Out of Afghanistan

End Of A Terrible Era 

Everything about the war in Afghanistan sucks. It went on for so long people kind of got inured to this phenomenon out there in the middle of Eurasia whereby USA and its allies stationed their troops, flew combat missions, trained a largely low-motivation Afghan military and for years seemed to feed the Hollywood fodder of a seemingly endless, pointless, witless Forever War. It got so bad it made a defective POTUS like Donald Trump look vaguely statesmanlike when he announced he was completely pulling out the American troops.Yes, the same president who thought sitting down with Kim Jong-Un was a good move. 

The cost of the war is staggering; the human carnage and damage is staggering; the very pointlessness of it is mind warping; and we have to wonder if any of it accomplished anything. We did learn a lot about the nature of war in the contemporary world. We can't go to war without legitimacy and this desire for legitimacy prohibits us from doing drastic terrible things. We can get all the air superiority win the world, but we cannot carpet bomb them all - we're not willing to do that any more. We say we want to win over hearts and minds, but the kinds of troopers we send over like the SAS seem to be high functioning psychopaths, out on a safari to shoot locals. There's no wining of any hearts and minds with all that. 

I've mentioned it elsewhere that the USA is not willing to pay for health and education in rebuilding Afghanistan because they don't even spend that money back home in places like Alabama and Louisiana. Why would they? So that shows to us that America probably shouldn't go marching into places it doesn't want to turning the 51st state of the USA.   

There's a weird irony that then day Kabul fell to the Taliban is also VJ day. Wars rarely end with any dignity or decorum. This one ends with the powers leaving behind a vacuum that will get filled by the flotsam and jetsam of world politics. The fearless prediction we can make is that the Taliban will rise to being a threat again. The Americans will go back again. There will be no plan next time either. 

How Do We Feel About This?

I started this blog way back when around the time they first sent troops to Afghanistan. Blogging was sort of new then, and it seemed like a fun thing to pass commentary upon. I was not a soldier, I was in do danger at all in this 'war on terror', so I had all the luxury in the world to snark away at the conduct of the conservative governments in USA and Australia as well as bitch about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's ethically challenged Labour Government in the UK. Did the war affect me? It did in strange ways. I won't go into them all but basically I watched liberal democracy dismantle itself in the face of the boogeyman it created for itself. The arts and humanities got defunded over that time, and everybody seemed to lose interest in culture-as-national-project. In turn we've allowed neo-nazis and extremely rightists to gain access to the mainstream, and everybody seems to have forgotten about Marx and Engels. 

I have to admit, the going got so stupid around the early part of the last decade that I gave up commenting on politics. There's a certain kind of idiocy with leaders who choose ideological positioning over proper policy considerations, and such idiocies are too demeaning to analyse. If it can be said that you cannot polish a turd but you can roll fit in glitter; well, there's only so much rolling around the turd can take without losing shape. That's kind of how much our politics and polity devolved in the course of the Afghan War - it turned into a formless bit of turd.

In a way I am glad the USA is out of Afghanistan. It's no place to be, and no place to be dropping money. It is a thankless task to keep the peace in a country surrounded by countries that want to destabilise it or turn it into a puppet or colony. And truth be told it's hard to say for certain the Afghanis really liked having Americans there to keep the peace. The very fact that the Afghan government collapsed like a house of cards as the Allies headed for the door suggests the Afghanis themselves were far less serious about the value of the Peace being kept by the American presence. Now is the awful time of reckoning, The Taliban will come back and run their medieval government. There will be refugees headed for Europe and America and Australia. There will be leaky boats once more. We've lined ourselves up for another bout of history repeating. 

So What Now?

America will probably do a bit of soul searching about the twin follies waged by the George W Bush Administration. They really should. The failure is very real, although somewhat vague. As with Iraq, it was easy enough to dislodge the shitty government. What was hard was to set up a viable government in its wake. Worse still, they left the military there for a long time in a bid to shore up whatever democratic civil government they could. The fact that they did for nearly 2 decades may not actually be a straight up failure.

The Chinese government had talks with the Taliban. Presumably they want to back the Taliban government in the hopes of seeing stability. They might find the Taliban are a lot worse than having the Americans on their backdoor. After all, you're talking about a government founded on the idea that if you're not Islam, you're little people. Godless-Communists-As-Your-Friends might be a bit of a hard sell with these people. Your enemy of your enemy might be your friend, but something tells me the enemies of enemies like these might just be just another enemy. 

If there's one thing I'm willing to prognosticate upon, I think the Taliban will be just as dreadful this time through as they were in 1996-2001. It was a long time ago and people have short memories but, the Taliban were simply terrible. There will be pain.  

Last Thought On This Matter

You know what's amazing? There are still prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that date back to the early days of this war. 

Trumporama

The Contradiction Shows The Cognitive Dissonance

I don't think the Trump Presidency is going to make it to June. Basically, the problem lies in the fact that having won the election on a dodgy kind of technicality, he's trying to push ahead as if he has a mandate when in reality he is one of the last popular incoming Presidents in the history of modern polling. He's hardly in a position to push for any mandate to do radical stuff. If anything he should be treading very delicately so that he can at least get the lay of the land and get used to a presidential routine. He's in the metaphorical big leagues now, so if we extend the baseball metaphor, it's time he put his game face on and started fielding the routine plays, play each ball on its merits and try to make good contact with the bat. Instead he's gotten to first base on a dropped third strike and proceeded to get picked off. It's not looking like he actually belongs.

Despite being the Republican POTUS, his notions of policy direction bears little relationship to the stated Republican values and objective, and as such a growing number of Republicans are deserting the cause of the President.

Overnight, the commentary is looking forward to an impeachment.

Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.

Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.

The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?

In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.


They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:

“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)

“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”

Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.

Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.

That looks ominous. Trump's presidency in roughly a working week has careened from reckless to loose, swinging wrecking ball as it has failed to fill positions, sacked ambassadors, and enacted directives that have blown up around the world.

Here's a more detailed track of what that list of messes looks like, but more simply, there's this alarming chart:

I do want to point out this bit:

(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies. 

Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.” 

Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.

Finally, somebody is talking about this in the Anglophone Sphere. 

Anyway, the Frankenstein Monster that is the Department of Homeland Security is  finally getting up and around creating the havoc its critics predicted years ago when it was conceived in the wake of 9/11:

Note also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday, and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a role in the decision. 

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.

Yeah. So logically, the DHS can ignore courts and exercise its prerogatives, and the ramification of that is the Trump administration really is about the Putin-isation of American politics, concentrating power in the executive office.

You can expect that impeachment call to come in before June is through, but it might not be in time before Donald Trump uses the DHS to cut out the Courts, Congress, and the Senate, and then silences the media and academia.  This is looking a lot uglier than people imagined. 

There's Something About Donald

On The Eve of Trumpageddon

Nothing about a world given over to billionaires is all that comforting or comfortable. We underestimate just much the 0.1% enrol the wealth of the world and by extension the media and information flow. In most instances we choose not to look into it because in most cases a misguided sense of modesty forbids us to compare ourselves to the stupendously wealthy. but then of course Donald Trump comes along an pecan't but help compare our commons sense against the man and find him wanting. And so it is with his choices for education secretary and chief of EPA and so on. The amazing thing is that the trump Presidency hasn't yet begun as of this writing and already it is feeling like a tired, failed administration.

In that spirit, I'd like to show you a small paper trail on the internet that's been bothering me for the last fortnight.

Here's the first link, sent to me by somebody who reads Russian. I know it's all in Russian, but one can resort to Google Translate and thesis what we get:

Взятка на 10,5 млрд. евро? Путин и Сечин подарили Трампу 19,5% акций «Роснефти»? 

Google Translate: Bribe to 10.5 billion. Euro? Putin and Sechin gave Trump 19.5% of shares of "Rosneft"?

