StephenKMackSD's Blog

What a happy combination,  Cohen & Luce, on defining ‘leftist’ from an utterly corrupted, but self-congratulatory, ‘Liberal’ perspective. Assange and WikiLeaks just didn’t redefine Journalism, they simply practiced Journalism in an age of Corporately owned News sources. And their hirelings, like Cohen & Luce, who manufacture the respectable bourgeois Party Line. Finley Peter Dunne describes what Journalism is:

“Th newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward”.^[32]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finley_Peter_Dunne

The Ghost of I.F. Stone

In the pursuit of one of his hopes , War with Iran, Mr. Stephens praises Donald Trump!

The Ghost of I.F. Stone

Headline: French PM hails 2-month national debate but warns of high hopes

Sub-headline: Edouard Philippe says 500,000 took part in exercise held in response to ‘gilets jaunes’ protests

Its easy to see that Macron is a complete political amateur, a canny pol would have led with the Great Debate proposal in his initial campaign, allied to the notion of necessary reforms: the usual Neo-Liberal gambit of platitudes in service to political obfuscation. Reform is a term of art for Neo-Liberalization. But the manipulation must be carefully disguised: Obama is the perfect example of this genre of political manipulation. He passed himself off as a ‘Progressive’, with the help of fellow traveler Arianna Huffington and her platform of The Huffington Post.

What got in the way of Macron was his arrogance: Jupertarian Politics and his initial rule by decree. The 36.5 % of voters, who rendered their ballots spoiled or otherwise uncountable, didn’t register as potential threat to his reform agenda. Another politically clueless énarque? The thought occurs , how would Thatcherite François Fillon have waged his campaign?

As reported in the pages of The Financial Times, Macron’s English language propaganda headquarters. A selection of quotations:

But Mr Philippe admitted it would be hard to meet popular expectations after the debate, which was launched by President Emmanuel Macron in January as a response to weeks of gilets jaunes demonstrations in towns across France.

…

Mr Macron said the debate would allow the creation of a “new contract for the nation”, and guide the policies of the government and legislators at home and abroad.

…
Although derided by some gilets jaunes as a pointless distraction, the national debate has so far been a political success for Mr Macron, whose standing in the opinion polls has recovered to about where it stood before the first protest in November.

…
Mr Philippe said the proposals centred on four main issues: “an immense exasperation over taxation”; a sense of isolation and abandonment in parts of France with less access to public services; a demand for more democracy; and a realisation of a global “climate emergency”, for which people were prepared to change their behaviour.

…

“We must lower taxes and we must lower them quicker,” Mr Philippe said.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/e3aca7bc-59ee-11e9-939a-341f5ada9d40

The central dogma of Neo-Liberalism is the destruction of the Welfare Sate by means of Austerity. The expression of a political nihilism, that places the welfare of The Market, as the sine qua non of a redefined State Capitalism.

Old Socialist

Headline: Emmanuel Macron ponders his de Gaulle moment with Brexit

Sub-headline: Fears grow that French president will say ‘Non’ and bundle UK out of the EU door

https://www.ft.com/content/23d71a04-5916-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a081a

This screen capture of a tweet puts the Financial Times propaganda in a necessary perspective:

Another perspective, this from Press TV:

This report from REI on Macron’s carefully managed ‘Great Debate’ in place of coverage of the violence perpetrated in Nantes!

http://en.rfi.fr/france/20190408-france-awaits-results-macron-great-debate-yellow-vests-gilets-jaunes

Old Socialist

Added April 08,2019 4:14 PM

The ultra-respectable London Sunday Times is Conservative politically, or should it be called by its actual name reactionary? continues to engage in the construction of conspiracy theory, this one  about the preposterous notion of Corbyn’s Anti-Semitic Army. Following each link in this indictment masquerading as journalism are ‘news stories’ from the Times.

The closer Corbyn gets to power, the hysteria reaches new levels of melodramatic desperation, that recalls the era of the 21 inch black & white screen of the Old Cold War. Its allies are various inquisitors, in and out of political office, and members of a collaborationist press , print and television. Look to the Blairite Clique and political fabulists like Jonathan Freedland, in The Guardian, who have manufactured the lie of Anti-Semitism. A list of  Labour Friends of Israel members is instructive:

David Abrahams, former Treasurer^[19]

Lord Archer of Sandwell^[20]

Sir Stuart Bell^[21]

Luciana Berger, former Director of LFI^[22]

Tony Blair, former Prime Minister^[23][24]

David Blunkett, former Home Secretary^[20]

Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister^[23][24][25]

