The Sisi Trend Again

It was only last Friday that things were looking up for Trump. Now things appear quite differently. The first place to start this morning is Yves Smith's re-post of Gaius Publius' "Trump – A Nation in Crisis, Again":

Yves here. The media’s fixation on the scary Putin monster takes energy away from opposing Trump on real issues: health care, climate, dropping life expectancy, the surveillance state, to name a few. It also validates the effort of the CIA and certain elements of the military to meddle in domestic politics in a shockingly open manner, which is a terrible precedent.

As Lambert wrote, “If we can’t win on the facts, we do not deserve to win.” As Ilargi said yesterday:

It’s not about whether Trump is or has ever been guilty of anything he’s accused of, it’s that the insinuating narratives about that have long been written and repeated ad nauseam. It’s about whether the witch hunt exemplified by PropOrNot makes objective news gathering impossible. And the only possible response to that question must be affirmative….

Does Trump deserve being resisted? It certainly looks that way much of the time. But he should be resisted with facts, not innuendo of yellow paper quality. That destroys the media, and the media are needed to maintain a democracy.

Gaius’ post focuses on how the “get Trump on Russia” campaign has gone down a series of rabbit holes and his opponents are now likely to shift to “extra-Constitutional means” to remove him.

Gaius Publius hypothesizes that a constitutional crisis occurs in the U.S. every 70 years:

The Next American Constitution

One last thought. This country has had a constitutional crisis every 70 years, after which the government restructured itself. In effect, we have been ruled by three Constitutions, not just one, each producing, in practice, very different governments and societies. We’re rapidly producing a crisis that will produce a fourth.

In order, our constitutional crises are:

• 1789, the Revolutionary War and transition from colony to slave-holding republic.

• 1865, the Civil War and transition from divided slave-holding nation with two competing economies to united freed-slave state. This change took down the Southern agricultural aristocracy (by depriving it of the nearly free labor it depended on); made the Northern industrial economy nationally ascendant; and put us firmly on the path to first-world industrial powerhouse.

• 1933, the Great Depression and transition from a light-handed pro-business government to a heavy-handed regulatory state.

• And now, this.

What will the next American Constitution look like? Turkey’s and Hungary’s, with their dictators and single-party governments wrapped in the old constitutional forms? A naked kleptocracy, where constitutional forms are simply ignored, like those in many third-world countries? A state in which forms are observed but the hand with real power belongs mainly to the “security” apparatus? In many countries, coups by segments of the elite, blatant or covert, are welcomed as correctives and tacitly approved (another way constitutions are revised without being rewritten).

In the past this is what I have referred to on this page as the "Sisi Trend."

Macron's attempted third-party renewal of neoliberalism is part of this Sisi Trend, a desperate lunge to create an electoral majority to implement all the hugely unpopular policies that have pauperized so many the last 40 years (and created a new definition of the working class, the precariat).

Macron's Republic En Marche! reeks of intelligence agency dial-spinning. But already Macron is running into trouble ahead of the June 11 legislative elections in France. According to the Reuters story, "France's Macron woos conservative moderates as row simmers with ally":

Thursday's publication of Macron's partial candidate list produced the first sign of tension within his camp since he was elected.

Francois Bayrou, a centrist who gave up his presidential bid to join Macron, told L'Obs magazine that the list contained only 35 names from his Modem party, whereas he and Macron had agreed it should have 120.

"We got him elected," Bayrou told L'Obs. "This (candidate list) is a Socialist recycling operation."

Richard Ferrand, secretary general of Macron's REM party, responded to Bayrou's complaint. "There was no set agreement," he said on BFM TV, adding that there was still room for maneuver given there are more constituencies to be assigned.

It is going to be difficult for Macron to govern. The Thomas Friedman fantasy of a legislatively potent third party devoted to the toxic nostrums of neoliberalism will likely disintegrate sooner rather than later in the French parliament, allowing the West to march on to unvarnished Sisiism.

Three days before the French election the Brits vote for a new parliament. The press is savaging Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn per usual. Next to Putin and Kim Jong-un there is not a figure more reviled in the mainstream media.

