The Art of the Deal

Donald Trump likes to mention his book, The Art of the Deal. Only it's not really his book. It was ghost-written by Tony Schwartz who says, if he had a chance to change the title, he'd call it The Sociopath.

In this, the Week of Our Donald, Schwartz has given a tell-all interview to The New Yorker about his experiences with Trump in the preparation of the book. It's kind of chilling. Here are a few teasers:

“I put lipstick on a pig,” [Schwartz] said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”

Schwartz had written about Trump before. In 1985, he’d published a piece in New York called “A Different Kind of Donald Trump Story,” which portrayed him not as a brilliant mogul but as a ham-fisted thug who had unsuccessfully tried to evict rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants from a building that he had bought on Central Park South. Trump’s efforts—which included a plan to house homeless people in the building in order to harass the tenants—became what Schwartz described as a “fugue of failure, a farce of fumbling and bumbling.” An accompanying cover portrait depicted Trump as unshaven, unpleasant-looking, and shiny with sweat. Yet, to Schwartz’s amazement, Trump loved the article. He hung the cover on a wall of his office, and sent a fan note to Schwartz, on his gold-embossed personal stationery. “Everybody seems to have read it,” Trump enthused in the note, which Schwartz has kept.

“Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn’t seem to be fully understood,” Schwartz told me. “It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then . . . ” Schwartz trailed off, shaking his head in amazement. He regards Trump’s inability to concentrate as alarming in a Presidential candidate. “If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it’s impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time,” he said.

...Schwartz believes that Trump’s short attention span has left him with “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.” He said, “That’s why he so prefers TV as his first news source—information comes in easily digestible sound bites.” He added, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.” During the eighteen months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment.

...This year, Schwartz has heard some argue that there must be a more thoughtful and nuanced version of Donald Trump that he is keeping in reserve for after the campaign. “There isn’t,” Schwartz insists. “There is no private Trump.” This is not a matter of hindsight. While working on “The Art of the Deal,” Schwartz kept a journal in which he expressed his amazement at Trump’s personality, writing that Trump seemed driven entirely by a need for public attention. “All he is is ‘stomp, stomp, stomp’—recognition from outside, bigger, more, a whole series of things that go nowhere in particular,” he observed, on October 21, 1986. But, as he noted in the journal a few days later, “the book will be far more successful if Trump is a sympathetic character—even weirdly sympathetic—than if he is just hateful or, worse yet, a one-dimensional blowhard.”

“Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz said. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.” Often, Schwartz said, the lies that Trump told him were about money—“how much he had paid for something, or what a building he owned was worth, or how much one of his casinos was earning when it was actually on its way to bankruptcy.” Trump bragged that he paid only eight million dollars for Mar-a-Lago, but omitted that he bought a nearby strip of beach for a record sum.

The New Yorker piece is an important glimpse inside the dangerously hollow man who would be president of the United States. That so many Americans would even consider voting for a man so apparently unhinged should concern us all.

Another Screw-Up for the Big Orange Bloat

Okay, Donald Trump has chosen his running mate, Koch Bros. shill, Mike Pence.

Every campaign team needs a logo and Trump, naturally, has his. It raised a few eyebrows, including a few of my own, when it was unveiled this morning and it didn't take long for the hilarity to ensue.

Here's one animated version:



And, of course, TP conjures references to Toilet Paper and that gives rise to giggles over ass wiping and ass wipes which, to many, seems to aptly describe Donald Trump and his trained monkey, Pence. Let the hilarity ensue. The conference is just two days away.

Turkey, Coup. Army Tosses Erdogan.

At long last the Turkish generals have turned on strongman Recep Erdogan.

Traffic has been stopped from crossing both the Bosphorus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges in Istanbul.

There are reports of gunshots in the capital Ankara.

Other reports said soldiers were inside buildings of the Turkish state broadcaster in Ankara.

Gunfire was also heard outside Istanbul police HQ and tanks are said to be stationed outside Istanbul airport. All flights are cancelled, reports say.

CNN Turk reported that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "safe" but did not elaborate.

A statement from the military group read out on NTV television said: "The power in the country has been seized in its entirety." Who represents the group remains uncertain.

All coups can be wild and wooly affairs for the first 24 to 48 hours and this one is a big unknown. It's possible for officers loyal to Erdogan to state a counter-coup but this would be the fourth time the military, which sees itself as the "guardian of [secular] democracy" in that country has overthrown a civilian government.

Erdogan, in a move befitting a dictator, treated himself to a lovely $350-million, 1000-room presidential palace complex built in the midst of a nature preserve.

Those 28 Pages Are Finally Out.

Congress has released the 28 pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission Report.


The 28-page document is a wide-ranging catalog of alleged links between Saudi officials and Qaeda operatives, from contacts that Saudi operatives in Southern California had with the hijackers to a telephone number found on the first Qaeda prisoner in C.I.A. custody that the F.B.I. traced to a corporation managing a Colorado home of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

The document, a section of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, has been kept secret out of concern that it might fray diplomatic relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Its release marks the end of a yearslong fight by lawmakers and families of the Sept. 11 victims to make public any evidence that the kingdom might have played a role in the attacks.


Former Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the committee that carried out the investigation and has been pushing the White House to release the pages, said Thursday he was “very pleased” that the documents would be released.

“It is going to increase the questioning of the Saudis’ role supporting the hijackers,” Graham told CNN. “I think of this almost as the 28 pages are sort of the cork in the wine bottle. And once it’s out, hopefully the rest of the wine itself will start to pour out.”

Graham added, “Would the U.S. government have kept information that was just speculation away from American people for 14 years if somebody didn’t think it was going to make a difference?”

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things - Like Survival of Our Species

Climate change gonna getcha. Climate change gonna getcha.

The Republican presidential nominee, the Orange Behemoth, Donald Trump, dismisses climate change as a hoax. He doesn't mean it, right? Wrong. He's even chosen far right nutjob, Mike Pence, as his vice presidential running mate. Former attorney/open mouth radio host Pence is also a climate change denier.

Not to be outdone, on the other side of the pond, Britain's freshly minted prime minister, Theresa May, made it her second order of business (the first was appointing Boris Johnson her foreign minister) was to abolish the UK's climate change department.

May’s priorities could not be more clear. The clues are in the titles.

Britain now has a Secretary for Exiting the European Union – a very sensible move if Brexit is inevitable – a Secretary for International Trade and a Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. You wouldn't know it, but the latter will be responsible for dealing with climate change.

The worst thing about developments such as these is that they prove we haven't reached the threshold yet where conditions are so terrible that our leadership will be stampeded into action. However, when they do get about to it, there's a good and steadily worsening chance it will be much too late.

When You Seem to Have Tried Everything

They want us out of their backyards. Maybe that's a good idea. Why should we continue on with a murderous pissing contest that we cannot end?

Sometimes it's best to stop howling and just walk away.

I'm talking to you, Europe. It's time to write this one off. There'll be no good coming your way from the Middle East or even North Africa much longer. Time for what they call a legal separation.

How do you go about that? You could start by breaking your dependency on folks you just can't get along with. Why do you need them anyway? Oh yeah, energy. Oil. Well then how about you stop buying their oil? What better time could there be than to engineer a switch to clean alternative energy? Harness the wind and the sun. You've already shown you know how to do that very successfully. Finish the job.

And both parties will need a restraining order. They'll direct both of you to stay out of each other's territories. That begins with you getting your tanks and your warplanes and your ships out of their world. Then, and only then, can you put your mind to The Wall.

