A skeptical leftist's, or post-capitalist's, or eco-socialist's blog, including skepticism about leftism (and related things under other labels), but even more about other issues of politics. Free of duopoly and minor party ties. Also, a skeptical look at Gnu Atheism, religion, social sciences, more.
Note: Labels can help describe people but should never be used to pin them to an anthill.
As seen at Washington Babylon and other fine establishments
Per the Clerk of the House of Representatives, that would be the number of Democrat Congresscritters voting yes on a resolution "denouncing the horrors of socialism."
NOTE: "Socialism," not "Communism."
The bill attacks not only the "obvious commies," but (natch, being sponsored by Florida Woman Maria Elvira Salazar, both Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, and Nicaragua's Danny Ortega.
It also, in its attacks on Stalin, refers to the Holodomor. Here's the first lie, a lie by omission. By percentage of population, the collectivization death rate was higher in the Kazakh SSR than in the Ukraine.
On inflation rate? Dependent on exact survey date last year, either South Sudan or Turkey may be higher than Venezuela. The wingers also ignore that the US has partial responsibility (but not total!) for Venezuela's inflation.
Here in Tex-ass, such non-shockers as Colin Allred, Henry Cuellar, Vicente Gonzales and Mark Veasey. (And, per Kuff, there's already blather about Allred challenging Havana Ted for the Senate in 2024.) To the west, ConservaDem Gabe Vasquez of the southern district in New Mexico. Among names I know from elsewhere? Dan Kildee of Flint. Knew his dad personally; my dad knew him better.
Then there's the "present" Dems, including Peanut Butter (and Eddie Bernice) Johnson replacement Jasmine Crockett, Houston fauxgressive Sheila Jackson Lee, California's Eshoo, and The Land of Disenchantment's other two Dems — Fanta Se's Teresa Leger Fernandez and Albuquerque's Melanie Stansbury. (The Monthly somehow thinks Crockett is a pergressuve.)
Last week, after blogging my piece calling The Squad as really The Fraud for embracing Biden's Ukrainian warmongering bill, I twice Tweeted the link to David Sirota and his latest online news site, The Lever, asking him why he hadn't said anything. I added more thoughts to the original piece as to my guess on why, and will expand further here.
I also called them out to talk about how Nina Turner is actually anti-BDS, per Mondoweiss,
and otherwise on Israel-Palestine issues, walks back half her allegedly
pergressuve walk. Stand by for ... nothing, in all likelihood.
Sirota doesn't talk a lot about foreign policy stuff (including BDS, I
think, judging from Sirota likely being part of the effort
to whitewash Bernie's record on BDS and Zionism), from what I see on
Twitter, and when he does, he appears to keep one foot inside the
bipartisan foreign policy establishment box. And, since he said nothing about Nina Turner, more of the same. Google only returned less than 5,000 hits for "David Sirota" plus "BDS," and showing how little Sirota has said on it, and how crappy Google results can be at times, despite "David Sirota" being in quotes (in other words, to say Google must find it, and those aren't just reference quotes for this blog post) multiple Google hits among the first 10 didn't even have his name.
As for The Fraud? My guess is that as the descendant of "Eastern European ethnics," Sirota indeed keeps one foot in the bipartisan foreign policy establishment box on Cold War 2.0 stuff. Scratch that. He's actually Jewish. But, see below.
Of course, for all his callout of "Team Blue," Sirota IS Team Blue himself.
Democratic candidate consultant, wife a Colorado state legiscritter, etc. He might puff Susan Sarandon on Twitter, but puff Jill Stein or Howie
Hawkins? Not.A.Chance. And since, per that link, he thinks DSA Roseys
are actual socialists, he'll never throw them under the bus. Also, (Nor did he ever say much about Bernie not ever saying much about climate change.) And, assuming he still eyeballs being a candidate consultant in the future (and possibly the dubious two-hats ethics that involves, which he did with Bernie), he'll continue not to overly criticize anointed "pergressuves."
Update: And dayum, I never looked at Sirota's Wiki page before. Team Blue indeed! Worked for the devil itself known as AIPAC! And, per a DuckDuckGo search, tweeted about it, then deleted it. Per the Atlantic, that was part of a massive Tweet-scrub when he joined Bernie's campaign. Guess like Miami Gator Geoff Campbell, he thought that didn't look too progressive? Oh, and went to high school at a tony private school.
So, let's call Sirota this: A suaver, more urbane, moderately more leftish-liberal version of Cajun attack dog James Carville.
And, I guess per Jack Nicholson, he couldn't handle the truth:
Yes, I wound up with a third different "main idea" on the war this week, so, three threads. Here's the third, with some ancillary thoughts as well.
Nice story at the Atlantic
by Peter Pomerantsev about Ukrainian villagers being forced to share
their basement with five Russian soldiers after the invasion. The
captain, he claims, was spouting Putinesque propaganda about fighting
the Americans and the villagers said "there are no Americans here." But,
should we really trust that the captain meant he was literally going to
be fighting Americans, versus the idea that he was fighting Ukrainians
being egged on by the US and NATO who were willing to fight to the last
Ukrainian? Given that Pomerantsev is a fellow at a nat-sec nutsack think tank
at Johns Hopkins, part of a larger institute named for Aristotle
Onassis' chief Greek shipping rival, and whose other fellows include
Anne Applebaum and Yascha Mounk, we should probably be skeptical of the
exactitude of correctness of his framing. That's especially since his
book, "This is Not Propaganda,"
talks about all of the "theys" engaging in propaganda, or information
warfare, but never the "us," er, the US. Add in that he partnered with
Michael Weiss on one book and the picture is complete.
==
Via Independent Media Institute, I am reminded that Russia, as a BRICS member, is part of its own development bank.
How much that would let it dodge asset freezes by the West, I don't
know. The IMI note is part of a larger piece about the Global South and
non-alignment issues. Tying this back to Pomerantsev? Let's remember that the West blocked Russia from most favored nation status long after granting it to China, and Pomerantsev is part of that international post-Cold War crowd.
==
Speaking of framing? Counterpunch has a piece
on Mearsheimer (and Stephen Cohen) questioning the framing of the
dominant narrative, like Mearsheimer and Walt did, what, 20 years ago
with the US' "dominant narrative" on Israel. Relevance to Pomerantsev? Obvious. It's so in-depth it notes that Cohen even said that, in the aftermath of the semi-coup or whatever at the Maidan, Putin felt he HAD to have Crimea back to prevent it from becoming a NATO "aircraft carrier."
==
James Dorsey discusses
how Russia being bogged down in Ukraine, combined with Biden
mishandling the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, has left Saudi Arabia
looking for a security guarantor. There will likely be ongoing ripples
from the war moving through the Middle East. Biden has an opening right now to call for a full cease-fire in Yemen, and condition a new security guarantee to that. (Let's not forget that getting heavily involved in Yemen was reportedly one of MBS' big ideas even before weaseling his way into Crown Princehood.)
==
Japan shows how one can condemn Putin without being a Russiophobic POS. Tie to Pomerantsev? Possible.
Will Russia's demand to be paid in rubles for natural gas end dollar hegemony? And if so, will that actually be good for everyday Americans? Thoughts here.
This is an extended version of my Goodreads review of his new book "Shutdown," along with an essay of his I found at Noema Magazine about how China dodged the early post-USSR Russian implosion.
