StephenKMackSD's Blog

It takes real patience to read through Mr. Tanenhaus’ rambling essay, because it seems interminable, although offering some valuable political insights,  but until he reaches the coverage of Trump’s Mechanicsburg appearance, only then does the essay breathes with something like the immediacy of life lived in the present, reported by an observer caught up in the historical moment.

The political chatter of the ‘expert’ is on full display until Mr. Tanenhaus decides to pronounce on Mrs. Clinton: what the reader does get is a collection of sycophantic cliches. One can speak of one American writer, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., whose talent for this brand of political gossip, linked with the self-serving mendacity of the political apologist, displayed in his carefully edited diaries, is matched in these excerpts.

‘She is, by almost any measure, the most accomplished woman in US politics, with a record of idealistic service dating back almost 50 years.’

‘That he has no compensating history of good works like Clinton’s—in civil rights and human rights, family law, women and children’s health—scarcely matters. This is the paradox of politics in 2016: it obsesses the nation, yet has ceased to be the domain of honourable action.’

These 3 examples  as part of the ‘record of idealistic service’ and the ‘ domain of honorable action’?

1)

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law considered to be a major welfare reform. The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract with America and was introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R–FL-22). President Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we have come to know it”.^[1]

PRWORA instituted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which became effective July 1, 1997. TANF replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program—which had been in effect since 1935—and supplanted the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training program (JOBS) of 1988. The law was heralded as a “reassertion of America’s work ethic” by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, largely in response to the bill’s workfare component. TANF was reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

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

2)

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, H.R. 3355, Pub.L. 103–322 is an Act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement; it became law in 1994. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the United States and consisted of 356 pages that provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs, which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers.^[1] Sponsored by Representative Jack Brooks of Texas, the bill was originally written by Senator Joe Biden of Delaware and then was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Following the 101 California Street shooting, the 1993 Waco Siege, and other high-profile instances of violent crime, the Act expanded federal law in several ways. One of the most noted sections was the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Other parts of the Act provided for a greatly expanded federal death penalty, new classes of individuals banned from possessing firearms, and a variety of new crimes defined in statutes relating to immigration law, hate crimes, sex crimes, and gang-related crime. The bill also required states to establish registries for sexual offenders by September 1997.

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

3) Not to mention this repeal of Glass-Steagall as the harbinger of Neo-Liberalism’s Golden Age, which lasted 9 years!

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]

A year before the law was passed, Citicorp, a commercial bank holding company, merged with the insurance company Travelers Group in 1998 to form the conglomerate Citigroup, a corporation combining banking, securities and insurance services under a house of brands that included Citibank, Smith Barney, Primerica, and Travelers. Because this merger was a violation of the Glass–Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, the Federal Reserve gave Citigroup a temporary waiver in September 1998.^[3] Less than a year later, GLBA was passed to legalize these types of mergers on a permanent basis. The law also repealed Glass–Steagall’s conflict of interest prohibitions “against simultaneous service by any officer, director, or employee of a securities firm as an officer, director, or employee of any member bank”.^[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act

The comments on Hillary’s ‘Feminism’ and her appearance with Madeleine Albright, and  the disappeared Gloria Steinem, in New Hampshire. And Albright’s  ‘special place in hell’ remark- what to call this statement by the utterly notorious rationalizer of the death of half a million Iraqi children? but this helps establish Mr. Tanenhaus as Hillary apologist, not an example of an ‘objective journalism’ or even a reporter who makes her/his politics plain from the outset!  Hillary as Feminist Privileged Elder is pure campaign propaganda!

”He meant during the New Hampshire primary, Sanders’s sweeping first victory built on a coalition of the very young, including young women—a deep shock to Clinton and her generation of feminist allies. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” said Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State and one of Clinton’s staunchest allies, as she introduced the candidate at a New Hampshire campaign event. “She’s been saying that as long as I’ve known her, which is about 25 years,” Clinton explained, trying to calm the furore, not realising those 25 years were part of the problem. To the new generation, Clinton is less pioneer than privileged elder.’

Mrs. Clintons record of enthusiastic supporter for the Bill Clinton rapacious Neo-Liberal agenda, a Reagan agenda enacted by a New Democrat, is beyond doubt, but inconvenient to creating an the alternate reality of a record of Hillary’s ersatz Feminism!

One final comment on the 1968 election, as retold by Mr. Tanenhaus, and the 13 million votes cast for George Wallace:

In 1968 I was 23 and was casting my first vote in a presidential race, and recall vividly ,that after Bobby Kennedy was murdered, that a great many of his followers opted to cast their votes for Wallace. It is hard to imagine the why of that, in this time, but recall the political turbulence of that era elided from the narrative confected by Mr. Tanenhaus. Such were the times, so make your judgements not relying on Mr. Tanenhaus’ politically  infused re-description of the past. Seek your answers elsewhere!

Political Reporter

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/american-nihilist-trump-us-election-republican-democrat

We are in the same propaganda territory relied upon by the Financial Times,  of The Rebellion Against The Elites,  in Mr. Rachman’s latest essay:

Headline: The crisis in Anglo-American democracy

Sub-headline: Trump of the Republicans and Corbyn of the Labour party are recycling some bad old ideas

Except that Mr. Rachman relies on an invidious comparison between Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn. How can two men be so different in career choice, and the exercise of judgement political and personal? Mr. Corbyn has spent most of his life in Labour politics and Trump has never before run for political office. Mr. Corbyn represents Labour before Tony Blair’s invention of New Labour, amounting to Thatcher Lite. Mr. Trump, in sum , is a grifter working his con on network television, as exemplar of the Entrepreneur ,the New Man made possible by the Market, as the sine qua non of Knowledge.

No matter the inaptness, myopia or just the ideological opportunism of the comparison, Mr. Rachman has the bit between his teeth, and proceeds at full gallop tilting at the windmills of his own construction, creaky though they may be. Don Quixote offered the pathos and comedy of an old man lost in his need to re-enact the deeds of a chivalric age, now made ‘real’ in his imagination. In an age without such heroes: nostalgia for the glories of a re-imagined past, refracted through the mind of a man in thrall to his self-created world: among others, the tales of Amadís de Gaula fueled his romantic delusion. Mr. Rachman has as his ‘guides’ the now thoroughly bankrupt writings of  Hayek, Mises and Friedman, that had fueled the Thatcher and Reagan ‘Revolutions’,that then led to the Collapse/Depression of 2008, it’s successor Austerity,  and  protracted decay of the political present. If your searching for the why of The Rebellion Against The Elites, begin with the codification of Free Market ideas, and it’s various apologists !

Almost Marx

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c2fc5b2-6630-11e6-8310-ecf0bddad227.html#axzz4I9ywpYpX

Trump isn’t Nixon! Hillary is the New Nixon of 1968. Mrs. Clinton was carefully ‘re-branded’ for her 2016 run for president, to make her more personally appealing to the voter: women, blacks and hawkish New Democrats and Neo-Conservatives tired of Obama’s Foreign Policy ‘weakness’.

After Nixon’s defeat for the California Governorship in 1962 and his self-pitying comment:  “you don’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”^{[1][2] ‘}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon%27s_last_press_conference

The video of his final comment in 1962:

As one can readily see Nixon needed a political re-model for the 1968 run for President.  For the facts on The New Nixon we can look to: ‘The Selling of the President 1968 is a non-fiction book written by American author Joe McGinniss and published by Trident Press in October, 1969.’ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selling_of_the_President_1968

This book and other publications are more historically aware and accurate than Mr. Luce. Mr. Luce was born in 1968 and so has no active memory of Nixon, as some of his readers who grew up in the 1950’s and have vivid memories of Nixon the man ,the politician, not the all purpose villain as he appears in this essay. To compare Nixon to Trump is fraught with danger, both were/are bullies and cowards, not to speak of reckless with the lives of others, in their climb to the top in The American Political Melodrama. But Nixon was, and had to be, more circumspect, more concerned with the cultivation of bourgeois  political respectability, as the first order of business. Trump is utterly contemptuous of any such scruple, he is rich enough not to care for that respectability: it is part of his appeal as unwelcome truth teller in the midst of an utterly corrupt political establishment of both the Republicans and the New Democrats. Notably both Trump and Nixon are/were politically self-destructive, even when victorious: a kind of personal nihilism?   Mr. Luce knows just enough American history to make his essay plausible, but for me, as a person who grew up seeing and hearing Nixon, in his various political guises, its just too formulaic, too much the product of a conclusion, the Trump Nixon analogy, in  search of an historically viable argument. The essay is unconvincing.

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c98879b0-65f4-11e6-8310-ecf0bddad227.html#axzz4HyenZXAA

Mr. Ganesh leaves behind for the moment his highly practiced rhetoric of London Spleen, for the pathos of the perpetual aspirant and political climber. This essay,his praise of Mr. Springsteen as an American artists of the first order, untainted by the Left Wing delusions of such American bards as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger or even Mr. Paul Robeson, these artists lived in 1930’s America and in the anguished watershed of The Great Depression. If Mr. Ganesh knew more American history that ‘Left’ was home to  other citizens e.g.  Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell,Irving Howe of the Alcoves One and Two of City College. The ‘Left’ was an organic political manifestation in that dismal time, as is the rise of the Rebellion against The Elites, endlessly chronicled in the pages of The Financial Times.

The Ganesh methodology of fear mongering of ‘The Left’ makes perfect political sense, in the face of the eighth year of the protracted Depression, that began in 2008 and continues to this day. The rise of political apostate Jeremy Corbyn figures here as subtext. Mr.  Ganesh praises Mr. Springsteen as an American Bard, as above the vulgar political fray and opines that ‘Reagan was half right’, a purely rhetorical device, that indicates an ersatz objectivity from a Reagan fellow traveler trying to win over the reader.

As an artist/troubadour/critic Mr. Spingsteen’s work resonates on those many levels and more in terms of emotional range: sympathy,empathy, anger, even a bitter resignation,  that eludes the grasp of Mr. Ganesh’s monochromatic politicization. Mr. Sprinsteen’s work stands on it’s own, without the need of myopic, not to speak of a maladroitly exercised ideological intervention.

American Writer

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d68c1cc2-655c-11e6-a08a-c7ac04ef00aa.html#axzz4HyenZXAA

1)

I have yet to read Robin Wigglesworth’s essay/news report, but I have read Mr. Edward. N. Littwak’s essay Hidden Costs at the Times Literary Supplement, August 19,2016 A review of The Panama Papers, that for it’s cast of characters, that includes Mr. Singer as a seeker after the his pound of flesh, President Macri of Argentina, and Cristina de Kirchner as clients of Mossack Fonseka. What was Argentina’s Neo-Liberal White Knight Mercri doing business where embezzler de Kirchner also did business? The Argentine Melodrama never ends, but there are more names of the politically respectable bourgeois politicians, and other civic actors…

Stayed tuned,

StephenKMackSD

2)

Poor Mr. Singer! The goose that laid the golden egg is kaput? Mr. Singer and his ilk produce nothing. He is not like the notorious Henry Ford, who at the least, paid his workers enough to buy the cars they produced on the assembly line! Ford produced a product that people bought, and provided jobs that enabled generations of Americans to purchase a home, to save for retirement, and put their children through school and even college. No matter Mr. Ford’s egregious beliefs, he did something that Mr. Singer and his investors cannot do, provide those jobs that built America and got us through two World Wars.

But times are now tough for the Vultures, as Capitalism, in it’s Neo-Liberal iteration, has collapsed, and what is on offer from the Elites, that the dread Populists are rebelling against, is the Utopianism of the TTP and the TTIP. Yet we as readers can see that this class of Capitalists relies on the ever shrinking detritus of a system mired in it’s own collapse. The Panama Papers demonstrates that both the Capitalists and their apologists in the Press, in Politics and Academia are wholly corrupt, or put bluntly, just on the take. So Mr. Singer’s dire warnings about an Economic ‘brokenness’ of the Bond Market: while we in America witness daily, the Sideshow of Clinton vs. Trump i.e. of two utterly loathsome self-seeking egoists vying to rule the ‘West’ garnished by the usual ‘the lesser of two evils’ bunk is just more bad news. Mr. Singer who makes Henry Ford look like a paragon of Capitalist Virtue, bemoans his lot: quelle dommage!  In the vision of Ayn Rand the world is dived into  producers and  drones, so one might ask, what category does Mr. Singer fit into? Or to frame it in a way utterly antithetical to Rand, what tangible good does he produce? to frame it a language alien to the ‘Objectivism’ of Rand. The notion of ‘Objectivism’ being a stand in  for greed. Perhaps we can turn to Hayek for the comforting news that the Market is the only really viable form of knowledge?

StephenKMackSD

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a21fec8a-6574-11e6-a08a-c7ac04ef00aa.html#ft-article-comments

After the treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, as part of the rise of The Populists in Western political life as indicative of The Rebellion against The Elites, as characterized by the writers at The Financial Times, The Brexit Vote and the attendant manufactured political hysteria, the editors and writers at that newspaper demonstrate in every issue  that it is a propaganda tool of an utterly corrupt Corporatist politics. Read my selection of  excerpts from four ‘news’ articles and one editorial that provides the empirical evidence that this newspaper is a purveyor of  New Cold War propaganda. The excerpts from the  five essays featured here are part of a pattern of that propaganda featuring Putin as The New Stalin.

Headline: Russia plays a dangerous hand in Ukraine conflict

Sub-headline:West should make clear aggression is not in Putin’s interest

‘Ukraine and Russia stand once again on the brink of open war. After weeks of elevated violence in the separatist Donbass, Russian president Vladimir Putin has accused Ukrainian forces of armed incursions and plotting “terrorist” acts in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. While a border shootout seemingly did occur, its circumstances are murky. Ominously, Russia appears to have exaggerated the incident as a pretext for renewed military threats.

For now, it seems unlikely Mr Putin would really want to risk fresh conflict, with all its dangers of broader escalation. After all, in his geopolitical stand-off with the west, some things seem to be moving in his favour. Turkey, after its failed coup, is again veering towards Moscow. In the US, Mr Putin has a Republican presidential candidate — albeit a currently faltering one — who has praised him and suggested Moscow should be allowed to keep Crimea. The EU has been rattled by the Brexit vote.

With parliamentary elections looming next month, however, Mr Putin might have decided some military theatrics were required to distract domestic attention from a stagnant economy and cast himself once again as the nation’s irreplaceable defender. His manoeuvrings, including troop build-ups in both Crimea and Donbass, may be aimed, too, at distracting from celebrations on August 24 marking 25 years since Ukraine’s independence declaration from the Soviet Union.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/73ec2b80-5fbb-11e6-ae3f-77baadeb1c93.html#axzz4Hd8BAbbr

Here is a news item, dated May 28, 2016, from Ukraine Today :

Headline:Ex-NATO Chief Rasmussen is now Poroshenko’s new advisor

Sub-headline: And this assignment was not left unnoticed by Russia

‘Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been appointed as a new advisor to the Ukrainian President. Petro Poroshenko signed the relevant decree on May 27.

Rasmussen, who also was Danish Prime Minister, has already confirmed the fact.

Read also: Former NATO chief Rasmussen says Russian attack on Baltics ‘highly probable’

“I’m pleased to accept the appointment, and I will do my utmost to promote security and reforms in Ukraine, and strengthen the Ukraine-E.U. bond. I look very much forward to working with the Ukrainian authorities”, Rasmussen posted on Facebook.

The ex-NATO Chief described the situation in Donbas as “alarming”. But, he said, at the same time Ukraine need to continue to carry out reforms, including the fight against corruption. “In that respect, reinforced ties with the E.U. are essential”, he stated.

Rasmussen is known for his support for Ukraine. In August 2014 Poroshenko awarded him “for significant contribution to the development of cooperation between the state of Ukraine and the NATO, important support in defending the sovereignty, independence and integrity of Ukraine”.

Moscow has already called this assignment “an enemy act against Russia”.

Read also: NATO Chief Retires: Rasmussen steps down from military alliance

“Ukraine is drifting towards NATO. The country is a stepping-stone (for NATO) against Russia, and it will be used if we or Ukraine itself don’t oppose”, Russian official Leonid Kalashnikov said in an interview with Interfax.

Kalashnikov added, “entering NATO would be a suicide for Ukraine”.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen was NATO Secretary General from 2009 to 2014. He was replaced by Norwegian politician Jens Stoltenberg.

http://uatoday.tv/politics/ex-nato-chief-rasmussen-is-now-poroshenko-s-new-advisor-662891.html

There can be no doubt that Rasmussen is now Viceroy of Ukraine and in full control of the puppet government headed by Poroshenko!

Headline: Russia ups the ante in Ukraine with eye on G20

by Sam Jones in London and Roman Olearchyk in Kiev: dated April 17, 2016

In Ukraine’s restive east, artillery explosions ring out and international monitors record dozens of shell bursts every evening. The ceasefire between Kiev and the Russian-backed separatists is fraying badly.

Signs of a flare-up in fighting began in July and Ukraine and its western allies are observing a more worrying development: a build-up of conventional Russian forces in Crimea and along the countries’ shared border.

Russia has positioned military units with thousands of troops to the north in Bryansk, to the east near Rostov, to the south in Crimea and to the west in the separatist Moldovan region of Transnistria. There are signs they are preparing for fighting.

Last week, people in Crimea began posting online about a large deployment of artillery and tanks in the north of the peninsula and within range of Ukraine. The internet there was temporarily shut down.

Ukrainian intelligence agencies say a Russian air defence regiment has been embedded with the separatists in Donbass. Launchers of the type that fired the Buk missile that downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in July 2014, killing all 298 people aboard, are again being deployed.

…

‘“Preparations for conventional conflict between Russia and Ukraine are accelerating, and the likelihood of open war is increasing rapidly,” the Institute for the Study of War, a US think-tank, wrote in a report last Thursday. On Monday that appeared to move a step closer. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, vowed that “exhaustive measures” would be taken against Kiev in reprisal for what Russia called an attempted terror attack by Ukraine’s defence ministry.

“These are very, very clear signals from Russia that say they are willing to escalate and to push boundaries,” says Kathleen Weinberger, a Russia and Ukraine expert at the ISW. “We’re seeing reports of big military convoys being sent into the separatist areas, Russian troops being sent to the border and a lot more naval equipment in the Black Sea — including some of their most advanced subs, which have quite powerful ground attack cruise missiles.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2196fd08-63c9-11e6-a08a-c7ac04ef00aa.html#axzz4Hd8BAbbr

The downing of MH17, killing all 298 passengers, still plays well with Western audiences psychologically habituated to the myth of Putin as political monster, a given in a Western Press in thrall to the imperatives of NATO and Western National Security States. Yet the ‘guilt’ of the Russians has yet to be demonstrated by empirical evidence, a small stumbling block!  The long quotations from a report by Institute for the Study of War, founded by notorious Neo-Conservative Kimberly Kagan, and its hireling Kathleen Weinberger can leave no doubt as to the why of  bellicose prediction of this essay: that have yet to materialize as of August 18, 2016. Yet we expect those developments monetarily?

Headline: Putin accuses Kiev of armed Crimea incursion

by Kathrin Hille in Moscow and Roman Olearchyk in Kiev: August 10,2016

‘Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukrainian forces of a “criminal” incursion into Crimea, in an escalation of the conflict between the two countries that began when the peninsula was annexed by Moscow in early 2014.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Wednesday that it had foiled “terrorist acts” prepared by Ukrainian military intelligence against infrastructure in the territory, with the aim of disrupting Russia’s parliamentary elections due on 18 September. Kiev has denied the allegations.

In response to the alleged operation, Mr Putin said he was pulling out of international peace talks on the conflict in eastern Ukraine. He said he was no longer ready to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, and German and French leaders in the so-called Normandy format, which has been used for negotiations. Mr Putin hinted at a possible meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China early next month.

“Under these conditions, meeting in the Normandy format, especially in China, is meaningless,” Mr Putin said at a press conference. “Apparently, the people who seized power in Kiev and continue to hold on to it, instead of seeking compromise, instead of searching ways of a peaceful settlement, have moved on to the practice of terror.”’

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/31c477c0-5f0d-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb1138a.html#axzz4Hd8BAbbr

The deadly political melodrama continues to play itself out with claims and counter claims of the protagonists, yet the culpability, duplicity not to speak of the mendacity of NATO, the E.U. allied to American support of President Obama, Victoria Nuland, Samantha  Power remain unmentioned in one more piece of New Cold War propaganda.

Headline: Russia pledges to take ‘exhaustive measures’ against Ukraine

by Max Seddon in Moscow: August 15,2016

‘Russia plans to take “exhaustive measures” against Ukraine in response to what it called an attempted terrorist attack in the annexed Crimean peninsula earlier this month, but will not go as far as suspending diplomatic relations with Kiev, the country’s foreign minister said on Monday.

Sergei Lavrov said Russia would provide evidence supporting its version of the incident in which a Russian soldier and a security services officer were shot dead near the disputed border with Ukraine.

“In addition to what you see on television, we have incontrovertible proof that this was a diversion that was planned long ago by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian defence ministry with the goal of destabilising the situation in Russian Crimea,” Mr Lavrov said.

Mr Lavrov was speaking after a meeting with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier. At a joint press conference Mr Steinmeier called on Russia and Ukraine to refrain from hostilities. “We do not have a clear picture of those events and await the results of the Ukrainian and Russian investigations,” he said.

Details of the shootings, which took place in the northern Crimean town of Armyansk, remain murky. Several local bloggers reported a shootout on the night of August 7, three days before Moscow made its accusations. Russia arrested nine men it says were Ukrainian “saboteurs”, but relatives of one of the men suggested that he had been abducted. Ukraine has denied the men were its agents and said the arrests were an attempt to cover up a drunken weekend scuffle between Russian military and security officials. Footage of the scene shown on Russian television showed a full moon — even though the last full moon was on July 19.’

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9781cc4c-62f6-11e6-8310-ecf0bddad227.html?siteedition=intl#axzz4HdOzLp6M

The above further evidence on Putin’s intransigence, via Lavrov.

Headline: Donetsk faces a creeping Russification

By Roman Olearchyk in Donetsk:  June 5, 2016

Sub-headline: Many fear city’s widening split from rest of Ukraine could complicate reintegration

‘At an electronics store in Donetsk, stronghold of the Russia-backed separatists who control Ukraine’s breakaway east, Vasili declines payment of 100 hryvnias to install the internet on a mobile phone.

“We don’t accept hryvnia any more, only roubles,” the shop assistant says, explaining that they exclusively use the Russian currency now on orders of the region’s separatist leadership.

A short distance away in Makiivka, a conversation with factory worker Marina underscores how Russian money has become the de facto currency.

The steel plant where she works is one of the few in the war-torn region that was once Ukraine’s industrial heartland that continues to pay salaries in the national currency. “We immediately exchange it to roubles as you can’t buy anything here in hryvnia any more,” she says.

Two years after the Ukrainian conflict erupted — when Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings in scores of towns across the country’s Russian-speaking east and set up their own breakaway republics — the Donetsk and neighbouring Lugansk regions have not (unlike Crimea) been annexed by Moscow.

The Russians held back, perhaps fearing further western sanctions — although many say it was more Moscow’s reluctance to shoulder the cost of a densely populated region and its hundreds of thousands of pensioners.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1425647c-297f-11e6-8ba3-cdd781d02d89.html#axzz4HdSfui00

August 19,2016: I didn’t comment on the above ‘news story’ as I had to really thing about what would be relevant to the issue of ‘creeping Russification’ yet a publication founded in 1888 by James Sheridan and Horatio Bottomley, at the height of the British Empire, ought to take care when making that charge, in sum, of cultural/economic imperialism, when that Empire made such ‘imperialism’ in such far flung places as India , South Africa. Not to those inextricably linked by both geography and linguistic/cultural similarity.

On the question of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe as some kind of objective arbiter, there is this from NATO:

‘The Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) is an important partner for NATO. The OSCE establishes the principles that govern international relations in the Euro-Atlantic area and embodies a comprehensive approach to human security. The two organisations play complementary roles in building security and maintaining stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. Both support the principles that underpin the European security order. Both also acknowledge the need for a coherent and comprehensive approach to crisis management, which requires the effective application of both military and civilian means.’

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49911.htm

For some insights on the questions raised in these Financial Times excerpts look to two videos featuring ‘Ray McGovern, retired analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, Vladimir Golstein, associate Professor of Slavic Studies at Brown University and James Jatras, a former U.S. diplomat and policy advisor and analyst for the Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate.’ Under the heading of Russia and US elections.

Victor Serge IV

Reading through Mr. Lloyd’s essay, laden with self-apologetics for an utterly failed Neo-Liberal Utopianism, eight years and counting since the 2008 Economic Collapse, or just call it by it’s actual name a Depression: Mr. Lloyd’s calls for a political understanding of those ‘left-behinders’ and their quandaries rings absolutely hollow, although it makes for an unusual headline in a newspaper, that has made a defense of Robber Capital,  in all it’s iterations, since the rise of Thatcher and Reagan.

The body of the essay is devoted to a resume of The Rebellion Against The Elites i.e. the rise of the Populist Menace, with the usual cast of the enemies of the technocrats, whose faith in the ‘Free Market’ brought Western economies to the dismal political present. How inconvenient to the the notion of ‘understanding’ of those misguided  ‘left-behinders’, who have birthed  the political monstrosities of Trump, Marine Le Pen and Jeremy Corbyn etc.! The last paragraph is instructive of the ‘politics of freedom’, perhaps we as critical readers can interpret that ‘politics of freedom’, in the Western democracies, as the rise of the newest utopianism of the Corporatism of the TPP and TTIP,  offered by the same technocrats who proffered Neo-Liberalism as salvation?

This is a fearful time, with popular authoritarian leaders to Europe’s east probing for advantage. Liberals of left or right cannot emulate the populists but their leaders have no choice but to work harder at shaping a politics of freedom that does not feel like in-difference to left-behinders on the part of out-in-fronters.

Almost Marx

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bbf0f4e0-5d74-11e6-bb77-a121aa8abd95.html#axzz4Hau9HZM5

As per usual it won’t take long before this comments section is closed to any further replies, Mrs. Clinton has far too many enemies: when the going gets tough the Financial Times folds, to paraphrase that American Philosopher Vince Lombardi.

Here is what I see for President Hillary Clinton after her less than impressive win over Trump, all those ‘spoiler’ 3rd Party candidates, sapping the strength of her slim victory. Some American Myths never die, like the ‘political spoiler’ that reared its ugly head in 1992 with Ross Perot and was succeeded in 2000 by Ralph Nader. These ‘spoilers’ had the irritating habit of being politically right, but only in retrospect!

Mrs. Clinton and her Sec. of State Victoria Nuland, a more bellicose duo of militarily inexperienced jingos one can hardly recall, except for Kristol and a number of Neo-Conservative Policy Experts.The Clinton/Nuland duo will exploit the South China Sea and Ukraine hot spots, with a kind of manic glee, until they go head to head with an utterly ruthless Putin. Or will the fake crisis begin on the Polish border with Russia? One can only guess that it will end badly i.e. how many lives lost, for what? With Ms. Nuland, and her porcine Spartan husband Robert Kagan, resorting to the unthinkable first use of tactical nuclear weapons?

Another burning question of a possible Clinton victory in 2016: when the President invites Zionist Caudillo Netanyahu to the White House will there be wholesale chaos in the streets of Washington D.C.? All my speculations fitting quite easily into Mr. Luce’s bracing melodramatic framing of the pressing issue of Obama’s Foreign Policy passivity as opposed to Hillary’s bellicosity argued as American Exceptionalism. If my comment seems a bit muddled, here at its end , it simply reflects Mr. Luce’s habit of trying to balance antitheticals and not quite succeeding.

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1476d7ca-6076-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb1138a.html#axzz4HEJfeufv

After the Economic Collapse of 2008, the bourgeois press refuses to call it a Depression, which it was and still is, no matter the lack of candor of a Press fully owned by Capital. The Self-Correcting Market one of the central dogmas of Neo-Liberal Utopianism has proven to be mythical, as all else presented by the economists who were the propagandists for this ‘reform’ of the imperatives that animated the New Deal. The names of Hayek,Mises, Friedman under the organizational umbrella of Mont Pelerin Society,  not to speak of the vulgar pamphleteer Ayn Rand, acting as an apostle of Greed, have resulted in catastrophe still exercising its hegemony over the Economies of the West. Is this overstatement? Yet the same experts/technocrats offer a New Utopianism to replace the old: Free Trade as it is now called under the political banner of TPP. In sum a Corporatist Coup directed at what is left of the American Republic, swallowed whole by the imperatives of the cancer of the National Security State, yet still somehow active in the political imaginations of American political actors, as some kind of fictional given in the political present .

How long can anyone entertain the fantasy that Obama is, among other things, a ‘Progressive’? He is a ‘Progressive’ in the sense that grifter Arianna Huffington was a ‘Progressive’. In sum what that means is a Neo-Liberal in New Democratic Drag, or just a Reaganite ! The TPP is, in fact, a Corporatist Coup against what remains of the Republic: as it codifies the right of Corporations to sue countries for lost profits, for laws that protect countries from rapacious greedy Corporate practices. Environmental protection laws are a big part of what those suits by Corporations will attack. In victory over the unhinged Trump, will Hillary and Tim come to ‘reconsider’ Hillary’s ill advised prior reconsideration, as a matter of an ‘evolution’ on the question? Think of Obama’s ‘evolution’ on Gay Marriage as opportunism wrapped in Christian moralizing chatter, as the product of an ‘anguished’ wrestling with conscience.

Almost Marx

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/obama-congress-trade-warning-226952

The Plot Against America: the usual shopworn obsessions with Roth! Narcissism takes the lead in this utterly tepid anti-fascist tract, that features the very appealing narrator/hero: Mr. Roth as a child. Lindbergh is a featured player, but strategically always just off stage, the éminence grise, the villain of this appealing melodrama, marinated in Mr. Roth’s rampant retrospective paranoia . But it never emancipates itself from that melodrama, it would have been more appropriate as a T.V. movie. with Roth providing a self-congratulatory introduction.
Lindbergh was an actual hero, the antithesis of the clownish fascist Ring Master Trump. Lindbergh and America First disappeared after December 7th.
Portnoy’s Complaint was a comic tour de force, as yet to be matched by Roth. Portnoy and Myra Breckenridge were the scandalous satirical literary polemics of the late 60’s in America.
American Writer

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/sameer-rahim/what-philip-roth-can-teach-us-about-donald-trump