U.S. Democrats Should be Concerned About Results of French Presidential Election

There is much to be disappointed with in the first round of France's presidential election. Though The New York Times ("Emmanuel Macron Mounts a Patriot’s Challenge to Marine Le Pen") is celebrating Macron's top finish as a sigh of relief for defenders of liberal democracy (née neoliberal plutocracy), leaders of the Democratic Party in the United States, if they're paying attention, can't be relieved. Benoît Hamon, the standard-bearer of the French equivalent of the Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, received a ridiculous 6.4% of the vote. The scandal-plagued conservative François Fillon received more than three times the votes.

In order for the neoliberal center to triumph it had to go engage in the kind of new party hocus pocus that worked so well for the traditional Republicans in the wake of the 2008 Obama landslide. Macron's En Marche! is another Tea Party, the difference being that En Marche! is organized entirely around the youthful former Rothschild banker, whereas the Tea Party was organized out of a racist, anti-government antipathy for the first black president in U.S. history. The malign effigy that motivates En Marche! is of course Marine Le Pen.

What En Marche! accomplished in France is something that Establishment mouthpieces like Thomas Friedman and David Brooks have been demanding for years -- a new centrist political formation in the United States, one that can join suburban GOP moderates with college-educated liberal Democrats, a party that focuses on neoliberal economic orthodoxy but is socially permissive; in other words, the status quo.

France and Macron prove it can be done. U.S. election law makes it almost impossible. But the right billionaire could pull it off. (Bloomberg flirted with such a presidential run several times.)

Read Yves Smith's excellent "Democrat Disunity: Hypocritical Media Attacks on Sanders" that was posted this morning. The war continues to rage between the discredited Democratic Party leadership and Bernie Sanders, the most popular Dem politician in the country now.

After reading Smith's post, it becomes clear that if the Bernistas were ever successful at wresting control of the Democratic Party from the neoliberals, a U.S. version of En Marche! would quickly take shape.

Exit Polls Show Macron and Le Pen Ahead

According to early results:

Macron 23.7%

Le Pen 21.7%

Fillon 19.5% 

Mélenchon 19.5%

Emmnuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are one and two in the first round of French presidential election. Fillon and Hamon have both conceded; Mélenchon has not. Reporters are already accepting the Macron-Le Pen May 7 runoff as a done deal.

Turnout was estimated to be just a few points lower than it was in 2012. So a big wave of voter disgust manifesting itself with blank ballots or by staying at home proved unfounded. What does appear to have happened is that Fillon's apparent comeback never made it to the polling station.

No surprise that Socialists are lining up behind Macron, but so is Fillon. Macron's candidacy and En Marche! itself is a ruse like the U.S. Tea Party -- a re-branding scheme meant to quickly remake a discredited ideology.

Early estimates are that Macron-Le Pen combined for 45% of the total vote. If Mélenchon is stuck at 19%, it is not looking good for his chances. Some of his supporters are vowing to sit out the second round. In that case I think Macron wins. Le Pen would need to capture most of Mélenchon's vote to have a chance in the second round.

All in all a dispiriting first round. 

Let's Hope for the "Doomsday Scenario" Sunday

The segment below is from  "Who will be the next French president: The six scenarios facing France," which appears in yesterday's The Local, 'France's news in English,' prior to the Kalashnikov-on-the-Champs-Élysées shootings,

The news cycle has been dominated by the shootings for the last 24 hours.The headline became a Trumpline when the addled POTUS inserted himself into the French presidential election by predicting that the terror attack would benefit Marine Le Pen. Trump is probably right.

But it is not good enough for Le Pen to make it to the final round. We need her to be joined by a real leftist, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. What the mainstream media in France is referring to as the "Doomsday Scenario."

It is Doomsday for the neoliberal center because the purveyors of the bankrupt status quo would have no mount in the race. Hence, the problem -- Who to demonize, Le Pen or Mélenchon? Mélenchon would probably be the one to wear the goat's horns since he favors communistic prescriptions -- a universal basic income -- as well as pacifistic ones -- withdraw France from NATO.

It is hard for me to comprehend how a plurality of French, let alone a majority, could vote for Macron. It is all the same stuff -- anti-labor, pro-intervention, the celebration of the rich and the elite -- that is destroying not only Western Civilization but the planet itself.

Let's hope the French can show as much personal courage as the English.

The doomsday scenario  

Just imagine the shock when at 8pm (or perhaps later, this year) on Sunday French TV stations broadcast the images of the two winners and it’s the face of hard left anti-EU, anti-globalisation Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s alongside the anti-EU, anti-globalisation figure of Marine Le Pen.  

It would for many French voters, be the nearest thing to getting tasered. For those who work for the EU in Brussels it would more like getting tear gassed. 

A battle between Mélenchon and Le Pen was described by former presidential favourite Alain Juppé as being like “the plague vs cholera". 

Macron supporting veteran centrist François Bayrou said the prospect was "terrifying for the country and for its image and its future." 

A “French Hugo Chavez” against a “French Donald Trump”. 

There is talk of a Black Monday with the financial markets going into meltdown the day after the result is announced due mainly to fears over a Frexit and talk of an imminent mass exodus by French entrepreneurs. 

With Le Pen wanting to pull France out of the euro and Mélenchon wanting to introduce a 32-hour work week and tax earnings over €400,000 by 100 percent, French business leader Pierre Gattaz said a run-off between the paid would force France to choose between “economic disaster and economic chaos.” 

Edouard Lecerf from polling agency Kantar Public believes this pairing of the two anti-system is still the most unlikely scenario because it would mean the whole centre of French politics would be eliminated. 

Who would win? 

Polls suggest the far left Mélenchon would win fairly comfortably by around 60 percent to 40 percent.  

Real losers? 

Le Pen or Mélenchon because both would then struggle to get a majority in parliament, plus those twitchy investors. 

But the real loser would of course be François Fillon, who would be “crucified”, as one party big wig put it. Macron might also want to try and get his old job back at the bank. 

Interestingly, of the six scenarios -- Le Pen-Macron; Le Pen-Mélenchon; Macron-Fillon; Fillon-Le Pen; Fillon-Mélenchon; Macron-Mélenchon -- Macron is the only candidate who was not out-polled in the second round. Next up is Mélenchon. Then Fillon. Dead last in the second round is Marine Le Pen who is incapable of polling above 42%.

A lot of this is hogwash. In a head-to-head contest margins will tighten between Sunday and May 7. I do think Le Pen is vulnerable because of the institutional odor of the National Front.

NYT Damns Macron with Faint Praise

Alissa Rubin, "Macron Wants to Change France. But Will Voters Elect an Unknown?," provides NYT readers one more puff piece before the French vote on Sunday in the first round of their presidential election:

The race is truly up in the air. As much as 30 percent of the French electorate is still undecided, and four of the 11 candidates, including Mr. Macron, are polling within three or four percentage points of each other. The top two vote-getters in the election’s first round will face off in a final vote on May 7.

