StephenKMackSD's Blog

It shouldn’t surprise that Andy Divine shares a propinquity with Fiona Hill. Ms. Hill’s thesis adviser was the notorious Neo-Conservative Richard Pipes. So her Russophobia, bordering on paranoia, is comfortable political territory for Andy. The first paragraph of his essay is…

I’ve been in Britain, so it was tough to give this week’s impeachment hearings the attention they deserve. But one obvious theme has emerged: the imperturbability, professionalism, and courage of the women who have testified. When I sat down last night and watched some of the footage of Fiona Hill online, I was gobsmacked.

‘Gobsmacked‘ is familiar descriptive territory for Andy, in sum, hyperbole is the first and last line of argument. His essay proceeds via a riff on what her voice evokes in emotional terms , and his familiarity with the various accents of the districts Britain. And his fascination with her personal history. The admiration of one scholarship student for another?

What of Ms. Hill’s testimony? available here:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?466380-1/impeachment-inquiry-hearing-fiona-hill-david-holmes

At about the 1:10:12 point in the c-span video Ms. Hill describes the Party Line of both the New Democrats, and the Neo-Conservatives, about ‘Russian Interference’ in the 2016 American Election*. And the attempt by the Russians to deflect that, by the use of the charge that Ukraine interfered in the American election.

…

From these modest origins, as she acknowledged in her opening statement, Hill became what we saw yesterday. One of the wretched things about the last few years has been following and staying sane in the blizzard of bluster, misinformation, gaslighting, conspiracy theories, and the actual empirical, complex reality we have been confronted with. To keep one’s focus while enduring this torrent of deliberate confusion and competing narratives has been extremely hard.

But not for Hill.

…

It is never hard for the ideologue to adhere to the approved narrative. Andy knows the territory, it is his home ground! The last two paragraphs of his essay, are awash in a maudlin exploration of the dimensions of political kitsch, allied to the patriotism of a 4th of July picnic speech, by an old pol, who relies on the cultivated ignorance of his audience.

Hearing Hill’s still voice of calm in this storm moved me deeply, and not just because she comes from the country of my birth too, but because her immigrant, accented voice revealed an understanding of America in a way this president simply doesn’t understand. She knows what’s at stake. And she has done her part. It gives me hope, I guess. Hope that we can, in fact, expose and defeat this malignancy at the heart of our democracy.

If we see Trump as the poison he truly is, we have now also seen something else. We have seen the antidote.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/andrew-sullivan-fiona-hill-is-the-antidote-to-trump.html

Political Observer

P.S. With 27 hours and 30 minutes of video, available for viewing on C-Span, of these hearings of last week -its a full time job, to even stay moderately well informed on this issue!

* This opening portion of Ms. Hill’s testimony, in which see acts ‘as if’ she were a member of the Committee, rather that as a witness, is telling!

