U.S. Pledges to Prevent Corbyn's Election

In a recording leaked to the Washington Post, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promises that the United States will "push back" against the election of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister of the United Kingdom, noting that “It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”

According to Robert Stevens of the World Socialist Web Site,

Pompeo didn’t outline what would be required to prevent Corbyn from being elected and what a “push-back” against him would involve. But senior figures in the UK military have already made clear what they are prepared to carry out: a coup d'état along the lines of that which the CIA engineered in Chile in 1973 that ended with the murder of elected social-democrat leader Salvador Allende and thousands of his supporters.

Just a week after being elected Labour leader [September 12, 2015], with the backing of hundreds of thousands of Labour members and supporters, the Sunday Times carried comments from a “senior serving general” that in the event of Corbyn becoming prime minister, there would be “the very real prospect” of “a mutiny.”

The general revealed that the military would be prepared to use “whatever means possible, fair or foul.” He warned, “You would see a major break in convention with senior generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn over vital important policy decisions such as Trident [nuclear weapons], pulling out of NATO and any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.” 

Just a few months later, Britain’s then Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton, asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr about Corbyn’s statement that he would never authorise the use of nuclear weapons, replied, “Well, it would worry me if that thought was translated into power.”

[snip]

The forces attacking Corbyn fear that if he won office—under conditions of growing social polarisation set to escalate under Brexit—millions of workers and youth would demand he make good on previous pledges to oppose austerity, militarism, war and attacks on democratic rights.

Corbyn is important because he acts as sort of a canary in the coalmine. Both Bernie Sanders and Corbyn are anti-war social democrats, a political orientation entirely within the mainstream but now no longer allowed for someone in a leadership position of a mainstream party.

The fraying Washington Consensus will brook no challenge to its neoliberal orthodoxy and its waging of perpetual warfare. The problem is that market fundamentalism and permanent warfare don't garner much support at the polls. Hence, the necessity for intelligence agencies, that serve at the behest of elites who remain fully committed to the Washington Consensus, to fiddle about and find ways to distract and divide the electorate: The Russian bogeyman, the Chinese demon dragon, the anti-Semitic peacenik social democrat.

How Long Do We Have to Wait for Mainstream Media to Cover the Integrity Initiative?

I just searched the web sites of Reuters, AP and The New York Times. So far there is no mention of the "Integrity Initiative." The Integrity Initiative is an information warfare campaign run by the Institute for Statecraft, a Scottish charity which receives money from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office and which acts as a front for UK military intelligence to spread misinformation, mostly of the New Cold War, Russophobic variety.

The Integrity Initiative was hacked and some of its confidential files revealed early last month. As explained in a Sputnik opinion piece:

On November 5, international hacking syndicate Anonymous published a series of internal files it'd appropriated from Integrity Initiative, an off-shoot of the Institute for Statecraft. The material was explosive, revealing the organization — which claims to be concerned with defending democratic institutions from Russian "destabilization campaigns" — to be an international "information war effort" run by British military intelligence specialists, which has disrupted the domestic politics of other countries.

As part of this enterprise, the organization has amassed 'clusters' the world over — lists of politicians, businesspeople, military officials, academics and journalists — who "understand the threat posed to Western nations" by Russian "disinformation" and can be mobilized to influence policy. The files suggest clusters are operational in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, Spain and the UK — and there are plans to extend the scheme to every corner of the globe.

They also offer numerous examples of cluster mobilization in action — one boasts of the success of 'Operation Moncloa', an effort to block the appointment of Pedro Banos, an army reservist and author the Spanish Socialist party wanted to make the country's Director of National Security.

When Banos' candidacy was announced, members of the Integrity Initiative's Spanish 'cluster' — including Gonzalez Ponz, spokesperson of the Partido Popular in the European parliament, and Nacho Torreblanco, director of the European Council for Foreign Relations Office in Madrid — colluded via a WhatsApp group to flood social networks with anti-Banos messages, and provide the Spanish media with a 'dossier' of negative material on the former head of counterintelligence and security for the European army. The Initiative's UK cluster supported their work — within 24-hours, the planned appointment was dropped.

While the files don't offer an example of any similar plot in the UK, its cluster there includes Ben Nimmo, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, who has repeatedly claimed Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is being supported by the Russian state through various means, including a "twisted cyber campaign", without any supporting evidence whatsoever. The Integrity Initiative's official Twitter account has also posted numerous tweets and links to articles attacking Labour, Corbyn — one post said he was a "useful idiot" in service of the Kremlin — and other prominent party figures.

Given how fraught Westminster is these days, it's the attack on Corbyn, and the blanket denials by Theresa May's government, that lead me to believe that the story will find its way to the principal mainstream outlets.

In the meantime, Moon of Alabama has posted a substantial article on the Integrity Initiative, as has Craig Murray, with the promise of further revelations. Niqnaq re-posts a Yandex translation of Colonel Cassad's piece on the Integrity Initiative:

Operation Integrity Initiative: The Institute for Statecraft

Hackers Anonymous continue to spread in parts of a large leak on the operations of British intelligence in Europe, held in the framework of the program Integrity Initiative. In the next portion of revelations describes the activities of the Institute of Statecraft and the influence of agents in Italy, France and Scotland. Interesting highlights: 

1. MI6 paid their own agents to fabricate evidence of Russian involvement in the organization of a referendum on secession of Catalonia from Spain, for the subsequent charges of Russia meddling in Spanish Affairs. 

2. Money from British Intelligence paid for a campaign to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and his entourage, which actually was done in the interests of the Cabinet Office of Theresa May. In fact, Intelligence became a tool of internal political struggle. 

3. Agents of influence paid by MI6 in different countries had to constantly speculate about Russian involvement in the poisoning of the Skripals, in order to create the ground for diplomatic condemnation of Russia. 

4. In 2014, one of the functionaries of the network proposed mining the harbour of Sevastopol and lock in the Bay of the Black Sea Fleet, followed by demonstrations of military presence of NATO in the Black sea. 

5. The Institute for Statecraft, led by Director Christopher Donnelly, was in fact a front for British Intelligence and part of the infrastructure of the operations of Integrity Initiative. 

6. The document expressed regret that Russia’s influence is strong in the countries where lustration has not been completed in relation to people educated in the Soviet Union. It was written before the lustration of MGIMO graduates in Poland. 

7. Expected to negotiate with Yushchenko that he told the world that Skripal not the first one who became victim of the “cruelty” Russia, connecting the “attempt on the Skripals” with the “poisoning” of Yushchenko in 2003. 

8. Emphasizes the reliance on prominent public figures for stream of best abstract operations of Integrity Initiative. For example, the famous footballer Gary Lineker during the World Cup in Russia. 

Remarkably, today part of the published documents was removed or unavailable.

Labour's Alleged Anti-Semitism

Surprisingly the latest issue of Harper's contains  a "Corbyn is an anti-Semite" feature (see "Among Britain’s Anti-Semites" by Tanya Gold). It's a professionally written tendentious hit piece that manages urbanity but nonetheless falls flat, as can be gleaned in this exchange between Gold and Jackie Walker:

Later [Jackie Walker] told me, “Presenting anti-­Semitism as the almost total focus of racism in this country in the last two years is feeding into antiblack racism and Islamophobia. Why aren’t you concerned about that?” What makes her think that I am not concerned? “What I perceive is that a minority with a lot more voice than blacks or Muslims have have taken up all the space.” So there is a limited space for justice in the world, and Jews took it all.

I told her that I thought the people in Parliament Square were frightened. She replied, “How do you think people of African descent feel? How do you think I as a black person feel when you say that to me? When I look at the Jewish community I see a community of relative privilege and power. How do you think that makes me feel? It makes me feel like shit.” She continued, “That [black] guy three weeks ago died in police custody. When did the last Jewish person die in police custody?” I don’t know. I have no corpse to present in evidence.

Gold's article fails to mention any of Israel's controversies -- settlements, Gaza embargo, bombing Syria, terrorizing Iran -- and proves the left's point that any criticism of the Israeli state is now reflexively greeted with cries of anti-Semitism.

Robert Stevens in "Blairites and Tories share platform calling for Corbyn’s removal" explains why the mainstream media is obsessed with the Corbyn's alleged anti-Semitism:

With Theresa May’s government tottering on the brink of collapse as tensions deepen over Brexit, with a scheduled exit from the EU less than 200 days away, the ruling elite fear the social and political implications of a Corbyn government coming to power with the support of millions opposed to austerity, militarism and war. [Tory MP Chris] Green gave voice to these fears, warning his audience that at last year’s general election, Labour “came within 20,000 votes around the country of being able to form a coalition government and Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.

The Splintering of the Labour Party

I've developed a screen aversion of late. Mostly I would say it is due to work. Work is a seemingly never ending source of misery. But my screen aversion also tracks back to nauseating news -- a lunatic rudderless Russophobia, threats emanating from the United States as Syria readies its offensive to reclaim Idlib Province from Al Qaeda control, the ongoing campaign to censor social media and the robust effort to tar Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite.

Corbyn is a threat to the listing neoliberal "New World Order" because the Labour Party which he leads will likely form the next UK government once a crash-out Brexit becomes a reality. Before that can happen, the Blairite wing of Labour is making sure that the party will split.

Paul Mitchell writes this morning in "Momentum’s Jon Lansman aids witch-hunt against Corbyn, joins Blairites at Jewish Labour Movement event" that

[T]he former welfare minister, Frank Field, quit the Labour group at Westminster complaining of the “tolerance” of anti-Semitism and “culture of nastiness” under Corbyn. Rather than forcing a by-election, as is usual, Field arrogantly declared he would continue as an independent Labour MP.

In 2010, Field accepted Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s invitation to act as “Poverty Tsar” in the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition that was overseeing vicious austerity. He has described former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a “hero”, commenting that he would see “Mrs. T from time to time”, during the time she was in office. His decision to quit the Labour group came after he had suffered a “no confidence” motion by his own Birkenhead constituency Labour party, in response to his voting with the Tory government on Brexit, preventing its potentially damaging defeat.

The Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley commented that more resignations by the right-wing are on the way and that, “One of the challenges for this group over the summer of Labour ferment has been persuading some of their number to wait rather than resign immediately.” He reports that one associate of Mike Gapes, the Labour MP for Ilford South, who says he has been “agonising daily” over whether to quit, stating, “A lot of the summer has been about holding the gang together and stopping people splitting off, one by one. We’re all trying to stay in formation until the right moment.”

A front-page article in the Sunday Times, owned by billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch and which has played a central role in the manufactured anti-Semitism campaign, was headlined, “Labour Rebel MPs plot breakaway party and ‘no confidence’ vote.”

It reported that a group of Blairite MPs “ plan a no-confidence vote to give MPs a way of expressing their disgust at Corbyn’s handling of the affair in the hope that it will embolden others to join a breakaway.” It added, “Fury at Corbyn’s approach to anti-Semitism has pushed up to 15 MPs to the brink of a breakaway from Labour...”

Craig Murray cogently sums up the situation -- either Corbyn and the majority of Labour's rank'n'file membership is ousted or conservation Blairite MPs split off:

There are only two ways to resolve this. Either the MPs will have to leave parliament or the members will have to leave the party. There is no coherent party at present.

The Blairite Labour MPs have painted themselves into a corner by their decision to brand Jeremy Corbyn as personally a racist and an anti-semite. If I was in a party led by a racist and anti-semite, I would leave the party. The idea that they can continue as members of parliament for the party while expressing such views about the leader is a nonsense. But they do not wish to leave, because they would lose their comfy jobs. All of the right wing Labour MPs realise they would never win an election on their own account, without Labour Party support. It would be hilarious if not so serious, that they claim Frank Field can resign the Labour whip but this does not mean leave the party, and that he must still be the Labour Party candidate at the next election!

Their hope is twofold. Firstly, that the charges of anti-semitism against Corbyn will be widely believed and lead to a drastic drop in public support which will force Corbyn out. This is not happening. The public realise that the charges of anti-semitism are false and based on a definition of the word which simply means critic of Israel. Other than the normal polling malaise which follows any split in a party, there is no drastic plunge in support for Labour of the kind which would definitely follow if the public thought the party were led by an anti-semite.

To put it another way, either 40% of the public are anti-semites, or the public do not take these accusations seriously.

The Blairites other hope is that, by the Labour Party adopting the IHRA’s malicious definition of anti-semitism as embracing criticism of Israel, they will manage through legal action to force Jeremy Corbyn’s expulsion from the Labour Party. This attempt to use the British Establishment to circumvent party democracy is extraordinary.

By bringing things to this pitch, the Blairites have made compromise impossible. Either Corbyn and most of the members will have to go, or the Blairite MPs will.

Corbyn on the Skripal Affair

In The Guardian yesterday Jeremy Corbyn penned a defense of his stance regarding the Skripal affair, "The Salisbury attack was appalling. But we must avoid a drift to conflict." His position is more hawkish than is being presented in the mainstream media. For instance, he applauds prime minister Theresa May's expulsion of Russian diplomats, and he calls for cracking down on the many Russian oligarchs who shelter on Britain's shores:

We agree with the government’s action in relation to Russian diplomats, but measures to tackle the oligarchs and their loot would have a far greater impact on Russia’s elite than limited tit-for-tat expulsions. We are willing to back further sanctions as and when the investigation into the Salisbury attack produces results.

The Tory government seems willing to take up Corbyn's idea of seizing Russian tycoon assets, but limiting the seizure to Putin's allies.

What set off the attacks on Corbyn was his statement of the obvious: We don't know who poisoned Skripal and his daughter, and trusting the government in these matters has gone very badly of late:

[T]hat does not mean we resign ourselves to a “new cold war” of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent. Instead, Britain needs to uphold its laws and its values without reservation. And those should be allied to a foreign policy that uses every opportunity to reduce tensions and conflict wherever possible.

This government’s diplomacy is failing the country. Unqualified support for Donald Trump and rolling out the red carpet for a Saudi despot not only betrays our values, it makes us less safe.

And our capacity to deal with outrages from Russia is compromised by the tidal wave of ill-gotten cash that Russian oligarchs – both allied with and opposed to the Russian government – have laundered through London over the past two decades. We must stop servicing Russian crony capitalism in Britain, and the corrupt billionaires who use London to protect their wealth.

[snip]

But if we are to unite our allies behind action that needs taking, we must make full use of existing international treaties and procedures for dealing with chemical weapons. That means working through the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to reduce the threat from these horrific weapons, including if necessary an investigation by chemical weapons inspectors into the distribution of Soviet-era weapons.

There can and should be the basis for a common political response to this crime. But in my years in parliament I have seen clear thinking in an international crisis overwhelmed by emotion and hasty judgments too many times. Flawed intelligence and dodgy dossiers led to the calamity of the Iraq invasion. There was overwhelming bipartisan support for attacking Libya, but it proved to be wrong. A universal repugnance at the 9/11 attacks led to a war on Afghanistan that continues to this day, while terrorism has spread across the globe.

Can't really dispute that. And I think that's what's behind the howls of derision in the tabloids. When you are actively engaged in a "big lie" you can't have someone of prominence stand and state the obvious.

