Italy's New M5S-PD Government Not Quite a Done Deal

On Wednesday Italian president Sergio Mattarella gave his permission to recently resigned prime minister Giuseppe Conte to form a new government, this one, as Jason Horowitz describes,  "a populist/anti-populist coalition between Five Star and the center-left Democratic Party."

Beppe Severgnini, writing an opinion piece today for The New York Times, is skeptical that M5S-PD will be a lasting marriage:

Still, the outcome is not obvious. A new government is likely to be formed, in the next few days. But the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement are quite different, and so are their voters. If their strange marriage fails, President Mattarella — the coolest head in this whole mess — will have no choice but to dissolve Parliament and call for a general election in the autumn. So Italy is, once again, on the brink — a spot it occupies all too often. Will it manage to take a step back and avoid going over? It might. On three conditions.

First, the political agenda. A government is formed to do something, not to prevent someone else’s rise (even if that someone is Mr. Salvini). The Democratic Party stands for open society, open market, investments, Europe and NATO; Five Star has been toying with conspiracy theories and anti-vaxx propaganda, has ranted against the European Union and supported Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The Democrats belong, in most respects, to the new moderate left; the Five Stars borrow many ideas from the old radical left. A good sign is that the most quarrelsome characters, such as Alessandro Di Battista, are not expected to be in the new government. And the outgoing (and incoming) prime minister just took control of the digital transformation of the notoriously labyrinthine Italian Civil Service.

In other words, what this "government waiting to be born" really is, more than a coalition of populist/anti-populist, as Horowitz formulated, is a coalition of neoliberal/anti-neoliberal. The Five Star Movement established itself criticizing neoliberal austerity and corruption.

David Broder thinks M5S is cravenly opportunistic, stands for nothing and its Rousseau online plebiscite a sham.

We'll see. Luigi Di Maio has promised to clear the new coalition with the M5S rank'n'file. According to Horowitz:

To allay the concerns of the Five Star base, Mr. Di Maio late Tuesday night announced that any government proposals would be subject to a vote on Five Star’s internet platform, where all their candidates and policies are approved.

The platform, called Rousseau, is owned by Davide Casaleggio, an unelected web entrepreneur, who has argued that representative democracy is passé and will soon be replaced by the internet. Party dissidents have said he personally decides the outcome of online votes and is the true power behind Five Star.

On Wednesday, Andrea Orlando, the deputy secretary of the Democratic Party, told reporters that it would be “unacceptable if the vote on Rousseau should enter into conflict with the procedures in the Constitution and on the decisions taken by the president.”

But in an interview Wednesday night, Pietro Dettori, a power broker within Five Star who is close to Mr. Casaleggio, said that while the date of a vote still hadn’t been set, it “will also be on the alliance.”

Brexit: We Should Know by Next Week if Labour Can Block a Crash Out

What was initially reported yesterday as a tricky move by Boris Johnson to extend the time that parliament is in recess following its break in September for party conferences, hyperbolized as the day progressed into #StopTheCoup prorogation. Craig Murray captures the spirit with "Boris Johnson Crosses the Rubicon: We Must React Now":

Boris Johnson has crossed the Rubicon today by announcing the suspension of Parliament at this crucial time, no matter how many days the suspension lasts. The United Kingdom has found itself with the most right wing government in nearly two hundred years. I still find it hard to believe that Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab and Priti Patel hold great offices. Even that minority of those voting who put this Tory minority government in place did not expect that. Now that right wing coup is being doubled down on by the deliberate suspension of the Westminster parliament just as the most crucial and divisive issue in several generations is being resolved.

There is an irony here. Johnson has been able to take over without facing the electorate because of the polite constitutional fiction that it is the same Conservative government continuing and nothing has changed. Yet he justifies the prorogation of parliament by the argument that it is a new government and a new Queen’s Speech is thus needed. Johnson is of course famously in favour of having cake and eating it, but the chutzpah of this is breathtaking.

As countries slip to the far right, the failure of the more decent forces in society to unite and to react with sufficient vigour is crucial. Jo Swinson and others need to stop their caviling and get behind Jeremy Corbyn’s no confidence plans.

The flinty Yves Smith thinks the #StopTheCoup outrage is overdone:

Mind you, as much as the Government’s ploy is awfully cheeky, it’s not as if Parliament was distinguishing itself in terms of its seriousness in trying to stop Brexit. Parliament took its customary summer recess. Perhaps I missed it, but I did not see any serious effort afoot to curtail the normal autumn caucus recess. As a result, the practical impact of this gambit is to reduce the time in which Parliament was set to be in session on its normal schedule by a mere four days.

But Smith misses the point of prorogation -- possibly due to the fact that she posts very early in the morning EST and the breaking stories yesterday did not define Johnson's gambit as a prorogue -- that when parliament returns for the Queen's Speech in mid-October it will be a new parliament. Stephen Castle explains:

Lawmakers are scheduled to return from a summer vacation next week but Mr. Johnson’s move means that Parliament will be suspended some time the following week. That heads off any attempt by his opponents to tack on a few more days, a tactic they were considering.

His new timetable has Parliament resuming work on Oct. 14, after the political parties hold their annual conferences — and several days later than previously expected. In addition, he has scheduled an address to Parliament on that date by the queen, laying out his government’s agenda, which lawmakers must then debate, taking up several critical days.

Mr. Johnson had the option of continuing the current session of Parliament into October, but instead he is starting a new one, meaning that any pending legislation intended to bind his hands will not carry over. If lawmakers who want to prevent a no-deal Brexit cannot draft, introduce and pass legislation in the next two weeks, they will have to start again from scratch in mid-October.

Labour promises to introduce "Standing Order Section 24 Motion and that would be to try and have an emergency debate."

So we'll know by next week if enough Remain Tories are willing to step out from Johnson's shadow and collapse his government. Clearly there is a move to bolster their confidence that the Tories will do just fine in a general election; therefore, they should stand pat with Boris.

The Brexit zombie drama is reaching a climax.