The Chinese understood the need for it. So too did Roman Emperor Hadrian.

Here's the thing. You know you're going to have to mount some perimeter defence sooner or later. Climate change alone will drive mass migrations out of Africa and the Middle East. You don't have enough food in your pantry or chairs at your table to handle that. You're already in "overloaded lifeboat" mode. It's a horrible thought having to repel boarders knowing the fate that awaits them but you can't take them all. You can't even take most.

Back in the closing years of the last century - hey, anybody remember those good old days? - the British magazine, The Economist, had a cover story about Europe's future dealings with the Middle East and Africa. I think the caption was "barbarians at the gate." It envisioned a future in which foreign traders were allowed up to the portcullis, just not inside the castle walls. Trading would be done outside at places of exchange. Goods would flow freely but people would not.

From this bastion of small town Vancouver Island this all sounds surreal. What seemed like a bizarre notion when I read that issue of The Economist now confronts Europe as reality.

The Muslim world is going to have to settle its own hash. Sunni versus Shiite, Arab versus non-Arab, all the little squabbles and long-term resentments, sectarian, ethnic and tribal - we cannot fix that. When we get involved we never come away with the outcomes we sought going in. Then again most of our involvement has been more about securing our perceived interests than fixing theirs. Meanwhile NATO remains in the corner vainly trying to get a winning score on the Whack-a-Mole machine.

So, my Euro friends, get building those wind generators and solar farms. Get busy switching your infrastructure to electricity from fossil fuels. Figure out how much of the E.U. is defensible and establish your frontiers along those borders. Place a moratorium, hopefully temporary, on travel to and from the Middle East and North Africa. Meanwhile at home you've still got a lot of work to do to restore public confidence in liberal democracy. That's going to take some doing.

One more thing. If the terrorism troubles continue, you tell every king, prince, emir and sheikh in the Persian Gulf states that you'll hold them personally responsible. This is their monster. They are our Dr. Frankenstein. Every time you're attacked, send a few cruise missiles to one of those magnificent palaces. Obliterate a few. See if these troubles don't mysteriously stop.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

AK's and Rain Ponchos

The Republican convention in Cleveland is less than a week away. In choosing an Ohio venue, the GOP is taking their pow wow into an "open carry" state. That means it's legal to carry an arsenal slung over your shoulder or tucked in your belt just so you can always prevent a takeover by a tyrannical government.

So, guess who's coming to dinner when the Repugs gather at Payday Loans Coliseum? One group will be the New Black Panthers and, yes, they'll be showing up loaded for bear.

The New Black Panther Party, a "black power" movement, will carry firearms for self-defense during rallies in Cleveland ahead of next week's Republican convention, if allowed under Ohio law, the group's chairman said.

The plan by the group this weekend comes as police in Cleveland brace for an influx of groups that plan demonstrations before and during the presidential nominating convention.

During the attack last week in Dallas that killed five police officers, law enforcement officials said demonstrators carrying rifles led them to initially believe they were under attack by multiple shooters.

Several other groups, including some supporters of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have said they will carry weapons in Cleveland.

"If it is an open state to carry, we will exercise our second amendment rights because there are other groups threatening to be there that are threatening to do harm to us," Hashim Nzinga, chairman of the New Black Panther Party, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

...Officials in Ohio have said it will be legal for protesters to carry weapons at demonstrations outside the convention under that state’s "open carry" law, which allows civilians to carry guns in public.

...The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group watchdog, describes the New Black Panther Party as “a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers."

The Home Team?

Sounds like the Republicans have all the makings to stage a "shoot-out at the Payday Loans Corral." Black Panthers armed to the teeth squaring off against members of Trump's loyal White Trash Tea Party movement. Throw in a hot day, a few cases of cheap beer, and there's no telling what could happen.

Update:

As the nutjobs descend on Cleveland, The New Republic reports that the city and its police force, now under federal oversight, are bracing for disaster.

Many have noted that Cleveland will be the first city to host a national political convention while its police force is under federal oversight for past bad acts. But that observation alone undersells how radically your world has been pulled inside-out if you wear a blue uniform. The [12-year old Tamir]Rice shooting and consent decree triggered a complete rewiring of a police department that’s operated with little oversight and few consequences for more than 50 years. Under the federal decree, the Cleveland PD is gradually changing its policies and practices after generations of engaging in racist behavior, producing sloppy internal investigations, and escalating routine police work into matters of life and death. It’s slow, painful surgery that will continue into the 2020s. And now, with its hoped-for transformation far from complete, the Cleveland PD is about to come under the hot lights of intense national media scrutiny.

The stakes and pressure couldn’t be cranked higher for the city’s troubled cops as they face the ultimate daunting task—refereeing a roughhouse political melee featuring a polarizing candidate, potential convention floor drama, guerilla clown protestors, Brexit anti-heroes, gun-toting white supremacists, gun-toting black militants, “patriotic” bikers, and an estimated 50,000 more. And we don’t know which Cleveland Police Department we’ll be getting if the 2016 RNC becomes a black-eye ideological thunderdome a la Chicago in 1968—the old, or the new?

As I said, what could possibly go wrong?

A Sportscaster Gets the Final Word on the Dallas Tragedy

I've got my take on it. You've got yours. Chris Hedges has his. Sarah Palin, Ditto. But maybe it takes a TV jock to get it right, Dale Hansen.

Sanctions Time

This time it matters. The issue is the deadly business that could lurk behind China's refusal to accept the judgment of the international tribunal of The Hague over claims to territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea.

None of the fiercely disputed Spratly Islands, the UN body found, were “capable of generating extended maritime zones … [and] having found that none of the features claimed by China was capable of generating an exclusive economic zone, the tribunal found that it could — without delimiting a boundary — declare that certain sea areas are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, because those areas are not overlapped by any possible entitlement of China.”

The tribunal found that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone by interfering with Philippine fishing and petroleum exploration, constructing artificial islands and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone. At Scarborough Shoal, where it said fishermen from the Philippines and China had traditional fishing rights, it said China had restricted these rights. It added that China had created a serious risk of collision when its patrol boats had physically obstructed Philippine fishing vessels.

The tribunal also condemned China’s land reclamation projects and its construction of artificial islands at seven features in the Spratly Islands, concluding that it had caused “severe harm to the coral reef environment and violated its obligation to preserve and protect fragile ecosystems and the habitat of depleted, threatened, or endangered species”.

Why sanctions? Well, it's a lot better than inching ever closer to war in the South China Sea. The military buildup there - Chinese, American as well as most of the nation states of the Asia-Pacific region is massive. Even the city state of Singapore is acquiring a fleet of modern attack subs. The region has already witnessed many incidents of provocation including China's construction of artificial islands on reefs complete with air strips and missile defence batteries. In Japan, Abe's recent victory in both houses has observers suspecting Japan will soon restore its full military capability, constitutionally muzzled since Japan's surrender in WWII. 

Canada has a direct interest in this. China has already said that it is entitled to Arctic Ocean seabed resources and says that the rules of the law of the sea are of no application to Arctic waters. China has also declared that it intends to maintain a permanent and substantial military presence in the Arctic. There's something that needs to be nipped in the bud.

Amerika's Untermensch

Today they're loosely gathered as the Tea Party. A decade or two before that they were called White Trash. To America's founding fathers they were were called "manure" or "offscourings" a term for human faeces. They're as American as apple pie.

