“History removed them from the conversation,” she says. Thomas decided to restart that conversation, placing black women in the same poses as some of western art’s most famous works. In 2010, for instance, she took on Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe”, noted for its nude woman alongside clothed men, with a painting of three self-assured — and fully dressed — black women.
https://www.ft.com/content/40f8bd16-ab1c-11e8-89a1-e5de165fa619
M. 37% is an authoritarian, in the highfalutin guise of his Jupertarian Politics! That’s the ‘why’ of Mr Benalla unsurprising attack, under the cover of a false authority, on a demonstrator. Not under discussion is the inconvenient fact that 36.5% of voters in the general election left their ballots blank, or were otherwise deemed uncountable or ‘spoiled’ . Such is the ‘popularity’ of Macron as bringer of ‘Reform’ otherwise known as Neo-Liberalism, and its modus operandi of ‘Austerity’ for the majority, and a licence to steal for the economically powerful.
Harriet Agnew’s concluding paragraph is the end of her political agitprop:
Despite these challenges, investors remain optimistic on France. “The real achievement of Macron’s tenure so far is enforcing changes that were previously unimaginable,” wrote Pierre-Henri Flamand, chief investment officer of hedge fund manager Man GLG in a note to clients on Tuesday. “The opposition on both sides of the political divide is weak and fragmented, buying Macron time to implement the changes he needs to make.”
Pierre-Henri Flamand is the last of a collection of Capitalists and an academic that follows the usual Financial Times template. The testament of ‘…Pierre-Henri Flamand, chief investment officer of hedge fund manager Man GLG…’ ‘ “The opposition on both sides of the political divide is weak and fragmented, buying Macron time to implement the changes he needs to make.”.
About the ‘weakness’ and ‘fragmentation’ of Macron’s opposition, the reader only need look here:
Headline:
French unions plan anti-Macron strike on 9 October
Sub-headline:
French trade unions have called a one-day general strike for 9 October against the “ideological policies” of President Emmanuel Macron. Pensioners’s groups had already called protests on that day against the government’s announcement that pensions will not be linked to inflation.
Two of France’s major trade unions, the CGT and Force Ouvrière, have called for the strike, along with a students’ union and a school students’ union.
A third labour grouping, Solidaires, has backed the call in principle but will take its official decision next week.
In a statement, they condemned Macron’s “ideological policies targeting the destruction of our social model, especially favouring an explosion of inequality and the destruction of collective rights”.
Decisions like the government’s announcement that pensions, housing benefit and family allowance will not keep pace with the rate of inflation will hurt “the weakest, the most vulnerable and most deprived once again”, they said.
Another major union federation, the CFDT, has not joined the strike call.
The last day of action came as a long series of railworkers’ strikes against Macron’s changes to their status petered out.The CGT has called on railworkers to take action again on 18 September, when negotiations on a new agreement for the SNCF rail company begin.
“The problems have not been settled” at the company, CGT leader Philippe Martinez told RFI on Friday.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe started a new cycle of talks with unions and bosses on Wednesday.
http://en.rfi.fr/20180831-french-unions-plan-anti-macron-strike-9-october/
Political Observer
https://www.ft.com/content/900a34ce-ab95-11e8-89a1-e5de165fa619
Thank you for your comments. Are Bankers held in high regard in any political quarter, even here, at one of the major advocates for the Free Market Doctrine? The decline of the ‘Banker’ is an idea that seems to be widespread!
Headline:Traditional banks are becoming obsolete, by Milena Kabza
‘Even the representatives of the banking sector are openly admitting that the traditional role and model of banks will undergo significant changes in ten or more years.
“The glory days of banking have ended for good, but customers will still need services provided by banks,” said Cezary Stypułkowski, the CEO of mBank (owned by Commerzbank), at the Impact Fintech’17 conference in Katowice, Poland.