The other entries go:

Доклад отдела разведки, 2016/134, 18 октября 2016, с. 30:
2. Что касается содержания разговоров, то помощник СЕЧИНа сообщил, что президент «Роснефти» настолько заинтересован в снятии западных личных и корпоративных санкций, наложенных на компанию, что он предложил помощникам ПЕЙДЖа/ТРАМПа в обмен брокеридж на 19 процентов (приватизированного) пакета акций в Роснефти. ПЕЙДЖ выразил интерес и подтвердил, что если ТРАМП будет избран президентом США, то тогда антироссийские санкции будут сняты.

Google Translate: The report of the Intelligence Department, 2016/134, 18 October 2016, p. thirty:
2. With regard to the content of conversations, the assistant Sechin said that the president of "Rosneft" is so interested in the removal of personal and corporate Western sanctions imposed on the company, he suggested assistants Paige / Trump exchange brokerage by 19 percent (privatized) stake in Rosneft. PAGE expressed interest and confirmed that if TRUMP will be elected president of the United States, then the anti-Russian sanctions are lifted.

Company Intelligence Report 2016/134, 18 October 2016, p.30:
2. In terms of the substance of their discussions, SECHIN’s associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered PAGE/TRUMP’s associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return. PAGE has expressed interest and confirmed that were TRUMP elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

If that's not interesting, here's another block:

Москва, Кремль, 7 декабря 2016 г., 22:00:
В.Путин: Игорь Иванович, хочу Вас поздравить с завершением приватизационной сделки по реализации крупного пакета нашей ведущей нефтегазовой компании «Роснефть» – 19,5 процента. Сделка совершена на восходящем тренде стоимости нефти, соответственно, это отражается на стоимости самой компании.
В этом смысле время очень удачное, да и общий объём сделки значительный – 10,5 миллиарда евро. ...это крупнейшая приватизационная сделка, крупнейшая продажа и приобретение в нефтегазовом секторе в мире за уходящий, 2016 год.
Очень рассчитываю на то, что приход новых инвесторов... приход в органы управления будет улучшать корпоративные процедуры, прозрачность компании и, соответственно, в конечном итоге будет приводить к росту капитализации.
В целом это очень хороший результат. Хочу вас всех, ваших коллег, которые работали по этому направлению, поздравить с этим результатом…
Мы с Вами знаем, что у компании «Роснефтегаз», которая в конечном итоге и должна перечислять деньги в бюджет, есть значительные ресурсы в рублях.
В.Путин: И наших инвесторов, новых участников и акционеров компании «Роснефть», пригласите в Россию, мы их примем на высоком правительственном уровне.
<…>
http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53431

Google Translate: The Kremlin, Moscow, December 7, 2016 22:00:
Vladimir Putin: Mr Sechin, I want to congratulate you on the completion of the privatization process for the implementation of a large block of our leading oil and gas company "Rosneft" - 19.5 percent. The transaction was executed on the upward trend in oil prices, respectively, is reflected in the value of the company.
In this sense, time is very good, and the total amount of the transaction significantly - to 10.5 billion euros. ... It is the largest privatization deal, the largest sale and purchase of oil and gas sector in the world in the outgoing year 2016.
I very much hope that the arrival of new investors in the coming ... controls will improve corporate procedures, transparency of the company and, accordingly, will ultimately lead to an increase in capitalization.
In general this is a very good result. I want all of you, your colleagues, who have worked in this area, congratulations with this result ...
We both know that the company "Rosneftegas", which ultimately must transfer the money to the budget, there are significant resources in rubles.
Vladimir Putin: And our investors, new members and shareholders of the company "Rosneft", was invited to Russia, we will take them to the highest levels of government.
<...>
http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53431

Anyway, the fragments are leaks from inside the Kremlin according to this journalist Andrey Illarionov:

On 3 January 2005 Illarionov resigned from his position as presidential representative to the G8.[2] On 21 December 2005, Illarionov declared "This year Russia has become a different country. It is no longer a democratic country. It is no longer a free country". The Washington Post reported that he had cited a recent report by the U.S.-based and government sponsored Freedom House.[3] On 27 December 2005, Illarionov offered his resignation in protest against the government course, saying that Russia was no longer politically free, but ran by an authoritarian elite. "It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free. It is another thing when the political system has changed, and the country has stopped being free and democratic," he said.[4] He also claimed that he had no more ability to influence the government's course and that Kremlin put limits on him expressing his point of view. Illarionov was openly critical to such elements of the Russian economic policy as the Yukosaffair, increasing influence of government officials on large companies such as Gazprom and Rosneft, and at last the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute and the energy policy of Russia in general.[1] Illarionov has also been a proponent of secession of Chechnya.[5]

You get the feeling he's trying to get all this stuff out. According to the original person who sent me the Russian link, Illarionov's contention is that based on the leaks, the Kremlin has had Donald Trump as an asset going back 5 years. It may not have been purely Donald Trump's sea to run for President, and that the 19.5% stake in Rosneft is ear-marked for the Trump family business should he succeed in lifting sanctions on Russia - a sanction designed to hit Putin and his cronies.

Since the new year, this business Trump's dossier has grown, but what seems to have gathered the most traction is not that Trump might be in the control of the Kremlin but that he is being blackmailed by a bit of video showing him participating in Golden showers with Russian prostitutes. Vladimir Putin himself has dismissed the dossier (and also told us that Russian prostitutes are undoubtedly the best in the world) which further muddies the already murky puddle.

All the same, there's a carrot (10.5billion euros from the 19.5% sale of Rosneft); there's stick (the KGB have something on Donald Trump); and the likely cui bono of Putin getting his sanctions lifted. In other words, this is serious boys and girls. Now, maybe Trump was coerced into running, but didn't want to win -which would explain the bizarre flip flops on all the things that would have killed other candidates' chances like the support of the KKK or denigrating a disabled journalist on nationwide TV. They're not things a candidate wants to win goes about doing. but the purpose was not to win, then it makes more sense.

I ran all of the above past somebody else who has Russian links, and they came back with this link which is a compendium of various links that seems to point at shady dealings surrounding Rosneft.

Even with all the conflict of interests going on and the likelihood of early impeachment (what an amazing phrase to be typing I tell you!) Donald Trump may go full steam ahead with lifting sanctions on Putin and his mates in order to collect that 10.5billion euros, just waiting to be paid into Trump Corporation's Swiss bank accounts or wherever he has a tax haven bank account.

I'm telling you, we've never seen anything like this. The world will not end with a bang but amidst laughter from all the gallows humour this man will beget.

From The Pleiades Mailbag - 06/Jan/2017

Standing Rock

Here's a little essay about Standing Rock. The writer likens the stand off to a moment from an imagined Zombie Apocalypse. You can just see that analogy right? Of course, how could those officers lined up to intimidate the Native Americans be so impervious to their own inhumanity? They must be some kind of cultural zombie, right?

At the head of the gathering army of the dead will be a man who brags about his lack of compassion and is so hollowed out by his punishing narcissism that he must compulsively eat our minds with tweets and outrageous behavior so as to fill his emptiness with our attention. His appetite for selfish self-regard seems immense enough to swallow the planet. It’s the appetite the Native-Americans witnessed as the European invasion crossed the continent. Hoisting the false flag of energy independence, our new zombie-in-chief promises a nationwide effort to extract coal, oil and gas offshore and in every natural environment. More pipelines, more strip mines, more deadly warming, more sacrifice zones. 

With Donald Trump a zombie apocalypse arrives, and the Indians at Standing Rock are on the front lines. 