The New York Times, always on the lookout to skewer Corbyn, hopped on the bandwagon with Stephen Castle's "U.K. Labour Leader’s Stance on Russian Ex-Spy’s Poisoning Splits Party." Fortunately Castle lets the sunshine in at the end of his article. The Blairites within Labour can't touch Corbyn:

But one commentator, John Rentoul, suspects that there is more support for Mr. Corbyn’s position outside Parliament where, he wrote, the Labour leader’s “idealistic opposition to warlike words goes down well with much of the general public.” And it remains true that despite the strong circumstantial evidence of Russian involvement, the British police have neither identified any direct link to the Kremlin nor named any suspects.

Whether Mr. Corbyn pays a political price for his stance may depend on how the Anglo-Russian rift develops. His supporters are likely to give him the benefit of the doubt, and most of his internal critics are already well-known opponents. While his comments gave plenty of ammunition to the right-wing press, many analysts, pointing to last year’s elections when the tabloids vilified the Labour leader, concluded that he might wear their criticism as a badge of honor.

The Italian elections, May's shuckin' and jivin' on Brexit, Trump's apparent longevity all point to the neoliberal center Washington Consensus in serious trouble. For those in power the solution is to lock in a New Cold War. Stifle dissent. Cement in narrow boundaries for political discourse.

It's a long shot. It will buy the discredited neoliberal center some more time. How much more is the question. But inevitably there will be a correction.

"No" is Enough for the Democratic Party

Tory doyen Theresa May has been pronounced dead. Jeremy Corbyn's rejuvenated Labour Party will likely lead the United Kingdom in the not too distant future. Whether a real social democrat can turn the battleship around, at least when it comes to its militaristic foreign policy, is subject to debate.

At least the UK has arrived at a point where the neoliberals have been routed from a mainstream stronghold, the Labour Party. That's not the case in the United States. The neoliberals remain deeply entrenched and in control of the Democratic Party.

Yesterday prominently featured throughout the day in NYT's online edition was Kenneth Vogel's story, "The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics." Vogel describes less a sea change and more an exercise in hedging by wealthy Democratic donors as they distribute money to big post-Trumpocalypse groups like Indivisible:

Perhaps no group epitomizes the differences between the legacy left and the grass-roots resistance like Indivisible. Started as a Google document detailing techniques for opposing the Republican agenda under Mr. Trump, the group now has a mostly Washington-based staff of about 40 people, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country. The national Indivisible hub, which consists of a pair of nonprofit groups, has raised nearly $6 million since its start, primarily through small-dollar donations made through its website.

Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.

And an advocacy group funded by the billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, a founding member of the Democracy Alliance and one of the most influential donors on the left, is considering a donation in the low six figures to Indivisible. Mr. Soros has already donated to a host of nonprofit groups playing key roles in the anti-Trump movement, including the Center for Community Change, Color of Change and Local Progress.

Indivisible would “gladly” accept a check from Mr. Soros or his foundation, said an official with the group, Sarah Dohl. But, she added, the group is committed to ensuring that money from major donors does not become a majority of the group’s revenue “because we want to maintain our independence both from the funders and from the party.”

I'm sure Soros et al. want to fund Indivisible to get at its list of activists. There was a political awakening after the Trumpocalypse that didn't always reach establishment groups like the Clintonista Center for American Progress (CAP). Also, it is not clear how committed to "No Is Not Enough" that Indivisible is. At the end of the day -- the end of Tuesday, November 3, 2020 -- "No Trump" might be enough.

At the moment it is this calculation -- that a neoliberal Democratic establishment can harness enough of the disenchantment with Trump without having to yield to social democratic demands (Medicare for all, free college tuition) to win in 2020 -- which is preventing the kind of overhaul of the party which Corbyn and Momentum have achieved in the UK.

Neoliberal Elite Believe They are Immune to Sixth Mass Exinction Underway

There is a zombie-like quality that distinguishes the U.S. deep state. Two stories over the weekend illustrate this stumbling, brain-dead behemoth. Mujib Mashal's "Back in Afghan Hot Spot, U.S. Marines Chase Diminished Goals" describes preparations by the Marines to re-invade Helmand Province, "The Marines are simply trying to keep Lashkar Gah from falling to the Taliban, and to help the Afghan forces come out of their barracks and put up a fight." Tim Arango's "Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’" is a tendentious brief for a re-invasion of Iraq to cleanse the country of Iranian control.

How long can it go on? That's the question. Monthly Review's July-August issue is devoted to the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The essays I have read are all quite good. Samir Amin's "Revolution from North to South" is the last one; and in his last paragraph, he has this to say:

In conclusion, I will again point out that the system of neoliberal globalization has entered its last phase; its implosion is clearly visible, as indicated by, among other things, Brexit, Trump's election, and the rise of various forms of neofascism.