A Labour campaign platform was leaked this week which sent the Tory press into a howling rage. Labour is returning to its social-democratic roots, calling for the re-nationalization of certain industries and making universities tuition free. What's not to like? Stephen Castle includes the following sidebar in  "U.K. Labour Party Approves Manifesto That May Take Sharp Left Turn":

KEY PROPOSALS IN LABOUR’S DRAFT MANIFESTO

The program includes some eye-catching policies likely to appeal to traditional party supporters and younger voters.

• Abolish university tuition fees.
• Provide free meals to more schoolchildren, paid for by removing the VAT exemption on private school fees.
• Renationalize some energy companies, train operators and Royal Mail.
• Impose a levy on companies “with high numbers of staff on very high pay.”
• Prohibit government contracts from companies that pay bosses more than 20 times as much as the lowest earners.
• Guarantee the rights of European Union nationals living in Britain, and "secure reciprocal rights" for British citizens living elsewhere in the bloc.
• Ensure no rise in income tax for those earning below 80,000 pounds, or about $105,000.

It is worth taking note of Labour's attempt to exorcise its New Labour Blairite demons. Will voters reward an anti-neoliberal mass political party? We'll find out soon.

The Silver Lining to the Comey Affair

A silver lining to the Watergateesque elite power play underway is that it might convince Trump that there is no placating the deep state, that he should return to the ideology of his presidential campaign and pursue confrontation. If the deep state is going to burn him down why shouldn't Trump go "Bulworth" -- something Obama hinted he might do while in office -- and burn the deep state down? He certainly has turned somersaults since his inauguration. Is there one campaign promise left standing? Besides the House repeal of Obamacare, the ongoing dismantling of the EPA and some grist for the Right-to-Life mill, I'd say no.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov's White House visit yesterday was buried beneath all the news of Comey's sacking. The deep state doesn't want to let go of its Cold War reboot because it is the main defense against collapse of the rotten neoconservative/neoliberal governing center. Western voters are now not allowed to vote for anything other than the tainted mainstream parties because to do so is to support Kremlin subversion of democracy. This is clearly on display in the Politico report from Michael Crowley, "Trump’s big Russia reset":

The positive tone throughout the day was a marked contrast from Tillerson’s mid-April visit to Moscow, where he sat grim-faced next to Lavrov for a dour news conference that focused on the U.S.-Russia divide. Days earlier, the U.S. had launched a missile strike on a Syrian airfield to punish the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons, an act in which Trump officials said Moscow may have been complicit. The Kremlin bitterly protested the strike and said in a statement during Tillerson’s visit that U.S.-Russia relations are at “their worst period since the end of the Cold War.”

There was little of that talk Wednesday, even as Democrats made some of their boldest charges yet that Trump could be covering up a huge conspiracy that would reveal him to be acting under Kremlin influence. Trump officials call such charges laughable paranoia and an effort to rationalize Hillary Clinton’s election defeat.

Lavrov’s first visit to Washington since before the annexation of Crimea, and Trump’s willingness to greet him in the Oval Office, are clear signs that Trump is determined to pursue better relations with Putin despite intense political headwinds.

“The symbolism does seem significant,” said Samuel Charap, a former State Department official now with the Rand Corp. “At least on a diplomatic level, there’s a degree of normalcy that the Obama administration was trying to deny Russia.”

[snip]

But Trump will soon face new pressure to maintain a hard line on Russia. Later this month, he travels to Europe for meetings with G-7 and NATO officials who mostly take a hard line against Putin — especially in the wake of suspected Russian efforts to swing France’s May 7 presidential election.

The Kremlin has denied trying to interfere in the French or U.S. elections.

“I believe it’s important to engage Russia at high levels,” said Finer, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “And I would hope that among the important issues that get raised with Foreign Minister Lavrov are what should be deep concerns about Russia’s continued interference in our democratic processes, and those of other countries.”

Statements from the White House and State Department on Wednesday did not mention election interference.

Drunk on the Heady Wine of Macron's Landslide the Deep State Takes Another Bite of the Trump Apple

Despite numerous placating gestures to the permanent government, Trump is back in its crosshairs. Trump's firing yesterday of FBI director James Comey, splashed all over the frontpage this morning, was prefigured Tuesday by prominent placement of Senate testimony by Sally Yates, former acting attorney general, of how she warned the Trump White House not to hire Mike Flynn.