The true origin of this zombie pandemic is of course us, we and the darker angels of our American culture. We are the culture that inspired the world with the ideal of human equality and self-governance. But we are also a culture motivated by fear. It is at work everywhere: in workplace competition, in our paranoia about immigrants, terrorists, ‘liberals,’ the ‘alt-right,’ even and perhaps especially in the pop up ads and blaring commercials that compel us to buy products by making us afraid that we’re lacking something, missing out, not part of the ‘winners.’ Our culture extols the supreme value of the self and is spellbound by narcissists and celebrities, justifies greed as good. Our consumerism, our sense of entitlement and exceptionalism have become part and parcel of the American dream, which in its grossest but most popular form is the dream of a better life filled with ever more comforts, conveniences, frivolous distractions, ersatz privilege (extra legroom on the airplane) and mountainous material possessions, most of them headed for the nearest landfill, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or entangled in a sea bird’s stomach.

Like it or not, American culture in its current form destines our spirits to a disconnection from the Earth. Nature has become something we work to own a piece of in the middle class suburbs, or enjoy on our vacations. Many of us, possibly even most of us, feel helpless pangs when we see evidence of the ecological devastation our ravenous culture is wreaking, but even at our most pained we don’t feel wounds inflicted on the Earth as the Indigenous peoples do. During the three presidential debates no question was asked the candidates about environmental issues, and we Americans accepted that as okay. We have become deadened, zombie-fied. Now, as a country, we have chosen to elect a president pledged to perpetrate a conspiracy theory, a grand delusion reality show denying that any environmental crisis even exists. Whisked from their busy human bodies, more spirits will go missing, “lost.” The zombie apocalypse will spread.

Standing Rock, together with the Adani mine in Australia are the two big fossil fuel projects that need to be stopped.

Venezuela Is About To Blow

Venezuela is a troubling nation. Under Hugo Chavez, it was one part populist bullshit as politics, one part military junta-ism, and one part incoherent cult of personality around Hugo Chavez. And while Hugo Chavez himself was kind funky in some small, personal ways - he played a Stratocaster, - as head of government of Venzuela, he sort of ran the country right at financial ruin, a bit like driving the Titanic right at the ice berg. Now, it's looking like crunch time is upon them.

There are, I might add, shades of Gough Whitlam too in what Chavez was able to join his lifetime:

Chavez was intent on utilizing Venezuela’s oil wealth to transform the lives of the masses of the people, instead of allowing it to remain in the hands of the nation’s oligarchs, who used it to fund exorbitant lifestyles redolent of Miami Beach, Monaco, and Beverly Hills. The Venezuelan president undoubtedly kept his word, as over the next decade a social transformation took place in the country, measured in vast improvements in literacy, healthcare, housing, and the overall share of the nation’s wealth redistributed to the poor. Social spending doubled under Chavez from 11.3 percent of GDP in 1998 to 22.8 percent of GDP in 2011. The Gini coefficient, measuring income inequality, improved from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the region.

These achievements should be considered in the context of a relentless attempt by the forces of the right in Venezuela – the oligarchs in control of the private media, big business, and other economic interests – to block, derail, and even overturn the country’s democracy with an attempted coup in 2002, followed by a politically orchestrated strike within the oil industry in 2002-03.

Of course, this was all well and good when oil was fetching US$100 a barrel. What has made Venezuela come unstuck was how the oil prices plunged in the last 18months - pretty much because the Saudi Arabians wanted to kill off the shale oil industry in America.

And that brings us sort of to today.

For good or bad, oil was the economic foundations of the Bolivarian Revolution inspired and led by Hugo Chavez. It is a commodity whose price is so volatile that it can only leave economies dependent on it vulnerable to global factors outwith their control. But this oil dependency cannot be laid at the door of either Chavez or his successor Nicolas Maduro. The country’s underdevelopment had taken root long before they arrived on the scene, a consequence of generations of Venezuela’s unofficial status as US neo colony controlled by a small clique of oligarchs who benefited from this state of affairs. 

Those oligarchs and vested interests never went away. On the contrary, exploiting Chavez’s determination to uphold the most advanced example of mass participatory democracy Latin America has seen, the right in Venezuela has been hyperactive over many years in its efforts to undermine, oppose, and ultimately end everything to do with Chavez and Chavism. In this they have enjoyed Washington’s unflinching support.

It is capitalism not socialism that has failed the people of Venezuela. However it is socialism that is carrying the can. Consequently, as things now stand, the Bolivarian Revolution is teetering on the brink.

It reminds us of Australia and its economic fortunes being tied so closely to coal. The rest of the world is moving on to renewable energy and here we are peddling our fossil fuels to keep our housing bubble going (and really, that's what it's come down to). We might go on about the integrity of our democracy, but structurally speaking, we're not that different to Venezuela. One of these days we might even vote in a hard left leader akin to Gough and you watch how quickly the vested interests and the 1% will manoeuvre to rid us of such a leader. You really can't discount the dynamics of the people who want to keep our country on a losing wicket.

Still, keep thatVenezuela thing in mind...

The Veil Of Niceties Fails Big

How awful were the 2016 US elections? Here's the explanation of the double-bind by which many sensible voters found themselves trapped:

Bernie Sanders put his 12 million primary voters and other supporters in a double-bind. For Sanders supporters, Hillary Clinton epitomized what they despised. Clinton has been: heavily supported by Wall Street and arms dealers; repeatedly pro-war from Iraq to Libya; a friend and admirer of Henry Kissinger, who for Sanders supporters is one of the greatest war criminals in world history; a former board member of the anti-labor union Wal-Mart Board of Directors; a co-sponsor of the Flag-Protection Act of 2005, which included prison terms for those who destroy the flag; and has had an otherwise despicable and untrustworthy history for progressives. 

Bernie Sanders’ choice was to either support someone that his supporters despise and distrust or don’t support Clinton and Trump wins, and the Democratic Party and its media operatives politically assassinate Sanders as was done with Ralph Nader post-2000 election. Sanders’ public reaction was to choose what he had many reasons to believe was a false reality—that Clinton was not going to betray her new-found progressivism. Given Clinton’s history, Sanders had good reason to believe that Clinton as president would likely betray campaign progressive promises and simply blame failure on the Republicans. But rather than choosing Nader’s path, Sanders suppressed the reality of Clinton, and asked his supporters to do the same. 

Many Sanders supporters could not shed the reality of Hillary Clinton’s anti-progressive history and that the Democratic Party establishment had sabotaged Sanders (who the polls had shown had a much better chance than Clinton of beating Trump); and these supporters lost faith in both Sanders and the electoral process and did not vote—a political-self psychotic break of sorts for people who had ardently believed in voting.

Other Sanders supporters followed Sanders’ direction and voted for Clinton, only to find themselves now assaulted by the reality that Sanders had instructed them to support a corrupt political process that resulted in Trump winning anyway.

If you thought the Sanders supporters got it bad, well, maybe you should spare a thought for the Basket of Deplorables after all.

How about Trump supporters? Millions of Trump supporters, even before his inauguration, began having their political-self psychotic break, recognizing that they had been “played,” that Trump had no intention of keeping his campaign promises, and used them to gain power and attention. 

A major issue for Trump supporters was “crony capitalism,” but even before Trump was inaugurated, he orchestrated the Carrier deal of tax breaks for jobs, which was so obviously a betrayal that even Sara Palin decried it calling it “crony capitalism.”
That has not been Trump’s only pre-inauguration betrayal. 

Trump repeatedly promised to “drain the swamp.” The epitome of the “swamp” is the revolving door between the U.S. government and Goldman Sachs, yet Trump’s nominees for his administration include former Goldman Sachs employees Steve Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary and Gary Cohn for National Economic Council. It’s now become increasingly clear that Trump appears to be well on his way to creating the most putrid swamp ever, as he nominated for cabinet positions six of his top donors, as well as several establishment politicians (for example, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife Elain Chao as Transportation Secretary; 20-year U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, and others).