From the land of Brexit, William Davies, writing in the London Review of Books, "Reasons for Corbyn," explains why the young have turned their back on neoliberalism. Despite its clearly visible implosion, the elite show no signs of changing course:

Reacting to the breakdown of the vote on 8 June, business leaders and conservative commentators have expressed their disquiet at the fact that young people are so enthusiastic about an apparently retrograde left-wing programme. ‘Memo to anyone under 45,’ Digby Jones, the former director general of the CBI, tweeted: ‘You can’t remember last time socialists got control of the cookie jar: everything nationalised & nothing worked.’ To which the rebuke might be made: and you don’t remember how good things were compared to today. Speak to my undergraduate students (many of them born during Blair’s first term) about the 1970s and early 1980s, and you’ll see the wistful look on their faces as they imagine a society in which artists, writers and recent graduates could live independently in Central London, unharassed by student loan companies, workfare contractors or debt collectors. This may be a partial historical view, but it responds to what younger generations are currently cheated of: the opportunity to grow into adulthood without having their entire future mapped out as a financial strategy. A leader who can build a bridge to that past offers the hope of a different future.

I have come to believe that this elite inability to make a course correction is not based on ignorance. For instance, last week there was a story by Tatiana Schlossberg "Era of ‘Biological Annihilation’ Is Underway, Scientists Warn":

From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction” caused in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena.

Gerardo Ceballos, a researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, acknowledged that the study is written in unusually alarming tones for an academic research paper. “It wouldn’t be ethical right now not to speak in this strong language to call attention to the severity of the problem,” he said.

The elite know this. My sense is that the inability to make a course correction is intentional. The elite believe they will be able to survive the sixth mass extinction underway. If asked the old question "Socialism or barbarism?" the elite are answering, "Barbarism!" out of a hubris that they can wire the barbaric life much as they have capitalist mass consumer society.

I believe what is happening here is that the elite are consciously if not articulately rejecting mass society in the mistaken belief that they will be able to jet to a sylvan glade somewhere post-apocalypse.

Can Macron's En Marche! Change the Channel from Corbyn's Labour

There has been some mainstream media confusion about messaging in the wake of Labour's surprisingly virile showing on Thursday. The "Corbyn Confounds Critics" highlight is rapidly being rubbed out in favor of "The Tories Fucked It All Up Again."

A few other talking points are emerging: 1) "May Still Won," the flip-side of which is "Corbyn Can't Govern"; 2) Labour's pick-up of 29 seats is being interpreted as a win for "Soft Brexit" over "Hard Brexit," to the exclusion of what it really was -- a crystal clear signal that voters want a return to social democracy -- more money for the National Health Service, free university tuition, higher taxes on corporations and the rich, and a less bellicose foreign policy.

Of course this kind of social democracy is exactly what the neoliberal center exits to deny, and that is why Labour's performance is going to be downplayed and derided. The messaging might not be as consistent as, say, "We Must Bomb Syria." But don't doubt that a consistent, relentless anti-Corbyn/anti-Labour set of talking points effectively dismissing Thursday's results as a one-off, a fart in a gale, is forthcoming.

Another talking point that bubbled up immediately after Thursday was the refulgent expression of a recent Francophilia in the U.S. prestige press. Brett Stephens' absurd Saturday column, "The Year of Voting Recklessly," is a good example:

The news isn’t all bad. Corbyn still fell 64 seats short of a parliamentary majority. Trump’s approval ratings are at 39 percent. Regrets? The Brexiters have a few. And Emmanuel Macron may yet provide evidence that, at least in France, there is gravity, energy, excitement and even sexiness at the political center. 

The West hasn’t walked over the ledge, yet. We’re only dancing at the cliff’s edge.

It appears that the neoliberals are placing all their eggs in the recently woven En Marche! basket. I don't think it's going to end well for them. French polls close in a couple of hours, and, as Alissa Rubin reports, turnout is already running far below recent legislative elections:

On Sunday, the French began voting in the first of two rounds for representatives to the National Assembly, the powerful lower house of the French Parliament and, in essence, decide whether to back the man, his cabinet and his plan.

The participation rate at 5 p.m. local time, nearly 41 percent, was considerably lower than the turnout at the same time in the first round in 2012, when it was 48.3 percent, according to the Interior Ministry. It was even higher in 2007: 49.3 percent.

Who does this benefit? The media has been heralding an-all-but-certain majority for the neophyte En Marche! Macron has selected novices to run. If victorious, they will be tasked with implementing cuts to pensions and worker rights -- the austerity agenda.

I have some experience with idealistic newcomers to politics. That's who the Green Party attracted back in the Nader days. Most didn't last very long because they had no stomach for conflict. That's what politics primarily is -- both internally and externally -- managing conflict. And the basic way that conflict is managed is through reciprocity, a.k.a., the grubby art of quid pro quo. Idealistic newcomers are usually shocked that this is what politics boils down to.

My sense is that is why the Five Star Movement didn't parlay its excellent showing in 2013 Italian general election into a broader, more effective base of power. M5S ran novices.

So regardless of whether the polls are correct and En Marche! sweeps the first round, assuring a strong majority in the National Assembly, legislating more draconian neoliberal austerity is going to be easier said than done.