Chris Bryant^[20] and former Minister for Europe

Stephen Byers, former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry^[20]

Wayne David^[20]

Andrew Dismore ^[20]

Michael Dugher^[26]

Louise Ellman, Vice Chair of LFI ^[20]

Derek Foster^[20]

Lord Foulkes^[20]

Mike Gapes, former Vice Chair of LFI (2004)^[27]

Barry Gardiner, former Vice-Chair of LFI

Anthony Greenwood, first Chair of LFI (1957)^[3]

Andrew Gwynne, Chair of LFI (2010)^[20]

Fabian Hamilton^[20]

Baroness Hayman^[20]

Margaret Hodge^[18]

Joan Humble^[20]

Barbara Keeley^[20]

Jane Kennedy, Chair of LFI (2007)^[20]

Ivan Lewis, former Vice-Chair of LFI ^[28]

Lord Macdonald of Tradeston^[20]

Denis MacShane^[20]

Michael McCann, Vice-Chair of LFI^[29]

Anne McGuire, Chair of LFI (2013)^[9]

Jonathan Mendelsohn, former Chair of LFI (2002)^[30]

Alun Michael, former Leader of the Welsh Labour Party^[20]

Andrew Miller^[20]

Jim Murphy, former Chair of LFI (2001), former Secretary of State for Scotland ^[31]

Dan Norris^[20]

Nick Palmer^[20]

Jess Phillips^[12]

James Purnell, former Chair of LFI, former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions ^[32]

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale^[20]

John Reid, former Home Secretary (2007)^[33]

Rachel Reeves^[26]

Terry Rooney^[20]

Joan Ryan^[20]

Dari Taylor^[20]

Gary Titley^[20]

Glenis Willmott, Vice Chair of LFI

Lord Winston^[20]

Iain Wright, former Chair of LFI (2006)^[20]

Lord Young of Norwood Green^[20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Friends_of_Israel

Consider this paragraph that makes a startling demand of the Labour Party:  ‘“Labour must now urgently open up its processes to scrutiny by the Jewish community.’ How is that nebulous notion of ‘the Jewish community’ to be first defined, and then chosen? What the Labour Friends of Israel  would find acceptable is that they must become the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes Anti-Semitism, within the Labour Party. With the vulgar Hodge as it lead inquisitor?

 Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “Labour must now urgently open up its processes to scrutiny by the Jewish community. We stand united with all decent people in the fight against ugly racism.”

New Labour is attempting to rescue their failed Neo-Liberalism, from a revolution that has its roots in Democratic Socialism. The Blairite Clique are the servants of Capital, in its most rapacious iteration, framed by a triad of thinkers/polemicists Mises/Hayek/Friedman.  In the Age of the Internet, the reach of the Sunday Times has become world wide: the politics of this newspaper becomes evident to that audience of critical readers. The means of attack on the re-invigorated Social Democratic tradition, within the Party, is for persons like Margaret Hodge and her allies, to manufacture a crisis that will serve as the denouement to the career of  Jeremy Corbyn. Even while the incompetent Mrs. May has asked Corbyn to join in the Brexit talks.

Old Socialist

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/labour-s-hate-files-expose-corbyn-s-anti-semite-army-9zzl0gxpv

Old Socialist

The Posh Boys on the Editorial Board of the prestigious Financial Times waste no time in their lengthy praise/advocacy for NATO. A selection of quotations from this essay and some commentary follow:

Collective defence of the Atlantic community’s democracies sat alongside the Marshall financial aid plan.

The Marshall Plan was part of the rehabilitation of Europe after War II, what is left out of this is that the Marshall Plan was also about the institutionalization of  American power in Europe, allied to the fact that the  political fate of Easter Europe had been decided by Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt at Yalta. Eisenhower pulled the troops out of Eastern Europe , some say to quickly to foil Stalin’s Imperialism.

Europe needs US support to check Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

…to counter Mr Putin’s revanchist ambitions…

Putin acts here as the incarnation of Stalin. Putin hysteria is the very lifeblood of The New Cold War: Crimea and Ukraine its exemplars . While the promises made by the American political actors, to Gorbachev to limit the expansion of NATO are subject to a self-serving political amnesia. Not to forget that The Atlantic Council, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty still function as propaganda outlets for NATO. Make note of the fact that the utterly notorious Elliott Abrams is a Senior Fellow.

Permanent military facilities in Europe provide vital bases for US-led strikes against Islamist terrorists.
…cyber warfare, the proliferation of new technologies and China’s rising military power present new challenges.

