The Term "Pinko" is Starting to Reappear

Trudeau continues to bleed out in Ottawa. Hillary opts out of another presidential run. Trump's trade war with China looks to conclude without laying a finger on Made in China 2025.

More fodder for the argument that neoliberal hegemony is cracking.

A guy I know emailed me yesterday about the following cover story devoted to the flourishing pinko cultural in New York City:

When did everyone become a socialist?” That’s the question posed on the cover of next week’s New York magazine: “Coolheaded Obaman technocracy is out; strident left-wing moral clarity is in. And while this atmospheric shift is felt most acutely among the left-literary crowd, it’s also bled into the general discourse, such that Teen Vogue is constantly flacking against capitalism and . . . one of the most devastating insults in certain corners of the internet is to call someone a neoliberal."

No, I mean, it's a real problem for the ruling elite.

That's why you had to recreate the evil Russian bogeyman bear Putin Rasputin.

Reading Ross Douthat's "The State of Russiagate” I noticed that he didn't hyperlink the "well corroborated" allegation that Russian intelligence was behind the hack of the DNC and the purloined Podesta emails released through WikiLeaks. If it is so well corroborated where's the hypernk to the proof-positive report? He hyperlinks to the Steele dossier, and that's it. The Steele dossier is a joke. What Douthat calls disinformation delivered as intelligence.

Ask yourself, What did the DNC hack reveal? (Let’s not even broach the topic that to my knowledge has never been refuted – the DNC couldn’t’ve been hacked because the download speeds online didn’t permit it; it had to be a leak to a thumb drive.) It revealed that the DNC leadership was conspiring against Bernie Sanders. What did the Podesta emails reveal? They revealed Hillary’s Goldman speech where she pledged allegiance to the banksters and told them, “I’m with you.”  
A Russian bogeyman had to be inflated – it’s part of our cultural DNA going all the way back to the Russian Revolution – because otherwise the Democratic Party, the party of Obama and Clinton – would be exposed for exactly what it is -- a private organization funded overwhelming by millionaires and billionaires to enact legislation favorable to their class.
Elites think they can derail the dialectic of history through disinformation and counter-intelligence. But it can only buy so much time before we end up like Egypt and Thailand. Truly closed society police states. 

Anti-Semitism, Socialism -- and What About Haiti?

We can tell from the post-holiday morning paper that the evolving strategy to maintain allegiance to a foundering status quo has for the time being settled on two epithets: "anti-Semite" and "socialist."

For the former, we have these three dispatches:

• Anti-Semitic Taunts by Yellow Vests Prompt French Soul-Searching
• 7 Labour Lawmakers Resign in U.K., in Rebuke of Jeremy Corbyn
• Anti-Semitic Attacks Fuel Continuing Rise in Hate Crimes in New York

For the latter, these three:

• Trump Delivers Blunt Warning to Venezuela Military Over Aid Impasse
• As Trump Attacks Maduro, Some See Bid for Florida Votes
• Kamala Harris Faces Questions About ‘Democratic Socialist’ Label and Jussie Smollett in N.H. Debut

Yes, it appears we have arrived at a point where to doubt the neoliberal status quo is to invite repudiation as an anti-Semite and a socialist, and this at a time when a prominent Jewish socialist has declared his intention to run for president.

One of the interesting takeaways from Trump's coup rally yesterday in Florida is Bolton's acknowledgement (first bullet in the second block) that the aid convoys being staged on the Venezuela's borders are a publicity stunt:

John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, told reporters in Miami before the speech that Venezuelan volunteers would bring in all the donated supplies, with no assist from the American forces that have stockpiled the aid on the Colombian side.

Regardless, the outcome would not be ideal for Mr. Maduro, Mr. Bolton said, because if the Venezuelan military blocked the aid, the world would see Mr. Maduro’s “true colors.”

“We hope that the press will be there to see the Maduro loyalists stopping humanitarian assistance from going to the poor people of Venezuela,” Mr. Bolton said. “People want to know why the Venezuelan people are rising up. That act by Maduro would be proof beyond words.”

But Venezuela is responding with PR of its own: delivering food aid to Colombia and staging a concert to rival the one staged by odious British billionaire Richard Branson.

And where's the news about the ongoing revolt in Haiti? Armed U.S. mercenaries were arrested there on Sunday. The mainstream press doesn't want to report on Haiti because it refutes the narrative concocted on Venezuela.