Should our presidents be nice?

 

Jimmy Carter was apparently a genuinely nice fellow.

Donald Trump isn’t famous for that. Neither was FDR.

In our media-mediated age, we’re taught to think that our leaders should be guys we’d fancy having a beer with. Or ladies. Hillary was dinged as unable to project empathy even though she liked to swill whiskey with army generals.

John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was said to do well because he wore workingman’s clothes and made voters feel they could “relate.”

For my part, I don’t relate to any of these guys and don't want to. In my old-fashioned way, I want them to do good things even if they’re raging assholes.

But let’s have a look at what nice President Carter did for us.

It’s easy to forget what a disaster Jimmy Carter’s presidency was and not for the reason given at the time--that he was too idealistic and therefore weak and let the Soviets and the Iranians take advantage.

Carter wasn’t weak at all when it came to his policy goals, led (by the nose perhaps) by his eminence gris, the Russia-hating Polish immigrant Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski saw no evolutionary nuances in the Soviet system like the proponents of the Nixon-Kissinger détente did, and he set about dismantling it.

Carter did his bidding by signing off on support for Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan well before the Soviet invasion (with some unfortunate boomerang results).

He also dug in with the Shah of Iran while ignoring reports that the shah’s rule was shaky. He ignored further advice not to admit the shah into the U.S. after his overthrow, leading directly to the hostage crisis that collapsed his presidency.

Carter had a star turn as a peacemaker between Israel and Egypt culminating in the Camp David Accords. That set the stage for further Israeli intransigence and gleeful destruction of the Palestinians.

Carter had nothing to say about the relentless Israeli settler project, which led to the hardening of  Israel's colonizing ambitions since it no longer had to worry about 100 million Egyptians on its borders. In addition, as Michael K. Smith wrote in Counterpunch,

His much-praised Camp David accords were the death warrant for Lebanon as Israel was freed to concentrate undivided attention on a long-planned invasion across its northern border. It was this invasion (June 1982) that convinced Osama bin Laden that only mass murder of Americans could ever change U.S. foreign policy.

Fifty years later, we can see the outcome: Carter got the Nobel while undermining chances of a long-term peace. 

Of course, as an ex-president he did courageously denounce the Israeli state for practicing apartheid. Too bad he hadn't noticed when he could have done something about it. 

Like his “peacemaker” reputation, Carter also is remembered for highlighting “human rights” as a cornerstone of U.S. relations with the world. It’s easy to forget—or not know given our PR approach to history—that the U.S. had sunk into acute disrepute over its decade of atrocities in Vietnam and its shameless promotion of vicious military dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere. 

Carter, a nice fellow with a humanitarian impulse, was a convenient antidote for regaining the lost moral high ground.

As we have since seen, “human rights” was quickly turned into an excuse to continue America’s expeditionary imperialism. Convenient accusations of “human rights” abuse popped up anywhere the U.S. wanted to stage its next invasion.

We heard about Saddam Hussein’s crimes, Khaddafy’s brutality, and al-Assad’s nastiness just as the U.S. needed them demonized. If a foreign enemy had to be undermined or unseated, moralizing over “human rights” was ever-ready as a spearpoint.

Conversely, problems with “human rights” among our allies never quite made it to the front pages or the TV news segments. Even Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas against his Kurdish population was excused while he fought a war against Iran, only to be resuscitated later when it was time to invade Iraq and restore “human rights.”

Carter chided Duvalier for his dictatorial rule in Haiti while deporting Haitian refugees back there. He winked at the South Korean military dictatorship and defended the CIA’s role in installing Chile’s Pinochet.

Nice Jimmy Carter could also launch the rollback of the New Deal that might have been resisted had some post-Nixon conservative attempted it too early. Under Carter, we had mass deregulation of a slew of industries including airlines, trucking, telecommunications, and railroads, ushering in the neoliberal era.

Carter delivered the goods for Wall Street though not quickly nor thoroughly enough and was shoved aside by the Reagan Revolution, which he arguably initiated.

