Round Three Democratic Presidential Debate Post-Mortem

By the time I got home the debate had already started. So I missed all the stuff about single-payer health care. My impression of the third Democratic presidential debate is pretty much in line with the main write-up in The New York Times by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin (see "Sanders and Warren Battle Accusations of ‘Fairy Tale’ Promises as Intraparty Rift Flares"):

DETROIT — The leading liberals in the Democratic presidential primary, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, strenuously fought back on Tuesday against accusations of making fanciful promises and imperiling the party’s prospects against President Trump, as a group of moderate underdogs sought to slow their momentum in the second round of debates.

Which is an antiseptic way of stating that doomed also-ran candidates at 0-1% in the polls -- people like John Delaney, Steve Bullock, and John Hickenlooper -- relentlessly attacked the two leading progressives -- Sanders and Warren -- in a kamikaze mission. It had the feel of a setup, much like the spotlighting of Cory Booker in the first debate last month. The corporate overlords of the mainstream wanted to take a shot at curbing the leftward bent of the party, and they used the junked, disposable politicians on the stage to do it.

It failed spectacularly. Delaney, Hickenlooper and Bullock came off as scolding bosses. Elizabeth Warren had the biggest "gotcha" line of the night when she said to Delaney:

“I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for the president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for,” Ms. Warren said to applause. “I don’t get it.”

Thankfully we've seen the last of these shameful corporate lackeys. Unless some sort of donor bot can be designed by New Knowledge, there's no way that someone like a Steve Bullock is going to be invited to the debate next month.

The fundamental problem that the corporate minders of the mainstream have is that they are trying to promote allegiance to a system that has been thoroughly repudiated and is broadly unpopular. Calls for incrementalism, calls to "go slow," sound like exactly what they are -- class warfare. Not really something that is going to resonate with the "unwashed."

Bernie was the big winner. He was terrific. Warren got a little mussed up this go-round, but she won all her scrapes. Another big winner was Marianne Williamson. Possibly the largest applause dispensed by the Detroit audience was when the pop spiritualist spoke about African-American reparations. I hope she makes into the September debates.

The Countdown to Brexit Zombie Apocalypse Begins Anew

Yves Smith this morning (see "Brexit: Can Anyone Take the Wheel From Johnson?") begins anew what will likely be a series of gloomy crash-out speculations:

Richard North argues in today’s post that unless Johnson changes his mind, a crash-out is baked in. The spectacle of the pound falling almost 3% today on his bluster won’t make a difference. Sterling is at January 2017 levels against the dollar. This isn’t a sterling crisis, and it’s not clear how much financial markets distress it would take to move “fuck business” Johnson. And he and his Team Leave stalwarts seem remarkably unconcerned about wee problems like not being even close to where they need to be to re-do UK legislation to untangle it from decades of integration with EU law.

I am going to try to avoid posting much on Brexit conniptions. Boris' media circus isn't meant to do anything else other than transfix voters right up until Halloween. His scotching of the Irish backstop guarantees that the EU will not deal with him.

The story in this zombie apocalypse remains "When oh when will a general election be called?" I think Johnson realizes an election in the near term cannot be avoided. He's campaigning now. Yves Smith thinks Labour will lose seats. I can't recall if she successfully predicted May's utter failure in the last general election in 2017. Most were predicting then that the Tories would add seats. Don't dismiss Labour just yet.

"The Great Hack"

Over the weekend I watched the new Netflix documentary The Great Hack. It tells the story of the rise and fall of Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting company that married big data with military-grade psychological operations to deliver the White House for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The documentary is less than stunning as it follows whistle-blower Brittany Kaiser from Burning Man to a resort in Thailand and then on to London and New York as she explains her role in Cambridge Analytica.

The film works in that it convincingly shows that Trump likely won in 2016 by spending heavily on Facebook ads that were minutely targeted in key swing states thanks to data that Cambridge Analytica mined with the help of Facebook (the root cause of Facebook's $5 billion fine). Trump was spending $1 million per day on Facebook ads; in comparison, Hillary's social media advertising was a pittance.

At the end of the documentary reporter Carole Cadwalladr grafts Russiagate onto the Cambridge Analytica story by falsely attributing a political motive to a meeting that Kaiser had with Julian Assange.

The real story is that the Hillary campaign got its clock cleaned by Cambridge Analytica. (Brad Parscale, Trump's 2016 campaign’s digital director, is running his re-election.) Russian interference is just a cover created to shield blame for the Democrats' shockingly poor performance.

Russiagate is an Excuse for the U.S. to Interfere in Elections at Home and Abroad

UPDATE: Here's how my hipster hometown weekly encapsulates the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

A Senate Intelligence Report confirms "extensive" Russian election interference: The bipartisan report, issued a day after Mueller warned the Russians are currently working to interfere with our 2020 election, found that our nation's election infrastructure is unprepared to deal with the "extensive activity" by Russia.

Note how "extensive activity" becomes "extensive interference" in the header. The putative "underground" press operates almost completely in the orbit of mainstream politics. Since Russiagate is a mainstream political construct, it's no wonder that the urban elite are busy tub thumping about the Russia menace.

****

The headline is breathtaking -- "Russia Targeted Elections Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds" -- but the accompanying story by David Sanger and Catie Edmondson about the Senate Intelligence Committee's release yesterday of the first volume of its report on Russian election interference is more of the same: More hype, more obfuscation and misdirection, more fear and loathing; all heavily redacted, with no guidelines offered in conclusion.