For news consumers this reemergence of the "Siberian candidate" meme from the obscurity of the back pages should have set antenna tingling.

Another tell is this morning's Situation Report. Supposedly devoted exclusively to foreign policy matters, I try to read SitRep every morning because it provides a synopsis of the deep state hivemind. Stories that are omitted are stories that the permanent government would rather you not read. Stories given prominent placement are of course the stories that the permanent government wants us to ingest.

Interesting then that this morning the firing of a FBI director would lead a daily foreign policy synopsis (more to play up the Russian angle):

Comey sacked. President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, removing from office the veteran head of the agency tasked with carrying out a wide-ranging investigation into whether the president and his staffers conspired with Russian agents to swing the 2016 election in the Republican candidate’s favor. FP’s Elias Groll has more.

“Not since Watergate has a president dismissed the person leading an investigation bearing on him, and Mr. Trump’s decision late Tuesday afternoon drew instant comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” in October 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into the so-called third-rate burglary that would eventually bring Nixon down,” writes the New York Times’ Peter Baker.

Reports indicate the move came after Trump grew increasingly frustrated Comey wouldn’t publicly clear Trump’s name. Tensions had been building in the West Wing, with aides to the president telling Politico that Trump “had grown enraged by the Russia investigation...frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.”

The move came as a surprise not only to the FBI and Capitol Hill, but also for White House staffers. And it led to calls from both Democrats and some top Republicans for an independent prosecutor to launch an investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

It was also revealed Tuesday by CNN that Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas “to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records,” for transitions Flynn conducted after he was fired by president Obama from his positions as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “Investigators have been looking into possible wrongdoing in how Flynn handled disclosures about payments from clients tied to foreign governments including Russia and Turkey.”

Trump has also recently hired a law firm to tell Senators that he has no business deals in Russia.

The deep state is feeling its oats. Macron, the only anti-Russian candidate of the major contenders in the French presidential election, won in a landslide. And it looks like the Western intelligence community was able to successfully perpetrate a false flag hack attack.

The giddiness is evident in the absurd hyperbole of a quote from a story yesterday by Steven Erlanger, "Emmanuel Macron Embraces E.U. to Put France ‘Back in the Picture’":

“If Macron manages to stop the populist tsunami, he’ll be rewarded by his European counterparts,” said Florence Gaub, a senior analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris. “He’ll be able to make some demands that other French presidents could not. Because everyone needs him to be a success, and if it stops with France, maybe it stops forever.”

This is purely delusional thinking. We know where Macron's neoliberal reforms lead. Look to Greece.

In any event, in these heady days the elite of the permanent government are going to take another bite at Trump apple.

Hillary's White House will be a Mausoleum for Neoliberalism

While it might be a stretch to label Hillary's "Get Out of Jail Free" card issued yesterday by FBI director James Comey a "Nixonian" moment, that is what it feels like to me. Certainly the powerless public is used to seeing the powerful skate. After all, how many times have we reminded ourselves that none of the "Masters of the Universe" behind the 2008 global economic meltdown spent time behind bars?

The difference here is that we were never asked to vote for Dick Fuld or Angelo Mozilo, at least not directly, as we are now being asked to vote for Hillary.

Nixon resigned in disgrace and was spared criminal prosecution, in what was almost assuredly a quid pro quo, thanks to a presidential pardon handed down by a successor Nixon himself selected. The public was enraged for a while, and it no doubt cost Gerald Ford a close election against Jimmy Carter in 1976, but it turned out that the whole Watergate Nixon resignation was a handy Judas goat scenario which allowed voters to think that the "good guys won" and the body politic had been healed.

Clinton is not going to bow out, and voters no longer believe that "good guys" serve in government. There is no wiggle room left, not anywhere near the space available to present-day elites as was nearby for those present at the creation of neoliberalism in the Carter years.

I say it feels like a Nixonian moment because we are at the threshold of the mausoleum. The mausoleum is the Hillary White House. Once we pass through it we will be in a different world.

The Walter Scott Homicide: 1984 in Reverse?

With the latest video of lethal force by the police -- in this case, a South Carolina officer, Michael Slager, nonchalantly gunning down a fleeing Walter Scott -- topping the national news for a second day, the question I have is how often does this happen? It seems like every other week -- whether it is a homeless guy in Los Angeles, a kid playing with a toy gun in a snowy Cleveland park, or Michael Brown or Eric Garner, to name a few -- we are confronted with another example of the police ruthlessly committing homicide.

A problem I have with television police drama like The Shield, even though I watched all seven seasons, is the body count that the cops rack up does not seem believable to me. Certainly they would be suspended constantly pending interminable investigations conducted by the local department, the FBI or the Justice Department. Right?

Well, apparently not because the Justice Department and the FBI don't know how many of these shootings take place. So, in answer to the question, "How often does a Walter Scott incident take place?" We don't know.

As Michael Schmidt explores today in "Scant Data Frustrates Efforts to Assess Number of Shootings by Police":

Under current federal laws, there is nothing requiring any of the 18,000 police departments and other law enforcement agencies across the country to report to the public or to the Justice Department anything about shootings involving officers.

Roughly 91 percent of departments and agencies in the country voluntarily report crimes like murders, rapes, car thefts and burglaries to the F.B.I., which releases an annual report.

But under the current reporting systems, there is no category for episodes in which the officer’s use of force was not deemed legally justified, and there is no category to report police shootings in which the officer has not killed a person. There are categories for “justifiable” or “excusable” homicides by police officers, ones in which officers kill a felon.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund keeps data on how often people shoot police officers, and departments willingly share that data. But the statistics on the police shooting civilians are much harder to find.

In the aftermath of police officers’ using lethal force in Staten Island, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere last year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, have strongly advocated changing reporting requirements. A White House task force created to look into the episodes made similar recommendations in a report released in March.

So far, though, those efforts have not provoked much interest on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers would most likely need to pass legislation to require departments and agencies to report figures to the Justice Department.

In January, Mr. Holder spoke about the issue at a Justice Department ceremony honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington.

“I’ve heard from a number of people who have called on policy makers to ensure better record-keeping on injuries and deaths that occur at the hands of police,” he said. “I’ve also spoken with law enforcement leaders, including the leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police, who have urged elected officials to consider strategies for collecting better data on officer fatalities. Today, my response to these legitimate concerns is simple: We need to do both.”

Mr. Holder said that in the 1990s, Congress passed a law that was intended to help the Justice Department collect better statistics about shootings involving officers. But that law was ultimately not effective because the reporting was optional, and local departments and agencies may not have the proper resources to be able to make reports to the Justice Department in a timely manner.

In a speech in February about the relationship between the police and minorities, Mr. Comey said that during the riots in Ferguson last summer, he had asked his staff members for figures on the number of blacks who had been shot by the police. They told him there were no uniform statistics on such shootings.

“They couldn’t give it to me, and it wasn’t their fault,” Mr. Comey said. 

Mr. Comey said that law enforcement officials and minorities “must find ways to see each other more clearly.” He added, “Part of that has to involve collecting and sharing better information about encounters between police and citizens, especially violent encounters.” 

Mr. Comey said he had spoken with the police chief in a major American city who said that he did not know whether the Ferguson police “shot one person a week, one a year or one a century.”

Since Congress is controlled by a neo-Dixiecrat GOP, I wouldn't expect a mandatory reporting law for the nation's 18,000 police departments anytime soon. Police use of lethal force overwhelming targets blacks, and that works well for the 113th Congress. The more the people are divided -- whether by race or sect -- the better for the money bags that run the show.

Another aspect of the Walter Scott murder that needs to be addressed is the positive role played by technology; here, a smartphone camera. Lately I am coming closer to the conclusion that the explosion of digital technology is creating a dystopia rather than utopia, that The Postmodern Condition leads us to a "dream machine" of endless passivity and distraction and not the upturning of old, rancid power narratives.

But smartphone videos capturing the police in the act of homicide prove that the Panopticon can be turned back on the jailers, a sort of 1984 in reverse.