Trump promised his supporters an “anti-politician,” and they received a caricature of a politician who didn’t even wait until he was inaugurated to betray his promises.

It could be worse. It's hard to fathom how, but it well may could be worse. But the important thing is that the message is out for once - "average Americans have no fucking influence on government policy". That's probably true of our own democracy down under in Australia as well. You could easily argue the veil-falling-off moment was when Julia Gillard ousted Kevin Rudd and called an early election to face Tony Abbott who had replaced Malcolm Turnbull as leader of the opposition. Now, it is easily argued that Ms. Gillard was trying to save us from the iniquities of the rule by the Deplorables, after all Tony Abbott represents the absolute naked nadir of intellectual ambition amongst leaders in this country. Even so, she was not successful, and by extension we can see how little control the citizens had over the outcomes.

The Thing That Could Go Wrong Yet

...and there are plenty of things that could go wrong for the Australian economy.

Here's the quick list of the various risks:

1. Car Industry shutdown.
2. Mining investment bust continues
3. Commodity prices snap back down
4. Property Bubble pops
5. Construction boom peaks
6. AAA credit rating is lost
7. Banking crisis in Australia
8. China slowdown 
9. Donald Trump being Donald Trump
10. European disintegration

Some of it reads like fairly reasonable bets. Try the China one for instance:
An ever-present risk for Australia is the economic health of its dominant trading partner.

China's private debt is up there with Australia's as one of the world's highest, with its loosely regulated "shadow banking" sector seen as a key risk for financial crises. 

Beyond a full-scale financial meltdown, there are indications the Chinese Government is planning to renew its economic shift away from heavy industry and construction towards services. 

Last year, China boosted commodity prices through increasing infrastructure spending and relaxing restrictions on real estate investment, as well as cutting its own coal production. 

Even moderate moves to limit growth in those sectors, plus a return to higher Chinese coal output, could see much of last year's commodity price gains unwind and, along with them, the boost to Australia's national income.

I mean, well, yeah. None of those on their own are likely, but there's an element where some of these risks are stacked like dominos. Plus, who knows what happens to Venezuela, and the fallout that would follow that one.

Quick Shots - 27/Nov/2016

Fidel Castro Passes Away

Fidel Castro is dead.

Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died on Friday, his younger brother announced to the nation. 

He was 90. 

A towering figure of the second half of the 20th Century,
Castro stayed true to his ideology beyond the collapse of Soviet communism, and retained an aura in parts of the world that had struggled against colonial rule and exploitation.

He had been in poor health since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006. He formally ceded power to his younger brother two years later. 

Wearing a green military uniform, Cuba's President Raul Castro appeared on state television to announce his brother's death. 

"At 10.29 at night, the chief commander of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died," he said, without giving a cause of death. 

"Ever onward, to victory," he said, using the slogan of the Cuban revolution.

Tributes poured in from world leaders including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Venezuela's socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who said "revolutionaries of the world must follow his legacy."

It wasn't exactly unexpected, the man was 90.

Somewhat In Defence Of Populism

The whole Trump winning the election situation has the world-knickers in a giant knot. It is as if the western world's left-leaning thinkers have been given a gigantic wedgie by the Bully-in-Chief. As a consequence, there's really not a whole lot of rational coherence going around, but it has to be said the charges that Trump is a populist and this is bad flies in the face of democracy.

Populism, by its very nature only works if the population get up behind the said candidate. A quick Google gives you this definition on 'popuist':

populistˈpɒpjʊlɪst/
nounnoun: populist; plural noun: populists1.
a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people.
a person who supports or seeks to appeal to the concerns of ordinary people.
"she is something of a populist—her views on immigration resemble those of the right-wing tabloid press"
adjectiveadjective: populist1.
relating to or characteristic of a populist or populists.
"populist tabloid newspapers"

First off, if you're in a democracy, it's really hard to mount an argument that says it is good for the democracy for the polity to represent the interests of ordinary people. Think about that for a moment. If you want to run a policy counter to the interests of the ordinary people, you are likely an elitist or a revolutionary. Either way, those impulses are anti-democratic.

There seems to be a double-think going on whereby democracy, which is rule by people of the polity is good, but populism which is representing the very same ordinary people is somehow bad. It seems to be an oddity of etymology. Democracy comes from Ancient Greece and especially Athens where they fought to end tyranny. The word Populism derives from Latin, that is to say ancient Rome where the Roman Senate sought to rule over the masses until the Triumvirate came along and neutered the Senate. Julius Caesar, Pompeii and Crassus were all populists - and so in the context of Roman history, populism led to the Imperium, and carries the historic connotation of being against the interests of a proper democracy because it overrode the Senate.

If we do carry with us the Roman legacy of the word populism, then we're effectively standing with the elite who deem themselves to know better than the ordinary man what is good for the state and polity. That is to say, us charging the other as populist underscores their argument that there is a "liberal elite". In a sense our use of the word 'populist' to describe the leader of the 'Deplorables' is the very essence of what gives strength to their accusations of elitism; that somehow we think we know better than they do, and so we look down upon them when they are not just the people, they are the demos that forms the democracy.

It's a bit like saying "we are the courageous, but they are the foolhardy" or "we are flexible, they are without moral fortitude". What is good in our modus operandi shouldn't really be painted as bad in the opponent. It's a bit tricky, but this tension between the words democracy and populism sums up the problematic of a Trump Presidency whereby a silver-spooned rich guy played up to the crowd of 'Deplorables' and won an election. We as the pinko liberals need to get a grip on this lurking vocabulary problem whereby one person's democracy (good) is another persons populism (bad).

Winning The Votes, Losing The Election

The last time this happened was bacon 2000 when Al Gore failed to beat George W. Bush. It was - as it turned out - a crucial election to have lost for the Democrats and by extension, pinko liberals and environmentalists and technocrats everywhere; this was because 'Dubya' led the  world into a series of wars with no discernible goalposts for victory. When you combine that event with Hillary Clinton losing this election even though she has 2 million more popular votes, you can understand why some people want to dismantle the electoral college system.

What's striking about the model of having electoral colleges is that it ends up weighing votes from different states differently. If you are from California, Texas, Florida or New York, your vote is vastly underweight next to a vote from North or South Dakota or for that matter Kentucky or Mississippi. One wonders if this is actually constitutional. This is partly how Hillary Clinton ends up with more votes and still fewer electoral colleges, but also discourages people from actually voting. There probably should be a class action to sue the United Staes of America for not allocating enough weight to votes in those four states.

The degree to which people opted not to vote is quite staggering. 46.9% of the electorate did not vote. This number dwarfs the 25% and 26% respectively of the sport Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton garnered.

For Australia, the other relevant problem is that the Australian Republican Movement wanted to go with this model of Republicanism to select a President. Back when John Howard allowed a referendum took take place, he successfully split the vote of the Republicans between the ARM's position and those who wanted a direct vote, thus stopping the move to a republic dead in its track. It was classic obfuscation whereby people not only had to vote for Republic, but had to overwhelmingly vote for one of two models, and so the entire republican cause suffered. You could say John Howard was  a wiley bastard, but equally it could be said the ARM were indeed the elitists of the variety that had anti-democratic notions which contributed to the ad result. At the time, they blamed the people who wanted a direct election, but really, they only had themselves to blame for being so inflexible.

All of that, is also on Malcolm Turnbull's head.

Quick Shots - 21/Oct/2016

World War III Is Brewing?

This past fortnight there were reports Russia was instructing its government people to bring back their kids from abroad. They were preparing for nuclear exchanges and World War III. At the same time there have been news reports saying the Pentagon is waring that World War III is looming large. Those sources are a bit fringe and hard to credit (especially in a world where fake news sites say extraordinary things in the hopes of harvesting clicks), but the main stream media all of a sudden is reporting similar things.