As to the hype, Sanger and Edmondson report that

The report — the first volume of several to be released from the committee’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference — came 24 hours after the former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III warned that Russia was moving again to interfere “as we sit here.”

While details of many of the hackings directed by Russian intelligence, particularly in Illinois and Arizona, are well known, the committee described “an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure” intended largely to search for vulnerabilities in the security of the election systems.

It concluded that while there was no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data” in the Illinois voter database. The committee found no evidence that they did so.

Aaron Mate's  point about Mueller's team being rebuked by a federal judge for conflating the Russian government with the Saint Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency is worth mentioning here. "Russian cyberactors" could be anyone. We know from WikiLeaks' release of Vault 7, the treasure trove of CIA hacking tools, that planting false flags in code is pro forma in cyber warfare. This speaks to the report's misdirection.

As Sanger and Edmondson note, the report, given the enormous existential threat to American democracy, can only list recommendations, not guidelines:

The committee’s recommendations ranged from the concrete — ensure a paper trail for voter machines and paper backups for registration systems — to the strategic, like adopting a doctrine of how to deter different kinds of cyberattacks.

While the committee suggested holding “a discussion with U.S. allies and others about new cybernorms,” it did not say what those norms should be — nor did it say election manipulation should be off limits for all nations. One reason for that hesitance, some government officials acknowledge, is the debate inside the administration over how much the United States itself is willing to forgo the option of using its own cyberabilities abroad.

[snip] 

But Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, appended an impassioned dissent to the report, arguing that the committee did not go far enough. “The committee report describes a range of cybersecurity measures needed to protect voter registration databases,” he wrote, “yet there are currently no mandatory rules that require states to implement even minimum cybersecurity measures. There are not even any voluntary federal standards.”

The committee found that the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. warned states in the late summer and fall of 2016 of the threat of Russian interference. But they did not provide election officials with “a clear reason” to take the threat more seriously than other warnings that are regularly issued, the report said.

Basically all of Russiagate is a farce. The Russians actually want to sign an international cyber agreement. But as The Nation pointed out this spring, the U.S. has refused, not wanting to blunt its attack capabilities: "[T]he Bush and Obama administrations rejected multiple Russian proposals for an international cyber code of conduct."

The conclusion I draw from Russiagate is that it is a U.S. Government effort to stifle dissent among its domestic population. U.S. internet censorship has accelerated since 2016 behind the screen of Russiagate. Google and Facebook are cracking down on "inauthentic" voices. Take the example of anti-war presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. She's suing Google for pulling her ads out of the blue just at the time she was peaking right after the first Democratic presidential debate. According to The New York Times in "Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic Presidential Candidate, Sues Google for $50 Million":

Tulsi Now Inc., the campaign committee for Ms. Gabbard, said Google suspended the campaign’s advertising account for six hours on June 27 and June 28, obstructing its ability to raise money and spread her message to potential voters.

After the first Democratic debate, Ms. Gabbard was briefly the most searched-for candidate on Google. Her campaign wanted to capitalize on the attention she was receiving by buying ads that would have placed its website at the top of search results for her name.

The lawsuit also said the Gabbard campaign believed its emails were being placed in spam folders on Gmail at “a disproportionately high rate” when compared with emails from other Democratic candidates.

Google can't explain why Gabbard's account was suspended:

Gabbard campaign workers sent an email to a Google representative on June 27 at 9:30 p.m. once they realized the account had been suspended. In emails reviewed by The New York Times, the campaign sent Google a screenshot of a notice of suspension for “problems with billing information or violations of our advertising policies.”

The account was reactivated at 3:30 a.m. on June 28. In the email announcing that it had reinstated the account, Google wrote that the company temporarily suspended the campaign’s account to verify billing information and policy compliance, but offered no other explanation for what had happened.

The campaign said it had opened the Google advertising account in February and had bought ads on Google search before the suspension. It said there was no problem with its billing information and that it had not violated Google’s terms of service.

“To this day, Google has not provided a straight answer — let alone a credible one — as to why Tulsi’s political speech was silenced when millions of people wanted to hear from her,” the lawsuit said.

The most likely reason, one that Google will never publicly acknowledge, is that Gabbard's account was suspended because she's been tarred by U.S. intelligence agencies as a Russian agent.

Russiagate is an excuse for the U.S. Government to brazenly interfere in elections both at home and abroad in order to manufacture electoral consent for the broadly unpopular neoliberal-perpetual-warfare Washington Consensus.

Turkey Threatens Rojava

U.S. Special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey met with senior Turkish officials this week to hash out the details on the creation of "safe zones" in northern Syria. The talks did not go to Ankara's liking. According to Reuters,

After U.S. special envoy for Syria James Jeffrey held talks with Turkish officials, Turkey said on Wednesday it had run “out of patience” with Washington and warned that it would carry out a military operation in the region if an agreement on the safe zone was not reached.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the United States was stalling progress on the safe zone, just as it did with a joint roadmap agreed to clear the northern Syrian town of Manbij of the YPG last year.

At a briefing in Ankara on Thursday, Turkish military officials said talks on the planned safe zone with the United States would continue, but reiterated that Turkey’s expectations on the Manbij roadmap had not been met.

“Work is planned to continue in the coming period. We cannot share details as efforts are under way. Our aims are clear. The Turkish army is the only force capable of doing this,” one of the officials said regarding the safe zone.