I've just ordered Louisiana State University professor Nancy Isenberg's new book, "White Trash, the 400 year untold history of class in America." For now we'll have to be content with Crawford Kilian's review in today's Tyee.

Isenberg ...makes a persuasive case that 16th century England saw North America not as a source of wealth like Mexico and Peru, but as a dump. Colonization advocates like Richard Hakluyt proposed exporting petty criminals, prostitutes and those who were simply poor, just to get them out of the way.

Hakluyt and his colleagues saw them as "manure," better exploited overseas than costing money in British jails. Their function would be to clear land and push the Aboriginals back. The survivors would breed new generations that could be impressed into the army and navy as cannon fodder.

...They were "squatters" and "crackers" (derived from the expression "crack a fart"). They were human waste, trash -- at best, compost to support worthier people.

Poor whites had formed a kind of slave class in the early years of the colonies, before Africans largely displaced them. They weren't even considered much use. Their children were malnourished and sick. Today we would call them stunted, kept from full physical and intellectual growth by lack of food.

...The Founding Fathers believed in class and race divisions as sincerely as anyone. Equally sincerely, they believed their own class had been bred to rule; "democracy" was a dirty word. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the American colonies' Declaration of Independence, supported a vague ideal of "yeomen" farmers, free whites who would support their families on their own land, fight the wars of the ruling class, but never challenge their rulers.

The reality, of course, was a handful of great landowners employing a landless class of poor whites, and not a yeoman in sight. (The great 18th century criticism of slavery was that it undercut poor whites' willingness to do the same work done by slaves.)

...As Isenberg notes, poor whites were able "to refashion the redneck and embrace white trash as an authentic heritage." By the end of the 20th century, Bill Clinton (a white trash Rhodes Scholar) was both president and "Slick Willie," attracting voters by entertaining them with his sax playing and his sexual adventures. Then came Sarah Palin, and now Donald Trump.

But these were all exceptions. Most poor whites settled for regular blue-collar jobs. When the economy became stagnant in the 1980s, they saw their real incomes stagnate also -- assuming their jobs didn't move to Mexico or China. They found themselves competing for jobs with black people.

As Lyndon B. Johnson once observed, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

...Some working-class whites who go into police work bring such an attitude with them and find it often intensified by police culture itself. Hence the tendency of white American police officers to shoot black American civilians in disproportionate numbers: 102 unarmed blacks in 2015, five times the rate of killing unarmed whites. Black hostility to police is therefore predictable.

The current spate of police killings, and the killing of five Dallas police officers by a black army reservist with mental health problems, are also predictable. Isenberg's book, a chronicle of deaths foretold, shows how such violence became not only predictable but a way of life.

What is impossible to predict is a way out of this four-century nightmare.

Black Day in July

It's kind of like deja vu all over again. 1967, 49-years ago. I was just waiting to be admitted into officer school en route to flight school and, I prayed, fast jets. This happened. My buddies and I went down to the Detroit River waterfront and watched and listened. Patton main battle tanks patrolled Jefferson. You could hear the odd rifle shot, often answered by automatic weapon fire. It was overcast enough that the angry red glare of the burning blocks below were reflected in the clouds. From our safe perch on the Canadian side of the river we watched a society succumb to madness, fear and loathing. John R, Brush, Jefferson - street names that became indelibly etched into one's consciousness.



Now it's Dallas. Two, too many black men gunned down by white cops. Two too many. Two atop a pile of dead black men, grieving families and cops who seem to slaughter with impunity.

Two snipers. Eleven cops down. Five dead. More close to death. Black day in July. Half a century and we're still trapped in this shit. That's the lion's share of my lifetime. We've not moved on. Not really.

What in hell is wrong with us?

Chilcot's Freebie Lesson to Canada

As I've pored over press reports and analysis of the Chilcot report into Britain's bungled invasion of Iraq, I can't get Stephen Harper out of my mind. Had he been prime minister at the time, Harper would have eagerly deployed Canadian forces to the campaign. He was all about "standing shoulder to shoulder" with our traditional (i.e. white, English-speaking) allies - the UK, the US, Australia.

Chilcot has exposed the Blair and Bush regimes as a gaggle of incompetents. Their Iraq War was FUBAR before the first tank crossed into Mesopotamia. There's been no peace in that country, or that region, ever since. If anything, the Crusaders have provided the petri dish in which have flourished al Qaeda, ISIL, al Nusra and the larger Sunni v. Shiite conflict waiting to break out.

The message, to me, seems clear. When America, or American-led coalitions (including NATO) come knocking, ask questions first. Don't just say, "okay, I'm in." These people are bunglers.

If the massively violent history of this new century has proven anything - persistently, repeatedly, conclusively - it's that All the King's Horses and All the King's Men are not enough to win militarily and politically significant victories. Look around. The bombing campaign to liberate Kosovo (NATO). Check out Kosovo today and you can call that a failure. Libya (NATO)? Failure. Afghanistan (NATO Plus)? That was more than a failure. It was a defeat. We lost. Canadian forces were defeated. For what? Iraq, now Iraq/Syria? We claim victories, that ISIS is getting pushed back, driven out. Remember when we had the Taliban run out of Afghanistan? How long did that last?

Fighting wars is easy. Winning is the tricky part and, these days, there are plenty of supposed leaders keen on waging wars without a clue how to win them.

So, what's the lesson for Canada from Chilcot? How about this? The next time the phone rings and it's the White House or NATO looking for warplanes or troops for this place or that, assume you've got Tony Blair on the other end of the line after he's spent an afternoon with a bottle of Bristol cream sherry. Don't ask them about the fighting. Ask them what they've got in mind to win it. How? When? What is the exit strategy? If they haven't got convincing answers to those questions, tell them - politely - you'll have to get back to them.

He Knew. Tony Blair Knew.

It's going to take days to digest the 2-million word Chilcot Report into the British government's decision to partner up with the Bush-Cheney regime to invade Iraq.

For years Tony Blair has been going on about how the conquest of Iraq was absolutely the right thing to do. The end, sending Saddam Hussein to the gallows, justified the means, the invasion, and the endless aftermath - the various wars without end that are the hallmark of today's Middle East.

Blair is actually playing two cards: the justification card and the sympathy card. Perhaps finally realizing that Chilcot would skewer the justification ploy, Blair has now been baring his profound anguish and suffering over how it all went wrong.

1441

The Bush-Blair Bandwagon ultimately relied on a UN Security Council resolution, 1441, as authorizing their devastating attack on and occupation of Iraq. 1441, however, did no such thing. To wrangle it through the UNSC where both France and Russia stood to veto it, the Anglo-Americans assured the doubters that the resolution did not constitute authority for war and there would be no war on Iraq without a further, express resolution. That, of course, never happened.

Tony Blair knew the Security Council had not authorized the attack he and Washington were planning. That's why the Brits tabled a further resolution, the one they had promised to bring to seek the Security Council go ahead. Only it quickly became apparent that resolution would be defeated. That led Blair to withdraw the resolution before any vote. Blair knew he needed authority. He sought approval. Then he backed off and he's been trying to cover  his tracks ever since. It was a monumental blunder.

Chilcot, according to reports, concludes that Blair knew war on Iraq was not authorized by the UN Security Council. He knew it was an illegal war and he, a war criminal, for ordering it. The rest of the report, as far as I can tell at this early stage, is window dressing. As for the post invasion aftermath, Chilcot does dispose of Blair's persistent dismissal of critics as resorting to hindsight. Given that an occupying power has a number of clear obligations to the occupied people, including providing for their security, Blair might be on the hook on this score as well.