Boris (Finally) Shows his Hand on Brexit

The breaking news on Brexit this morning (see Stephen Castle's "Boris Johnson Seeks to Stifle Brexit Opposition With Surprise Parliamentary Delay") is that the British prime minister plans not to prorogue parliament but to reconvene it later than usual:

Parliament, currently on vacation, is scheduled to meet during the first two weeks of September, and then to be suspended for annual political party conferences. Parliament had been scheduled to reconvene on Oct. 9.

But in a letter sent Wednesday to all members of Parliament, Mr. Johnson said he intended to resume on Oct. 14, with a speech by Queen Elizabeth II, laying out the agenda of the Conservative government under Mr. Johnson, who took office last month.

A new session of Parliament begins with a queen’s speech, an elaborate ceremonial occasion that requires a significant chunk of parliamentary time, and the prime minister has great leeway in deciding on the timing. By scheduling it before the Brexit deadline, he would further limit the time available to opponents of a no-deal Brexit.

This has caught Brexit watchers by surprise. Johnson seems to have successfully feinted the other day when it was leaked that he had asked attorney general Geoffrey Cox whether parliament could be prorogued for five weeks starting September 9.

Yves Smith had a helpful write-up yesterday, "Brexit: Sound and Fury," where she once again illuminated the bottom line:

We’re in Groundhog Day territory yet again, with the tired threat of not paying the so-called divorce tab again rearing it ugly head. It is quite astonishing that most of what passes for the elites in the UK seem not to grasp that Brexit is not the end of the road, but merely an irrevocable first step in what will be a long and taxing process of forging new trade agreements with the rest of the world and making significant legal, economic, and lifestyle changes as a result of that. Those of you who are keeping tabs on the finer points of the Brexit negotiations likely took note of Barnier saying that any trade deal with the EU would require the UK to commit to the main points of the Withdrawal Agreement, in particular, the exit bill, the provisions regarding movement of people, and something a lot like the backstop (Clive pointed out it would be very hard to devise an analogue to the backstop arrangements absent a transition period, which comes only with a Withdrawal Agreement).

At least Johnson has shown his cards. And what do they reveal? Really what we've known all along: That the essence of the Tory position has always been delay; delay until a crash out becomes inevitable.

Unless Jo Swinson, new leader of the Liberal Democrats, changes her tune and agrees to Jeremy Corbyn's unity government, it looks like Johnson will be successful.

This morning Corbyn is promising to block Johnson when parliament meets next week.  But if Corbyn can't accomplish this, even if Johnson loses a confidence vote, it doesn't appear that there is enough room left on the calendar to prevent a crash out.

Bad News for Biden

Bad news for Joe Biden. The latest Monmouth Poll, released Monday, shows him at 19% running behind Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who are both at 20%.  Yesterday, Lambert Strether added some atmosphere in the form of a reader's eyewitness account of Biden's appearance at Dartmouth College on Friday, August 23:

Then Biden came out. As I said last night, very frail, fragile, and super thin. Slow, deliberate steps. Skin was tissue-papery and getting to that translucent stage that very elderly people can have. I was so shocked. He looks at least 85-90, not 76. And I’ve seen healthier, more vibrant 90-year olds!

After the Dartmouth appearance FOX's Tucker Carlson confidently predicted that Biden would not be the Democratic Party's nominee.

What is no doubt causing panic in the corporate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee is the Monmouth Poll also illustrates how far distant all the also-ran neoliberals remain:

Senator Kamala Harris of California remained steady with 8 percent support. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey gained slightly, from 2 percent in June to 4 percent in August. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., got 4 percent, compared with 5 percent in June.

How much longer will the DNC brain trust engage in the fantasy of a Buttigieg or Harris nomination?

Clearly the task before the neoliberal ruling elite is to guide the voters abandoning Biden's sinking candidacy in the direction of Elizabeth Warren's campaign, and then co-opt Warren, principally through a New Cold War foreign policy, to which she already basically pledges allegiance.

This is only meaningful route available to the DNCers. Because for every day dithered away in daydreams of Kamala, that is a day that Bernie Sanders gobbles up defectors from Joe Biden's failing campaign.

Turkish Buffer Zone in Northeast Syria Takes Shape

Turkey and the United States announced over the weekend that a joint operations center for overseeing the new buffer zone in northeastern Syria, or "safe zone" as Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan prefers, is opened for business. As Selcan Hacaoglu reports for Bloomberg,

Turkey sees its deal with the U.S. to carve out a narrow security zone in northern Syria as just the beginning, two Turkish officials said, with Ankara determined to purge Kurdish fighters from a much larger section of the border region.

After weeks of difficult negotiations, the NATO allies agreed this month to jointly patrol an area stretching 125 kilometers (78 miles) between the Syrian towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and up to 15 kilometers deep, according to the officials, who have direct knowledge of the talks but asked not to be identified in line with regulations barring them from talking to the media.

While the agreement should allow Turkey’s military to move into northeast Syria without firing a shot, the country could unleash a unilateral incursion if the zone isn’t deepened and extended by as much as several hundred kilometers at a later date, they said.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on the Turkish plans.

Turkey has deployed 10 brigades along its frontier between the Euphrates River and the Iraqi border to confront an estimated 15,000 members of the Kurdish YPG, the officials added.

A joint Turkish-U.S. headquarters designed to oversee a buffer zone in northern Syria became “fully operational” on Saturday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, citing Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. A first helicopter flight over the zone, which will be off-limits to U.S.-backed YPG forces, was planned for Saturday.

It looks like Turkey is getting much of what it wants. The Kurdish YPG must abandon its fortified positions, hand over its heavy weapons to the U.S. and leave the area:

The Turkish-U.S. agreement foresees the immediate withdrawal of YPG fighters from the buffer zone, with the U.S. collecting heavy weapons it had supplied to the group, the officials said. Fortified Kurdish positions and tunnels were to be destroyed, they said. Turkey wants members of the YPG’s political wing, called the PYD, to leave the area as well.