Its almost as if the reader is experiencing a kind of deja vu, of the xenophobic paranoia writ large of Huntington’s ‘Clash’. The editors will defend Europe i.e. the EU as the evolving bastion of a State Capitalism, whose reason d’etre is to provide a political framework for a Market Singularity, that places the efficient function and profitability of  ‘The Market’ above every other imperative!

Now is not the time for western democracies to walk away from the world’s most successful military alliance.

Given the above, what can the reader make of NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg comments regarding ‘Brazil, other Latin American countries’ joining NATO?

Headline: NATO chief says Brazil, other Latin American countries could become ‘partners’

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NATO can look at the possibility of other Latin American states joining Colombia in becoming alliance partners, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday, while appearing to rule out U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Brazil could one day become a full member of the North Atlantic security body.

“Until 2017, NATO didn’t have any partners in Latin America and then in 2017 we got our first partner, which was Colombia, and to be a close partner of NATO is something that is good for NATO and the partner country,” the NATO leader told Reuters in an interview ahead of a NATO ministerial meeting in Washington.

“So of course, it is a possibility to look into the possibility of having also other countries in Latin America become partners which then provides a platform, a framework for close political and practical cooperation,” he said.

At a joint White House news conference last month, Trump said he had told visiting far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro he would designate Brazil a “major non-NATO ally” and possibly go further by supporting a campaign to make Brazil “maybe a NATO ally,” something that would imply full membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-brazil-latam-interview/nato-chief-says-brazil-other-latin-american-countries-could-become-partners-idUSKCN1RF2TT

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/40aaa992-5520-11e9-91f9-b6515a54c5b1

Added April 07, 2019

Headline:NATO ‘broke away’ from intl law, lost its legitimacy – ex-OSCE Parliamentary Assembly VP to RT

NATO broke away from international law and risks “collapse” or a conflict that will “destroy Europe,” if it does not change its modus operandi, Willy Wimmer, the former vice president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, told RT.

As the US-led military alliance marked its 70th anniversary on Thursday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg stated that the bloc remains essential for global security. “We stand together, fight together, and, sometimes, die together,” he said in a speech in Washington.

Stoltenberg, however, is not striking a chord with the people NATO claims to be protecting, Wimmer believes. The veteran German politician explained to RT that “it is not the message that Germans, the Europeans and even the Americans want to hear.”

…

https://www.rt.com/news/455776-nato-legitimacy-international-law/

 

Thank you to Paul Craig Roberts for posting this!

 

Just reached your ‘Against the neoliberalism taboo’ and your criticism of Daniel Rogers Dissent essay. I read Prof. Rogers ‘Age of Fracture’, relying on the praise offered in the TLS. I was impressed until I reached the Epilogue, where he frames it in a quotation from the execrable *Drama Queen and ‘Bell Curve’ advocate/apologist/enthusiast Andrew Sullivan!

In this Epilogue, Prof. Rogers proceeds to piss away the very impressive arguments that he built in the preceding chapters. I’m still angry about his betrayal of his own valuable  historical/political insights, that devolved into a verbose exercise in bourgeois political respectability.

*As a Queer I reserve the right for the use of this term!

Best regards

StephenKMackSD

http://www.focaalblog.com/2018/01/12/quinn-slobodian-against-the-neoliberalism-taboo/

P.S. Thank your for your indispensable voice!

I watched a video highlight of the ‘Intelligence Committee’ yesterday:

March 28, 2019 | Clip Of Russia’s International Influence 

Intelligence Committee Chair Pushes Back Against GOP Calls to Resign

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/28/gop-adam-schiff-resign-1241749

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Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

Headline: US Democrats should remember, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’

Sub-headline: As long as growth is happening, voters will tolerate presidential character flaws

Here is my selection of the metaphors that Mr. Luce uses in his latest essay on the political watershed of the Mueller Report

But as long as growth is occurring, they will tolerate ethical flaws in their commander-in-chief. Decency comes second. Just ask Bill Clinton. Or Donald Trump.

In the wake of the collapse of The Free Market Mythology the ‘Gig Economy’ and its ‘worker insecurity’, a foundational concept of the Mises/Hayek/Friedman coterie’s war against Unionism, expresses itself in the mirage of ‘Growth’ as central to a Capitalism without limits or constraints. The fate of the actual worker in this economy is about  the growth of Uber and Lyft and other part time or ‘contract employments’ without benefits,  as a way to supplementing meager incomes in the political present. A Posh Boy would not know or care about such economic restraints , but would resort to the capacious  notion of ‘Growth’ as a predictor of the political fortunes of Trump. That pay envelope is the ultimate testing ground of an Economy!

