking you." It worked before. Why not try it again?

No evidence has yet been produced to document the extent of this Russian troll army. Neil MacFarquhar's story yesterday "Inside the Russian Troll Factory: Zombies and a Breakneck Pace" was built around interviews with two former employees of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg. The problem is that they didn't work as trolls targeting the U.S. They worked as trolls generating content for the Russian market.

This has been the fundamental weakness of almost all the reporting of Mueller indictment. No effort has been made to actually quantify the size and budget of the Russian troll army as it relates to the United States. The numbers we see bandied about in terms of the Internet Research Agency are for its overall activities, and based on what Moon of Alabama has written, "Mueller Indictment - The "Russian Influence" Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme," it is a standard clickbait factory.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Where Monsters Dwell #12

As the media peddles furiously to convince us that Russia has plans to make us a nation of Manchurian Candidates, it is helpful to consider a simpler time, the first Cold War.

By happenstance -- to see how old newsprint paper that the interior pages of comic books were printed on scanned, I reached into my closet and arbitrarily grabbed a handful of comics -- I started working my way through old issues of Where Monsters Dwell.

Where Monsters Dwell was a Marvel title from the dawn of the Bronze Age of Comic Books (1970 to the mid-1980s) that reprinted Silver Age (1955 to 1970) science fiction and horror. While not having a quote from Stan Lee or Roy Thomas at hand to explain why Marvel did this, my guess is that the company was expanding and it had a lot of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko material from the period directly preceding its blastoff as a superhero factory of the 1960s. So why not introduce it to a new generation of readers (like me) who missed it the first go-round a decade earlier?


What my intermittent study of Where Monsters Dwell has revealed is that Marvel's Silver Age monster stories were about the Cold War. The space aliens and evil robots from another world like Orogo! were stand-ins for the specter of nuclear annihilation by the Soviet Union. The usual story has the alien appear, promise global domination, crush some buildings before it is defeated by the pluck and ingenuity of a boy; in Orogo's case, a blind old man.

"Orogo! The Nightmare from Outer Space!," reprinted in Where Monsters Dwell #12 (November 1971), was originally published in Journey into Mystery #57 with a cover date of March 1960, a little more than a year before the Bay of Pigs invasion. Stan Lee penned the story and Don Heck supplied the art. If you want to get the flavor of the guileless rootedness and materially secure America of the 1960s, look at Don Heck's work.

 



If you're unconvinced that these stories of aliens and robots are metaphors for the Cold War, "The Pretender!" should change your mind. Originally appearing in Tales to Astonish #31 (May 1962), "The Pretender!," a filler story penciled by Paul Reinman, posits that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is in fact an alien space invader. (The story, whose author is not credited, was probably written after the alleged "shoe-banging incident" at the United Nations in the fall of 1960.)






Marvel became the top comic-book publisher in the 1960s by taking these Silver Age monsters and through a neat Kirby-Lee alchemy making them heroes. What are the Fantastic Four if not a exemplary bourgeois family of space monsters returned to Earth? What is Spider-Man if not a teenage laboratory abomination? We're not talking about Barry Allen here. We're talking about characters who seemed much more real than Batman and Superman. How Lee, Kirby and Ditko did this, I'm saying, is by taking all that ambient fear of the Cold War and putting it inside their heroes. 

The monsters became the heroes, but the monsters were merely stand-ins for the Cold War Soviet enemy. In other words, the whole Marvel superhero revolution of the 1960s was based on the conversion of the fear of an existential foe into a new more human heroism.

It's no wonder now that Marvel is experiencing trouble it has tried to go back to the Monsters Unleashed formula. The political parties in the United States are attempting the same sort of reboot with Cold War 2.0. 

But that era of Silver Age social conformity can't be Jiffy-Popped from on high. That cohesion is an organic thing. And the Marvel heroes of the 1960s played a big part in its undoing.

Now in the "Modern Age" Hollywood is dependent on Postmodern comic-book heroes. The lines are crossed. The cookies have crumbled. The New Cold War won't boot. It might work for partisan New Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans, but a cultural revolution it is not.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Mueller's Russia Indictment is Bullshit

