Press Association

‘The Ministry of Defence has estimated acquiring four new submarines to carry the Trident deterrent will cost £31bn over the course of the 20-year procurement programme, with a further £10bn set aside to meet unexpected cost increases.’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b91423a4-dd73-11e5-b072-006d8d362ba3.html#axzz41LCui6jT

Union boss Tim Roache tells Corbyn to toe party line on Trident

February 26, 2016

Chris Tighe

‘But on Trident, Mr Roache said Mr Corbyn should toe the party line. “Now he is the leader, you are bound by the policy of the party you are elected to lead,” he said. “With leadership comes responsibility. Our members desperately need the return of a Labour government.” ‘

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cc8dc584-dc7e-11e5-a72f-1e7744c66818.html#axzz41LCui6jT

February 14, 2016

Sam Jones in Munich and Kate Allen in London

‘Nato officials and political leaders from across the alliance are “deeply concerned” over the opposition Labour party’s wavering support for Britain’s nuclear weapons, according to defence secretary Michael Fallon.

He claimed senior figures in Nato as well as his counterparts in European ministries had raised the issue of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, his attitude towards Nato and the question of nuclear arms repeatedly at the meeting of alliance defence chiefs in Brussels last week.’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3a2451c8-d331-11e5-8887-98e7feb46f27.html#axzz41LCui6jT

Political Reporter

This essay expresses a mixture of hectoring and hand wringing over Trump! An impotent cri de cœur ? Too little too late? To paraphrase Goya, the sleep of reason  brings forth monsters.

The Republicans have been engaging in, and or, flirting with political necromancy since their ‘Generation of Treason’  sloganeering of post World War two. The  McCarthy/Nixon/McCarren/Mundt political alliance used this as a political war cry against The New Deal. Then came Goldwater quickly followed by the Dixiecrat migration of 64 and 65. The election of Nixon and the ‘Southern Strategy’ followed by States Rights advocate Ronald Reagan.Then Came Bush I and his Willy Horton race baiting , and then Neo-Reaganite Bill Clinton whose ‘Welfare Reform’ and ‘Financial Reform’ and ‘Crime Bill’ were monuments to Republican political and moral paranoia, and cemented the fact that the New Democrats were betrayers of the New Deal, in the name of scheming ambition.The New Democrats as the not so sub rosa allies of the Republicans. And don’t forget Bush II and his unalloyed economic incompetence wedded to an irrepressible war mongering.

After the economic collapse of 2008, as the watershed of the Neo-Liberal ascendancy, an utterly failed Austerity, followed by the dismal economic present: why is the rise of the dreaded Populists of both Left and Right such a surprise? That rise chronicled in the pages of the two most prestigious journals of Capitalist Apologetics, The Financial Times and The Economist. My above  ‘history’ inconvenient to the current political orthodoxy: the ‘as if ‘ that Trump appeared out of a political nowhere. The facts, the ‘Laws’ of history suspended in the interest of those who placed their faith , not to speak of their political power, behind and into a Neo-Liberalism that didn’t just founder but collapsed in a deafening crash. Which brings this comment back to Goya’s observation that can can stand as an admonition!

Almost Marx

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21693579-donald-trump-unfit-lead-great-political-party-time-fire-him

Mr. Bremmer sells a product, if nothing else The Economist idolizes the entrepreneur:

‘Eurasia Group provides analysis and expertise about how political developments and national security dynamics move markets and shape investment environments across the globe.’

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

One could say that Mr. Bremmer and his business are engaged in the practice of political/economic clairvoyance, or more vulgar notions of predicting the future! I’m old enough to recall that television showman The Amazing Criswell, I’m sure there are others familiar with the man and the genre!  And that the Bagehot columnist proves that he, I’m just guessing on this point, but relying on my perception of the corporate culture of The Economist, a la Mr.Bremmer, travels in the same circles, but as a journalist ally of the technocrats. The proof, Bagehot says:’ I joined George Osborne on his recent trip to Beijing.’