[snip]

The deal allows for Turkish armed drones to start surveillance flights over the zone but the U.S. hasn’t yet agreed to overflights by Turkish warplanes, the officials said. The U.S. also opposes Turkey’s proposal to move Ankara-backed rebels of the Free Syrian Army to the area, but did agree that refugees living in Turkey could return, they said.

Joint military patrols are expected to start within a month and Turkey will set up four bases ahead of the creation a local security force, the officials said.

Turkish demands to be able to deploy as many troops as it considers necessary to enforce security were rebuffed, with the U.S. agreeing only to the deployment of two Turkish soldiers for every American soldier, they added.

Turkey has stepped up attacks on the Kurdistan Workers Party; at the same time, Turkish alignment with Al Qaeda in Idlib has been exposed and is going poorly.

The Kurds are sophisticated actors. They will either resist a campaign of ethnic cleansing approved by the United States; or the U.S. has provided assurances that the safe zone is a ruse. It's hard to imagine the latter.

South Korea and Japan to be at Odds for the Long Haul

An interesting installment in the yarn of a disintegrating global order is the ongoing feud between South Korea and Japan. The story is usually presented as another example of Trump's "America first" sowing chaos among longtime allies, not to be mention the Trump administration's general incompetence. This is no doubt true.

The latest news (see "South Korea Says It Will End Intelligence-Sharing Deal With Japan, Adding to Tensions" by Choe Sang-Hun, Motoko Rich and Edward Wong) is that South Korea has pulled out of an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan. The agreement was cobbled together by the Obama administration to free the U.S. from having to act as middleman for the two countries when it came to comparing notes on North Korea's ballistic missile program.

The summary of events that led us here is an interesting one:

South Korea’s relations with Japan soured late last year when Mr. Moon’s government took steps to effectively nullify a 2015 agreement his conservative predecessor had reached with Tokyo over the so-called comfort women, Korean women and girls who were forced or lured into brothels for Japanese soldiers during World War II. The 2015 deal was meant to lay that painful issue to rest, and Japan accused Mr. Moon of tearing the wounds open again.

Matters worsened when South Korea’s highest court ruled that Korean victims of forced labor under colonial rule could seek compensation from Japanese companies. In recent weeks, the discord over historical issues began bleeding into the countries’ trade ties.

Japan removed South Korea from its “white list” of most-trusted trading partners and tightened controls on three chemicals needed to make semiconductors and flat-panel displays, which are major South Korean exports. The move was seen as an attack on South Korea’s major electronics firms, most notably Samsung and LG, which are pillars of the country’s economy.

Angry South Koreans responded with protests and widespread boycotts of Japanese goods, like the fashion retailer Uniqlo, while Mr. Moon’s government downgraded Japan’s trade status. Lawmakers and protesters demanded that the intelligence-sharing agreement be scrapped.

What is even more interesting is the Trump administration assessment that South Korea-Japan relations won't normalize anytime soon:

American officials are closely watching Mr. Moon’s latest move in the context of domestic politics and attempts to shore up support for him and his party, a senior administration official said. It will be difficult to encourage reinstatement of the intelligence-sharing agreement with the current administrations in Seoul and Tokyo, the official added.

M5S-PD Coalition Set to Govern Italy

It took about 14 months for the Five Star Movement-League coalition government to burst apart, but explode it has. Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte resigned Tuesday ahead of a no confidence vote. The no confidence vote was brought about League firebrand and government interior minister Matteo Salvini withdrawing his support from the coalition.

The widely accepted view is that Salvini sees the late summer as his best opportunity to hold new elections, the result of which would be to make him prime minister. Over the last year the anti-immigrant League has replaced the Five Star Movement (M5S) as the most popular party in Italy. In May's European Parliament elections the League won 34% of the vote, whereas the M5S, with close to 33% in the national parliamentary elections last year, fell to 17%.

Today Italian president Sergio Mattarella will meet with party leaders to see if a new coalition can form a government. The main contender is M5S-Democratic Party (PD) combine; strange bedfellows given that M5S came to power relentlessly skewering the neoliberal austerity and Brussels group-think of the PD. But the bigger threat for both parties now is the dramatic rise of the Italian Trump, Salvini.

If Mattarella fails to find a successor coalition, something explained by Marianne Arens, he can always name a technocratic government:

The next step is at the discretion of the 78-year-old President Mattarella, who himself comes from the PD. If no new coalition is formed, he could also appoint a government of experts, which would then also require a parliamentary majority. If Mattarella opts for new elections, which is considered unlikely, they must take place within 60 days. One last possibility would be for the Lega and the Five Star Movement to resume their coalition.

The politics of the collapse of the M5S-League government has to do with writing a budget due in October. Arens explains,

The most immediate task of the next government is to present a budget that complies with European Union deficit guidelines by October 15, which will require massive cuts at the expense of the working class. If the PD and the Five Stars take on this task, Salvini and Lega, which would then nominally be in opposition, could be further strengthened.

The acidic Jason Horowitz  writing in the neoliberal NYT notes that "Some analysts speculated that Mr. Salvini actually wanted out in order to avoid the difficult budget cutting required in the coming months to avoid an automatic tax hike."

My guess is that the Democratic Party will aggressively pursue the coalition with M5S, confident that it can zombify the party in the next three years. M5S will likely go along because its fate at the polls looks particularly bleak now. The question is whether the online membership of the M5S will ratify a coalition with the PD.

A 2020 Presidential Election Prediction

This paragraph from yesterday's Water Cooler by Lambert Strether caught my eye:

Trump (R)(1): “An Anti-Trump Landslide?” [The American Conservative]. “Anything could happen between now and November 2020, but this new Fox News poll is not good news for the president. If the vote were held today, Joe Biden would clobber him, which is no surprise. But also, a geriatric New England socialist would beat the stuffing out of Trump. So would a preachy Harvard professor and a militantly progressive black woman from the San Francisco Bay Area.* An anti-Trump landslide at the top of the ticket could wash the GOP Senate majority away. We would then have a Democratic president and Congress — and they would be in a score-settling mood. One more time: anything could happen between now and Election Day 2020. But a recession, which is growing more likely by the day, would be something extremely hard for Trump to overcome.” • “Anti-Trump landslide” is Bitecofer’s theory of the case for 2018 and 2020. NOTE * Harris, lol.