All you need to know whether there is any there there to the Mueller indictment is to read Trump's response, as reported by Mark Landler and Michael Shear in "Indictment Makes Trump’s Hoax Claim Harder to Sell," one of four stories as well as the lede editorial published by The New York Times in today's national edition:
Far from being rattled, Mr. Trump was elated, according to his advisers, because he viewed it as evidence that Mr. Mueller now knows who the malefactors are — and they do not include him or members of his team. (The indictment refers to campaign officials who met or communicated with Russians, but says they were “unwitting.”)
The Mueller indictment boils down to this: An internet troll farm in St. Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency, ran a three-year social media campaign to "sow discord" in the American electorate and undermine confidence in Hillary Clinton. According to Matt Apuzzo and Sharon LaFraniere in "13 Russians Indicted as Mueller Reveals Effort to Aid Trump Campaign":
The Russian nationals were accused of working with the Internet Research Agency, which had a budget of millions of dollars and was designed to reach millions of Americans. The defendants were charged with carrying out a massive fraud against the American government and conspiring to obstruct enforcement of federal laws.
Their tasks included undermining Mrs. Clinton by supporting her Democratic primary campaign rival, Bernie Sanders, prosecutors said. Those instructions were detailed in internal documents: “Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).” Mr. Mueller identified 13 digital advertisements paid for by the Russian operation. All of them attacked Mrs. Clinton or promoted Mr. Trump.
With the above -- Trump elation combined with the indictment's quantification of 13 digital ads funded by an ambiguous "budget of millions" -- we have all we need to know that this indictment is  bullshit.

The "budget of millions" is the strong tell.  The indictment  states that the Internet Research Agency's entire annual budget "totaled the equivalent of millions of U.S. dollars."

But we're not talking about the entire Internet Research Agency, which has many departments with different tasks; we're only talking about one ad hoc department allegedly created in the spring of 2014 to engage in "information warfare" in the United States, the "translator project." The indictment states that by July 2016 more than 80 employees were assigned to "translator project."

But being assigned to something doesn't mean that you're actually doing any work. Where's the quantification?

To provide that quantification, the indictment does a little fudging. It stops talking about "translator project" and starts talking about "Project Lakhta":
Project Lakhta had multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in various countries, including the United States.
By in or around September 2016, the ORGANIZATION's [Internet Research Agency] monthly budget for Project Lakhta submitted to CONCORD [company owned by Kremlin-friendly mogul Yevgeny V. Prigozhin] exceed 73 million Russian rubles (over 1,250,000 U.S dollars), including approximately one million rubles in bonus payments.
So we have 80 workers assigned to something called the "translator project," which is waging info war within the U.S. by means of social media. Then we have something call "Project Lakhta," which is an all-points-of-compass info-war campaign, targeting audiences both domestic and foreign. The indictment states that Project Lakhta's monthly budget is $1.25 million.

Look what this becomes in the NYT editorial:
By the spring of 2016, the operation had zeroed in on supporting Mr. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton. The Internet Research Agency alone had a staff of 80 and a monthly budget of $1.25 million. On the advice of a real, unnamed grass-roots activist from Texas, it had focused its efforts on swing states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida.
Staffers bought ads with messages like “Hillary is a Satan,” “Ohio Wants Hillary 4 Prison” and “Vote Republican, Vote Trump, and support the Second Amendment!”
The "newspaper of record" can't even keep this straight. The passage regarding the "unnamed grass-roots activist in Texas" is particularly embarrassing. According to Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, "Inside a 3-Year Russian Campaign to Influence U.S. Voters":
The Russian operatives contacted, among others, a real Texas activist who, evidently assuming they were Americans, advised them to focus on “purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.” After that, F.B.I. agents found that the phrase “purple states” became a mantra for the Russian operation.
So we're supposed to believe that secret Russian agents traveled all the way to the Lone Star State in order to discover the philosopher's stone of U.S. electioneering -- purple states?

Are we really that stupid?

The obvious thing about the indictment is included the Shane and Mazzetti story: There is no mention of the hack of the DNC, nor of Podesta's Gmail account:
Mr. Mueller’s indictment does not present evidence that the campaign overseen by Mr. Prigozhin was ordered by Mr. Putin. American officials have traced other elements of the Russian meddling, notably the hacking and leaking of leading Democrats’ emails, to Russian intelligence agencies carrying out Mr. Putin’s orders.
While the indictment certainly undermines Mr. Trump’s blanket assertions that the Russian interference is a political “hoax,” it does not accuse anyone from his campaign or any other American of knowingly aiding in the effort.
No connection to the Russian government; no collusive tie to the Trump campaign. Caitlin Johnstone does a good job collecting frantic Democratic tweets in her post "Insane Anti-Trumpists Call For Even More Escalations Against A Nuclear Superpower."

Another obvious thing about the indictment, which is mentioned by Apuzzo and LaFraniere, is that this kind of background info war is stock and trade of the U.S. government:
Such anecdotes are rare examples of how intelligence agencies work covertly to influence political outcomes abroad. The C.I.A. has conducted such operations for decades, but both Mr. Mueller’s indictment and an intelligence assessment last year present a startling example — unprecedented in its scope and audacity — of a foreign government [the indictment doesn't name a foreign government -- sloppy editing] working to help elect an American president.
I imagine all governments employ these kind of private-sector contractors to test messaging and fiddle about in their neighbors' affairs. Russia has promised to expose U.S. meddling in its upcoming presidential election. What is Navalny's presidential boycott campaign if not a U.S. intelligence operation?

