Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 18, 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 18, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Who will guard the guardians? 

U.S. Government Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intelligence Community For Illegal Spying And Election Interference, Say Sources 

Public, via Naked Capitalism 02-15-2024]

“Former CIA Director Gina Haspel blocked the release of ‘binder’ with evidence that may identify her role in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.”

CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say 

Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag [via Naked Capitalism 02-14-2024]

[TW:  I want to put forward the observation that given Trump’s close association with Roy Cohn, and business dealings with the Russian mafia, it would have been malpractice for USA intelligence agencies NOT to make such requests. The real problem with this is that there is no longer any reason to believe the the CIA, FBI, NSA and other intelligence agencies actually serve the General Welfare of the citizens of USA. 

Or to put it another way, how would we want an intelligence agency to have dealt with Aaron Burr when Burr was running for president? Or how about dealing with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis in the 1850s as the sectional crisis worsened? What do we want an intelligence agency to do when one such appears headed for the highest office in the land? Or actually wins it?

There are many people who have a knee jerk reaction against intelligence agencies.  Are we to abolish any and all intelligence agencies? I have no doubt that there are many people who immediately answer with an emphatic “yes!” I would ask them to take the time to read James Fenimore Cooper’s The Bravo/ It is Cooper’s “novel” of how the secret service of Venice blackmails a poor man into being an assassin. At the very least, read Cooper’s Introduction; there is nothing fictional there at all. Cooper explains that he wrote the novel to explore the process of cultivating evil in the dark recesses of government power, and how that contrasts to the process of acculturation in civic values that is supposed to occur in a real republic.

In the case of Trump, we know that his behavior and character was molded in profoundly evil ways because Trump was tutored in Cohn’s methods and philosophy of government. But, again, what are we to do about this when we no longer have government institutions steeped in the civic values of republicanism? Recall that Jeffrey Epstein’s first troubles with law enforcement were dissipated by the intervention of intelligence agencies with the district attorney in Florida who wanted to bring charges.

Lambert Strether applauds (anti)Republicans for opposing the campaign of the intelligence agencies against Trump, but I do not think these (anti)Republicans are acting from any moral commitment to the good. Rather, their position is part of their partisan warfare against the Democrats, calculated to gain a political advantage.  The excesses and coups of the CIA, let us remember were committed as much, if not more, under Republicans as Democrats. The names Dulles, Helms, Colby and Casey come to mind. And then there is George Bush Sr., who was both CIA director and POTUS. And I think it is a mistake to assume that only the Democrats thought they would benefit from the RussiaGate operation. Trump is as much a danger to the Republican establishment as he is to the Democratic Party. Nobody yet has been much interested in looking for a RussiaGate connection to the Bush family apparatus yet, but I suspect there are some important stories there waiting to be uncovered.

It is useful to look at the history of intelligence activities before the formal establishment of intelligence agencies — and especially the creation of the national security state — beginning with Franklin’s and Washington’s espionage operations during the Revolutionary War. Why were there no scandals arising from those operations? Or from the Union Army and Pinkerton operations during the Civil War? I contend that a large part of the reason was that the guardrails of public duty as defined by civic republicanism were still in place and quite robust.

In the final analysis, the only real way to “guard the guardians” is to make sure that the doctrines and values of civic republicanism a suffused throughout the nation. But capitalism, and its single-minded emphasis on self-interest, is a strong and dangerous corrosive element that must be reckoned with. — TW]

Death of Aleksei Navalny: the Brits did it! 

Gilbert Doctorow [via Naked Capitalism 02-17-2024]

...In all of the false flag operations that have been directed by the West against Russia over the past decade or more, I have argued that the old Roman investigative principle of cui bono militated against the Kremlin having been involved in any way.  So it is today:  why would Putin want to murder Navalny, when the man is now largely forgotten within Russia. Navalny is yesterday’s news and his ‘anti-corruption’ campaign is irrelevant to Russians in the midst of an existential struggle with the Collective West that is being fought on the territory of Ukraine?  However, the murder of Navalny clearly serves the interests of that same Collective West.…

Let us go beyond the cui bono argumentation to circumstantial evidence that is damning for the Brits. As the Americans like to say, there are ‘fingerprints’ of the Brits all over this death of Navalny.