With a year and a couple months to go until the 2020 general election, this is how it looks to me: Trump is going to lose, and he is going to lose big.

For the Democrats, Biden will not win the primary. Biden is the candidate of choice for all those who don't want to think about voting. Many of these Democrats will either not vote or change their mind when it comes time to actually cast their ballot. Polling is not voting. Trump 2016 should forever remind us of that fact. Exit polls on election day showed Hillary winning.

If not Biden then who? It's not going to be Buttigieg, and it's not going to be Harris. Both are warmed-over Obama clones. There is no great yearning for a return of Barack.

That leaves either Sanders, Warren or a sudden groundswell for a complete dark horse. Bernie grates on the average voter. He is too intense. Most people interact with politics on the level of entertainment. So at this point I doubt Bernie wins the nomination. A dark horse could emerge, but none of the candidates who fit the bill -- Julian Castro, Andrew Yang, Jay Inslee -- have either the gravitas or the charisma.

This leaves Elizabeth Warren. Warren will stick to a Hubert Humphreyesque "Happy Warrior" schtick, and she'll clean Trump's clock, winning in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Maybe even Ohio too.

Islamic State -- One Big Reason to Doubt Imminent Peace in Afghanistan

For months it has been reported that a peace deal will soon be reached allowing the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. There are many reasons to doubt this, one of which Mujib Mashal explores this morning in "As Taliban Talk Peace, ISIS Is Ready to Play the Spoiler in Afghanistan." 

In the aftermath of an Islamic State suicide bombing at a wedding in Kabul on Saturday which slaughtered 63 people, it is apparent that an end to hostilities will be difficult to bring about because, as witnessed in Syria, jihadists will simply go where the money is, and that is the Islamic State. Mashal argues that Islamic State in Afghanistan is run by Pakistan's military and intelligence services:

The Islamic State is set to grow if an extreme layer of insurgents breaks away from the Taliban to keep fighting, and it is likely to thrive if a hastily managed American military withdrawal leaves chaos behind.

“This is a replacement for the Taliban,” said Abdul Rahim Muslimdost, an Islamist cleric who has been jailed in Pakistan and in the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Muslimdost explained how he helped create the Islamic State chapter in Afghanistan — mostly, he said, from former Pakistani and Afghan Taliban members. He said he had since dissociated himself from it, contending that it had been infiltrated by Pakistan’s military and intelligence services.

That view is shared by some Afghanistan security officials. They have consistently portrayed the Islamic State as the continuation of what they describe as neighboring Pakistan’s policy of “strategic depth,” in which it exerts influence in Afghanistan through militant proxies.

The Taliban, whose leadership operates out of Pakistan, had long been seen as that country’s main source of leverage in Afghanistan. But even though international pressure has led Pakistan to support the peace process with the Taliban, Afghan officials accuse the country’s military establishment of investing in the Islamic State’s local chapter to maintain its influence.

They say there is overlap between the support networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that enable the Islamic State’s suicide bombings and the ones that helped the Taliban’s most lethal arm, the Haqqani network, carry out urban attacks for years.

“The responsibility of all these attacks — which are carried out with same tactics as the Taliban — goes to the Taliban,” said Massoud Andarabi, Afghanistan’s interior minister, even after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the wedding bombing on Saturday.

“It is the Taliban who have created the networks that make possible such terrorist attacks in our cities, and now they claim responsibility when they want for an attack and not when they don’t,” Mr. Andarabi said.

The U.S., as to be expected, denies that Islamic State is run by Pakistan.

Two critics of the United States in the region, Russia and Iran, claim that the Islamic State here is being nurtured by the Americans in order to destabilize everything around it.

Makes sense. Afghans think the entire peace overture in Qatar is a Trump reelection stunt. I think they are right. 

Weekend Epstein Blackout

The churn this morning on the Epstein story is mostly limited to a denial by Buckingham Palace that Prince Andrew committed any sex crimes. AP has a story  floating the possibility that Ghislaine Maxwell might be indicted as Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator.

The bombshell went off on Friday when New York City's Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson issued a brief statement that Jeffrey Epstein's death was caused by suicide. The New York Times followed up the next day (see "Inmate 76318-054: The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein") with what was clearly intended to be an atmospheric "case closed." But, as Patrick Martin argues this morning in the definitive "American media shuts down the Epstein story," the NYT story had the opposite effect:

The circumstances detailed by no less than seven reporters can be read quite differently from the conclusion drawn in the article. Perhaps Epstein was desperate to avoid his cell because he feared what was going to happen to him there. After all, he had barely escaped with his life on July 23.

Moreover, the Times reports: “Outside the meeting room, Mr. Epstein mounted a strategy to avoid being preyed upon by other inmates: He deposited money in their commissary accounts, according to a consultant who is often in the jail and speaks regularly with inmates there.” This again suggests fear on Epstein’s part of what others might do to him in prison.

Epstein’s own lawyers have indicated they do not accept the finding of suicide. “The defense team fully intends to conduct its own independent and complete investigation into the circumstances and cause of Mr. Epstein’s death,” they said in a statement. “We are not satisfied with the conclusions of the medical examiner.”

There are also reports that some jail staff members are not cooperating with the ongoing investigation into Epstein’s death.

One comes away from the story with the distinct impression that Epstein wanted to live.

Even with the mainstream push to blackout the Epstein suicide saga over the weekend, I doubt the story is going away. At the very least, the Miami Herald will keep publishing. This past weekend was about crowd control. By taking a timeout after the medical examiner released her statement Friday, the corporate media cut down the audience for the Epstein story.

One glaring failure of the medical examiner's statement is that there is still no basic description of how Epstein actually killed himself. Where did he attach the bed sheet? How was his body found? Since the medical examiner does not have to make her findings public, there is no indication the public will learn how Epstein died anytime soon. Epstein's July 23 suicide attempt also remains a mystery.