Bankers believe that the role of banks is changing. In light of the development of modern technologies, they are well aware that banks should be building customers’ trust towards new solutions, such as finte ch’s services. Bank branches will continue to exist, but there will be fewer of them – which can be already noticed – and their operations will change. The majority of customer services and transaction activities will disappear, while consulting services will remain. Industry representatives are already seriously taking into consideration the utilization of robots in this field. Bank branches will also retain significance in terms of marketing.
…
https://financialobserver.eu/poland/traditional-banks-are-becoming-obsolete/
…Republican approval ratings of Trump would point to a huge surge in trust to the establishment a-la-Trump – what to make of that?’
If you have followed the Mueller investigation the Russians have disappeared ,due to his attempt to limit the Discovery phase of the Russian Troll Farm’s ability to share that with each of the indited persons:
Headline: Judge rejects Mueller’s request for delay in Russian troll farm case
Sub-headline: Russian firm linked to Putin’s chef accuses special counsel of ‘pettifoggery.’
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/04/mueller-russia-interference-election-case-delay-570627
And on Comey there is this investigative report:
Headline: Despite Comey Assurances, Vast Bulk of Weiner Laptop Emails Were Never Examined
…
In fact, a technical glitch prevented FBI technicians from accurately comparing the new emails with the old emails. Only 3,077 of the 694,000 emails were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information. Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges.
“Most of the emails were never examined, even though they made up potentially 10 times the evidence” of what was reviewed in the original year-long case that Comey closed in July 2016, said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Yet even the “extremely narrow” search that was finally conducted, after more than a month of delay, uncovered more classified material sent and/or received by Clinton through her unauthorized basement server, the official said. Contradicting Comey’s testimony, this included highly sensitive information dealing with Israel and the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas. The former secretary of state, however, was never confronted with the sensitive new information and it was never analyzed for damage to national security.
…
The why of Trumps political viability, in the minds of his voters, might be explained by the incompetence and mendacity of the Mueller/Comey duo!
Regards,
StephenKMackSD
Mr. Ganesh provides a very particular history made to measure of the rise of American Populism. And in just 841 words! Here are two paragraphs of the most suggestive parts of his narrative, his political panorama is almost rendered in CinemaScope:
We are living through the hasty promotion of an important historical event to a totally seminal one. Modern populism was not born in 2008. Like the raising of a vein, the crash just brought to the surface what was already extant and pumping. Mr Trump weaponised a popular suspicion of political elites that long predates Lehman. The root of that suspicion is not all that mysterious.
…For a sense of the speed of the collapse, consider John McCain’s naval career. He enlisted in 1958. By the time he returned from wartime capture in 1973, the public realm had soured unrecognisably (and, it would turn out, unsalvageably). The Republican senator’s death last week deprives America of much: a one-man reason to trust politicians and a connection to a war that explains, far more than the crash, why so few do.
…https://www.ft.com/content/5a129e5e-ab6f-11e8-94bd-cba20d67390c
The number of walk-ons by American historical figures, events,place names as stand-ins , even American movies should provide rhetorical ballast to this propaganda predicated on that old standby misdirection:
Lehman Brothers, Year Zero, Donald Trump , Steve Bannon, Rightwing populists, Barack Obama, Pew Research Center, Lyndon Johnson, Watergate, Republican, Democrat, Vietnam war, John McCain, Wall Street , Vietnam, Badlands and The Deer Hunter, Hollywood, Democratic national convention in Chicago, Norman Mailer, North Vietnamese , Americans
Even with this collection of references the Populism that Mr. Ganesh attempts to ‘diagnose’ is outside this pseudo-historian’s metier. Mr. Ganesh attempts in his meager 841 words to prove, to his American readers, that he is not just another historical arriviste.