What comes of this now is unclear. Will Blair be prosecuted? He ought to be but that doesn't mean he will.



UPDATE:

Blair, of course, has written a book, A Journey: My Political Life. I'll leave the review to Foreign Policy's Thomas Ricks.

Best Explanation Ever

Out here on Vancouver Island, July and August bring us incredibly clear night skies. I cherish the season, trying to set aside a half hour or more to sky gazing before bed. It's amazing what there is to see - stars, meteors, satellites, even the International Space Station (there's an ISS app telling you when it will be overhead in your location).

Once you're used to it you may find a connection to all you see in that night sky. Some of the light you will see with the naked eye is several thousand years old. The oldest event man has seen with sophisticated instruments clocked in at 168,000 light years old. Creationists go ape shit trying to explain that away.

I enjoy gazing into the clear night sky, communing with what's out there. I've always felt somehow connected although in a most infinitesimal scale. We're here for what, 60 maybe 80 years? In galactic terms that's not even the flaring of a match. Still it's a wonderous thing that I somehow find comforting. It adds a perspective in which our individual irrelevance is somehow welcoming.

With that in mind, I'd like to share this from Neil deGrasse Tyson. His point - when you look into the universe, you're seeing yourself.

Scotland Reacts

Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has announced there'll be a second independence referendum in the wake of yesterday's Brexit vote.

Deep Breaths. The World Didn't End - Not Yet.

If there was ever a time to revive the iconic 1939 poster it might be now. Then, Britain faced Hitler, the Nazi horde and six sometimes terrifying years of world war. Now, Britain faces Brexit. That should lend a bit of perspective.

The simple fact is that today and for a while to come you'll find a lot more headless chickens running around than chicken heads. The unexpected always triggers panic and hyperbole among those taken by surprise.

As a general rule, the more vested one is in the status quo, the more traumatic the event. Those with least to lose can be less fearful, even welcoming of change. Societies rent by brutal austerity and soaring inequality can become societies primed for change sometimes bordering on upheaval. Out with the old, in with the new. Screw me? No, Screw You!!

Sure it's a spin of the wheel. Sure it's scary. The more cosseted the more fearful and angry. One Liberal pundit declared the Brexit vote a victory for the "economically illiterate, racists, nativists, anti-traders, separatists and isolationists" before proceeding to declare the sky fallen and British virginity deflowered. Oh well. I guess he missed the "Keep Calm" part.

Will the British vote herald the end of the European Union experiment? Possibly but not of itself, not entirely. The EU, as it is currently constituted, is rife with problems that present the precursor(s) of instability. It's like a sporting league that took on too many new franchises. It lost the old "natural" fit of the pre-expansion union. The centre weakened and populist movements, rightwing and left, rose across the union in poor states and strong.

Academics will have years of work ahead analyzing the vote, the fallout and the causes and blunders. All we have today is the usual "oh, crap" moment. This is the moment tradition cedes to Team Vanquished to moan and wail and spread recriminations and fear mongering and, true to form, that's exactly what they've done. It's so predictable.

Look, British army sappers are not deployed in the Chunnel setting demolition charges. I'm almost positive that the trains and the ferries and freighters that ply the cold waters above them are still carrying people and goods between the UK and Europe. Planes continue to fly.

Sure this is an upheaval event of some sort, duration and impact unknown and, for now, unknowable. It's great stuff for those into casting bones and reading entrails. The thing to remember is that Brexit is just part of an increasingly dysfunctional world that is entering upheaval or on the cusp.

Our old and once comfortable modes of organization - political, social, economic, even environmental, the lot - have been in decline for years and are reaching marginal utility.

Over a decade ago, John Ralston Saul quite convincingly proclaimed the collapse of globalism. He wrote that the neoliberal experiment had failed miserably yet we would remain in its hold until our leaders came to their senses and introduced the next great thing. In recent months even the very temple of neoliberalism, the International Monetary Fund, admitted its failure. There are some who argue, plausibly, that the Brexit vote was an angry response to neoliberalism, one that may soon spread.

Is upheaval inevitable? Sure it is. I was reminded of this yesterday when I received the annual "heads up" email from the highly respected, scientific NGO, Global Footprint Network announcing Earth Overshoot Day 2016 will fall on August 8th. That means that humanity's voracious appetite for renewable resources is outpacing the Earth's capacity to replace them faster each year. From August 8 we will be in a state of Overshoot, meaning we will be consuming our planet's dwindling reserves of renewables - air, water, biomass. When I first learned of GFN six or seven years ago, Overshoot Day fell in mid to late October. Now it's the beginning of August. See where it's heading, how fast it's progressing? This is real Thelma and Louise stuff.

The 80s are over and they're not coming back. We're into a new era that will open with discontent, destabilization and upheaval - that we will ride out in some form if we're very lucky. This new reality isn't just a matter of politics and economics. It's also a function of physics, biology, botany, and climatology. Of course it's going to be different. How could it be remotely the same?

P.S. I'm taking a break for a while to do a couple of online courses and catch up on a mountain of overdue reading. I may stop by, from time to time, but it will be infrequent at best. Have a good summer.

Who Is Guaranteed to Win the American Elections This November?

As Chris Hedges sees it, this election is in the bag. There's only one possible outcome. Corporatism wins, again, hands down.

During the presidential election cycle, liberals display their gutlessness. Liberal organizations, such as MoveOn.org, become cloyingly subservient to the Democratic Party. Liberal media, epitomized by MSNBC, ruthlessly purge those who challenge the Democratic Party establishment. Liberal pundits, such as Paul Krugman, lambaste critics of the political theater, charging them with enabling the Republican nominee. Liberals chant, in a disregard for the facts, not to be like Ralph Nader, the “spoiler” who gave us George W. Bush.

The liberal class refuses to fight for the values it purports to care about. It is paralyzed and trapped by the induced panic manufactured by the systems of corporate propaganda. The only pressure within the political system comes from corporate power. With no counterweight, with no will on the part of the liberal class to defy the status quo, we slide deeper and deeper into corporate despotism. The repeated argument of the necessity of supporting the “least worse” makes things worse.

Change will not come quickly. It may take a decade or more. And it will never come by capitulating to the Democratic Party establishment. We will accept our place in the political wilderness and build alternative movements and parties to bring down corporate power or continue to watch our democracy atrophy into a police state and our ecosystem unravel.

Electoral Reform and Referenda

Most of us seem to support ending the First Past The Post electoral system. Our multi-party reality means that it is possible for one party to win a hefty majority of seats with what can be little more than the largest minority of votes. Governments elected by two out of five voters effectively rule over the three out of five that did not support them.

With a benevolent, open and democratically-minded government prepared to heed views other than its own the outcome can be, if not ideal, at least workable. Recent experience has shown us that will not always be the case and then the government can become tyrannical. We don't want a repeat of the Harperian era and the best way to achieve that is voting reform.

It would be great if there was one, perfect solution to FPTP. Flip the switch from A to B. Yet there are more than one option and varying permutations of each. The choices present a confusing array of strengths and drawbacks, the perception of which may be further clouded by political persuasion.

Should the choice be based on which party each system allegedly favours? Should the choice rest with a slate of core benefits offered by the competing systems? Should we modify not just our votes but the composition of the legislature itself to accommodate both elected and appointed law makers?