These safe zones were agreed to by Trump last December. Trump promised at the same time to withdraw all U.S. forces in northeast Syria, which prompted the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and ISIS czar Brett McGurk. Trump eventually walked back the troop withdrawal. Today thousands of U.S. troops remain in Syria.

What are these "safe zones"? The Defense Post reports that

How such a buffer zone would be created by Turkey is unclear. A 20-mile zone would encompass the majority-Kurdish towns including Qamishli and Kobane as well as strategic cities controlled by groups affiliated to the Syrian Democratic Forces, such as Tal Abyad and Manbij. It would also include Ayn Issa, the new administrative center for north and east Syria.

The Turkish government has long been threatening to launch a military incursion to clear the border area of the predominantly Kurdish YPG, which forms the core of the U.S.-led Coalition-backed SDF in ground operations against Islamic State.

Washington’s support for the group has infuriated the Turkish government, which views the YPG as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, designated a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.

In Manbij, Turkey expected the U.S. to get rid of all heavy weapons, eliminate the YPG, and hand the city over to a Turkish-approved governing council.

Turkey does not appear to be willing to settle for anything less than military control of this 20-mile buffer along the border, an area heavily populated by the Kurds and vital to any future Rojava.

Turkey appears willing to fight. The Defense Post story ends with the following:

Turkish media reported a significant buildup of Turkish military forces along the Syrian border in the days following the [S-400] missile system’s initial delivery.

An undisclosed number of U.S. troops still remain in northern Syria. American officials have taken Turkey’s threats seriously in past internal discussions.

American patrols were reported in the border area near Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn) earlier this week after the Turkish military said it retaliated against rocket fire from the Syrian side that landed in the Turkish town of Ceylanpinar.

Both the SDF and YPG also said a shell was fired from Syrian territory but denied responsibility and said an investigation was underway.

The YPG called the incident a “provocative act” and a “clear attempt to disrupt stability in NE Syria.”

The United States is vulnerable in northeast Syria. It would have to use air power to defend its troops on the ground. Erdogan's purchase of the S-400 is proof that Turkey is serious about attacking Rojava.

"Podemos Still Doesn't Understand the World is Heading Towards Chaos"

One can scramble about online in vain trying to find an explanation as to why Podemos so far refuses to form a coalition government in Spain with the Socialists. Most of the reporting boils down to a personality struggle between Socialist Party leader Pedro Sanchez and Podemos' Pablo Iglesias. Al Jazeera explains that

In a parliamentary debate on Monday, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias accused the socialists of refusing to offer his party significant positions and wanting them to be "mere decor" in the government.

"We have to talk about content, we have to talk about programmes, and not so much about who will occupy the blue seats," Sanchez retorted on Tuesday, regarding the places reserved for the cabinet in parliament.

Sanchez's effort to form a government is important because the Socialists' performance in Spain's April general election was heralded as a stunning comeback for a mainstream party in the age of Brexit and Trump. As Raphael Minder notes in "Sánchez Struggles to Assemble New Government in Spain":

Mr. Sánchez’s surprisingly strong result in April was seen as a victory for Socialism in Europe. It also came as a relief to backers of the European Union, which he and his party support, at a time when the bloc is embattled by challenges from nationalists and populists, especially in Italy and Eastern Europe.

The political uncertainty in Spain will be watched closely by European partners, particularly President Emmanuel Macron of France. He has been hoping that Mr. Sánchez could prove a strong ally in his project to fortify the European Union as it prepares for Britain’s departure.

At the time I interpreted that the Socialists' big win was due to Sanchez campaigning against austerity and for more social spending. Macron's embrace of Sanchez refutes any idea that the Spanish Socialist Party is going to scrap neoliberalism.

For a better understanding of the issues at stake it is worth reading an interview with Manolo Monereo, "Podemos Must Become an Anti-Establishment Force Again," which appeared last month.

Monereo goes into the rise of Podemos out the Indignados/Occupy movement and how that post-meltdown political moment seems to have lapsed.

Monereo is clear. There is nothing for Podemos in a coalition with the Socialists, other than greater irrelevance. Podemos not only lost over a third of its MPs in the April elections, but it performed even worse in regional elections held in May.

Given this, one would think Iglesias will resist and Sanchez will lose again tomorrow when a second vote is held to form a government.

Monereo ends the interview with a wonderful statement on the neoliberal/neoconservatism fin de siècle in the midst of which we are presently planted:

In Spain, the establishment might be stabilizing itself once more, but the world is heading towards an almost permanent state of chaos. That’s the key thing for me. Pablo taught geopolitics but he doesn’t seem to understand it, what’s happening in the world. The world is heading towards chaos, towards a great new transition that has already begun. We’re about to enter a period similar to the one Europe witnessed between 1875 and 1914 — which saw the failure of the first wave of globalization. Now we’re about to enter the period of failure for the second wave of globalization. This is something Podemos still doesn’t understand.

Boris Goes to Number 10

It's official. Boris Johnson will be the United Kingdom's prime minister.

According Reuters, "Johnson, the face of the 2016 Brexit referendum, won the votes of 92,153 members of the Conservative party, almost twice the 46,656 won by his rival, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt."

What now? Boris will replace Theresa May tomorrow. Then the charade of renegotiating Theresa May's Brexit deal with the EU will begin anew. The only difference is that Boris is an avowed "Leave" Tory who campaigned on promises of prorogation -- suspending parliament without dissolving it -- in order to ensure a crash-out from the European Union.