ISIS and Saudi Arabia: "They are One and the Same"

The truth of Saudi support for jihadist terror is front and center in the British parliamentary election campaign. George Monbiot had a superb piece in The Guardian yesterday:

[May] is even more sycophantic towards this revolting man [Trump] than Tony Blair was to George W Bush. She won’t confront Saudi Arabia over terrorism or Yemen or anything else. Far from it: both as home secretary and as prime minister she appears to have suppressed a report into the foreign funding of jihadi groups in the UK that is said to focus on the role of the Saudi kingdom. When there is a conflict between our security and selling weapons to a despotic regime, brutality wins.

The hyperlink is to another Guardian story, "Theresa May urged not to suppress report into funding of jihadi groups," which says that

Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron have challenged Theresa May over a long-delayed inquiry into foreign funding and support of jihadi groups in the UK, after the Home Office suggested the investigation may not be published.

The inquiry into revenue streams for extremist groups was commissioned by David Cameron when he was prime minister and is thought to focus on Saudi Arabia.

[snip]

The Conservatives were criticised last year for selling billions of pounds of arms to the Saudis. 

Cameron ordered the investigation as part of a deal with the Lib Dems in exchange for the party supporting the extension of British airstrikes against Islamic State into Syria in December 2015.

The Home Office’s extremism analysis unit was directed by Downing Street in January 2016 to investigate overseas funding of extremist groups in the UK, with findings to be shown to the then home secretary May and Cameron.

Eighteen months on, the Home Office said the report, originally due to be published in spring 2016, had not yet been completed and publication was not guaranteed, given the sensitive nature of the content.

A decision about the future of the investigation would be taken “after the election by the next government”, a Home Office spokesman said. 

Another reason to vote Labour tomorrow.

The feeling inside Iran is that ISIS terror definitely is Saudi directed. This from Thomas Erdbrink's story, "Islamic State Claims Deadly Iran Attacks on Parliament and Khomeini Tomb":

At least 12 people were killed and 42 others wounded Wednesday morning in a pair of devastating attacks on two of Iran’s most potent symbols: the national Parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Islamic State immediately claimed responsibility; if that is found to be true, the attacks would be the terrorist group’s first major assault within Iran’s borders. Suspicions in Tehran were also directed at Saudi Arabia, Iran’s nemesis in the region, which has been newly emboldened by a supportive visit from President Trump last month.

In the view of many in Iran, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is inextricably linked to Saudi Arabia. Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line analyst with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “ISIS ideologically, financially and logistically is fully supported and sponsored by Saudi Arabia.”

“They are one and the same,” he added.

At this point I think this is a pretty safe bet, and no doubt the reason the Tories are keeping their report hidden.

Given this then we have to accept what follows: Western governments in their fulsome support of the Saudis are complicit, even if only tacitly, in attacks on their own citizens.

The political equation is that terrorizing one's own population keeps the status quo -- the deep national security state, the rancid mainstream political parties, the inequality -- safe and secure.

Trump, thoroughly and unimaginatively corrupt, has "poured gasoline on the fire." As The Independent reported yesterday, "Trump's Washington DC hotel received $270,000 from Saudi Arabia":

Donald Trump’s flagship hotel in the nation’s capital has received more than $270,000 in payments from a lobbying firm tried to Saudi Arabia, as the country seeks to overturn a US anti-terrorism law.

The anti-sharia protesters this Saturday should park themselves on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Corbyn Has His Mojo Working

UPDATE: A Politico story, "8 ways Jeremy Corbyn is winning," from this morning enumerates Corbyn's charge up the polls. Point eight is particularly sweet:

8. Standing room only 

While packed rallies are not an indicator of voting intentions, Corbyn has managed to attract people to his campaign events in their thousands, giving him a sense of momentum when the images are beamed into people’s living rooms on the evening news. “I know the rallies are driving them mad at CCHQ [Tory headquarters],” one former Tory campaign strategist said. “They know they can’t match it and it’s a problem for them. The images are really good for Labour.”

**** 

It’s funny to track the huge swing in the Tory tabloid press as Corbyn surges towards next week’s election. At first Corbyn was dismissed as an out-of-touch Mr. Magoo riding his bicycle to nuclear-free extinction as Labour disappeared forever. Now he is the Second Coming of Stalin thumping his red playbook for re-nationalization of British industry while he conspires with the reviled Nicola Sturgeon to carve up poor old John Bull.

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.

Brexit Post-Mortem

The reason the neoliberal status quo has been around for as long as it has -- 40 years and counting, ten years longer than the social democratic consensus following World War Two -- is that it has proven agile at quickly adapting to threats.

Two recent examples. First, the Arab Spring, which, after stunning victories in Tunisia and Egypt, was completely rolled back thanks in large part to the export of jihad by the U.S. client states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Next, the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was easily co-opted by Obama's 2012 presidential campaign, with a hefty assist from New York City's Finest.

What is happening in the case of Brexit is more of the same. The neoliberal status quo lost the vote last Thursday but has been winning ever since. The first significant casualty might have been Podemos in Spain's parliamentary elections on Sunday. Going into the vote, many predicted that Podemos would replace the Socialists as the number two party behind the ruling conservatives. It didn't happen. While Podemos didn't lose ground, neither did it gain any. The Popular Party actually picked up seats. The reason for Podemos' lackluster showing is being explained as voter risk-aversion following the currency and equity markets turmoil on Friday following the Brexit vote.