Then there's the debate over whether proposed voting system change should be put to a referendum. Should eligible voters get to choose how they will vote?

The referendum idea sounds great. What would be more democratically empowering than to allow voters to decide how they will vote? Yet it is an idea fraught with drawbacks.

A huge problem is the decision-making process itself. How do people tend to vote on referenda? Presumably the viability of the choice has some bearing on the state of mind of those casting votes. How well informed are they of the issues and the choices? How many options should be on the ballot? Do the voters really understand what they're voting for or what they're effectively rejecting? What other factors are influencing their votes? To what extent can the referendum outcome be skewed by collateral factors? What percentage of the eligible public will even turn out to vote? Should a minimum percentage threshold be required?

There's a major referendum in three days hence. British voters will go to the polls to decide whether their country should remain in the European Union. What is pertinent to our debate is not what is at stake or the possible outcome but how public opinion has shifted in the runup to the vote.  For quite a while the "Stay" camp held a comfortable lead. More recently the "Leave" side pulled ahead by several points. Now, with the balloting just days away, the polls show "Stay" edging out "Leave" by a thin margin.

Is this no-yes-no pattern endemic to referenda? Are voters fickle? Do they go from bold change to play it safe as voting day nears? Is the outcome of any referendum at least partly pre-determined?

British Columbians wrestled with electoral reform in 2005 and again in 2009. In the first referendum, a 57.69% majority voted to change to a Single Transferrable Vote system. Tantalizingly close, but no cigar. It was close enough, however, to lead to another FPTP/STV referendum in 2009. This time the STV camp was hammered, dropping to just 39.09% support. FPTP was upheld by 60%. Turnout was 55%. What a disappointment that was.

Ontario's 2007 voting reform referendum saw FPTP do even better, over 63%. It seems to have been more thoroughly analyzed. The voting public seemed poorly informed and the major newspapers opposed reform which must have had some influence on the outcome. The LeDuc report (post-mortem) went further: 

"The political advantage in referendum campaigns, particularly those dealing with unfamiliar issues, often seems to rest with the NO side. Those opposed to a proposal do not necessarily have to make a coherent case against it. Often, it is enough merely to raise doubts about it in the minds of voters, question the motives of its advocates, or play upon a natural fear of the unknown." 

Does this dynamic explain why Mulroney's referendum on the Charlottetown Accord (deservedly) failed and why the Brexit vote seems just days away from also going down to defeat?

There are a good many of us who argue that something as fundamental as voting reform should be a question for the citizenry to decide. Yet the evidence suggests that a fair referendum with a suitably informed electorate is almost impossible to achieve. It's a stacked deck.

Maybe the only way forward is to have Parliament implement some form of proportional representation or STV. Let the voters have two elections under the reformed system to get familiar with it and then have a referendum on whether to keep it or find something else.

Meanwhile, all eyes on Britain this week.

Oh, I Don't Know, I Suppose They Think Slavery Isn't Good Enough for Them.

Young Americans are giving up on capitalism. That's the angle of an article from Foreign Policy. The report paints a grim but familiar scenario.


Imagine that you’re twenty years old. You were born in 1996. You were five years old on 9/11. For as long as you can remember, the United States has been at war.

When you are twelve, in 2008, the global economy collapses. After years of bluster and bravado from President George W. Bush — who encouraged consumerism as a response to terror — it seems your country was weaker than you thought.

In America, the bottom falls out fast. 

The adults who take care of you struggle to take care of themselves. Perhaps your parent loses a job. Perhaps your family loses its home.

In 2009, politicians claim the recession is over, but your hardship is not. Wages are stagnant or falling. The costs of health care, child care, and tuition continue to rise exponentially. Full-time jobs turn into contract positions while benefits are slashed. Middle-class jobs are replaced with low-paying service work. The expectations of American life your parents had when you were born — that a “long boom” will bring about unparalleled prosperity — crumble away.

Baby boomers tell you there is a way out: a college education has always been the key to a good job. But that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. The college graduates you know are drowning in student debt, working for minimum wage, or toiling in unpaid internships. Prestigious jobs are increasingly clustered in cities where rent has tripled or quadrupled in a decade’s time. You cannot afford to move, and you cannot afford to stay. Outside these cities, newly abandoned malls join long abandoned factories. You inhabit a landscape of ruin. There is nothing left for you.

Every now and then, people revolt. When you are fifteen, Occupy Wall Street captivates the nation’s attention, drawing attention to corporate greed and lost opportunity. Within a year, the movement fades, and its members do things like set up “boutique activist consultancies.” When you are seventeen, the Fight for 15 workers movement manages to make higher minimum wage a mainstream proposition, but the solutions politicians pose are incremental. No one seems to grasp the urgency of the crisis. Even President Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat — the type of politician who’s supposed to understand poverty — declares that the economy has recovered.

America's young, the 18-29 year olds are turning against capitalism, at least the predatory capitalism that is the hallmark of neoliberalism.

According to an April 2016 Harvard University poll, support for capitalism is at a historic low. 51 percent of Americans in this age cohort [18-29] reject it, while 42 percent support it. 33 percent say they support socialism. The Harvard poll echoes a 2012 Pew survey, in which 46 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds had a positive view of capitalism, and 47 percent a negative one. While older generations had a slightly more positive take on capitalism — topping out at 52 percent for the oldest cohort, citizens over 65 — youth had a markedly different take on socialism. 49 percent viewed it positively, compared to just 13 percent of those 65 or older.

Does this mean that the youth of America are getting ready to hand over private property to the state and round up the kulaks? No. As many of those who reported on the Harvard survey noted, the terms “socialism” and “capitalism” were never defined. After meeting with survey takers, John Della Volpe, the director of the Harvard poll,told the Washington Post that respondents did not reject capitalism inherently as a concept. “The way in which capitalism is practiced today, in the minds of young people — that’s what they’re rejecting,” he said.

American youth seem to be rejecting modern predatory capitalism that preys on their generation. What they seek is some restoration of New Deal democracy, what I like to call progressive democracy. 

Things older generations took for granted — promotions, wages that grow over time, a 40-hour work week, unions, benefits, pensions, mutual loyalty between employers and employees — are increasingly rare.

As a consequence, these basic tenets of American work life, won by labor movements in the early half of the twentieth century, are now deemed “radical.” In this context, Bernie Sanders, whose policies echo those of New Deal Democrats, can be deemed a “socialist” leading a “revolution”. His platform seems revolutionary only because American work life has become so corrupt, and the pursuit of basic stability so insurmountable, that modest ambitions — a salary that covers your bills, the ability to own a home or go to college without enormous debt — are now fantasies or luxuries.You do not need a survey to ascertain the plight of American youth. You can look at their bank accounts, at the jobs they have, at the jobs their parents have lost, at the debt they hold, at the opportunities they covet but are denied. You do not need jargon or ideology to form a case against the status quo. The clearest indictment of the status quo is the status quo itself.

The crushing reality depicted in this article breathes life into Chris Hedges' contention that America is in a simmering, pre-revolutionary state. He argues that it's not a matter of if but when and then how bad will it be. Remember the Arab Spring uprisings were a result of several forces but youth disaffection was one of the most powerful. Sanders and Trump have shown that their country has a broad-based discontent that, when properly led, could be the kernel of open unrest that takes hold and spreads. 