Yesterday the number two official at the Foreign Office, Alan Duncan, resigned over Boris' ascension to Number 10. According to The New York Times,

Mr. Duncan, the Foreign Office minister who resigned, pushed for an emergency vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday to test whether Mr. Johnson could command the support of a majority of lawmakers. Mr. Duncan’s bid for the vote was rejected, but he warned that the government could collapse in the fall.

There will be several months of fiddling, but sometime in September or October, when crash-out looms, a vote of confidence will be called and Boris will lose. Since the Tories have done everything possible to avoid parliamentary elections, Johnson could even try prorogation.

In any event, the Tories are likely headed towards greatly diminished status. Writers in the mainstream have begun to believe their own propaganda about Labour -- that it is split, wounded and ineffectual. I think not. I think Corbyn heading a Labour Party campaigning unabashedly for peace and against austerity wins -- if not an outright majority certainly enough seats to form a coalition government with the SNP.

Ukraine's Servant of the People Captures Parliament

There were parliamentary elections in Ukraine yesterday. The new Servant of the People Party, named after president Volodymyr Zelensky's sitcom, appears to have won an outright majority, currently projected at 246-249 seats out of 424 seats. The pro-Russian Opposition Platform is running a distant second; Poroshenko's European Solidarity third; Yulia Tymoshenko's Fatherland fourth; and a new party, Voice, led by Ukrainian rocker Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, was last.

Turnout at just under 50% was about on par with the 2018 U.S. midterms.

What's interesting to me is how dour and elliptical the coverage in The New York Times has been of the Zelensky phenomenom. The dispatch by Ivan Nechepurenko, "In Ukraine Snap Elections, New President Aims to Consolidate Power," makes nary a mention of what Servant of the People actually promises to deliver, and that's a peace deal with the separatist eastern part of the country.

The Reuters story is much better in this regard in that it actually identifies what Servant of the People stands for: greater investment by the West, along with greater integration with NATO and the EU; anti-corruption; and peace:

Since defeating Poroshenko by a landslide in April’s presidential race, Zelenskiy has promised to keep Ukraine on a pro-Western course and seek a new aid-for-reforms program with the International Monetary Fund.

He has also pledged to find a lasting peace in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region, where war between Kiev’s forces and Russian-backed armed separatists has killed 13,000 in five years since Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.

His back-to-back election victories “create the necessary support for the newly elected president to implement much-needed and long-delayed reforms,” a note by Citi said.

Markets welcomed the prospect of a period of political stability, with some of Ukraine’s dollar-denominated sovereign bonds rising to their highest since early 2018.

[snip]

Zelenskiy will now have to manage the high expectations that his large mandate has generated.

A pre-election survey by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute said 45% of voters expected Zelenskiy to negotiate a peace in the Donbass within 12 months — the biggest single priority among voters.

But 57% would not accept peace at the cost of allowing Crimea to become a recognized part of Russia — something Moscow is likely to insist on — and 62% would not accept peace if Donbass did not return to Kiev’s full control.

More than half of respondents also expected Ukraine to be a member of the European Union by 2030.

This smells like a push poll. The New York Times has downplayed Zelensky because Washington wants Ukraine as an anti-Russian warfare state. Period. End of story. Peaceful integration with the European Union is not the point. (Remember "Fuck the EU!")

Let's hope Zelensky can deliver peace in a year. It would be an enormous win for people power.

Biden and the "Woke" Democratic Base

With Trump traveling to Greenville, NC to rally the hayseeds with hate, and the vote to impeach Trump for that hatred garnering 95 votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, I thought it would be interesting to read what the Black Agenda Report has to say this morning.

Ajamu Baraka's "The 'Squad' Will Need to Realize that You Can’t Defeat White Supremacy with White Supremacy" is worth checking out:

The “squad” condemns Trump for his white nationalism, not understanding that as a white supremacist settler-colonial state, white nationalism is “American” nationalism. Until there is break with that history and reality, and with Biden, who like Trump either understands that reality better or is more honest than the squad.

Biden as a neoliberal white supremacist imperialist was always clear where he stood. His voting record and policy support for war on Iraq; the dismembering of Syria; the U.S./ NATO attack on Libya that turned the most prosperous nation on the African continent into a real “shithole country;” and support for Trump’s campaign to buttress the white minority oligarchy in Venezuela by implementing a regime change program was not much different than that from Trump. Most of the Democratic Party supported these policies.

The Democratic Party is trapped between a Indivisible, Women's March "woke" base that wants to turn the page on 40-plus years of neoliberalism/neoconservatism and an official party apparatus that is foundationally linked to the policies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

Biden as the nominee of a "woke" base doesn't make any sense.

The Coming Crackup of the Democratic Party

For a delightful account of the partisan melee in the House of Representatives yesterday read Julie Hirschfeld Davis' "House Condemns Trump’s Attack on Four Congresswomen as Racist." The Democrats managed to pass a non-binding resolution "Condemning President Trump’s racist comments directed at Members of Congress" on party lines. (There were four Republican defectors.)

Trump has accomplished one thing in terms of the GOP: He has outed it -- no doubt about it -- as the Dixiecrat Party of the 21st Century. This is a minority party in existential crisis.

On the opposite side of the aisle, "the Squad," led by the talented congresswoman from Queens, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came out on top in their joust with speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, it is easy to forget, Trump was defending in his "YOU CAN LEAVE!" tweet. The Democratic caucus and Pelosi herself publicly defended the Squad in the non-binding resolution. (I must say I was impressed by the Squad when they read their statements on Monday.)