A fair number of the poisonings and other assorted deaths of people who could be said were ‘inconvenient’ to the Kremlin happened in the U.K., after all. That is where Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch who opposed Putin tooth and nail, was ‘suicided’ and it occurred in 2013 at his London estate when it was widely rumored he was looking for forgiveness for his treachery and was preparing to return to Mother Russia with a trove of documents.  Earlier still, the U.K. is where the Berezovsky employee Alexander Litvinenko met his death in 2006 from polonium poisoning in a very British cuppa tea.

However, more recently there were incidents in the U.K. which bear directly on the fate of Navalny, and their timing is very relevant. I am thinking about the Novichok poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Skripal in Salisbury at the start of March 2018, ahead of the 18 March presidential elections in Russia that year, when Putin was making his return to power following the interregnum when Dmitry Medvedev was president….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 11, 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 11, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Israel’s Relentless Bombing Erases Gaza’s Heritage Sites 

[Wide Walls, via Naked Capitalism 02-09-2024]

The war in Gaza is wiping out Palestine’s education and knowledge systems 

[The Conversation, via Naked Capitalism 02-09-2024]

In the past four months, all or parts of Gaza’s 12 universities have been bombed and mostly destroyed.

Approximately 378 schools have been destroyed or damaged. The Palestinian Ministry of Education has reported the deaths of over 4,327 students, 231 teachers and 94 professors.

Numerous cultural heritage sites, including libraries, archives and museums, have also been destroyed, damaged and plundered.

Oligarchs' war on the experiment of republican self-government

The Republican Party and Their Billionaire Backers’ Plot Against America

Thom Hartmann, February 8, 2024 [Common Dreams]

...The most appealing thing about a dictator is that he can “get things done.”

Dictators don’t have to worry about bureaucracies hindering them, or pesky laws and regulations. They don’t care about local opposition to their projects, or their impact on the environment.

From making the trains run on time to building an autobahn and a car company to go with it, dictators famously “get things done.”

The corollary to that old nostrum is that when things are going well, when things are working smoothly, when the people are getting what they want from their government, there is little interest in putting a dictator into office.

You have to break government pretty badly before people are willing to trade in a normal democracy for a dictatorship, but it’s sure happened before.

Germany wouldn’t have embraced Hitler if it weren’t for the depression the country had slid into because they lost World War I and were hit with fierce sanctions in the Treaty of Versailles.…

One of the most successful ways the forces of autocracy and authoritarianism have risen to power throughout history is by creating or stepping into a crisis and promising to be the “strongman” who will fix things and fix them now.

Which, of course, is why right-wing billionaires and the Republicans they own have been working so hard in the decades since the Reagan Revolution to break our government.

They want a series of terrible crises. And if they don’t happen organically, right wingers are more than happy to create them, as we saw this week when Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to do anything about our southern border or to fund aid to Ukraine and the Palestinians….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 4, 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 4, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Trader Joe’s Attorney Argues National Labor Relations Board Is ‘Unconstitutional’ 

HuffPo, via Naked Capitalism 01-29-2024]

Global power shift

Everything You’re Told About The Global Economy Is Wrong (interview)

Philip Pilkington, YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 02-02-2024] Grab a cup of coffee. Or two cups. Starting with the Houthis and moving on from there:

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Domicide: The Mass Destruction of Homes Should Be a Crime Against Humanity 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation 

[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 02-01-2024]

Satellite image with destroyed buildings in red

Israeli Ministers Attend ‘Resettle Gaza’ Conference 

[Antiwar.com, via Naked Capitalism 01-30-2024]

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Links 01-31-2024]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 28, 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 28, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Global power shift

Maersk ships in US Navy convoy forced to retreat under Houthi missile attack 

[Trade Winds, via Naked Capitalism 01-26-2024]

As Armchair Warlord noted on X(Twitter): “Lost amid all the other news breaking in the last 24 hours is one particularly disturbing story: the United States Navy lost a battle at sea yesterday.”

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 01-25-2024]

x

.