The Democrats are headed into the midterms with their dirigible deflating. They will try to keep the New Cold War inflated at all costs. Judging from CBS News "Key Takeaways," it is going to be a lot of effort for not much return. Russiagate has been deflating for months. It has required periodic scare headlines to refocus the citizenry's wandering attention.

Even though Democrats have real, powerful issues with which to mobilize their base -- gun safety and immigration, to name but two -- this is a party that has a visceral aversion to reality. Their cry will be for Trump to slap even more sanctions on Russia, to lock in the New Cold War, to guarantee the New McCarthyism will determine the Democratic nominee, which will assure Trump's reelection. That is how self-destructively stupid the power brokers of the Democratic Party are. Rather than fight to win, they choose to lose so that they can retain power in the organization.

Friday, February 16, 2018

Tillerson Signals Long Anticipated U.S. Betrayal of the Kurds

The news from Tillerson's meeting today in Turkey with foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is not good. The oft-anticipated U.S. sellout of its Kurdish partners in northern Syria appears to be in the works.

Rudaw is reporting that
The United States and Turkey are “locking arms” in Syria, said Tillerson in a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. “We’re not going to act alone any longer… We are going to act together from this point forward.”
They will begin in Manbij, the northern Syrian city under control of US-ally the Manbij Military Council and the Kurdish YPG, a force Ankara alleges is a terror group.
The US promised the YPG will leave the Manbij region, Cavusoglu stated. And once the Kurdish forces are gone, Turkey will be able to take steps forward with its NATO ally, he said.
Tillerson asserted that they “share the same objective in Syria” – to defeat ISIS, stabilize the country in order to allow refugees to return home, and support a political solution for a unified Syria, with no internal demarcations dividing the country.
They will closely coordinate on the final defeat of ISIS “and other terror groups” inside Syria, Tillerson added.
Bloomberg does not mention the "The U.S. promised that the YPG will vacate Manbij" statement by Cavusoglu:
The incursion has created an unprecedented military face-off between the two largest armies in NATO, with U.S. forces fighting alongside the YPG in northeastern Syria while Turkey attacks members of the group to the west. The two sides said the top priority of the working group established Friday will be addressing Manbij, a town in northern Syria held by the YPG with the backing of American forces. Erdogan has threatened to attack the town.
Manbij should stay under the control of the U.S. or its allied forces, Tillerson said.
“We have made clear our expectations from the U.S. in terms of its support for the YPG and the fight against terrorist groups,” Cavusoglu said. “We’d like to think that our vital security concerns are taken seriously.” He said previous promises made to Turkey by the U.S. were broken, but that the two sides had “reached an understanding to normalize our relationship again."
Previously, Tillerson has spoken of allowing the Turks to create a buffer zone in northern Syria in territory that is now Rojava.

Something is definitely happening here. There are contradictory reports that the Syrian government will join the Kurds in battling the invading Turks in Afrin. It seems Turkey's "Operation Olive Branch" is a slow, methodical grind. Turkey is peeling off villages. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that Turkey now controls 7% of the canton.

For an excellent overview of what is going on with the Kurds and Turkey, as well as a fulsome defense of Rojava, read "Defending Afrin" by ROSA BURÇ  and KEREM SCHAMBERGER.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Russophobia, Domestic Dissent and Internet Censorship

The story "Russia Sees Midterm Elections as Chance to Sow Fresh Discord, Intelligence Chiefs Warn.," by Mathew Rosenberg, Charlie Savage and Michael Wines, has been topping the news for close to 24 hours.

There are two takeaways from the story, neither of which bolster the headline. The first is that there is no evidence that Russia is targeting U.S. election infrastructure:
Russia does not, however, appear to be trying to penetrate voting machines or Americans’ ballots, United States officials said.
“While scanning and probing of networks happens across the internet every day, we have not seen specific or credible evidence of Russian attempts to infiltrate state election infrastructure like we saw in 2016,” Jeanette Manfra, the chief cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, said in an interview last week.
Right now, Mr. Pompeo said, Russia is trying to focus on what are known as influence operations — using social media and other platforms to spread favorable messages — not hacking.
“The things we have seen Russia doing to date are mostly focused on information types of warfare,” he said.
Which is takeaway two. What we're talking about here in terms of Russia is people like me, citizens of the United States who read the news and who express dissent when it comes to the destructive course of American global hegemony, whose views are being amplified by Russian clickbots:
“We expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee at its annual hearing on worldwide threats.
[snip]
Russia appears eager to spread information — real and fake — that deepens political divisions. Bot armies promoted partisan causes on social media, including the recent push to release a Republican congressional memo critical of law enforcement officials.
The bots have also sought to portray the F.B.I. and Justice Department as infected by partisan bias, said Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee.
“Other threats to our institutions come from right here at home,” he said. “There have been some, aided and abetted by Russian internet bots and trolls, who have attacked the basic integrity of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. This is a dangerous trend.”
So at root Russiagate, the New Cold War, Cold War 2.0, the trenchant Russophobia of the Democratic Party are about domestic dissent. Support for the governing political establishment is collapsing. (It is more visible in Europe because European nations have a parliamentary system and party formation and coalition creation are much more fluid.)

