Good News for The Donald

It's obvious now that Donald Trump is averse to reading. He may be the first functional illiterate to receive a degree from Wharton. There's a story there that we still have not heard.

So what's the good news for the Cheeto Bandito, the Mango Mussolini, the Great Orange Bloat? Illiteracy seems to be catching on in America.

The average eighth-grade reading score on a nationally representative test declined among public school students in more than half of the states, according to data released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Education Department. 

The dismal results were part of the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “nation’s report card.” The test assesses a sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students — more than 290,000 in each subject in 2019 — every other year. 

“Over the past decade, there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest performing students are doing worse,” Peggy G. Carr, the associate commissioner of the center, said in a statement.

In other words, the dumbing down of America proceeds apace. Which brings to mind an op-ed in today's Guardian by the two joint winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in economic sciences.  They write that the public has become dangerously estranged from the views of economists.

This trust deficit is mirrored by the fact that the consensus of economists (when it exists) is often systematically different from the views of ordinary citizens. The Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago regularly asks a group of about 40 prominent academic economists their views on core economic topics. Working with the economist Stefanie Stantcheva, we ran a survey: we selected 10 of the questions that were asked of the Booth panel and put them to 10,000 Americans. 

On most of these issues, our respondents were sharply at odds with economists. For example, every single member of the Booth panel disagreed with the proposition that “imposing new US tariffs on steel and aluminium will improve Americans’ wellbeing”. Only a third of our respondents shared their view. And the gap is not only because people are not informed of what economists think: telling them does not seem to change their opinion one bit.

... Part of the problem is that there is plenty of bad economics around. The self-proclaimed economists on TV and in the press – chief economist of Bank X or Firm Y – are, with important exceptions, primarily spokespeople for their firms’ economic interests, who often feel free to ignore the weight of the evidence. Moreover, they have a relatively predictable slant towards market optimism at all costs, which is what the public associates with economists in general. It does not help that there is a class of economists who make predictions about broad trends in the economy, which often turn out to be wrong.

Another part of the problem is that, especially in the UK and the US, a lot of the economics that has filtered into government thinking is the most beholden to orthodoxy, and the least able to pay attention to any fact that does not square with it. Economists are therefore naturally seen as those who keep repeating that regulations, taxes, and public spending all need to be slashed to let the market be, and that eventually everything will all “trickle down” to the poor, even as we watch inequality exploding.

No wonder it is branded "the dismal science."

"Just Another Scumbag"

That's how former Trump right-hand man, Steve Bannon, says Donald Trump will be remembered - "just another scumbag."

The former White House adviser Steve Bannon has described the Trump Organization as a criminal entity and predicted that investigations into the president’s finances will lead to his political downfall, when he is revealed to be “not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag”.

The startling remarks are contained in Siege: Trump Under Fire, the author Michael Wolff’s forthcoming account of the second year of the Trump administration. The book, published on 4 June, is a sequel to Fire and Fury: Trump in the White House, which was a bestseller in 2018. The Guardian obtained a copy. 

In a key passage, Bannon is reported as saying he believes investigations of Donald Trump’s financial history will provide proof of the underlying criminality of his eponymous company.

Just When You Thought They Couldn't Sink any Lower

The Trump regime is rebranding American LNG as "Freedom Gas."

Mark W Menezes, the US undersecretary of energy, bestowed a peculiar honorific on our continent’s natural resources, dubbing it “freedom gas” in a release touting the DoE’s approval of increased exports of natural gas produced by a Freeport LNG terminal off the coast of Texas. 

“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy,” he said.

...It’s unclear if members of the Trump administration attempting to assign patriotic intentions to natural gas are aware of the silliness of the concept, but Rick Perry seems to believe in it. 

“Seventy-five years after liberating Europe from Nazi Germany occupation, the United States is again delivering a form of freedom to the European continent,” the energy secretary said earlier this month, according to EURACTV. 

“And rather than in the form of young American soldiers, it’s in the form of liquefied natural gas.”

China's Long Game - Waiting for Trump to Bring Down the United States

China's economic prowess is just part of its rivalry with the United States. This is a standard part of an ascending power taking its rightful place alongside a once-dominant power.

According to research analyst, Laban Yu, Trump's trade war won't stop China's long game.

“China can only conclude that the U.S. is in long-term decline as President [Donald] Trump actively undermines the liberal international order with his tariffs on allies as well as adversaries, contempt for multilateral institutions and belligerent tweets … [China is] betting on American political decay … We believe China will test America’s pain threshold with the belief that U.S. politicians are beholden to interest groups (farmers, retail industry, corporations).” 

Mr. Yu sees the economic pain from an extended trade war as more or less evenly distributed, with the two-sided imposition of tariffs “not punches thrown at the other boxer but head butts which hurt both sides equally.” 

Citi economist Willem Buiter described similar concerns about U.S. politics in “How to Think about Political Risk and the Economy,” 

“Policy uncertainty affecting trade, sanctions, regulation, diplomatic norms, and the strength and independence of institutions is the greater risk going forward. The obstacles to appropriate countercyclical [stimulative] policy when global recession threatens are likely to stem from weak political capacity and will, owing to political fragmentation.”

Globe and Mail market strategist, Scott Barlow, concludes:

There were signs of institutional failure ...almost a year ago – political extremism, pathetically low approval ratings for U.S. congress, and an anti-vaccination movement that showed disdain for medical experts – but there was no clear battleground to test the relative strength of western democracies. 

Trade negotiations might be providing the arena that was missing. A deal that cools tensions could, of course, be signed at any point but Mr. Yu believes, “Even if a deal is signed next week, it is now clear to us that the China-U.S. relationship will be fraught for decades to come.”

Trump Is Losing His Marbles

There's recently been a noticeable decline in Donald Trump's mental faculties. Here's one example when he repeatedly complains about the "oranges" of the Mueller investigation.



Equally worrisome are two instances this week where Trump mentioned his New York born father, Fred, having come to America from Germany.



It's tempting to write this off as just more lies from the world's most consummate liar but I don't think that's it. He doesn't realize where his father was born. He blurs his grandfather with his father. In his mind, Fred Trump was born in Germany.

This guy is in La La Land.

What Has Mueller Really Done? Think.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has a lot to show for his two-year investigation. He's indicted some 37 individuals. Of those within his reach, most charged have pleaded guilty. Others have been convicted at trial. The remainder await trial.

The local gang have mainly been indicted for lying to investigators. Manafort added witness tampering to his caseload. There have also been indictments for tax evasion and other commercial crimes that surfaced through the investigations.

Two issues are conspicuous by their absence - obstruction of justice and Russian interference with the 2016 elections. There are a number of obvious offences there but they've never resulted in charges, at least not that we know.

Why has Mueller indicted no one for either of those issues? Not even one indictment. Why?

Part of the art of criminal law is identifying what's missing. For example the Crown may develop a theory of the crime and then it's up to defence counsel to scour all the discovery evidence and look not just at what has been produced but what has not, stuff that should be evident if the Crown's theory was valid. Prosecutors do the very same thing when it comes to dismantling alibis or other exculpatory evidence. In this way each side seeks to cast doubt on the other's case and, with the Crown bearing the onus of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that's a powerful weapon.