But the Squad's victory is bound to be short-lived. Thomas Friedman's noxious column this morning, "‘Trump’s Going to Get Re-elected, Isn’t He?’," is a blueprint wealthy donors who control the Democratic Party will likely follow in the coming months: The party, according to Friedman, has lurched too far to the left; it risks handing Trump a second term. The only way to avoid this is to nominate someone who can win the hearts and minds of moderate Republicans:

Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!

But please, spare me the revolution! It can wait. Win the presidency, hold the House and narrow the spread in the Senate, and a lot of good things still can be accomplished. “No,” you say, “the left wants a revolution now!” O.K., I’ll give the left a revolution now: four more years of Donald Trump.

In other words, Friedman wants a repeat of 2016. This is how delusional, how truly hopeless, the gatekeepers of the elite consensus have become. There's bound to be a crackup.

Trump Launches 2020 Presidential Campaign in Earnest

Trump's Twitter dust-up with "the Squad" -- “IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY HERE, YOU CAN LEAVE!” -- is all about the 2020 general election. As NYT chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse writes in his opening paragraph (see "A Blaring Message in Republicans’ Muted Criticism: It’s Trump’s Party"):

The lack of widespread Republican condemnation of President Trump for his comments about four Democratic congresswomen of color illustrated both the tightening stranglehold Mr. Trump has on his party and the belief of many Republicans that an attack on progressivism should in fact be a central element of the 2020 campaign.

In his "Water Cooler" post Lambert Strether finds that "top Democrats" are concerned:

“Exclusive poll: AOC defining Dems in swing states” [Axios]. “Top Democrats are circulating a poll showing that one of the House’s most progressive members — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — has become a definitional face for the party with a crucial group of swing voters. Why it matters: These Democrats are sounding the alarm that swing voters know and dislike socialism, warning it could cost them the House and the presidency. The poll is making the rounds of some of the most influential Democrats in America.” • Goodness, I wonder who those top Democrats are. Note that even Celinda Lake thinks this is a terrible poll (see thread here).

According to Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Trump thinks he's got a winner here with this melange of pink-baiting and bigotry:

Mr. Trump clearly sees a political advantage in his targeting of the congresswomen, betting that by focusing attention on them, he will be better able to paint all Democrats with a broad brush of socialism and radical policies.

“The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four ‘progressives,’ but now they are forced to embrace them,” Mr. Trump gloated on Twitter on Monday evening. “That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!”

Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster and strategist, said Mr. Trump’s latest remarks reflected a broader strategy to use the same kind of racial animus that helped propel his 2016 presidential bid to bolster his base for his 2020 re-election push.

“He’s crazy like a fox, and it only makes perfectly good sense for him to go back to what got him here in the first place, which is driving this racial angst in the electorate,” Mr. Belcher said.

Let's not forget that Trump pulled out all the racist stops before. In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections Trump "crisscrossed" the country campaigning for Republican candidates by sounding the alarm that a migrant caravan was on its way to invade the United States and that it was being funded by Democrats. It didn't stop the Blue Wave.

Trump might find a more receptive audience by screaming "Socialism!" repeatedly from now until November 2020. This will likely enable him to keep the suburban Republicans who Hillary was banking on in 2016.

But the problem for Trump remains that the only way he can replicate 2016 is if the Democrats nominate another Hillary. Of the top-tier candidates that fit the bill, it's Biden, Buttigieg and possibly Harris (given her penchant to flip flop). Still, I am not convinced that these three couldn't return enough of the "Obama coalition" to the polls to beat a lusterless Trump.

Trump's best bet is if the Democratic Party eats itself. And there's a decent chance that will happen.

Neoliberal Authoritarianism

French president Emmanuel Macron used yesterday's Bastille Day celebration to tout the European Intervention Initiative, which Reuters defines as "a 10-country coalition of European militaries ready to react to crises. The French-led initiative, which includes Germany, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, was launched last year." Think of it as NATO minus the United States.

Macron's government had banned Yellow Vest protesters prior to the parade, as well as having detained some key Yellow Vest leaders. This didn't prevent approximately 200 arrests and a large amount of tear gas being dispersed.

In a recent London Review of Books Didier Fassin writes about Macron's neoliberal authoritarianism. In May's elections for the European Parliament Macron's En Marche! was nosed out by Marine Le Pen's National Rally. Not a good sign for Macron's "radical center" political project.

Fassin, who I quote at length, is worth reading because he shows just how authoritarian Macron's government is:

The lessons that Macron drew from his 2017 campaign seemed, as the historian Robert Zaretzky wrote, to be the ‘wrong ones’ for 2019. Part of the reason is technical. Unlike the majority system in national elections in France, the European Parliament is elected by proportional representation, which does not produce a single winner. Tactical voting – in which the prime objective is to eliminate undesirable candidates – is ruled out. But that aside, the key to Macron’s poor performance in May is that two years after his election, many in France – and increasingly in Europe – consider his self-styled progressive identity to be at odds with his actual politics: a mix of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, projected by means of his own distinctive form of populism.

Neoliberal attitudes are what one might expect of a man who had no background in politics but networked his way through a brief career in investment banking. This was evident from the policies he implemented when he came to power: a flat tax on interest from capital and abolition of the wealth tax; a rewriting of the labour code to expand corporate power; taking away protections for railworkers; the end of inflation-indexed pensions; a cut in housing benefit for the poor; a 15-fold rise in college tuition fees for students outside the European Economic Area; the full privatisation of companies in which the state is a majority shareholder, including those that run the Paris airports. Comparisons have been made with Donald Trump’s reforms, but as the French economist Philippe Askenazy sees it, a better analogy is with Thatcher and Blair: as Brexit offers opportunities for Europeans to take over key British assets on the Continent, the implicit slogan is: ‘Make France Greater Britain.’