What's interesting about Rubin's story is how faint the praise is. Clearly the 37-year-old Macron is a recognizable shill. Even the prestige press that puffs him can't obscure the fact.

Rubin repeats Macron's famous faux pas when he responded to a heckler by telling him to get a job so he could buy a fine suit.

Those who have worked closely with Mr. Macron, both in government and in the private sector, are almost uniformly impressed by his grasp and dedication, but some said that at times they felt misled as Mr. Macron pursued his ambitions.

[snip]  

At his recent rally in Pau, the crowd seemed a bit more enthusiastic before he spoke than afterward when some seemed baffled by his lofty proposals. He has been criticized as being technocratic, abstract and sometimes lacking in empathy.

An episode last year during a visit to an event in southern France, when Mr. Macron was heckled by a 21-year-old union activist in a black T-shirt, seems emblematic.

The young man called out to the neatly attired former banker, saying he had “not a penny to pay for a suit like that one.”

Mr. Macron responded: “The best way to pay for a suit is to work.”

“I’ve worked since the age of 16,” the man shot back, in an exchange popularly interpreted as having put Mr. Macron in his place.

It is hard to believe the French are so gullible as to pass Macron through to the second round. But if you look at the polling it does seem like he's going to make it.

Then again there are the huge number of undecideds. Plus, how fervent are Macron supporters?

So the ingredients are there for a Le Pen-Mélenchon final or even a Le Pen-Fillon final.

"What is to be Done?"

“What is to be done?” A question that is being asked now that Trump has performed an about-face less than three months into his presidency. No longer is he the people’s tribune battling the many-headed Hydra of the deep state. Now he is the deep state’s colossus.

The first thing that can be done is that communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon can knock off Emmanuel Macron on April 23 and qualify for the second round of the French presidential election, along with the National Front's Marine Le Pen. This will send a message loud and clear that neoliberal orthodoxy is kaput as a viable political program. Markets will panic. The media monopoly with have nowhere to turn because Macron, Fillon and Hamon will be sidelined.

If Mélenchon and Le Pen cannot box out the neoliberals, and Trump can pull off his 180 without suffering an enormous setback during the 2018 midterms, then Tariq Ali is probably right. The radical center can probably lurch along from one crisis to the next for another ten to 20 years.

Let's hope that elections still matter, and that Mélenchon and Le Pen come out on top April 23.

Neoliberalism Flying High? April Elections in U.S. & France

It would've been hard to imagine last November, following Hillary Clinton's spectacular defeat by a reality TV star, that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party would be flying so high in April. Then, post-election, the widely held and uncontroversial conclusion was that Hillary lost because she was too close to Wall Street, too rigid a practitioner of "identity" politics and too hawkish. The only prominent "Not My Fault!" note struck was to blame FBI Director James Comey for reopening the investigation into Clinton's email less than two weeks before election day.

How times have changed. Just one example is today's "Gabbard takes heat from Dems for skepticism of Syria chemical attack" by Mike Lillis writing for The Hill:

Powerful liberal voices are calling for the ouster of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard over the Hawaii Democrat’s vocal criticism of last week’s U.S. strike against the Syrian government.

Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, both took to Twitter to bash Gabbard for what they see as a shameful defense of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president long accused of brutal attacks on his own people in the country's ongoing civil war.

They’re urging Hawaii voters to replace the third-term Democrat in 2018.

“People of Hawaii’s 2nd district — was it not enough for you that your rep met with a murderous dictator? Will this move you?” Tanden tweeted.

“This is a disgrace,” Dean echoed. “Gabbard should not be in Congress.”

You'll recall Tanden as the bitchy star of the Podesta Emails and Dean as the disgraced faux-populist candidate from the 2004 Democratic primary. What is happening is that the corporate Democrats are exterminating the peace wing of their party. All Gabbard has said is that no proof has been provided that the Syrian government is responsible for using chemical weapons at Khan Sheikhoun. That's it. But for this Dean and Tanden say she has to be rubbed out. This is evidence that we are living in a closed society.

Matt Taibbi predicted that this would happen, just not so soon. He was speaking more in terms of the next presidential election.

How have the Wall Street Dems been able to turn things around in a mere six months?

By engaging, with the fulsome support of the mainstream media, in a neo-McCarthyism so pervasive and devoid of content (instead of microfilm in a hollowed out pumpkin, we're supposed to sustain ourselves with Fancy Bears and office visits from Serge Kislyak) that it has to be classed as the most astonishing feat of propaganda in the 21st century, surpassing even the invasion of Iraq. (Today The New York Times announced that it has won a Pulitzer for "Russia’s Dark Arts: An investigative series on Russia’s covert projection of power.")

We'll see if this corporate McCarthyite rebirth of the Democratic Party has any pop at the polls when a special election is held next Tuesday in Georgia's 6th Congressional District to fill Tom Price's seat. Young spooky elite Jon Ossoff is running as a Democrat, and he has garnered an enormous amount of prestige press, partly because he has raised the unheard amount of money -- $8.3 million. The race is being spotlighted as a bellwether of the anti-Trump "Resistance."

Commentators have opined that Ossoff has to win more than 50% on April 18. If not, and he ends up in a one-on-one runoff with a Republican, he'll most likely lose. It is after all Newt Gingrich's old district.

Recent polling gives him a chance, a remote one, to win it all on the first ballot. I'm looking forward to a little schadenfreude at the neoliberal's expense.

The Sunday after the special election in Georgia's 6th CD the French hold the first round of their presidential election. The National Front's Marine Le Pen has had a brutal go of it lately. During last week's presidential debate, Le Pen was attacked as an out-of-touch elite by a Ford factory mechanic Philippe Poutour running on the New Anticapitalist Party ticket. The story received a lot of coverage. Now, after an interview Sunday, it is the old Holocaust-denial bugaboo that doomed her father.

All of this obscures some devastating appraisals of neoliberal savior Emmanuel Macron that have appeared lately. Not in mass publications mind you. But all -- "The Macron Phenomenon" by Christakis Georgiou writing in Jacobin; "Big Stakes in the French Presidential Election: Governance Versus the People" by Diana Johnstone writing in CounterPunch; "Candidate Macron" by Jeremy Harding writing in London Review of Books -- paint a very similar portrait of a technocratic shape-shifter spawned from the womb of France's corporate-liberal elite and whose mission is to erase the age-old left-right divide through some alchemy of propaganda to empower a new popular party -- with a mass base of support -- for the 1%.

This picture of Macron is so consistent, so easy to understand, it is hard to see how it doesn't filter down to the 99%; hence, the recent fusillade against Le Pen.

A silver lining is the recent surge by Communist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who polls show has replaced Francois Fillon for the number three spot behind Le Pen and Macron. Is it too much to hope for the Communist to knock off the neoliberal?