Let's see an indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell. Then we'll know the U.S. Attorney is serious.

Political Shakeup in Germany

While not as dire as a Brexit crash-out, politics in Germany is set to scramble the status quo before the end of the year. Reuters reports that German finance minister Olaf Scholz will run for the leadership of the Social Democrats. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been led by three interim chiefs since Andrea Nahles' resigned following the party's disastrous performance in European Parliament elections in May. Scholz is a pro-GroKo, which means he supports the maintenance of the Grand Coalition government of the SPD and Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU). The GroKo has been extremely damaging to the popularity of the SPD.

There are six main parties in Germany divided into three tiers in the polls. The top tier is occupied by the Greens and CDU, running currently in the mid-20s; then comes the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and SPD in the low teens. The bottom tier is occupied by The Left Party and the Free Democrats, both in single digits.

If Scholz is defeated by an anti-GroKo candidate in December there will either be a new red-red-green government (SPD-Left Party-Greens) or general elections that will likely see a red-red-green government as the result.

In July Adam Tooze sussed it all out in a lengthy article, "Which is worse?," published in The London Review of Books. I recommend it. Change is coming.

Broken Bones in Epstein's Neck Explain Why Medical Examiner Has Not Released Her Report

The Washington Post has published a leak of the autopsy findings (see "Autopsy finds broken bones in Jeffrey Epstein’s neck, deepening questions around his death" by Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis) that Jeffrey Epstein had broken neck bones, something more commonly associated with homicides, not hanging suicides:

Jonathan L. Arden, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said a hyoid can be broken in many circumstances but is more commonly associated with homicidal strangulation than suicidal hanging.

Arden, who was not involved in the Epstein autopsy, said that in general, a finding of a broken hyoid requires pathologists to conduct more extensive investigation. That investigation can include analysis of the location of the noose, how narrow the noose is, and if the body experienced any substantial drop in the course of the hanging.

This explains why the medical examiner has delayed the release of her report. We don't know because nothing has been released, but the assumption is that Epstein attached his sheet to his bunk bed and strangled himself. The broken hyoid leads one to speculate that Epstein took a flying leap from the top bunk. Hard to imagine.

Chalk One Up for Mainstream Containment of the Epstein Suicide Saga

To stay with the Epstein suicide saga again this morning, what's noteworthy is that the story has disappeared from the homepage of The New York Times. Scroll way down and there is a link to a story written by Sharon Otterman (see "Hundreds of Child Sexual Abuse Lawsuits Flood N.Y. Courts") about New York's Child Victims Act . The law allows victims of sexual abuse, regardless of their age, one year  to file civil suits against their abusers. More bad news for the Boys Scouts and the Catholic Church.

One has to peruse AP's top stories for the latest on the Epstein suicide. There is a compelling installment in the mainstream containment effort, "For inmates like Epstein, suicide watch is meant to be short" by Larry Neumeister and Michael Biesecker.  Basically, the Metropolitan Correctional Center is a rat-infested shit hole poorly staffed. Inmates kill themselves there all the time. And, oh, by the way, suicide watch is always short term because it involves abusive treatment for the inmate -- lights always on; no bedding -- and round-the-clock staffing.

So chalk one up for mainstream containment of the suicide narrative. Given this AP story, it is not so strange why the prison would remove Epstein from suicide. But the question persists, "When Epstein's cellmate posted bail on Friday, why wasn't he replaced?"

AP reports in a separate story --"Epstein accuser sues as questions swirl about his death" -- that correspondence relating to the case was released yesterday; it documents the judge who is presiding in Epstein case, Richard Berman, confused about the particulars of Epstein's July suicide attempt:

Last month, Epstein had been put on suicide watch, with 24-hour monitoring and daily psychiatric evaluations, after he was found on the floor of his cell with bruises on his neck. But he was taken off suicide watch at the end of July and returned to the jail’s special housing unit, for inmates requiring close supervision.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, who in charge of the criminal case against Epstein, asked the jail’s warden for answers about that episode, saying in a letter Monday that it had “never been definitively explained.”

The warden replied that an internal investigation was completed but that he couldn’t provide information because the findings were being incorporated into investigations into Epstein’s death.

The series of letters, made public Wednesday, began with the warden writing Berman to inform him that Epstein had died. The judge wrote in his response that Epstein’s death “is a tragedy to everyone involved in his case.”

Why has no public explanation been provided to date?  The DOJ is probably waiting to compile a Warren Report-like snow job to cow the press and buffalo the public.

One good thing about the Epstein suicide saga, it has brought the reporting of Whitney Webb a larger audience.

Struggle to Contain Epstein Suicide Saga Continues

The latest salvo in the Epstein suicide saga is the predictable scapegoating of front-line staff at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (see "Jeffrey Epstein Death: 2 Guards Slept Through Checks and Falsified Records" by Katie Benner and Danielle Ivory). Two guards have been placed on administrative leave and the warden reassigned. The guards apparently slept through watch duty and then falsified records to cover this up.

This doesn't explain why Epstein was removed from suicide watch:

He had apparently tried to commit suicide once before, on July 23, shortly after he was denied bail, which resulted in him being placed on suicide watch, prison officials familiar with the incident have said.

Six days later, prison officials determined that he was no longer a threat to his own life and returned him to a cell in the 9 South housing unit with another inmate, officials said. That inmate was later transferred out of the cell, leaving Mr. Epstein alone on Friday night.

Though it is standard practice to house people who have recently been taken off suicide watch with another person, the prison did not replace Mr. Epstein’s cellmate.

Leaving Epstein alone is what needs to be explained. Maybe one could write off this decision to bureaucratic incompetence if the prisoner in question was the lowest, most inconsequential of low-level offenders. But that wasn't the case with Epstein. Epstein was a superstar prisoner.