But make no mistake. The same thing is happening in the United States. The Democratic Party is facing an existential crisis, one which likely will become even more acute after the November midterms. Ever since the Democrats blocked Bernie in the primaries and then Hillary lost the general, they have been confronting this crisis. Their solution was to concoct Russiagate.

Are clickbots real? Absolutely. They are an inseparable part of the functioning Internet. Giants like Google and Facebook couldn't survive without them. Does Russia employ bots to juice "sympathetic spokespeople"? Absolutely. I can bear witness. This is a humble, low-traffic page. But when I do harvest a lot of clicks on a particular day -- what I consider a lot of clicks, a couple hundred -- the country of origin is Russia; and it is presumably machine driven because the traffic is to entries made several years ago, and they are counted off in chronological sequence.

Is this illegal? Of course not. You don't think U.S. bots juice Russian opposition blogs? How about all those hits for Alexei Navalny's YouTube talks?

So what is to be done? How to keep clickbots for commerce but bar them from enhancing "sympathetic spokespeople"?

I guess we should look to China for an answer. In other words, massive censorship. The corporate world appears to be turning in that direction.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

A Silver Lining to a GOP Win of the Midterms: Pelosi Will be Removed from Leadership

If you consider The New York Times the flagship of Democratic centrism, the signals it is sending belie the prospects of the Democratic Party retaking the House in November.

Yesterday Nate Cohn's tendentious "Big Republican Advantages Are Eroding in the Race for House Control" was published. It lists GOP gerrymandering court loses in key states, coupled with Republican retirements and successful Democratic candidate recruitment in swing districts, to meekly conclude:
Even so, Democrats still seem poised to have viable if imperfect candidates in a large number of battleground districts. Upshot estimates indicate that Democrats would need to win the popular vote by 7.4 points — albeit with a healthy margin of error of plus or minus more than four points — to take the House. Today, most estimates put the generic congressional ballot very near that number. So far from the election, the fight for control remains a tossup.
When coupled with Cohn's intro -- "The Democratic advantage on the generic congressional ballot has slipped over the last few weeks." -- the reader is more likely to come away with the opposite conclusion: Republicans are likely to hold the House.

There is an attack piece on Trump's infrastructure scam ("Trump’s Infrastructure Plan Puts Burden on State and Private Money," by Patricia Cohen and Alan Rappeport) and yet another Russiagate 101 ("‘An Extraordinary Moment’: Explaining the Russia Inquiry") to refocus flagging liberal attention.

Then the other day there was another respectful nudge ("Nancy Pelosi Wants to Take Back the House. But She Faces a More Urgent Test.," by Sheryl Gay Stolberg) for Nancy Pelosi to get lost:
David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said that in an era when voters are disaffected with Washington, it is difficult for Democrats to make the case that they are change agents with Ms. Pelosi at the helm.
“There’s no question she’s been a highly skilled legislative tactician for Democrats for decades; she has also been very effective for Democrats raising money and behind the scenes,” Mr. Wasserman said. “But if House Democrats could do one thing to improve their odds of winning the House back, it would probably be to install leaders that no one’s ever heard of.”
One silver lining to Republican victory in November: It will force a change in Democratic leadership going into the presidential election.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Hope on the Korean Peninsula

War appears to be our only future, unless the United States can somehow be knocked off its hegemonic throne without blowing the planet to kingdom come.