What's missing in Mueller's case, the part that has already been aired in public? Pretty much everything dealing with obstruction or Russian interference in the 2016 election. Do you think he overlooked that, the very essence of his appointment?  The absence of that is hardly proof of its absence. That would be preposterous especially given Mueller and his team's stature. These are the 'Pros from Dover.'

Mueller spent two years doing more than sleuthing out amateurs like Papadopoulos, and middle-grade scoundrels such as Cohen, Manafort and Flynn. Most of those who pleaded guilty sang like canaries. Others, who escaped indictment, like David Pecker and Allen Weisselberg, also sang like canaries. Lesser characters who were grilled emerged saying that Team Mueller knew more about them than they did themselves.

So think. Think like a lawyer. Put this all together and what do you come up with?

Mueller was commissioned to investigate and report. He was not ordered to indict and prosecute.  When he did indict what was his purpose? That's obvious. He was doing what American prosecutors do in RICO cases. He was using the prospect of jail time, years in the Greybar Hotel, to loosen tongues. He wanted evidence going to the two foundational issues of his investigation, Russian meddling in the election and obstruction of justice.

Now, once again, think like a lawyer. Why do you think we've heard nothing about either of those matters?

Trump Backers Sought to Bury Cambridge Analytica So Deep No One Would Uncover Its Secrets

Cambridge Analytica, the now defunct company believed to be instrumental in the Brexit Leave campaign and the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, is now before a British court.

The company, once owned by ultra-right billionaire, Robert Mercer, and directed by noneother than Trump aide, Steve Bannon, and Mercer's somewhat odd daughter, Rebekah, was tossed into court-ordered administration (receivership) when undercover videos revealed its scurrilous dealings. It seems there was more to its liquidation than a piffling scandal. It was thrown into administration to bury its darkest secrets and prevent people from looking into its conduct.

The High Court in London heard on Monday that Cambridge Analytica was up to its old tricks from beyond the grave—by surreptitiously trying to halt investigations that could expose allegedly nefarious tactics before the company was shut down for good. 

The company filed for the British equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy last year after secret recordings of its boss, Alexander Nix, emerged in which he claimed that Trump’s data gurus had carried out illicit election campaigns all over the world. The company was also accused of using up to 87 million clandestinely harvested Facebook profiles to create a state of the art voter database that helped Trump win election in 2016.

A lawyer representing a New York professor, who believes his private data was misused by the notorious campaign operatives, claims Cambridge Analytica’s data secrets are being shielded from justice and exposure by administrators in the pay of a shadow company set up by a band of executives linked to the Trump campaign veterans. 

The High Court heard that administrators had deliberately misled a judge during a previous hearing by obfuscating their financial links to Emerdata, a company which was set up by Nix, Rebekah Mercer, and other senior figures who were previously involved with Cambridge Analytica.

In Britain, court-appointed administrators are supposed to work independently on behalf of all creditors to take over running of the company, similar to chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. But the legal team of David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School in New York who is fighting for access to the data compiled on him, claimed that the administrators of Cambridge Analytica has succumbed to undue influence. Emerdata appointed the administrator and subsequently committed to pay them up to $1 million in fees. 

The administrators, Vincent Green and Mark Newman of Crowe U.K. LLP, were accused of trying to liquidate the company before a full investigation into the company could be held.

“It is extremely unusual, in my submission, to have the fees of an administrator underwritten effectively by the people who may themselves be the principal focus of any subsequent investigation,” said Andreas Gledhill Q.C., the lawyer representing Carroll in court.

...“This needs to go to the official receiver and there needs to be a whole set of investigations—someone needs to crack the vault,” Ravi Naik, a lawyer for Carroll told The Daily Beast outside court. “Without this case being successful, there cannot be an investigation because the company will liquidate. This is the dying embers.” 

In documents submitted to the court, Gledhill claimed that Emerdata was due to pay the administrator up to £800,000 ($1 million) but had only handed over around £220,000 ($290,000) so far. 

“With their legal fees funded by Emerdata, the administrators have treated this as hostile litigation between themselves and Mr. Carroll, making their lack of independence abundantly clear,” Gledhill said.

...Rebekah and Jennifer Mercer, daughters of billionaire Trump donor Robert Mercer, are listed as directors of Emerdata. As is former Cambridge Analytica chairman Julian Wheatland, who is named on the list of people close to President Trump being probed by the House Judiciary Committee, alongside Nix, who resigned as a director of Emerdata on the same day that he was called back for further questioning by a committee in Britain’s House of Commons. Nix remains a shareholder. 

The court is expected to rule on the removal of Emerdata's token receiver in a few days.

Having practiced extensively in the field of insolvency and receivership, it is hard to believe this conflict by a court-appointed administrator. He functions as an officer of the court by virtue of that appointment and ought to be held to the strictest standards of transparency and accountability. This, to me, is astonishing.

It Is Revealed in Glimpses But This Is the Unmistakable Face of Today's Right Wing

Whether it's Donald Trump's absolution of white nationalists or Andrew Scheer and Dave Tkachuk embracing them on the lawns of the Parliament buildings, the abject evil of the right wing is unmistakable.

Here's the latest. An Australian senator, Fraser Anning, has responded to the Christchurch massacres by blaming the carnage on the victims, Muslims.

Following the attack, which left 49 people dead at two mosques in Christchurch, Fraser Anning tweeted: “Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?” 

In a statement shared by an Australian journalist on Twitter, the Queensland  senator also wrote: “As always, leftwing politicians and the media will rush to claim that the causes of today’s shootings lie with gun laws or those who hold nationalist views, but this is all cliched nonsense. 

“The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.”

Why do we let these people live among us?

Obstruction of Justice? Of Course, Yawn.

Up here in the Great White North, we're dampening our dainties over whether the prime minister strong armed a former justice minister to intercede on behalf of a Quebec company with a rich history of corruption at home and abroad. When Canadians get into navel gazing we sometimes lose sight of what's happening elsewhere. For example, the United States.

A gaggle of New York Times reporters, i.e. Haberman et al, have an eye-opening report on how Trump has tried to undermine the New York Southern District prosecutors on the "hush money" scandal.

As federal prosecutors in Manhattan gathered evidence late last year about President Trump’s role in silencing women with hush payments during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called Matthew G. Whitaker, his newly installed attorney general, with a question. He asked whether Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and a Trump ally, could be put in charge of the widening investigation, according to several American officials with direct knowledge of the call.

Mr. Whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to “jump on a grenade” for the president, knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation. The president soon soured on Mr. Whitaker, as he often does with his aides, and complained about his inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s many legal problems go away.

...An examination by The New York Times reveals the extent of an even more sustained, more secretive assault by Mr. Trump on the machinery of federal law enforcement. Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Mr. Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.

It's a long article but well worth the read if only to refresh one's appreciation for the depth of Trump's corruption. We can only hope that Robert Mueller and other federal prosecutors are just sitting on a stack of soon-to-be unsealed indictments.