The Reason China Can’t Stop Its Decline

Among specialists who follow China most closely, the two main causes cited for this new conventional wisdom have been known for years. The first is that China’s growth model has been overreliant on policies such as financial repression and extraordinary levels of investment. Here, repression has nothing to do with the usual political usage of the word. It means, rather, that the state controls domestic interest, exchange rates, and capital outflows in such a way that citizens receive little accrual or benefit from their high rates of savings. Instead, these are captured by the state and channeled into industries that are favored or prioritized by bureaucrats, including many that are state-owned.

Some of the problems that might arise from financial repression can seem apparent even to lay people. Bureaucrats tend to know little about business and are unlikely to be in the best position to make the smartest and nimblest economic bets about the industrial future. Some features of this setup may be less than obvious, though. When the state captures and invests the nation’s savings according to its own whims, capital becomes scarcer and more expensive for private investors. This also suppresses the domestic consumption that most mature economies depend on for growth. Finally, as the state channels more and more investment into industries of its choosing, average return on investment falls. China is now at the point where it must invest huge amounts of capital to produce each new dollar of economic growth, and everything points to this continuing to worsen….

[TW: I included this because of its use of the term “financial repression” in an example of clumsy and terribly inaccurate Western analysis of China.  In fact, financial predators are the very reason the USA industrial base was “hollowed out” inevitably resulting in the inability to produce enough ammunition. or to build safe and cost-effective aircraft.]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 21, 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 21, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Global power shift

China Is the World’s Sole Manufacturing Superpower

Richard Baldwin [VoxEU, via Naked Capitalism 01-17-2024]

...The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined. China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined. This column uses the recently released 2023 update of the OECD TiVA database to paint an eight-chart portrait of China’s journey to superpower status and the asymmetric impact that its dominance has had on global supply chains….

When it comes to gross production, China’s share is three times the US’ share, six times Japan’s, and nine times Germany’s. Taiwan, Mexico, Russia, and Brazil now have higher gross output than the UK. Canada is further down the ranking, in 15th place….

China’s dominance is less stark in exports (Figure 3), though the rise is equally amazing. In 1995 China had just 3% of world manufacturing exports, By 2020, its share had risen to 20%. The corresponding fall in the G7 share was less dramatic than for its share of production….

Figure 4, left panel, shows that the US relies far more on Chinese manufacturing production than vice versa. ² While shocking at first sight, this should not be unexpected. It is natural that a country with 11% of the world output buys more from a country that produces 35% than vice versa, but the numbers are astounding. China was more exposed to US inputs before 2002, but the US has had greater exposure since then. In 2020, the US was about three times more exposed to Chinese manufacturing production than vice versa….

Robust growth in 2023: China maintains top position in global shipbuilding sector for 14 years

[news.cgtn.com, via Naked Capitalism comments 01-17-2024]

In the past 12 months, China's shipbuilding output reached 42.32 million deadweight tonnes (dwt), a year-on-year increase of 11.8 percent, accounting for 50.2 percent of the world's total.

The new orders rose 56.4 percent year on year to 71.2 million dwt during the period, taking up 66.6 percent of the world's total.

By the end of December, the volume of orders on hand was 139.39 million dwt, up 32 percent year on year, accounting for 55 percent of the world's total.

In 2023, five Chinese shipbuilding enterprises ranked in the global top 10 in output, seven in top 10 for new order volume, and six for holding orders, said the MIIT.

The US, Israel Have Lost Battlefield Control – Houthis Have Attacked US Destroyer, Hit Greek-US Owned Bulker; Iran Has Hit US Base in Kurdish Capital, Erbil

John Helmer [via Naked Capitalism 01-17-2024]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 31, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 31, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Oligarchy

Oligarchy and Democracy

Jeffrey A. Winters [The American Interest, via The Big Picture 12-24-2023]

Winters is professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of Oligarchy, published by Cambridge University Press in 2011.

Everyone is by now aware of the staggering shift in fortunes upward favoring the wealthy. Less well understood is that this rising inequality is not the result of something economically rational, such as a surge in productivity or value-added contributions from financiers and hedge-fund CEOs, but is rather a direct reflection of redistributive policies that have helped the richest get richer.