Le Pen Campaigns in Moscow and Sounds Very Presidential

To add fresh perspective to how absurd the endless "Trump Colluded with the Russkies!" U.S. deep state hyperventilating is, how about Marine Le Pen traveling to Moscow to shake Putin's hand and talk turkey on global terrorism just four weeks before the first round of France's presidential vote? (Note the ridiculous Daily Beast headline, "Russia’s Putin Picks Le Pen to Rule France.")

Trump needs to find some of Le Pen's cojones.

The statement from Putin and Le Pen can be found on the President of Russia website:

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ms Le Pen, this is not your first time in Moscow [!], and I am pleased to welcome you here. I am aware that you came at the invitation of the State Duma – the parliament of the Russian Federation.

We value highly our relations with France and try to maintain good relations with incumbent government and the opposition.

I am, of course, aware of the ongoing election campaign in France. In no case do we want to influence the events as they unfold, but we reserve the right to communicate with all representatives of all political forces in France, just like our partners in Europe and the United States are doing. [Damn straight.]

Of course, it would be very interesting to exchange opinions with you on our bilateral relations and the situation in Europe. I know that you represent a European political force that is growing quickly.

I am very pleased to see you.

Marine Le Pen (retranslated): Thank you, Mr President. As you know, I have long been urging the restoration of cultural, economic and strategic ties between Russia and France, which is especially important now when we face a serious terrorist threat.

The fight against terrorism can only be truly effective if the largest nations stand side by side and join forces. Russia is fighting in Syria. France has contributed by waging Operation Barkhane in Chad and by fighting terrorism in Mali. I believe that our countries are taking a very active part in this struggle, including by providing assistance to the countries that had to fight the rise of terrorism in the past and are still fighting this threat.

Mr President, you know that terrorist blows have been delivered to France. Yesterday terrorists delivered a terrible blow with many casualties. They continue their attacks every day, using new forms of terrorism, including so-called economy-class terrorism, when the blows are delivered by individuals some of whom enter our countries together with migrants to strike at the population on orders from terrorist organisations, such as ISIS. I believe that in this situation we must do everything in our power to create conditions for an effective exchange of intelligence information in order to protect our nations from the threat that has hit France and has recently delivered a blow to our British friends.

I would like to say that I see it as a big problem that Russian MPs cannot meet with their colleagues from the EU countries. I believe that meetings between representatives of our democratic forces can help all of us find an effective solution to the ongoing terrorist crisis, which, apart from the military aspect, has many other components, as I could see during a meeting with President of Chad Idriss Deby.

As we have said at the meeting with the State Duma Speaker, I believe that all countries should also think about human trafficking, that is trade in people for purposes of financing terrorism.

Vladimir Putin: As you know, there have been many terrorist attacks in Russia. France, Belgium, the United States and many other countries have also suffered. Unfortunately, the erosion of traditional values in many Middle Eastern countries has intensified violence and migration flows.

Tragic events are taking place in Syria and in Iraq’s Mosul, where hundreds of thousands of refugees were forced to flee from their homes. I fully agree with you that we can effectively fight terrorism only by pooling our efforts.

Today, so soon after the tragedy in London, a tragic event happened in Chechnya in the North Caucasus, where terrorists attacked a National Guard unit. We all live in difficult conditions. We must open our eyes to this threat and join forces to fight terrorism.

Marine Le Pen (retranslated): Mr President, I would like to begin by saying that in addition to solidarity and joint actions, which we definitely need, such countries as Russia should consider ways to promote the development of African countries, in particular, in Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa. The African countries that are fighting terrorism say this struggle requires significant financial resources. As a result, they have to reduce spending on healthcare, education and agriculture.

Besides, many young people face the temptation of escaping economic problems by joining armed terrorist groups. In other words, I believe that we need a truly global strategy that will bring together all the countries that want to preserve or restore security around the world.

In my opinion, this strategy should include attention to the economic development of the countries that have become the object of the terrorist threat and have to defend themselves against it.

Vladimir Putin: I fully agree with you. You are quite right. [Absolutely.]

Our Political Predicament in the West in a Nutshell

The New York Times is beginning to train its lens on the French presidential election. There have been back-to-back stories the last two days, both written by the sneering Adam Nossiter, the Gray Lady's Paris correspondent.

Yesterday's "As French Election Nears, Le Pen Targets Voters Her Party Once Repelled" was noteworthy in that it was not a blanket dismissal of Marine Le Pen; it made the point that the National Front has been connecting immigration to the loss of jobs since the party's founding in the early 1970s.

But it is in today's article, "Marine Le Pen Sharpens Attack on Emmanuel Macron in French Debate," that the whole political dysfunction of the Western world was laid bare.

There is support among the masses of the mainstream for a political solution to the many woes of Western Civilization, and it entails a swing to the left -- massive spending on public works and housing and education, a universal basic income. But the politicians, even those who represent hoary mainstream parties like Benoît Hamon, who advocate such policies find themselves at war with the the establishment of their own parties (look at Corbyn in Britain) and dismissed in the global prestige press as fantasists. Instead the people are served up one phony neoliberal after the next -- Obama, Trudeau, Clinton, Macron -- and expected to fall in line.

Given this choice the people are swinging to the right, what is being called anti-immigrant populism.

In Nossiter's story this morning all the focus is on the "knife fight" between Le Pen and Macron, leaving the following meager text for the left-wing candidates, Hamon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon:

Mr. Hamon, the Socialist candidate, has promised a guaranteed “universal income” and has spoken of cutting the already reduced French workweek, but his chances are thought to be lowered by the presence of Mr. Mélenchon, whose positions are largely similar.

Ms. Le Pen, who also faces accusations related to fictional jobs, accused Mr. Mélenchon of being a “Robespierre” when he called on voters to “reward the virtuous and punish those who don’t seem so.”

That's it. At least Fillon got four paragraphs on his legal difficulties.

The people want to go social-democrat left but the failing neoliberal center won't allow it. So we get right-wing populism. That's our predicament in the West in a nutshell,

Recent Polling Unfavorable to Wilders & Le Pen

An interesting post today on Naked Capitalism, "Nationalists Slipping in European Polls," predicts a poor showing for Geert Wilders' Party of Freedom in Holland's general election next Wednesday. Apparently the Party of Freedom has dropped 14 points of late.

Yves Smith, who is usually bearish when it comes to predictions of fundamental change delivered by conventional politics, re-posts a story by David Llewellyn-Smith from an Aussie website, MacroBusiness. The analysis is thin and is pervaded with the same tongue-clucking that preceded Trump's upset. 

We should recall that most polls predicted that Hillary would win easily last November. Even the young sage Nate Silver was caught with his pants down, though he did hedge enough to say that Trump might hit a trifecta: huge white turnout, reduced Obama coalition turnout, and resistant Republicans returning to the fold.