The "problematic and troubling" is NOT about the material in the narrative. It's not about "all shall bow before Xi Jinping." Rather, the narrative itself (including Tooze's take on China and COVID) is what's problematic and troubling. And, like British new leftist Perry Anderson's take on Tooze's "Crashed," I speak from several degrees to his left, albeit here in America, not the UK. But, I'm not close to a Trumpist, contra other low reviewers.
A deeply problematic book.
By page 11, Tooze is describing Dems’ Green New Deal as though it were pristine and unsullied, rather than a watered-down ripoff of the Green Party’s original. If a centrist mag like Atlantic or a left-center (but moving a bit more left) site like TNR (can’t remember which one) could report this, why can’t Tooze have it?
Especially since he doubles down on this story. And does so mulitiple times.
Probably because it would spoil his narrative.
The narrative? With a plasticine definition of “neoliberalism,” the main narrative by page 30 seems to be that neoliberalism can stretch to fit anything, just as much as his definition of it. The ergo that comes from that is that, if neoliberalism got anything wrong before, a better version of it will fix things in the future.
Also by page 30, he downplays the more baleful parts of neoliberalism in the west (inequality gap grows) and globally (increased climate change by carbon and other pollution being exported to places with less regulation and increased exploitation of workers, especially minorities like China’s Uyghurs).
In other words, we’ve got a book written by a technocratic neoliberal celebrating the “pragmatic” work of most central banks and using that pragmatism to underpin his plasticine.
Other problems, some bigger, arise after that.
The first and foremost is Tooze’s assumption that China controlled COVID as well as it claimed it controlled it. Even before he makes this claim / accepts this assertion, he’s undercut it by talking about Chinese restrictions on COVID-related information leaving the country. (As I write up this review, per Worldometers, China claims less than 5K COVID deaths, a number that’s laughable. It reports fewer total cases than Rwanda, also laughable.) We also have good evidence that larger nations of East Asia, like Vietnam, haven’t controlled COVID as well as they have claimed, or as their reflexively anti-American parroters in the West have claimed. Then, there’s the related vaccine issue. China’s is worse than anything developed in the West. And, the most Westernized Asian nation, Japan, was a flop on distributing Western vaccines.
In the last full chapter of the book, Tooze really jumps the shark, with his claims about efficaciousness of the Chinese and Russian vaccines.
Sinopharm has much less study than Western vaccines. Plenty of news stories note this. They also note that inactivated virus vaccines may have less potency than mRNA or adenovirus jabs. Tooze ignores all of this. He also ignores that China had reported only relatively limited clinical trial data.
Sputnik V? Production problems. It’s why WHO never approved it. And, its clinical trial data was so bad to leave open the question of data manipulation.
Also ignored.
Now, more details on some of this only came out after Tooze's book, but some of this information was out there last year, or at the start of this. And, if he didn't have a chance to know of this, he shouldn't have made the claims he did. (Amazon has a pub date of Sept. 7, 2021, to be precise, so that largely removes even that excuse.)
And, on this, with me already seeing this as a three-star book, it fell to two stars.
There was one final failure in the conclusion. Tooze talks about the “huge East-West gradient” in dealing with COVID. Of course, he bases this on accepting Chinese data, or lack if it, at face value, and ditto for Vietnam and some other nations. At the same time, he ignores the clusterfuck response of one major East Asian nation, Japan. He also ignores that at least one “Western” nation, New Zealand, did generally quite well.
Beyond all of this, some of his tangents, like Middle Eastern rivalries becoming more exacerbates, aren’t really even tangentially connected to COVID.
If this is a “grand narrative,” which he calls it, then it’s a dime-novel version of one.
And, at that point, before getting to the conclusion of my original review, I want to talke about his Noema piece. It ties with his intellectual dishonesty about China expressed repeatedly throughout "Shutdown." I call it intellectual dishonesty because a professor at Columbia who writes for international public and foreign policy magazines knows the truth about China issues (and should know the truth about things like the Green New Deal).
The piece is all about how China, in the late 1980s, avoided Russia's implosion at the end of the USSR and start of the new Russian Federation. And, yes, China may have had good leadership and smart economists, but the amount of difference in their situations, HUGE differences, is all omitted by Tooze.
First, China was a member of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank since 1980, when the membership it had since 1945 was stripped from the Republic of China and given to the People's Republic. Remember that James Earl Carter, arguably our first neoliberal president, was in the White House then and not St. Ronald of Reagan. Russia didn't get membership in either organzation until 1992.
Ditto on most-favored-nation status. Russia didn't get that until 1992, either. And, in all three cases, US strings were attached that weren't for China. Again, Tooze knows all this. And, given that Noema started out of a partnership with the WaPost and Puff Hoes, the turd-polishing of China, and the shin-kicking of Russia, shouldn't be surprising. Bipartisan foreign policy establishmentarian par for the course. I don't recognize all the names on the editorial board, but I see enough. Walter Isaacson, writer of crappy modern history books and bios and Aspen Institute "guru"; Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn; Fareed Zakaria of Beltway media; Pico Iyer; and Puff Hoes founder Arianna Huffington. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong of the LA Times etc.
And with that, I not only recommend against reading this book, but as with select other authors, I recommend against reading Tooze in the future, period. His lack of engagement with COVID facts, especially vis-a-vis Beijing, is troubling.
China's maximum leader made all sorts of climate change promises to the UN General Assembly kickoff this year, a lollapalooza whose Kabuki theater level rivals that of the Republican National Convention and its Democratic counterpart.
And, per that link above, Foreign Policy largely drank the Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid. I will give it credit for being skeptical, but only partial credit, as that skepticism only starts halfway through the piece:
There are reasons to be skeptical. Xi is not promising an immediate turnaround. The peak will still be expected around 2030. Recent investments in new coal-fired capacity have been alarming. A gigantic 58 gigawatts of coal-fired
capacity have been approved or announced just in the first six months of this year. That is equivalent to 25 percent of America’s entire installed capacity and more than China has projected in the previous two years put together. Due to the decentralization of decision-making, Beijing has only partial control over the expansion of coal-burning capacity.
And, it ignores Xi's own past. He, along with Dear Leader Obama, made sure the Paris Accords were largely toothless Jello.
Back to the piece itself.
Xi is saying this because, per the Kabuki above, the UN General Assembly is always a good time for PR. China, the US, Israel and a few other countries are major players. And, between remaining coronavirus anger, new border skirmishes with India, Belt and Road Project souring by many alleged beneficiary nations and other things, China's got plenty of PR it needs to sow. Speaking of, Xi's actual statement to the UN is itself full of blather, mainly on coronavirus. If Xi REALLY cares about "coming together," drop the opposition to Taiwan joining WHO. (Also not mentioned at FP by Adam Tooze.)
Beyond THAT? Per the link in the pull quote, Chinese shoddy construction, even by US standards, means for a lot of ongoing reconstruction. (Which is also a Chinese regional governors' jobs issue.) And, that means more construction-related carbon emissions.
Indeed, that link deserves its own pull quote.
A broad announcement by chairman Xi, and one made in front of the world’s assembled heads of state, has the potential to mobilize the resources of the society and re-align the five-year plan targets. If the signal goes out to the bureaucracy that this vision is something to be implemented from now on, it can kick China’s energy transition into high gear. But one can just as
easily imagine a future where this target gets relegated into the category of lofty long-term visions to be addressed by the distant successors of current bureaucrats and state-owned company bosses.
Beyond THAT THAT? This is the Xi Jinping who got the post-Deng two-term limit on being president tossed for him, and is creating Xi Jinping Thought.
Beyond THAT THAT THAT? How many of the China-stanners in certain precincts of the left will ALSO guzzle this?
Beyond THAT THAT THAT THAT? Going beyond the worst Trumpian ideas of a national security establishment "deep state," the bipartisan foreign policy establishment incestuousness is a real issue.
I already said RIP to the co-founder of Freethought Blogs at my Philosophy of Socratic Gadfly site but wanted to speak here as well, with expansion of some of the political ideas I wrote about there, both where I agree and where I disagree.
Basically, the political issues of disagreement reflected some of the same tribalism of Gnu Atheism, with which Ed had a conflicted, but yet enabling, relationship. Let's dig in.
I've long since stopped following "movement" skepticism or most "organized" atheism, especially anything that tilts Gnu-ish. I knew Brayton had been in somewhat declining health for some time, indeed, even from when he split off from the Freethought Blogs he co-founded with P.Z. Myers.
And now I see he died the early part of August, three days after his last blog post. Unfortunately, his dying reportedly was not as pain-free as he had hoped.
My take? He'll be missed to a degree, but not as much a degree as many paeans would have you believe.
I wrote about problems at FtB when Ed was still large and in charge. Tolerance of social justice warriors, above all Stephanie Zwan and "husband" Greg Laden, which sent Laden the rabid pit bull after me when I joked, with roles reversed, of him and his "wife."
The big thing I have against Ed, per the link above, is this, and that's Ed getting into bed with PZ in the first place. And, the loonies he let stay there far too long. And the hypocrisy a year before that. Per the first link in the graf, he and PZ were both cheap asses to the late Leo Lincourt in not paying his surely reasonable price to make FtB better as a website. And, I have no doubt Leo's price was reasonable, and that FtB would have looked like what Patheos, and Ed's eventual "Dispatches from the Culture Wars," did look like.
Probably what I'll miss most about him is what most of us miss about ourselves later in life: The could have beens. That would mainly be, in Ed's case, a FtB that never had P.Z involved in the first place. Can't say you weren't warned, Ed, from this small corner of the blogosphere; as I noted, from the start, you were turning over too many of the keys to PZ. Had that been the case, Greg Laden and Stephanie Zwan might not have been part of FtB, as well, and the problems never would have reached that point. In other words, a secular humanist version of Panda's Thumb or something.
Patheos wound up kind of fulfilling that, but not really. The Patheos "nonreligious" vertical doesn't have some of the broader secular humanism and civil liberties focus Ed did himself, and that he surely originally intended for FtB. Nor does it have a personal "face."
Leo and I used to talk about looking for the sweet spot in the center of a triple Venn diagram between non-Gnu atheism, or a modernized secular humanism, on one circle, a broad-focus skepticism that looked beyond Skeptics™ (I first met Leo online in the old Skeptics' Circle blog circle), and a non-conspiratorial leftist politics. Ed wasn't lefist, but his civil libertarianism would have halfway checked the box on the third circle. He could have checked, pretty much, the first and second circles had he done things differently. Picture something like the Venn at left, which is a snapshot of my takes on philosophy, atheism and secularism, and true skepticism.
But, he had his good points, and he wasn't fully a Gnu, and he called out Islamophobia in people like Dawkins and Harris, which is why some weren't fans of him at all. And, in today's day and age, calling out Islamophobia is a big deal. Contra some full-on Gnus who disliked him, his battles against things like Islamophobia were battles for social justice. And fact based. If you don't like being challenged that Islamophobia is real, and not just an excuse word for Islamic bad behavior, you can go fuck yourself. And, that too, I think was part of what was being him running away from PZ again.
I also, per this piece, apparently had disagreement with Ed on something related to the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Can't remember what it was, but I think it was twosiderism, in that he believed not only Trump wanted Putin's help, but Putin gave it. Nope.
It was probably related to his thinking being confined to within the duopoly parties, and being a Dem tribalist there, as he showed in discussing American exceptionalism. And, that's one of the areas I want to expand on. Joe Biden is just as much an American exceptionalist, in his own way, as is Donald Trump. Especially at the national level, most members of both duopoly parties are.
If I am correct, all the faults of the Green Party aside (and all the things I reject about the Libertarian Party), it's a shame that a sharp thinker couldn't work more outside the duopoly box in general, and on particular things like the 2016 election, outside the twosiderism box.
Guess Ed hadn't familiarized himself with Idries Shah.
This is clearly an Idries Shah issue:
Yes, yes, Electoral College straitjackets and other issues, but I'll continue to look for third sides, either on duopoly politics in general, or on things like Russiagate that transcend duopoly, and third party, lines.
I've said before that being an atheist is no guarantor of either moral or intellectual superiority. Ed was above average on both, but again, nothing was guaranteed.
Lots of stuff to dig into this week, as we await the results of primary runoffs and continue to watch the surge in Texas coronavirus cases, with more details on that, statewide, nationally, and globally, in the split-off portion of this week's Roundup.
That said, politicization claims aside, COVID and GOP politics do intersect. Let's dig in.
Both Strangeabbott and Danny Goeb have officially confirmed they have no balls, as the Texas GOP has said its state convention remains on to meet in person, but all bigwigs will speak virtually. Abbott has none over facing wingnut-plusers calling him out for "Masks On," and Patrick has none on matching words to mouth on dissing COVID, or on being 70-plus and not considering himself personally dispensable. Surprised? Sadly, since that initial story, Helltown Mayor Sly Turner removed their balllessness excuse by canceling the in-person convention.
That privately built border fence in the lower Valley? A stupidity that's going to fall into the Rio Grande sooner rather than later.
Meet the Texas GOP wingnut political candidates touting Q, whether as true believers or as political grifters. (Also note how many of them refused to talk to Texas Monthly.)
The challenges
of being young, liberal (and, overlooked by Texas Monthly) wedded to
the Democratic Party in Austin and having to deal with old, white
liberals, especially when they demonstrate that they're far from free
from implicit bias.
Trump and Cruz have dueling endorsements in the runoff in CD24 to see who will try to replace Will Hurd. Ronny Jackson, Trump's choice in CD13, will almost certainly get smoked. Trump's choice in Colorado CD5 got smoked by someone even more nutbar. Especially for endorsements to the "less nutbar" side of the GOP than Trump's, if they win nominations, whether or not general elections, how many of these will it take for the GOP to distance from Trump? And, if Trump loses re-election, how involved will he personally be in 2022?
Related? The Supreme Court unanimously ruled states can punish so-called "faithless electors" in the electoral college. This is of a piece with state and federal courts boosting the duopoly parties and supporting third-party voter suppression, although mainstream media, and even a Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog fail to recognize this.
Long read, but Scott Ritter has the nuanced truth about alleged Russian bounties on US troops. Have the MSM been hyping this to try to keep us in the hellhole of Afghanistan?
Federal judge rules the Dakota pipeline must be shut by early August, and stay shut for the duration of a review that's expected to last a full year.
Grits for Breakfast presents a primer for new, local police-reform advocates in Texas.
Atlantic Monthly had a good speculative piece
on likely fallouts from COVID. Neocons and many centrists wanted a new
Cold War after 1989. Thanks to the toxic mix of the Brer Rabbit and Tar
Baby of Xi Jinping Thought (a good read is here from the Beeb) and Donald Trump Mouth (evident to any non-MAGA American), they likely have
gotten it. This is not to exonorate China in general or Xi in particular
for technology theft far beyond the old USSR or modern Russia (or
democracies like France, or like the US, for that matter) nor its
forcing companies to surrender trade and business secrets (which they
always could have resisted).
Some specific factors in both Xi's and Trump's makeups, while not making a new Cold War inevitable, at least made it more likely. Hubris, a certain amount of which is necessary to becoming a leader, is one that is toxic in too high of amounts, per the biblical statement that "pride goes before a fall." It's one that both of them have in excess. The photo at left underscores how much disdain they have for each other at bottom line, though Xi better masks his.
Let's start with Xi.
I'm not such a close China-watcher that I know that he had an excess of hubris early in his his first term. But, asking for, and being granted, the possibility of being president for life rather than being restricted to the two terms that had been on the books since Deng Xiaping's time, put it on full display. It's clear, by the CCP's rubber-stamping of the idea, that Xi had been wanting this for what, a a full year in advance? (He publicly broached the idea six months before his second-term election by not providing an apparent successor. And clearly, that also had been planned.)
That said, whether directly connected to imperial hubris or not, Xi's actions during his first term had helped grease the skids. His anti-corruption campaign surely not only eliminated actual corruption, but per Franz Joseph's old bon mot, "Is he a patriot for ME?" eliminated people who refused to be corrupt directly for and to Xi and Xi alone.
And then, just 18 months later, Xi became the first of two people to learn that you can't bully a pandemic.
And, it's "interesting," or "ironic," while ultimately tragic and worse that his mindset and Trump's on the coronavirus appeared to mirror each other. Both essentially, in their own ways, tried to pretend it away.
Xi had the advantage, or disadvantage, of being able to use brute force. Telling government agencies to destroy records, for example. Oh, wait, Trump told the CDC to scrub its website. Actual records are still available, but trying to hide stuff from the public? That said, the good side of American federalism meant that Trump couldn't get state health departments to outrightly lie, like we know Xi did with Chinese national stats and continues to do so. See here for more.
Pre-coronavirus, Trump wasn't totally wrong about China. It was all of the above, and given the growth of its economy, also arguably a currency manipulator and more.
But, he was totally wrong on how he handled this.
First, while globalization is not all good, it's not all bad, either.
Second, his America Firsterism cut out potential allies in battling China, namely Canada and the EU.
Third, his record of semi-failures in the business world, with something that looks like long-term success being achieved only through six US bankruptcy filings, a likely infusion or three of Mafia money (beyond what we know of his willingness to do business with mob-controlled companies in his early days), some known infusions of Russian money (but no, Putin didn't collude to elect him president, and doubly no, he hasn't been a Russian asset since the 1980s), and the Deutsche Bank ongoing lending to him that has raised eyebrows as to possible ultimate reasons, fueled an already high level of hubris. Well, international affairs isn't like one-off business deals, first. Second, the only ultimate results to bailing out a country are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and given that both are ultimately based on the dollar, that would have meant harikiri for them.
Fourth, per my post on how Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" has insight for human reactions to the coronavirus, Trump is a poster child for human nature's general willingness to throw good money after bad, plus the human, and definitely not-Asia specific, worry about losing face.
So, in international affairs, he had a history of wreckage, carnage and more before this. Specific to Xi, he had a history of insults, some of them at least marginally racist in nature long before his description of the coronavirus, and a refusal to really negotiate with Xi on any terms other than at least a partial surrender in advance by Xi.
Then this. We know Trump had some national-intelligence knowledge of the severity of COVID even while Xi was trying to cover it up, before that failed. And Trump? Like the stereotypical Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Denialism Don entered his usual mode when there's bad news he can't fully control.
The US will have more total cases and deaths than China by the time this is done, even with the most liberal allowance for Xi's lies. For US, and global by country, deaths and cases, click those links. (With notes that China's, especially is of course inaccurate.)
The fallout of all of this will be, as Atlantic notes, an increase in lack of cooperation between the US and China. Whether China's supply of help to EU nations can buy off knowledge of its lies remains to be seen. So, too, does the issue of other EU countries largely leaving Italy adrift in its early days.
Given that the EU doesn't border China, or Chinese satellites, and neither does NATO, of course, assuming we're already in the start of a new Cold War, this one will be different from the last. If COVID drives more austerity, it's likely that more European nations that are NATO members will look at further military budget-cutting.
As for the EU? Union-wide bonds for its short-term post-COVID future sound great. Germany continuing to keep a budget surplus sounds great to Chancellor Angela Merkel, I'm sure. It probably sounds even better to the AfD. The next six months are going to determine if she'll go down in history as the first leader of 21st-century Europe or "just" as a great chancellor of Germany.
Odds? 50-50, in my opinion. Yes, as head of a parliamentary-based government, she has more restrictions than a President Macron. But, she's not running for re-election, and she still has some wiggle room outside the Bundestag. The 50-50 includes a guess on how much she'll try to use that wiggle room, or not.
Some of the Cold War 2.0 picture will depend on the US presidential election.
If Trump does get re-elected (shut up, Dems, it's a real possibility, and your claiming it isn't just makes it more real) of course, Trump's personality and everything driving the Cold War from his side just gets worse, and per my "Tar Baby," it just gets worse on Xi's side as well.
If Biden is elected (shut up, Berners, he's not getting the nomination, and that's in part due to him being a bad candidate, not your conspiracy theories), he'll do his best to undo the worst of Trump's damage. Unfortunately, it will be on the path of pursuing the bipartisan foreign policy establishment's idea of "engagement" with Beijing, which Xi will see as weakness.
Xi will also have no problem smiling when the allegedly outside the box stenos, the cadre within leftist American journalists who think America is almost always wrong on foreign policy, keep that up, as well as folks like the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay.
Russia's own president for life, Vladimir Putin, remains a wild card. The median age of the Russian population as a whole isn't much higher than the US, and is well below, say Italy (and Germany). BUT? The median age of ethnic Russians, plus Belorussians and Ukrainians inside its borders, is higher than the various minorities, like those at the edge of Russia's Central Asian neighbors or those in the Caucuses. On the other hand, it's relatively non-dense, even in the European side; Moscow and Petersburg are the only metro areas of more than 5 million in Russia.
On the other hand, Putin's already treating this just like Xi did, to the point of arresting one doctor. And, Dr. Anastasia Vasilieva had been challenging Putin's official numbers.
So, it could survive COVID fairly well. It could survive the oil price wars fairly well. Climate change could improve its agricultural situation. If farm mechanization increases, Russia could be the next US.
==
Update, April 28: For purely domestic political reasons, Mitch McDonnell's senatorial campaign committee wants to push a new Cold War.
It was an interesting year this year. No heavy thread of refuting conspiracy theories, unlike my top blogging of 2018. And, several of the top posts, including two baseball-themed ones, came from the last few months of the year.
One post was a repeat from a previous year, and one was a "throwaway" from a decade ago.
Let's start with that.
The most read blog post here in 2019 was "Could an Iranian bomb LOWER tensions?" As a generally erratic President Donald Trump listens to his neocons and tightens the screws ever more on the Islamic Republic, and as our Saudi allies and other Gulf Arab states descend into further butchery in Yemen, and as Trump panders to Zionists ever more while also encouraging antisemitism more (to those who know the history of Zionism, and know early Zionists themselves did that, that should be no shock) it seems that a lot of people wonder if a Tehran with a nuke or two, as much as proliferation is a no-no, might be better than the current situation.
No. 2, speaking of Zionism and antisemitism? That was me defending Ilhan Omar from charges of antisemitism — even as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, no less, shoved her halfway under the bus. (As I also noted there, it wasn't the first time — nor was it the last — for AOC's reality to fall several steps short of her rhetoric.)
No. 4? After making the Top 10 of 2017, but missing the cut last year, my ever growing biography of Twitter guru in the mind of himself, when alive, and his cultists still today, "Who Is Alan Smithee, aka Actual Flatticus?" (answer: misogynist, possibly racist, abusive Florida lawyer Chris Chopin) is back in the Top 10 this year.
No. 5? Yeah, everybody else doing political blogging wrote about it too. But! My "What's next for Trump after the Mueller Report?" was written from a position that clearly rejected twosiderism. That became more and more of a theme here the second half of 2019, with allegedly outside the box journos, but actually stenos to a certain form of twosiderism, like Aaron Maté, Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, Mark Ames, Ben Norton, Yasha Levine et al repeatedly engaged in.
No. 6? For the first time in years, Texas news cracked an annual Top 10 list. The tragic fall shooting in Greenville, an arrest of someone eventually cleared de facto if not de jure, the omerta that leaves the case still unsolved, and cultural issues surrounding that all drew my attention.
No. 7? Texas news a second time, and in my backyard. I called out the Dallas Observer (which hasn't responded for months, and is one of several things that has led me to look at it with a more jaundiced eye than before) for doing a hit job on a planned wind farm. The site is on the Fort Worth half of the Metromess so why was the Observer writing? The reporter clearly understands nothing about the oil and gas world, and gas motives behind some opposition, to boot. (A follow-up post is coming shortly.)
No. 8? The first of two baseball posts. This was about who the Veterans Committee should and should not vote into the Hall of Fame. Veterans got it wrong, IMO, on not admitting Lou Whitaker and Thurman Munson. They got it OK on Ted Simmons, though Munson should have gone in first. And they definitely got it right on not selecting Dale Murphy.
No. 9? Connected to Jeffrey Epstein. I looked at some of the various Epstein-related sleaze that is connected to John Brockman, creator of The Edge Foundation and, until this year, its annual "the big question."
Why did she agree to speak to Religious Right wingnut de luxe John Hagee's Christians United for Israel four years ago? (That's the lead-in.)
Islamophobia and being generally in bed with neocons, per The Nation.
LobeLog reminds us that this is the same Hagee who blessed the opening of the (unconstitutionally moved??) U.S. embassy in Jerusalem last year.
That, in turn, is why on July 24 she voted FOR AIPAC and AGAINST BDS (and the First Amendment). The Tulsi Twerkers simply cannot explain this one away, though they try.
You’ll have to read the bill, and read Tulsi’s response. I don’t agree with her vote, but I understand the nuance. I’ve yet to read the full bill, but will be doing so. AIPAC is far too involved in US FP, and it reflects on all the candidates. No exceptions.
So, Ryan is claiming, I guess, that this was really a vote AGAINST AIPAC? Sure.
Snark aside, and more seriously, this is a good example of cultlike, or even full-on cultic behavior.
It's one thing when the leader tells the masses that "black" is "white" and they then agree.
It's a step deeper when they make the brainwashed decision on their own that "black" is "white" without any prompting.
Besides, Ryan, the three more actually progressive Squad members voted against it. They know.
Besides that, as I've already said, Tulsi claims Palestinians use people as human shields.
Third, the House could have had a simple two-state resolution without the BDS. Related? Tulsi could have abstained on this resolution; THAT could arguably be seen as nuanced. A yes vote? No way, Cochise.
Fourth, HRes 246 ain't that long, and it's easy to understand. "I've yet to read the full bill?" Takes about 3 minutes, if that. The anti-BDS parts twist what the movement is about and twist Omar Barghouti's words, among other things. Period.
So, Ryan, you're either lazy, or you're lying. Or both. And, as for the "it reflects on all the candidates"? I thought Tulsi was supposed to be different? Outside the crowd. Actually, the crowd is her cult-like following. I consider her to have the greatest degree of cultiness of any Dem presidential candidate, well above Sandernistas or even the more stereotypical BernieBros.
Fifth, the resolution was crafted in March. She's had four months to decide to abstain, if she couldn't vote no.
And, Tulsi herself now tries to explain this away and fails. She eventually admits she opposes BDS, while lamely saying she'll support Ilhan Omar's pro-right to boycotts bill. Too late, the horses are out. Her stance is just like most Democrats, including most (with the 17 exception votes) on the alleged left of the party. "We can't pressure Israel that much." (Setting aside Tulsi's own neocon-friendly background.)
Update, Sept. 17: Mondoweiss says that two and only two Democratic presidential candidates have explicitly talked about cutting U.S. foreign aid to Israel. Guess what? Neither Bernie Sanders nor Pete Buttigieg is named Tulsi Gabbard.
Maybe Ryan can next explain her background in repeatedly indulging and being with conspiracy theorists. (That's another reason I would absolutely oppose her as a Green candidate; the party's got more than enough damned conspiracy theorists as is.) As for Jimmy Dore, at the first link, I don't care if he's on RT or not. I know he's not a Russian pawn. But, I'd never really paid attention to him other than noting he's an attention-getter.
Ryan, or maybe it was another Twerker, also tried to explain to me everything about Syria. That was before I said (which I then did say) that I'm a Green, that I don't believe everything the foreign policy establishment claims about Syria, that I've read Sy Hersh, Ted Postal, and Robert Fisk, among others, and that I knew not everything alleged to have been done by Assad actually had been. At the same time, I noted that Assad had plenty of blood on his hands, too, and that some chemical weapons use, especially before Russia brokered an alleged disposal of his remaining stock, almost surely had been done by him.
A full half a dozen years or more ago, when Tulsi Gabbard wasn't even a fucking blip on the national political horizon, I had multiple long blog posts about Syria, including facts/allegations/strawmen about Assad AND Erdogan AND the rebels, who would benefit from some attacks. Since then, I've written about the alleged Assad chemical attack two years ago and the White Helmets reality. That said, in one other case, whether Assad ordered it or not (and I doubt this flew under his radar), Syrian officers DID do it. And, Syrian troops — the guys who report to Assad — have committed other war crimes and crimes against humanity. The reality in Syria, per LobeLog, is a lot dirtier and a lot more complex than Tulsi and the Twerkers paint.
Fisk has also noted her close ties to dictators, plural, not just Assad, looking first at her and Egypt's al-Sisi, the man who likely had his predecessor killed. (Fisk asked Gabbard for comment for that first story and she took a powder, unsurprisingly.)
Another Twerker, one who thinks if you put hashtags on the names of Tulsi, Bernie, Stein and Baraka, you're truly a deep thinker as well as outside the deep state or whatever, was even worse.
Part of how the Twerkers are a collective pain in the ass is that they not only assume Tulsi is right about every foreign policy statement she makes, but, where she actually is right, you can only learn the truth from her. Bullshit.
That said, it doesn't surprise me Dore is both a 9/11 truther and a Seth Rich conspiracy theorist. Wouldn't surprise me if Tulsi is.
Is every Tulsi follower cultlike enough to be a Twerker? No, but I honestly think about half are.
Are all Twerkers as cultlike as Ryan on the anti-BDS bill? No, but probably 1/3 are.
So, at minimum, 1/6 of Tulsi followers will call "white" as "black" without prompting.
And, while we're here? As of Aug. 1, Brains still has a bromance, or hard-on, or whatever for her. David Bruce Collins, with less vitriol for those calling out Tulsi, also still likes her. Brains is back to his Dem-first Green-leaning unless Sanders (or maybe Warren, we'll see his take) isn't nominated. DBC is a full-on Green, so why he cares favorably about Gabbard, let alone doesn't look at realities?
==
Update, Aug. 23: Tulsi has remained strict social media radio silence on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's suspension of the constitution, suspension of constitutionally based agreements, a de facto declaration of martial law and more in Kashmir. Many people are calling Kashmir "India's Palestine." Given that Gabbard has claimed Palestians use human shields, etc., I am sure she thinks Kashmir being India's Palestine is a good thing.
And Twerkers, don't give me this "she's been on Guard duty" bullshit. She's had plenty of tweets in the past two weeks.
The reality of Kashmir as a "giant prison camp" and how India (led by the BJP, but with Congress and allies in acquiescence) got to this point is explained in detail by Arundhati Roy.
Maybe I should have "progressives" in scare quotes, especially speaking from outside the duopoly.
Or use the good old Fauxgressives label.
There are few actual progressives, and not a tremendous amount of Fauxgressives, supporting Kamala Harris.
But, in other cases?
Tulsi Gabbard is still drawing support from people who should, IMO, know better. People who are accepting her past apology for homophobia and not digging deeper, to note her support for the RSS and her support for neocons on Israel? Maybe I should call them Failgressives instead of Fauxgressives. In either case, they exist, and in abundance. That said, she's been good on Venezuela and other things. It still leads me to a question of whether she's truly antiwar or more anti-Americans getting killed in war.
Marianne Williamson? Down with Tyranny loves them some Marianne. Shock me. People I thought knew better do as well, though.
Bernie Sanders? Yes, the best among Democrats. But, still with plenty of holes in his foreign policy world, and the Trump / bipartisan foreign policy establishment's push for a coup in Venezuela — followed by Bernie's response, or rather, largely his non-response on social media — has showed some of those holes are pretty big. Not that a lot of Berniebros will accept that.
Betomania? Some here in the Pointy Abandoned Object State still lust for him, including some I thought were more progressive than that. This is part of why I may do a Facebook cleanup soon.
At the same time? In Bernieville, David Sirota has IMO committed an ethical faux pas. And after me standing up for him on Twitter.
I don't question David Sirota's general tactics, but now that we (I personally) do know that he was giving informal advice to Bernie for several weeks? The lack of disclosure IS kind of troubling and I say that coming, by party choice, from Sirota's left. https://t.co/MwvGuzcXMT
Now, plenty of MSM flaks have been flakking for Beto without sekrutly working for him, other than the MSM likes style points candidates of the neoliberal Democrats in general. But it does, yes, raise a small bit of Credibility Gap issues with Sirota.
Maybe not huge. What he said about Beto, Kamala and others is true. But, he was doing it while advising Bernie.
That also puts into light that Sirota only addressed campaign financing issues, and a little bit other domestic policy issues.
Hence this:
OTOH, .@TheAtlantic and .@IsaacDovere from the left of .@davidsirota I agree with most his critiques of other Dems on finances & domestic policy. OT3rdH, tho, this now gives him an out to not critique some Dems on foreign policy. Including Bernie.
Regular readers know that I've blogged about Bernie and things like his F-35 bromance, his weak knees, or downright opposition to, BDS, his weak knees on "Putin Did It" collusion claims, and also, his recent weak knees on Venezuela.
Sirota's not that uninformed on foreign policy.
Maybe he just didn't care to write about it, whether at Capital and Main or The Guardian. Maybe he made a deliberate choice, though.
==
Outside of the presidency? AOC is still a lightning rod. And she's still botched some things. But, just because she doesn't talk about every environmental issue in the world, and is focused on the Green New Deal, doesn't mean she's an anti-environmentalist. Nor do I think she was "forced down" any throats. A Google Trends shows a spike when she beat Crowley, and a bigger spike at the general election, then a drop again until the kerfuffle with the pre-swearing in workshops for freshman Dems followed by the Green New Deal. And, part of those spikes were wingnuts posting pictures of her dancing, then getting pwn'ed.
I'm going to call out what I see as wrong where I can. I will try not to slip up in how I do it. That's my bad.
I'm surprised, given how much good stuff she's done, but ... it's true. Her piece on Christopher Steele could have been written by one of the "insider" foreign policy staff at the New York Times.
First, she talked to nobody from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, nor Robert Parry at Consortium News. They could tell her that evidence to date has her proven wrong on the spring 2016 DNC emails, that international download speeds are too slow to be a Russian hack.
Second, she ignores, or is ignorant of, and I'll be less charitable and say the first, that her claims about Dutch intelligence telling US intelligence about 2014 Russian hackery has been thoroughly refudiated.
Third, she uncritically repeats claims about Russian meddling on social media without talking about the drop-in-the-bucket dollar value, and also appears to swallow wholly Mueller's indictment of the Internet Research Agency, which I've already discussed.
There's other stuff, as noted in this long Twitter thread of mine, where Mayer comes close to looking like she's throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks.
I mean, from someone who wrote "The Dark Side" and "Strange Justice," this is B-grade material. Given that both of these books questioned official or quasi-official narratives, both of which had at least partially bipartisan support, that's the strangest part of this. What she's writing now is stuff the likes of which she criticized in the past.
Coming into last night's Democratic debate, knowing that it was on Univision and in Miami, I wondered (hoped isn't quite the right word) if Bernie Sanders would finally mention the 2009 Honduras coup that was helped by President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
And, yes:
A. It was a coup; Wikipedia calls it that, among others.
B. It was helped, contra Clintonistas, "independents," and anti-Sanders mouth-foamers (I've met all) by Obama and Clinton.
But, my wonderment was unfulfilled. Not even close to being fulfilled.
Again, since I was wondering, not hoping, this doesn't surprise me.
After passing on chances starting within the first half hour of the debate, CNN, near the end, played an old, mid-1980s video clip of Sanders praising both the Sandinistas and Fidel Castro. Hillary Clinton then jumped on him for praising leaders who "disappeared people," which led to this Tweet from me:
Because, if not being disappeared, people in Honduras are outrightly being killed today. (Update, May 28: Per the Book of Proverbs, Clinton is now fleeing when nobody is pursuing, deleting Honduras references from her memoir. Per that Common Dreams link, it appears to be part of a larger whitewashing of her backing the rougher edges of neoliberalism and American imperialism throughout Latin America.)
For you Sandernistas, this is why, even if Sanders can pull off the shock of shocks and get the Democratic nomination, I expect to vote Green for president again, as I have in every election this century.
If Sanders' critique of foreign policy adventurism can't extend into the current administration and, other than an oblique reference to the Bay of Pigs, generally only covers Republican misadventures of the past (don't forget JFK's overthrowing Diem in Vietnam and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which was also part of Latin America, last I checked), then his foreign policy stances remain problematic.
Did he support the coup himself? I doubt that, but why won't he speak out? Afraid of giving Republicans ammunition? Well, if that's the case, then he's not so revolutionary after all.
Surely, Sanders knows both about the Honduras coup, or even semi-coup, if he wants to tone it down a bit, as well as the 2014 semi-coup in Ukraine, or semi-demi coup, if he wants to soften that; I mentioned a month ago my lament that neither was being covered in the Democratic debates, multiple times. Israel/Palestine got nothing more than perfunctory coverage, and when it and related issues did, Bernie had bipartisan foreign policy establishment answers.
I'm going to have a more in-depth wrap later, but, this debate got to the heart of not just what I have said, but what others have, about Sanders' foreign policy stances, to the degree that people who don't know a lot of them have heard about them besides his no vote on the Iraq War.
(Update: Bernie also avoided Libya.)
Jeet Heer at The New Republic frames it similarly, and more broadly, noting that Sanders critiques Hillary Clinton as part of a system, not as Hillary Clinton, and in a way to stay inside the Democratic Party's coloring circles. It's all part of making nice and being a good Democrat, which, the nuttery of some Clintonistas aside, he really is and has been. Jeff St. Clair was saying the same nine months ago.
Also speaking of foreign policy #fails, Sanders has yet to repudiate the endorsement of Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, an arguably Islamophobic supporter of India's BJP, which is also enabling by silence the persecution of Christians in India.
Refusing to repudiate current coups is bad enough, as the lack of a foreign policy revolution; continuing to accept the endorsement of an Islamophobe is even worse.
Hey, Bernie ... voters in Democratic primaries have repeatedly said "trust" is a huge factor. This issue was handed to you on a plate, and it was NOT manufactured by Trey Gowdy.
This is also why Clintonistas and Democratic establishment hacks who claim he's "not a real Democrat"? Eff off.
Trust me, folks. As is my wont, I'll string all five of those together before I'm done.
Update, July 3, 2019: I cannot recommend enough this in-depth, fair but certainly not "sympathetic" long-form look at Tulsi's life, and Hindu-ish (I think the "ish" is needed) cult guru Chris Butler and his influence on her. Related update, Oct. 5, 2019: Yet more on the Islamophobia and the homophobia of Butler.
Update, Jan. 29: 2025: The Wall Street Journal has a new piece noting that Chris Butler's org was running a pyramid scheme back in 2017 and she was trying to whitewash her ties:
To defend and burnish Tulsi Gabbard’s image as her political star was rising, her congressional campaign hired a public-affairs firm in 2017 that tried to suppress coverage of an alleged pyramid scheme connected to her Hindu sect, according to interviews, emails and Federal Election Commission records. ...
Gabbard ... was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a direct-marketing firm accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries. Neither Gabbard, the sect nor the firm, QI Group, wanted the relationships scrutinized. ...
Gabbard’s campaign paid Washington, D.C.,-based Potomac Square Group for the PR cleanup, trying to mask the connections. But the operation was directed by a Science of Identity follower—and longtime Gabbard adviser—who sits on the board of a QI subsidiary.
The revelations shed further light on Gabbard’s ties to the religious group—publicly described by some former followers as a cult that demands total loyalty to its founder—and to the Hong Kong-based QI, which has been a target of criminal and civil cases alleging fraud and racketeering in at least seven countries.
Ooops. Read the whole thing. It goes beyond this to be one of the best takedowns of former Hare Krishna (that says something right there, doesn't it?) cult. More here from the Independent, largely extracting from the WSJ but adding a few items of its own.
Update, Dec. 25, 2018. I have some updates at the bottom, per a late 2018 Twitter poll that thinks she had a Kool-Aid drinking set of backers as vociferous, if not necessarily as big, as that of Beto O'Rourke. Do I think Tulsi is evil incarnate? No. Do I think she is all the Kool-Aid drinkers crack her up to be? No. Do I think she is an Islamophobe, and that wanting the US to exit a war in a Muslim nation is no proof that she is not? Absolutely.
That said, Islamophobia is itself an outgrowth from the core issue of her support for fascistic Hindus nationalism. It is, and she does. Period. Just as the US doesn't have a second capital in Tel Aviv, it doesn't have a second one in New Delhi, Tulsi. Per the below, note the RSS is anti-Christian as well as anti-Muslim and the BJP enables that. Basically, it is America's version of the Religious Right. I wish not only Tulsi Kool-Aid drinkers but more people in general understood that.
Were the RSS support not there, and the BJP support less blank-checked, I would consider voting for her over other Dems in a primary, though still not over a Green in a general election. But it is still there, and she is still supporting India's Religious Right.
I'll eventually pull a separate article from items listed below.
Sandernistas was a more serious, non-stereotyping term for Bernie Sanders backers long before Berniebros was made into a caricature by Clintonistas. Jeff St. Clair of Counterpunch was using the term nine months ago. That said, St. Clair, writing for a true left-liberal site, pivoted from saying that he had warmed to Sanders as a cudgel against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Establishment to noting that Sanders was still part of that Democratic establishment on Israel and other things, as part of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
OK, we're at Democratic Establishment. That leads to Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and her endorsement of Bernie. She was vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, but over various conflicts DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz over management of this year's primary cycle, and a desire to openly endorse Sanders, she resigned her DNC spot.
As Wikipedia notes, the BJP is joined at the hip with the right-wing Hindu nationalist organization Rashtrya Swayamsevak Sangh, normally shortened to RSS. The RSS has been banned multiple times in India, the last ones arguably unconstitutional, but the former ones of concern. (At partition, the RSS refused to accept the Indian flag, the tricolor of today, since it includes "Muslim" green.) It also opposed the Indian Constitution guaranteeing equality to all Hindu castes, a stance which I don't think it has repudiated today, although it has called for various social uplift programs for lower castes — but only within Hindu structures.
And also for the Tulsi Twerkers? A friendly reminder of why the US banned for a decade India's current prime minister, Narendra Modi.
Unfortunately, Sanders has yet to repudiate this endorsement.
Refusing to repudiate current coups is bad enough, as the lack of a foreign policy revolution; continuing to accept the endorsement of an Islamophobe is even worse. And, that's a selective reading of Gabbard, just and only on her opposing U.S. attempts to overthrow Assad in Syria. That's the only reason she has opposed intervention there. Elsewhere? She's a hawk in the War on Terra.
Back to that "worse" link. The RSS and affiliates have been alleged to been involved in anti-Christian as well as anti-Muslim riots. Multiple Indian states have anti-conversion laws of some sort, and they've all been pushed by the BJP, as the political party representing RSS Hindu nationalism interests.
Contra an insinuation in comments, these laws are NOT about preventing forced conversions of Hindus, how much or how little that happened under the British Raj or earlier. Rather, they're to prevent the free evangelizing activity of Christians, and to a lesser degree, of Muslims. The only actual forced conversions in India at this time are forced conversions BY Hindus. Let's remember that as we read on.
(In all of this, it is worth noting, as etymology hints, that Hinduism is seen by RSS types — and arguably rightly in some ways — as a cultural/sociological structure as much as a religion.)
While not involving the same level of punishment as in, say, Saudi Arabia, these laws do allow for criminal penalties upon violation.
Doug Henwood, in the first half of this podcast, talks in depth about the BJP, the RSS and the charge of fascism, with Benjamin Zachariah, a professor of modern Indian history at the University of Trier.
Let's add, to further undercut the ground of commenter Hari, that she spoke at a BJP-related fundraiser for her. (Corrected; I originally called it a fundraiser for the BJP.)
Her speech starts about 10 minutes in. She speaks for about a dozen minutes, a long time, and far more than just courtesy comments.
The Lok Sabha, for the unfamiliar, is India's lower house of parliament. In other words, an elected representative of the BJP spoke at a fundraiser for her.
Either ironically or hypocrically, she talks, at about the 15:30 mark, about people "struggling to worship" halfway across the globe. I guess those don't include Muslims or Christians in India.
Both these and more come from a Quartz India piece on her, with analysis at top, interview with her at bottom.
In that Quartz piece, she says a couple of things I find
eyebrow-raising. The first is:
While there is no doubt there is some discrimination
directed toward different “religious minorities” in India, throughout India you
will find Muslims, Christians, and people of all kinds of religions free to
practice their faith.
Um, no. Not true. The Gujarat violence against Muslims and
the Orissa violence against Christians alone undercuts that. The no-conversion
laws are further prove otherwise.
Then, there’s this:
There are many Hindus in America who feel they need to
convert to Christianity or take “Christian” names if they or their children are
to succeed in this country.
Sounds purely anecdotal. Maybe it was true a century ago, as
with other East and South Asian immigrants? Today? I highly, no very highly,
doubt it; sounds like it’s more propaganda for BJP-run India.
She then claims to have “met with” Congress Party as well as
BJP members.
Erm, call me when she speaks 15 minutes at a Congress Party
fundraiser for her.
This is all important to note, because there's a lot of Indian flak-writers (sic on spelling) out there working hard to spin all of this. They will claim that Gabbard has met with members of Congress as well as BJP. That may be true, but it still doesn't explain why she led the charge to block House Resolution 417, which specifically mentioned attacks on Christians as well as Muslims. It's a surprise that any Indian PR flak group would actually link to the resolution because of that, precisely since it undercuts claims about what it's about, including the insinuation that its original sponsor was Keith Ellison, America's one Muslim Congressman. Actually, it was introduced by a non-Muslim conservative Republican, with Joe Pitts even being at least fairly much part of the Religious Right.
I'm not a Christian, I'm a secularist. But, I point out the Hindu nationalist attacks on Muslims as well as Christians, and the bill's mention of that, to try to remove the claim that HR 417 was giving cover to radical Islam or something. Besides that, secularists have occasionally faced problems, too. And, also showing that I'm not making this up, native Indians like renowned novelist Arundhati Roy have spoken out against religious violence — which started after the BJP came back into power.
The PR spin also fails to explain why people politically connected to her, and Indian or Indian-American, are BJP-connected. Like wearing a BJP party sash, in the picture.
So, we've now covered bigotry. It's on to smears.
At least some Sandernistas who slaver over Gabbard's endorsement of Sanders have passed around the anti-Semitic smears against the author of that piece, Zaid Jilani, that eventually got him bounced from the Center for American Progress. (Jewish organizations not part of the Israel-first lobby, like Mondoweiss, have defended Jilani.)
Other smears come from at least one Indian PR flak attacking HR 417, claiming that, besides Muslims pushing it, other backers were Marxists. The BJP, as one might — and should — expect, is politically right-wing in general. More, from The Jacobin, on why cries of Marxism would so resonate with BJP backers.
Coincidentally, or not, the president of Center for American Progress — where Jilani worked before being sacked after being subject to those anti-Semitic smears — Neera Tanden, is herself Indian American. Uncoincidentally, she is a Clintonista.
As for the claim that the resolution was interfering in Indian internal affairs? Tosh. First, it was only a resolution, nothing more, therefore there was no interference. Second, Congress has passed similar resolutions on religious freedom against other countries. Indeed, it even passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998.
Finally, her claim that ISIS et al act purely out of religious belief and that poverty and social isolation aren't other factors is a flat-out like, convincingly refuted by the likes of Scott Atran, and, in the wake of the Brussels bombings, underscored by Belgium's Molenbeek ghetto, which, in turn, reflects the problems of the quasi-nation of Belgium itself.
Back to the other "-istas."
The Sandernistas often seem unwilling to actually see things in broader context, viewing this campaign through a quasi-Manichean lens, as Sanders vs. Clinton, period — Ormazd vs Ahriman.
Not I.
First, I vote for ideas before people. Second, I view very little in life in terms of such dichotomous polarities.
I want Sandernistas, as Clinton moves closer and closer to clinching the Democratic nomination, to start talking seriously about Plan B, that is, voting for Jill Stein or whomever the Green Party nominates. Unfortunately, I'm despairing more and more of the depth of insight of many of them, and the willingness of them to vote for ideas, rather than an individual. That's even more problematic when Stein, or another Green nominee, is not part of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
But, if you don't want to think in terms of Plan B, especially if you don't want to open your eyes outside the two-party box, you're not wanted anyway. Beyond that, this is yet another sign of how horrific the national Democratic party has become, that a fairly challenged challenger like Bernie Sanders is this popular, and often, uncritically popular.
As for Sandernistas trying to defend her, or his not refuting the endorsement?
Let's take one I just heard on Twitter, that "she's a U.S. politician, not an Indian one."
I already had an analogy in the holster, ready for a quick draw.
As for blanket Gabbard defenders who think this is either anti-India or anti-Hindu? Rot.
If you're an Indian-American, the answer is simple. Push BJP and its RSS backstop to allow true freedom of religion. Tell friends if they don't, to vote Congress or other secular political parties.
And, if you don't believe BJP restricts freedom of religion? You're wrong. And at some point, rather than continuing to post new comments in reply to yours, I''m going to stop allowing comments.
==
Updates, Dec. 25, 2018:
1. An in-depth 2017 piece by the New Yorker points out that she's a Trump-like level of political weathervane — other than never changing on her BJP support. I've already muted one Twitterer who refused to accept that she could want to stop American involvement in the war in Syria yet still be an Islamophobe (like Trump). That includes, like Trump, supporting a blanket ban on Syrian refugees coming to the US.
2. In 2016, Hawaii's Dem LGBT caucus endorsed her Dem primary opponent, they found her so untrustworthy. As of one week ago, they still find her untrustworthy. So, Tulsi Kool-Aid drinkers who say she supports gay rights? People on the islands kind of disagree. (On the first link, at the time, folks like the idiotic Democratic Underground attacked the messenger, the Maui Times, as a "conservative rag" rather than actually consider the message, just because Tulsi was posing as a Berniecrat. Especially in light of the second link, the message rings true.)
3. She did, eventually, support Conyers' HB 676, but I don't trust the depth of that support. Even since then, she's used the New Dem weasel phrase "universal health care."
4. She still has not modified in any way her BJP support. As of six months ago, she still drew ire of Indian minorities for that and the Islamophobia associated with it. RSS leaders spoke at the World Hindu Congress she attended.
(Note: If Modi weren't PM, and Obama were still president, I suspect he'd still be blocked from entry to our country. So, it's the BJP, not just the RSS.)
8. She also accused Palestinians in Gaza of using people as human shields, basically spouting standard Israeli talking points.
So, to her Kool-Aid drinkers? I would certainly vote for any reasonable Green for president against her. An Islamophobe who may still be a closet bigot on gay rights hasn't captured me, let alone I wouldn't vote for a Trump-level weathervane.