But the mainstream containment of the Epstein suicide saga is by no means complete. Take the trial balloon floated by Benner and Ivory purporting to explain how Epstein killed himself:

Prison staff discovered Mr. Epstein, 66, dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, officials said. He had apparently hanged himself with a bedsheet, likely fastening the sheet to a top bunk and pitching himself forward, law enforcement and prison officials said.

Those bunk beds must be awfully high.

A number investigations are underway, including interest by the House Judiciary Committee. It's going to be hard to control this narrative.

Mainstream Containment of the Epstein Suicide Saga

Obliquely answering the question from yesterday's post, "Who Made the Decision to Leave Epstein Alone in His Cell?" The Times' "Short-Staffed Jail, Epstein Was Left Alone for Hours; Guard Was Substitute" says in the story's last paragraph:

According to Bureau of Prisons' policy, several high-ranking prison officials would have had to have approved Mr. Epstein’s removal from the facility’s suicide prevention program, including the prison’s chief psychologist.

The rest of the story, as one can infer from the headline, seeks to pin the blame for Epstein's suicide on an overworked, short-staffed workforce at the Metropolitan Correctional Center; plainly, misdirection because even after Epstein was mysteriously removed from suicide watch, he should have been bunked with someone. Epstein's cellmate had been transferred recently and not been replaced. Who approved this transfer? Why was no replacement cellmate found?

The mainstream media is fast spinning a containment theory which combines blaming front-line workers at the corrections center with a robust critique of conspiracism (Epstein's suicide could not have been assisted by prison officials conspiring with shadowy individuals because all conspiracy theories are false).

We'll see where the story goes from here. It's encouraging that the Miami Herald is not letting go. We've reached nowhere near the level of media frenzy that followed the Khashoggi murder last fall, but we're in the ballpark.

Who Made the Decision to Leave Epstein Alone in His Cell?

It's going to be hard for the current narrative of Jeffrey Epstein's suicide to remain aloft. This is from NYT's "Before Jail Suicide, Jeffrey Epstein Was Left Alone and Not Closely Monitored":

Officials cautioned that their initial findings about his detention were preliminary and could change.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has already come under intense criticism for not keeping Mr. Epstein under a suicide watch after he had been found in his cell on July 23 with injuries that suggested he had tried to kill himself.

The law-enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said that when the decision was made to remove Mr. Epstein from suicide watch, the jail informed the Justice Department that Mr. Epstein would have a cellmate and that a guard “would look into his cell” every 30 minutes.

But that was apparently not done, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the death was still under investigation.

The city’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, announced on Sunday night that her office had conducted an autopsy of Mr. Epstein, but she declined to release a determination about the cause of death.

The story goes on to make a convincing case that Epstein should never have been taken off suicide watch, particularly given that by Friday "thousands of documents from a civil suit had been released, providing lurid accounts accusing Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing scores of girls." What The Times fails to mention, but Patrick Martin of World Socialist Web Site does, is that

The documents released Thursday named a number of prominent political and society figures as patrons of Epstein’s sex ring, including two top Democrats, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former governor and Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson, a one-time presidential candidate, as well as Prince Andrew, second son of the Queen of England.

Whatever the truth of the allegations against these individuals, there is no question that Epstein was for many years an integral part of the financial and political elite in the United States, hobnobbing with former presidents like Bill Clinton and future presidents—and equally corrupt billionaires—like Donald Trump.

Bill Richards, George Mitchell -- these are Clinton people.

In order for the Epstein suicide narrative to hold together the guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center will have to take the blame. The Times reports that

The two guards on duty in the protective housing unit where Mr. Epstein was housed were both working overtime, the prison official with knowledge of the incident said.

One of the corrections officers was working his fifth straight day of overtime, while the other officer had been forced to work overtime, the official said.

The implication here is that working overtime is synonymous with not performing one's regular duties, which is ludicrous. Working overtime is not unusual for a prison guard.

Clearly a decision was made at the supervisory level to leave Epstein alone in his cell undisturbed for long stretches of time with the expectation that he would kill himself.

Whoever made this decision -- why, and at whose behest -- should be identified.

Craig Murray, sharing his thoughts in "Epstein’s Death Must Be the Start, not the End, of the Investigation," is not hopeful:

The deeper question is why such a significant proportion of the rich and powerful have a propensity to want to assuage their sexual desires on the most vulnerable and powerless in society, as opposed to forming relationships among their peers. I suspect it is connected to the kind of sociopathy that leads somebody to seek or hoard power or wealth in the first place.

It is not necessary to develop that idea further, to understand that the Epstein case had given us a glimpse of criminal sexual behaviour which beyond doubt involves many powerful people. It is essential that the threads that can be grasped are now worked on assiduously to uncover the entire network.

I am afraid to say I suspect the chances of that actually happening are very slim indeed.

U.S. and Turkey Agree to Fudge on the Buffer Zone in Northeast Syria

Turkey and the United States decided to settle there differences over a proposed buffer zone in northeast Syria by agreeing to a hollow statement reaffirming the idea. According to Carlotta Gall,

Defense officials from both countries issued separate but similar statements after three days of talks in Ankara, the Turkish capital. The statements gave no details on the size of the zone or how it will be policed, which may still be undecided, but the agreement was presented by Turkey as a meeting of its demands.

[snip]

Discussions have been focused on the S.D.F. pulling its forces and weaponry away from the border area and on the size of the safe zone. The United States has preferred a zone that is just a few miles wide, whereas Turkey has sought a corridor along its border as deep as 20 miles.

The agreement announced on Wednesday appeared to be aimed only at ensuring that Turkish and American forces, who are NATO allies, do not come into conflict.

Syria blasted the agreement.

There is No Easy Out in Afghanistan for the U.S.

Peace negotiations between the United States and the Taliban continue in Qatar while violence spikes in Afghanistan. This morning there was another fatal car bomb in Kabul. According to "Blast in Kabul Kills 14 and Injures 145 as Taliban Continue Talks With U.S." by Fahim Abed and Mujib Mashal,

In a sign of how widespread the violence is, Afghan security forces conducted nearly 100 large military operations and small commando raids and airstrikes in the last 24 hours, the defense ministry said, adding that it had killed at least 84 Taliban fighters and wounded dozens of others.