THE RUSSIANS INTERESTS TO DELEGITIMIZE OUR ENTIRE PRESIDENCY. ONE YRBISSUE I DO WANT TO RAISE AND I THINK THIS WOULD RESONATE WITH OUR COLLEAGUES ON THE COMMITTEE FROM THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THAT THE GOAL OF THE RUSSIANS WAS TO PUT WHOEVER BECAME THE PRESIDENT BY TRYING TO TIP THEIR HANDS ON ONE SIDE OF THE SCALE UNDER A CLOUD. SO IF SENATOR CLINTON HAD BEEN ELECTED AS PRESIDENT, AS INDEED MANY EXPECTED IN THE RUN-UP TO THE ELECTION IN 2016, SHE TOO WOULD HAVE HAD MAJOR QUESTIONS ABOUT HER LEGITIMACY. AND I THINK WHAT WE’RE SEEING HERE AS A RESULT OF ALL OF THESE NARRATIVES AS THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT WAS HOPING FOR. MISINFORMATION, DOUBT, THEY HAVE EVERYBODY QUESTIONING THE LEGITIMACY OF A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, BE IT PRESIDENT TRUMP OR POTENTIALLY A PRESIDENT CLINTON, BUT THEY WOULD PIT ONE SIDE OF OUR ELECTORATE AGAINST THE OTHER, THEY WOULD PIT ONE PARTY AGAINST THE OTHER. AND THAT’S WHY I WANTED TO MAKE SUCH A STRONG POINT AT THE VERY BEGINNING. BECAUSE THERE WAS CERTAINLY INDIVIDUALS AND MANY OTHER COUNTRIES WHO HAD HARSH WORDS FOR BOTH OF THE — WHO HAD HARSH WORDS FOR MANY OTHER CANDIDATES DURING THE PRIMARIES, A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WERE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE. THERE WERE MANY PEOPLE TRYING THEMSELVES TO GAME THE OUTCOME AS YOU KNOW IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, THE BOOKIES TAKE BETS, YOU CAN GO TO LADBROKES OR WILLIAM HILL AND LAY BETS ON WHO YOU THINK WILL BE THE CANDIDATE. THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT WERE TRYING TO LAY THEIR OWN BETS. THEY WANT TO GIVE A SPREAD, MAKE SURE THAT WHOEVER THEY HAD BET ON WHOEVER THEY TRIED TO TIP THE SCALES WOULD ALSO EXPERIENCE SOME DISCOMFORT THAT THEY WOULD BE BEHOLDEN TO THEM IN SOME WAY, THAT THEY WOULD CREATE JUST THE KIND OF CHAOS WE HAVE SEEN IN OUR POLITICS. SO I JUST WANT TO, AGAIN, EMPHASIZE WE NEED TO BE VERY CAREFUL AS WE DISCUSS ALL OF THESE ISSUES NOT TO GIVE THEM MORE FODDER THAT THEY CAN USE AGAINST US IN 2020.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?466380-1/impeachment-inquiry-hearing-fiona-hill-david-holmes

Rep. Schiff then comments on Ms. Hill’s testimony. I’ve rendered in bold type Schiff’s comments, that render the utterly failed Mueller Investigation subject to, not just to an act of breathtaking revisionism, but a re-write.

THANK YOU, DR. HILL. I WILL NOW PROCEED TO THE FIRST ROUND OF QUESTIONS. AS DETAILED IN THE MEMO PROVIDED TO THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS, 45 MINUTES OF QUESTIONS CONDUCTED BY THE CHAIRMAN OR MAJORITY COUNCILFULED BY 45 MINUTES FOR THE RANKING MEMBER OR MINORITY COUNCIL. FOLLOWING THAT, UNLESS I SPECIFY ADDITIONAL EQUAL TIME FOR QUESTIONING WE’LL PROCEED UNDER THE FIVE MINUTE RULE. I RECOGNIZE MYSELF FOR MAJORITY COUNCIL FOR THE FIRST ROUND OF QUESTIONS. FIRST OF ALL, THANK YOU, BOTH, FOR BEING HERE. THANK YOU FOR TESTIFYING. DR. HILL, YOUR STORY REMINDS ME A GREAT DEAL OF WHAT WE HEARD FROM ALEXANDER VINDMAN. FEW IMMIGRANT STORIES WE HEARD JUST IN THE COURSE OF THESE HEARINGINGS ARE AMONG INGS ARE AMONG THE MOST POWERFUL I HEARD. YOU AND DR. — AND COLONEL VINDMAN AND OTHERS ARE THE BEST OF THIS COUNTRY. AND YOU CAME HERE BY CHOICE AND WE ARE SO BLESSED THAT YOU DID. SO WELCOME. MY COLLEAGUES TOOK SOME UMBRAGE WITH YOUR OPENING STATEMENT, BUT I THINK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN BE FORGIVEN IF THEY HAVE THE SAME IMPRESSION, LISTENING TO SOME OF THE STATEMENTS OF MY COLLEAGUES DURING THIS HEARING THAT RUSSIA DIDN’T INTERVENE IN OUR ELECTION, IT WAS ALL THE UKRAINIANS. THERE HAS BEEN AN EFFORT TO TAKE A TWEET HERE AND OP-ED THERE AND NEWSPAPER STORY HERE AND SOMEHOW EQUATE IT WITH THE SYSTEMIC INTERVENTION THAT OUR INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES FOUND THAT RUSSIA PERPETRATED IN 2016 THROUGH AN EXTENSIVE SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN AND A HACKING AND DUMPING OPERATION. INDEED, THE REPORT MY COLLEAGUES GAVE YOU THAT THEY PRODUCED DURING THE INVESTIGATION CALLS INTO QUESTION THE ACCURACY OF INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE’S FINDING THAT RUSSIA INTERVENED TO HELP ONE SIDE, TO HELP DONALD TRUMP AT THE EXPENSE OF HILLARY CLINTON. NO ONE IN INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY QUESTIONS THAT FINDING. NOR DOES THE FBI, NOR DOES THE SENATE, BIPARTISAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REPORT, THE MINORITY COMMITTEE REPORT OF THIS COMMITTEE, THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN REPORT IS AN OUTLIER. BUT LET ME ASK YOU, DR. HILL, ABOUT YOUR CONCERN WITH THAT RUSSIAN NARRATIVE THAT WASN’T THE RUSSIANS THAT ENGAGED IN INTERFERING IN THE ELECTION IN 2016, AND, OF COURSE, THIS WAS GIVEN A BOOST WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP HELSINKI AND THE PRESIDENT QUESTIONED HIS OWN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES, BUT WHY ARE THE RUSSIANS PUSHING THAT NARRATIVE?