It's true that Jimmy Carter did great things for world health, like eliminating guinea worm disease. He acted to protect the ozone layer by banning CFCs. Good! No doubt he thought the planet worth saving, and maybe you have to be kinda nice to feel that.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, isn’t likely to go down in history as nice, compassionate, humanitarian, or a fun guy on the next barstool. He’s an arrogant prick, a narcissistic scammer, and as empathetic as a scorpion in your shoe.

Maybe that’s why he could send his real estate buddy Steve Witkoff to Israel and tell Netanyahu that he didn’t give a rat’s ass whether it was the holy Shabat or Hallowe’en. I’m coming for your signature on this deal, said Witkoff, so get your inkstand out.

Would Kamala Harris have done anything like that? No. Is she nicer? Probably.

Who knows if this means the slaughter of Gazans will end or what new horror Trump’s Zionist billionaires has planned for them. For now, however, Trump turns out to be the lesser of two evils on genocide, and that’s true whether he or anyone around him is nice.

It’s time to put “niceness” to sleep as a political category, alongside “sincerity.” As my late friend Gabrielle always used to say, referring to her escape from the Nazis at age 14, “Hitler was sincere. So what?”

Two vigilantes

 

In May 2023, Daniel Perry took down Jordan Neely, an erratic homeless man who was making wild threats on a New York subway car. Perry then killed Neely by strangulation.

Police reacted nonchalantly to the Perry-Neely killing, at first letting Perry go without charges.

In December 2024, Luigi Mangione fired bullets at the back of a prominent accountant, Brian Thompson, who was minding his own business on a midtown Manhattan street.

Police mobilized an intense manhunt for the Thompson killer, with the police commissioner appearing daily flanked by a phalanx of top NYPD officials vowing to track down the threat to the business district’s reputation for safety.

Perry’s defense fund quickly raised $1.5 million from people who cheered his permanent removal of the subway ranter. Tabloid news coverage noted that he was an ex-Marine, more for the heroic aspect than the implication that he knew how to kill people.

Other New Yorkers were uncomfortable with the extreme action. Dealing with unhinged riders on the underground trains is a daily occurrence for anyone who rides them regularly.

While we’re always wary of how things can get out of control, nearly all of the mentally ill passengers are merely exasperating. (There are exceptions.) We give them a wide berth or move to another car.

The hundreds of uniformed NYPD and MTA agents swarming the platforms don’t ever seem willing or authorized to do anything about the assorted monologuists and dazed spirits. One occasionally sees security talking to a lost soul in the station, getting them to stand up from their squats, or nudging people unconscious on the platforms or sound asleep at the system’s terminal stations.

But I have never once seen police climb onto the subway itself and remove someone causing a disturbance, (illegally) flogging chocolates to every rider one by one, or preaching The Word to a captive audience.

I’d support them if they did.

I’d be even gladder if the city ever figured out how to attend to the untold thousands of mentally ill people who have taken up residence in the subway system in the absence of anywhere else to go. We certainly spend enough city cash on policing the place with the very inadequate results we all can see.

Perry was acquitted yesterday just as Mangione was nabbed at a Pennsylvania Macdonald’s. The latter can expect to get a multi-decade sentence for his act and didn’t seem terribly eager to get away with it, given his indifference to the horde of incriminating evidence he was still carrying around.

From early accounts, Mangione was moved to commit homicide by the state of our health payment system, which empowers people like his victim to engage in financial legerdemain that enriches accountants while denying people the healthcare they pay enormous sums to obtain—sometimes resulting in their deaths.

Maybe he’ll express disdain for the judicial system that lets people off while the elites get away with, well, murder.

Assassination is not a good way to address injustice (ask the Mexicans). Then again, when other avenues are cut off, we can’t be surprised to see it occur.

 

The Biden Crime Family and its loyal claque

How appropriate that the Biden Era should begin with a shadow state maneuver to protect the Big Guy from the damning contents of Hunter’s laptop by declaring it a Russian fake news operation and end with the pardoning of the family bagman. 

Predictably, the clapping seals on state media like MSNBC immediately mobilized to justify it. These debased sycophants who assured us that Joe was compos mentis (until suddenly he wasn’t) signed up to shill for him even as he poked a stick in their eyes. All those solemn promises that he wouldn’t exercise the pardon power turned to dust, but hordes of media comfort women (and men) rushed to his defense in exchange for nothing. A self-respecting sex worker at least demands payment. Maybe they’ll get book contracts.

