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On top of the manufactured political melodrama of the President’s courage in his act of re-evaluation/self-repudiation of his past commitments, we are then subjected to Mr. Luce’s long and unconvincing apologia for the un-lamented ‘diplomatic’ career of Mr. Holbrooke. Mr. Luce must have been one of the elite who watched ‘The Diplomat’, in a preview for Washington taste makers, or should this cadre be called the followers of an ever evolving Political Orthodoxy ? Proving that movies are not about rational discussion, or anything like reason, but about the imperatives of propaganda. World War I and Hollywood are inextricably linked in their campaign against the Hun!

Holbrooke was a professional bully, not a diplomat. His successors are Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland and R2P zealot Samantha Power: not a very impressive legacy except to those whose eyes have been opened by the revelation of The Diplomat. Others have explored Vietnam with greater honesty and reliability: but for the reader that has found Mr. Luce comments of interest, or even compelling, the book for you is ‘The Georgetown Set, Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington’ by Gregg Herken. This is readable gossip masquerading as history. Available on November 24, 2015 in paper.

http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/78894/the-georgetown-set/

Although Mr. Holbrooke doesn’t appear in these pages, his political precursors, as deeply committed agents of The American Empire, provide an entertaining, if dispiriting , narrative that sets the stage for Mr. Holbrooke’s ‘diplomatic’ career.

President Obama’s ‘act of courage’ in his self-repudiation/re-evaluation becomes lost in Mr. Luce’s act of political adoration of Mr. Holbrooke. As others have cogently argued  ‘The War on Terror’ has evolved into a new 30 Years War, and can we then view Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash’ as a prophecy of an American Policy technocrat?

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a263021c-7421-11e5-bdb1-e6e4767162cc.html#axzz3ovrNSwXf

I’m writing my comment on October 18, 2015, and why that is germane is that The Intercept has published a series of related essay called The Drone Papers:

The Drone Papers

This is a collection of ten essays that map the abject failure of America’s Drone Policy. With 80 to 90 % killing of civilians and an unreliable practice of intelligence gathering , and it’s many euphemisms, for that unreliability/failure- the question arises: what will Mr. Cameron do that the American Hegemon could not do? The American Empire with it’s seemingly endless treasury, and it’s massive collection of technocrats, which can’t even come up with anything like ‘reliability’, in terms of that intelligence gathering! The civilian deaths associated with the utter failure of this policy, as judged by another set  of technocrats, who evaluate those policies, is a vicious circle of demonstrated incompetence!

Mr. Sands raises  the legal issue of British intervention, and what ever legal pretext Mr. Cameron and his advisers can cobble together: perhaps, Mr. Cameron needs a John Yoo, to confect, out of political need, something like the ‘Unitary Executive Theory’, that was the legal rationalization/blueprint for a complete abuse of  executive power in America?

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/034508d4-6e8a-11e5-8171-ba1968cf791a.html#axzz3ovrNSwXf

The author of ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson’ proves himself to be the most sophisticated political sycophant yet to appear in these pages, this is surely an accomplishment, when there are so many precursors. Mr. Harry Mount produces a ‘History’ made to measure, for the mayor of a city that is not a part of Great Britain, but utterly apart from ‘this sceptered isle‘! London is an historical singularity in the narrative confected with such public relations aplomb: a combination of hubris and political pandering, in praise to one of the most notorious creatures that the Neo-Liberal swindle produced since Mrs. Thatcher.

Mr. Mount is an Oxbridger of impeccable educational credential, not to speak of his lineage as son of Ferdinand. Although Mount pere has been a bit more circumspect in his political apologetics. The Pericles/Johnson comparison, or parity, marks the ignominious end to this utter embarrassment. What follows is what W.H. Auden called curlicues: more Classical references, that will send you to your well worn copies of The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature by Sir Paul Harvey, and or The Oxford Classical Dictionary!

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f948e1ec-7182-11e5-9b9e-690fdae72044.html#axzz3oUWoaumI

As usual Mr. Rachman faithfully conforms to the latest iteration of Political Orthodoxy: American Decline, American Retreat from World Dominance and other such locutions, favored by both Neo-Cons and their R2P political allies. The rise of the twin myths of Russian revanchism and Chinese Hegemony are now part of that Political Orthodoxy.  Mr. Rachman becomes bellicose when challenged by his readers. Those readers think that the price of a subscription entitles them to unfettered access to the comments section! Well, a Capitalism allied to the prerogatives of an American National Security State, and it’s running dogs, to use a Marxist, or is it  Maoist, cliche that definitely applies, are in charge,  so be forewarned this is not a Democracy!