There is no such hedging in Llewellyn-Smith's piece. Wilders will shit the bed, and Le Pen might not even make it to the second round. And even if she does, Macron, who, according to the polls enjoys a 20-point advantage over Le Pen in round two, will humiliate her.

It's unfortunate to see the usually flinty Yves Smith fall for this. The exchange in the comments section is illuminating. Smith gets straightened out. Undecideds and low turnout taint those impressive poll numbers of Macron:

1. MonetaMarch 9, 2017 at 6:55 am

   Sounds like Brexit and Trump election…. polls and media convinced there is not much threat for the establishment.

   Reply ↓
   1. Yves SmithMarch 9, 2017 at 7:58 am

      No, the gap in the runoff is vastly larger than for Trump v. Clinton. Most of the time, Clinton was 4 points ahead of Trump, with a range of being barely ahead to very briefly down 11 (after the Khan gaffe) with the normal range down 2 points to down 7. 4-5 points is the margin of errors on polls and so Trump being down 2 points in the final tally is entirely consistent with the polls.

      And that’s before you get to the fact that the state level polling, which matters in the US, was less precise. Lambert pointed out in his piece yesterday on the election that he had been keeping tabs on the Electoral College paths to victory per each candidate, and he said several times Trump had more ways to eke out a win than the media was giving him credit for.

      A 30 point gap is a totally different matter. Yes, 2 months is a way away, but a LOT would have to change in two months.

      Reply ↓
      1. visitorMarch 9, 2017 at 8:42 am

         What you say is accurate, but there is a big issue that may throw political calculations out of the window: massive abstention.

         The latest polls in France show that abstention will reach at least a third of the electorate — double the historical value — and that it may well grow further.

         Besides, when evaluating voting intentions, it appears that 78% of Le Pen voters are already committed to their vote, and 70% of those intending to vote for Fillon, whereas only 50% of Macron voters are. Macron’s base is fragile.

         In France just like in the UK, the USA or the Netherlands, polls have been repeatedly wrong in the past. Expecting that the typical left-wing voter will, just like in 2002, rally under a right-wing (Fillon) or an opportunist (Macron) candidate to stop Le Pen is a risky bet. Their experience with the outcome of “tactical voting” has been dismal, and they might really wash their hands of the whole affair in the second round.

         Reply ↓
2. DavidMarch 9, 2017 at 7:11 am

   This kind of superficially impressive analysis is what you get when you work with an outdated analytical model of “Left and “Right” or “nationalist” and “European”; That’s not where the game is, and so much of the analysis is beside the point. It also confuses electability with ability to govern.
   The real political divide can be expressed in various ways: “insiders vs; outsiders”, “soveriegnists vs. Euro-integrationists” or even the centre vs. the periphery. When we look at the figures in these ways, they begin to make sense.
   Take the French case for example. There, the last reliable polls show that the two Presidential candidates for the “traditional”, “insider” parties, one of which currently forms the government, the other of which previously did so, can barely muster a third of the French electorate between them. This may even have reduced over the last few days as Fillon continues to weaken, and people keep forgetting who Hamon is. This is astonishing.
   By contrast, “soverignist” candidates, who want major changes in Europe and more independence from Brussels can muster about 40%. A lot of this is Le Pen, but Mélenchon (allegedly on the far Left) and Dupont Aignan (allegedly the traditionalist Right) are expressing fundamentally the same ideas. The “integrationist” candidates (Fillon, Hamon and Macron) have a majority, but that’s largely because the elites of those parties are absolutely wedded to Euro-integrationist ideology. Their voters don’t necessarily feel the same. And finally, if you take the candidates from “outside” the system (Le Pen, Mélenchon and Macron for the most part) a clear majority of the French electorate (about 65%) supports one or the other. (OK, Macron is pretending but his whole campaign is based on an allegedly new start and a repudiation of the existing system).
   So traditional categories of “Left” and “Right” mean little, and so-called “nationalists” can be found everywhere. That’s what you get for using outdated analytical tools.
   Finally, as I have said before, it will be difficult, and probably impossible, for Le Pen to form an FN government. But it will be even more difficult for Macron, because he scarcely has a party, and needs to find 577 candidates and win enough seats to be the dominant party in the National Assembly, to form a coalition; I think that’s very unlikely, and the country will probably be ungovernable after the summer.

   Reply ↓
   1. Anonymous2March 9, 2017 at 7:34 am

      David

      Thank you. That is very interesting. Do you forsee an Assembly with four or more parties sharing the seats? I can see the traditional parties holding on to many seats but guess that, if neither of those parties can get their candidate into the second round,
      traditional loyalties will be weakened with somewhat unpredictable consequences?

      Reply ↓
      1. DavidMarch 9, 2017 at 8:10 am

         Well, there are currently five separate “Groups” in the Assembly, as well as about 25 independents. The governing coalition itself consists of three parties. By and large, the many parties involved have had understandings with each other, so the situation is not quite as anarchic as it may appear, but that could change.
         The one thing to bear in mind is that, with its weird two-round electoral process, the French system (like the British one) seldom hands out seats in parliament proportional to votes. Even then, local deals may be done in the second round – in 2012 candidates of the major parties conspired to keep the National Front out. So almost any outcome is possible. Don’t forget though that the major parties are very well dug in to many of their traditional seats, and have powerful machines and large patronage systems. I think it’s perfectly possible that the Socialists and the Republicans will do rather better in the parliamentary elections than they will in the presidential ones, thus making it impossible for either Macron or Le Pen to form a government. What fun.

Super Bowl LI: Le Pen and Anarchism Beckon

Many times during the bizarre first-ever overtime Super Bowl I found my eyes looking past the television to the snow beginning to fall outside the window, particularly during Lady Gaga's "Cirque du Soleil" halftime extravaganza. Featuring drones, a truncated opening salute to the Fatherland, twists and turns in an acrobat's harness, the usual horde of "Rhythm Nation" dancers gesticulating to supermarket pop, and a faceless throng wiggling glow sticks beneath the parapet, I preferred to watch the trees turning white.

The game itself was bizarre because the Falcons so completely manhandled New England in the first half plus parts of the third quarter that I thought we might be in store for a delicious blow-out of the celebrated, super-historic Belichik-Brady Patriots. Then the Falcons returned to earth. The young, fast defense lost its legs and MVP quarterback Matty Ice reverted to his playoff form of prior seasons and melted. New England won the toss to begin overtime and promptly drove down the field and scored the game winning touchdown. Atlanta's defense was so cooked at this point it looked like a walk-through drill at practice. Depressing.

Never before has a team come from so far behind, the score was 28-3 in the third quarter, in the Super Bowl. Superficially, since Trump has a tight bond with Belichik, Brady, Gronkowski and owner Bob Kraft, one would have to conclude that the outcome is a hardy reaffirmation of Trumpism.