[TW: I would argue that this is, in fact, well understood: that’s why Biden’s polling is so terrible. People generally understand the economy is rigged, and the see no effort being made to unrig it, nor any effort to rein in the worst abuses of economic predators, such as private equity. ]

The tiny proportion of wealthy actors among eligible voters cannot account for the immense political firepower needed to keep winning these policy victories. While motivated and mobilized minorities—those organized over issues like gay marriage, for example—can sometimes win legislative victories despite broad opposition from the electorate, America’s ultra-rich all together could barely fill a large sports stadium. They never assemble for rallies or marches, sign petitions, or mount Facebook or Twitter campaigns. So how do they so consistently get their way?

One increasingly popular answer is that America is an oligarchy rather than a democracy.¹ The complex truth, however, is that the American political economy is both an oligarchy and a democracy; the challenge is to understand how these two political forms can coexist in a single system. Sorting out this duality begins with a recognition of the different kinds of power involved in each realm. Oligarchy rests on the concentration of material power, democracy on the dispersion of non-material power. The American system, like many others, pits a few with money power against the many with participation power. The chronic problem is not just that electoral democracy provides few constraints on the power of oligarchs in general, but that American democracy is by design particularly responsive to the power of money….

Oligarchy should be understood as the politics of wealth defense, which has evolved in important ways throughout human civilization. For most of history, this has meant oligarchs were focused on defending their claims to property. They did so by arming themselves or by ruling directly and jointly over armed forces they assembled and funded. Every great increase in wealth required oligarchs to spend additional resources on armaments, castles, militias and other means of defense. The greatest transformation in the politics of wealth defense and thus of oligarchy came with the rise of the modern state. Through its impersonal system of laws, the armed modern state converted individual oligarchic property claims into secure societal property rights. In exchange, oligarchs disarmed and submitted to the same protective legal infrastructure that applied to all citizens (in theory if not always in practice). Property rights offered reliable safeguards not only against potential antagonists without property, but also, no less important, against other oligarchs and the armed state itself that administered the entire arrangement.

[TW: Here, I think Winters commits a grievous error of omission by not considering the mental and social pathologies which characterize the rich, and the society they dominate. Theorists of civic republicanism repeatedly warned of the self-glorification the rich engage in. ]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 24, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 24, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

14th Amendment

Why 14th Amendment bars Trump from office: A constitutional law scholar explains principle behind Colorado Supreme Court ruling

Mark A. Graber [The Conversation, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-20-2023]

“Section 3 then says people can be disqualified from holding office if they ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion.’ Legal authorities from the American Revolution to the post-Civil War Reconstruction understood an insurrection to have occurred when two or more people resisted a federal law by force or violence for a public, or civic, purpose. Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Insurrection, Burr’s Rebellion, John Brown’s Raid and other events were insurrections, even when the goal was not overturning the government. What these events had in common was that people were trying to prevent the enforcement of laws that were consequences of persuasion, coalition building and voting. Or they were trying to create new laws by force, violence and intimidation.” 

Donald Trump blocked from appearing on presidential primary ballot by Colorado Supreme Court

[Colorado Sun, via Naked Capitalism 12-22-2023] 

Chief Justice Boatright: “The framework that (Colorado’s election law) offers for identifying qualified candidates is not commensurate with the extraordinary determination to disqualify a candidate because they engaged in insurrection against the Constitution.” [Boatright] said the plaintiffs relied on the ‘breakneck pace’ required in Colorado’s election laws to pursue Trump’s disqualification and that they ‘overwhelmed the process.’ ‘This speed comes with consequences, namely, the absence of procedures that courts, litigants, and the public would expect for complex constitutional litigation,’ Boatright added.” Justice Samour called the challenge ‘a square constitutional peg that could not be jammed into our election code’s round hole’ and labeled the district court proceedings a ‘procedural Frankenstein’ for not following the strict deadlines in state election law.” Berkenkotter: “Three days to appeal a district court’s order regarding a challenge to a candidate’s age? Sure. But a challenge to whether a former President engaged in insurrection by inciting a mob to breach the Capitol and prevent the peaceful transfer of power? I am not convinced this is what the General Assembly had in mind.”