Doctors should not lose sight of the ailment —

The ‘ailment’ that afflicts America is that both the Republicans and the New Democrats are utterly corrupt, and equally invested in the Free Market Swindle.

The special counsel Robert Mueller’s report — or the amuse-bouche we have been given — offers Mr Trump only partial absolution.

Here ‘amuse-bouche’ functions as a stylistic embellishment, that functions as a trivialization of the Mueller Report’s key findings presented  by the Attorney General, but then tries to rescue himself by the notion of  theological  idea of ‘partial absolution’ !

This next paragraph is chock-a-block with descriptive metaphors, that mercifully ends with the fact that the New Democrats will waste their political capital on hearings with star witnesses like the Mueller, Comey and other  carefully selected ‘witnesses’.

Blaming the problem on Russia is like telling a cancer patient they should suspend treatment to sue the driver who ran over their dog. It misses the point.
These basic facts will ensure Washington remains consumed by the Mueller report for months ahead.

Mr. Luce stating the obvious:

The 2020 election is already in danger of becoming another referendum on Mr Trump’s character.

Mr. Luce paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld:

It is worth stressing two known unknowns.

Mr. Luce on the challenge that faces Speaker Pelosi:

It will be hard for the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to marshal these fiefdoms into a single force.

This collection of metaphors is followed by jejune, but necessary political speculation, to emancipate Mr. Luce’s collection of  metaphors/cliches: that becomes by the use of  a self-serving, but ersatz political alchemy, that renders this disparate collection, this essay, into the category of valuable insights .

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/b8e4f7c8-5070-11e9-9c76-bf4a0ce37d49

______________________________________________________________

Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

Who is ‘the we’ that Mr. Brooks makes the target of his admonition, delivered in his sabbath address to the American Congregation? This ‘we’ is described here:

And what about the rest of us? What about all the hours we spent speculating about the Mueller report, fantasizing about the Trump ruin or watching and reading speculation about these things? What about the superstructure of scandal politics we have built and live in today?

He’s really talking about the political experts ,now called Technocrats, synonymous with himself ,and his fellows scribblers, not to forget the television/internet corporate hirelings, who comment in the Corporate Media on politics.  But back to an earlier part of his essay for context :

Maybe it’s time to declare a national sabbath. Maybe it’s time to step back from the scandalmongering and assess who we are right now.

Democrats might approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. It’s clear that many Democrats made grievous accusations against the president that are not supported by the evidence. It’s clear that people like Beto O’Rourke and John Brennan owe Donald Trump a public apology. If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize.

Republicans and the Sean Hannity-style Trumpians might also approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. For two years they’ve been calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt. For two years they’ve been spreading the libel that there are no honest brokers in Washington. It’s all a deep-state conspiracy, a swamp. They should apologize for peddling the sort of deep cynicism that undermines our country’s institutions.

Mr. Brooks’ ‘evolution’ from war mongering Neo-Conservative and Free Market partisan – the collapse of each of these political delusions led him to what used to called, in another time, an agonizing reappraisal. His political self-rescue took the form of an ‘evolution’ towards the preferred and more wide-ranging status as Political Moralist. He morphed into a combination of a preacher and teacher. David Frum, a fellow Neo-Conservative, ‘evolution’ ,in the face of these failures was to become a Wise Republican Elder. The only question that remains for the attentive reader, is why would Brooks resort to the religious practice of Sabbath to frame his  political intervention?

This preamble is to provide a context for Mr. Brooks’ admonition to both the Republicans and New Democrats about their possible strategies that each might adopt in the wake of the Mueller Report. This has about it the political quaintness of Frank Capra’s  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and its star Jimmy Stewart, who once represented American Virtue in the American Imagination, crafted by Hollywood. Brooks adopts the guise of the political naif as cover for his cynicism wedded to opportunism.

The patient reader eventually comes to Mr. Brooks’ definition of that ‘we’, that evolves  rhetorically into ‘the rest of us‘:

And what about the rest of us? What about all the hours we spent speculating about the Mueller report, fantasizing about the Trump ruin or watching and reading speculation about these things? What about the superstructure of scandal politics we have built and live in today?

I’ll end my comment  with this insight offered by Brooks, that of a political hack pretending to some kind of nonexistent wisdom.

It’s all a wonderful game. You don’t have to know anything about a boring policy subject like economics, poverty or foreign affairs. You can have a long career in politics and media by simply treating public life as an arena of life-or-death gossip.

Political Cynic

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Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary