It's Luigi Di Maio of the Five Star Movement, Not the League's Matteo Salvini, Who is the Real Power

Well, the technocratic government of Carlo Cottarelli, the one president Sergio Mattarella blessed after tomahawking the M5S-League combine, is being hastily and quietly dismissed. The negative reaction of the divine market quickly made it apparent to Mattarella that he had blundered enormously. Cottarelli would not survive a confidence vote, and it would be back to the campaign hustings as early as July. Matteo Salvini of the League and Luigi Di Maio of the Five Star Movement (M5S) would pad their parliamentary majority.

So Salvini and Di Maio are back to negotiating with Mattarella. The deal, depending on where you read about it, involves getting rid of Paolo Savona as minister of the economy. The Guardian reports that

The leader of the Italian far-right party the League, Matteo Salvini, has cancelled political rallies to return to Rome, in what was seen as a sign that a political impasse that has left the country without a fully functioning government for months may soon be coming to an end.

Salvini was heading back to the capital to meet his coalition partner, Luigi Di Maio, the head of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, after the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, gave the pair more time to form a government.

Italian press reports indicated that any agreement to form a new populist government involving the League, formerly known as the Northern League, and M5S would include the nomination – again – of Giuseppe Conte, a formerly obscure law professor, to serve as prime minister.

But Di Maio and Salvini are expected to back down on their earlier insistence that Paolo Savona, a Eurosceptic who has called Italy’s adoption of the euro a “historic mistake”, should serve as finance minister.

The odious Jason Horowitz, writing for The New York Times, sees another element to the bargain. Not only is Savona out, but so too is Conte:

But simultaneous negotiations with the Five Star Movement seemed to center on a top official in his party, Giancarlo Giorgetti, taking the position of prime minister. Some analysts speculated that Mr. Salvini coveted the position himself, and that he had the leverage of Mr. Savona, and his own popularity, to force the Five Star leadership to accept.

The Five Star Movement, reluctant to give up its primacy in the alliance, after winning nearly a third of the Italian vote, is resisting, according to reports in the Italian press. And Mr. Mattarella, who is very much an audience of one for all of the political performances, would also have to sign off.

It appears that Di Maio has the upper hand here. While Salvini has been strutting and preening, Di Maio has been trying to salvage the nascent M5S-League government. His reasonableness is conveyed by the Guardian quote,

Di Maio said that if a deal could not be reached, he favoured snap elections. “There are two paths ahead. Either we launch the Conte government with a reasonable solution or we vote right away,” he said.

For all the talk that Salvini is surging, I would not rule out M5S as the party on the rise. Di Maio has displayed his prowess.

Why Italy is Important: The Neoliberal Center No Longer Believes Its Own Prescriptions

Isn't the irony rich that markets are responding so negatively to the diktats of their champions? The M5S-League government was aborted in deference to the wisdom of the markets, and the markets have deemed this an unwise decision. As Yves Smith says this morning in "NIRP’s Revenge: Italian Bonds Plunge, Worst Day in Decades":

Yves here. While Mr. Market got in quite a tizzy today over 5 Star and Lega’s abandonment of their effort to form a coalition government after the President Sergio Mattarella nixed their choice of economy minister, Paolo Savona. This has produced a first-class political crisis. The technocrats, in trying to appease Mr. Market, has done the reverse.

The Times editorial board spins this obvious blunder -- this is the preferred argument du jour for neoliberals -- as a necessary move to allow Italian voters to come to their senses:

However spooked the markets were, they had been equally wary of the coalition and its grandiose spending plans, and given the mutual hostility of the coalition partners, their government might not have survived for long. Mr. Mattarella’s stand, at least, gives Italian voters a second chance to weigh their options after glimpsing what their earlier choices might mean. That’s something some Brexit voters in Britain, or Trump voters in the United States, might have welcomed.

Such an argument doesn't appeal to Italians though, as Steven Erlanger notes in his lengthy write-up, "Italy Pushes Euro to Fore, the Last Place Europe Wants It":

On Tuesday, the European Commissioner for the budget, Günther H. Oettinger, a German, told the broadcaster Deutsche Welle that the markets and a “darkened outlook” would teach the Italians to vote for the right thing. 

They may yet do so, but it’s impolitic to say so, especially for a Brussels-based German.

One of the first to point out the offense was Mr. Di Maio himself, who in his own message on Twitter called the remark “absurd.”

“These people treat Italy like a summer colony where they come to vacation,” Mr. Di Maio wrote. “But in a few months a government of change will be born and Europe will finally respect us.”

Di Maio is right; hence, the market reaction.

This marks an important turning. The neoliberal center no longer believes in its own prescriptions.

"Italian Voters! Achtung! We're Doing You a Favor by Not Honoring the Results of This Election."

UPDATE: Succinct statement on Italy's political crisis lifted from the comments section of this morning's post, "Italy’s Political Crisis….How Ugly Might It Get?," by Yves Smith:

Please take the time, if you will, to ponder on article 1 of the Italian Constitution, and tell me how 25% unemployment, a majority without government, a government without majority, the fifth unelected prime minister in 5 years and street protests against the Head of State square with this:

Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labour. Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution.

****

I read the headline in the airport "Populist Parties in Italy Fail to Form Government," and I was confused. I had been away from newspapers and television news over the weekend. Last I heard the M5S-League government was on its way to a successful launch. Maybe there had been a last second dust-up between Salvini and Di Maio over the choice of Paolo Savona, an academic who has questioned the wisdom of the euro, as minister of the economy.

But that was not the case. Reading the story by the odious Jason Horowitz, it was apparent that the headline was one of the more misleading in a seemingly daily grab bag of misleading headlines. The populist parties did not fail to form a government. President Sergio Mattarella tomahawked the infant government as it was exiting the birth canal.

In this he did the bidding of the banks, the member states of the European Union, as well as the mainstream press. All had been calling for Mattarella to crush the M5S-League upstarts. They got their wish. Even better for the neoliberal center, Mattarella asked a former International Monetary Fund bureaucrat to form a new government.

As Jason Horowitz reports today in story with a much more accurate headline, "Italian President’s Loyalty to the Euro Creates Chaos":

On Monday morning, as markets rose and fell with the whiplashing events in Italy, Mr. Mattarella gave a new mandate to form a government to Carlo Cottarelli, a respected economist, former International Monetary Fund official and Italian government appointee, who told reporters that he would form a caretaker government only with the goal of passing a budget and guiding Italy to new elections.

If Parliament votes in support of his caretaker government, elections would take place in early 2019. If it does not, which seems much more likely, he would quit “immediately” and elections would take place sometime after August.

RT reports that there is zero chance that Cottarelli's technocratic government will be supported in parliament:

Italian journalist Marcello Foa told RT that Cottarelli’s chances of forming a new government are “non-existent,”noting that the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and its rightist coalition ally Lega Nord are unlikely to support Cottarelli’s efforts because they would then “lose all credibility with the voters.” The two parties were the top performers in March’s parliamentary elections and have spent the last two months negotiating the formation of a coalition government.

Yanis Varoufakis appears on the mark with his dissection: "President Mattarella of Italy: From moral drift to tactical blunder":

Beyond his moral drift (as he condones Mr Salvini’s industrial-scale misanthropy while vetoing a legitimate concern about the eurozone’s capacity to let Italy breathe in its midst), President Mattarella has made a major tactical blunder.

In short, he fell right into Mr Salvini’s trap. The formation of another ‘technical’ government, under a former IMF apparatchik, is a fantastic gift to Mr Salvini.

Mr Salvini is secretly salivating at the thought of another election – one that he will fight not as the misanthropic, divisive populist that he is but as the defender of democracy against the Deep Establishment. Already last night he scaled the high moral with the stirring words: “Italy is not a colony, we are not slaves of the Germans, the French, the spread or finance.”

If Mr Mattarella takes solace from the fact that previous Italian Presidents managed to put in place technical governments that did the establishment’s job (so ‘successfully’ that the country’s political centre was destroyed), he is very badly mistaken. This time around he, unlike his predecessors, has no parliamentary majority to pass a budget or indeed to give his government a vote of confidence. Thus, he is forced to go into elections that, courtesy of his moral drift and tactical incompetence, will return an even stronger majority for 5S-Lega, possibly in alliance with the enfeebled Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi.

And then what Mr Mattarella? 

For a sample of how the mainstream is spinning Mattarella's radical move, take a look at "What Comes Next for Italy?" by Beppe Severgnini, editor in chief of Corriere della Sera’s magazine 7:

Right or wrong, the financial markets and the rest of Europe were convinced that the proposed government was a fundamental threat; now that it has been sidetracked, they will do what they can to prevent its return.

[snip]

It sounds naïve to say it, but the real winners here are Italy’s voters. Thanks to their coolheaded president, they have a chance to rethink their answers to a very important question. By voting for the League and Five Star, they set Italy on a collision course with the European Union. British voters made a similarly emotional decision to leave the union, and they don’t get a second chance. Italy should consider itself lucky: A solid Constitution is better than a rushed referendum.

This is how the radical neoliberal center paves the way for fascism -- "Voters! Achtung! We're doing you a favor by not honoring the results of this election."

NYT Editorializes Against New Italian Government

The editorial page of The New York Times takes aim at Italy's nascent M5S-League government in "The Populists Take Rome." Its main purposes is to repeat previous slurs: Conte inflated his resume with universities he never attended; Di Maio is a college dropout; Salvini wears a sweatshirt (oh, my). It's exhausted and foolish. One imagines that these nameless editorial writers feel suffocated having to churn out attack after attack in defense of a status quo to which no one is devoted other than the rich and powerful.

The exhaustion is on display in the tepid concession paragraph:

Yet the new Italian government cannot be dismissed as just another in Italy’s long history of political crises. The shift of a core member of the European Union, one whose allegiance to the “European project” had not been in doubt, toward the new Central European members hostile to Brussels is a serious blow to the deeper European integration championed by President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

The editorial doesn't mention that Merkel is on her way out and Macron is diminishing by the day. The political center as wishfully conceived by The New York Times does not exist.

Do You Remember Yanis Varoufakis and MH17? Two Huge Hurdles for New Italian Government

Yes, Italy's M5S-League Government = Reprise of Greece 2015. The issue is basically the same. Can a sovereign government engage in deficit spending to stimulate its economy without the eurocrats in Brussels and Frankfurt vetoing it by means of engineering a punishing banking crisis? And if the answer is no, then will the new government be brought to heel or, mixing metaphors, will it collapse in the crib?

Italy is much larger than Greece (like a cruiserweight vs. a middleweight). So it has more punching power at its disposal. Also, France has been allowed to run deficits without punishment. But the problem is that the marriage of the Five Star Movement and the League is one that M5S party fathers appear to have embraced out of fear that their electoral mandate is fast fading. A little counter-punching from Brussels and Luigi Di Maio might very well go down.

When in Doubt, Poke the Bear. Now that Giuseppe Conte has survived Jason Horowitz's smear and been asked by president Sergio Mattarella to form a government, and that government is firmly opposed to continuing EU sanctions on Russia, sanctions that were put in place following the media firestorm that accompanied the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 and the death of all 296 passengers, it is no coincidence that the kangaroo "Joint Investigative Team" would hold a press conference to announce that Russia was responsible.

There is absolutely no new evidence provided.

"Prosecutors showed photos and videos of a truck convoy carrying the system as it crossed the border from Russia to Ukraine. It crossed back several days later with one missile missing. The vehicles had serial numbers and other markings that were unique to the 53rd brigade, an anti-aircraft unit based in the western Russian city of Kursk, they said.

It's the same several-years-old Eliot Higgins chicanery repeatedly debunked by the late Robert Parry. But it needs to be dusted off and spotlighted anew because Italy now poses a threat to continuing EU sanctions on Russia.

The Skripal Affair and the Steele Dossier

Yesterday Reuters released a story about a video statement read by Yulia Skripal. Craig Murray speculates, "Yulia Skripal and the Salisbury WUT," that the statement was written by her British handlers and then translated into Russian for her to present, but that the actual captions stuck to the original English; hence the discrepancies between her statement in Russian and that which was quoted in the media (Murray speaks Russian).

What's interesting about Murray's piece -- it's sort of a "Where are we now with the whole Skripal affair?" -- is that it does appear that Sergei Skripal was involved in the production of Christopher Steele's anti-Trump dossier:

The government slapped a D(SMA) notice on the identity of Pablo Miller, Skripal’s former MI6 handler who lives close by in Salisbury and who worked for Christopher Steele’s Orbis Intelligence at the time that Orbis produced the extremely unreliable dossier on Trump/Russia. The fact that Skripal had not retired but was still briefing on Russia, to me raises to a near certainty the likelihood that Skripal worked with Miller on the Trump dossier.

Jason Horowitz Now in Rome Up to His Usual Dirty Tricks

UPDATE: An absolutely damning piece on the M5S-League government in formation (Lib-Pop Politics: Italy’s New Government Is More Neoliberal Than Populist by Mario Pianta) was posted this morning by Yves Smith. Pianta's point is that M5S is rudderless while Salvini's League is on the ascent:

Current polls reflect this trend of a growing Lega and a stable Five Stars consensus; when Five Stars support weakens – as happened in the peripheries of Rome and Turin, run by weak Five Stars mayors – Salvini is set to grab a large part of their disappointed voters. Thus, the political outlook suggests Salvini as a likely winner of a real majority for the centre-right whenever new elections take place, giving him the upper hand in talks for the new government – the alternatives being an early vote in autumn or in May 2019 when they could be held together with the European elections.

That's something to think about: If Mattarella somehow tomahawks the nascent government, which is the drumbeat in the corporate press, and another round of elections is scheduled, Pianta argues that the League would be the clear winner with the center-right coalition likely able to form a government on its own.

The reason Pianta sees this as a problem is that the League is nothing more than Italian Trumpism, espousing tax cuts and bashing immigrants. Pianata concludes with this sobering assessment of the M5S-League program:

The asymmetry between a Lega with clear priorities – in terms of class and nation – and a Five Stars with its only concern to strike a deal, has produced a government programme that includes some general concerns of the Five Stars – on legality and minimum income – and most practical measures designed by the Lega – on taxes and migrants.

Demands for renegotiating European treaties and restoring national sovereignty in some areas are enough to open up a rhetorical confrontation with Brussels – and much attention from the media. But they have little concrete content.

The most important specific policy that will be introduced by the new government is the Italian version of the ‘flat tax’; firms and individuals will pay either 15 or 20% of income taxes, as opposed to the current 43% for the top income bracket.

It is clearly stated that no wealth tax will be introduced (Italy has often been criticized by the EU for having cancelled real estate taxes on home-owners). Tax controls on Italy’s large number of small firms and self-employed will be scaled down, basically legalising tax evasion for a large number of right-wing, medium and high-income voters.

For financial firms and banks no control or limit on their activities will be introduced. This will make Italy a neoliberal business paradise, competing with Ireland in the race to the bottom of business taxes in Europe, offering some room for the survival of Italy’s small businesses dramatically hit by a decade of crisis.

In this way, the transfer of income to the richest 20% of Italians will be huge, with the very rich benefiting the most. Berlusconi would have never been able with his past majorities to introduce such a pro-rich agenda.

Such measures are the easiest to implement, as they simply scale back state redistribution, leaving unequal outcomes of market processes untouched. More difficult is the implementation of the only ‘pro-poor’ measure long championed by the Five Stars: the so-called ‘citizen income’. In the programme this is reduced to an income support of €780 a month for a maximum of two years for unemployed Italians (no residents with foreign citizenship will obtain it) ready to accept any job offer; no figure for potential recipients or funding for implementing it is mentioned.