[snip]

The violence comes as American diplomats are hashing out final details of a preliminary agreement with the Taliban in talks in the Qatari capital, Doha. A deal would pave the way for immediate direct negotiations between the Taliban and other Afghans over the political future of the country.

An agreement between the insurgents and the United States, expected to be finalized soon, would result in a schedule for a conditional withdrawal of the remaining 14,000 American troops and their NATO partners in return for assurances on the prevention of terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies from Afghan soil.

While the United States seems to have assured a third element of its peace plan — direct negotiations between the Taliban and other Afghans, including the national government, immediately after an announcement of a schedule for troop withdrawals — there is little clarity on a demand for a comprehensive cease-fire.

If it is taking this long to arrive at an understanding about a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, chances seem slim that any deal can be arrived between the Afghan government and the Taliban. There is a presidential election, already postponed twice, at the end of September that few will consider legitimate. Who will negotiate with the Taliban?

That's why I believe there is anxiety on the part of the Trump administration to have some sort of agreement in hand before September 28 because if things are violent and chaotic now they are bound to be even more so the closer election day approaches.

Trump is trying to cut and run. No doubt about it. And I don't think the Pentagon brass is too happy. But Trump has other wars he wants to fight -- Iran, Venezuela, to name only two.

The problem for Trump is that there is no easy way out of a country once you've been there for the better part of two decades. We have yet to see the worst.

It's Election Day

UPDATE II: There's a fair amount of  "Woe is me!" among Sawant supporters this morning based on last night's primary election returns. I say, "Fear not." Kshama will not be beaten by a Chamber shill. DeWolf's supporters will flow to Sawant; Murakami's, to Orion. Voters for Nguyen and Bowers are more likely to go with Kshama than Orion. It's going to be closer than 2015, but Kshama will still come out on top.

City of Seattle, Council District 3

Logan Bowers:  7.04% (1,347 votes)

Zachary DeWolf:  12.54% (2,401 votes)

Pat Murakami:  14.20% (2,719 votes)

Egan Orion:  23.74% (4,545 votes)

Kshama Sawant:  32.75% (6,270 votes)

Ami Nguyen:  9.50% (1,819 votes) 

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UPDATE: Sawant's campaign sent this out to her supporters this afternoon --

Did you see that the corporate cash flooding in against us from Amazon has made national news? Yesterday, The Guardian published an article titled “Is Amazon taking revenge on the Seattle socialist who took on the retail giant?” It certainly seems so. Fifteen of Amazon’s top executives and closest advisors have donated directly to at least one of our opponents. The Amazon corporation itself put $250,000 for “anybody but Kshama Sawant” into the Chamber of Commerce's corporate PAC (CASE), which is spending more money against us than on any other race in the city. Polls close tonight. We have an urgent message. In the final days of this election, CASE has dumped even more money against Councilmember Kshama Sawant, spending over $10,000 on a final round of attack mailers! CASE’s chosen candidate, Egan Orion, was quoted in The Guardian as saying: “Kshama Sawant is the worst partner for our large businesses. You know, a bologna sandwich would be a better partner.” As Kshama has made clear time and again, she is running as an unambiguous representative of working people, not the corporate elite, because you can’t serve two bosses. We’ll leave it to the bologna sandwiches to serve big business. Despite Orion’s campaign being propped up by nearly $200,000 in corporate PAC money, in a shocking display of hypocrisy and outright falsehood, Orion has been plastering District 3 with these posters:

This would be laughable if it weren’t so outrageous. When confronted about it on social media, Orion claimed that the corporate PACs just “happen to be supporting him.” This is a lie.  In reality, Orion had to directly apply to the Chamber of Commerce corporate PAC by submitting their questionnaire. Orion even stated that he was “honored” to have received their endorsement. And now this corporate PAC has spent more money on Orion than on any other candidate in the entire city. We’re proud that we just hit our fundraising goal for the primary election of raising $280,000, which cancels out the big checks written earlier this summer by Amazon and luxury developer Vulcan! But this last minute CASE PAC money-dump is an emergency.  We’ve printed a final round of posters and leaflets so our volunteers can go all out on the doors these final hours to counter the corporate propaganda and get out the vote. We need to raise $5,000 more today to cover these additional expenses for this crucial election.  We need your help. Donate $15, $50, $100, or more right now to stand with Councilmember Kshama Sawant against this corporate propaganda.Today is the final day of this election — there is no time to waste. And please join us TONIGHT at our Election Night Party, 6pm at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, to celebrate all our hard work and prepare for the next stage of our struggle.  Solidarity, Eva Metz Vote Sawant 2019 Fundraising Director

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It's primary election day in Washington State. ("Tuesday’s primary marks the first election that Washington’s same-day voter registration law will be in effect.") The municipal voting district in which I reside, Seattle's District Three, features six candidates, all of whom, with the exception of Zach DeWolf, have raised over $85,000.

This city council race is about one thing: the re-election of socialist Kshama Sawant. The local plutocracy wants her out sooner rather than later. But Kshama will easily survive the primary. She has a broad following in the district, a sterling reputation as a fighter, and a strong campaign operation.

In 2015 the plutocrats tried to take out Kshama with Urban League CEO Pamela Banks, in many ways a more formidable opponent than any Sawant now faces, and Kshama beat her by 12 points in the general.

Banks unsuccessfully tried to split the black community. District Three includes Seattle's historically black Central District. I distributed Sawant yard signs in the CD with a friend on Saturday. The amount of new residential construction is eye-popping. If Seattle has been steadily gentrifying for years, what's happening now is a gold rush. Seemingly every block we traveled down had a new slender townhouse going up.

This go-round the plutocrats are trying a Gay Chamber of Commerce guy, Egan Orion, as their shill. He has the endorsement of the daily newspaper, The Seattle Times. Orion might not even make the general election. Labor, at least the developer-dependent building trades who have a lock on the central labor council, abandoned Sawant in favor of school board member Zachary DeWolf, who is another shill.