But notice my surprise! that practically the first thing out of Mr. Bremmer’s mouth is about the death of Corporatist/Originalist Supreme Court Justice Scalia. One might just observer that Democracy, as practiced, is extremely unpredictable, and way too slow for the eager beavers,the planners/apologists for the TTIP: Mr Bremmer in this edited interview acts as cheerleader for this Corporate Coup, as the coming of a New Age. But recall that that was the Party Line on the New Age that Neo-Liberalism was to usher in ? Where is that promised land? Another mirage of seers like Mr. Bremmer, or was it himself? More from the Wikipedia entry:

‘Among his professional appointments, Bremmer serves on the Presidents Council of the Near East Foundation, the Leadership Council for the Concordia Summit, and the Board of Trustees of Intelligence Squared. In 2007, he was named as a ‘Young Global Leader’ of the World Economic Forum, and in 2010 founded and was appointed Chair of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Geopolitical Risk. In December 2015, Bremmer was knighted by the government of Italy.’

Followed by comments on ‘Key concepts’ The J Curve, State Capitalism, G-Zero,Weaponization of finance,Pivot state.

As to the why of this interview:

I’m the one who tweeted that the most influence Britain has these days is what’s written in The Economist. And I meant it. Precisely because that is soft power, it does matter and Britain is seen as much more relevant on stuff that it has done for a long time than on what the British government is coming up with these days.

It was a long and dismal read, an Economist standard, but the patient not to speak of the forebearant reader has the answer.

According to Mr. Bremmer Obama’s most important Foreign Policy accomplishment:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, I think, is the single biggest thing Obama has done in seven years on foreign policy.

A telling quote as to the political myopia of technocrat Mr. Bremmer:

The Labour Party has imploded

Corbyn is just the beginning!

Political Dissident

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2016/02/meaning-brexit

I am going to re-post a comment that I tweeted to Mr. Schama on February 21, 2016 via TwitLonger:

Link to Schama’s Financial Times essay:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d6a75c3c-d6f3-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.html#axzz40l84ZKpE

@simon_schama
Just the latest on the pressing question of ‘Jewish Money’:
A link available to subscribers of W.S.J.:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spy-net-on-israel-snares-congress-1451425210
A link to Occupy Democrats that reports on the W.S.J. news story:
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/2015/12/31/treason-leaked-wiretaps-reveals-netanyahu-bribed-republicans-to-sabotage-obamas-iran-peace-deal-2/
My comment is in response to your hysterical diatribe against B.D.S. in The Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d6a75c3c-d6f3-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.html#axzz40l84ZKpE
‘Jew hatred’ is the response of that notorious hybrid creature Antisemite/Self-hating Jew, constructed by Zionist apologists/propagandists like yourself, and accepted as the Party Line by your allies at A.I.P.A.C.,Sheldon Adelson and the Bronfman’s Sr. & Jr. Who would have thought, that this report would have come from the utterly dependable defender of Zionist settler colonialism The Wall Street Journal?
Karl Kraus’ Ghost

I also posted this comment, as it was, to the Financial Times as a reply to the Schama essay, and after a few hours it was removed.What I meant to indicate by my use of rhetorical binary of Antisemite/Self-hating Jew was that a politically rational critique of Israel and Zionism is an impossibility: given that this hybrid makes any critique impossible, as the critique is the product of a prima facie prejudiced source.  Any critique is immediately identified as either one or the other. The practice of nuance is antithetical to political apologetics as practiced, but call by its rightful name propaganda.

Here is my subsequent comment to my first,that I hoped would clarify and add depth to my first attempt:

StephenKMackSD

From the Occupy Democrats essay:

‘You may remember the ridiculous doomsday prophecies and outrageous fear-mongering that defined the Republican campaign against President Obama’s nuclear peace deal with Iran. The motivation behind their unwise and ultimately ineffective resistance to the President’s diplomatic agenda has finally come to light. A new report from the Wall Street Journal reveals that NSA wiretaps found that the the Israeli Prime Minister and other officials of the Israeli governments attempted to, and most likely succeeded, to bribe American legislators in exchange for their support against the deal. “A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the intercepts said Israel’s pitch to undecided lawmakers often included such questions as: “How can we get your vote? What’s it going to take? Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes.” The answers to Israeli proposals have yet to be fully revealed, but it is clear that favors were offered – bribes were proposed – and from the subsequent behavior of Republican lawmakers, we can only infer that our legislators accepted those bribes, from a foreign government in exchange for opposing the diplomatic efforts of the Obama Administration. At the very least, the very discussion itself indicates that they conspired with a foreign government to undermine the foreign policy agenda of their elected Commander-in-Chief, which certainly amounts to treason.’ http://www.occupydemocrats.com/2015/12/31/treason-leaked-wiretaps-reveals-netanyahu-bribed-republicans-to-sabotage-obamas-iran-peace-deal-2/StephenKMackSD