Other parties are also issuing warnings. The crux of the biscuit is Aleppo where Assad's forces are present and the Americans want to bomb them. Th Russians are still supporting Assad, and so it flies right in to Putin's face to be even thinking about it.

If World War III really is brewing over Syria, I'd want the West to abandon its plans in Syria. It's not worth it. Aleppo has been reduced to rubble, which is bad enough, but really, the continued conflict is creating more refugees by the day. As much as Bashar Assad is a horrible dictator to let go, turning Syria into a flashpoint for global conflict with the Russians is just unpalatable. That being said, you have to wonder about the timing. This close to the Presidential elections makes Obama a lame duck POTUS who is going into caretaker mode, so this would present an opportunity when American leadership is in a political limbo. If you're Putin and you meant to go to war with America, then this moment through to the end of the year represents an opportunity.

Anyway, it is interesting how these things are lining themselves up. I don't think there will be a world War III. I just think it's interesting people in power want to toy with the rhetoric of a World War.

Achilles' Choice

I am still shocked by the passing of Seiji Hirao. 53 seems much too young. He had everything in his life that he could ever want, but 53years is all he got. He certainly got more than Achilles, I guess.  Lots of Important people have died younger. All the same I'm still shocked, and it makes me ponder about the meaning of things, this and that, and the value of life.

After I wrote my little entry on Hirao, I remembered the first time I met him in 1995. I'd left Dentsu Australia and was freelancing when Bucks Night Terry rang up and wanted me to dig up an old report I'd written for Dentsu in late 1994. The report was about the successful bid for the 2000 Olympics by the Sydney Olympics Committee, and the salient points to the strategy in how they went about trying to win. Dentsu at the time were busily preparing for the Nagano Olympics but wanted to try and get Osaka for 2004.

My report would have been about 20pages long. A lot of it was based on statements in the public record as well as Rod McGeoch's account in 'The Bid', plus ringing around a few sports bodies. When I filed it in 1994, I got no response whatsoever out of Dentsu Tokyo so I had forgotten all about it, but at the time I filed it, I would have told Bucks Night Terry what was in it and he remembered it.

Seiji Hirao came through Sydney on Kobe Steelers Rugby business but somehow made Bucks Night Terry his gopher, and Terry had told him about the report because Seiji Hirao told Terry he was part of the Osaka Committee. Terry was a classic panderer - hence his strange nickname - but he was very good at it. One thing led to another and I met Mr. Hirao in the office of Mino Metals in Chatswood. Mr. Hirao didn't want to read the report, he wanted me to give him an oral digest, so I spent 20 minutes going through the ins and outs of the Sydney bid's approach as far as I could piece together. He didn't say anything, simply nodded and walked out.

Afterwards Terry told me the report went to the Osaka Committee and that Mr. Hirao wanted to go all in on the recommendations I'd written. He also had some feedback about my presentation which I won't go into here, but basically nobody likes a smartarse and I am one.  After that, he went off to the UK to coach the Japan Rugby team where the team famously got that historic drubbing of 145-17. Later that year he was backing Sydney and I had the chance to go drinking with Mr. Hirao and Bucks Night Terry. It was a bloody long night. I staggered home at 3 or 4 in the morning, drunk as a skunk.

For a few years there in the late 90s, Bucks Night Terry started being an agent for Australia Rugby payers looking for professional contracts in Japan. That's how I ended up interpreting at the contract negotiations. That was all Seiji Hirao helping out Terry. Mr. Hirao would come through Sydney about once a year and I would meet him now and then. I'm not sure I got along with him so much because when we were sober, we'd never really talk. I can remember quite a few uncomfortably silent rooms, just sitting with him. He was a gregarious guy when drunk but when sober, there were simply some people with whom he'd deign not talk, and I was one of them. Maybe he was shy, but it was hard to imagine.

I learned it can suck to meet famous people. Especially those with a lifelong record of success. no mater how humble they try to be, they just can't hide their ego. Mr. Hirao was one of those characters. He wasn't arrogant or meant to be superior; he just couldn't stop himself acting that way; and he wasn't the sort to be self-reflective about it either. He was in some ways a very awkward person to be around if you weren't from rugby or of rugby or about rugby. And I decidedly wasn't from his world where he was a king.

Anyway.... I lost touch with that whole thing about the time Bucks Night Terry closed up shop with his little agency business and started a restaurant. They were good friends and stayed in touch, but I fell out of Terry's orbit. It's just how life goes. Now that he's gone I can't stop thinking about those awkward moments of silence sitting in a room with Seiji Hirao, "Mr Rugby" of Japan.
It's really rough.

I rang Terry today and he was really bummed out, but he had known it was coming for about a year. He said he wished Mr. Hirao could have made it to the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 3years time, but it wasn't to be. In honour of the man Terry said he was  giving up smoking. I don't know how long that vow's going to last but the fact that Terry wanted to vow it, alone spoke volumes.
If nothing else, I am bummed out.

UPDATE:
I understated how funny he could be. I've been reading a transcript of one of his last speeches and in it is a line about how much he loved rugby. He said you have to love what you do. "Nobody I know ever became no.1 in Japan doing something they had to do because they had no other options in life".

Not A Circus, A Dumpster Fire

Can It End Now Please?

Well, the second debate came and went and it was divisive and crazy. I can't believe that there are people who thought Trump was a good idea when he was labelling Mexicans rapists, denigrating the disabled, accepting support from Ku Klux Klan members, and all the other crazy antics like the 3am tweets, abusing a Miss Universe contestant (a woman he once defended no less) - and then turning around to abandon Trump because he talks incredibly disrespectful-dirty shit when he thinks nobody's recording. It's actually hard to tell if that's worse than continuing to support the man in spite of all the crazy plus the leaked audio. At least sticking with the man shows loyalty. If they're abandoning him now after this recent scandal, then it's really hard to understand what exactly they stand for but that they draw the line at white women. Which is fine, but it's no endorsement of these people's character, because if one was willing to line up with the lunatic extremist and populist that is Trump while ignoring all the signs that he was a contemptuous human being full of bile, resentment, class entitlement, race entitlement and gender entitlement, it doesn't say much for one's judgement or character, does it?

That's all on the one side which is hellaciously awful.

But giving the Clintons a pass because Hillary isn't Bill is disingenuous; the Clinton Foundation and its inner workings would be problematic tif Bill and Chelsea were to remain part of it, and you'd think the American public would wonder out loud if having Bill back in the White House as a househusband on the loose was really what America wants. Is Bill a reformed philanderer or a better philanderer at covering his tracks? Not that it really matters where he sticks his genitals but last time he was in the White House he made a spectacular job of making it the world's business. If Hillary is in the White House, it stands to reason she brings with her the baggage of the first Clinton presidency.   Will the more serious questions like the dismantling of the Glass-Steagle Act be revisited? Can Hillary reinstate it without damaging Bill's legacy? Highly unlikely; and if not, then is this a decent candidate to be having? What about all those leaked memos over at Wikileaks confirming she' a hawk and wants to go boots and all into war over Syria? Is that even safe?

The only reason she looks reasonable is because her opponent is Donald Trump, Man of Abject Intellectual Misery. A pile of hot steaming shit on a plate next to a poisoned pizza can make the poisoned pizza look like the palatable option.

It is an utter failure on the part of the Republicans that they couldn't come up with single credible candidate to face Clinton this year. The irony is that her toughest opponent was Bernie Sanders in the primaries. All this speaks volumes to the credibility loss trickle-down economics and globalisation and all these other Reaganomic claptrap economics has suffered. It also underlines the intellectual failure of the neo-con framework for government and the fact that the Republicans could not repel the insurrection from the right bodes ill for its future. I guess the problem now is what is going to replace it. If the Tea Party was an early harbinger of the shitstorm to come, then maybe we shouldn't be hoping for the demise of the Republican Party.