Macron’s authoritarian style was less visible at the start, but soon showed in the decisions he took and intentions he expressed. The suppression of parliamentary debate on major reforms in favour of passing laws by decree diminished the power of the legislature, which Macron wanted to reduce further by abolishing the Senate. Powers granted to the police at the expense of judges, the expansion of the role of public prosecutors (who are answerable to the minister of justice) and the closure of local courts (to be replaced by online processes) have weakened the judiciary. The abolition of local taxes has reduced the financial resources – and thereby the power – of municipalities. The lack of negotiations over major reforms has marginalised trade unions and strengthened the government’s alliance with employers’ organisations. In consequence, both the principal checks and balances on government power and the role of intermediary bodies are coming under threat. Political parties and independent media are under pressure too. Police raids were ordered on the headquarters of La France Insoumise, Macron’s fiercest critics, and on the offices of Mediapart, a news site that has exposed several scandals in Macron’s circle. After Le Monde revealed various intrigues involving the president’s entourage, its director and one of its investigative journalists were summoned by the intelligence services.

Saudi Coalition Imploding in Yemen

A lengthy story in The New York Times, "U.A.E. Pulls Most Forces From Yemen in Blow to Saudi War Effort," by Declan Walsh and David Kirkpatrick, confirms what was reported last week in the Wall Street Journal: United Arab Emirates is abandoning the war in Yemen. 

This is dire news for Saudi Arabia since it was UAE-led forces that have achieved most if not all of the significant battlefield victories against the Houthis in Yemen. Word is that now, with the UAE departing, the militias that control Aden will set to fighting among themselves; also, Houthi forces will be able to lift the siege of the critical port city of Hodeidah.

Walsh and Kirkpatrick's dispatch is filled with juicy quotes from Western aficionados:

The drawdown “is going to expose the Saudis to the reality that this war is a failure,” said Michael Stephens of the Royal United Services Institute, a research group in London. “It tells us the two main protagonists on the coalition side, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, don’t have the same idea of what success looks like.”

[snip]

“The only thing stopping the Houthis from taking over Yemen was the U.A.E. armed forces,” said Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “Now the glue that was holding Yemen together is being withdrawn.”

[snip] 

The Saudis, though, may still believe in a military victory. “There are voices in Riyadh who think the Houthis can be caused enough pain to do what Saudi Arabia wants,” said Peter Salisbury of the International Crisis Group. “But that feels like wishful thinking, which is not a good substitute for strategy.”

One face-saving solution for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would be for Trump to start a shooting war with Iran. Then MbS could announce his own drawdown in Yemen to bolster the U.S. effort.

The pressures are going to be enormous to begin a war on Iran this summer.

We are at the End of Neoliberalism

The United Kingdom is now taking the lead when it comes to provoking a military conflict with Iran. Trump, mindful that a U.S.-initiated war would doom his re-election prospects, has passed the baton to the poodle. Last week Great Britain seized an Iranian oil tanker off the coast of Gibraltar. This morning the British are claiming a standoff in the Persian Gulf with three Iranian vessels:

In its statement on Thursday, the British government said three Iranian boats had attempted to stop the British Heritage in the early morning as it headed toward the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage out of the Persian Gulf that is a vital channel for international oil supplies.

A British warship, the Montrose, had been escorting the tanker in an effort to guard against any Iranian interference. After a short standoff, the British warned the three Iranian boats to back away and they did, the British government said in its statement.

“H.M.S. Montrose was forced to position herself between the Iranian vessels and British Heritage and issue verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, which then turned away,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

From the British perspective, it sounds too good to be true. John Bull standing tall and the little Persian ferrets scrambling away in terror. What poppycock!

The UK is in a prolonged meltdown: Two reeking Tory cadavers compete to head a government that has almost no popular standing, while the opposition is being torn apart by a fictitious plague of anti-Semitism -- and the Brexit bell set to toll on Halloween.

The Iranian revolution is part of the ontology of the neoliberal age, now more than 40 years old. This confrontation of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a confrontation with the foundation of the West's own frozen neoliberal paradigm. We are at the end of neoliberalism. Something new is about to be born.

Pelosi vs. AOC

Nancy Pelosi protects the rich donors who control the Democratic Party. That's her role as the principal elected official of the party. Sometimes she is an effective critic of Trump. But for the most part she suffocates any progressive breath in her caucus.

On Sunday Maureen Dowd published a column "It’s Nancy Pelosi’s Parade" in which the speaker is quoted dismissing "the squad" -- Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York , Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts -- as basically inconsequential, that it has no support in congress.

Pelosi comments have created a furor:

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, went much further, arguing in a series of tweets that his boss and her first-term colleagues were better at leading than Ms. Pelosi was, that Democratic leaders were not willing to fight for their principles, and that the speaker had failed to deliver any Democratic victories while shrinking from impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump.

“Pelosi claims we can’t focus on impeachment because it’s a distraction from kitchen table issues,” Mr. Chakrabarti wrote. “But I’d challenge you to find voters that can name a single thing House Democrats have done for their kitchen table this year. What is this legislative mastermind doing?”

The ray of sunshine here is that Pelosi is gone as speaker after 2020. That was the deal she cut to become speaker again after the Democrats took the majority following the 2018 Blue Wave.