There is no doubt that the author of this obituary is schooled in the Scalia patois, in fact she/he is adept at sounding the notes of witless bulling insult that is the hallmark of that Scalia style!
But was Scalia an ‘Originalist’ Or as Scalia described himself  as a ‘faint-hearted originalist’? Here is a partial answer provided by Bruce Allen Murphy,the Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

‘When I teach about the First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion at Lafayette College, which used to occupy a routine pair of classes, I now wheel into the classroom a large white board that will occupy us for weeks, filled with all of the exceptions that the Court has created here restoring, in piecemeal fashion, the pre-Scalia, 1990 decision, world. I explain what has become the “Swiss Cheesing” of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause, allowing, among others, for claims to be considered for exceptions for federal prisoners and others being held in government institutions, for a religious group in Hialeah, Florida seeking to sacrifice animals in religious ceremonies, and for a small religious group seeking to drink ceremonial hallucinogenic tea from the Amazon. The string of exceptions to Scalia’s Smith rule has created so many holes that there is almost no cheese left. After the Hobby Lobby decision, I will have to make one more change to the top of my board, one which risks doubling the number of exceptions, adding next to the words “person’s Free Exercise of Religion rights,” the phrase “and closely-held corporations’ religious rights” Even though the majority in Hobby Lobby has further limited Scalia’s Smith case holding, since that result comports with his pro-religious accommodation, pro-corporation constitutional rights, viewpoint, he silently votes with them. While Scalia likes to say in his public speeches that his version of the Constitution is “Dead. Dead. Dead,” once more his reading of Founding era history to construct his originalist interpretation of the Constitution is very much an evolving work in progress.’- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156300#sthash.BWyZ4mgK.dpuf

Continue reading →

A political observer could call Mr. Ganesh a Tory Hazlitt,  who has accepted the notion of political compromise, as a coming to terms with the responsibilities of governance, as practiced in Western Democracies. Sometimes we must govern as part of a coalition because wholesale victory is out of our reach. Better to share power than to be an outsider, although  dissidence has its place. That doesn’t sound too highfalutin for a thinker and stylist of Mr. Ganesh’s talent ? not to speak of literary – skill isn’t the word because he writes with verve and concision-is panache the almost correct descriptor? Mr. Ganesh has a penchant for considering himself like Messieurs Wolf ,Rachman, and  Luce to be an integral part of an Elite that is under attack from the riff raff of both Left and Right. In Mr. Ganesh’s case he is unable to mask his contempt for Corby and Sturgeon, if it is masked with wit it can be tolerated, or even relished in an exercise of perverse  admiration,  but it is most times churlish:it displays a lack of wit that Mr. Ganash usually wields with dexterity.

American Writer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b594caf4-d1a1-11e5-92a1-c5e23ef99c77.html#axzz40NQzoyl3

Gone this week is the hysterical tone of The Rebellion against The Elites of last week. Replacing that ‘Rebellion’ as the current rhetorical frame is the ‘Isolationism’ of Trump and Sanders, far right and hard left respectively,  as opponents of TPP an exemplar of ‘Free Trade’, ‘The Pivot to Asia’ and other bloated locutions, of the political hirelings of Global Capital. And ,of course, no pundit here at The Financial Times can resist a bit of political melodrama, which is provided by that all purpose villain Vladamir Putin. As a reason to maintain America’s ‘Internationalism’ in the face of Putin’s aggressions in Ukraine and now his Syrian intervention. The double standard that is exhibited by American apologists is always evident, except to those apologists whose myopia, or actual blindness to that truth is ever present, in any foreign policy discussion/debate.

All of this leading to conjecture about President Obama’s foreign policy ‘weakness’, ‘fecklessness’, which takes the onus off Mr. Luce, but puts this accusation into rhetorical play. One-upmanship is still being practiced, but not very adroitly by Mr. Luce. One might look at Obama’s first term as being advised and assisted by Samantha Power, Victoria Nuland and Mrs. Clinton, and in his second term by John Kerry, who has taken the dominant role as adviser, a decided realignment but not by much: The New Cold Warriors supplanted by an ersatz Dove?