My assessment that a Trump administration cannot be sustained might have to be amended. It appears that Trump is already making adjustments, trimming his sails, currying favor with the deep state. He is settling in for the long haul. And it is likely he will get a boost from France this spring.

Predictions for the second round are now of a Le Pen-Macron contest, which is basically a recapitulation of the U.S. general election. Macron is the stand-in for Hillary and the enervated neoliberal center; Le Pen, Trump, and waving the flag of a nostalgic nationalism. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, in fact is campaigning against Trump ("Marine Le Pen Echoes Trump’s Bleak Populism in French Campaign Kickoff," by Adam Nossiter):

The populist Ms. Le Pen, 48, offered up a forbidding dystopia in urgent need of radical upheaval, much like Mr. Trump did. The boyish Mr. Macron — he is 39 and has created a nonparty political movement that has suddenly caught fire — spoke of “reconciling” France and of “working together,” and repeatedly addressed more than 10,000 supporters in a giant stadium as “my friends.” France would certainly stay in the European Union, in his view, and there would be none of Ms. Le Pen’s war on globalization.

The crowd spilled onto the grounds outside the stadium, forcing many to watch Mr. Macron on huge screens. He took a backhanded slap at Mr. Trump, promising refuge in enlightened France to American scientists, academics and companies “fighting obscurantism” at home. They would have, “as of next May,” the date of the presidential runoff, “a homeland, and that will be France,” Mr. Macron promised.

The candidates both present themselves as outsiders — Mr. Macron served in the Socialist government but is not a Socialist, while Ms. Le Pen’s party has never held power — but the crowds at the two rallies were a study in contrast. Judging by a dozen-odd interviews, Mr. Macron’s group was peppered with teachers, doctors, academics, civil servants and men who described themselves as “heads of companies.”

In contrast, Ms. Le Pen’s crowd was full of factory workers and former soldiers, and it adored her thundering opening line: “I’m against the Right of money, and the Left of money. I’m the candidate of the people!”

We know how this game ends.

That's why there has been a steady moan in the media about the fate of Germany in this new Trump world of ours. This morning's installment is Max Fisher's "Germany Prepares for Turbulence in the Trump Era." Some Christian Democrats are calling for a massive militarization of Germany to counteract a perceived U.S. retreat from confrontation with Russian.

What gets left out in all this "whither Deutschland?" hand wringing is an acknowledgement that prior to the 2014 coup in Kiev Germany's development was moving eastward. Obama's New Cold War ended that.

What we have to keep in mind is that the refulgent nationalism presently cloaking the West is brittle and thin. It was on display in pregame to the Super Bowl. It is a brazen celebration of militarism -- a live video feed of soldiers watching the game in Kuwait; a flyover of Air Force fighter-bomber jets; Tom Brady mouthing the words to the national anthem for the Fox TV cameras; a superannuated G.W. Bush wheeled out to midfield for the the coin toss -- that is razor thin in its superficiality; it is all held together by a consumerism that is rapidly growing dim, captured beautifully by a Nina Simone recording played to a Ford commercial.

Make no mistake about it. It is a doomed society.

A glimmer of this was captured in a surprisingly balanced report on the blossoming of anarchist support in the United States. Found on the front page of The New York Times last Friday, Farah Stockman's "Anarchists Respond to Trump’s Inauguration, by Any Means Necessary" notes that

Anarchists also say their recent efforts have been wildly successful, both by focusing attention on their most urgent argument — that Mr. Trump poses a fascist threat — and by enticing others to join their movement.

“The number of people who have been showing up to meetings, the number of meetings, and the number of already-evolving plans for future actions is through the roof,” Legba Carrefour, who helped organize the so-called Disrupt J20 protests on Inauguration Day in Washington, said in an interview.

“Gained 1,000 followers in the last week,” trumpeted @NYCAntifa, an anti-fascist Twitter account in New York, on Jan. 24. “Pretty crazy for us as we’ve been active for many years with minimal attention. SMASH FASCISM!”

The movement even claims to be finding adherents far afield of major population centers. A participant in CrimethInc, a decades-old anarchist network, pointed to rising attendance at its meetings and activity cropping up in new places like Omaha.

“The Left ignores us. The Right demonizes us,” the anarchist website It’s Going Down boasted on Twitter. “Everyday we grow stronger.”

Little known to practitioners of mainstream American politics, militant anti-fascists make up a secretive culture closely associated with anarchists. Both reject social hierarchies as undemocratic and eschew the political parties as hopelessly corrupt, according to interviews with a dozen anarchists around the country. While some anarchists espouse nonviolence, others view property damage and even physical attacks on the far right as important tactics.

While extreme right-wing groups have been enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Trump, anti-fascists express deep disdain for the Democratic Party. And it is mutual, by and large: They amount to the left’s unwanted revolutionary stepchild, disowned for their tactics and ideology by all but the most radical politicians.

The neoliberal center is kaput.

Trump Needs Le Pen and Vice Versa

Benoît Hamon won the Socialist Party primary yesterday in France. He won 58% of the vote, clobbering the neoliberal Manuel Valls. Alissa Rubin reports in "Benoît Hamon Wins French Socialist Party’s Presidential Nomination":

Mr. Hamon strongly endorses a stimulus approach to improving the economy and has promised to phase in a universal income, which would especially help young people looking for work, but would also supplement the livelihood of low-paid French workers. The end goal would be to have everyone receive 750 euros per month (about $840).

With the Republican's François Fillon on the ropes over allegations that his wife received a lucrative no-show job, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Left Party gaining momentum, the first round of France's general election on April 23 is shaping up to be anybody's guess.

Fillon stands for greater austerity, and Emmanuel Macron, who abandoned the Socialist Party and the Hollande government last year to create a new political party En Marche!, is a peak neoliberal who is currently standing at number three in the opinion polls.

I suppose a scenario is possible where Fillon continues to bleed out and Macron qualifies for the second round. But what I am interested in is whether it is at all possible to imagine a leftist, whether Hamon or Mélenchon, moving on to round two. And I don't think it is. Hollande has done lasting damage to the Socialists, and in the West, there is no broad base of support for legitimate leftist political formations.

So it appears that it will be Fillon or Macron squaring off against Marine Le Pen of the National Front. I think she beats either one for the same reason Trump beat Hillary -- because s/he is the person who said s/he is going to protect voters' jobs and lifestyles.

Trump needs Le Pen at this point, and Le Pen needs Trump to avoid total self-destruction before the end of April. Announcing his immigration order without working first with the Department of Homeland Security created chaos. If Trump makes more decisions like this in the next three months, a Le Pen presidency might not seem worth the risk to a majority of French voters.