Neoliberal capitalism with its hellspawn of globalism, inequality and oppression never was the "trickle down" cornucopia of prosperity and ease. It was, instead, a "trickle up" phenomenon where wealth was gradually sapped from the working classes, winding up in the laps of the 1%. It only took just 30 years for America to reach the point of economic feudalism.


Update: It's not just Americans who are being battered by today's predatory capitalism. Read this article, "I Go to Bed in Tears," from The Tyee.

Betrayal. The Debasement of the Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau.

You just can't get much lower than to betray Canada's wounded veterans. Yet now we have Justin giving us another unwanted glimpse of his true Harperian nature.

His government is doing something that will rightfully disgust most Canadians. It is going to court to revive the Harperian argument that Canada does not have a social contract or covenant to care for our war wounded.

My father lived with the benefit of that covenant from 1944 until his death seven years ago. He was horribly wounded in WWII while serving as an infantry lieutenant. Canada - at least my Canada as distinguished from this prime minister's - was on his side from the day he left the military hospital right to the day he died when we had to call to say the cleaning lady would no longer be needed.

The only way the relationship between the disabled vet and the nation can work is a covenant. Harper thought he could have somebody do some math and just write a cheque, sending the disabled vet on his way. That's not the way it works.

A veteran usually takes some time to recover, to get back on his feet (if he still has them).  Then he might do pretty well for a while, ten or twenty years. Maybe, maybe not. He may be just fine one day and collapse in a pool of blood at death's doorstep the next. And then as he gets old those wounds return. The normal aging process and decline can  quickly turn tougher, more dangerous.

The VA people used to be proactive. They didn't wait for you to ask. They checked, found out how you were doing and what you needed, figured out what they could do to help. If, as in my dad's case, the veteran winds up caring for his elderly spouse, that can be a real bugger. When that happened the VA people stepped in to shoulder part of the load.

It's the government that makes the call to send these people into harm's way. When they make that decision, knowing that some will die and some will be maimed, the country takes on a solemn responsibility to those soldiers and to their families. These people can be ordered into situations where their death is probable, at times even certain. We don't put civilians in that situation. There's a difference. It's in that fundamental difference that the covenant arises. It is beyond shameful for a government to deny it.

I Know. I'm Sorry. Still, It Has To Be Said.

I'm posting this because it illustrates the predicament we've got ourselves in and what might be entailed to get ourselves out of it. I know you don't want to read this but it's important, vitally important and so I feel obliged to post it anyway. I almost feel like I should be apologizing for this.

The planet is reeling from loss of biodiversity. This is a problem that reaches from lowly microbes to the largest lifeforms on Earth. Species are falling extinct at rates wildly above normal and far beyond sustainable. Surveys of non-human life of all sorts, marine and terrestrial, have found that life on Earth has declined by half since the 1970s. Our stocks of terrestrial life and down by half. Our stocks of marine life are down by half. In case you're wondering, they're still in decline also.

Along comes E.O. Wilson, a world class biologist, who has a way to fix all this. He wants us to set half the world aside for all other forms of life. Humans get half. Nature gets half. That goes for our oceans too.


The reason why half is the answer, according to Wilson, is located deep in the science of ecology.

“The principal cause of extinction is habitat loss. With a decrease of habitat, the sustainable number of species in it drops by (roughly) the fourth root of the habitable area,” Wilson wrote via email, referencing the species-area curve equation that describes how many species are capable of surviving long-term in a particular area.

By preserving half of the planet, we would theoretically protect 80% of the world’s species from extinction, according to the species-area curve. If protection efforts, however, focus on the most biodiverse areas (think tropical forests and coral reefs), we could potentially protect more than 80% of species without going beyond the half-Earth goal. In contrast, if we only protect 10% of the Earth, we are set to lose around half of the planet’s species over time. This is the track we are currently on.

Nice idea but there are snags. The biggest snag is that humanity, as we're constituted today, can't live with just half of Earth. The reason that our stocks of marine and terrestrial life have plummeted by half over the past four decades is because of us. We're taking so much of everything that there's not enough for everything else and so their numbers have to plummet.

In an essay for Aeon, Robert Fletcher and Bram Büscher, both social scientists with Wageningen University in the Netherlands, dub Wilson’s idea “truly bizarre.”

“For all his zeal, (misplaced) righteousness and passion, his vision is disturbing and dangerous,” they write. “It would entail forcibly herding a drastically reduced human population into increasingly crowded urban areas to be managed in oppressively technocratic ways. How such a global programme of conservation Lebensraum would be accomplished is left to the reader’s imagination.”

Did you get that? Wilson's solution would be truly dystopian beginning with a massive cull of humanity. Some calculations have concluded that Earth's human carrying capacity is just under 3 billion. Half an Earth then might need us to get down to 1.5 billion. We're nearing 7.5 billion now so that would be a cull of most of humanity and as much as 80%. Or we could go full-bore Blade Runner and cram billions more into chronic urban density.

The point, however, is that the way we're living now will not continue. This graphic from 2014 produced by the Global Footprint Network illustrates our ecological dilemma.

In 2014 we had reached the point where we, mankind, were consuming the equivalent of 1.5 times our planet's capacity for renewable resource replenishment. We needed one and a half planet Earths to support our consumption. Today that has reached the 1.7 point. By 2050 we'll hit 3.0 - except we won't. 

In the course of hunting down that graphic I came across this post from October, 2014 about a gathering of Nobel laureates who met annually to evaluate the state of our planet. They called for "revolutionary change" saying there was no other path.

The state of affairs is “catastrophic”, Peter Doherty, 1996 co-winner of the Nobel prize for medicine, said in a blunt appraisal.

From global warming, deforestation and soil and water degradation to ocean acidification, chemical pollution and environmentally-triggered diseases, the list of planetary ailments is long and growing, Doherty said.

...The worsening crisis means consumers, businesses and policymakers must consider the impact on the planet of every decision they make, he said.

Underpinning their concern are new figures highlighting that humanity is living absurdly beyond its means.

...“The peril seems imminent,” said US-Australian astrophysicist Brian Schmidt, co-holder of the 2011 Nobel physics prize for demonstrating an acceleration in the expansion of the universe.

“We are poised to do more damage to the Earth in the next 35 years than we have done in the last 1,000.”

It's well known that people, even progressives, tune out to reports dealing with the environment or climate change. The "head in the sand" approach guarantees one result and only one.

Making Sure Connie Can't Give Them the Slip, Except He Might Have Already

Is he still Lord Black of Crossharbour? Doesn't really matter. The Canada Revenue Agency has slapped a lien on Conrad Black's Toronto mansion to secure the $31-million he apparently owes in Canadian and U.S. taxes.

Documents filed in Federal Court proceedings related to the liens reveal that Mr. Black, who gave up his Canadian citizenship to sit in the British House of Lords, has little money left in his Canadian bank accounts and has made no attempt to renew a temporary residence permit that expires in September.

The documents say that Mr. Black, who has sold all his property in the United States and Britain, has refused to provide a bank letter of credit to secure his income tax debt on the sale of his Toronto mansion at 26 Park Lane Circle.


“It is open to Black, and would be relatively easy to move his funds, including liquidated equity from Park Lane, offshore and relocate abroad at any time, thereby jeopardizing the collection of his tax,” the revenue agency said.

Mr. Black owes $12.3-million in taxes to the Canadian government and $19.3-million to the U.S. tax department, according to the documents. As of March 11, 2016, he had balances of $38,900 and $6,834 U.S. in his Canadian bank accounts, despite large lump-sum payments made to him over the previous two years.