Conservative Pat Murakami is the dark horse. She has an enormous number of yard signs throughout the district. Murakami is running against the homeless, painting a picture of Sawant as a Trotskyite Fagin leading an army of the dispossessed bent on expropriation,

It's an interesting election because it takes place in an educated progressive district that is massively gentrifying. If somehow Sawant fails and the plutocrats triumph it is a very bad sign. Money will have won out one more time.

But I don't see how Kshama can lose.

"All Fall Down"

Over the weekend I finished reading Gary Sick's All Fall Down (1985), the insider account (Sick was a Zbigniew Brzezinski underling on Jimmy Carter's National Security Council) of the Iranian Revolution. It's a book one could always find in the dollar bin back when used bookstores were common. I decided to read it now because the Iranian Revolution is a key event at the beginning of the neoliberal age, and that age is under enormous strain as it appears to be fixing to die (that, and the Trump administration seems hellbent on destroying the Iranian Revolution). I chose Sick's book because it has been around so long and so widely available I thought it might represent sort of a basic American understanding of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

One of the book's big takeaways is just how much coordination and information processing governmental decision making requires. Carter was an able chief executive who could speed read, worked incredibly long hours, but he had no trouble delegating and making quick decisions.

If Kim Darroch is right, and the Trump White House is totally inept, then things should be starting to fall apart by now.

And I think that the burgeoning Japan-South Korea trade war is evidence of that.

Bolton is Trump's Brzezinski; Pompeo, his Cyrus Vance; both spend all their time ginning up conflict. Managing relationships with allies is not on their radar, unless that ally is Saudi Arabia or Israel.

Tories Lose Another Election. General Election Likely in October.

The other day I proclaimed a desire to mention Brexit only rarely, the reason being that Brexit talk moves endlessly nowhere. There is a lot of noise but at the end of the day the Tories are still in power and the UK is part of the EU.

But yesterday something consequential happened. The Conservative Party lost a by-election in a Welsh Tory stronghold, Brecon and Radnorshire (see Stephen Castle's "Special Election Defeat Poses a Thorny Problem for Boris Johnson"), and Boris Johnson's governing majority in parliament is effectively reduced to a single MP.

While the press wants to label the by-election a referendum on Boris, more likely it is a one-off since the incumbent Conservative MP, Chris Davies, was recalled for falsifying expense reports yet he only ended up losing to the Liberal Democrat by less than 1,500 votes.

The Liberal Democrat, Jane Dodds, benefited from the Greens and Plaid Cymru agreeing to stand down, leaving an open lane for an unadulterated pro-Remain candidate.

It worked, making one wonder if similar arrangements can be made once a general election is called.

Labour was not part of the agreement, and the Labor candidate came in fourth behind the Brexit Party, which is an ill omen for both the Conservatives and Labour. Nigel Farage has said that the Brexit Party will field candidates in the next general election.

After summarizing the results in Brecon and Radnorshire, Castle spends the rest of the story pondering whether a general election will be called pre- or post-crash out.

My guess is that Johnson will call a general election before a crash out.

To attempt to lock in a crash out Boris would have to expend far too much energy in prorogation to prevent the House of Commons from toppling his government. He's been campaigning since he entered Number 10. Maybe holding a general election at the same time as the Brexit deadline arrives is Johnson's secret plan to guarantee a crash out. I would imagine though that before adjourning for the election parliament would instruct the government to seek another extension.

In any event, elections in October. Hopefully.

Round Four Democratic Presidential Debate Post-Mortem

Burns and Martin provide another lucid summary of the Democratic debates in "Biden Under Fire From All Sides as Rivals Attack His Record." The former vice president took on all comers, and, while he still came off as enfeebled by age, he managed to muddle through:

[B]y the end of the debate, Mr. Biden was besieged, attacked from all sides on a plethora of subjects including health care, immigration, trade, criminal justice, climate change, women’s rights and the war in Iraq. As he did at times in the first debate, he cut some of his answers short and stumbled over lines. And he flashed his impatience with rivals, like Mr. Booker and Ms. Harris, who he said were harrying him over events that occurred “a long, long time ago.”

[snip]

Far from resolving anything, the debate seemed to showcase just how messy and protracted the Democratic race could be. If Mr. Biden’s first debate held out the possibility of a rocket-like ascent by Ms. Harris, this one may have presaged a different trajectory for the race — one that has the former vice president persistently unable to quell resistance on the left, but with no singular rival emerging anytime soon as a focal point for that resistance.

Tulsi Gabbard assailed Kamala Harris' record as attorney general in California, and Harris' defense was weak. All in all a poor night for Harris. Tulsi Gabbard squandered a critical opportunity to define the U.S. permanent warfare state.

De Blasio had a fine moment when he repeatedly asked Biden to affirm or deny whether he supported the record number of deportations during the Obama administration.

Believe it not, Cory Booker was not nearly as offensive as he was during the first debate. He roughed up Biden pretty good on Biden's support for 1994 crime bill.

Even Kirsten Gillibrand had some good moments, particularly her definition of white privilege.

Then there was Andrew Yang. Yang might be more Ron Paul than Ralph Nader, more libertarian than socialist, but he is consistently thoughtful and interesting to listen to. Whether Yang is talking about his plan for a universal basic income, automation-fueled unemployment or how we need a new, more comprehensive understanding of gross domestic product, he is a breath of fresh air. His closing statement hit the mark: "We're up here with makeup on our faces and our rehearsed attack lines, playing roles in this reality TV show. It's one reason why we elected a reality TV star as our president."

The field is about to be significantly winnowed. My guess is that Biden will continue to hemorrhage. Neoliberalism is in trouble. The hope of apologists for the status quo is that somehow through a miracle Biden will hand the torch to a Buttigieg or a Harris.

The reality is that the "woke" base of the Democratic Party is with Warren and Sanders. Democratic voters benighted by fear and hazy on the issues are sticking with Biden for the time being. The outlook for the former vice president is distinctly bearish.