I do pity the American electorate. Neither candidate is exactly enticing. One is a disaster, while the other proves the failure of American politics through her victory - which is pyrrhic to say the least. Yet by extension of her powers, American politics affects us all, and so it is that this tragedy belongs to us all.

Is It An Election Or A Circus?

One Of The Most Disturbing Things

By this time all of you with a connection to the internet should know that Donald Trump took a big hit last week, when a 2005 recording was released wherein he displayed the most misogynistic frat-boy sensibility we all suspected he had. In fact if you didn't suspect it or felt compelled to defend it, it probably meant you had it as well. Since then his polls have plummeted, and it's been such a meltdown in the media about it. Republicans who once offered their support to the Donald are now withdrawing it; some are even calling for him to pull out. It's all looking a bit untenable for the Donald.

President Obama has said:

"One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming at the top of the Republican ticket,"

"I don't need to repeat it. There are children in the room."

... which pretty much sums it up. If you thought Mitt Romney giving a speech about the 47% of Americans being freeloaders was damning, this bit of audio consigns Trump to the ranks of those who truly did not deserve to run.

The more interesting thing this week is that Donald Trump's 2005 leaked audio has become something of an enabling cipher for our politicians to discus the American election - something that politicians rightfully avoid doing.

A handful of Australian politicians have now expressed their opinions on the Trump scandal ahead of the second presidential debate. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull labelled Trump's comments "loathsome" and said they deserved the "absolutely universal condemnation that they have received". 

Minister for Women Michaelia Cash said Mr Trump's comments were "demeaning, they were disappointing and they were wrong, full stop". 

Deputy Prime Minister Barnarby Joyce, while labelling Mr Trump's comments as unacceptable, criticised both the Democrats and Republicans for digging up rubbish from each other's past. 

"I just think this whole debate in the United States is turning into a dirty, filthy concoction which belies the respect the American people deserve," he told ABC radio.
"They're all digging up rubbish from each other's past and I just think the whole thing is pretty unsavoury."

It's not just a bunch of nobodies saying this stuff in the press, and that's a little surprising.

Regular sparring partners Pauline Hanson and Derryn Hinch, two of the most outspoken crossbench senators, have exchanged heated words in the hallways of Parliament House about Trump's attitudes to women. 

Fairfax Media's political reporter Fergus Hunter reports that the spat, caught on camera, followed a television interview where the pair were asked about whether Trump should quit the race for the White House. 

As the pair left the television studio and walked on to their next Parliament House engagements, Senator Hinch pursued his Senate colleague over her attitude.
"That you, as a woman, could even make any justification for what he has said and what he has done is just ...," he said. 

"Well, I didn't condone what he said," responded Senator Hanson. 

"No, you said the people of America will decide. If you are even slightly right, then God help the country and God help the world. The man is a sexual predator and he is a disgrace," the former broadcaster said, before getting a lift.

Great Googly-moogly. One can only imagine the rest of that conversation. On the one hand you have the crank Pauline Hanson tacitly trying to continue support for the unsupportable Trump, and on the other side you have a shock-jock-turned-pollie looking for some moral high ground; The two of them arguing over a candidate whose approach to elections was to turn it into a reality show. You can't come up with this stuff.

Australian Labor senator Doug Cameron doubts there will be a Trump presidency.
"Why would any woman in America vote for Trump?" he asked. 

"The sooner he's defeated, or the sooner he gives in the better." 

New Labor MP Emma Husar said Australia would work with whoever was elected, but called Trump a "pig". 

"He's an absolute repugnant animal who deserves to have every single Republican who is well-respected over there walk away from him," she told reporters.

You know, in the days not so long ago, our politicians would have refrained from saying stuff like this. What the hell is Senator Hussar going to do should the Donald pull out an unlikely win and visit Australia? Hide? Apologise? Yes the Donald is a terrible human being, but is it that necessary for a Senator in Australia to be hammering in nails of his political coffin when others inches own country are doing a perfectly good job? It actually doesn't say anything good about our polity. If lack of restraint is Donald Trump's problem, then our politicians could have done better showing that very same restraint.

A World With POTUS Trump

Peter Hartcher has this article:

The US under a President Trump would withdraw Australia's security guarantee and become a "rogue superpower", according to a scholarly analysis commissioned by Australia's Lowy Institute. 

The results would be so dire that the US election is the most consequential for world order since World War II, and the most consequential for the US since the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the report says. 

"For the first time one of the two major party nominees for the presidency, Donald Trump, is campaigning on a platform of weakening the core elements of the international order, including the US alliance system and an open global economy," concludes Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution in Washington. 

He says Australia's alliance with the US would suffer directly as a result. 

The Republican candidate has said he'd be prepared to re-negotiate or abandon US alliances with Japan, South Korea and NATO, but has not specifically mentioned Australia. 

"Honestly, I think you are probably in the same category" as those US allies, Dr Wright told Fairfax Media. "He just hasn't been asked.

It's a genuinely scary world where Trump's in charge. There's not a lot of conversation about it in Australia, but there's quite a bit of it in Japan where they've budgeted the possibility of a complete US Withdrawal, and just how much money would have to be spent by Japan to fill that vacuum. In short, Japan would have to re-arm in a way that would bring back a proper military. A Trump-led US pull out to from Japan and Okinawa will necessitate Japan return to being a military power.  Presumably the same would apply for Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Not only would that be a more dangerous world, it would be more expensive in a time when governments don't have money.

Peter Hartcher is so disturbed by this, he wrote a further comment piece on the same topic:

In trying to make believe that Donald Trump is not as dangerous as he promises to be, millions of people have resorted to denialism.
On three levels. 

First, that he could not possibly win. This remains in the hands of events, of course. But even after he was exposed boasting of sexually assaulting women, US betting odds on Sunday gave him one chance in five of taking the presidency. 

Two, that he could not possibly be serious about the things he's said. He does enjoy being outrageous. And on many issues he has had more positions than a yoga instructor. 

(edit) 

The third and final level of denialism is that even if he's elected and even if he tried to press ahead with his policies, the American system would stop him.
Wright agrees that Trump would be frustrated on domestic initiatives by the Congress or Supreme Court. 

But on his foreign policy ideas? Wright's analysis paper, to be published by the Lowy Institute on Monday, says: "He will have a freer hand internationally. There is no body or law that can prevent him from aligning himself with Putin, ignoring an ally, or shaking things up with a far-reaching foreign policy statement. And, as we have seen, grievance against the rest of the world is not just a part of Trump's ideology, it is at its very core."
Denialism is no defence. Trump, even now, is possible. He's serious, and some of his most dangerous ideas could become real.

Well that's all well and good, but our country has very little sway over the electoral outcome in the USA. So denialism or not, there's solid chance that Donald Trump might still survive this round of scandals and end up POTUS and unleash fresh hell. Should that happen, those Australian politicians who slammed him are going to look really dumb for having done so.

Yeah, it's a problem.

Populism And The Politics Of Blame-Throwing

As with Australia, you do wonder how in the hell America got to where they are now. After all, if Pauline Hanson is back, and she's sort of okay with Donald Trump, you know he's appealing to the demographic of wilful ignorance and cranks. That there are so many of them attests to the 'success' of conservative governments who tried to create a populace more prone to populist arguments by degrading the quality of public education.

In ever way possible, the Donald Trump candidacy is a symptom of the anti-intellectual malaise thetas endemic amongst the conservatives. What the Republicans didn't count on was for the election to be hijacked by a reality show host who understood the schema of democracy's prime election as nothing but a popularity contest; And this, was essentially made possible by the very education-deprive populace the conservatives helped neglect - not nurture - who decided to choose the person who made the show more interesting.