https://www.c-span.org/video/?466380-1/impeachment-inquiry-hearing-fiona-hill-david-holmes

_____________________________________________________

Added November 26, 2019

Read  this essay by  Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/fiona-hill-pitfalls-being-pit-bull-russophobe

If you’re in need of a mild chuckle today @JananGanesh @FT provides something that might meet your needs? This, for his audience of scriveners pretending to the status of Internet Boulevardiers. The pretentious is his métier.

Allow me to itemise all the burdens that I bear. I have to obey the criminal law of the US and the UK. I am contracted to perform certain duties for the FT. After that, well, some people insist on a reply text these days, but really, in all candour, that is it. The world asks almost nothing of me. What with my talent for saying No (I am what you might call a people-displeaser) I don’t even feel informal pressure to serve this or that cause, live this or that life.
I and the millions like me are CS Lewis’s “men without chests”. As much as our hard-to-target lower pecs need tightening, this is in fact a slight at our listlessness. We are all desire and reason with no higher calling. Francis Fukuyama cribs the phrase in The End of History, which has displaced Das Kapital and perhaps even The Origin of Species as the most invoked book that nobody reads. Among the consequent misunderstandings is that Fukuyama relished the triumph of liberalism as the end-state of humankind.
…

StephenKMackSD

https://www.ft.com/content/f068080c-0c4a-11ea-bb52-34c8d9dc6d84

Mr. Ganesh opens his essay via ‘The Servant’ a movie, cineasts forgive my use of such an unsophisticated American term, just call me a provincial!

The class animus in The Servant was meant to be peculiarly British. 

Wasn’t this more about a celebration of Decadence, rather than the proffered ‘class animus’? Although there is something to be said about – the reader could almost cast this in Hegelian terms, via Kojève’s reading of The Phenomenology of Spirit: Master and Slave fight to the death in his Philosophical Novel. Have I reached to far? Or is that even possible in Ganesh World? Or are Pop Culture references the ultimate limit?

What writer would think that ‘class neuroses’ has any kind of intellectual/political weight? Freud and his epigones, the Neo-Freudians, have faded into a richly deserved obscurity. Except for the practitioners of  a ‘Science’ that has transmogrified into a Metaphysics, or an instance of Jewish Story Telling, and other forms of  an etiolated apologetics. Place this under the rubric of self-rehabilitation.

Let me speculate that Mr. Ganesh has not read the classic books by Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time and Neurosis and Human Growth. A clinic named in her honor is still accepting patients.

Home

Neo-Freudians were the experts on  ‘psychological pathologies’ , while I was coming of age in the 50’s and 60’s America, these two books were part of my self assigned reading, as a pseudo-analysand.

Although the desperation of the practitioners of the ‘Psychoanalytic Method’ has led to a ‘Science’ transmogrified into the afore-mentioned  Metaphysic , or the preposterous notion of the art of Jewish Story Telling, and other such rehabilitative tropes. The reader should direct their attention to the work of Frederick Cruz: ‘Memory Wars’, Freud: The Making of an Illusion and his essays at The New York Review of Books.