Change is Coming from Europe

If a blow is going to be dealt to American hegemony, we should look to Europe first. The U.S. is on a perpetual war footing. The Obama administration has picked fights with Russia, China; it is attempting to reassert control in South America, at the same time it is presiding over extensive military campaigns in the Greater Middle East (not to mention all its secret ops and special forces in Africa). The U.S. needs its enabling European sidekick in order to cope with its war mania.

But this war mania is what is splintering the electoral base of Europe's ruling parties. War mania creates refugees who attempt to immigrate to Europe. Merkel is losing consistently in Germany, and Le Pen is on her way this spring in France. Spring is also the time that Conservative Party leader Theresa May announced that Britain will trigger Article 50 and begin negotiating with the EU on an exit, which by statute must be concluded in two years. Spain might be headed for its third election in a year. Italy's Renzi is on the ropes.

At the very least, next year, when Europe is coming apart, it is going to be very hard for the U.S. to bluster and bully as it has for so long. Change is on the way, and it is coming from Europe.

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.

Regional Elections in France Point the Way for the U.S. in 2016

The surmise is that Trump timed his headline-grabbing announcement about banning Muslims from entering the United States until "we can figure out what the hell is going on" because of a poll in Iowa showing Ted Cruz taking the lead there. This is from yesterday's story by Patrick Healy and Michael Barbaro, "Donald Trump Calls for Barring Muslims From Entering U.S.":

Mr. Trump has a track record of making surprising and even extreme comments whenever he is overtaken in opinion polls by other Republican candidates – as happened on Monday just hours before he issued his statement about Muslims. A new Monmouth University survey of likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers found that Mr. Trump had slipped from his recent top spot in the state, which holds the first presidential nomination contest on Feb. 1. According to the poll, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas earned 24 percent of support, while Mr. Trump had 19 percent and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida had 17 percent. But another Iowa poll released on Monday, by CNN/OCR, showed Mr. Trump with a comfortable lead but Mr. Cruz gaining ground on him.

Over at FiveThiryEight Nate Silver & Co. suss out the meaning of that Monmouth poll in "What If Ted Cruz Wins Iowa?" FiveThirtyEight can't stop drinking the "Trump Can't Win" Kool-Aid. So most of the analysis that one reads there is tilted toward explanations of improbable scenarios where Establishment-worthy candidates like Rubio or Cruz -- now even Chris Christie is being mentioned -- come out on top in the Republican primaries.

This speaks to the hollowness and superficiality of "horse race" reporting, the kind of writing which dominates election coverage in the United States, because it misses the obvious tsunami heading toward the duopoly. People don't believe in the parties and national government anymore. Perpetual war, skyrocketing inequality, institutional racism, partisan gridlock, wage stagnation, rising housing and healthcare costs -- what is there to feel hopeful about?

Establishment analysts pay too little heed to the alienation swelling in the ranks of the average citizen. It is on full display in France where the first round of regional elections took place last weekend and which will finish up this weekend with what everyone is predicting will be a big win for Marine Le Pen's National Front. The National Front will no longer be an also-ran but one of the top two parties in France, replacing the Socialists.

Alissa Rubin laid it all out yesterday in "National Front Gets a Boost in French Regional Elections"; she might as well have been talking about the U.S.:

The National Front not only came in first in the popular vote on Sunday with 28 percent of votes cast nationwide, it was leading races to govern six of France’s 13 regions, decisively in at least two. 

Many factors combined to help Ms. Le Pen’s party in the first round of voting — the second will be held on Sunday — but the overwhelming message was one that the French elites have been reluctant to confront: The political rules that have governed the country for the past 25 years are being reshaped by a wave of nationalist right-wing populism familiar to voters in many other countries, not least fans of Donald J. Trump in the United States. 

Just like Mr. Trump, Ms. Le Pen is shrewdly speaking to voters who feel economically strained, distant from leaders they perceive as elitist and out of touch, and angry or frightened by waves of immigration that they feel threaten their national identity and personal security. Her appeal, which helped her party win political control of a few French cities last year, seems to have only grown since the attacks in Paris last month that killed 130 people, giving the National Front a chance to establish greater credibility by governing key regions, including the area in the north around Calais that has been struggling all year to deal with an encampment of thousands of migrants.

***

Her success is rooted not just in her ability to modulate her message, cloaking some of her more xenophobic ideas in coded language. She also had the good fortune to come to the political stage at a moment when the traditional parties are splintering, seemingly unable to address the economic woes of the middle class, stem the more negative effects of globalization on the French way of life or convince voters that they are not imperiled by immigration and extremism. Ms. Le Pen has long had proposals on these issues — albeit ones that exclude immigrants from many of the benefits that go to French citizens, or that force assimilation.

The old Socialist Party is “incapable of changing at the moment; it is an empty shell,” said Pierre Haski, the co-founder of the French news site Rue 89. “The Socialists are losing the cities, except for Paris, Lyon, maybe Lille; it’s lost most departments; and it’s going to lose regions after this election. It’s been weakened so that it’s very difficult to imagine it could win the next presidential election.

“And you find the same crisis in the traditional right,” Mr. Haski said. “Sarkozy’s party is in disarray.”

Trump has shrewdly protected his spot at the top of the polls since the summer. And while his Islamophobia is grossly demagogic, it is better politics than demonizing undocumented Latinos who make up a far-larger percentage of the electorate than the 2% who identify as Muslim. Also, Trump has cast his spear at the Achilles' heel of the U.S. Global War on Terror (GWOT). Administration policymakers refuse to acknowledge that the brand of Sunni Islam that is the primary fuel for jihadist terrorism is an export of our chief Arab ally, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. voter has been vaguely aware of this since 9/11, but conflicting messaging of the USG and the shallow reporting by the mainstream press has kept the Saudi role in GWOT from reaching critical consciousness.

Trump has once again proven he can command the direction of the presidential race. And like Marine Le Pen, he remains the candidate who must be beat.

War Widens in Iraq & Syria + Spotlight Back on Saudis + Trump & Le Pen Riding High

Sunday night going to bed after watching football on television and reading the news all day I was oppressed by the feeling that world powers are cycling out of control, ably summed up by a Niqnaq blog post this morning titled "come on, cut the shit and start ww4, i was planning to die fairly soon anyway," having to do with Turkey's refusal to withdraw its troops from around Mosul.

Then yesterday Syria accused the U.S.-led coalition of bombing one of its military bases in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, killing three soldiers and wounding 13. The U.S. immediately denied that it was at fault and blamed Russia. Brett McGurk, Obama's ISIS czar, the guy who managed the Western response to the fall of Mosul, tweeted "Reports of coalition involvement are false."

The problem for the U.S. is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Western, anti-Assad propaganda outlet, puts the blame on the U.S.-led coalition. According to Hwaida Saad and Eric Schmitt in "Syria Blames U.S. in Base Bombing, but Americans Blame Russia":

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group that tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts on the ground, also reported on Monday that American coalition airstrikes had apparently hit a Syrian military post on Sunday near Ayyash, in the western part of Deir al-Zour.