The impact of Reality TV in the last 15years has been devastating. It's no coincidence that Pauline Hanson herself was a contestant on dancing with the stars. If one thing these shows have taught the populace, it is the entertainment to be had by having fractious, conflict-generating individuals on the show to stay longer. Donald Trump himself understands this very well, and so went about the primaries behaving more like a boor than a candidate, and still managed to win because he drew upon the votes who understood this dynamic the most. If the Republicans didn't see this coming, that would be because they were complaining about a black man being in the White House a little too much. It would appear their neurosis was entirely misplaced.

Democracy Is Deeply Wounded

The Deep Blue Sea

For some days I've been trying to write something sensible about the end of Bernie Sanders' Presidential campaign and how Hillary Clinton is now the last standing hope in stopping Donald Trump from becoming POTUS. The thing is, if Donald Trump is the devil, then Hillary Clinton surely is the deep blue sea, and so one cannot in good conscience say that the latter is a better candidate because they are the lesser of two evils.

This is not to be childish and scream Bernie-or-Bust, but more a long distance sketch of how things stand. In many ways it reminds me of the 2013 Australian Federal Election whereby PM Julia Gillard mired in bad polls would point at Tony Abbott as the terrible threat coming our way. In the end she was ousted by her own party and worse sill, the electorate voted in the dreaded Tony Abbott and Australia has had a basket case government ever since. It has the same quality of a not very popular person pointing at a terrifying opponent saying they are the only person who can stop the unspeakably awful from happening. We in Australia have been here, and continue to live through the horror of government by oligarchical interests with scant attention for good public policy. There's not much advice we can offer Americans in how to survive this horror.

Of course in that likening, I do Julia Gillard an immense disservice, for as unpopular as she was, she was not wrapped up in some strange twilight zone of corruption and coverups that is the hallmark of the Clintons. There was Whitewater, there was Mena Arkansas and the gun-running, the Vince Foster thing, the Monica Lewinsky affair (and the distraction of Operation Desert Fox), and above all else the strange charity that is the Clinton Foundation which takes money from dodgy oligarchs to create access in very strange places while the Foundation itself accepts colossal sums of money in exchange for the influence of the Clintons. It's nuts. It really is. That's not a few skeletons rattling around in the closet, it's like a mass grave after a genocide hiding in their closet. It's so bad that when Wikileaks leaks more and more emails from Clinton's past revealing terrible deeds and judgment, the world greets it with an indifferent shrug because we are so inured to the Clintons being scandal-prone.

It goes without saying hat Donald Trump is a terrible candidate. He is such a bad candidate that people really think it's some kind of elaborate hoax or joke. And yet the opposite number American democracy has managed to throw up against him is Hillary Clinton, the dodgiest nominee since maybe Richard Nixon. Talk about your wildest nightmares. If democracy really was just a popularity contest, it's amazing the two finalists are two of the most disliked candidates out of a field of dregs. They've scraped the bottom of the barrel and found there was shit down there - and they must really love shit because they're waving it around like a trophy.

The End Of Bernie's Run

It all came out in the leaked emails how the DNC were far from impartial and went out of their way to hobble Bernie Sanders' campaign. In the end, Bernie Sanders ended up being the only sane candidate with a decent plan and policy platform that withstood rational scrutiny out of a large field of candidates. He's still more popular than Hillary when polled and more importantly far more popular than Donald Trump. And yet the DNC is hellbent on going with their gal Clinton, so it's anybody's guess what's going to happen to the Democratic Party after this election.

It tok more than a generation since Robert F Kennedy's ill fated campaign in 1968 to Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2016 to bring the properly progressive agenda back to the Democratic Party. 48years is a long time between drinks. Maybe the good news is that the Progressive bas that supported Bernie is young, and so the future belongs to them to push forwards. Things can still change in the future, but for now the progressive push back into the Democratic Party platform is stalled. The flip side of the constituency dialogue is that the Baby Boomers are not yet the minority and with the help of a few dirty tricks can keep the Boomer candidate in Hillary Clinton going.

This may not work out the same way in say 2020. The youngest Boomer will be 55 then. One would imagine it would be harder to wage the kind generational demographic war the Boomers of the DNC waged this time around. They would have fewer numbers and less of an influence. Whatever happens in the next 4 years, Bernie sure won't be back to run again next time, and that is the shame of it.

In the mean time, the sensible people are asked to get behind the corrupt candidate to beat the unthinkably awful candidate. The DNC created this mess by insisting on the corrupt candidate - surely they will rue the turn of events they fomented by trying to manipulate the democratic process.

View From The Couch - 26/Jul/2016

Runaway Trump

Since confirming his nomination as GOP nominee for the POTUS elections, the critiques, the attacks and brickbats have mounted against Donald Trump. It's game on for everybody to have a hack.

First cab off the rank was Michael Moore who pessimistically prognosticated a Trump win.

I can see what you’re doing right now. You’re shaking your head wildly – “No, Mike, this won’t happen!” Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this! 

You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts – “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!” – or logic – “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” – is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, “oh, a tire just blew out,” or, “wow, who’s playing with firecrackers?” because you don’t want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It’s the same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said “a small planeaccidentally flew into the World Trade Center.” We want to – we need to – hope for the best because, frankly, life is already a shit show and it’s hard enough struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We can’t handle much more bad news. So our mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the curb: “Watch out!,” they shouted. “There are people on the sidewalk!” 

Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen – and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.

It's not a happy thought, and he's right in assuming we're all in denial that this is going on.

The more urgent hit came from the Washington Post, famous as the home of the guys who brought down Richard Nixon. This time it appears they're not taking any chances.

DONALD J. TRUMP, until now a Republican problem, thisweek became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew. 

Any one of these characteristics would be disqualifying; together, they make Mr. Trump a peril. We recognize that this is not the usual moment to make such a statement. In an ordinary election year, we would acknowledge the Republican nominee, move on to the Democratic convention and spend the following months, like other voters, evaluating the candidates’ performance in debates, on the stump and in position papers. This year we will follow the campaign as always, offering honest views on all the candidates. But we cannot salute the Republican nominee or pretend that we might endorse him this fall. A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world.

And on it goes, right down to the end where they say:

The party’s failure of judgment leaves the nation’s future where it belongs, in the hands of voters. Many Americans do not like either candidate this year . We have criticized the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the past and will do so again when warranted. But we do not believe that she (or the Libertarian and Green party candidates, for that matter) represents a threat to the Constitution. Mr. Trump is a unique and present danger.

Look, I don't know about you, but the candidacy of Donald Trump and the surprising Brexit vote and even the election of Tony Abbott indicates a world where democracy seems to have one to mean much less than it used to. We seem to be voting in favour of less tolerant less meaningful, less nuanced, less informed, less intelligent positions in spite of ourselves. A little like how we seem to like to cut off our noses to spite our own faces or cut off our dicks to spite our balls. We should know better than to be voting in the likes of Abbott or Turnbull, or listening to demagogues lie Farage, Gove and Boris Johnson, or for that matter making one Donald J. Trump a serious candidate for the Presidency of the most powerful nation on the planet on nothing but a promise to make that land great again (whatevertjhe hell that means). There are a lot of asshole voters giving into their inner fascist assholes in the first world.
I don't exactly relate to that mentality.

In that light, it is perhaps valuable to assay the catastrophes of the past that we as humans inflicted upon ourselves.

So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world. 

But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.” 

But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape. 

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a minor European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people. 

My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.

It makes for some sobering reading. The rest of it is no less somber and sobering. History tells us we're heading in for some self-destructive times. We'd better take note.