Almost Marx

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cf420d44-70bd-11e5-ad6d-f4ed76f0900a.html#axzz3oNuy2naq

I hate to say this but Mr.Franzen sounds just like an American Provincial. No particular insights on any important issue political,historical,philosophical just petulant chit chat. Mailer was driven by egotism and being the self-appointed heir to Hemingway, a collection of bellicose poses. Vidal was America’s man of letters and a very witty polemicist and  consummate snob, but he managed to be insightful and funny. Bellow wrote the same novel again and again, with just the cast of characters being different: Herzog morphed, over time, into Ravelstein.

My favorite novelist is Graham Greene, he managed to write ‘entertainments’ as well as literary fiction, although not an American, he didn’t repeat himself. From Stamboul Train to Monsignor Quixote, each of his novels managed to compel the readers attention and respect. I’m sorry to say Mr.Franzen comports himself like an egoist with three best sellers to his credit. Ms. Kellaway did her homework, and seemed more like an admirer than an antagonist. She seemed congenial enough, but perhaps not enough to charm this boorish American literary lion.

American Litterateur

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/6a563a5a-6cde-11e5-8171-ba1968cf791a.html

The Corbyn Panic is now normalized by Cameron. One need only read The Financial Times, The Economist. Even the TLS gets into the spirit of the Witch Hunt, with  Peter Hennessy’s review of  Nick Robinson’s Election Notebook and The Times Guide To The House of Commons of September 25, 2015. One is struck by Mr. Hennessy’s political prescience as he predicts with an inspiring and or dotty confidence the defeat of Labour in 2020, with this astounding sentence, couched in a question:

Was the May 2020 general election won by the Conservatives at 11:45 on the morning of Saturday, September 12, in the QEII Centre at Westminister when Jeremy Corbyn was announced as the runaway winner securing nearly 60 per cent of the vote on the first ballet?

Mr. Hennessy does a bit of backtracking on this sentence in his next, yet the power of this question is retained in one’s memory, despite that qualification. The political prescience of Corbyn’s critics can only be called acts of clairvoyance or political metaphysics?

But wait the pièce de résistance is Tony Green’s rhetorical intervention that identifies ‘ultra left rhetoric’ and ‘out-of-touch marxists’ as the central concern of the reader of  Mr. Harry Leslie Smith’s essay. Green’s rhetoric/argument simply makes plain the fact that Mr. Smith has identified political hysterics as the central themes of the Corbyn Panic.

Political Reporter

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/camerons-attack-terrorist-sympathising-corbyn-resembles-mccarthyist-witch-hunt-1523212

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Reading Mr. Brooks’ essay on the Pope and his argument about his ‘subversive message’ it seems quite obvious that the Pope and Mr. Brooks have one commonality above all others : to put a humane face on the institutions that they head. The Pope is head of a church mired in a trans-generational crisis of pedophile priests and a hierarchy that betrayed it’s responsibility to protect and provide a safe place for it’s children. That hierarchy betrayed the trust of it’s parishioners and demonstrated an utter contempt for the law!

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute:  a think tank that specializes in Capitalist apologetics. It’s members and former members and associates are a motley collection of Conservatives ,Neo-Conservatives, War mongers and even a Neo-Confederate/Originalist:

John Bolton, Lynne Cheney,  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Paul Wolfowitz,  Kevin Hassett, Frederick W. Kagan, Leon Kass, Charles Murray, Norman J. Ornstein, Christina Hoff Sommers, Peter J. Wallison, and Mark J. Perry, Arthur burns, David Gergen, James C. Miller III, Laurence Silberman, Antonin Scalia, Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Michael Novack, Ben Wattenberg.