A hopeful development in this regard has been the tentative movement toward rapprochement  between the governments of the two Koreas. Choe Sang-Hun writes in "Kim Jong-un Invites South Korean Leader to North for Summit Meeting":
North and South Korea marched under one flag at the Olympics’ opening ceremony. Some South Koreans hope it is a symbol of a peaceful unification. Others fear it is an omen of larger political ambitions of the North.
Mr. Pence, by contrast, avoided speaking with North Korean officials on Friday, and he and his wife did not stand, as most spectators did, when the athletes from both Koreas marched together under a flag representing a unified Korea. Earlier Friday, Mr. Pence met with defectors from the North and invited them to tell their stories of repression under Pyongyang.
Mr. Moon would like to bring both North Korea and the United States to the negotiating table. China has suggested that talks could start if the United States suspended its regular joint military exercises with South Korea, and if North Korea reciprocated by shelving nuclear and missile tests.
But both sides have held their ground. North Korea has said that its nuclear weapons are not for bargaining away. In a speech that Mr. Kim gave on New Year’s Day, in which he first raised the possibility of the North participating in the Olympics, he vowed to “mass-produce” nuclear weapons and missiles.
Mr. Pence reiterated on Friday that the North must “put denuclearization on the table and take concrete steps with the world community to dismantle, permanently and irreversibly, their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
“Then, and only then, will the world community consider negotiating and making changes in the sanctions regime that’s placed on them today,” Mr. Pence said after a meeting with Mr. Moon.
“Kim Jong-un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons,” said Cheon Seong-whun, a former presidential secretary for security strategy and now a visiting research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “With his summit proposal, he seeks to incite friction between Seoul and Washington by widening their policy gap.”
Mr. Moon cannot rush for a summit meeting given Washington’s deep misgivings and because “South Koreans are not as enthused about another summit meeting with North Korea as they used to,” Mr. Cheon added.
A senior analyst at the Sejong Institute in South Korea, Cheong Seong-chang, agreed that Mr. Kim’s latest overtures were aimed at easing its isolation and the impact of sanctions. But South Korea also needed to ease tensions, especially given Mr. Trump’s threat to take a military option, he said.
“It will not be wise for President Moon to reject dialogue with the North and do nothing but stick to sanctions for the sake of the alliance with the United States,” Mr. Cheong said. “South Korea will suffer the most if miscalculation or hostility drives the North and the United States into an armed clash.”
The main political opposition, the conservative Liberty Korea Party, warned that Mr. Moon was duped by the North’s “false peace offensives.” But Mr. Moon’s governing Democratic Party heartily welcomed the prospect of an inter-Korean summit meeting.
A party spokeswoman, Kim Hyo-eun, went so far as to call for the reopening of a joint factory park in the North Korean town of Kaesong. Mr. Moon’s conservative and impeached predecessor, President Park Geun-hye, shut down the park two years ago. Washington says that the reopening of the park would violate sanctions — a concern Mr. Moon shared.
The United States has also opposed suspending its joint military exercises with the South, though it agreed to delay drills scheduled for February until the Olympics are over. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, asked Mr. Moon on Friday to hold the exercises soon after the Games end, but Mr. Moon told Mr. Abe not to meddle in South Korea’s “sovereignty and internal affairs,” South Korean officials said.
On Saturday, members of the small progressive Minjung Party held a rally near an Olympic site, condemning Mr. Pence and Mr. Abe for committing “diplomatic discourtesy” and “ruining South Korea’s party.”
It's not been a good games so far for the United States and Japan. NBC shit-canned an analyst after he praised Japan, saying “Every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural and technical and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation.”

I guess the analyst doesn't read newspapers.

U.S. policy on North Korea is geared toward conflict. The two options boil down to harsh sanctions and first strike, as Ben Norton of FAIR reports in "Vox’s US Government-Linked Experts Present Options for Korea: Sanctions or War."

These two options don't offer much to the Korean people. So expect Moon to keep moving toward peace. The U.S. no doubt would love the conservatives to return to power. But that's not going to happen in the near future, particularly now that Samsung scion Jay H. Lee got a get-out-of-jail prematurely card. It was a corruption scandal involving Park Geun-hye and Samsung that allowed Moon to enter the Blue House on a wave of people power. Elections do matter.

Friday, February 9, 2018

The Scramble for Northern Syria

UPDATE: I guess it is being discussed. This is Rebecca Shabad reporting for CBS News, "Tim Kaine demands release of memo outlining legal basis for U.S. airstrikes in Syria":
Sen. Tim Kaine is calling on the Trump administration to disclose a memo that he says outlines the legal basis for U.S. airstrikes conducted last year in Syria.
"The fact that there is a lengthy memo with a more detailed legal justification that has not been shared with Congress, or the American public, is unacceptable," the Virginia Democrat wrote in a letter Thursday night to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Kaine said he's concerned that the legal justification in that memo "may now become precedent for additional executive unilateral military action, including this week's U.S. airstrikes in Syria against pro-Assad forces or even an extremely risky 'bloody nose' strike against North Korea."
He also argued in the letter that the administration's justification so far for airstrikes conducted in April 2017 has been "insufficient" and that because there was no immediate threat to the U.S. or personnel abroad, he suggests the president should have sought authorization from Congress to carry out those strikes. The U.S. had launched cruise missiles against a Syrian regime target in retaliation for a chemical attack at the time. In a televised statement, President Trump said he authorized the airstrike because "it is in the vital, national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the use of deadly chemical weapons."   
Kaine has asked for legal justification and further information about the U.S. mission in Syria twice since those airstrikes in April of last year.
The senator and 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee has long advocated for a new authorization for the use of military force (AUMF), updating the version approved by Congress in 2001 that the Bush administration, Obama administration and now Trump administration have relied on to conduct military action against terrorist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
On Wednesday, the U.S. launched airstrikes on Syrian government-backed troops after they attacked Syrian opposition forces.
The April 2017 airstrikes reinvigorated the debate on Capitol Hill over a new AUMF last year, but division among lawmakers about whether to provide a more broad or more narrow authorization has impeded the effort to craft a new measure

****

Rather than "It’s Hard to Believe, but Syria’s War Is Getting Even Worse," the NYT headline of a story by longtime Syria war scribes Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, I would say it is very much expected.