But the darkest success of the Lega in the government programme is the chapter on migrants, envisaging a stop to the flows of refugees, changes in European rules on asylum and free movement, and proposing the repatriation of the 500,000 immigrants with irregular status now present in Italy.

Combined with harsh measures on law and order, this policy caters to the ‘fear effect’ that is behind the growth of Lega’s support. In parallel the rise of the Five Stars was based on a ‘poverty effect’ – especially in the South (see here). The tragedy is that the poorest Italians have overwhelmingly voted for two political forces that are now creating the most pro-rich, pro-business government in Italy’s history. Even worse, Lib-pop politicscould be just the starter for an outright far-right political future.

****

My suspicion when Jason Horowitz was made bureau chief of Rome by The New York Times, a reward for his work in slandering Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, is that the flagship of neoliberal hegemony was positioning a poison pen to take out the biggest internal threat to the European Union, Italy's Five Star Movement (M5S).

Horowitz faced a tough pull during the run-up to parliamentary elections because the political center has absolutely collapsed in Italy. While he churned away with his typical attacks, it was all just so much piss in the wind because it was clear that the insurgent parties, M5S and Northern League, were going to kick ass. And kick ass they did. In France, the NYT praised a party of neophytes, Macron's En Marche! And anything tech based usually garners accolades aplenty from the Gray Lady. But M5S does not support the Washington Consensus. So it must not be allowed to govern.

Horowitz earned his supper the other day when he published an innocuous two paragraphs in "Italy’s Populists Offer Giuseppe Conte for Prime Minister; N.Y.U. Claim in Question" casting doubt on the M5S-League candidate for prime minister, Giuseppe Conte:

[Giuseppe Conte] lists research at famous universities around the world, including Yale, the Sorbonne in France and New York University, where he said he “perfected and updated his studies” while staying at the college for at least a month every summer between 2008 and 2012.

Asked about Mr. Conte’s experience at N.Y.U., Michelle Tsai, a spokeswoman, said Monday, “A person by this name does not show up in any of our records as either a student or faculty member,” adding that it was possible he attended one or two-day programs for which the school does not keep records.

Clearly Washington's plan is to strangle the M5S-League government in the cradle. Bloomberg has at least a story a day which all but beg the Italian president Sergio Mattarella to take over. It's fascism without the slightest hint of a mass base.

New War Scares Before the End of Summer

It's all coming unraveled for Trump. When it comes apart, it will disintegrate quickly. Eventually all the braggadocio and brinkmanship he learned as a developer and a star of the New York City tabloids are going to have to be backed up with an actual war, whether a trade war or an armed conflict.

Team Trump is on the ropes with China. According to Mark Landler and Ana Swanson in "Chances of China Trade Win Undercut by Trump Team Infighting":

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that the United States would hold off on imposing tariffs on China, putting the trade war “on hold,” but hours later, the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, warned the Chinese that the Trump administration might yet impose tariffs.

On Friday, Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, told reporters that China had offered to reduce its trade surplus with the United States by $200 billion. Two days later, he said that the number was merely a “rough ballpark estimate,” and that the two countries never expected to reach an agreement and merely planned to issue a statement laying out next steps.

It was a muddled end to a chaotic process — one that revealed an American team riven by conflicts over tactics and policy, working for a president eager for a victory but torn by his desire to have a smooth summit meeting next month with North Korea, over which China wields enormous influence. 

Now the future of the negotiations falls to Wilbur Ross, the 80-year-old commerce secretary, who will travel to China in the coming days to try to nail down the commitments that proved so elusive in last week’s negotiations.

Trump is on the ropes with North Korea. There is a good chance that the ballyhooed Trump-Kim summit in Singapore won't happen.

It is obvious that complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is a Trump fantasy. Trump has made a huge blunder though, similar to Obama's chemical weapons red line blunder, by proclaiming that no Northern Korean deal equals decimation of the country.

Yesterday Pompeo promised the same thing for Iran. Bill Van Auken has a masterful write-up in "US Secretary of State Pompeo presents war ultimatum to Iran." What caught my eye was his detailed summary of the steps being considered to counter the resumption of U.S. sanctions:

The French energy giant Total has already announced that it will withdraw from a $5 billion deal to develop the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf unless it is granted a sanctions waiver by US authorities. The Danish shipping giant Maersk Tankers said Thursday it would cease its activities in Iran, while German insurer Allianz and the Siemens corporation, which has sold gas turbines to Iran, have also announced that they are closing down their operations there. Airbus, which has already provided jets to Iran under a multibillion-dollar contract, has indicated it is considering compliance with US sanctions.

Meanwhile, China’s state-owned oil company CNPC announced that it is prepared to take over the contract for the Iranian gas field if Total withdraws. China is Iran’s top trade partner. The Russian government has signaled that it is prepared to incorporate Iran into a free trade zone.

While the unilateral US action has brought relations between Europe and America to their lowest point in the post-World War II era, with calls from European officials for an independent policy and a defense of “economic sovereignty,” the EU and its member states have yet to agree on any concrete policy for defying Washington.

Proposals coming out of Brussels reportedly include the continuation of Iranian oil imports by making direct euro-denominated payments to Iran’s central bank, bypassing the US financial system; paying damages to companies affected by US sanctions; and the retooling of a 1996 “blocking statute” drafted in response to US sanctions against Iran, Libya and Cuba, which makes it illegal for European firms to comply with extra-territorial sanctions. At the time, the Clinton administration provided relief for European corporations doing business in those countries, rendering the statute moot.

There is no indication that the Trump administration intends to provide any such exemptions. This means that, whatever the divisions among the European powers, trade war and political tensions will continue to intensify as the threat of a major new war in the Middle East looms.

Then there is the regime change operation underway in Venezuela.

Before the summer is over the U.S. will be at the center of several new war scares.

Venezuelan Presidential Election Another Battlefield in Growing China-Russia vs. U.S. War

The most blatant, indisputable "official enemy" propaganda has of late been produced by The New York Times with the reporting of William Neuman and Nicholas Casey on the presidential election in Venezuela.

For a sample, read the first paragraph of "Venezuela Election Won by Maduro Amid Widespread Disillusionment":

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Nicolás Maduro won a second term as president of Venezuela, a country in the midst of a historic economic collapse marked by soaring prices, widespread hunger, rampant crime, a failing health system and a large-scale exodus of its citizens.

From there the story goes to read like an opposition brief  in favor of a re-vote, which is what distant runner-up Henri Falcon is demanding:

Reuters lists the vote total:

The election board said Maduro took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 million for his chief challenger Henri Falcon, a former governor who broke with the boycott to stand. 

Turnout at the election was 46 percent, it said, way down from the 80 percent at the last presidential vote in 2013.

No doubt turnout was down significantly because Venezuelans know that a Maduro victory will precipitate more Yankee economic warfare against the country. According to Neuman and Casey,

The United States — which condemned the election as unfair and anti-democratic even before it happened — has threatened stricter sanctions. Also likely to increase pressure on Mr. Maduro’s government even before his next term begins: He has largely been cut off from international financing, and the government-run oil industry, which provides virtually all of the country’s hard currency, is in free fall, with plummeting production.

What Casey and Neuman don't mention, but the Reuters report does, is that the economic warfare is already so extreme that a U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips, has seized significant property of the Venezuelan national oil company, PDVSA:

Furthermore, Venezuela’s multiple creditors are considering accelerating claims on unpaid foreign debt, while oil major ConocoPhillips has been taking aggressive action to seize state oil company PDVSA’s assets over a 2007 nationalization.

I was surprised to read of this last week in a business page feature written by Times energy specialist Clifford Krause, "Sanctions on Iran and Venezuela May Empower U.S. Rivals":

ConocoPhillips has seized cargoes at a refinery it leases in Curaçao and various storage facilities in Aruba, Bonaire and St. Eustatius to enforce a $2 billion arbitration ruling against the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, known as Pdvsa.

The facilities were used to blend Venezuelan heavy crude with lighter oils, and the port in Curaçao was able to dock the largest tankers that typically send crude and other fuels across the Pacific.

“This will clearly limit Venezuela’s ability to export profitably to Asia,” said Francisco J. Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University. “And if the supplies from Venezuela cannot arrive in Asia, China and India are less likely to go along with sanctions against Iran.”

Venezuela may hope for a reversal of the liens, either by international courts or by island governments concerned about protecting local jobs and fuel supplies. But with the country increasingly behind in its debt payments since last year, mining and oil companies are likely to make further attempts to seize Pdvsa assets in the coming months. That would limit Asian imports of Venezuelan oil even more.

More trouble may be coming for Venezuela in the next few days.

Trump administration officials have warned that they may impose additional sanctions on Venezuelan oil after the election on Sunday. Washington could restrict insurance on Venezuelan oil shipments or ban American sales of light oil used to blend with Venezuela’s heavy oil to prepare it for export. A ban on imports of Venezuelan oil altogether is less likely, although possible.

The point of the Krauss piece is that the Trump administration is biting off more than it can chew by sanctioning (with the ultimate intention of regime change) Iran and Venezuela simultaneously. China relies on both countries for its crude oil; hence, China will find a way around the sanctions:

In Venezuela, Beijing in recent years has tried to gain a stable energy source with more than $50 billion in loans in exchange for oil shipments, but lately has shied away from deepening its relationship. More recently, Russia has poured money into the tottering government and helped it create a cryptocurrency as it picks up oil fields on the cheap.

A collapse of the Venezuelan government might jeopardize payment of money owed to China and the future of oil-field acquisitions by Rosneft, the Russian oil company.

As Reuters says,

Though increasingly shunned in the West, Maduro can at least count on the support of major powers China and Russia, who have provided billions of dollars’ funding in recent years. 

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China believed the Venezuelan government and people could handle their own affairs and that everyone should respect the choice of the Venezuelan people.

China and Russia, at least for the time being, will stand fast with Venezuela.

The Gaddafi Option on Iran

For a compellingly plain explanation of why the U.S., its allies in Israel and among the sheikhdoms will continue to come up short against Iran and its allies read Eldar Mamedov's "Obsession With Iran Destabilizes The Middle East":

As the political track to roll back Iranian influence fails to produce desired results, Washington and its regional allies are debating whether to mirror what the Iranians did: build up proxies capable of challenging them militarily. This, however, is a daunting task. Organizations like Hezbollah, for example, are not just military groups acting on Iran’s behalf. It is a genuine Lebanese grassroots organization. Armed struggle is only one dimension of its activities. The rest is focused on social and political work, all of which integrates the holistic concept of “resistance”. By contrast, as the Syrian war has shown, the most militarily capable Sunni militant groups are in the orbit of al-Qaeda, pursuing a global jihad through means of nihilistic terrorism. And those Sunni militants that are outside this orbit, like Hamas, are in many ways allies of Iran and Hezbollah.

So, the notion of openly supporting al-Qaeda/Islamic State-type proxies against Iran/Hezbollah would be politically costly for the US and its allies and inevitably backfire, like it did on September 11. Kurds are not considered plausible proxies, given their own dynamic and complex relationships with Iran. There is, of course, an option of hiring an army of mercenaries paid by mainly Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. But in the long term, mercenaries are always at disadvantage when confronted with highly motivated and capable local foes.

Taken together, these aggressive efforts to counter Iranian influence would only stiffen the resolve of Tehran and its allies/proxies to protect their positions and contribute to the destabilization of countries like Lebanon and Iraq. In such a climate, any talk of Hezbollah giving up its arms and becoming a “normal” social and political Lebanese actor would be an obvious no-go. In Iraq, consensus-minded politicians like Abadi would find it difficult to retain power, while figures like Hadi al-Amiri would be on the ascendant. Any prospect of security sector reform, involving the demobilization of the Hashd Shabi militias or their integration into the official security forces of the state, would be rendered impossible. To the contrary, there will be ample incentive for Iran and its allies in Iraq to transform Hashd into an Iraqi version of Hezbollah.

Thus, Trump administration’s anti-Iranian offensive is likely to make the Middle East even more violent and unstable than it already is. There was no need for that. The JCPOA opened the way for engaging Iran, also on regional issues. None other than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei recognized as much when he said that the JCPOA was a test that, if successful, could lead to opening up conversation between the US and Iran on other issues. That could have provided an opportunity to address and perhaps even remove the more objectionable Iranian policies in the region. The utterly unnecessary crisis manufactured by Trump precludes that possibility. The result is likely to be not so much Iranian rollback as more chaos and destabilization in the Middle East.

There appears be two options to the neocon U.S. pullout of the JCPOA, one oriented primarily around recreating the pre-JCPOA status quo -- economic strangulation through extensive sanctions and periodic terror attacks on critical infrastructure and personnel -- and the other an outright military strike a la Libya.

The first can't succeed because China, Russia and most likely Europe -- we'll have to wait and see what effect Italy's new government has on the neoliberal corporate hive mind in Brussels -- are absolutely not going back to the pre-JCPOA status quo.

The days when China and Russia go along with U.S. global leadership are long gone. Was it Obama's "pivot to Asia"? Was it the Umbrella Revolution? We know for Russia it was definitely Kiev February 2014.

So sanctions aren't going to work over the long haul. China and Russia will continue to trade with Iran, if not Germany and Italy. That leaves option #2, the Gaddafi option. But Iran is not Libya. Persia has been around for a long time, longer than Europe. It is going to take more than F-16s and Tomahawks to bring Iran down. That was the whole point of the JCPOA. There were enough people within the U.S. national security state who understood that the Gaddafi option wouldn't work for Iran. To think otherwise is insanity.

By now we should know that this is Trump's game. He bluffs, runs right up against the insane and the absurd, and then he sashays backwards, rubbing out his tracks as he retreats. But before we can cry foul, he's on to the next absurdity, cartwheeling and tweeting.

Trump has made himself vulnerable to China though. If he accepts China's reported offer of $200 billion in additional imports from the U.S., he'll have to capitulate on his demands that China end "Made in China 2025"; he'll have to give in on national security restrictions to Chinese purchases of U.S. tech.

Without China there is no peace deal on the Korean Peninsula. Trump badly wants a peace deal between North and South Korea. He's hungry for it because he believes it will guarantee him a second term and it will put him in the history books as one of the greatest statesmen of all time.

But Trump's foreign policy team, minus Mattis, is composed of full-spectrum dominance neocons, which is why he'll try to keep everyone on board by promising a Gaddafi option on Iran.

Another Brexit-Size Shock to the EU?

It finally happened. A government is on the verge of being formed in Italy.

Italian parliamentary elections took place on March 4, followed by round after round of inconclusive negotiations. The main sticking point for the top vote-getting party, the Five Star Movement (M5S), was the center-right's insistence that Silvio Berlusconi be prime minister.

Once the League's Matteo Salvini agreed to sideline the octogenarian -- the League is the real power of the center-right coalition, not Berlusconi's Forza Italia -- things got cooking; that, and president Sergio Mattarella threatened to name a technocratic caretaker government.

The League-M5S plan has been published, and it has two components that are sure to stir things up: an end to the EU sanctions on Russia and an increase in debt spending. RT crows, "Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement and Lega Nord parties have called for an immediate lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia." Reuters outlines other features of the plan:

The document, published after 11 weeks of political stalemate in the euro zone’s third-largest economy, calls for billions of euros in tax cuts, additional spending on welfare for the poor, and a roll-back of pension reforms.

The euro sank on the latest developments on Friday and was headed for its fifth straight weekly fall against the dollar, in what would be a first for the currency since 2015.

The possibility of a eurosceptic government in Rome is shaking investor confidence ... at this point, a larger fiscal deficit and greater bond issuance (in Italy) does seem likely,” said David Madden, a strategist at CMC Markets.

The euro gave up gains and fell 0.2 percent to $1.1778 after the Italian parties outlined their economic plans. It settled near a five-month low reached on Wednesday of $1.1763.

The final accord dropped a previous draft proposal, seen by Reuters, to create fiscal headroom by adjusting the formula used to calculate debt burdens in the EU, and contained nothing questioning Italy’s membership of the euro.

But it still called for a review of EU governance and fiscal rules — setting the stage for the bloc’s biggest political challenge since Britain voted to leave two years ago.

So we're right back to back to Syriza 2015 and the question of whether a nation-state can change course through democratic elections or is the status quo so cemented in place that nothing short of armed rebellion can alter the neoliberal Washington Consensus.

The neoliberals are pining for Mattarella to take control, which Politico encapsulates here:

What role does the president play?
If the deal passes muster with members, the parties will present it to President Mattarella. As guarantor of Italy’s constitution and international treaties, he has the power to approve or reject ministers and even specific bills in the government’s program if he deems them to be unaffordable. He can even reject the coalition government altogether and appoint his own — a power that has been used once before, in 1953.

M5S's Luigi di Maio and Salvini are going to meet with Mattarella Monday. M5S members are currently voting online whether to support the new government. The candidate for prime minister has yet to be named.

Signs are good that an M5S-League government will be the real deal. Reuters says that, "Salvini’s pre-election ally, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, accused him of betraying their centre-right electoral alliance and urged him to back out of the deal with Di Maio and 'come back home'."

The U.S. is already making threats about upending Russian sanctions. From Politico:

In June, the European Council will have to roll over the Russian sanctions that the two parties strongly oppose. Last month Kurt Volker, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, warned Rome that “Italy cannot lift the measures without serious consequences.”

An outbreak of European democracy comes just at the right time. The U.S. is trying to maintain the Continent's vassalage as Trump lurches from brinkmanship in East Asia to the Middle East.

The Washington Consensus is now clearly held together by nothing other than war -- economic warfare, armed conflict, genocide and information war. May the consensus collapse as soon as possible.

Why I Think Trump is Kaput

Though there is a month to go before the arrival of summer, and from there close to five months until election day, I feel pretty confident that the GOP is headed for a shellacking. Trump's survival in office is predicated on a compliant Congress; that should change next year. Trump doesn't have the bandwidth to deal with hostile challenges from the legislature.

Trump's approval ratings are holding steady in the low 40s, and the distance between Republicans and Democrats on the generic ballot appears to be narrowing. So why do I think Trump is cooked?

• Trump has destroyed the foundation of U.S. global hegemony -- hence, "American exceptionalism" -- by pulling out of the Iranian nuclear deal and alienating Europe. There is some evidence that Europe is working to ends its vassalage.

• Trump has shown himself to be a run-of-the-mill neocon warmonger. A big reason he won the GOP primary was that he positioned himself as a critic of U.S. forever wars.

• Trump is going to lose on trade. He'll either capitulate to the Chinese at the bargaining table or he'll launch a gigantic trade war.

When Trump feels vulnerable, he "punches a Latino." From Julie Hirschfeld Davis' "Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant":

“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — we’re stopping a lot of them,” Mr. Trump said in the Cabinet Room during an hourlong meeting that reporters were allowed to document. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”

[snip]

The president’s language and his focus on California drew a sharp rebuke from Jerry Brown, the state’s Democratic governor.

“Trump is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of California,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. “Flying in a dozen Republican politicians to flatter him and praise his reckless policies changes nothing. We, the citizens of the fifth-largest economy in the world, are not impressed.”

During the session, Mr. Trump suggested that the mayor of Oakland, Calif., should be charged with obstruction of justice for warning her constituents in February of an impending large-scale immigration raid and arrests.

“You talk about obstruction of justice,” said the president, who is himself the subject of a special counsel’s investigation into whether he sought to thwart a federal examination of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections. “I would recommend that you look into obstruction of justice for the mayor of Oakland.”

Turning to Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, who sat at the other end of the large wooden conference table, Mr. Trump said: “Perhaps the Department of Justice can look into that.”

Picking a fight with California is foolish heading into that state's June 5 primary. California and a remapped Pennsylvania are probably why Paul Ryan took a powder.

Trump is finished. The next couple of months we shall see the unwinding.

"Behind Terrorism are Men in Uniform!"

There was a great shorthand quote about terrorism from a story the other day about the Pashtun political awakening underway in Karachi (see Meher Ahmad, "Seeking Justice in Pakistan, Pashtuns Stage Defiant Rally in Karachi"):

“Behind terrorism are men in uniform!”

This says it all about the spread of Wahhabism, whether it is Al Qaeda, Islamic State or any of the various constantly re-branded Salafist fighting formations in Syria. It's a front for Saudi skullduggery. And let's not forget. There is no Saudi Arabia without the United States and the United Kingdom.

Don't Expect Any Liberal Resistance When the War Against Iran Starts: My Impression of a Saturday Rally and March for Affordable Housing

There is resolution to Seattle's effort to build affordable and fund homeless services by taxing large corporate employers. Yesterday a reduced proposal was passed 9-0 by the city council. As The Stranger reports, "Seattle City Council Passes $45 Million Head Tax Compromise":

The tax, which passed unanimously, is nearly half the size that four city council members originally proposed in April. Under the plan, Seattle would collect $275 per employee from businesses grossing more than $20 million in annual revenue, or about three percent of the businesses in the city.

The tax is projected to bring the city about $45 million of new annual revenue in its first year, according to a spending plan prepared by council staff. Under the legislation, council members would have the option of renewing the tax after five years.

Now the bill heads to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s desk. In a statement, she says she plans to sign the legislation. "This legislation will help us address our homelessness crisis without jeopardizing critical jobs," Durkan said.

The tax proposal represents a compromise between city council members who aimed much higher—$500 per employee to raise $75 million—and their colleagues who believed the initially proposed rate would be too costly for businesses. Mayor Durkan fell in the latter camp. Late last week, she put her support behind a $250 per employee tax.

The Seattle Times reports, "Seattle City Council votes 9-0 for scaled-down head tax on large employers," that Amazon, though unhappy with the reduced tax, will resume construction planning on the large downtown location, Block 18, that was paused:

The city declared a homelessness state of emergency in late 2015. A point-in-time count last year tallied more than 11,600 homeless people in King County and one in 16 Seattle Public Schools students is homeless.

“We have community members who are dying,” Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda said before the 9-0 vote. “They are dying on our streets today because there is not enough shelter” and affordable housing.

In a statement after the vote and weeks of fierce debate, demonstrations and denunciations, she said the tax “will have a meaningful impact on addressing our homelessness crisis by building housing and providing health services.”

Having paused construction planning on an office tower over the larger proposal, Amazon now will move ahead with it, a spokesman said after the vote. But the company’s plans to occupy a skyscraper under construction are still up the air, he said.

“We are disappointed by today’s City Council decision to introduce a tax on jobs,” spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement.

“While we have resumed construction planning for Block 18, we remain very apprehensive about the future created by the council’s hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here.”

I attended a rally and march Saturday for the full $500 per employee head tax. Despite the homeless crisis in the city, despite the national attention and Amazon's high-stakes extortion, despite the golden opportunity to build some affordable housing, which the Chamber of Commerce's own study says is desperately needed, the people who showed up were mostly socialists -- Freedom Socialists, Socialist Alternative, Democratic Socialists of America, Workers World Party, and probably some other socialist splinters that I'm leaving out.

Nowhere did I see any Democrats, whether politicians or precinct-level people. Nor did I see any organized labor presence other than rank'n'file AFSCME members who were socialists.

It was a good group. Probably 100 strong. We made a lot of noise as we marched through downtown to Amazon's new headquarters. It's just that there were no liberals among us.

So here you have a slam dunk: Tax Amazon, a global behemoth, to build some units of affordable housing and put some more resources into dealing with the homeless state of emergency. But the liberals are missing.

My immediate takeaway is that liberals have lost all connection to decency. The Democratic Party, including its rank'n'file, is neoliberal. False consciousness is its only consciousness. Don't expect any protest when the war with Iran starts.

Election Upset in Iraq

It's probably more a statement of the poor quality of Western reporting on Iraq -- this morning the only story I could locate about Saturday's parliamentary elections was from from Reuters, "Cleric Sadr, in surprise comeback, seems set to win Iraq election" -- than an actual upset by Muqtada al-Sadr's Alliance of Revolutionaries for Reform coalition:

In the first election since Islamic State was defeated in the country, Shi’ite militia chief Hadi al-Amiri’s bloc, which is backed by Iran, was in second place, while Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, once seen as the front-runner, trailed in third position.

The preliminary results were based on a count of more than 95 percent of the votes cast in 10 of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

Unlike Abadi, a rare ally of both the United States and Iran, Sadr is an opponent of both of the countries which have wielded influence in Iraq since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and ushered the Shi’ite majority to power.

[snip]

Turnout was 44.52 percent with 92 percent of votes counted, the Independent High Electoral Commission said - that was significantly lower than in previous elections. Full results are due to be officially announced later on Monday.

Sadr and Amiri both came in first in four of the 10 provinces where votes were counted, but the cleric’s bloc won significantly more votes in the capital, Baghdad, which has the highest number of seats.

A document provided to Reuters by a candidate in Baghdad that was also circulating among journalists and analysts showed results from all 18 provinces.

Reuters could not independently verify the document’s authenticity but the results in it showed Sadr had won the nationwide popular vote with more than 1.3 million votes and gained 54 of parliament’s 329 seats.

He was followed by Amiri with more than 1.2 million votes, translating into 47 seats, and Abadi with more than 1 million votes and 42 seats, according to calculations made by Reuters based on the document. Ex-Prime Miniser Nuri al-Maliki, a close ally of Iran like Amiri, came in fourth with 25 seats.

Winning the largest number of seats does not automatically guarantee that Sadr will be able to hand-pick a prime minister. The other winning blocs would have to agree on the nomination.

In a 2010 election, Vice President Ayad Allawi’s group won the largest number of seats, albeit with a narrow margin, but he was blocked from becoming prime minister for which he blamed Tehran.

And a similar fate could befall Sadr. Iran has publicly stated it would not allow his bloc to govern and may try to form a governing coalition between its allies, Amiri and Maliki.

“We will not allow liberals and communists to govern in Iraq,” Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser to the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in February.

His statement, which sparked criticism by Iraqi figures, was referring to the electoral alliance between Sadr, the Iraqi Communist Party and other secular groups who joined protests organized by Sadr in 2016 to press the government to see through a move to stem endemic corruption.

Iraqi Communist Party Secretary General Raed Fahmy told Reuters the vote in favor of the Sadrist list, backed by his group, ‘’is is a clear message that we must have balanced relations with all (foreign countries) based non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.’’

‘’Everybody is welcome to provide support to Iraq, but not at the expense of its sovereignty and independence,’’ he added.

During the campaign, frustrated Iraqis of all shades complained about their political elite’s systematic patronage, bad governance and corruption, saying they didn’t receive any benefits of their country’s oil wealth.

‘’The importance of this vote is that it is a clear message that the people wants to change the system of governance which has produced corruption and weakened state institutions,’’ said Fahmy. ‘’It is a message to provide services to the people, health and education, and to reduce social disparities.’’

These parliamentary elections must be seen as a solid defeat of the U.S.-Saudi-Israeli goal of Balkanizing Iraq. Clearly the Islamic State was a GCC-supported project to create a Sunnistan out of Iraq and Syria. It partially succeeded in Syria with U.S. troops and air power controlling one-third of the country and a hefty chunk of turf along the Iraq border.

But the citizens of Iraq are more committed to their sovereignty and national independence than at any time since the U.S. invasion. The defeat of the Salafist mercenaries played a key role in this renewal of national purpose. The same thing can be said of neighboring Syria.

The U.S.-Israeli-Saudi idea to scrap the Sykes-Picot Middle East is proving difficult to implement. It's actually reinvigorating allegiance to these old nationalist constructs.

The problem for the United States and its clients is that it has force but it can't actually hold territory, absent U.S. troops. The Salafis have proven incapable. The Israelis are too busy slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza.

The United States remains the only option for GCC states and Israel. And right now there is not enough of an anti-war movement in the U.S. to block another war from kicking off.

Why War with Iran is a Safe Bet: Sheldon Adelson Owns the GOP

From Walt Hickey's "Significant Digits" today:

$30 million
Following a personally delivered plea from Speaker Paul Ryan, Sheldon Adelson, who owns casinos, gave $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP-aligned super PAC. [POLITICO]

From Caitlin Johnstone's "We Are Being Lied To About Yet Another Middle Eastern Country By Yet Another US President," which appeared Tuesday:

Do you know who the single biggest donor was to any candidate in the 2016 presidential race?

Hillary Clinton’s massive $1.2 billion losing campaign budget might make you think that it was one of the many, many powerful influencers who were looking to get on her good side prior to her anticipated coronation, but it wasn’t. The largest donor to any campaign was oligarch Sheldon Adelson, who gave $25 million to the Trump campaign, and who in 2013 said that the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

After his election win, Adelson gave another $5 million to Trump’s inauguration, the largest single presidential inaugural donation ever made. Newt Gingrich, another of the billionaire’s hired politicians, has said that Adelson’s “central value” is Israel.

Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Adelson lackey, made an absurd and dishonest presentation arguing in favor of the termination of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal. Today, Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal and announced aggressive new sanctions against Iran, like a good little boy. Lobelog‘s Eli Clifton has published an article on how two other pro-Israel, anti-Iran oligarchs, Bernard Marcus and Paul Singer, helped pave the way for this decision along with Adelson.

Ape-Shit in the Emerald City

Over the last week or two I've noticed that the usual homeless encampments I come across on my morning walk to work have been swept up. I got to see a sweep take place today. A guy was sleeping peacefully wrapped in one of those blankets made out of recycled material when two strapping young white officers of the Seattle Police Department pulled up in their trendy hatchback cruiser and rousted him.

Rather than address the problem -- which Charles Mudede correctly identifies in a post yesterday "Why Seattle's Proposed Head Tax Is Making So Many People Go Ape-Shit" -- of skyrocketing housing costs brought on by Amazon's commercial construction orgy, the idea is just to scatter it to the winds so it's not as visible, not such an eyesore.

This change, I surmise, is pegged to the high-stakes city politics underway. There is a committee vote tomorrow morning on a "head tax" to fund low-income housing and homeless services in Seattle. From this morning' s Slog:

Under the current proposal, the city would impose a tax of about $500 per employee on for-profit businesses grossing more than $20 million annually. In 2021, the city would switch to a .7 percent tax on payroll for the same businesses. City staff estimate both taxes will generate about $75 million of revenue for housing and homelessness services.

The mayor has come out in opposition. She will likely veto the legislation, and the council majority does not have the votes to override her veto.

Mayor Durkan was elected for this very reason. The wealthy have been troubled by the progressive drift of the city since Occupy Wall Street and the ascension of Kshama Sawant and the $15 minimum wage. The message is clear. The market rules even in a progressive metropolitan gem like the Emerald City.

With the head tax stymied, the present boom will maintain its course. More homeless sweeps, more sterile gentrification of an already gentrified city. Eventually -- I thought of this last week -- a prison ship will be anchored in Elliott Bay to keep the homeless and their refuse off the streets.

Mudede sums it all up:

All of this hysteria, however, obscures one obvious fact about Seattle's boom: It's not benefiting the poor. They can't afford to live in the city because rising rents, which are tied to rising house prices, are claiming more and more of their hard-earned, but still low, wages. Indeed, a recent article by Puget Sound Business Journal's Marc Stiles reports that though there is more supply in the local housing market, prices are still going up and up. He also reports that, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service, the "median sales price of houses in King County hit $725,000, up 16 percent over a year ago."

This is all that the boom has meant for most people in Seattle who, even if they find employment, are unlikely to earn enough to meet the ever-rising costs of living in this city. For them, the boom has been a crisis that's only getting worse. Officially, we haven't been in a recession for most of this decade, and in an economic boom for half a decade, and yet, IRS data from 2015 (a full two years into the boom) shows half of the people who live in Seattle earn less than $50,000. The five-year boom has, for many in this city, done more harm than good; this we do actually know. But what the anti-tax op-eds and stories in this city's leading papers are saying is that the head tax will be even worse than the continuation of a boom whose benefits have yet to be shared in any meaningful way. So, even if you do not agree with raising taxes, you have to admit that what all of the anti-tax people are offering as a solution to a brutal housing crisis is more of what has, for the most part, caused the crisis.

And it is exactly here that the noise about the taxes is revealed to be atavistic rather than edifying. Those who authorized the current hysteria are from a class that, since the birth of the market-centered society, has hated taxes (the rich). And with good reason. Taxes hit them the hardest. And with good reason—they have most of the money. So, it's not a matter of the head tax being right or wrong, good or bad, fact or fiction, science or religion. What the chimps must do is bang and jump when any talk about raising taxes emerges from the foliage.

Now It's Israel's War

From the headline alone "Israeli Warplanes Hit Dozens of Iranian Targets in Syria" one would assume that Syrian air defense, based as it is on Russian technology, is a bust. Isabel Kershner reports that

Overnight, Iranian forces fired around 20 rockets at the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, targeting forward positions of the Israeli military, according to an Israeli military spokesman. The rockets were all either intercepted or fell short of their mark in Syrian territory, the spokesman said, but were nevertheless a significant escalation in Iran’s maneuvers in the Middle East. Though Israel has hit Iranian forces in Syria with a number of deadly airstrikes, Tehran has been restrained in hitting back, until now.

Hours later, Israel responded. By Thursday morning, the country’s air force had destroyed “nearly all” of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria, according to Israel’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman

“If there is rain on our side, there will be a flood on their side,” Mr. Lieberman said in remarks broadcast from a policy conference in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. He added, “I hope we have finished with this round and that everybody understood.”

In all, at least 23 people were killed in the strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group. Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency said the Syrian Army had responded by firing 68 missiles at Israel.

In a sign of international concern that the conflict could escalate, Britain, France, Germany and Russia were quick to call for calm. Moscow — which enjoys warm ties with Israel and has had ever-closer relations with Iran in recent years — in particular called for “restraint from all parties,” Mikhail Bogdanov, a Russian deputy foreign minister, was quoted as saying by the Russian news agency Interfax.

Iran has taken advantage of the chaos in Syria to build a substantial military infrastructure there. It has built and trained large militias with thousands of fighters and sent advisers from its Revolutionary Guards Corps to Syrian military bases.

 SANA says Syrian air defenses shot down at least ten Israeli missiles.

The takeaway here is that once the jihadists were cleared out of eastern Ghouta Israel took over responsibility for regime change in Syria.

The final paragraph quoted in Kershner's story is a rich one: "Iran has taken advantage of the chaos in Syria." It should read, "The failed GCC-U.S. covert war in Syria has augmented Iran's stature in the Middle East, something the Likudniks cannot abide."

It's no longer primarily a jihadi war. Now it's Israel's war.

Murray and Erlanger on the Future of Europe Following U.S. Pullout from JCPOA

A couple of good assessments -- both focus on the chances of Europe falling into line with the U.S. resumption of sanctions on Iran -- are Craig Murray's "Trump’s Act of American Hubris" and Steven Erlanger's "Europe, Again Humiliated by Trump, Struggles to Defend Its Interests."

Murray sees yesterday's announcement by Trump scuttling U.S. participation in the Iranian nuclear deal as "a key marker in US decline as a world power." Erlanger sees another humiliating episode for gutless European vassals to grin and bear; in other words, Europeans leaders will grouse but ultimately fall into line behind the U.S. position because Europe has no ability to map its own course.

First Murray:

We are yet to see the detail, but by all precedent Trump’s Iran sanctions will also sanction third country companies which trade with Iran, at the least through attacking their transactions through US financial institutions and by sanctioning their US affiliates. But at a time when US share of the world economy and world trade is steadily shrinking, this encouragement to European and Asian companies to firewall and minimise contact with the US is most unlikely to be long term beneficial to the US. In particular, in a period where it is already obvious that the years of the US dollar’s undisputed dominance as the world currency of reference are drawing to a close, the incentive to employ non-US linked means of financial transaction will add to an already highly significant global trend.

In short, if the US fails to prevent Europe and Asia’s burgeoning trade with Iran – and I think they will fail – this moment will be seen by historians as a key marker in US decline as a world power.

Then Erlanger:

BRUSSELS — It is now a familiar, humiliating pattern. European leaders cajole, argue and beg, trying to persuade President Trump to change his mind on a vital issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance. Mr. Trump appears to enjoy the show, dangling them, before ultimately choosing not to listen.

Instead, he demands compliance, seemingly bent on providing just the split with powerful and important allies that China, Iran and Russia would like to exploit.

Such is the case with the efforts to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear pact. The failure is very similar to what happened with the Paris climate accord, and to what is happening now with unilateral American sanctions imposed on steel and aluminum imports, and to Mr. Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

And with each breach, it becomes clearer that trans-Atlantic relations are in trouble, and that the options are not good for the United States’ closest European allies.

However angry and humiliated, those allies do not yet seem ready to confront Mr. Trump, wishing to believe that he and his aides can be influenced over time. It is reminiscent of what Samuel Johnson said of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience.

But there are signs that patience is wearing thin, and that many are searching for solutions as Mr. Trump, in the name of “America First,” creates a vacuum of trans-Atlantic leadership that the Europeans have so far seemed incapable or unwilling to fill.

“The allies are certainly sick of this but don’t seem to have an alternative,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former career State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Europeans are invested down a path of trying to please the president, not out of belief but more hope against hope that they will convince him,” he added. “And they only pursue this at such a level of embarrassment because they don’t have an alternative.”

I favor Murray's analysis because he sees the U.S. pullout from the JCPOA as a precursor to wider war in the Middle East:

I have chosen not to focus on the more startling short term dangers of war in the Middle East, and the folly of encouraging Saudi Arabia and Israel in their promotion of sustained violence against Iranian interests throughout the region, as I have very written extensively on that subject. But the feeling of empowerment Trump will have given to his fellow sociopaths Netanyahu and Mohammed Bin Salman bodes very ill indeed for the world at present.

I shall be most surprised if we do not see increased US/Israeli/Saudi sponsored jihadist attacks in Syria, and in Lebanon following Hezbollah’s new national electoral victory. Hezbollah’s democratic advance has stunned and infuriated the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia but been reported very sparsely in the MSM, as it very much goes against the neo-con narrative. It does not alter the positions of President or Prime Minister, constitutionally allocated by religion, but it does increase Hezbollah’s power in the Lebanese state, and thus Iranian influence.

Iran is a difficult country to predict. I hope they will stick to the agreement and wait to see how Europe is able to adapt, before taking any rash decisions. They face, however, not only the provocation of Trump but the probability of a renewed wave of anti-Shia violence from Pakistan to Lebanon, designed to provoke Iran into reaction. These will be a tense few weeks. I do not think even Netanyahu is crazy enough to launch an early air strike on Iran itself, but I would not willingly bet my life on it.

The problem is, with Russia committed to holding a military balance in the Middle East, all of us are betting our lives on it.

Erlanger hints at this -- the real goal is regime change -- but, writing from Brussels, favors institutional inertia maintaining the trans-Atlantic alliance:

A senior adviser to the European Union, Nathalie Tocci, said that the Iran deal was a lost cause, because “Trump and Europe have fundamentally different objectives.”

She said that Mr. Trump “is not interested in keeping a nuclear nonproliferation agreement but in regime change in Iran — it’s as simple as that.” 

“We have to stop being wimps,” she added.

Europe can't go along with another large war in the Middle East. Governments who join the U.S., Israel and the Gulf monarchies in attacking Iran will fall. The voters will rebel. 

The U.S. Unipolar World Ends Today

Trump is set to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), today. The silver lining here is that it will drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.

This morning Bill Van Auken, "Tensions rise with Trump set to announce decision on Iran nuclear deal," plays up the commercial divisions between Europe and the U.S. over Iran. But even more important than commerce is the political reality for the governing parties of Britain, France and Germany that the voters would rebel against a conflict with Iran.

Voters in the United States have been sapped of any strength to resist the widening gyre of war. Israel will lead the way, and the U.S. will join in.

Pain has to come home before the voters in the U.S. demand a halt to the madness.

But for the time being the initial stages have to play out. Let's pay close attention. The U.S. unipolar world ends today.

Jane McAlevey

I'm reading Jane McAlevey's NO SHORTCUTS: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age.

It is encouraging that McAlevey's ideas are gaining traction. She is a trenchant critic of "business as usual" unionism and electoral politics. She favors a return to the whole worker organizing model of the early CIO. The worker is the leader not chattel and you go to the community where she lives. McAlevey favors a return to the strike as the bedrock of unionism, which, she says, will require an emphasis on class struggle.

To give you a sense of McAlevey's bona fides, take note of this passage from a recent exchange, "A Strategy to Win," she had in Jacobin with Eric Blake:

You said that the Democrats were “almost” as responsible for the budget crisis that we’re in. I’d take out the word almost. The contemporary Democratic Party is just as responsible as the Republicans for the terrible conditions that we’re in locally, statewide, and federally.

This has been the case for my whole lifetime, for as long as I’ve been politically conscious. Beginning with the mid-1970s fiscal crisis, it was really the Democrats who refused to put the question of progressive taxation on the table. In the early 1980s I was starting college at the State University of New York, because I couldn’t afford anything else, and the first Governor Cuomo pushed the single largest tuition increase in history of NY public education, for both CUNY and SUNY.

Ever since, the Democrats have continued to shift their loyalties from the working class to the corporations. This got codified, of course, by Bill Clinton in 1992 and through the founding of the Democratic Leadership Council. Basically they said: fuck the workers, we’re all about the corporate class.

Arizona teachers recently won a 19% pay increase by going out on strike, joining teachers in West Virginia and Oklahoma who also won significant pay raises by striking.

McAlevey warms against a creeping “We’ll Remember in November” mantra coming out of these struggles:

If all you’re going to do is shift into “We’ll Remember in November” mode, good luck with that. It ain’t going to work. Look at what happened in Wisconsin 2011, where the movement died by turning into a campaign to recall the governor.

Electoral politics is a piece in our repertoire of struggle. A comprehensive plan to win needs an electoral component. But elections are just one piece of the puzzle. And strikes are a more important piece of the puzzle. To build real power, including on an electoral level, you need to be organized at the workplace.

Simply going into the Democratic Party to support the average Democratic candidate is a losing strategy. They don’t motivate people, they leave a lot to be desired.

The strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona were fights with state legislatures over allocating resources, resources that had been denied for decades, and not just by Republicans. My sense is that there is something redolent of the "Fight for $15" here. Necessary and long overdue but shortly to be superseded by rising housing costs.

What McAlevey is calling for is a return of Marx. Good.

Hippies vs. Punks: The Leaving Trains' Fuck (1987)

There is a moment when everything is clear. Ideas are fully revealed. Bright, solid, bold. Then it's back to befuddlement.

What happened to the wide-open horizon of my youth? --Work happened.

One loses track. The job takes over. Sometimes it's a woman. Sometimes it's drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it's poor health. Mine is the job.

When I was 23 I owned this album. I couldn't figure it out. Now that I am 53, I was able to figure it out.

What I remember about The Leaving Trains is that they were fronted by a guy, a super-hipster, a crossdresser junkie a la the New York Dolls, by the name of "Falling James" Moreland.

If you Google The Leaving Trains today, or Falling James, you won't find much: A Wikipedia entry. A Discogs page. A relatively recent blog post about Moreland's failed marriage to Courtney Love (he preceded Kurt Cobain to the altar). Then some links which allude to his work as a writer for the L.A. Weekly. That's basically it.

What I seem to recall about The Leaving Trains and Fuck is that SST Records actively promoted the band -- and this particular album -- as the immediate "shape of things to come." So as a young devotee of SST I took note.

But, as I mentioned in a previous post, I threw in the towel after a few listens. The aesthetic was too hard, resistant, slick; too junkie cool. I was a heart-on-your-sleeve guy, not a hipster.

Over the years I continued to carry a torch for this record though because it is associated in my mind with the spring of 1988, my girlfriend Stacey and her railroad apartment on the Oakland-Berkeley border near the Alcatel Bottle Shop. At the time, my horizon was unblinkered; the future seemed infinite.

When I heard Fuck again in February, as I mentioned before, I thought I was listening to a Fleshtones album. Lenny Kaye's "Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968" influenced underground rock'n'roll throughout the 1980s, as did the Velvet Underground.

A breakdown of the 14 songs of Fuck reveal a Punk-heavy album:

1. "Temporal Slut" -- SST Slam Dance Weltanschauung
2. "How Can I Explode" -- Fleshtones
3. "What Cissy Said" -- Lou Reed VU vibe, could be the best song
4. "The Horse Song" -- Iggy Pop cover from the early '80s
5. "Disasters" -- Rockabilly number
6. "Walking With You" -- Punk number
7. "Sleep" -- Another Punk number
8. "With Dr. A.W.O.L." -- Another Lou Reed number
9. "27 Days" -- Another Punk number
10. "So Fucked Up" -- Album cover; reminds me of Stacey's railroad apartment
11. "I Don't Know What I'm Doing Here" -- Lenny Kaye's Nuggets
12. "Violent Sex" -- Black Flag number
13. "Welcome to New York" -- Another Punk number, West Coast critique of NYC
14. "What the President Meant to Say" -- Negativlandesque take on Iran-Contra hearings

It is a moving between styles in a limited style alphabet of the underground rock'n'roll avant-garde of the 1980s -- with an emphasis on L.A. Punk. When I say I "got" Fuck after 30 years, this is what I got. It is an accomplished -- one might even say breathtaking -- encapsulation of the West Coast rock'n'roll underground of the 1980s: predominantly Hardcore, a little Rockabilly, a fair amount of Velvet Underground, a respectful embrace of Garage Rock, dexterously tied together at the end by an ambitious sonic sculpture political commentary.

All in all an amazing document.

Futures come and go. The present is dominated by the promise of futures that never arrive. The Leaving Trains' Fuck was pretty much obsolete before the end of 1988. Its slick, hip, fast, Nuggety sound was replaced by a Hardcore reinterpretation of Classic Rock. Time moves on and we forget the futures that once existed for us. I rediscovered the future of 1987 this February past.