The Revenge of the Repressed, from the November 17, 1994:

Or his  incendiary biography of Freud, here reviewed by Matthew Hutson in The Washington Post: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/young-freud-cruel-incurious-deceptive-and-in-search-of-fame/2017/09/01/df3e74a4-76fa-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html

Read Frank Kermode’s essay of 1976 titled ‘Fighting Freud’ a review of Cruz’s ‘Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method’ that might just offer a rejoinder, to both mine , and Cruz’s dissent to the Cult of Freud and his epigones.  The Skeptic’s practice of setting two arguments against each other, equipollence, might lead to a valuable reckoning?

Fighting Freud

‘ Neuroses’  as a frame for his latest essay places Mr. Ganesh’s firmly in the territory of anachronism, used maladroitly to discuss  class/racial/ethnic prejudice. Using Marxism, in any of its iterations, to discuss the above triad of vexing moral/political, what to name it conundrums?, is antithetical, or in the interest of candor anathema, to both Mr. Ganesh’s Neo-Liberalism and the editors and readers of this newspaper.

Mr. Ganesh’s last paragraph identifies a kind of tribalism, that looks down upon others as less than themselves.

It reminded me of the awesome pride that people I grew up with felt at not living in a council house, even if they were just one notch better-off. Looking back, my mistake was to think of their obsession with hairline differentials in status as uniquely British. As my life plays out on its fourth continent, I search for traits that hold more or less across the world. Nothing stands out as much as the need to look down on someone.

I recall ,when I was seven or eight, telling my mother I was going to play with a friend from school, who lived in a motel, on the boulevard very near my house. In that time, my sisters and brothers and I walked all over our neighborhood.  I was surprised at her response, which was very negative about him and his mother, for living in a motel. I recall later in my life my mother used the term ‘white trash’: she felt that was the ultimate insult.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/63e4bd6a-0607-11ea-9afa-d9e2401fa7ca

It is getting very close to election day in Great Britain. Because so much is a stake, in this election, where can Mr. Freedland be? He’s the Blairite attack poodle who authored this from The Guardian of March 18, 2016 :

Headline: Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem

Sub-headline: Under Jeremy Corbyn the party has attracted many activists with views hostile to Jews. Its leaders must see why this matters

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/labour-antisemitism-jews-jeremy-corbyn

In my internet search for the above essay, I see that I have missed Mr. Freedland’s latest intervention. Facing the fact that polling ‘data’ is notoriously unreliable ,Freedland’s polemic is in need of ballast to keep it  afloat. Labour Friends of Israel is Freedland’s natural ally, or more likely acting as co-conspirators, in his attacks on Corbyn.

From October 25, 2019:

Headline: The question for Labour: why are you sticking with Jeremy Corbyn?

Sub-headline: The party leader is polling so badly that we risk a hard Brexit and five more years of Boris Johnson. It’s time to change course

…

The Labour leader has the lowest poll numbers of any leader of the opposition since records began. His net satisfaction rating is minus 60, outstripping the previous negative record held since 1982 by Michael Foot. He is less popular than Boris Johnson among both men and women, in every socioeconomic category, whether richer or poorer, in London and Scotland as well as the Midlands and Wales and, remarkably, in every age group. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the over-65s prefer Johnson to Corbyn by 62% to 8%, but it’s arresting that even among the youngest voters, aged 18 to 24, those once seen as the Labour leader’s base, Corbyn is less popular than the prime minister, albeit by three points.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/labour-jeremy-corbyn-party-leader-brexit-boris-johnson

Yet Mr. Freedland seems to have modified his hysteria, to the extent that he focuses upon matters of politics rather than his usual hobby-horse of Anti-Semitism. What has happened? Perhaps ‘saving the best for last‘?  Yet the reader might just title this ‘Corbyn, Johnson, Brexit & The Poor’. Neo-Liberal’s like Freedland do not care about the poor, although the closing paragraph of his essay demonstrates an unalloyed self-serving hypocrisy, in sum, completely familiar territory!

The diehards will say that to criticise Corbyn in this way is to side with the Tories against the poor and vulnerable. But the opposite is true. To stick with a path that makes five more years of Boris Johnson, and a hard Brexit, more likely is not to side with the poor and the vulnerable – it is to betray them.