The Rapid Decline of Governance - Part Deux

Is 2019 the year the Transatlantic Relationship irreparably fractured? Have Europe and the United States finally taken their leave of each other? Has the United States forfeited its right to proclaim itself leader of the free world? Have mutual rancour and distrust displaced what remained of the bonds between the EU and the US?

In a word, "yes."

According to Brookings fellow, Thomas Wright, the "Transatlantic Charade" ended at the Munich Security Conference.

Europe and the Trump administration have stopped pretending to respect each other. For the past two years, we have been treated to a transatlantic charade. Everyone knows there’s a problem, but publicly the leaders proclaim that nothing has fundamentally changed. But at the 2019 Munich Security Conference, which took place over the weekend, the charade ended. The American position is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. The Europeans are defaulting to nostalgia for a multilateral order. Meanwhile, the true challenge of a rising authoritarian bloc goes largely ignored.

The mood of defiance was summed up by Wolfgang Ischinger, the chairman of the Munich Security Conference, in his opening and closing remarks. Ischinger, who is 72, opened the forum’s proceedings sporting a hoodie emblazoned with the EU flag—a gift from his grandson, and a not-too-subtle rebuke to an American administration that has reversed a 70-year policy of support for Europe. Three days later, in a suit and tie, he offered his closing observation: “As this conference concludes, critics might argue that some speakers were less interested in putting the pieces back together than in creating more disarray in our international system.”

The "some speakers" Ischinger referenced were Trump Veep, Mike Pence, and secretary of state Pompeo.

In 2017, Pence spoke at length about the importance of the NATO alliance and its historic accomplishments. In 2019, there was none of that. The only praise of NATO was for its response to Trump’s leadership on defense spending. Otherwise, Pence offered a litany of criticism leveled against NATO and the EU—for not doing enough on Iran, Nord Stream 2, or Venezuela. (Ironically, the EU would have had a common position on this last item were it not for the effective veto of the pro-Trump Italian government.) 

Pence could have come and spoken about the common challenge facing the alliance from China—which is what many Europeans and Americans expected him to do.  ...He did not choose that path, possibly fearing that it would be shot down by a president who has repeatedly rejected the idea of working with the EU on China. 

The administration’s America First approach to Europe is now riven with contradictions. Take Iran as an example. Senior administration officials have repeatedly said over the past year that while the United States was pulling out of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, they were not calling on the EU to do the same. That, they said, was a matter for Europeans, as sovereign nations, to decide. Apparently sovereignty is not what it used to be. With no explanation for the U-turn, Pence demanded that the EU now withdraw from the JCPOA. His message was clear: Under Trump, the alliance means getting behind whatever Washington decides, even if that changes weekly. 

...The European position is understandable, but fraught with risk. Help, if it comes, will not arrive until 2021. Rumors are rife in Washington of a new Trump move against the NATO alliance, which is preparing for a major meeting in Washington in April.

...But despite all the problems of policy and personnel, the alliance cannot afford to wait two years. The Trump administration may believe that it does not need Europe, and the Europeans may believe that America is temporarily lost, but meanwhile, China and Russia gain ground. In Munich, Yang Jiechi, a senior Chinese official, gave a long and meandering speech about win-win solutions and the benefits of multilateralism, which was completely at odds with China’s increasingly assertive and disruptive behavior. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reveled in the disarray between the allies and sought to drive a wedge between them, weaponizing the Trump administration’s rhetoric about sovereignty. 

Wolfgang Ischinger was right. There is a big problem. Western leaders are retreating into their foxholes, taking potshots at one another, rather than figuring out how to deal with new challenges. We’ve been lucky so far that there has not been a major crisis on Trump’s watch, but the luck is unlikely to hold forever.

Then there's the formerly United Kingdom where both the Conservative and Labour parties are adrift, in disarray and chaos ensues with a hard Brexit now less than forty days off. Guardian diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, writes that, even at the United Nations, British influence is in palpable decline.

Brexit is already leading to a “palpable decline” in British influence at the UN, and that influence would be in freefall but for the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7 % of gross national income on overseas aid, a study has found. 

The report by the UK branch of the United Nations Association suggests Britain will lose political capital on the 15-member UN security council and the larger general assembly in New York because its campaigns will no longer be automatically aligned with those of the EU.

One by one, the grand old stalwarts are descending into chaos, the United States, the European Union and the no-longer-Great Britain. No one, it seems, has any remedy for this affliction. In most cases the decline in governance is mirrored by an equally worrisome fracturing of social cohesion.

It is not unfair to say that Donald Trump has played an outsized role in this disunity. Much of it emanates from his damaged psyche and his malignant narcissism. That is the most likely outcome when the most powerful man on the planet is mentally unwell.  Then again, destabilizing the West is exactly what Trump's Kremlin idol, Vlad Putin, craves most.

There's a Reason They Called it MAD.

They were all the rage in my day. Tactical nuclear weapons, mini-nukes, or "those little bags of instant sunshine."

Somewhere around here I've got a then-"secret" field manual laying out how these weapons were to be used in the event of a massive Soviet invasion of western Europe.  All eyes were on the Fulda Gap, two corridors through which it was expected a flood of Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks would pour into the central German plain and then on to the English Channel.  The idea was that those corridors provided convenient "choke points" where massed Soviet tanks and vehicles might be eliminated with tactical nukes delivered by NATO fighters including Canada's CF-104 Starfighters.

It was a dangerous gambit. There were so many unknowns. Would it encourage the Soviets to use similar weapons to annihilate NATO bases and our forces in the field?  Might an exchange of low-yield nukes escalate into a full-blown, civilization ending exchange of ICBM volleys?  The theory, as I understood it at the time, was a hope that using nukes to block a Soviet surprise attack would buy both sides two, maybe even three days to cool down and negotiate some way out of Armageddon.

With time the luster of tactical nuclear weapons faded.  Sure there were still arsenals of B-61 gravity bombs (above) scattered about. There still are. Most of the other stuff - the atomic cannon, the nuclear depth charge, that sort of thing has gone.

That sleeping giant is stirring again and, in a world already facing a variety of potentially existential threats, it does feel like "piling on."



Russia, meanwhile, is fielding new nuclear delivery systems of its own.  Among them are a robotic nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarine that could travel very deep, very fast, over very long-ranges, navigating its way into America's coastal ports and naval bases. There's also, according to Putin, a nuclear powered, nuclear armed cruise missile. There's a new nuclear submarine-launched Russian missile and Putin has just pledged to develop a new intermediate-range nuclear missile. How does that grab ya?

Fortunately we've got a very rational, very stable genius in the White House. Thank God and the United States of America for that.

Theresa May, Donald Trump, and Nigel Farage

Was Donald Trump acting as Nigel Farage's beard when he gave a controversial interview to the Brit tabloid, The Sun, the evening before his meeting with Theresa May?

To Sun reporters, Trump sang the praises of May's bete noire, Boris Johnson and even said he'd make a fine prime minister for the UK. He then went on to attack the current prime minister's handling of Brexit negotiations with the EU, even saying they would wreck any prospect of a big trade deal between Britain and America.

The following day, when he stepped up to the podium alongside Theresa May, Trump was singing a much different tune. He backed away from just about everything he'd told the Sun, even accusing the rightwing tabloid of pitching "fake news."

How could he spin two such different tales in the span of less than a day and in another country as the guest of its government? Deutsche Welle thinks it knows the answer.

The real man behind Brexit — forget Conservatives like Boris Johnson and David Davis — is still the former, and perhaps future, UKIP leader Nigel Farage. That's the man who campaigned with Trump in the US at a time when politicians like Boris Johnson were still describing The Donald as "clearly out of his mind." (Johnson would later change his tune, calling the negative British coverage of president-elect Trump a "whinge-arama" just hours after his confident US election predictions flew out of the window.)

Prior to Trump's arrival, Farage had told anyone who would listen that the Conservative Party had issued a clear red line to Trump when negotiating the visit: Under no account was he to meet with Farage. The government has not disputed this claim, and no meeting is scheduled.

But Farage and Trump didn't need a face-to-face meeting;  a coordinated media offensive would serve their purposes far better.

Three lions on Theresa's tail 

Three hard Brexit lions went into the media fray, 24 hours after England's semifinal defeat, hunting as a pack.

The pride's alpha, Trump, took the fight to Britain's best-selling "red top" tabloid paper, The Sun.

Trump tore shreds out of Theresa May's Brexit plans, hitting all of Farage's key talking points: The deal "wasn't what the people voted on," it negated the chances of a bespoke US trade deal (not that one had ever been formally offered, at least not publicly), and it overlooked citizens' concerns about "cultural changes" initiated in Europe by EU immigration policies. Like Farage, Trump managed to steer inches clear of white supremacist territory while frantically dog-whistling to any and all attuned to that wavelength. The owner of The Sun, Fox News' Rupert Murdoch, got precisely the ammunition he wanted for his pro-Brexit paper. Even its writers expressed surprise at how far the president went.

... Meanwhile, two senior British hunter-gatherers within Trump's global populist harem — Farage and former newspaper editor and The Apprentice winner Piers Morgan — spent the evening talking to BBC viewers, who might be reading a more substantive and sober newspaper on Friday morning.

Morgan was on the Question Time panel, lamenting the protests against Trump's visit. He also spoke at length on Brexit, assuring the audience "I voted remain as well," before elaborating on how Theresa May's plan was unsatisfactory, and how Britain needed a Brexiteer prime minister who "believed in what they're trying to achieve." Perhaps it was a coincidence that Trump told The Sun how sad he was to see Brexiteer Boris Johnson go, and how he would make a great prime minister. Perhaps.

As for Farage, he appeared as the guest of honor on This Week, for the extended My Take Of The Week segment. He told viewers what a success Trump had made of his first 18 months in office, how noteworthy it was that Italy's new government seemed to be getting on with the White House, and that Britain was missing its chance to get in on the new world order at the ground floor.

Casual observers, including most of us, would never have been aware of Trump's real subterfuge but the British government, especially prime minister Theresa May, knew all too well that Trump had exploited her invitation to stab her in the back.

Right Now, It's a Spectator Sport. Before Long It Could Become a Blood Sport.

Trump has people in Canada, Mexico, Japan and Europe a bit worried about how we'll fare in a trade war with the United States. We're told we could be heading toward a recession, a drop in GDP of perhaps 2 per cent.

Trump's abuse of America's traditional allies is small potatoes. The Big Show is the Clash of the Titans, Washington versus Beijing. There's the one to watch because it's possible that could end in fireworks.

It would be much less worrisome if America had a mentally sound president. It doesn't. It has Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is in the White House and the reasonable people, the boys in the long pants, are pretty much gone. Trump has now surrounded himself with some pretty sketchy types like Pompeo, Bolton, Navarro and Haspel. They're the sort who can play on Trump's worst instincts, his deranged sense of grievance, his fears and every base instinct - they are legion. Trump embodies a malignant narcissism. He's extremely sociopathic, utterly lacking in empathy. He's impulsive and more than a little sadistic. These are the foundational attributes that Donald Trump has consistently exhibited his entire life. They're also America's Achilles Heel.

Trump may be attempting to restore America's dominance in the world. He can't. America's days as the world's industrial powerhouse are over. Trump blames that on foreign predators. Not hardly. It was America's industrial giants that, unleashed by globalism, offshored their manufacturing operations to low-wage, minimal-regulation regimes abroad. The United States quite deliberately transitioned to a "fire" economy - finance/insurance/real estate.

A few years ago I read a fascinating analysis by an American labour economist about the state of industrialism in his homeland and why so much of it was gone for good. He pointed out that manufacturing generates stable albeit modest returns on investment. Typically it's something in the range of 3 per cent. At the same time, the fire economy, Wall Street, was generating returns of 9 to 12 per cent. To encourage financial investment the feds began cutting capital gains taxes. The Triumph of the Rentier Class. Trump has no appetite for undoing that.

Do we imagine Chairman-for-Life Xi hasn't taken the measure of Trump and the box he's in? Do we think only Trump will ruthlessly exploit every opportunity, every vulnerability?

Could Trump's trade war be the very opportunity Xi has been looking for? This could be China's opportunity to cement its ascdendancy. History tells us that most of these superpower transitions lead to warfare. That was predictable when ships were made of oak, cannon were cast iron and fired grape shot. This transition will be the first we've seen in the Nuclear Age.

I would bet that Xi has a critical advantage. He can probably weather the domestic reaction to a recessionary trade war much better than Trump. Trump's base will be hit. The Gullibillies are quite vulnerable. But it will be the Kochs, the Coors and the Adelson's who will be gunning for him if they see he's launched a ruinous trade war without much chance of success. They're already incensed with Trump's trade wars. They'll be unforgiving if Trump loses his war with China or winds up groveling for terms. And let's remember who owns America's "bought and paid for" Congress.

Trump is no Simon Bolivar but he may wind up as America's Don Quixote. He cannot endure humiliation and he's now surrounded with people like Bolton, Pompeo, Navarro and Haspel. With those people steering Trump, it's Xi's advantages that I find truly worrisome.

Remember, America is flying solo this time. It has viciously turned on its allies.

Let's hope this doesn't get out of control.

Living With Trump in the Age of Entropy. We Have to Figure This Out and Soon.

The Washington Post carried this message of warning from Steve Bannon in February, 2017:

Bannon dismissed the idea that Trump might moderate his positions or seek consensus with political opponents. Rather, he said, the White House is digging in for a long period of conflict to transform Washington and upend the world order. 

“If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken,” Bannon said in reference to the media and opposition forces. “Every day, it is going to be a fight.” 

Bannon says that the post-World War II political and economic consensus is failing and should be replaced with a system that empowers ordinary people over coastal elites and international institutions.

Bannon's warning came to mind following the fractious G7 meeting in Quebec over the weekend. This too seems to be borne out in an analysis piece in Foreign Policy, "The West Will Die So That Trump Can Win."

...it is not surprising that a U.S. administration no longer sees an overriding political need to restrain itself from pushing allies into making trade concessions. The Soviet Union no longer exists. To the extent that the administration’s detractors argue that its demands are unreasonable, or that the United States has bigger fish to fry — like maintaining solidarity in the face of Russian aggression — Trump’s response would presumably be twofold. First, a better deal is always better — “reasonable” is for chumps. Second, if geopolitics stand in the way of the United States getting better trade deals, then geopolitics should give way. Americans don’t care about Crimea; they don’t care about the abstractions of democracy. They care about winning trade wars. 

To the extent that these two things are true, at least to the average American, Canada and the EU have a bigger problem than they realize. Their strategy at the moment, reflected in tempered responses to Trump, is to wait him out — on the assumption that he will be gone in two and a half years, or less, and that the United States will then go back to normal. But Trump may be the new normal — not in the sense that future presidents will be as crude and loose with the facts, but in the sense that they, reacting to a seismic shift in U.S. public sentiment, will no longer recognize the constraints of solidarity with fellow free-market democracies. Those days are, perhaps, as Bolton would say, “no more.”

In the same issue, Daniel Sargent writes of, "The Slow Rise and Sudden Fall of the G7."

The end times have come and gone for the West over 70-odd years, but it is difficult these days, to escape the sensation that the dusk really is falling.

...After showing up late and interrupting a forum on gender equality, President Donald Trump scowled his way through sessions before departing early for Singapore. And as he headed out, Trump insulted his host and neighbor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and retracted his signature from the G-7’s communique, ending a 42-year run of choreographed collegiality. Then, over the past 24 hours, Trump has showcased his preference for the company of a callow despot, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, over engagement with what used to be considered America’s closest allies and peers.

...On the most urgent dilemmas of our times — economic inequality, sustainable development, and the looming peril of ecological catastrophe — the G-7 has been irrelevant. The G-7 has not evolved into a directorate capable of offsetting a historic slippage in U.S. hegemonic capabilities, as political scientists like Robert Keohane once hoped it might. To call Donald Trump’s Canadian temper tantrum an assault on the West’s governing framework is to overstate, by a mile, the G-7’s institutional significance. 

Trump’s assault is no death knell; as a project in global leadership, the G-7 was already dead. Its supersession by the G-20 during the global financial crisis confirmed its obsolescence as a framework for governance. The G20, not the G7, functioned as the forum for the coordination of fiscal stimulus efforts in the nadir of 2009. The same goes for the current GDP data. In 1980, the G-7 countries constituted about 51 percent of global production on a purchasing power parity basis; today, the G-7 claims just over 30 percent. The G-7 can no longer maintain a plausible pretension to run the world — it has become a niche organization. 

And herein lies the real significance — and the real tragedy — of Trump’s petulant behavior. The point of the G-7, as Schmidt, Pompidou, and Ford all grasped, was to foster unity in a historical phase when geopolitical trends were corroding the West. Dialogue on common economic problems, all hoped, would offer an alternative source of cohesion. Or, as Kissinger explained in 1975: “The trick in the world now is to use economics to build a world political structure. 

...Today, it is the sense of unity the G-7 has cultivated that is imperiled. Configurations of power and interest are an insufficient basis for durable order among nations, as diplomatic historians well understand. The West cohered after 1945 not only because of shared enmities but also because its elites cultivated sociability and common values. From the Bilderberg Group to the Trilateral Commission, sociability proved both a source of cohesion and a salve for disagreements. 

Functioning at the most elite level of all, the G-7 nurtured unity among the world’s liberal democracies through economic crises and geopolitical transition. Its debasing by a feckless U.S. president will serve only to tear the West’s fraying bonds of commonality still further asunder. In Beijing and in Moscow, the West’s rivals are cheering.

If Trump is not simply a perverse aberration but the "new normal" of the United States, it seems foolish, even reckless, for Ottawa to imperil Canada by pretending that it's still business as usual.

Maybe there is, finally, a real "Axis of Evil." Maybe there is an emerging alliance of despotism, strongman rule that see lesser, weaker nations as prey for the picking. Look at the leaders Trump is so obviously drawn to - Putin, Xi, Kim, the House of Saud, Erdogan, Orban - just about every murderous thug on the planet.

Don't forget it wasn't that long ago that another gang of thugs sought to carve up the nations of the world among themselves. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and the government of the Sun God, Emperor Hirohito. Why should today's thugs be much different?

The world today is vastly different than the world of the 1930s. It is a world that is massively overpopulated; rapaciously consumptive and rapidly running out of resources of all descriptions; and just beginning to become battered by the early onset impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. It would not be rash to think of it as pre-dystopian.

Recently Britain's prestigious think tank, Chatham House, warned that Trump is intent on taking down the World Trade Organization, a precursor to creating a world without rules in which the large economies can pillage lesser economies.

In a world where there are no internationally predictable rules, most countries faced with protectionist actions, crudely, have two options – retaliate or concede. If they choose to retaliate, the optimal strategy is to cause enough pain to the political leadership of the protectionist country that they will back down. This is the course of action that the EU and China have so far taken, with the hope that powerful political constituencies in the US will successfully lobby the administration to change course. 

However, this can only be effective for large economies that the US exports to significantly. For smaller countries without significant leverage, the alternative is to concede and try to negotiate a favourable settlement, which will still be asymmetrical.

In 2014, before Trump declared he was running for president, political scientist R. Schweller described how the world had already embarked on an "age of entropy."

It increasingly seems that the world will no longer have a single superpower, or group of superpowers, that brings order to international politics. Instead, it will have a variety of powers -- including nations, multinational corporations, ideological movements, global crime and terror groups, and human rights organizations -- jockeying with each other, mostly unsuccessfully, to achieve their goals. International politics is transforming from a system anchored in predictable, and relatively constant, principles to a system that is, if not inherently unknowable, far more erratic, unsettled, and devoid of behavioral regularities. In terms of geopolitics, we have moved from an age of order to an age of entropy. 

Entropy is a scientific concept that measures disorder: the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. And disorder is precisely what will characterize the future of international politics. In this leaderless world, threats are much more likely to be cold than hot; danger will come less frequently in the form of shooting wars among great powers than diffuse disagreements over geopolitical, monetary, trade, and environmental issues. Problems and crises will arise more frequently and, when they do, will be resolved less cooperatively.

During the Occupy movement there were many warnings about America falling into class warfare. That prompted billionaire investor, Warren Buffet, that America had already gone through a class war and his class, the wealthiest, had won it. The poor and the working class, by the time they woke up, they had already lost.

Perhaps what we should be focusing now is on whether our government, the Trudeau Liberals, have the measure of these seismic shifts in the world order. Do they understand the uncertainties we face and our vulnerabilities? Why do they keep acting as though we're still in the 80s? Why do they keep dreaming that Donald Trump could ever be our friend?

What Then Must We Do? Canada's Place Alongside the United States in Turbulent Times.

Do you ever wonder how close the United States may be to abandoning democracy? Do you ever wonder what that might mean for Canada? Are you familiar with the word, "anschluss"?