Over at the Moon of Alabama blog, "Is Erdogan's Mosul Escapade Blackmail For Another Qatar-Turkey Pipeline?," a connection is made between Turkey's invasion of Iraq and the attack on the Syrian military base in Deir al-Zour:

Damascus insists that four jets entered Syria from Al-Bukamal, Iraq and fired 9 missiles against al-Saeqa military base in Ayyash near Deir Ezzour.

The U.S. accuses Russia to have committed the strike. I very much doubt that. There have been accidental "friendly fire" strikes by the Russian air force against Syrian troops and against Hizbullah. But those accidents were always immediately admitted and investigated within the 4+1 alliance. The Russians say they did not do this strike and Damascus agrees. 

But notice the weasel word in the U.S. statements: "U.S.-led coalition". The Turks in Mosul are not part of the "U.S.-led coalition" even if they first claimed to be. If the air strike in Syria today were not done by the "U.S.-led coalition" it could mean that some country committed these air strikes on its own without the strike being officially within the "U.S.-led coalition" framework. Could that country's name start with a Q? [Qatar]

The U.S. will know who really launched this strike. In both, the Turkish aggression on Iraq and the airstrike in Syria today and even with the earlier mountain ambush on the Russian jet, the U.S. is likely "leading from behind" the curtain. All these events are, like the now forming new alliance with Jihadis, part of Obama's bigger plans and designs for Syria and the Middle East.

Events appear to be spiraling out of control. But the spotlight on the Saudi origin of the Wahhabite ideology espoused by the jihadists of the Islamic State, a spotlight that quickly dimmed after shining brightly for about a week following the Paris terrorist attacks of November 13, looks to have been turned back on. 

Yesterday Declan Walsh published a remarkable story, "Tashfeen Malik Was a ‘Saudi Girl’ Who Stood Out at a Pakistani University," about the female member, Tashfeen Malik, of the husban-&-wife terror team of last week's San Bernardino massacre. Malik was born in Pakistan but reared in Saudi Arabia where her father worked as an engineer. She returned to Pakistan where she attended a religious school, Bahauddin Zakariya University, in Multan. Malik studied pharmacy. Her professors considered her such an excellent student (even if they didn't know what she looked like since she was always decked out in a face-covering niqab) that they hoped she would stay on after she received her degree and teach.

Here is the passage where Walsh focuses the spotlight on Saudi Arabia:

In many ways, Ms. Malik was a classic product of the conservatizing influence that Saudi Arabia has brought to bear on countries like Pakistan. 

Critics of Saudi influence usually focus on the funding of hard-line mosques and religious schools, a criticism echoed on Sunday by the German vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, who connected the export of Saudi-style Islam to the danger from growing extremism in Europe. “We must make it clear to the Saudis that the time of looking the other way is over,” Mr. Gabriel said an interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. 

[Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, also squarely affixed blame to the Saudi's for exporting jihadist ideology. See Alison Smale, "Germany Rebukes Its Own Intelligence Agency for Criticizing Saudi Policy." 

But Ms. Malik’s family represents a different strand of the same phenomenon: changes wrought by Pakistanis who, since the 1970s, have migrated to Saudi Arabia for work, only to return with a far more conservative creed. 

Relatives and neighbors said that, after some years in Saudi Arabia, Ms. Malik’s father, Gulzar, rejected the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam that his family had traditionally practiced, and turned to the stricter Deobandi school. He stopped returning home for weddings, and his children, including Ms. Malik, did not meet their Pakistani relatives. 

“There was a lot of friction within the whole family as they adhered to different sects,” said Zahid Gishkori, a journalist based in Islamabad who is from the same district as the family.

Walsh obviously struck a bull's-eye based on the preposterous Saudi reaction reported by Ben Hubbard in "Discrepancies Emerge Over Where Tashfeen Malik Grew Up." Saudi officials are denying that Tashfeen Malik grew up in Saudi Arabia:

Maj. Gen. Mansour Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, said via text message on Saturday that Ms. Malik had visited the kingdom twice. In 2008, she arrived in June from Pakistan to visit her father and stayed for about nine weeks before returning to Pakistan, General Turki said. 

Then, in 2013, she arrived on June 8, from Pakistan, and departed for India on Oct. 6 of the same year, General Turki said. 

He gave her full name as Tashfeen Malik Gulzarahmed Malik and said his office did not know whether her father was still in the kingdom. 

General Turki said there was “no evidence” that Ms. Malik had met her husband in the kingdom, but they were in Saudi Arabia at the same time for about five days in October 2013, according to information General Turki provided.

Mr. Farook, 28, visited Saudi Arabia twice, once for the hajj pilgrimage between Oct. 1 and Oct. 20, 2013, and once for an off-season pilgrimage known as umrah for nine days in July 2014. 

American officials reported that the couple flew to the United States together from Jidda in July 2014. And members of a mosque the couple attended in California said they had been married in Saudi Arabia. 

Both Saudi and Pakistani officials have bristled at the suggestion that their respective countries played any role in the radicalization of Ms. Malik and Mr. Farook. 

In Multan, Pakistan, where Ms. Malik went to the university, the authorities swarmed around journalists who were seeking interviews with people who knew the family. "What is your intention?” one security guard asked a reporter seeking comment at the university. “Why do you want to interview people here? We will not allow anyone to malign our institution.”

Saudi officials, meanwhile, have rejected the idea that Ms. Malik took up more fundamentalist views in Saudi Arabia, or that it played a role in the relationship between her and Mr. Farook. The Saudi narrative has varied to the extent that one official denied she had ever been there. 

The day after the attack, Osama Nugali, a spokesman for the Saudi Foreign Ministry, said via text message that Mr. Farook had visited the kingdom only once, for nine days in 2014. He said he had no record of Ms. Malik having ever entered the kingdom. 

“For the lady, we don’t have a record of this name,” he wrote.

The Saudis are lying of course. Anyone who has followed their war on Yemen should know by now that for the House of Saud no lie is too blatant or too big. The Saudis are scared because things are getting out of their "pay-to-play" control. Trump, the candidate who is going to win the White House and/or destroy its remaining patina of legitimacy, is calling for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S., while Marine Le Pen is heading to a resounding victory in France's regional elections.

After Paris: A Few Hopeful Signs but Overall Business as Usual

There are indications this morning that the Friday assault on Paris by Islamic State hit teams that murdered 129 might actually prompt a shift by the West. Ever since Mosul fell at the end of spring 2014, the West, led by the United States, has been engaged in largely cosmetic attacks on ISIS as the jihadist offshoot of Al Qaeda pursued goals identical to the West, namely, regime change in Iraq and Syria. The collapse of the Iraqi Army was used to oust Nouri al-Maliki, but Bashar al-Assad has not proven so easy to dislodge.