The markets have calmed since. Brexit will not be another Lehman Brothers. The narrative that is cohering to the point that it is close to being chiseled in stone is that the successful Leave campaigners, leaders like UKIP's Nigel Farage and Tories Boris Johnson (BoJo) and Michael Gove, have not a clue what Britain is to do now that its people have actually voted to separate from the European Union. This confusion is crystallized in a much-cited column written by BoJo for The Telegraph, "I cannot stress too much that Britain is part of Europe – and always will be," where he basically dismisses the reasons for a Leave vote by both the right and the left: Immigration will continue and so too will free trade. Britain will negotiate for itself a Norwegian membership in the common market.

Cameron must have been mindful of this dearth of leadership atop the Leave campaign. His 90-day exit is looking like the smart move at this point. Given another week like the last one, the Leave Tories will be so discredited they will not be able to govern. Cameron's Remainers will keep control of the Conservative Party, better able to join Labour's parliamentary putschists -- assuming they are somehow able to rid themselves of the troublesome Jeremy Corbyn as party leader (which I don't think they will be able to do) -- to finagle avoidance of Article 50, whether through a re-vote or artful negotiation.

The problem in all of this are those hard-shell anti-neoliberal voters, both left and right, who have grown deaf to the mellifluous hymns sung in praise of unfettered markets. Bigger is not better. And I would argue that a solid majority of voters in countries throughout the West have come to believe this, which is a real problem for the governing elite. This majority can be tamped down here and there by means of fear and focusing on division within its ranks, but it will not go away.

I would guess that over the next few years the major parties in the capitalist core will continue to splinter.

National Front's Third-Place Finish in the Second Round of France's Regional Elections: Cautionary Tale for Trump

Well, if the National Front points the way for Donald Trump over the next few months it is going to be a rocky road for the reality TV star real estate mogul. Marine Le Pen's nativist third party failed to win control of any regional government in the second round of voting yesterday in France. According to the AP this morning, "No Real Winner in French Elections, Presidential Race Ahead":

The far-right National Front, the front-runner in the first round of the regional vote, was crushed in Sunday's second round. Despite the defeat, the leader of the anti-immigrant party still has her sights set on the French presidency. 

Marine Le Pen hopes to capitalize on fears over Islamic extremism and a surge of migrants into Europe, and on the political horse trading that went on between conservatives and Socialists in the run-up to the regional elections. 

The Socialists withdrew their candidates from two regions where Le Pen and her niece were running and asked their supporters to vote for their conservative rival to prevent the National Front from scoring symbolic wins. 

This has left the Socialists totally absent from the councils in those two regions. They have also lost the Paris region, which conservative candidate Valerie Pecresse won. 

The official results of the regional elections put the conservative party ahead with 40.2 percent of the votes nationwide. The results from Sunday's vote put the Socialist party in second with 28.9 percent and the far-right National Front in third with 27.1 percent. 

The conservatives took control of seven of France's 13 regions while the Socialist party won in five regions. The winner in Corsica wasn't affiliated with a major party. 

The National Front won its largest number of votes in an election with a total of 6.8 million, better than Le Pen's performance in the 2012 presidential race. The party has extended its influence with more than 350 councilors on regional councils.

There are two takeaways here: 1) The two main parties, liberal Socialists and conservative Republicans, collaborated with one another to make sure that the National Front would not gain control of any regional government, and 2) despite being overwhelmed in the second round the National Front won more votes than it ever has before.

Throughout the West, the mainstream political duopolies, historically representing capital and labor, have thoroughly deracinated their popular base of support. The mainstream parties in the West serve the bankers and the corporations. That is why you have the curious scenario in Britain where the popular Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is actually opposed by a majority of his own MPs.

This deracination of the mainstream parties has become so pronounced after nearly 40 years of neoliberalism that it has created an opening for formerly fascist parties like the National Front or a rhetorically savvy demagogue like Donald Trump.

But as the second round of voting in France's regional elections makes clear, the two hands of the duopoly will join together to beat back any upstart. All one need do is consult American political history from a century ago. Then, during the Age of Progressivism, when reformers and socialists were challenging the entrenched city machines of the Republican and Democrats, it was a common occurrence for the machines to coalesce, just as the Socialists and Republicans did this past week in France, in order to keep Progressives and Socialists from victory.

Trump should take note, and not just because the Republican National Committee is powwowing about how to block Trump at the convention in Cleveland this July (see Alan Rappeport's "For Republicans, Contested 1976 Convention Looms Over 2016 Race"). A greater danger for Trump, if he manages to win the primaries, will be the collaboration of GOP elders with the Dems to pitch the election to Hillary in the general. Is there any question that Hillary better represents the interests of the Republican Party and the deracinated neoliberal center than Donald Trump?