Even The Economist recently rated the US as a "flawed democracy."  That might have been overly generous. A paper released by Princeton in 2014 written by two professors, Gilens (Princeton) and Page (Northwestern), contrasted the voting record of Congress to the public will and reached the compelling conclusion that democracy had yielded to plutocracy in the American state. America's "bought and paid for" Congress had been "captured" by narrow, powerful interests and had ceased to serve the public interest. America was in the process of transforming into an oligarchy.

We watched as America's legislatures, state and federal, were captured. The telltale signs included the thwarting of campaign finance reform, the rise of a dominant corporate media cartel (think Sinclair Broadcasting) and the arrival of organizations such as ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, where captured legislators made pilgrimage to be given industry-drafted bills to take back and pass into law.

This sort of big money corruption is gangrenous and, true to form, it quickly spread to regulatory capture where representatives of regulated industries come to control the quasi-judicial boards that regulate those same industries. Trump's poster boy for this is EPA head, Scott Pruitt, who is out to dismantle most environmental regulations.

A lot of the corruption-fueled decline in American democracy predates Donald Trump but the Mango Mussolini has been a powerful catalyst who may propel the United States into a new level of authoritarianism, possibly extending into outright fascism.

When it comes to global leadership, Trump spurns America's traditional allies but has revealed a preternatural affinity for tyrants including some of the most murderous. Trump sees the retreat of liberal democracy through much of the world and will not come to its aid or defence.

Trump has little time for America's vaunted system of checks and balances. He does not recognize three co-equal branches of government. He regularly attacks law enforcement and the judiciary. He is intent on contaminating the US Supreme Court by transforming it into a partisan political agency. Neither Congress nor the American people seem to realize that a partisan political Supreme Court cannot uphold justice in the land. The Rule of Law becomes meaningless. Trump insists that the Department of Justice works for him, not the nation. When impartiality is extinguished what remains is one party rule and when that is coupled with an imperial presidency you have one-man rule.

As American public intellectual, Henry Giroux, recently wrote:

While the United States under Trump may not be an exact replica of Hitler’s Germany, the mobilizing ideas, policies, passions and ruthless social practices of fascism, wrapped in the flag and discourses of racial purity, ultra-nationalism and militarism, are at the center of power in the Trump administration. 

When selected elements of history are suppressed and historical consciousness and memory no longer provide insights into the workings of repression, exploitation and resistance, people are easily trapped in forms of historical and social amnesia that limit their sense of perspective, their understanding of how power works and the ways in which the elements of fascism sustain themselves in different practices.

Before America's Electoral College handed Trump the presidency, several scholars who listened to his campaign rhetoric observed that Trump's vision of reforming the United States government strayed well into the extra-constitutional. Trump would have to go rogue, unconstitutional. To do that he would need to subdue or disable both the judicial and legislative branches of government. He's done a good job with House leader, Paul Ryan, and Senate leader, Mitch McConnell. With two, possibly even three more, Supreme Court vacancies in the near future, he can probably capture the already compromised judiciary also. Then it's just a matter of a Reichstag Fire.

These are problems that the American people will have to address. Perhaps they're willing to accept a post-democratic authoritarian government, strong man rule. That's their call.  Canadians, however, will be impacted by developments south of the 49th parallel perhaps more than ever in the history of our two nations.

We need to start considering how the decline of American democracy will alter the relationship between our nations; how it may impact us as individuals; whether we need to formulate some bottom line or red lines that will limit or regulate dealings between our countries. Are we at risk of succumbing to this American contagion? Should we be taking steps to rehabilitate and renew liberal democracy in Canada? Is democracy really all that secure in the True North or are we deluding ourselves? Can we afford this "open border" policy we once took such pride in? There are doubtless many issues we need to consider, questions we need to ask.

We're going to have to figure this out somehow. America is changing. It already has changed. It's not the beacon of democracy any more. To ignore that, to pretend that it's still Ozzie & Harriet and that the 2020 presidential elections will provide some magical reset button is delusional. Being next door neighbours leaves us uniquely exposed and vulnerable to this new America that seems intent on trying to forestall its decline by throwing out the rule books and exacting tribute from friend and adversary alike.

Churchill famously opined that America could always be counted on to do the right thing, after it had exhausted every other option. I wish that still held true. It doesn't. The right thing seems to have lost its currency in Washington.

This is as good a time as any to start talking among ourselves. We have a lot of catching up to do.

Living in a World Without Rules

The international order is beginning to feel like the League of Nations. Donald Trump wants a "might is right" world and his steel and aluminium tariffs are a ploy to create it.

These tariffs, whether by coincidence or design, continue President Trump’s ongoing efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement process. 

The tariffs were ostensibly levied on national security grounds, and the WTO allows for trade policy to protect industries relevant for national security. But this has been invoked so rarely and narrowly that there is little precedent as to what constitutes a legitimate national security concern. 

Indeed, the WTO will be wary of finding against a state that invokes national security concerns – it is not a politically sustainable position for an unelected international body to claim it understands a state’s national security needs better than the state’s own government, no matter how implausible the justification might be on its face. President Trump has already said he will withdraw the US from the WTO if they receive an unfavourable ruling, and such a ruling would provide a justifiable reason. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration refuses to approve any new members of the WTO Appellate Body, which adjudicates disputes. This will leave it without a quorum to decide cases against the US, China or India when the next Appellate Body member’s term expires in September, and without the requisite three members to adjudicate any disputes by the end of 2019.

The Ugly American.

In a world where there are no internationally predictable rules, most countries faced with protectionist actions, crudely, have two options – retaliate or concede. If they choose to retaliate, the optimal strategy is to cause enough pain to the political leadership of the protectionist country that they will back down. This is the course of action that the EU and China have so far taken, with the hope that powerful political constituencies in the US will successfully lobby the administration to change course. 

However, this can only be effective for large economies that the US exports to significantly. For smaller countries without significant leverage, the alternative is to concede and try to negotiate a favourable settlement, which will still be asymmetrical. This course of action was taken by South Korea in response to the tariffs, which agreed to export quotas on steel in exchange for a permanent exemption.

The Fight Against Neoliberal Fascism is Anchored in Memory

Fascism today doesn't look exactly as it did when it spread through Germany and Italy in the 30s but the foundational elements are alive and well around the world today, including the United States of America.

Henry Giroux contends the key to beating back modern neo-fascists rests in historical memory.

As Hannah Arendt reminds us, the protean elements of fascism always run the risk of crystallizing into new forms. Historical memory is a prerequisite to the political and moral witnessing necessary to successfully counter growing fascism in the United States today. As Richard Evans, the renowned historian of modern Germany, observes, the Trump administration may not replicate all the features of Germany and Italy in the 1930s, but the legacy of fascism is important because it echoes a “warning from history” that cannot be dismissed. What historians such as Evans, Timothy Snyder and others have suggested is that it is crucial to examine history in order to understand what tyranny and authoritarianism look like and how we can use the past to fight against such forces. While the United States under Trump may not be an exact replica of Hitler’s Germany, the mobilizing ideas, policies, passions and ruthless social practices of fascism, wrapped in the flag and discourses of racial purity, ultra-nationalism and militarism, are at the center of power in the Trump administration.