Beginning early last month with Russia's active militarily involvement against the potpourri of jihadist groups operating in Syria, many with the direct support of Western intelligence services and GCC funding, the war in Syria began to shift. Islamic State struck back by blowing up a Russian charter jet in the Sinai two weeks ago, followed by a suicide bombing in a Beirut neighborhood, capped off by the assault on Paris on Friday.

Indications that this ISIS assault on a Western capital city has elicited a move away from the cosmetic to the substantive in the war against the caliphate are contained in two stories this morning: "France Strikes ISIS Targets in Syria in Retaliation for Attacks," by Alissa Rubin and Anne Barnard, and "U.S. Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria," by Michael Gordon.

First, Michael Gordon's story. Many commentators have pointed out that if the U.S. were truly serious about knocking out the caliphate it would go after its black-market oil pipeline. As Pepe Escobar argued ten-days ago in "What's the Big Deal Between the Russians and the Saudis?":

Meanwhile, fomenting all sorts of wild speculation, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh still manages to collect as much as $50 million a month from selling crude from oilfields it controls across “Syraq”, according to the best Iraq-based estimates. 

The fact that this mini-oil caliphate is able to bring in equipment and technical experts from “abroad” to keep its energy sector running beggars belief. “Abroad” in this context means essentially Turkey – engineers plus equipment for extraction, refinement, transport and energy production. 

One of the reasons this is happening is that the US-led Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists (CDO) – which includes Saudi Arabia and Turkey – is actually bombing the Syrian state energy infrastructure, not the mini oil-Caliphate domains. So we have the proverbial “international actors” in the region de facto aiding ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to sell crude to smugglers for as low as $10 a barrel.

Or as John Newsinger points out in a footnote to his "Wars Past and Wars to Come" in the latest Monthly Review:

The U.S. fight against Islamic State is compromised by the covert support that America’s allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, continue to provide for that regime. When considering IS it is worth adopting the old adage of following the money. Who is helping produce, sell and distribute the Islamic State’s oil? It is certain that Western intelligence agencies know the answer to this question, but obviously those assisting IS are too important to be named, let alone be sanctioned for their actions.

Now, according to Gordon, the U.S. has finally decided to target the Islamic State's oil:

ISTANBUL — Intensifying pressure on the Islamic State, United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said.

According to an initial assessment, 116 trucks were destroyed in the attack, which took place near Deir al-Zour, an area in eastern Syria that is controlled by the Islamic State.
The airstrikes were carried out by four A-10 attack planes and two AC-130 gunships based in Turkey. 

Plans for the strike were developed well before the terrorist attacks in and around Paris on Friday, officials familiar with the operation said, part of a broader operation to disrupt the ability of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to generate revenue to support its military operations and govern its territory. 

American officials have long been frustrated by ability of ISIS to generate tens of million of dollars a month by producing and exporting oil.

To disrupt that source of revenue, American officials said last week that the United States had sharply stepped up its airstrikes against infrastructure that allows ISIS to pump oil in Syria. 

Until Monday, the United States had refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1,000 tanker trucks, because of concerns about causing civilian casualties. As a result, the Islamic State’s distribution system for exporting oil had remained largely intact. 

The new campaign is called Tidal Wave II. It is named after the World War II effort to counter Nazi Germany by striking Romania’s oil industry. Lt. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, who in September assumed command of the international coalition’s campaign in Iraq and Syria, suggested the name. 

To reduce the risk of harming civilians, two F-15 warplanes dropped leaflets about an hour before the attack warning drivers to abandon their vehicles, and strafing runs were conducted to reinforce the message.

Don't believe the window-dressing about concern for civilian casualties. Just ask the survivors from the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz. The U.S. and its allies obviously wanted to maintain the viability of the caliphate as a way to pressure the governments of Iraq and Syria.

My concern is that these airstrikes on the oil-tanker trucks are going to be a PR one-off, evidence of good faith for the voters back home who are paying attention. Kerry's statement coming out of the negotiations in Geneva stick to the "It's All Assad's Fault" script, which is the same one that got us ISIS to begin with. According to Julie Hirschfeld Davis, "Attacks in Paris Add Urgency to Talks on Ending Syria War":

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov sparred openly over the fate of Mr. Assad, a central question in any final agreement. 

The United States, along with Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, believes Mr. Assad must go as part of any final settlement, and Mr. Kerry described him on Saturday as an enabler of the Islamic State and a “magnet” for foreign fighters who are spreading terror through the region and beyond. 

“This war won’t end — this war can’t end — as long as Bashar al-Assad is there,” he said. [Clear statement that there will be more terror attacks like Friday's in Paris.] 

But Russia has been a strong Assad supporter, and Mr. Lavrov argued that the conflict in Syria goes far beyond him, noting that past crises in Iraq and Libya only worsened with the ouster of their leaders, Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi. 

“I cannot agree, therefore, with the logic that Assad is the cause for everything,” Mr. Lavrov said to Mr. Kerry, seated with him in a hotel ballroom for the news conference. “The Paris attacks have shown, alongside with ISIS claiming responsibility for it, that it doesn’t matter if you are for Assad or against him; ISIS is your enemy, so it’s not about Assad.” 

Also left unresolved was the critical question of which groups would be considered terrorist organizations and which legitimate members of the opposition would be included in the political transition talks, an issue that the diplomats agreed to work on in the days ahead.

Not good. Yet in the Rubin and Barnard story about French airstrikes on the caliphate's capital of Raqqa, there is some hopeful news that the West is finally getting serious:

There is a growing focus on both reducing the Islamic State’s territory and its financing, said French government officials and experts. 

“We need to push the organization away from its territories,” said Jean Charles Brisard, a terrorism expert, who worked in the French government and now is the chairman for the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, a Paris-based research group. 

“Most of its resources are from the territory, so we have to push it away from its resources in Syria and Iraq and that means going in on the ground with a regional power,” he said.

The United States currently has soldiers on the ground in Iraq working with Syrian and Iraqi Kurds to dislodge the Islamic State. France has not yet said whether it will adopt a similar course. 

On Sunday, Mr. Hollande met his predecessor and rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the Élysée Palace. Afterward, Mr. Sarkozy urged decisive action against the Islamic State — a position Mr. Hollande has also taken. 

“We need everybody in order to exterminate Daesh,” Mr. Sarkozy told reporters, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

We'll see. A danger here is this "going in on the ground with a regional power" could be the green light that Erdogan has been looking for all along -- a buffer zone in northern Syria. Erdogan is going to get his billions and his special session in Brussels for Turkey. He has been playing his cards like a poker shark.

So despite hints here and there of a shift, it looks like business as usual. It is going to take a shift in Europe away from the United States and closer to Russia and China to bring about real change. That is not going to happen unless there is a cracking of the European Union. Something that "business as usual" is rapidly bringing about. Look for Marine Le Pen in 2017.