Rob Urie had an acute piece, "The Donald, Ascendent," from a left, radical perspective, on the current hand-wringing about Trump. In it Urie situates the rise of Trump firmly in the soil of Obama's "Manchurian" candidacy:

Barack Obama encountered a reformer’s circumstance when he entered office in the midst of crisis in 2009. Repudiation of the late-capitalist project that had run from the mid-1970s to crisis in 2008 in some measure explained Mr. Obama’s election. In Democrat apparatchik fashion it quickly became apparent that Mr. Obama had been properly vetted by the powers that be and that he clearly understood his role as restorer-in-chief of the predatory, dysfunctional order that had led to crisis. With the same ambition of ‘resume-enhancement’ that Donald Trump now pursues the Presidency; Mr. Obama is of the insular and well-insulated order that considers self-interest first and perceives the public interest as a public relations problem. 

Fear that Mr. Trump is a nascent fascist assumes that he has actual political interests rather than a blowhard’s interest in self-promotion. Twentieth century German fascists, Nazis, spent two decades instantiating themselves into the fabric of regional governance before rising to power. And they had a political program. As Mr. Obama and his recent predecessors have demonstrated, modern American governance is more a business to be milked by insiders. It is hardly an accident that government employment has fallen under Mr. Obama for the first time in decades under the corporate rationale of economic ‘efficiency.’ But other than restoration and perpetuation of the existing order official Washington isn’t that ambitious. This isn’t to suggest that it isn’t dangerous— the embedded government, broadly considered, is in the business of creating global chaos and destruction. But the motives are different from explicit fascism. 

Donald Trump is frightening for the place in history that his ascendance represents and not for who he is. In 2009 Democrats had the opportunity to change the course of history by redirecting political economy to support the people who comprise it. Seven years of bank bailouts, scam public interest programs, abusive ‘trade’ deals, domestic surveillance and racist / classist police repression later and they are the face of everything wrong with late-stage capitalism. And here is the kicker— this was very easy to predict. Even a few liberals made the point that inadequate economic policies would discredit the idea that governments can resolve economic crises. Left out of the liberal frame was class analysis that explained why it was unlikely that Democrats could even serve their own long-term political interests by acting in the broader public interest. 

The current political season is the grimmest in modern history. Democrats frightened by Donald Trump’s rhetoric likely don’t know much about Hillary Clinton’s actual policies— those that she has acted on in official capacities and not the empty blather that she puts forward to win votes. The danger of motivated and empowered racists and nativists is real and it precedes the rise of Donald Trump. Ms. Clinton and the Democrat establishment bear as much responsibility as Republicans for creating the economic circumstances that support manufactured social divisions. The eternal Democrat motivation of lesser-evilism is so much empty chatter in the face of actual Democrat policies over the last thirty years. Obama administration policies were intended to deliver political power to Donald Trump and his class-mates in plutocracy. To now complain about how they are using it is both pathetic and less than well-considered.

Corbyn's Triumph Another Ill Omen for Hillary

Hillary's grave has been dug.

Back at the beginning of May, after Ed Miliband led Labour to a historic defeat in Britain's parliamentary elections, I opined that it augured ill for corporate Democrats in the U.S. At the time, analysts in the mainstream media were trying to spin Cameron's big win as a cautionary tale for Labour moving to the left. Somehow these analysts (I'm thinking here of Steven Erlanger's "Appeal to Dwindling Core Proves Costly for Labour Party in Britain") interpreted Miliband's meekly mouthed promises to roll back some of the egregious aspects of Tory austerity, and Labour's subsequent collapse at the polls, as proof that a leftist attack on neoliberalism was a surefire loser. These analysts failed to account for the incredible showing of the Scottish National Party, a party far to the left of Labour.

Now, this past weekend, Labour has corrected course by shifting hard to the left. Longtime socialist, anti-war firebrand and Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the Labour Party. (See top of the post the informative interview with Tariq Ali from yesterday's Democracy Now! for a good intro to Corbyn.) He won thanks in part to a change in rules that broadened the base of who could vote for party leader. Young people overwhelming supported Corbyn and his message of equality, fraternity and an end to foreign wars; he won with 60 percent of the vote over a mishmash of Blairites.

So Labour is starting its journey back to relevance. Rocky will be the road because zombies occupy most positions of power in neoliberal Western society. (Erlanger pitifully reprises his tune from May by arguing that Corbyn's election means a big Tory win in 2020.)

But the canon has sounded and the blast has been heard across the pond. The U.S. and UK are cousins. When neoliberalism drove it piles into the soil 40 years ago it did so with Thatcherism and Reaganism. Markets are always right and unions are insidious special-interest groups and blacks are lazy scofflaws and military might must be exercised frequently (preferably against a powerless opponent). These are some of the tenets of Thatcherism/Reaganism. And I would say that they have largely lost their purchase on the general public.

Hillary as the Democratic banner-waver of the neoliberal consensus has said that her plan to win the White House is based on returning the Obama coalition to the polls. One crucial bloc of the Obama coalition is the youth vote. Youth went overwhelming with Corbyn in the Labour leadership vote. Youth is not going to go for Hillary in any significant number.

Richard Hell said that the truth is in the youth. The youth has rejected neoliberalism and its perpetual wars and inequality. Even if Hillary manages to cart her carcass across the finish line and defeat Sanders in the Democratic primary, Trump's traveling fascist road show will prove far too formidable for a conventional champion of neoliberalism like Rodham Clinton.