Islamic State has been crushed in Syria; its fighters, either spread out in the desert along the border with Iraq, assimilated with various Al Qaeda affiliates still fighting in Idlib and East Ghouta, or part of the Turkish-led Free Syria Army battling the Kurds in Afrin.

Going back to 2014 and the ISIS blitzkrieg, the idea was always to collapse the governments of Iraq and Syria and then have the U.S. intervene to liberate -- and control -- the two nations.

It didn't work out that way because ISIS foreign mercenaries were beaten on the battlefield by the Russian- and Iranian-backed armed forces of Iraq and Syria, as well as a U.S.-led Kurdish force that conquered Raqqa.

Now we have what we have -- a U.S. scramble for northern Syrian. Read Rod Nordland's "On Northern Syria Front Line, U.S. and Turkey Head Into Tense Face-off"and ask yourself, Is there any soft landing for this flight?

Ask yourself another question, Where is the congressional mandate for the U.S. occupation of northern Syria?

There is none. People don't care. It is not even discussed. The U.S. is nominally democratic but in substance a closed society.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

The Wave Won't Come

The GOP-controlled congress appears keen to turn the page on the shutdown politics that have dominated the nation for the last seven years. Democrats are willing to go along -- January's mini-shutdown proved to be a debacle for the party -- and they're hoping that Pelosi's eight-hour Dreamers speech yesterday on the House floor will somehow mollify and inspire #Resistance and make groups like Indivisible forget promises made that there would be no budget deal, no lifting of the debt limit, until the Dreamers were taken care of. Well, that's obviously not going to happen.

Thomas Kaplan provides the basics of the McConnell-Schumer budget deal in "Senate Leaders Reach Budget Deal to Raise Spending Over Two Years":
WASHINGTON — Senate leaders struck a far-reaching bipartisan agreement on Wednesday that would add hundreds of billions of dollars to military and domestic programs over the next two years while raising the federal debt limit, moving to end the cycle of fiscal showdowns that have roiled the Capitol.
The accord between Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Chuck Schumer of New York, his Democratic counterpart, would raise strict caps on military and domestic spending that were imposed in 2011 as part of a deal with President Barack Obama that was once seen as a key triumph for Republicans in Congress.
The deal would raise the spending caps by about $300 billion over two years. The limit on military spending would be increased by $80 billion in the current fiscal year and $85 billion in the next year, which begins Oct. 1. The limit on nondefense spending would increase by $63 billion this year and $68 billion next year.
[snip]
From the increase in domestic spending, Mr. Schumer said the deal includes $20 billion for infrastructure, $6 billion for the opioid crisis and mental health, $5.8 billion for child care and $4 billion for veterans hospitals and clinics. In addition, the deal includes almost $90 billion in disaster relief in response to last year’s hurricanes and wildfires.
The agreement includes an additional four-year extension of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, on top of the six-year extension that Congress approved last month.
The deal also lifts the debt limit until March 2019, pushing any future confrontation over that issue until after the midterm elections. The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that the Treasury would probably run out of cash in the first half of March if the limit were not raised.
[snip]
The Senate was expected to vote on the deal on Thursday, with the House to follow afterward. It was not clear if enough Democrats would oppose the deal to imperil its passage in the House, given the likely opposition from at least some fiscal conservatives. If lawmakers cannot pass a temporary funding measure by the end of Thursday — either tied to the budget pact or by itself — the government would shut down for the second time this year.
Pelosi promises a "No" vote on the budget. But will she be able to bring enough rank'n'file Democrats with her -- after adding many likely Republican "No" votes from the Freedom Caucus -- to block the budget deal?

Highly unlikely. Pelosi's opposition is purely ceremonial. Democrats won't trigger another shutdown because they know that Trump will eat them alive.

So the Democrats are back to where they were before the rise of #Resistance. The Resistance has been foiled by Democratic leadership. Will this spur a break with the Democratic Party? That's the only move to make. A no-brainer, right?  But it's not going to happen.