None of the commentators have much to say about the 10,000 non-violent offenders still in federal prison for marijuana possession who are not, so far, the beneficiaries of a Biden pardon. Instead, we hear about how we should respect family feeling though obviously not every family.

After all that panic about Trump being a dictator-in-waiting, virtually the new Hitler about to seize power, we see that none of it was to be taken seriously. Joe, playing the part of Hindenburg, welcomed The Donald to the White House with a broad grin, as one capo di tutti capi entertaining another. 

The aghastitude over January 6 that we were supposed to see as an attempted dismantling of the Constitution (which it certainly was) turned out to be a big, phony wrestling match as far as the outgoing crowd is concerned. If 1/6 truly mattered to Biden, he wouldn’t have given Trump a golden invitation to use the pardon power to free all the day’s rioters by arguing that they were unfairly targeted, just like Hunter. The moral high ground, if it ever existed, is gone.

Hunter’s laptop, as we now know, was completely genuine and had a slew of data about his dubious business dealings as well as distracting sleaze. But the politicized FBI went to Capitol Hill and lied about it, for which it merits the sound thrashing that I fervently hope will be forthcoming at the hands of nominee Kash Patel. How luscious that the citadel of jughead white dudes should be thoroughly scoured by a dark-skinned guy who thinks half of them should be behind bars. They should have pushed Biden to close Guantánamo before Trump gets the idea of sending them there. 

Some of my liberal friends will probably leap to the defense of the FBI since it was so reliably anti-Trump during the Russiagate scandal, which was a far worse assault on the constitution than Watergate. It was even worse than the January 6 circus, in part because 1/6 only lasted one day while Russiagate was a 4-year campaign by intelligence and police agencies to undermine an elected president. Trump seems determined to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and if the Revenge Tour is properly directed, it could be very healthy. (Trump should also get a food taster.)

I remember the old FBI that snooped on every left-wing social movement under COINTELPRO, kept files on our protected political activities, and helped murder Black Panther Fred Hampton in his bed. But those days seem forgotten now that the security-intelligence apparatus boosts the fortunes of Democrats, and erstwhile radicals scurry to hop onto the party’s tail and help wag it because Trump is a threat to “democracy.” (No matter that people voted for him.) 

Biden’s pardon of Biden fils covers anything he did all the way back to 2014, precisely the date of the Maidan coup that brought a NATO handmaiden regime to power in Ukraine. Joe was on the scene immediately, even chairing a foreign country’s cabinet meeting IIRC. It was also the year Hunter got a $60K per month gig sitting on the board of Burisma for which his sole qualification was shared DNA with a powerful oligarch. 

How convenient for the neocons who wanted to use Ukraine to push war with Russia to have a willing partner busily extracting millions for his family accounts from the place and easily kept in line for the pursuit of their geopolitical games. The Sullivans and Nulands could rest assured that no annoying attention would be paid to the interests of U.S. citizens in getting ourselves involved in yet another expensive war based on the fantasy that the American military is the “greatest fighting force” in world history and more than a match for the “gas station parading as a country.”

Living in Lalaland is fun until reality intrudes. It will soon be impossible to ignore the fact that the expensive weapons we pay our left nut for don’t work and that we’ve sent a million Ukrainian men to their deaths for nothing. The deals available in 2014 (Minsk 1), 2015, (Minsk 2), 2022 (Istanbul), and even as recently as last year when the Ukrainian counteroffensive failed would have left Ukraine with an intact state and a chance for neutrality and eventual reconstruction. Now, it will be lucky to exist at all. Meanwhile, they continue to send untrained kids into doomed battles to be slaughtered by the thousands.

Trump’s loony-tunes advisors like the deranged friend of MI6 Sebastian Gorka will help him bluster into further stupidity and makes things worse. The collapse when it eventually comes will be dramatic; the finger-pointing should be quite a spectacle. But the Bidens will be long gone, their foreign accounts intact and their deals beyond the reach of investigators and prosecutors. Historians will have to uncover the saga of the crime family whose surname doesn’t end in a vowel, and Biden will die in his bed. May the rest of us be so lucky.