Readers responses to the above essay have been carefully carefully chosen/sanitized  by the Guardian editors .

Headline: Putting fear of Corbyn’s Labour in perspective

Sub-headline: Readers respond to a piece by Jonathan Freedland in which he asked how Jews can vote for the Labour leader

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/11/putting-fear-of-corbyns-labour-in-perspective

What can a reader think of a publication which posts, for the most part criticism framed in faint praise,  in its various iterations, to Freedland’s essay?

Old Socialist

______________________________________________________________

P.S.Here is a link to Mr. Freedland’s more considered, or call it highfalutin, essay on Brexit,  refracted through a  ‘Brexit novel’  Middle England by Jonathan Coe , in The New York Review of Books of September 26,2019.

Fools Rush Out

The essay seems like an almost straight forward book review, of a book that satirizes Brexit, until this paragraph:

That this can even look like a promising political strategy for the Tories is a function of the parlous state of the British opposition. The forces of Remain are hopelessly fragmented, divided among Liberal Democrats, Greens, and the nationalist parties of Scotland and Wales. Labour, the main opposition party, is itself divided: members and activists are overwhelmingly and passionately pro-European, but the leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and his tight ruling circle are drawn from a hard-left strand that has long been suspicious of the European project. Corbyn voted No to joining Europe in 1975, regarding the venture as both a capitalist club and part of the architecture that propped up the West in the cold war. (On the major international questions of the last five decades, Corbyn’s sympathies have rarely lain on the Western side.) Accordingly, Corbyn has wriggled and writhed on Brexit, saying “Labour respects the result of the referendum” and promising to oppose only “a damaging Tory Brexit” rather than Brexit itself.

This sentence wastes no time in presenting Corbyn as what? (On the major international questions of the last five decades, Corbyn’s sympathies have rarely lain on the Western side.) Mr. Freedland abandons, for the moment, his Anti-Semitism hobby-horse, for what has become a popular trope for American Neo-Liberals: to engage in political defamation of their opponents, using these terms of art, ‘Russian asset’ or ‘useful idiot‘. The New Cold encourages dull-witted phrase making.

Old Socialist

Macron s’annonce, déjà comme le leader de l’Europe! Où si Merkel?

https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-in-his-own-words-french

L’économiste ultra réactionnaire agit “comme si” l’ascension de Macron à la direction de l’Union européenne est un “fait politique”! Macron récite tous les clichés, y compris celui de la “merde de l’histoire” du charlatan politique Fukuyama. À droite du pastiche hégélien d’Alexandre Kojève. Ce n’est que le début des récitations des prémices de l’opportunisme néolibéral!

Vieux socialiste

(Mes excuses pour mon terrible français!)

@tdal1moe

Thank you for your comment. One of the reasons I came to read The Financial Times is that Chomsky recommended its reporting as more reliable. Iv’e been a reader since around 2007 and I’m inclined not to agree with Chomsky.
As the ‘reporting’ ,especially on Argentina and Macron, has steeped a kind of paranoia about the return of de Kirchner ,and a wan apologetics about the collapse of Macri’s Neo-Liberalism Lite, in the near free-fall of the peso. And Macron as the return of political sanity to France, via the now discarded Jupertarian Politics i.e. Rule by Decree. Not to forget that 36.5 % of the French electorate rendered their ballots uncountable. The spontaneous political manifestation of both the gilets jaunes and then the gilets noir, is a sign of deep anger about Macronism, and it attempts to Neo-Liberalize France. The naked character of Macron’s attempt ,to become the titular leader of the foundering European Utopia, is both darkly comic as it is mendacious. This internal rebellion no longer ‘reported’ in The Financial Times, Except for one lone interview with the least radical of the resistors:

https://www.ft.com/content/82624d98-f72f-11e9-a79c-bc9acae3b654

I was ‘guilt tripped’ into voting for the utterly misbegotten Hillary, you and a great many American voted for Trump. He is all you say about him and more, yet the New Democrats have based their Impeachment on hearsay, as Jim Jordan’s questioning of Taylor amply illustrates: ‘I heard that…’ . The center of the case against Trump is hearsay combined with the fact that the New Democrats haven’t got the votes to convict in a Senate controlled by the Republicans.