What will happen is Democratic turnout will likely fall short in November. You need proof of live to go to the polls. And there's nothing alive about the Dems. The wave election will not appear.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Libya and Italian Elections

A long rambling article by Jo Becker and Eric Scmitt, "As Trump Wavers on Libya, an ISIS Haven, Russia Presses On," which ends up going nowhere, seems intent on making the reader frightened of Russian influence in North Africa without every explaining why that is something of which we should be afraid. You have to travel all the way to the last paragraph to get an inkling of what that fear is:
To many Libyans, though, the Trump administration’s strategy looks a lot like the Obama administration’s post-Benghazi “lead from behind” approach: carrying out reactive strikes while leaving the difficult tasks of reconciliation to the latest United Nations envoy. 
Current and former Libyan and American officials say that while there are no ready solutions for resolving Libya’s woes, a more engaged and effective American policy would include more frequent, highly visible diplomatic engagements with Libyan leaders; a new United States special envoy with a mandate to work closely with the rival Libyan factions; a seasoned diplomat to replace Peter W. Bodde, who retired at year’s end as Washington’s ambassador to Libya; closer support for European and United Nations-led efforts to reconcile the warring parties; and a greater number of Special Operations advisers on the ground. 
“We have clearly delegated all of our foreign policy in the Gulf and Libya to a coalition of Emirates, Saudi and Egyptians,” said Jason Pack, executive director of the U.S. Libya Business Association. “That’s essentially letting the Russians win in Libya because they support exactly the same groups.” 
The consequences, Mr. Pack added, are far-reaching. “Libya is important because of where it sits. He who can project power into Libya has the ability to deluge Europe with migrants and bring right-wing populists to power there, interfere in the market price of oil, and more.”
In less than a month Italians go to the polls to elect a new government. Right now a rightist coalition led by Berlusconi's Forza Italia has the best chance of forming a government. According to Jon Henley writing for The Guardian:
The Five Star Movement is set to be the single largest party with between 27 and 29% of the vote, but it has long ruled out forming a coalition with any of the traditional parties. In recent days, however, it has said it could reconsider in the event of an inconclusive result.
Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is on between 16 and 18%. His coalition with the Northern League on 12 to 14%, the Brothers of Italy on five to 6% and possibly Us with Italy on two to 3% could come within spitting distance of 40%.
On the left, Renzi’s centre-left alliance should manage a combined 26-28%. The Democratic party is on between 22 and 23%, and More Europe, Together Italy and Popular Civic List between four and 5%. Free and Equal is polling at around 6%.
A regional election in Sicily in November saw a Berlusconi-backed candidate win nearly 40% and the Democratic party less than 20%. In regional elections in June, the centre-right were also the big winnersand the Five Star Movement fared badly.
Add to this the high proportion of still-undecided voters and it is all but impossible to predict who will be governing Italy later this year.
There is a good chance that whomever takes power in Italy is going to be willing to publicly work with Russia. Immigration is a huge issue for Italians. Libya is the main transit point for refugees. Russia is attempting to stabilize the country, when all the U.S. manages is an occasional drone strike.

When will the European Union withdraw its sanctions on Russia? Maybe after the Italians vote.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Disintegration of the Social Democratic Party in Germany

Coalition talks are still underway in Germany. Judging from a story in The Guardian by Philip Oltermann, "German parties hope to reach coalition deal this week," Social Democratic Party leader Martin Schulz is pushing hard for the type of policies it is hard to imagine Merkel's CDU can accept:
The SPD leader, Martin Schulz, announced on Monday that the two sides had also reached an agreement on the European chapter of the coalition agreement that amounted to “an urgently needed signal for a fresh start for Europe”.
The agreement would commit the next German government to “more investments, an investment budget for the eurozone, and an end to the austerity mantra”, as well as “fair taxation” of internet giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, Schulz said via an information service for SPD party members.
Schulz has to push hard because the SPD is in real trouble. Alternative for Germany (AfD) is only a few points shy of overtaking the SPD as the second-largest party in Germany behind CDU. Katrin Bennhold explores the abandonment of the SPD for AfD by rank'n'file union members in traditional industrial strongholds.

Bennhold's story, "Workers of Germany, Unite: The New Siren Call of the Far Right," is worth reading for the insight it provides into the sway of Trump among the U.S. white working class.

Elites throughout the West are loyally wedded to neoliberalism. A particularly acute articulation of this commitment could be found over the weekend in Anna Sauerbrey's "How Millennials Are Changing German Politics":
Real politics always consists of bullet points. You want to lift up the lower middle classes? You have to pass tax relief, restructure social security contributions, bolster the education budget — which is what the next grand coalition will vow to do, if the negotiations are successful.
The challenge for German politicians, moving forward, will be to come up with a narrative big enough to create a sense of direction, of being based on values more fundamental than raising the gross domestic product a few percentage points, but avoiding the sort of utopian visions that German voters rightly distrust.
If they succeed, they could set free a new era of political energy. If they fail, we could see a dark turn toward the sort of fractured, incoherent politics haunting the rest of the world, full of holes that the far right can move through. There’s a trap, however. In raging against the slow and boring politics of compromise, the members of the new generation are joining the very populist chant they are setting out to defeat.
In other words, more compromise, cuts to social programs, no utopias -- more of the same. That's the mantra of the neoliberals. And by doing more of the same we will magically "set free a new era of political energy." This is derangement, plain and simple.