We can oppose Trump without losing our minds

A reaction to the results of Nov. 5 is setting in that will do us no favors: Trump (bad), Trump’s people (worse), Trump’s actions (awful, by definition). Therefore, we should oppose everything Trumpian, and devil take the details. This is a mistake.

A few nights ago, I was on a call convened by a respected epidemiologist, whom I know slightly. It was for people in the public health universe, which I am, and was attended by 100 early logins with another 900 frustrated parties stuck in the waiting room for technical reasons.

We were well into the first 20 minutes of the ad hoc meeting, hearing about a survey in which potential participants listed their areas of expertise and interest. We then had a discussion of what working groups to form and how to sign up as volunteers or to take on leadership roles.

But something was missing. No one told us why we were there.

One obvious answer is that people are worried about what the Trump II experience is going to mean for public health. Fair enough. In fact, there were hints in the chat and in some passing comments about the need to protect “Science” and the potential dangers for the health of our people represented by certain Trump nominees.

But no one felt the need to lay out in even the vaguest general terms any guiding principles shared by those present and by the organization that clearly is intended to emerge from this assembly. That means we were assumed to share a set of foundational, core beliefs [see above]: that Trump and Trumpism are profoundly bad and dangerous things, that this is evident on its face, and that no precision is required to start the motors running for resistance.

I did make a feeble attempt to raise this question and was told that the convening alarm was not just about Trump and his appointees and that “policy” issues will be developed in due course. Others said that the details will emerge “from below” as the working groups take hold. I appreciate the spirit and await more information.

That said, I find the exercise, so far, completely lacking in nuance and, by implication, lacking any critical distance from the pre-Trump state of affairs. Now, I have been paying attention to the statements of the Trump nominees. While I certainly shake my head with my public health colleagues at much of what I hear, these figures also issue critiques that echo the forgotten cries of the Bernie campaigns: regulatory capture of federal agencies by the industries they monitor; horrible food choices foisted on the unsuspecting; and yes, brute censorship of non-mainstream views in the name of “misinformation” suppression.

A new advocacy body that starts out without the merest recognition that there are points of agreement even with the most crackpot of Trump’s hangers-on is hamstringing itself. After all, the RFK Jr. confirmation hearings are going to be a unique opportunity to air not just Kennedy’s vaccine views but also his denunciations of nefarious pharmaceutical and Big Ag practices. Shouldn’t we welcome that and look for ways to boost his timely messages? The Manichean view of the present (bad because Trump) versus the past (imperfect but basically sound) is far too cozy.

The cards are stacked against Kennedy and anyone else who actually tries to confront corporate interests and their armies of lobbyists, especially given Trump’s well-known affinity for the rich and powerful. The most likely outcome of all the stir around the incoming president’s unusual nominees is that they will be outmaneuvered by their respective bureaucracies and eventually dumped by The Donald shortly after they annoy one of his golf buddies. Do we want to pitch into that process by denouncing them all in advance?

The quick defenestration of Matt Gaetz as a possible Attorney General is a good example of a lost opportunity. Whatever Gaetz’s faults, he was good on censorship, good on antitrust, and openly called for former A-G Bill Barr to be sharply questioned on the Epstein “suicide.” He was quickly burned by a dubious accusation of sex crimes (for which there is to date zero evidence), which most of my Democrat friends nonetheless believe, because Trump. No one asked why the Republican establishment hates Matt Gaetz or what they wanted to avoid.

I don’t diminish the real dangers represented by the Trumpian zealots’ slash-and-burn approach to government. Civil service protections date back to the Garfield-Arthur Administrations of the 1880s and have shielded Federal employees from partisan hackery for many decades. Trump wants to further consolidate executive powers, which should alarm us all—which it mostly did not while Democrat presidents wielded them.

That said, the Federal bureaucracy was fully mobilized to undermine Trump’s first presidency with the bogus Russiagate conspiracy, a far worse attempt to subvert democracy than Watergate and for which hardly anyone has paid a price. Trump has good reason to want to bring it back under control and clip the wings of the secret societies that populate the CIA, FBI, DoJ, and who knows what other mysterious three-letter outfits.

Trump is wacko, a loose cannon, undisciplined, erratic, and a disagreeable human being. He was also the choice of the majority of voters, and in a democracy that means he gets to make policy. Refusing to engage with that fact will condemn critics to the upper-middle-class wilderness that the Democratic Party now represents, all the more easily ignored by the struggling citizens who brought him back to power. We need to get over ourselves and the partisan obsession with Trump’s innate horribleness, which only discredits us in the eyes of his followers who, like it or not, must be our interlocutors.

 

The "F" Word

Photo: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, Heinrich Hoffmann collection, PD-US https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22501218

FASCIST. Are you one? Who is bringing fascism to the United States? It’s been a term loose on the lips for a good while in political discourse here. Now, it’s taking off like a TikTok video. 

We have a general notion of what fascism is; academic historians and political scientists, even literary figures, have more formal ways of talking about it. Here and now, it’s just a sound-bite insult. But given the importance of whether or not we’re heading there, we ought to stop and consider the concept during these last few days of shaky calm before The Vote.

What do we think of when we think of fascists and fascism? Storm troopers burning books; thugs in distinctive clothing (blackshirts, brownshirts) marching on/intimidating elected officials; vigilante justice and police/secret police impunity; sustained attacks on a scapegoated minority; centralized political power and persecution of dissidents; censorship, fear, regimentation, and a charismatic (to some—ridiculous to others) chief demagogue—does that cover it?

Wikipedia says fascism (FASH-iz-əm) is “a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Merriam-Webster adds a detail. It says fascism is a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime “that exalts nation and often race above the individual.” Can’t have populism, then, even though that used to mean “the people,” i.e., the regular people in their struggle with their bosses, the banks, and the elites in general.

The Encyclopedia Britannica notes that “fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another” historically, but they have in common “extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism” as well as belief in “the rule of elites.” So, EB says they aren’t populist at all even though they might pretend to be. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Humberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) once wrote a long essay on the topic and listed a dozen elements (14 actually) that he thought characterized fascism. Unlike the three definitions above, Eco emphasized that fascism is hard to pin down because it is essentially anti-intellectual and emotive. So, “fascism” may be something like pornography: a thing very hard to precisely distinguish from close cousins like erotic art but pretty easy to recognize when it’s, um, in your face. “Fascism” thus could just mean extreme bloody-mindedness for one person while for another the same behavior or policy would merit massive, even extra-constitutional resistance.

In my view, this is the key distinction that we should examine because there are plenty of signs that our polarized polity is stepping right to the edge of that conclusion, i.e., that our “democracy” is in danger and must be preserved by any means necessary, including anti-democratic ones. (“Democracy,” of course, being another emotive and hard-to-define object.)

I’m going to go through Eco’s 14 signs and see if Trump really is one, but [spoiler alert] I’ll also suggest that the finger-pointing Democrats are not immune to the accusation in certain important ways.

Eco 1: The Cult of Tradition, the idea that things were great once and we just have to get back there. MAGA sums that up nicely, and Trump’s Christian fundamentalist base certainly harkens back to a Golden Age when we were a “Christian nation” (First Amendment be damned). The Dems are really on the opposite side of this. Hillary famously praised the “innovative” coasts and the brave new world of hi-tech.

Eco 2: Anti-Modernism, a rejection not just of recent changes like civil rights, gender equity, and sexual emancipation but, in extreme cases, the Enlightenment itself, the Age of Reason that shed religious dogma for science, individual liberty, and the expanded franchise to non-property holders. Trump doesn’t reflect this much, but some of his supporters do, like Peter Thiel who laments women’s suffrage. 

Eco 3: The Cult of Action, often expressed in contempt for pointy-headed intellectuals. This is present in Trump’s movement, but it’s nothing new. The GOP has embraced this resentment since the days of Nixon and Agnew (“nattering nabobs of negativism”), and Democrats regularly play right into it, for example, by the shoddy “expert” handling of things like Covid and, most famously, Hillary’s “deplorables” line. Iva League graduate Vance says universities are the enemy except when they shut down protests against genocide.

Eco 4: Disagreement is Treason. Trump hates turncoats worse than anything and doesn’t forgive. Mike Pence isn’t welcome at his rallies (though he could go to Kamala’s and get a round of applause.) The censorship-industrial complex put together by the Dems (and cheered by most liberals) is authoritarian if not fascism-lite and certainly a solid precedent for an uglier version to come. And P.S., the Guantánamo dungeon is still open after both R and D presidencies could have shut it down. Lest we forget: no one was ever punished for torturing defenseless prisoners. The apparatus for crushing dissent has been in place for a while. If fascism is so dangerous, why did everyone sign off on its tools?

Eco 5: Fear of Difference. Trumpism is guilty, witness the anti-Obama birther conspiracy and rhetoric about immigration “poisoning the blood of our nation.”  Not to mention the allergy to transgenderism. Dems embrace “diversity” in superficial traits like ethnicity and sexual partners but draw the line at people who dare to challenge them or run against their anointed candidates (vade retro, Bernie S).

Eco 6: Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class. Democrats handed this to Trump by not taking care of people’s concrete material wellbeing over the last few decades. So, yes, they’re resentful and have every right to be. We could say those voters are more resentful of a loss of status than survival issues, but in most cases it’s probably both. And what’s wrong with wanting some status?

Eco 7: Obsession with Plots. Q-Anon, of course; Stop the Steal, of course. But wait a minute—Russiagate? Misinformation spread by Iran? Both sides get an F.

Eco 8: Deceptively Strong/Weak Eternal Opponent. Eco says that fascism requires an enemy that is both too strong (justifying harsh measures) and essentially weak (undermining the nation). Jews fit the bill for Hitler, inferior and weak but also secretly in control of everything. I suppose the Deep State could serve here with the accusation that they’ve taken over the government but then can’t deliver in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, etc. Dems treat the MAGAs similarly, an internal fifth column (strong) but also “deplorable” and incompetent (weak).

Eco 9: Life as Permanent Warfare. This seems like a stretch to lay on one side or the other though the Trumpians are more openly belligerent.

Eco 10: Contempt for the Weak. Like true fascists, Trump mocks the weak, mocks his enemies as being weak, and seems congenitally incapable of recognizing that he ever did anything wrong. OTOH, Kamala doesn’t recognize that she ever did anything, so there’s that. And could Blinken, Biden, Harris, Sullivan be any more contemptuous of the Palestinians of Gaza? They’re defenseless, so naturally we slaughter them, right?

Eco 11: Cult of Heroism. This doesn’t seem to be a big factor in U.S. politics at present though Dems love to parade military types, showcase generals on talk shows, and run CIA agents for elective office. Who are the MAGA heroes? Kyle Rittenhouse? Trump doesn’t like to share the stage with anyone.

Eco 12: Machismo. Bingo.

Eco 13: Selective Populism: Fascism claims to speak for “the People” while enriching the elites. Both sides guilty as hell.

Eco 14: Newspeak. Where to begin? The English language long ago entered its decadent period with the shift from “torture” to “enhanced interrogation.”

Speaking of fascism, was Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally a fascist display? Liberal media certainly think so. All the Dem-leaning talk shows went absolutely ballistic, comparing it to a Nazi event held there a century ago.

Sorry, people, not convincing. After all, 400 members of BOTH parties stood and cheered a real, bonafide fascist on the floor of the House of Representatives not so long ago, one who is actively carrying out a mass murder of untermenschen before the entire world with U.S. weaponry, money, and support. Clips of that infamous display will someday terrify our grandchildren. The same liberal outlets clutching their pearls actively collaborate every day by pushing out the genocidal party line from Jerusalem. Their piously “democratic” university presidents attack anyone who objects. Now we’re supposed to forget all that and lose our minds over Trump.

Is Trump a fascist? If so, he’s got company and plenty of it.

At BRICS summit, Global South not playing along

Dozens of Global South leaders dared to gather last week at a world summit meeting hosted by Voldemort Putin in the Tatar capital, Kazan. So hey, the world didn’t stop turning because we have an election next week, imagine that.

Apparently, they didn’t agree that Mr Putin is the new Hitler, as Hillary Clinton opined in 2014, i.e., long before the Ukraine war broke out. Whatever they might think of the battle raging in eastern Europe, 30 heads of state and top officials from BRICS member and observer countries came to the powwow.

They wanted to see whether they could collaborate on a new trade and development architecture, given that the record of the last 500 years of Western-led domination has left many of them in an unenviable state.

And these were not minor players. Aside from the five original BRICS states—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—there were the newly incorporated members such as oil giants Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates, plus Ethiopia and Egypt, suggesting the door is open for more African countries.

And sure enough, the list of 11 new candidate members includes Algeria, Nigeria, and Uganda. Southeast Asia is also heavily represented among the newcomers: Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, that is, the four biggest and most prosperous countries of the region.

Only Latin America is largely on the sidelines. Cuba and Bolivia will be invited to join, but these are minor economic players to say the least. Venezuela was vetoed by Brazil after the glaring election theft by Maduro & Co.

News coverage has highlighted the fact that the ever-expanding BRICS far outdistances the G7 Masters of the Universe countries in real GDP, population, and geographic reach.

Less often mentioned is the fact that most of the BRICS countries aren’t keen on wars, unlike their erstwhile colonial powers, historically incapable of imagining a world that they don’t dominate. Could world trade be mutually beneficial and not inevitably exploitative? Let’s see.

The summit set itself the task of finding new ways to engage in trade without kowtowing to the interests of the Americans and the Europeans as they have had to do for centuries. That’s plenty complicated, but the meeting outlined ambitious ideas.

Western reaction has been twofold: ignore the whole thing as not worthy of our attention or mock it as Putin’s attempt to prove he’s not isolated.

News flash: he isn’t and neither is Russia.

The New York Times’ headline was typical: “BRICS Summit Offers a Glimpse Inside Putin’s Alternate Reality.” Yeah, a reality that the Times’ writers and their friends in Washington should explore, including side-to-side comparisons with their own. Narrative management—at which the U.S. is particularly expert—is no substitute for looking at facts and basing one’s actions on them.

The BBC put it this way: “Putin gathers allies toshow West’s pressure isn’t working.” Hey, Beeb, that was demonstrated 2 years ago, time to catch up! And the influential Associated Press insisted that the summit was “shadowed by Ukraine.” It certainly was for the western media, which are laser-focused on the war their countries are losing. No evidence that the rest of the world is “shadowed” by it.

Perhaps they’re less obsessed with Ukraine after having witnessed the U.S. and its allies illegally invade and destroy one disobedient country after another. Or it could be that seeing a U.S. ally slaughter defenseless civilians in Gaza for a year makes them less likely to sit up and salute at the demand that they “isolate” the Russian leadership.

The point of BRICS is that through joint cooperation they hope to carve out room to stay independent of the West’s demands and think and act for themselves. Maybe that’s why it’s proving so popular in this early stage.

Our mainstream reporters continue to whistle confidently that Russia’s economy—that they were shocked to discover was not crushed by the mighty sanctions regime imposed in 2022—still has “severe cracks beneath the surface” (BBC).

They also scoff at the idea that the diverse member states of the BRICS could ever reach agreement on important issues of trade, commerce, and finance, no doubt because they’re used to the western version where one country imposes the rules, and everyone else obeys. China and India overcoming their differences is simply “bonkers,” according to one quoted expert.

The lengthy Kazan Declaration issued at the end of the summit suggests that the BRICS countries can indeed find areas of considerable consensus, notwithstanding the ponderous turgidity of such documents. The signatories call for a reform of the outdated UN apparatus, including the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organisation, and an end to “unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions.”

The Declaration includes consensus language on climate change, biodiversity, species conservation, water scarcity, terrorism, money-laundering, Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan, and a bunch of other stuff.

It finally gets to the much-anticipated talk of new cross-border payments mechanisms, now that the U.S. has queered the dollar by stealing other countries’ cash. They “welcome the use of local currencies in financial transactions” and want to see interlinked banking networks free of American control.

Does all this add up to a New Bretton Woods, a reformulated UN, displacement of the dollar in international trade, a “South” bloc to oppose the West in a new stand-off? Yes, no, and maybe.

Turkey’s presence at the summit suggests NATO is in serious trouble, having demonstrated to the world that its expensive weapons don’t work. The UN Secretary General also attended, to howls of Atlanticist outrage.

BRICS has its own development bank and has started to lend money although the World Bank still dwarfs it. These alternatives will take years, perhaps decades, to evolve.

Reuters, to its credit, diverged from lamestream coverage by taking note of the attending countries’ serious grievances with the status quo. “People see institutions which are not really representative or democratic," it quoted one expert saying. "Infrastructure established in the 1940s after the world war, and nothing changes.” 

Net financial flows, Reuters continued, “turned negative for developing countries, meaning they paid more to service external debts than they received in new external finance.”

That is, the poor are now funding the rich. As a matter of fact, that feels a lot like how economics works here at home lately. No one should wonder at the world’s marginalized billions feeling rebellious, unrepresented, taken advantage of, and scolded. After all, so are we.

Eric Adams just doesn't know how to grift

 

I read the entire indictment issued by federal prosecutors that outlines Mayor Adams’ attempt to play with the big guys. Since influence peddling and favor-trading for campaign cash is how our system runs, it’s a bit much to see Adams tackled for business as usual. Unfortunately for Adams, he didn’t learn the basics on how it’s done.

Adams should have had better instruction from the real experts in how to move in power circles and get everyone’s back mutually scratched smoothly and silently. He didn’t get the right lawyers who know how to do deals without leaving tracks.

Adams and his staff thought they were slick OGs who had parleyed themselves into power and could sail into the big time. In fact, they’re nouveau hustlers with sloppy methods.

A good chunk of the evidence federal prosecutors have lined up against Adams is based on text messages. Text messages?? Seriously, did these folks really not get the memo about how none of that is safe or private? They even write things like, Let’s not text each other about this!

I sat on a jury last year in which a kid who conceivably could have gotten away with a serious crime screwed himself by texting incriminating statements. You get the exact same vibe from reading Adams’ staff work.

And who’s bright idea was it to organize the cash slurry for Adams’ campaigns through Turkiye? Anyone with a pulse knows that you rely on Israeli cash nowadays, and nobody will dare bother you. Some powerful people had to be very unhappy about city government being penetrated by a Muslim country. Ukraine, okay, maybe some East Europeans, solid Anglo allies elsewhere, no problem. But Istanbul? Not done!

It's almost sad to see how cheaply Adams was seduced by things like a business class seat on Turkish Airlines and a few days in a luxury hotel. No wonder we went along with Bloomberg for so long since he could buy the same hotel out of his petty cash box.

New York City tries to lessen the influence of big money in elections by matching small donations with public funds 8 to 1. That’s real money, and Adams stole it, essentially, by lining up illegal major donations and hiding them through straw donors, like a business guy’s driver who then gets reimbursed by the boss. It’s a very old game, and everyone knows it goes on. But that’s why you need experts in covering it up.

Intrepid muckrakers at The City dug up the details, which started the investigative ball rolling. (Everyone should subscribe to their daily bulletin and send them money.) While that took work, it wasn’t hard to unravel the corrupt threads.

Adams might beat the bribery charge because the Supreme Court helpfully limited those prosecutions to provable quid pro quos. But the manipulation of campaign finance restrictions is clearly laid out; I can’t see how he escapes those counts. His career is over, and the fantasies of moving on to national office and even the White House (yes, there are delusional messages in that vein) are consigned to dreamland.

That said, liberal New York shouldn’t wallow in self-righteousness because we put Eric Adams in office, and we can’t pretend we didn’t know what he was about. People succumbed to fear-mongering over crime in the subways, and Adams, a former cop, promised to pour police officers onto the platforms, which he did. We all know perfectly well what a policing response means, and we got what the majority asked for—a baton-led response to social ills. The tabloids and Murdoch’s empire were delighted and now keep up the drumbeat of scare stories so that the only possible response to the current failing policy is to double down on it.

Adams’s shamelessness was on display even before he took office. He smiled glibly and was surrounded by dubious comrades with disturbing records. His word salads could compete with Kamala’s indecipherable ramblings, and his interest in keeping the rich and powerful happy was obvious from Day One. But we demanded SAFETY above all else, and we got cops everywhere, which isn’t that but reassures white people. The sad evidence that Adams was in it for himself should have been a bright red warning light. But our overlords reminded us to be scared, and we did what they suggested. Will we do better next time?