I hated to belabor the point with this catalog of prominent Conservatives, but Mr. Brooks faces a  similar challenge,  that the Pope has been very adroit at managing: the fact that nothing has changed since the days of Conservative capo Ratzinger, no church dogmas have changed , just that the new Pope is again a more humane presence. He is a more approachable, affable and accepting pontiff. To be cynical, the new Pope is a more Public Relations savvy pontiff, than either of the arch-reactionaries John Paul II  or Benedict XVI

The point about AEI and Mr. Brooks is that since the Economic Collapse of 2008 and the depredations of Austerity, and the succeeding economic doldrums, not to speak of the precipitous rise of inequality: first brought to national attention by Occupy Wall Street and then fully established in the political conversation by the publication Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has put the hucksters of the Free Market in an untenable position. The opportunity that Mr. Brooks’ New York Times column offers in terms of Public Relation/ Propaganda is the he is now the face of  kinder gentler Conservatism, hence the title of his book ‘The Conservative Heart’. His column attempts to put a new humane stamp on a Conservatism that can only be called, like Social Dawinism, red in tooth and claw. The Pope’s Public Relations savvy, as an expression of a self-rescue attempt, resonates with Mr. Brooks’ attempt to rescue Conservatism from it’s well deserved reputation for mendacity, lawlessness and contempt for long established civic republican values.

Almost Marx

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/opinion/the-popes-subversive-message.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

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This is the second time you have tweeted this!

‘a new Cold War between the two camps will emerge.’ It’s here! ushered in by @RussiaHand and his R2P allies: The New York Review of Books writer Timothy Snyder, the zealot Samantha Power, not to speak of Neo-Con black widow Victoria Nuland! One shouldn’t forget the seemingly feckless President Obama, as inept leader of US mendacious New Cold Warriors!   Nuland and her NGO confederates: The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, not to speak of the ungovernable Fascists, Right Sector and Svoboda, now disappeared from the mainstream apologetics for the Coup Government, and it’s political predations/censorship. For the particulars on the new laws governing speech in Ukraine and the effectiveness of Poroshenko as a usable American/EU puppet go here:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/06/ukraine-anti-communist-laws-stir-controversy-150601054437645.html

Andrej Krickovic and Yuval Weber sound mournful in their bringing the bad news to the reader, that the New Cold War is about to happen, when in fact it is a fait accompli: their attempt to see it in the future is mere political subterfuge! The last two paragraphs are instructive about the power of mournful, yet expectant cliche, in service to that New Cold War as fact!

A downward slide?

As things stand now, neither side can make the concessions necessary to make a grand bargain work. As a result, both now find themselves sliding towards a new Cold War that neither really wants.

We hope that statesmen on both sides will prove us wrong by finding the courage and foresight necessary to overcome these commitment problems. But it is difficult to be optimistic given the current political climate, as talk in both capitals is dominated by the sort of Russia- and America-bashing, which prevents either side from developing an appreciation of the other’s security concerns.

Political Observer

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/09/30-new-cold-war-with-russia-krickovic-weber

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Mr. Rachman’s long preachment against proxy wars has caused the editors of The Financial Times to close the comments section to his essay. The readership of this ultra-respectable house organ of Capitalist Apologetics, and it’s traveling companion a buttoned up Conservatism, like to manage the comments section, with due regard for the primacy of bourgeois political respectability, at all costs.

Mr. Rachman focuses his attention on the proxy war in Syria with what might be called a mild scolding to the stakeholders in this conflict:he speaks as the self-appointed voice of political reason to the protagonists. The Ukrainian proxy war gets mentioned twice but is ideologically inconvenient, as Russian revanchism is too closely held a Western Theology to allow anything like political candor. The number of deleted comments is indicative of the level of what? That question will remain an open one.

The last two paragraphs of Mr. Rachman’s essay are a summation worthy of full quotation:

All the nations that have intervened in Syria are motivated, to a large extent, by fear. The Saudis fear the rise of Iran and the Iranians fear the replacement of an allied government in Syria with another hostile Sunni-dominated state. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin — faced with a shrinking economy and a stalemate in Ukraine — wants to prevent further western-sponsored “regime change”. The US feels compelled to respond, lest the Obama administration is once again accused of accepting a decline in US power — a perception that risks becoming self-fulfilling.

All of these nations fear that their weakness will be exposed or accentuated, if their side is seen to “lose” in Syria. All of them seem incapable of acting on their mutual interest in ending a conflict that threatens them all. Until they decide to co-operate, the misery of the Syrian people will continue.

If the recitation of well worn political cliches passes for foreign policy wisdom, Mr. Rachman has articulated it, with the exercise of a fidelity to the current political orthodoxy.

Political Skeptic

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/35dd3c28-6b4a-11e5-aca9-d87542bf8673.html#axzz3nu8PXLFY

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