The safest bet in any book is the bet that the traditional parties of the mainstream left in the West will continue to disintegrate.

Monday, February 5, 2018

These Contradictions are Real. Someone is Going to Have to Lose.

Eventually the United States is not going to be able to manage the contradictions created by its policy of perpetual war. Case in point is Syria. As Carlotta Gall reported over the weekend in "Some Syrian Refugees Are Going Back to War Alongside Turkey," the CIA-spawned Free Syrian Army has joined the Turkish Army's invasion of Syria and is battling the Pentagon-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces, a.k.a., the People's Protection Units of Rojava:
KILIS, Turkey — Turkey is relying on a newly reconfigured, 20,000-member American-trained force with three army corps as it tries to carve out a buffer zone within Syria. The force has already taken 16 casualties in two weeks of fighting on the front lines.
But the soldiers are not Turks. Rather they are the mostly Arab fighters of the Free Syrian Army, once trained and assembled by the C.I.A. and Western allies to oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Since the routing of the Islamic State, alliances in Syria have been scrambled. The latest round of the conflict, in fact, features two American-trained forces fighting each other.
The Free Syrian Army, out of favor with the United States and badly depleted after seven years of fighting on multiple fronts, has long had common cause with Turkey, whose incursion has angered the Americans.
On the other side are Kurdish groups, under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are the United States’ favored fighting tool on the ground but who are disliked by local Syrians for driving them from their homes and seen by Turkey as a security threat.
But it is not going well. "Operation Olive Branch" is in its third week and Afrin is still under Kurdish control. The Turkish Army suffered its worst day of fighting on Saturday, the same day a Russian fighter was shot down by Al Qaeda. According to Rod Nordland in "Turkey’s Worst Day Yet in Syria Offensive: At Least 7 Soldiers Killed":
KOBANI, Syria — Turkey’s military suffered its worst day yet in the two-week offensive in Afrin, Syria, when at least seven soldiers were killed and a tank was destroyed in the fighting, official Turkish news outlets reported on Sunday.
But the losses may be higher, according to other reports.
Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led militia defending the city in northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said its fighters had killed eight Turkish Army soldiers in two episodes northeast of the city on Saturday. Two tanks were destroyed, he said.
An independent monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that two tanks had been destroyed and that 19 Turkish soldiers and allied Syrian militiamen had been killed in total on Saturday.
It was the single biggest one-day loss for the Turkish forces since they pushed into Syria on Jan. 20, vowing to take the enclave from the Syrian Democratic Forces, which Turkey describes as terrorists. The losses bring to at least 14 the number of Turkish soldiers killed in the offensive so far.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in a statement on his Twitter accountthat Turkey would retaliate for the losses. “They will pay for this twice as much,” he wrote.
The deaths occurred on the same day that a Russian warplane was shot down over Idlib, about 50 miles south of Afrin, and the pilot, who had apparently parachuted out, was killed on the ground.
An affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or H.T.S., claimed responsibility, broadcasting footage of the plane’s downing. Elements of that same group are among the Free Syrian Army militias, many of them Islamist extremists, who are allied with the Turks and fighting in Afrin, according to the group and to analysts in the area. 
Russia, which controls Afrin’s airspace, has allowed Turkey to operate its air force there for the offensive.
Al Qaeda coordinates with Turkey in Idlib. Turkey coordinates with Russia to conduct the air campaign of "Operation Olive Branch." Russia controls the air space over Afrin. Turkey minus air power has no hope of defeating the Kurds of Rojava.

The New York Times is prominently featuring a story by Eric Schmitt, "Thousands of ISIS Fighters Flee in Syria, Many to Fight Another Day," the long and short of which is that ISIS has not been defeated after all:
WASHINGTON — Thousands of Islamic State foreign fighters and family members have escaped the American-led military campaign in eastern Syria, according to new classified American and other Western military and intelligence assessments, a flow that threatens to tarnish American declarations that the militant group has been largely defeated.
As many of the fighters flee unfettered to the south and west through Syrian Army lines, some have gone into hiding near Damascus, the Syrian capital, and in the country’s northwest, awaiting orders sent by insurgent leaders on encrypted communications channels. 
Other battle-hardened militants, some with training in chemical weapons, are defecting to Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria. Others are paying smugglers tens of thousands of dollars to spirit them across the border to Turkey, with an eventual goal of returning home to European countries.
So ISIS fighters are joining back up with Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda is working with Turkey and the Free Syrian Army against the Syrian Arab Army, Russia and Syrian Democratic Forces, who are backed by the U.S. military. But the Free Syrian Army is a creation of the CIA, and Turkey is a NATO ally, and SecDef Mattis recently announced that GWOT is on the back burner and great power conflict with China and Russia is what's really cooking.

These contradictions are real and cannot be massaged out of existence. Someone is going to have to lose.