If only "the squad" were more radical. Right now AOC is better than nothing. Same with Omar and Tlaib. Let them go to war with Pelosi. It would do the party a lot of good.

A Craving for Justice

Julie Brown's Miami Herald bombshell "How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime," which appeared in November, found its target on Saturday when financier Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for operating a sex-trafficking ring. It is now completely dominating the news; for instance, the top four "most popular" stories presently featured on The New York Times homepage are all Epstein stories.

Why? This story -- how federal prosecutors in Florida's Southern District basically issued Epstein a get-out-of-jail-free card back in 2008 -- has been out there for months if not years. But now more so than a decade ago there is an intense desire on the public's part that the high be brought low. There is a desperate "last gasp" aspect to this desire because it is so obvious that the rich, who rule the world as absolutely as the monarchs of old, have fucked things up beyond repair.

While former president Bill Clinton shamelessly tries to distance himself from his bosom buddy, claiming that he only rode on Epstein's private jet a couple of times when dozens of trips have been reported, one can feel a palpable craving for justice in the heartland.

Iran Increases Uranium Enrichment with an Eye to the U.S. Presidential Election

The International Atomic Energy Agency today will confirm that Iran has surpassed the 3.67% uranium enrichment cap established by the JCPOA. Megan Specia in "Iran Says It Has Surpassed Critical Nuclear Enrichment Level in 2015 Deal" quotes the busy spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang, at a news conference today:

“The U.S. side not only unilaterally withdrew from the agreement but also created more and more obstacles for Iran and other parties to implement the agreement through unilateral sanctions and long-armed jurisdiction,” he said. “It has been proven that unilateral bullying has become a worsening ‘tumor’ and is creating more problems and greater crises on a global scale.”

Specia also reports this nugget regarding the Iranian oil tanker seized by the UK:

A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Abbas Mousavi, said that the vessel had not been bound for Syria as British officials had suggested, Iranian state media reported.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, said the seizure of the ship set a “dangerous precedent” in a Twitter post on Monday. Using the derogatory label “B Team” to refer to President Trump’s advisers and some allies, Mr. Zarif said Iran was not subject to the European sanctions on Syria, as it is not part of the European Union.

“UK’s unlawful seizure of a tanker with Iranian oil on behalf of #B_Team is piracy, pure and simple,” he wrote.

Chomsky, in a talk recorded months ago, mentions how extraterritorialty as practiced by the United States has become so normalized that we no longer even pay attention to it. It's the assumed doctrine of "global capitalism in one country."

Iran has increased the enrichment level of its uranium with an eye to the calendar.

Trump is boxed by the fast-approaching election year. The prospect of a war against Iran is enormously unpopular with voters. If Trump launches such a war in the next year, he's a one-term president. So Iran is basically calling the question.

Europe as presently constituted is incapable of leading. Iran will not negotiate with the United States until it rescinds its sanctions, something, as we have seen in relation to North Korea, Trump will not do. So we're stuck with the status quo, which is an ever-expanding list of provocations.

In Coming War Iran will Seek to Topple Gulf Monarchies

Naked Capitalism re-posts Raul Ilargi's "Memo to the US – The Winds Are Shifting" this morning. It's a breath of fresh air. How often is the big picture illuminated for us? Not very often:

The sanctions on Syria were always aimed at one goal: getting rid of Assad. That purpose failed either miserably or spectacularly, depending on your point of view. It did achieve one thing though, and if I were you I wouldn’t be too sure this was not the goal all along.

That is, out of a pre-war population of 22 million, the United Nations in 2016 identified 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance; over 6 million are internally displaced within Syria, and around 5 million are refugees outside of Syria. About half a million are estimated to have died, the same number as in Iraq.

And Assad is still there and probably stronger than ever. But it doesn’t even matter whether the US/UK/EU regime change efforts are successful or not, and I have no doubt they’ve always known this. Their aim is to create chaos as a war tactic, and kill as many people as they can. How do you define terror, terrorism? However you define it, ‘we’ are spreading it.

That grossly failed attempt to depose Assad has left Europe with a refugee problem it may never be able to control. And the only reason there is such a problem is that Europe, in particular Britain and France, along with the US, tried to bomb these people’s homelands out of existence. Because their leaders didn’t want to conform to “our standards”, i.e. have our oil companies seize and control their supplies.

The UK's seizure of an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar is more proof that a war with Persia is right around the corner. Seizing ships is already an act of war. Escalation is going to be impossible to avoid.

Iranian leadership must have concluded by now that a war is inevitable. What's the Iranian plan to win the war? I don't think it involves an attack on Israel. I think the target will be the Gulf monarchies.

These despotic regimes are unpopular with the U.S. electorate. If in the next year Trump initiates a shooting war against Iran in defense of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates he will not be re-elected.

Europe Must Defend the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that the United Arab Emirates "is aiming to pull most of its forces out of the Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen." Also on Tuesday, a Houthi drone attacked the airport in Abha, Saudi Arabia, wounding nine.

One wonders if UAE is withdrawing from Yemen to ready itself for the coming war on Iran. As AP reports, "Iran this week breached a low-enriched uranium stockpile limitation set by the deal and said by Sunday it would increase its enrichment of uranium closer to weapons-grade levels if Europe does not offer it a new deal."

The ontology of Europe is such that it is incapable of action in opposition to the United States. The problem for Europe, and the planet as a whole, is that the United States is now inseparable from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the apartheid settler state of Israel. All three are fundamentally warfare states.