American Writer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c598ba32-d1a1-11e5-92a1-c5e23ef99c77.html#axzz40FLIZ3bz

The hard truth that all bourgeois respectable pundits avoid is that Originalism is the child of the politics of States Rights, as the political rationale for Jim Crow. How bitter is the reality that American Jurists swear not just allegiance, but fealty to an idea that has its root in post Civil War America, that produced the Klu Klux Clan as enforcer of that practice of States Rights! Its an ugly history of the enforcement of political conformity by terror, nothing less, with racism at its core!

The revival of States Rights, renamed, transmogrified and or grafted on to Originalism post Brown v Board of Education I & II is one of the marvels of America’s Public Relations revolution: all about the care and maintenance of political respectability. And certainly Antonin Scalia’s judicial career was fully vested in that re-framing of American racism.

See The Partisan by John A. Jenkins :

http://www.johnajenkins.com/BookpageThePartisan.html

And John Dean’s Book The Rehnquist Choice:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rehnquist-Choice-Appointment-Redefined/dp/0743233204

for confirmation of the part played by Brown I & II in the political rise and legitimization of Originalism, and the careers of Rehnquist and Scalia as the first two Orginalists on the Supreme Court.

Continue reading →

Here is a still from pages 186 & 187  from  Rudiger Safranski’s Philosophical Biography of Nietzsche, available as a PDF here: (Thank you to Ross Wolfe!)

Click to access rucc88diger-safranski-nietzsche-a-philosophical-biography.pdf

I had read this essay at The Financial Times on the death of Scalia and its effect on American politics last night, before going to sleep:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5e4e521c-d29e-11e5-8887-98e7feb46f27.html#axzz4094YVrB3

Besides the report on the continuing political melodrama in Washington D.C.: will or won’t the Republicans display, in an election year, their self-destrutive penchant, their  utterly  persistent nihilism- the pronouncement of McConnell being an unsurprising yes to that question. What is also here is the usual Party Line on Scalia: witty sometimes scathing commentary lodged in his his finely crafted legal opinions, that are markers in the history of American Jurisprudence. The usual postmortem complementary chatter: one wonders at the lack of judgement, that reeks of bourgeois conformism

In this long quotation from Mr. Safranski’s biography of Nietzsche supplies a highfalutin description of what might be a self-conception, that was central to the life of Justice Scalia. He conceived of himself as ‘noble’ and most others as ‘base’ or just ‘insignificant’. I think he was more like a bully, who exercised his judicial will from a position of power, that could not be challenged.The radical political nostalgia for an imagined past of white, male,heterosexual power. In an age that was hostile to claims that more properly belong in 1859 America.

If you read both the majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, written by Justice Roberts and maladroitly ‘doctored’ by Scalia, and then compare it to the Ginsberg dissent- one comes to the conclusion that Ginsberg utterly eviscerates the notion that ‘things have changed’,the central metaphor that anchors the Roberts/Scalia majority opinion, as rationale for striking down the ‘pre-clearance clause’ in the Voting Rights Act. Even given the unimpressive retaliatory remarks in the majority opinion aimed at the Ginsberg dissent: a dissent that provides ample evidence that the ‘pre-clerance clause’ is still essential to the protections of voting rights that that clause provides.

Philosophical Apprentice

Where else but at The Financial Times  would a critic cite Dixiecrat Feudalist Tom Wolf and ‘America’s Mayor’ Rudy Giuliani as somehow expert in the field of music criticism, or just the leading characters in the beat down of the leading  duo in American popular music. Who dared to link Black Lives Matter with the Black Panthers as expression of anger, indeed rage at the political present, that excuses the epidemic of the murder of black folks in American! The feigned naivete expresses itself in the idea that Beyoncé and JayZ are just like Leonard Bernstein and company in Wolf’s  Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers . It reeks of political desperation as an apologetics for the intolerable.

It is politically convenient but there are better sources for the ‘politics’ of Hip Hop: Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can’t_Stop_Won’t_Stop_%28book%29

And such artists as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy:

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

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney expresses the current Party Line, here at the Financial Times, of the Revolt Against The Elites, in his own idiosyncratic, not to speak of maladroit way, as a purported critique of the money hungry duo of  Beyoncé and JayZ. I thought the raison d’êre of this publication was to construct an ongoing apologetics for the economic plunder of powerless by the economically powerful?

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e1a26f10-d012-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html#axzz4041MKo49