What is absent is the fact of the rise of Neo-Liberalism, as the preferred economic/political/ethical frame, in both the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, the New Democrats, Bill Clinton. The New Democrat’s desertion of its New Deal legacy, led by the utterly mendacious Clinton’s and their fellow travelers. There agenda was ‘Reaganite’ to is core, and their economic instrument was the ‘Reform‘ offered by:
The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, (Pub.L. 106–102, 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999) is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999–2001). It repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies that prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. With the bipartisan passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. Furthermore, it failed to give to the SEC or any other financial regulatory agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies.[1] The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
The Depression of 2008 was a direct result of the failure of that Neo-Liberalism’s faith in the Reform offered by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act , allied to the greed of Wall Street actors. Not to forget Obama’s de facto pardoning of these malicious economic/political actors. This is just the beginning point of an honest consideration of the ‘why’ of the rise of the dreaded ‘Populist Menace’, and its ‘popular suspicion of political elites’ as Mr. Ganesh presents it. This potential ‘why’ is beyond the ken of Mr. Ganesh, but is the servant of his propaganda intervention.
Political Cynic
The next stage in Corporatist Apologetics is the newest ‘Think Tank’ NeuroLeadership Inst:
Neuroleadership refers to the application of findings from neuroscience to the field of leadership.[1] The term neuroleadership was first coined by David Rock[2] in the US publication Strategy+Business.[3] Neuroleadership claims to bring neuroscientific knowledge into the areas of leadership development, management training, change management, education, consulting and coaching.
The idea and exploration of ‘determinism’ is one of the pressing questions of Western philosophy. But Mr. Rock’s Institute is found not in free inquiry about the pressing question of that ‘determinism’, but from the perspective of an utterly failed Neo-Liberal experiment. The magazine Strategy+Business is about Corporatism:
The publication strategy+business is a business magazine focusing on management issues and corporate strategy. Headquartered in New York, it is published by certain member firms of the PricewaterhouseCoopers network. Prior to the separation of Booz & Company (now Strategy&[1]) from Booz Allen Hamilton in 2008, strategy+business was published by Booz Allen Hamilton, which launched the magazine, then titled Strategy & Business, in 1995. Full issues of strategy+business appear in print and digital edition form[2] on a quarterly basis, and other original material is published daily on the website: strategy-business.com.[3]
Articles cover a range of industry and organizational topics that are of interest to CEOs and other senior executives as well as to business thinkers, academics, and researchers. The articles, written in English, are authored by a mix of leading figures from both the executive suite and academia in addition to journalists and consultants from PwC.
The magazine’s founding editor-in-chief, Joel Kurtzman, coined the term thought leadership when he published interviews with influential business figures under the rubric “Thought Leaders.” [4] Today, interviews with “Thought Leaders” remain a recurring column in the print magazine and on the website.[5]
The NeuroLeadership Inst.’s ‘mission statement’ ,to repeat the vocabulary of corporate self-congratulation, is here:
The purpose of the NeuroLeadership Institute is to encourage, generate and share neuroscience research that transforms how people think, develop and perform.
The reader can look forward to the political alliance between the Corporatists at NeuroLeadership and Dr. Pangloss, Steven Pinker, and the Hydra headed charlatan Jordan Peterson, if this hasn’t already taken place! I just discovered the existence of this ‘Think Tank’ today! Look forward to the birth of the concepts of Neuro-Devience, as an attack on those who would stray from the ‘accepted norms’, defined by the latest, yet ever-changing evidence, offered by the technocrats of Brain Science fostered by Corporatism. Simply a reification of the troika of Neo-Liberal Prophets Mises/Hayek/Friedman?
Old Socialist
Again Mr. Ganesh is completely out of his element! Not a surprise, but here is the very serious misjudgement, or worse yet, just a recitation of the catechism, that leaps from the page:
The threat posed by Mr Manafort is less direct. The charges against him were byproducts of Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The convictions do not concern that meddling — as Mr Trump was entitled to point out — but they speak to the rigour of the special counsel’s work. He should claw back some credibility after months of all too effective sullying by the president.
‘but they speak to the rigour of the special counsel’s work.’ Here is an example of the Mueller rigor:
Headline:Mueller’s Attempt to Hide Evidence Just Got Torn Apart by Attorneys for Alleged Russian Troll Farm
…
While making their case for why Mueller’s blanket protective order should not be granted, Concord Management cites the wide-ranging nature of the request itself. Noting, “The Special Counsel seeks the unprecedented process of prohibiting defense counsel from sharing or discussing any discovery with any co-defendant—including the only person affiliated with Concord named in the Indictment—unless those individuals come to the United States to become hostages in this political game of tit-for-tat.”
Concord’s description here is essentially correct. Mueller’s protective order would be unprecedented in the district. As noted later in the filing, no published court opinion in the D.C. Circuit has ever allowed such a blanket protective order for unclassified discovery materials–the case law just isn’t there.
And aside from the district in question, Dubelier also claims that “[n]o reported court case has ever endorsed a blanket protective order of this magnitude for unclassified discovery.” This is another way of saying that Mueller has apparently requested something so prohibitive that there’s arguably no analogue to it in U.S. law. This is a broad accusation and necessarily an open question. Unfortunately for our purposes, it can’t really be analyzed here because Mueller, naturally, only purports to cite a handful of cases in his initial request–and not the entirety of U.S. law and jurisprudence.
(Italics and bolding mine:ed.)
Does the reader need to be told that Trump hired grifters and crooks? ‘Birds of a feather’!
Then there are these historical analogies:
…
Which leaves us with the most political of all forms of presidential defenestration. The election of 2020. Will legal and ethical stains cost Mr Trump in what Alger Hiss, that target of McCarthyism, called the “court of public opinion”?
…
Counting against him is the sheer number of scandals. True, no postwar president has lost an election because of sleaze (even if Gerald Ford’s pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, did not help him in 1976). But then no postwar president has been quite so mired in the stuff quite so soon. He still has more than two years in which to attract more suspicions of wrongdoing.
The first framed by the ‘cowardice ‘ of Alger Hiss as Anti-McCarthyite, and the second by the bought and paid for Gerald Ford, and his cowardly Pardon of Nixon, as ‘sparing the Nation’ a national ordeal: The American Empire must never appear to be ‘weak’ ! The cult of the Law, and the Constitution recede into the background, in deference of the imperatives of Empire! This the propaganda of the Wm. F. Buckley School of American historiography. Mr. Ganesh is being schooled, but not quite quickly enough, in this idiosyncratic interpretation of the American Political Mythology!
American Writer
https://www.ft.com/content/fd4f55ea-a5ec-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff35b
Jim Brunsden and Kerin Hope recite the Neo-Liberal Catechism as if it were Revealed Truth. The Greeks must meet the Austerity Standards set by its creditors, the recitation of Neo-Liberal Propaganda: Hit the targets, Stimulate the economy,Fix the banks, Create an investor-friendly environment. Political Economy tarted up with Statistical Data! the policy of ‘Austerity’ is a FAILURE where ever it has been visited upon populations by bankrupt Technocrats!
Here is the central propaganda claim of this polemic, the Welfare State is the enemy of the Market Ideology, enunciated by the trio of charlatans Hayek/Mises/Friedman! Privatisation is the answer:
Another challenge to build investor confidence is to complete flagship privatisations such as the €8bn Hellinikon project to redevelop Athens’ former international airport as a business, residential and leisure centre. “Hellinikon is a large enough project to be a catalyst for changing the Greek economy,” said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the centre-right New Democracy party.
Greece came 67th in the World Bank’s latest annual assessment of the “ease of doing business” in different countries — ahead only of Malta among EU member states.
On the human costs of this policy, all the reader need do is read this New York Times news story:
…
But the price of Greece’s apparent turnaround has been steep. A wrenching downturn, combined with nearly a decade of sharp spending cuts and tax increases to repair the nation’s finances, has left over a third of the population of 10 million near poverty, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
…
To make the economy more competitive, Greece’s creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — set austerity terms that included suspending collective bargaining and easing conditions for firing. Salaries in the public and private sectors fell more than 20 percent. The monthly minimum wage was cut to €586 in 2012, the second-lowest in the eurozone, from €751.
The cost of ‘Austerity’ is the impoverishment of ten million human beings, who must submit to ‘Market Discipline’, this is political, moral Bankruptcy!
Almost Marx
https://www.ft.com/content/bf654494-9578-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee64e
It is, without doubt, presumptuous to truncate Mr. Kundnani’s review of Mr. Jan Zielonka’s book ‘Counter Revolution’, but these historical insights as reviewed, explicated, indeed, illuminated by Kundnani, need to be shared with the largest possible readership!
…
Zielonka seeks not so much to defend the status quo based on the particular form of liberalism that has prevailed throughout the West in the past forty years, as to ask what went wrong with the wider liberal project. His critique of the complacency of Western and especially European elites is particularly powerful. As populist figures, movements and parties became stronger, he writes, centre-left and centre-right parties joined forces against them and refused to admit mistakes or reverse policies. “The official narrative became black and white”, he writes. “The establishment insisted on continuing with projects that gave Europe ‘prosperity and peace’ and it accused critics of trying to undermine its noble efforts. Self-reflection, let alone self-criticism, have been missing.”
Unlike much of what is currently being written about “liberalism”, Zielonka also recognizes the complexity inherent in the term, which, he writes, “does not represent a single coherent phenomenon”. He is particularly helpful in disaggregating liberalism into distinct “streams”. “When we talk about the successes and failures of liberalism we need to specify which types of liberalism we are talking about”, he writes. Thus he is sensitive to the tensions between different elements and forms of liberalism and suggests that liberals have themselves betrayed the liberal project. In particular, he argues, neoliberalism “captured and perverted” liberalism and is “the prime factor behind the series of crises currently facing Europe”.
The difficult question is where the EU – seen by some, particularly on the Right, as an illiberal project and by others, particularly on the Left, as a neoliberal project – fits into this picture. Zielonka writes that the EU needs to be “reinvented” and should reject the “neoliberal agenda of deregulation, marketization and privatization” that it has “progressively embraced”. He also notes the connection between neoliberal economics and migration – neoliberalism, he writes, is dependent on continued availibility of cheap migrant labour”. Yet he stops short of questioning the principle of freedom of movement or its evolution in practice since the end of the Cold War.
…
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/counter-revolution-backlash-west-poland/
What more can a reader ask of a reviewer of books, than to present the writers ideas and their expression, through the lens of a critical intelligence and sensibility? Mr. Kundnani demonstrates the value of the exercise of that critical intelligence and sensibility.
Political Observer
Like both Maugham and Greene, Naipaul was a monster. But in addition to Mr. Genesh’s essay read V.S. Pritchett’s review of ‘The Mimic Men’ and ‘A Flag on the Island’ from the April 11, 1968 New York Review of Books. The first paragraph demonstrates Pritchett’s mastery:
Among the younger English novelists Mr. V. S. Naipaul is a virtuoso. A brilliant chameleon from the Caribbean, the descendant of Hindu immigrants, he has grown into the English novel with more lasting assurance than almost all contemporaries in the West Indies or Africa who are in the same case. This has not been achieved by intelligence and education alone; nor by the fact that the West Indies were, in many respects, a very fertilizing Victorian enclave. His advantage is that he shares with many English novelists natural and serious feeling for the fantasy life of his characters. This was obvious in the rich comi-tragedy of Mr. Biswas; also in his one purely English novel, Mr. Stone and the Knight’s Companion, in which he made a careful study of the “little man” and pushed forward the tradition of Pooter, Polly, and the Napoleon of Notting Hill into regions that were more exposed and dangerous, without falling into pastiche or charm. There are poor dogged little clerks all over the world, and Mr. Naipaul, who is above all a diagnostician in his comedy, brought a piercing West Indian eye to what was either a Russian or a London subject. After their first success with their native scene, most African, Indian, or West Indian novelists who have made the emotionally and politically disrupting journey to Oxford or London run aground on the shallows of journalistic writing: assertion and loneliness coarsen them. Everything becomes, crudely, a problem. Mr. Naipaul has had the sensibility and the stamina to avoid this. He feels his pain, but he is in command. His latest novel is a resourceful, compassionate, intensely critical and imaginative statement of a colonial crack-up, but not a bald and impersonal one. It is put together ingeniously as a mosaic of recurring themes.
…
V.S. Pritchett was one of the great critics of his age! Mr. Ganesh workman like essay can’t quite match the insights offered by a writer and critic who had mastered both forms.
American Writer
Thank you for your comment.
‘I certainly was not expecting this comment from you…’
I can only ponder what you mean by this? Although it doesn’t deserve the time nor the space.
‘… a review furthermore that praises him in rather old-fashioned terms.’
Mr. Pritchett essay remains what it is, not just an insightful exercise in literary criticism, but a paradigmatic exercise in the essay form! That has aged not just well, but represents what that endeavor can mean to a reader: every writer deserves a critic who can exercise this kind of literary evaluation, against the background of a tradition. Aided by the vast reading an actual critic can draw upon.
Mr. Ganesh’s gift for caustically framed Tory Hipster political commentary, does not fit with the imperatives of the literary critic.
On the question of Balzac, I’ve read these Penguin Classics: Lost Illusions, Cousin Bette, The Wild Ass’s Skin and found them worthy of my time. His work is a part of our literary tradition, that places his accomplishments with Hugo and Dickens.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/honore-de-balzac/10279/
I’ve read most of Graham Green’s novels and found even his ‘entertainments’ worthy of praise. For his economy of expression -for me this bring into sharper focus ,what Sartre attempted to explore in his ‘Roads to Freedom’ cycle, in sum, the existential dilemmas of post war humanity, to put it in highfalutin terms.
Look to EnglishRose’s valuable comment, that points to the intrinsic value, indeed necessity, of reading across the span of the history, of writing itself and our engagement with that tradition, as alive to those willing to engage with it.
‘Put differently. what would a modern Naipaul write about and how would he or she write it? Any thoughts?
Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra are the two novelists and essayists, writing today, who are the most trenchant critics of the Colonial Project’s abysmal failure and its political/intellectual/moral legacy. They attack with cogency the idea and practice of Western Hegemony as foundational to the ‘Rationalism’ tout court.
Regards,
StephenKMackSD
Fellow Financial Times readers spend some of your valuable time reading some other writers ,than Mr.Luce’s jejune speculations, prognostications, not to speak of a rickety psychological portrait of the Carnival Barker Trump.
First is the American ‘Liberal’ Eugene Robinson’s Hymn of Praise to the ‘Deep State’ in the Washington Post, owned by CIA contractee Jeff Bezos:
Headline: God bless the ‘deep state’.
Before this harebrained and reckless administration is history, the nation will have cause to celebrate the public servants derided by Trumpists as the supposed “deep state.”
The term itself is propaganda, intended to cast a sinister light upon men and women whom Trump and his minions find annoyingly knowledgeable and experienced. They are not participants in any kind of dark conspiracy. Rather, they are feared and loathed by the president and his wrecking crew of know-nothings because they have spent years — often decades — mastering the details of foreign and domestic policy.
God bless them. With a supine Congress unwilling to play the role it is assigned by the Constitution, the deep state stands between us and the abyss.
…
One can only wonder at the state of ‘Liberalism’, that one of its advocates, representatives should praise such a lawless band of nihilistic political actors. Such is the manufactured hysteria aided and abetted by the Brennan/Clapper/Clinton political alliance.
Then turn your attention to Ray McGovern’s latest essay. This from a man with some actual long term experience working, with distinction, in that ‘Deep State’
Headline :‘Trump Strikes Back at ‘Ringleader’ Brennan’
Sub-headline: At war with current and former intelligence officials since before he was elected, Donald Trump Wednesday moved to strip Barack Obama’s CIA chief of his security clearance, though worse may be in store for John Brennan, says Ray McGovern.
There’s more than meets the eye to President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearances that ex-CIA Director John Brennan enjoyed as a courtesy customarily afforded former directors. The President’s move is the second major sign that Brennan is about to be hoist on his own petard. It is one embroidered with rhetoric charging Trump with treason and, far more important, with documents now in the hands of congressional investigators showing Brennan’s ringleader role in the so-far unsuccessful attempts to derail Trump both before and after the 2016 election.
Brennan will fight hard to avoid being put on trial but will need united support from from his Deep State co-conspirators — a dubious proposition. One of Brennan’s major concerns at this point has to be whether the “honor-among-thieves” ethos will prevail, or whether some or all of his former partners in crime will latch onto the opportunity to “confess” to investigators: “Brennan made me do it.”
…
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/15/trump-strikes-back-at-ringleader-brennan/
The question to the reader then becomes what shall I make of these three opinions, in the most vulgar terms, where might I place my wager? Or can that reader see with growing clarity that the indited Russian Trolls have challenged the Mueller case in court:
Headline:Mueller’s Attempt to Hide Evidence Just Got Torn Apart by Attorneys for Alleged Russian Troll Farm
…
While making their case for why Mueller’s blanket protective order should not be granted, Concord Management cites the wide-ranging nature of the request itself. Noting, “The Special Counsel seeks the unprecedented process of prohibiting defense counsel from sharing or discussing any discovery with any co-defendant—including the only person affiliated with Concord named in the Indictment—unless those individuals come to the United States to become hostages in this political game of tit-for-tat.”
Concord’s description here is essentially correct. Mueller’s protective order would be unprecedented in the district. As noted later in the filing, no published court opinion in the D.C. Circuit has ever allowed such a blanket protective order for unclassified discovery materials–the case law just isn’t there.
And aside from the district in question, Dubelier also claims that “[n]o reported court case has ever endorsed a blanket protective order of this magnitude for unclassified discovery.” This is another way of saying that Mueller has apparently requested something so prohibitive that there’s arguably no analogue to it in U.S. law. This is a broad accusation and necessarily an open question. Unfortunately for our purposes, it can’t really be analyzed here because Mueller, naturally, only purports to cite a handful of cases in his initial request–and not the entirety of U.S. law and jurisprudence.
And this from America’s Political Gossip Sheet, with pretension, on the Manafort Trial, day thirteen, it takes three reporters to cover this news story:
Headline: Manafort trial Day 13: Jury deliberations begin, verdict timing unknown
Sub-headline: The former Trump campaign chairman has pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of tax and bank fraud.
Jurors began deliberating Thursday in Paul Manafort’s trial on bank- and tax-fraud charges, but the possible timing of a verdict remains unknown.
U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III sent the 12-person jury off with a lengthy list of instructions on how they are to weigh reams of evidence and testimony delivered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors and the former Trump campaign chairman’s lawyers over the course of the two-plus week trial in Alexandria, Virginia.
“You may deliberate as long or as little as you like,” Ellis told the jurors before he officially impaneled them. “How long you deliberate is entirely up to you.”
A court security official who briefed reporters later Thursday morning said the jury can work as long as they want each day, even beyond the 5:30 p.m. end time they’ve typically had. The official said a verdict will be read in court immediately after its reached — even if it comes after hours.
Any questions the jurors have for the judge will also be read in open court.
As the wait began, Manafort’s attorneys decamped to the Westin hotel restaurant across the street from the courthouse, along with reporters and players from the New York Jets, who are in town for a pre-season game Thursday night against the Washington Redskins.
The jurors are working out of a ninth-floor conference room because the typical space where they meet is otherwise overcrowded.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/16/paul-manafort-trial-verdict-latest-updates-779660
To even venture a guess, in this political/legal melodrama can only be left to the vulgar Political Theology of Luce, and his allies: who are scribbles that persuade their readers that they are Pundits. Platonic Guardians ,who are the hirelings of the Corporatist in their many guises.
Political Observer
https://www.ft.com/content/b2e5d89c-a143-11e8-85da-eeb7a9ce36e4
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