Our only hope to counter a catastrophic war on Iran is if Europe acts independently and confronts the United States. A fulsome defense of the JCPOA is the only way. But it doesn't appear that France, let alone the UK, intends to provide that defense.

Possibility of Hong Kong Protests Spreading to Chinese Mainland

Yesterday protesters (see "Hong Kong Protesters Storm Legislature, Dividing the Movement" by Javier Hernandez) occupied Hong Kong's Legislative Council building for three hours, breaking glass, spraying paint and smashing office equipment. Most of the protesters had dispersed by the time the police reclaimed the building.

In the aftermath, the protest movement that has mobilized to defeat legislation allowing for extradition to the Chinese mainland is being declared effectively over. Hernandez concludes his dispatch:

“This movement has reached its end,” said Tian Feilong, the executive director of a research institute on Hong Kong policy in Beijing, citing the divisions between lawmakers and more extreme protesters. “It will cool down by itself.”

The political crisis might prompt officials to place even greater pressure on Beijing’s formidable network of sympathetic business executives, media outlets and civil servants in Hong Kong, experts say, such as by threatening employees of mainland companies whose children participate in the protests.

“Those elements will be pushed to the max to elicit greater compliance from the population,” said Victor Shih, an associate professor of political economy at the University of California, San Diego.

The movement now enters a period of uncertainty. Arrests are likely. Divisions are growing among protesters. Without a recognized set of leaders, the demonstrations lack a sense of focus.

Victoria Hui, an associate professor who studies Hong Kong politics at the University of Notre Dame, said a successful protest required some level of coordination, even if it was decentralized.

“It cannot be leaderless,” she said. “They need better coordination. It’s not worth it to court arrest.”

Peter Symonds of World Socialist Web Site sees the Hong Kong protests differently, not confined merely to the issue of extradition but encompassing housing and inequality that could spark protests on the mainland.

Writing in the South China Morning Post last Friday, commentator Albert Cheng cautiously advised Beijing and its Hong Kong administration that in order to end the protests it had to address the underlying social issues. “The government’s incompetence in tackling the city’s long-standing problems, such as the wealth gap and lack of upward mobility, has generated despair among the younger generation, prompting them to take to the streets,” he wrote.

The continuing protests are creating a political crisis, not just for the Lam administration but for Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing. The CCP leadership is afraid that the political unrest in Hong Kong will spill into the Chinese mainland despite its efforts to block out any news of the protests.

The upheaval compounds the mounting problems and dilemmas confronting the CCP bureaucracy, which faces Washington’s aggressive trade and economic war and continuing US military provocations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. The Chinese economy is continuing to slow, with growth rates well below the 8 percent benchmark that was long touted as necessary to avoid rising unemployment and social unrest.

Reflecting the deep-seated anxieties in Chinese ruling circles, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang warned the National People’s Congress in March: “There is still public dissatisfaction in many areas, such as education, healthcare, elderly care, housing, food and drug safety, and income distribution. Last year saw a number of public safety incidents and major workplace incidents.”

The CCP regime fears a political movement of the working class. It went to great lengths to black out any mention of the 30th anniversary of the June 4-5 Tiananmen Square massacre, which was aimed at crushing the mass opposition of Chinese workers to the consequences of the regime’s pro-market policies. Any mass movement of workers today would erupt on a far wider scale than in 1989.

The potential for the Hong Kong protests to trigger instability throughout China, and elsewhere, may account for the rather muted response in Western capitals. The European Union appealed for restraint and dialogue to defuse the protests, while Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, notorious for his militarist views, simply called on China “to adhere to its international obligations.”

The Western mainstream press exists substantially in its present form to demonize China. Now that it has its golden ticket, it's conflicted about using it.

Huawei's Ren Zhengfei Predicts Trump's Defeat in 2020?

Another pause in the U.S.-China trade war was announced by Trump over the weekend at the G20 meeting in Osaka. Analysts are already dismissing the truce as inconsequential since a ceasefire has been announced before (the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires last fall) to no avail.

A main sticking point in the negotiations is the U.S. blacklisting Huawei. The company is said to be far ahead of any competitor in bringing 5G technology, the next generation of mobile internet, to market. 

Trump relented in Osaka and announced that U.S. firms could once again sell component parts to Huawei without first obtaining a waiver from the government.

Huawei has been holding its own in the trade war. According to Raymond Zhong in "As Trump and Xi Talk Trade, Huawei Will Loom Large":

[A] few weeks ago, China began issuing commercial 5G licenses to mobile carriers, ahead of the schedule that many observers had expected. Analysts at J.P. Morgan called the move an attempt “by the government to assure the world about China’s capability to push forward 5G.” China’s state-run telecom operators have also signed agreements to buy 5G gear from Huawei.

“They can survive,” Xiaomeng Lu of Access Partnership, a policy consulting firm, said of Huawei. The company will just have to stand more firmly on China’s side of the increasingly “splintered” world of tech, Ms. Lu said. “The U.S. only picks suppliers they trust, and China will pick suppliers they trust.”

Zhong quotes Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei in what looks to be a prediction of Trump's defeat in 2020:

Huawei’s leaders do not seem to believe that China and the United States are heading for a permanent divorce.

At an event last week, the firm’s founder and chief executive, Ren Zhengfei, predicted that business would be tough for the next two years. But he said he hoped to resume working with American partners in the not-too-distant future.

“We are not afraid of using American components,” Mr. Ren said. “We are not afraid of working with any American people.”