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

https://www.ft.com/content/7b8f8a12-0661-11ea-9afa-d9e2401fa7ca?commentID=db29fb34-5131-4495-bb5f-f6844d40c348

This is like reading David Brooks, in The New York Times before he became a Political Prophet, and Self-Help Guru to divorced over 40 males, in his utterly pretentious ‘The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life‘: the places, personages and the political landscape look familiar, yet they don’t reflect anything but an ideologically determined reading of a political present.

Mr Ganesh has confected, via his Neo-Liberalism, or should I say ,in the thrall to the myth that Obama is the political touchstone, that the New Democrats must contend. Obama’s de facto pardon of Wall Street, Investment House. and Banking thieves is a monument to political opportunism, that gives that opportunism a bad name!

This paragraph of Mr. Ganesh’s essay makes the case for Bloomberg in its dubious sub rosa way, as ‘reluctant but civic minded’. Mr. Patrick is mere what? Rhetorical embellishment, acting as argumentative ballast?  While placing his own opinions, in the political thought, calculation of  ‘…among a certain class of Democrat — rich donors, the media…’ .

This week, a grateful America has been told to anticipate late presidential bids from the reluctant but civic-minded. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, and Deval Patrick, who once governed the state of Massachusetts, are among them. Each man taps into a vein of doubt among a certain class of Democrat — rich donors, the media — about the current options. These are variously too old (Joe Biden), too young (Pete Buttigieg), too extreme (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) and too obscure (Amy Klobuchar). The hopefuls have “wilted upon inspection”, writes Andrew Sullivan, a conservative who longs to be rid of President Donald Trump.

Quoting American political hysteric Andrew Sullivan adds nothing in the way of  usable or valuable insight. But is it usable in making the case that the Democrats i.e. the New Democrats don’t actually offer some kind of viable , winning candidate that can defeat Trump? Mr. Ganesh relies on ‘polling data’ to add weight to his arguments yet this from Saturday 5 November 2016 :

Headline:Survey finds Hillary Clinton has ‘more than 99% chance’ of winning election over Donald Trump

Sub-headline: The Princeton Election Consortium found Ms Clinton has a projected 312 electoral votes across the country and only 270 are needed to win

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html

Has Mr. Ganesh missed this ?

Headline:Hillary Clinton Says She Faces ‘Enormous Pressure’ to Run in 2020

Sub-headline:The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate said ‘never say never,’ but added that a run is ‘absolutely not in my plans.’

https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2019-11-13/hillary-clinton-says-she-faces-enormous-pressure-to-run-in-202o

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/918c31f8-05f3-11ea-a984-fbbacad9e7dd

The reader just might wonder at what exactly a ‘Wealth Editor’ is/does? Its obvious that part of the job is to construct apologetics for billionaires, as in  this essay. As UBS is the ‘source’ for this opinion piece, what will a search of the internet reveal about this financial organization?

Violation Tracker Parent Company Summary

 

https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/ubs

The ‘rap sheet’ of the machinations of this company should give pause to the reader,  of this essay, as the list of infractions and fines is not just extensive, but demonstrates a breath-taking pattern of contempt for the law.

This quote from Joseph Stadler demonstrates his function as some times mealy-mouthed apologist and  for the .001 %. And then as an enemy of a ‘New Aristocracy’: that partakes fully in Populist rhetoric he finds so reprehensible.

“I am not saying billionaires should be heroes,” said Josef Stadler, head of the ultra-high net worth unit at UBS, the world’s largest private wealth manager. “But at least they should be recognised.”

…

Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Stadler said there was “bias in the media” in reporting on billionaires. “In the talk of inequality, the debate that they are too greedy, that they make too much money on the back of poor people.”

He said: “The data tells me that the debate is one-sided and it’s a pity. There is a natural tendency today to be critical when it comes to wealth accumulation. There is sometimes a fear that there is a new aristocracy coming.”

In the Worlds of both The Financial Times and Mr. Stadler , the as if expresses itself in  that Occupy Wall Street and Thomas Piketty and the rhetorical/political triumph of the idea and actuality of ‘inequality’ had never happened. But the political hysteria is cemented in the construct of a New Aristocracy: this notion steeped in the execrable populist rhetoric- that blatant irony lost on both  Mr. Stadler and Mr. Wagstyl’ !

The concluding two paragraphs of  Stefan Wagstyl’s essay offers the reader proof that a ‘Wealth Editor’ is the highfalutin term, for a not very sophisticated apologizer for Plutocrats.  Wagstly is  a political/economic Panglossian. 

Coming at a time when capitalism faces heavy criticism in the US and Europe, the report presents a stout defence of the world’s top wealth creators in applying “new technologies and business models to change entire industries”.

The authors argue that, while billionaires enrich themselves, they benefit the rest of society by generating jobs, creating wealth for others, including many employees, and paying tax.

Note that the photograph that accompanies this essay is of billionaire and Jeff Bezos. Who is an unapologetic, even an enthusiastic operative of the American National Security State.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/a897387c-0222-11ea-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47

What reader can forget the Edward Luce’s  essay of Nov. 7, 2019 ?

Headline: America’s religious war will test the limits of democracy

Sub-headline: Liberal dogmatism risks alienating the ‘exhausted majority’

https://www.ft.com/content/0a4ac312-00f3-11ea-be59-e49b2a136b8d

Will Mr. Luce’s doom and gloom be lifted by Mr. Bloomberg’s entry into the maelstrom of the Democratic Party’s primaries? His record might be more in keeping with the closely held views of Evangelicals : an indigenous strain of political reaction to the Modern World, equal to Secularism? Bloomberg’s candidacy might not be a good fit? But an actual Oligarch has potential, as an instance of ‘Our Dear Leader’, in a belief system ruled by ruthless, but benevolent male figures.

Bloomberg’s list of accomplishments

Broken Widows Policing,  Removal, by stealth, of Judge Shira Scheindlin from the Stop & Frisk Case , Police violence against Occupy Wall Street, unstinting support of Charter Schools, and this Harvard Commencement Address warning against ‘political radicals’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhfn2zgFFJ8&t=9s

‘Bloomberg adviser’ Mr. Wolfson offers these observations on what Bloomberg has to offers

…

But Howard Wolfson, a Bloomberg adviser, said the former mayor had grown concerned that the Democratic candidates were “not well positioned” to defeat Donald Trump.

…

“If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist,” Mr Wolfson said.

…

Its unfortunate that Mr. Ganesh missed reading Matthew Goodwin’s essay of Sunday November 3, 2019 in which he quotes H.L. Mencken:

…

The American journalist and critic HL Mencken once remarked that “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”.

…

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2019-11-03/comment/general-election-2019-jeremy-corbyns-elite-bashing-is-naked-populism-xmrwnt9fz

The original Cold War was the product of a post-war Republican Party, and their first attempt to brand The New Deal as ‘a generation of treason’ , that evolved into the Nixon/Mundt/McCarren/McCarthy witch hunt, that the ADA  ‘Liberals’ Schlesinger and Niebuhr, acted as enthusiastic, if coerced, callabos. Or so the Liberal self-apologetic is framed.

Mr. Ganesh resorts to political kitsch here -its easy to lose patience with this kind of puerile political commentary:

The Soviet empire was America’s favourite enemy: the one that gave it the securest sense of itself. When the wall fell, so did a certain kind of US nationhood. The partisanship that followed will endure until the next worthy ogre comes along.     

After much unconvincing historical exhumation,in defense of his nostalgia,  Mr. Ganesh closes his essay by celebrating, in true Cold War Triumphalist rhetorical style:

America’s victory in the cold war was a feat of strategy and patience that should be saluted this weekend. It just happens to be a victory from which it has never recovered.

What is interesting is what Mr. Ganesh excises from his radical political nostalgic essay: what is strategically absent from his narrative is that the transitional power of American political/cultural/civilizational paranoia, provided by Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, published as an  essay of 1992,  that became a bloated BestSeller: was the transitional replacement for the the very specifically directed Cold War. The ‘Enemy’ ,  presented by Huntington,  was/is everywhere.

Mr. Huntington even became the bearer of xenophobia/racism in his Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity published in 2004. The Mestizo hordes are  actively subverting  ‘Anglo-Protestant virtue’!

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/fa0457d2-ffc3-11e9-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47