When selected elements of history are suppressed and historical consciousness and memory no longer provide insights into the workings of repression, exploitation and resistance, people are easily trapped in forms of historical and social amnesia that limit their sense of perspective, their understanding of how power works and the ways in which the elements of fascism sustain themselves in different practices. Fascism is not unvarying and expresses its most fundamental attacks on democracy in different arrangements, which is all the more reason for people to develop what Timothy Snyder calls “an active relationship to history” in order to prevent a normalizing relationship to authoritarian regimes such as the United States under Trump’s rule. Surely, a critical understanding of history would go a long way in enabling the American people to recognize the elements of a fascist discourse in much of Trump’s racist tweets, speeches and policies.

...If there is one thing that the important lessons of history in the work of writers such as George Orwell have taught us, it is that we must refuse to be complicit in the mockery of truth. This is especially crucial in the current historical moment, given the way the Trump administration — along with far-right media giants, such as Infowars, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Fox News and Breitbart News Network — work to aggressively propagate a vast disimagination machine. With the death of historical memory comes the nightmare we had thought was no longer possible to witness again.

The Rise of Civic Illiteracy.

Donald Trump’s ascendancy in American politics has made visible a plague of deep-seated civic illiteracy, a corrupt political system and a contempt for reason that has been decades in the making. It also points to the withering of civic attachments, the undoing of civic culture, the decline of public life and the erosion of any sense of shared citizenship. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. ...At the same time, reason and truth are not simply contested or the subject of informed arguments as they should be, but wrongly vilified — banished to Trump’s poisonous world of “fake news.”

Under the Trump administration, language has been pillaged, truth and reason disparaged, and words and phrases emptied of any substance or turned into their opposite, all via the endless production of Trump’s Twitter storms and the ongoing clown spectacle of Fox News. ...What we are witnessing is not simply a political project to consolidate power in the hands of the corporate and financial elite, but also a reworking of the very meaning of literacy and education as crucial to what it means to create an informed citizenry and democratic society. In an age when literacy and thinking become dangerous to the anti-democratic forces governing all the commanding economic and cultural institutions of the United States, truth is viewed as a liability, ignorance becomes a virtue, and informed judgments and critical thinking are demeaned and turned into rubble and ashes. ...Traces of critical thought appear more and more at the margins of the culture as ignorance becomes the primary organizing principle of American society.

...The culture of manufactured illiteracy is also reproduced through a media apparatus that trades in illusions and the spectacle of violence.  ...In the age of manufactured illiteracy, there is more at work than simply an absence of learning, ideas or knowledge. Nor can the reign of manufactured illiteracy be solely attributed to the rise of the new social media, a culture of immediacy and a society that thrives on instant gratification. On the contrary, manufactured illiteracy is a political and educational project central to a right-wing corporatist ideology and set of policies that work aggressively to depoliticize people and make them complicitous with the neoliberal and racist political and economic forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives.

The War on Education.

Increasingly, neoliberal regimes across Europe and North America have waged a major assault on higher education and those faculty and students who view it as crucial to producing the modes of learning and formative cultures necessary in the struggle for a strong and healthy democracy. For instance, in the United States, higher education is being defunded, devalued and privatized while also restricting access to working- and lower-middle-class students. Those underprivileged students who do have access to some form of post-secondary education are too frequently burdened with financial debts. ...The attack on higher education has a long history. Since the 1980s, the democratic principles of the university have been under assault by right-wing billionaires such as the Koch brothers, a select financial elite and big corporations, “leading to a blurring of the lines between the university and the corporate world.” Increasingly, the object of higher education is the individual consumer rather than the public good.

... One of the challenges facing the current generation of educators, students and others is the need to address the question of what is the role and mission of education in a time of tyranny. What should it attempt to accomplish in a society at a historical moment when society is slipping over into an abyss of fascism? Central to such a challenge is the question of what education should accomplish in a democracy. What will it take for higher education not to abandon its role as a democratic public sphere? What work do educators have to do to create the economic, political and ethical conditions necessary to endow young people and the general public with the capacities to think, question, doubt, imagine the unimaginable, and defend education as essential for inspiring and energizing the citizens necessary for the existence of a robust democracy? What kind of language is necessary for higher education to redefine its mission, one that enables faculty and students to work toward a different future than one that echoes the present, to confront the unspeakable, to recognize themselves as agents, not victims, and to muster up the courage to act in the service of a substantive and inclusive democracy? In a world in which there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and democratic values and impulses, what will it take to educate young people and the broader polity to challenge authority and hold power accountable?

Neoliberalism and Fascism - the Bond.

I bring the two terms together in the phrase “neoliberal fascism,” which I define as both a project and a movement. Neoliberalism is an enabling force that weakens, if not destroys the commanding institutions of a democracy while undermining its most valuable principles. It is part of what Sheldon Wolin called a totalitarian imaginary that constitutes a revolutionary break from democracy. This is a form of fascism in which state rule is replaced by corporate sovereignty and a culture of fear, insecurity and precarity reinvigorates executive power and the rise of the punishing state. Consequently, neoliberalism as a form of gangster capitalism provides a fertile ground for the unleashing of the ideological architecture, poisonous values, and racist social relations sanctioned and produced under fascism. Neoliberalism and fascism conjoin and advance in a comfortable and mutually compatible project and movement that connects the worst excesses of capitalism with fascist ideals: the veneration of war and a hatred of reason and truth; a populist celebration of ultra-nationalism and racial purity; the suppression of freedom and dissent; a culture which promotes lies, spectacles of disparagement and a demonization of the other; a discourse of decline, brutal exploitation and ultimately, state violence in heterogeneous forms. All vestiges of the social are replaced by an idealization of individualism and all forms of responsibility are reduced to individual agents. Neoliberalism creates a failed democracy, and in doing so, opens up the fascists’ use of fear and terror to transform a state of exception into a state of emergency. As a project, it destroys all the commanding institutions of democracy and consolidates power in the hands of a financial elite. 

It is time to repudiate the notion that capitalism and democracy are the same thing, renew faith in the promises of a democratic socialism, create new political formations around an alliance of diverse social movements and take seriously the need to make education central to politics itself. As Walter Benjamin reminds us, fascism is the product often of failed democracies, and under the reign of neoliberalism, we are in the midst of not simply a dysfunctional democracy, but in the grip of an extreme form of gangster capitalism wedded to unbridled forms of corporate power that produce massive inequalities in wealth and power, and aggressively wage war on everything crucial to a vibrant democratic society.

This Should Give Justin a Needed Boost

Trump advisors went on the Sunday morning US talk shows like scalded cats to denounce Justin Trudeau's handling of the G6+1 leaders summit.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Trudeau's comments at a press conference after the G-7 amounted to a "betrayal, while Peter Navarro, a Trump trade official, declared there was a "special place in hell" for foreign leaders who double-crossed Trump.

Fox TV's Larry "Wrong Way" Kudlow obviously got his marching papers. An opponent of tariffs and trade wars, Kudlow has abruptly changed course.