...The documents also show an unusual arrangement in the sale of Mr. Black’s mansion, which is now on hold. The undisclosed price was $14-million, which was $5-million less than an appraisal commissioned by Canada Revenue Agency.

Revenue investigator Jon-Paul Rebellato said in the court documents that the unnamed buyer agreed to lease the mansion back to Mr. Black at an annual rent of $155,000. The sale included a verbal agreement with the purchaser to give Mr. Black 50 per cent of the proceeds of any future sale of the property.

Mortgages on the 23,000-square-foot house, nestled on 6.6 acres, amount to $13-million.

Something, as you might have guessed, is not right here. Connie's tapped? No money in the bank. A 14-million dollar property subject to a 13-million dollar mortgage? The guy owes 31-million in outstanding taxes. AND HE'S NOT BANKRUPT? His creditors, the Canadian and U.S. governments haven't petitioned Black into bankruptcy so they can go after his worldwide assets, find out where everything (if there is anything) is hidden?

Something is not adding up.

Movin' On Up

Canada has moved up. We are now the second biggest supplier of arms to the Middle East.

The most authoritive defence industry publisher, Janes, also puts Canada 6th overall in global arms trading.

Just a question. If we're doing such a landslide business selling armaments to foreigners, why is our military in such bad shape?

Canada has also vaulted to sixth overall among all arms-exporting countries, based on rankings released by Jane’s this week. This means only five countries are currently selling more weapons and military equipment.

IHS Jane’s analyst Ben Moores said he suspects Canada has never ranked so highly among all arms-exporting countries and that it certainly hasn’t held that position in the past 15 years.

The Trudeau government, asked whether it took pride in Canada’s expanded role as a weapons seller and would feature this achievement in trade promotion materials, referred the questions to a department of Global Affairs bureaucrat. The civil servant instead said Ottawa hopes to toughen screening of weapons sold to foreigners.

“The government of Canada remains firmly committed to introducing more transparency and rigour in export controls,” spokeswoman Rachna Mishra said.

Yeah, right.

Cesar Jaramillo, executive director of Project Ploughshares, a disarmament group in Waterloo, Ont., that is an agency of the Canadian Council of Churches and tracks arms shipments, said Canadians should be worried that their country is now the second-largest arms exporter to “the most volatile region in the world” today.

“This ranking comes days after Canada addressed the UN Security Council and highlighted the importance of protecting civilians in conflict zones … it is civilians who are often most at risk as a result of arms dealings, in particular to regions engulfed in conflict and notorious for their poor human rights records,” Mr. Jaramillo said.

Wait a minute, did I just hear that right? Canada put in an appearance at the UN Security Council to deliver a lecture on the "importance of protecting civilians in conflict zones?" Yet we'll sell Death Wagons to the Saudis who are relentlessly slaughtering Houthi civilians in Yemen. Yeah, this "we'll do better next time, promise" stuff is bullshit.

The United States of Assholery

How did America give birth to this sub-culture of total assholes? Case in point, Tennessee representative Andy Holt.

Just days before the Orlando massacre, Holt announced a fundraiser would be held at his family farm.  He was laying on quite a spread, a roasted hog, a petting zoo, live music and hay rides for the kids. And there was even a door prize, an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle.

In the wake of the Orlando slaughter, representative Holt realized the situation had changed. And so he decided he'd give away not one AR-15, but two.

"That's right…. I'm now giving away TWO AR-15s!" he wrote on Facebook on Monday. "I'm sick and tired of the media and liberal politicians attacking our right to keep and bear arms. I'll do everything I can to ensure the 2nd Amendment is protected and people are equipped to exercise their innate right to self-defense [sic]."

It's not that some lowlife like representative Holt did something like this that's troubling. It's the utter predictability, no - absolute certainty, that a tragedy like the Orlando shootings would generate this type of response, that is the most disturbing part of modern American culture. That is a civilization in decline.


 

What Do Bill Maher and Donald Trump Have in Common?

According to Foreign Policy's Judy Ioffe, comedian Maher and comedian Trump share the same warped Islamophobia.


Speaking after “appreciating the congrats” on the Orlando shootings, Donald Trump again insisted that what mowed people down at Pulse was not an assault rifle but radical Islam, because in Trump Tower, it cannot be both. Trump’s world is binary. It is zero-sum: Either guns kill people or radical Islam kills people. In that world, only one religion can be bad, and so Christianity is good and Islam is bad. Christianity is peaceful and Islam violent. Christianity is tolerant and Islam intolerant. Both are inherently one thing or the other, immutable blueprints etched in stone for the behavior of their respective adherents.

This is a worldview that is shared by people who are Trump supporters and not Trump supporters. In the secular vernacular, we might call this view “Manichean,” that is, a binary between light and darkness, good and evil.

...I am tired of hearing, from Bill Maher and from Donald Trump, that Islam is inherently violent. I am even more tired of hearing that Christianity is inherently peaceful. I have witnessed this debate play out many times over, including at one dinner party when Laura Ingraham turned to the other guests and took a poll: Raise your hands if you think Islam is a death cult. Most of the (politically conservative) guests raised their hands and then took pains to explain to me how, unlike Islam, Christianity is inherently a religion of love.

...Conservatives roll their eyes when you mention the Crusades — oh, that old thing? — and I’m sure they will when they see the reference to the Manicheans, but they both matter, especially if you’re trying to argue that religions have inherent characteristics.

The Crusades are still a sore subject in the Muslim world, but it’s easy to forget the havoc they wreaked on the Jews of Europe. Time after time, as Crusaders slogged southeast on their umpteenth trip to the Holy Land, they slaughtered the Jews in their path. They herded them into synagogues and set the buildings alight. The Crusaders killed so many Jews in the name of their Christian faith that it was the most stunning demographic blow to European Jewry until the Holocaust. Which, just a friendly reminder, happened in Christian, civilized Europe only 70-some years ago.

And if you don’t believe me about the brutal repression of Manichean Christians, you can read about it here in the Catholic Encyclopedia (a publication that “chronicles what Catholic artists, educators, poets, scientists and men of action have achieved in their several provinces”). The Christian Church was ruthless with people whose faith was in any way a deviation from the canon, torturing and burning heretics at the stake. After Martin Luther pinned his theses to a church door, unintentionally spawning a new wing of Christianity, it led to hundreds of years of on-and-off religious warfare between Christians, spilling each other’s blood in the fervent belief that their vision of Christ was the truest. And it’s not ancient history: Violence between Protestants and Catholics continued in Christian Ireland until the very end of the 20th century.

...There are so many historical examples I could mention — Christians killing Jews because they blamed them for the plague; the fact that the word “ghetto” comes from the enclosures in which Jews were forced to live in medieval Venice; the pogroms in which the Russian Orthodox Church encouraged their flocks to kill the non-believing Jews. If that’s too far back in time for you, consider July 1988, the thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Russia: Rumors flew in Moscow that there would be a pogrom to celebrate the day Christianity came to Russia, and that the police were handing out addresses of Jews to the public. (That’s when my family decided to flee Holy Rus.)