Meanwhile The Arseholes We Have Down Here

It's no secret Kevin Rudd wants to be the Secretary General of the UN. He has two problems on that front. One is that the Australian government hats officially endorse him as the Australian candidate. The other is that Helen Clarke is also running. While none of this is fresh news, the Australian Government has prevaricated mightily over Kevin Rudd's candidacy. In short, they don't want to give him the nod in cabinet. Why? Partisan politics.

Except John Key over in New Zealand's quite happy to endorse Helen Clark, who was the NZ Labour Prime Minister.

Mr Key, who hails from the conservative National Party in New Zealand, is barracking hard for his former Labour party rival Ms Clark to become the UN Secretary-General.
It marks a curious contrast with his Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, still struggling to decide whether his government will do the same for Mr Rudd. 

Mr Key also revealed he had spoken to Mr Turnbull about the race and was quizzed about whether he'd asked him not to support Mr Rudd. 

"I've had a couple of chats with him about it," Mr Key told breakfast television in New Zealand, but was coy about details. 

"All I'd say is if any person wants to be in the race, be in the race … You've got to get either your host country, preferably, or a country, to nominate you. At the moment, he [Mr Rudd] doesn't have a country nominating him. 

"I still think anyway, if it's a drag race between Kevin Rudd and Helen Clark, New Zealanders - and I reckon a hell of a lot of Australians - know who the best candidate is, and it's not Kevin Rudd."

It's all bit academic really, because the man in the lead is Antonio Guterres from Portugal. All the same, it's worth pointing out that Kevin Rudd was quite nice to departing Coalition politicians. The least they could do is return the damn favour. The fact that they don't immediately say yes says tons about these people. 

IOC Takes A Stand Against Doping And Passes The Buck

Nobody really has spine. 

It seemed a mere formality that the entire Russian team would be rubbed out, saving the Olympics any more of the embarrassment that the host city keeps heaping on itself with incomplete facilities. 

There was an expectation – not a mere desire – that Russia would be excluded.
Instead, the Olympic Committee's executive board has displayed the type of leadership that allows doping to flourish: it passes the buck and instructs individual sporting federations to decide which Russian athletes can compete in Rio. 

In other words, it has been left to sporting federations to wade through a legal minefield … in 12 days. 

Some of these sporting federations are loyal to Russia and the bottomless money it provides. Some are too scared. Some are complicit to doping themselves, turning a blind eye to the poison in their own sport and yes, cycling, we are looking at you. 

The IOC has had an appalling bet each-way. Foremost, it is a slap in the face for WADA, which has again been undermined. 

"WADA is disappointed that the IOC did not heed WADA's Executive Committee recommendations that were based on the outcomes of the McLaren investigation and would have ensured a straight-forward, strong and harmonised approach," WADA president Sir Craig Reedie said. "The McLaren Report exposed, beyond a reasonable doubt, a state-run doping program in Russia that seriously undermines the principles of clean sport embodied within the World Anti-Doping Code." 

That's not a few rogue athletes. That's not even a rogue sport. That's a rogue country. If the same happened here, we'd be calling for Royal Commissions, lifetime bans and jail time for those responsible.

Oh the outrage blahblahblah. As I asked - rhetorically - in my previous entry, are we done with this PED hysteria yet? We really need a new approach to the problem especially if the body that allegedly is in most favour of the current method of shaming athletes and banning them, won't back itself to carry out its policies. Go figure.  

We live in a world where haters are gonna hate and cheaters are gonna cheat. It's just the way it goes when sport is anachronistically wrapped up in nationalism of 200-odd nations,some of whom have no shot at any medal, but more importantly some of whom whose national pride depends upon it. Like Russia and Australia. The dumbest thing about the Olympics is how somebody from some nation wins a gold medal and the whole nation gets to thump their chest over that win. This idiotic bit of identification is bolstered by nationalist sentiment and misplaced identity politics. These are really 19th century kinds of modes of thinking, unbecoming of the 21st century. Yet here we are again at another Olympic Games ready urge our boys and girls on to medals. 

Go you beautiful Aussies as you swim through the raw sewerage waters of Rio! Do we relate to this experience? Really?  

Quick Shots - 02/May/2016

'The Lobster'

It's rare that I quit on a film but I just couldn't finish this critically acclaimed work. It's surreal and interesting as a premise but it has a few moments of genuinely gratuitous violence - which is utterly unlike the gratuitous violence of say, 'The Avengers: Age of Ultron' - which I'm sure is an attempt to recapture Luis Bunuel's work but I just wanted to groan. It's a funny film because it's odd, but at certain points it leaves you cold.

Anyway I just thought I'd mention it in passing. Lately I can't finish films if I'm not hooked into it. I've lost the discipline and gumption to go through to the end of a film I'm not enjoying.

Zero Hedge Exposed

The dudes who are the Tyler Durdens at Zero Hedge got revealed this week.

Working at Zero Hedge was also exhausting, Lokey said, and typically involved early morning starts and writing as many as 15 posts a day of as many as 1,500 words each. The work didn't stop on the weekends, either. Text messages exchanged between Lokey and Ivandjiiski, screen shots of which were provided by the latter, paint the picture of a work environment that ranged from exhilarating to exasperating. 

For instance, Lokey says he's "scared to even ask for an hour off," while Ivandjiiski replies that "if you ever need time off for whatever reason, never hesitate to just ask." In February, Lokey says, "I love this company and this website," and tells Ivandjiiski "you saved my life," expressing thanks for the job. 

By April 2 - the day Lokey left Zero Hedge-their relationship had deteriorated significantly, according to the messages provided by Ivandjiiski. 

"I can't be a 24-hour cheerleader for Hezbollah, Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, and Trump anymore. It' s wrong. Period. I know it gets you views now, but it will kill your brand over the long run," Lokey texted Ivandjiiski. "This isn't a revolution. It's a joke."

It would seem that way. Nobody can be a total stoic as the Tyler Durden from 'Fight Club' demands. That's why it's a movie. More interestingly, it's nice that the political bias of Zero Hedge got explained. While I enjoy the site, it's always made me wonder just where they're coming from to be so Pro-Putin even in the depths of the Ukraine crisis. Now I realise it's their editorial policy. That makes it easier to digest as flaks being flaks. 

Bitcoin Mastermind Outs Himself

This was news today. Satoshi Nakamoto does not exist - it's actually an Aussie by the name of Craig Wright. 

The BBC said Wright gave technical proof supporting his claim to using Bitcoins known to be owned by Bitcoin's creator. It said prominent members of the Bitcoin community had also confirmed Wright's claim and said Wright repeated the claim to The Economist and GQ. 

"I was the main part of it, but other people helped me," the BBC quoted Wright as saying. 

The Economist however said it was not entirely convinced.
"Our conclusion is that Mr Wright could well be Mr Nakamoto, but that important questions remain," it said. "Indeed, it may never be possible to establish beyond reasonable doubt who really created bitcoin." 

Despite its use initially being restricted to tech insiders, Bitcoin has steadily gained popularity, with mainstream banks and the Australian Stock Exchange considering adopting its "blockchain" public ledger model for managing transactions.

At this point in time, it's hard to know if finding the inventor is all that significant. The genie is clearly out of the bottle. 

"Obama, Out"

It's still a bit early for President Barack Obama to be signing off, but he did have his final White House Correspondent's dinner where he put on his stand up comedy routine. He's still got 6months until the election day in November. He's not quite the full lame duck just yet so you hope he's not signing off like he did at the end. 

It does make me think of the last year of Dubya's Presidency and it is quite the contrast. As much as Carl Icahn and Zero Hedge are talking up another GFC, the market seem to be calm. This time in 2008 was like a daily grind downwards in all the markets with teeth-gnashing angst in the papers everyday. I guess we'll know where we really are around July-August. 

In the mean time, I guess we're watching the final year of a fairly good Presidency. Jeez time flies.