He argued Trudeau's press conference criticisms of Trump's trade tariffs were inappropriate because of Trump's upcoming meeting with Kim, and because they represented a shift from the more cooperative work that had been done to form the communique from the seven nations. 

"You just don't behave that way, OK? It is a betrayal, OK? He is essentially double-crossing — not just double crossing President Trump, but the other members of the G7, who were working together and pulling together this communique," Kudlow said. 

"President Trump played that process in good faith," he continued. "So, I ask you, he gets up in the airplane and leaves. And then Trudeau starts blasting him in a domestic news conference? I'm sorry. It is a betrayal. That is a double-cross."

The even more unhinged Navarro was unleashed on FOX.

Navarro, Trump's top trade adviser, in an appearance on Fox News, declared Trudeau's comments "one of the worst political miscalculations of a Canadian leader in modern Canadian history." 

"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," Navarro said on "Fox News Sunday."

It sounds like the White House has figured out that Trump's Singapore lapdance with Kim Jong Un isn't going to end well. Blame that on Trudeau.

Kudlow and Navarro asserted that Trudeau's comments were particularly troubling given the timing.

President Trump is set to meet Tuesday morning in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Kudlow acknowledged Trump's reaction to Trudeau's comments was "in large part" about the meeting with Kim. 

"POTUS is not going to let a Canadian prime minister push him around," he said. "Kim must not see American weakness." 

"And this is a case where Trudeau -- it was like, I don't know, pouring collateral damage on this whole Korean trip," he continued. "Trudeau made an error. He should take it back. He should pull back on his statements and wish President Trump well in the Korea negotiations." 

Trump did Trudeau a "courtesy" by attending the G7 in Quebec, even when he had "bigger things on his plate in Singapore, Navarro said Sunday.

There is no proof that Donald Trump is working for Vlad Putin but Obama's national security advisor, Susan Rice, writes that Putin couldn't have wished for a better stooge.

Mr. Putin’s objectives are plain: to restore Russia to global greatness at the expense of the United States and to divide Europe by weakening NATO and the European Union. In Mr. Putin’s zero-sum calculus, when the United States and Europe founder, Russia benefits. The Russian leader knows that America’s global power rests not only on our military and economic might but also on our unrivaled network of alliances from Europe to Asia. For some seven decades, our alliances have ensured that America’s strength and influence are magnified. Accordingly, Mr. Putin seeks to drive wedges between the United States and its closest partners, to strain and ultimately rupture its alliances.

If Mr. Putin were calling the shots, he would ensure that America’s reliability is doubted, its commitments broken, its values debased and its image tarnished. He would advise the new president to take a series of steps to advance those aims:

First, withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement the United States negotiated to bolster its economic and strategic position in the Pacific, at the expense of China (and Russia). Then, pull out of the Paris climate agreement, becoming the only country in the world absent from this landmark accord.

Second, criticize NATO and cast doubt on America’s willingness to defend its allies on the grounds that they haven’t paid their bills (when that’s not how NATO works). Simultaneously, corrode the European Union by: lauding Brexit; sending Stephen Bannon to stoke European anti-establishment movements; and undermining Europe’s most powerful country, Germany, most recently through installing a right-wing flamethrower as ambassador.

Third, for the coup de grâce: start a trade war with our closest allies. Impose steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the European Union with the threat of auto tariffs to follow so that, according to reputable economists, both the United States and its allies’ economies will suffer. Justify the penalties on the preposterous grounds that allies threaten United States national security. Do so after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, following months of stringing our European partners along with the hope that we might agree to augment aspects of the pact. Then threaten sanctions on European companies for abiding by the deal, which has worked as intended.

...Finally, for completeness, Mr. Putin might encourage the president to ensure that countries large and small revile America’s leadership, suggesting he: disparage African nations and Haiti with a vulgarity; call Latin American migrants rapists and criminals; halt most refugee admissions; ban Muslims from several countries from entering the United States; restrict legal immigration; and separate children from their parents at the border.

With the sum of these actions, President Trump has deeply angered our closest allies and offended almost every member of the international community, except Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates — and Russia. Meanwhile, Russia is ascendant in the Middle East. The European Union is reeling — with Italy, Slovenia, Austria and Hungary now led by populist nationalists who embrace Mr. Putin and wish to terminate sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. NATO’s unity is similarly strained, provoking concern about its collective will to counter any new Russian aggression.

...America stands alone, weakened and distrusted. Without United States leadership, the G-7 can accomplish little. And, when next we need our allies to rally to fight terrorists, place sanctions against North Korea, combat a pandemic or check China and Russia, will they join with us after we have so disrespected them?

Imagine a World Where Every Leader Was a Variation of Donald Trump

Donald Trump likes to pretend he's shaking everything up. In fact he's tearing everything down and what he can't tear down his instinct is to bog it down. You could say that he's the first poster boy for the Age of Entropy.

Yesterday I reviewed an article by political scientist and historian R.L. Schweller published in the June, 2014 volume of Foreign Affairs.

International politics is transforming from a system anchored in predictable, and relatively constant, principles to a system that is, if not inherently unknowable, far more erratic, unsettled, and devoid of behavioral regularities. In terms of geopolitics, we have moved from an age of order to an age of entropy.

...How did we get here? The shift began in the twentieth century, with the advent of nuclear weapons and the spread of economic globalization, which together have made war among the great powers unthinkable. ...The absence of cataclysmic wars among great powers has obviously been a great boon. But it has also come at a real cost.

In their absence [wars of  major power ascension], we no longer have a force of “creative destruction” capable of resetting the world. And just as seas become foul without the blowing of the winds, prolonged peace allows inertia and decay to set in.

Too much peace. Too little war. Mutually assured destruction. Neoliberalism. Stagnation. Failure of the world order. Chaos. In this Age of Entropy, Schweller thinks Trump is all America needs. Many would disagree.

Merkel, Macron, Trudeau and Abe are trying to bolster the international order but they've been virtually powerless to arrest the decline of liberal democracy and the rise of authoritarianism - Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Austria and even America. It seems chaos is indeed overtaking the world order. Authoritarianism has not only taken hold in these countries, it is a rising force in most others - Germany, France, the Netherlands, Britain and, yes, even our own Canada.

The longer leaders like Trudeau obsessively cling to globalism, the greater the appeal of authoritarian voices. People lose faith in their central governments as being under the sway of corporate interests and not in service to the public interest. If that was a crime you could convict every prime minister going back all the way to and including Mulroney. Democracy stagnated with the adoption of the neoliberal model and now democracy has succumbed to "inertia and decay."

As long as Trudeau's focus is on expanding trade and perpetual, exponential growth in the GDP he cannot focus on what ails us. He needs to be putting all his efforts into restoration of progressive democracy and there's an enormous amount of work that needs to be done in a shrinking window of opportunity. We have seen how other countries have succumbed or are at the cusp of illiberal democracy and worse. Doug Ford's victory yesterday is a wake up call. The election of Stephen Harper was a wake up call. Yet we sail into this becalmed, stagnant and foul sea and pretend nothing is wrong.