Ioffe got a barrage of anti-Semitism from The Donald's Trumpeteers in the wake of an expose on Melania Trump in GQ. Really, really vile stuff. As for the gays:

Watching Trump and the Christian right go after Islam for being homophobic is, frankly, jaw-dropping. If any community in this country has shown itself to be anti-gay, it is conservative Christians and their decades of peddling hatred for gay people, comparing homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, claiming AIDS is divine punishment, pushing “cures” for homosexuality, and blocking laws that prevent gays not just from marrying but from being discriminated against. A Christian pastor, who has enjoyed the company of Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz, recentlysaid that, according to the Bible, homosexuals “deserve the death penalty.” Now the very same people who, just last month, were comparing trans people to predators who would use the wrong bathroom to hunt for child victims are suddenly lining up to defend gays from radical Islam.

...Friday will mark the one-year anniversary of Dylann Roof killing nine people in the middle of a Bible study in Charleston, S.C. Before his rampage, he wrote a manifesto declaring his allegiance to the white supremacist cause and pointing to the Council of Conservative Citizens, which claims to adhere to “Christian beliefs and values,” as a major source of information and inspiration. By some accounts, Roof came from a church-going family and attended Christian summer camp. Did Roof kill his fellow Christians because he was deranged or because Christianity is violent?”

...No religion is inherently violent. No religion is inherently peaceful. Religion, any religion, is a matter of interpretation, and it is often in that interpretation that we see either beauty or ugliness — or, more often, if we are mature enough to think nuanced thoughts, something in between.

Saudi Prince Snubbed?

In the wake of Hillary Clinton's remarks linking Saudi Arabia to Islamist terrorism, a possible new rebuke to Riyadh, this time from the White House.

It was billed by Riyadh’s state media as a trip for Saudi Arabia’s powerful deputy crown prince to meet with President Barack Obama and other senior U.S. officials. But now that Prince Mohammed bin Salman has arrived in Washington, it’s still unclear if the president or any White House officials will meet with him, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

“No confirmation at this time for any WH meetings,” White House spokesperson Dew Tiantawach told Foreign Policy.

“Very unusual for the Saudis to come out saying he is meeting with Obama and White House not confirming it,” said David Ottaway, a Saudi expert at the Wilson Center in Washington. “They certainly knew he was coming.”

Prince Salman is also the Saudi defence minister which taints him with the atrocities (war crimes) his military is inflicting on Houthi civilians in Yemen. As I understand it, he's also next in line to the Saudi throne.

Does Europe Offer a Glimpse Into Our Future? Is the Old Political Dynamic Passing Away?

The mass support shown for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump has been a measure of the powerful disaffection among the American public. Both are/were anti-establishment figures who spoke to public discontent with their mainstream political parties.

Something similar seems to be underway in Europe. An article from The Guardian suggests a broad-based discontent, from the far left to the far right and everything in between has "mainstream parties in full retreat."


The concerns of many may be broadly the same: immigration, integration, jobs, incomes, the EU, political and business elites. The euro crisis, followed by Europe’s migrant crisis and the Paris and Brussels terror attacks have fuelled their rise.

But their ideological roots are very different: from anti-establishment to neo-fascist, nationalist to anti-austerity, authoritarian to populist, libertarian to Catholic ultra-conservative.

Germany’s AfD is not Hungary’s Fidesz. The Finns and the Danish People’s party loathe France’s Front National, and the Netherlands’ PVV is nothing like Poland’s Law and Justice, which bears no resemblance to Austria’s Freedom party. It may be misleading to bracket them all together in the same category.

What is undeniably happening, however, is that the continent’s traditional mainstream parties are in full retreat. Across Europe, the centre-left social democrats and centre-right Christian democrats who have dominated national politics for 60 years are in decline.

Following a collapse in support for its two centrist parties last December, Spain has been unable to form a government and will hold fresh elections next month. The three mainstream parties in the Netherlands are set to win 40% of the vote between them in elections next year – roughly what any one of them might have got previously.

Even in Germany, it seems highly likely that support for liberal and green parties and, above all, the populist, anti-immigrant AfD, could soon bring to an end an era of two-party political stability that has endured since the end of the second world war.

Is the old political apparatus also failing us in Canada? To me it does seem so, quite clearly. From globalization and the surrender of state sovereignty to inequality and the rise of corporatism to the environment and climate change our governments no longer seem to be acting in the public interest. It's as though representative democracy has atrophied under the governance of our mainstream parties. We are no longer led. Today we are ruled, administered by visionless technocrats who fiddle with this and meddle with that to no coherent end. Perhaps it is just a symptom of some greater malady looming. Who can tell?

Are We Spoiling For a Fight?

Yesterday it was CSIS egging the Canadian government on with dire warnings that Vlad Putin was mobilizing Russian forces and war could be imminent.

Today comes word that the US Navy's Third Fleet, its eastern Pacific/home waters navy, is sailing for China's marine backyard, the East and South China Seas.

The Third Fleet, based in San Diego, California, traditionally has confined its operations to the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean's international dateline.

Japan's Nikkei Asian Review quoted the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift, as saying on Tuesday that the move came in the "context of uncertainty and angst in the region," an apparent reference to China's behavior.

Swift argued that the Navy should utilize the "total combined power" of the 140,000 sailors, over 200 ships and 1,200 aircraft that make up the Pacific Fleet.

The Seventh Fleet consists of an aircraft carrier strike group, 80 other vessels and 140 aircraft. The Third Fleet has more than 100 vessels, including four aircraft carriers.

Pacific Fleet commander, 4-star admiral Scott Swift left no doubt about this mission.

"This is real. The commitment of the 3rd Fleet [operating] forward is real," Swift said, pointing out that the deployment engages the entire Pacific command's 140,000-sailors, 200 ships and 1,200 aircraft.

Does CSIS Want Canada On a War Footing?

According to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Vlad Putin is going for his guns and it could mean war is on our horizon.

Fine time to tell us now that our army's kit is clapped out from Afghanistan, our navy is rusting into scale incapable of sallying forth to defend any of our three coastlines, and our air force is having to make do with a paltry number of "long in the tooth" warplanes and little else.

The Trudeau government is considering a request to commit hundreds of troops to eastern Europe and take part command of a new NATO force being assembled to deter Russian aggression.

Canada's participation in the Baltic operation was discussed Tuesday by the military alliance's defence ministers, including Canada's Harjit Sajjan, at a meeting in Brussels.

This comes just days after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service quietly released an open-sourced global security analysis warning, among other things, that the hard-line policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin are becoming more deeply entrenched and that Moscow is retooling its military for a fight.

Yes, Russia is rearming. No question about that. It's the "spoiling for a fight" part that has to be questioned. There's a huge difference between worrying about this giant military alliance that has been marched right up to your borders and wanting to pick a fight that you will almost certainly lose and might not even survive at all.

Using stark language, the report warned decision-makers not to treat Putin's rearmament drive lightly.

"Russia is not modernizing its military primarily to extend its capacity to pursue hybrid warfare," the 104 page report said, referring to the Kremlin's use of irregular tactics to take over Crimea. "It is modernizing conventional military capability on a large scale; the state is mobilizing for war."

I think CSIS overstated its position if it indeed claimed that Putin is mobilizing for war. In a military context, mobilization is a very loaded term. It speaks to a heightened state of military readiness, a massing of forces, an immediacy of action. In the American system it would be the equivalent of Defcon 3, perhaps even Defcon 2. There's no indication that the Russians are doing anything of the sort. They're rearming. So are we.

One thing for sure. If either side does provoke a shooting war it won't resemble anything we've known since the Korean War, perhaps even WWII.