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 17, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 17, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Oligarchs' war on the experiment of republican self-government

Constitution in the Crosshairs: The Far Right’s Plan for a New Confederacy

Nancy Maclean, Arn Pearson, December 11, 2023 [progressive.org, via Naked Capitalism 12-15-2023]

Frustrated by the surprise defeat of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race, a group of breathtakingly rich and highly strategic actors on the radical right, including the Koch brothers, quietly launched an ambitious new campaign to lock in their political control once and for all. They had used their immense wealth and institution-building savvy to capture a majority of state legislatures in 2010, so the groundwork was already in place.

This campaign would be spearheaded by a corporate pay-to-play group they had long funded to influence state laws—the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—and a dark money group with deep ties to Charles and the late David Koch (who died in 2019), as well as the Tea Party movement—Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). When legislators arrived at ALEC’s annual meeting in August 2013, they were given detailed instructions and model text to bring back to their statehouses for a resolution demanding the first Constitutional convention since 1787….

In the decade since those first secretive meetings, Meckler’s Convention of States has managed to rack up wins in nineteen states for a convention that would address sweeping proposals to radically curtail the powers of the federal government. ALEC-led groups also claim to have twenty-eight states behind their call for a more limited convention to propose a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Should a convention be convened, what is it that the ultra-rich backers want? Their chosen so-called grassroots leaders mince no words when speaking to friendly audiences. Meckler has declared that the purpose is “to reverse 115 years of progressivism.” In fact, the endgame is even more consequential: to return this nation to its pre-Constitution roots under the Articles of Confederation, with a weak central government and sovereign states….

Indeed, most of what ALEC, CSG, and their billionaire backers want to achieve flies in the face of public opinion. And that’s what makes their plan so devious. “Voters have no role to play in the right’s vision of a Constitutional convention,” a report by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) concluded. Delegates would be handpicked by legislative leaders, and here’s the kicker: The votes taken at such a convention would be based not on population but on one vote per state in order to grossly underrepresent the majority of Americans.

In audio obtained by CMD, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, told an ALEC audience in 2021 how this strategy could be used to circumvent what most Americans want. “Because their [Democrats’] population is concentrated and ours isn’t,” Santorum said, “rural voters [Republicans] . . . actually have an outsized power granted under this process.”

He added, “We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority, even though . . . we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

[TW: The most disconcerting aspect of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza is not the brutality and inhumanity of it, or the shamelessness of Israeli officials, but the complete lack of any plan or even proposal for a constructive alternative to the killing and destruction. 

[Israeli leaders are clearly intent on driving Palestinians out of Gaza. And they say they will not accept a Palestinian state. But a Palestinian state is the only humane solution. Whether or not a Palestinian state will include Gaza and the West Bank is, at this point, entirely subject to Israeli intransigence.

[Palestinians must be given hope for building a better future, otherwise they can never be expected to be peaceful. Give them a chunk of Sinai and the resources to begin building new farms, villages, and cities, new schools, universities, and hospitals, and they will soon enough cease harboring a hatred for the state of Israel. They will be too busy building a new future to listen to jihadists who want to exterminate Israel. This is the only true way to lasting peace. 

[The only place for a Palestinian state, given Israeli intransigence, is the Sinai. The Egyptian government has very good reasons to oppose the displacement of over two million Palestinians into a peninsula that currently is home to only 600,000. But if the international community can summon the will, it is possible to offer Egypt much, much more than the complete forgiveness of its $160 billion in debt. 

[Gathering $1 trillion to create a new state of Palestine in Sinai would also force a break with the bankers dictatorship that has enforced neoliberal austerity on the world’s poor countries for three quarters of a century. Over $30 trillion is sitting in hot money centers around the world. Impose a mere one percent tax on those holdings world wide and you have a third of what’s needed. The oil rich Middle East countries can surely come up with another third. That leaves some $330 billion to be provided by the rest of the world. By contrast, the US has already provided $111 billion in weapons, equipment, humanitarian assistance and other aid to Ukraine. ]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 10, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 10, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

War in Ukraine

Seymour Hersh, Anatol Lieven and the desperate DC gambit to end hostilities in Ukraine while claiming ‘victory’ 

Gilbert Doctorow [via Naked Capitalism 12-04-2023] Excellent.

Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine 

[Washington Post, via Naked Capitalism 12-07-2023]

Key elements that shaped the counteroffensive and the initial outcome include:

● Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan. But Washington miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period — especially without giving Kyiv air power integral to modern militaries.

● U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing. The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and training.

● U.S. military officials were confident that a mechanized frontal attack on Russian lines was feasible with the troops and weapons that Ukraine had. The simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov and cut off Russian troops in the south in 60 to 90 days.

● The United States advocated a focused assault along that southern axis, but Ukraine’s leadership believed its forces had to attack at three distinct points along the 600-mile front, southward toward both Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov and east toward the embattled city of Bakhmut.

Dissecting the Washington Post’s “analysis” of Ukraine’s Failed Counter Offensive — Part 1 

Larry Johnson [via Naked Capitalism 12-09-2023]

Establishment Alarmism in Overdrive as Raytheon Lloyd Threatens Congress with War 

Simplicius the Thinker [via Naked Capitalism 12-08-2023]

Lying Was the Only Plan Biden, U.S. Ever Had in Ukraine 

Matt Taibbi [via Naked Capitalism 12-09-2023]

Democratic Party "stuck in its addictions to neoliberal economics" - Sen. Chris Murphy

 Luke Goldstein of The American Prospect reports on Senator Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) recent shift to an explicit rejection of neoliberalism. 

I pressed Murphy about why, despite executive actions, Democrats in Congress weren’t able to move forward in the last session on new antitrust legislation, such as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act or the Open App Markets Act, when they controlled both the House and Senate. He didn’t blame it on Senate Republicans or on party leadership, despite ample reporting that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was the main impediment holding up votes on both bills last year.

Did you catch that? The junior Democratic Senator from Connecticut says Democrats in Congress are not being blocked by Republicans, or even by the gerontocracy that unfortunately dominates the Democratic Party. So who or what does the Senator blame?

“I think there is still a sizable portion of the Democratic Party that is sort of stuck in its addictions to neoliberal economics that concentrated and globally integrated markets can deliver prosperity. I still think this party has not made a firm break from neoliberalism,” said Murphy.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 3, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 3, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 12-01-2023]

x

‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza

[+972, via X-Teitter. above]

Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry out its deadliest war on Gaza….

The investigation by +972 and Local Call is based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions….

Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.

In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,” said one source.

“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”

“Wiping Gaza Off the Map”: Implementing Israel’s “Secret Intelligence Memorandum.” More Than 20,000 Civilians Killed 

Michel Chossudovsky [via Naked Capitalism 12-01-2023]

Out of Gaza’s 2.3 million people,

1.73 million are now displaced…

20,030 civilians killed…

8,176 children have been killed…

4,112 women have been killed…

7,000 people remain unaccounted for, including more than 4,700 children…

36,350 civilians have been injured….

...It’s genocide. The underlying modalities are confirmed in an official “secret” memorandum of Israel’s  Ministry of Intelligence. Washington is fully supportive of this military-intelligence operation.

Both US and British Operation  Forces are collaborating with the I.D.F. (See this)

The 10 page document  recommends “the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations as well as routine consultations with U.S. intelligence….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 26, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 26, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

The deep state unleashed oligarchy 

Patrick Lawrence: What Died 60 Years Ago? A President and a Nation’s Promise

[Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-2023]

Why Has America Tolerated Six Illegitimate GOP Presidents?

Thom Hartmann, November 22, 2023 [DailyKos]

...it’s important to remember that Dwight Eisenhower was the last Republican president who believed in democracy, the rule of law, and that government should prioritize what the people want…. 

This has brought us a series of criminal Republican presidents and corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, who’ve legalized political bribery while devastating voting and civil rights.

None of this was a mistake or an accident, because none of these people truly believed in democracy.

This rejection of democracy and turn toward criminality and it’s logical end-point, fascism, started in the modern GOP with Richard Nixon….

[Nixon sabotaged peace in Vietnam to win the 1968 election]

Next up was Ronald Reagan. He not only didn’t believe in democracy, he didn’t even believe in the American government….During the Carter/Reagan election battle of 1980, then-President Carter had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr to release the fifty-two hostages held by students at the American Embassy in Tehran. 

[This deal was sabotaged by Reagan by creating the illegals Iran-Contra arms deal.]

...Fifty-four years of Republican presidents using treason to achieve the White House (or inheriting it from one who did) has transformed America and dramatically weakened our democracy.

Those presidents have contributed their own damages to the rule of law and democracy in America, but their cynical Supreme Court appointments have arguably done the most lasting damage.

Republican appointees on the Court during this time have gutted the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, union rights, the Affordable Care Act, and legalized Republican voter purges. They legalized the bribery of politicians by billionaires and corporations….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 19, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 19, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Global power shift

The Hinge of History:  Palestine and the New World Order

Patrick Lawrence [Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2023]

There is disgust and condemnation now, and they find expression not only on the streets of many cities but also in governing circles. Axios reported Monday that an internal State Department memo, signed by 100 officials at State and its aid agency, USAID, accuses President Biden of lying about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and of complicity in war crimes. On Tuesday, The New York Times put the signatories of another letter to Biden at 400 representing 40 government departments and agencies, including the National Security Council — this in addition to an open letter to Secretary of State Blinken signed by more than 1,000 Agency for International Development employees. So far as I know, this measure of dissent in policy and governing circles is more or less unprecedented….

The devastation of America’s status in the community of nations—and I do not think we witness anything less—is altogether the consequence of a complacency long evident among America’s policy cliques. As Chas Freeman points out in his exchange with Chris Lydon, Israel is now breaking U.S. laws circumscribing the use of American-made armaments; it is in breach of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. And nobody in the U.S. says anything about it, Freeman says with obvious ire. It is the rest of the world that is beginning to speak up. I put it this way: We watch as the Age of Hegemonic Hypocrisy, as I propose we call it, draws to a close….

...We now have the Chinese preparing, by all appearances, to play a diplomatic role in the search for a settlement. We have Iran and Saudi Arabia summiting to determine a common course of action in response to the Gaza crisis. We have Turkey militantly denouncing Israel and talking to Iran after long, long years of animosity. We have a goodly number of America’s friends pulling the plug on their relations with Tel Aviv.

Postscript to ‘What’s on the tube…’ 

Gilbert Doctorow [via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2023]

...There are a lot of possiblities to explain subjectively what CNN and the BBC are doing. Objectively what they are doing is re-establishing their credibility as news as opposed to propaganda providers.  And I think this is especially obvious for the BBC.  One of their senior journalists who has his own program now calls it "Unspun" and repeats in the trailer-adverts that he is delivering news without spin.  Why would he be saying this if it were not obvious that everything the BBC has been saying about Russia for the past 20 months is "spun" and is being rejected by viewers for such tendentiousness.

This is all the more timely for these broadcasters now that the lies they have been disseminating about the Ukraine war are overturned by the latest news from the supreme Ukrainian military commander Zaluzhny in his widely cited interview in The Economist. Now, finally, we read in mainstream that the Ukrainian losses in the war may approach 400,000 dead, not 70,000 as official Kiev claims and that the kill ratio till now may be 10:1 or 12:1 in Russia’s favor….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 12, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 12, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

(anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

Trump will implement Martial Law, Shoot Protestors and Prosecute his enemies

Frank Vyan Walton, November 11, 2023 [DailyKos]

Trump has called for the Death Penalty against human traffickers, firing “Radical Marxist Prosecutors”, he has plans to implement right-wing indoctrination in our colleges, he has plans to “Crush the Deep State” (which would be Federal Employees), he’ll criminalize gender affirmation, he’ll try to criminalize the press that criticizes him under the guise of fighting “censorship” and the labeling of false “disinformation” and hate speech, he’ll end all support for Green Energy and Electric Vehicles, he’ll cut off aid to Ukraine and let Russia keep the land they’ve stolen, the guy who has 114 Trademarks in China and Russia says he’s going to “Stop Chinese Espionage” [How? Shut down Mar-A-Lago?] , he's promised to restart failed racist policies like “Stop and Frisk” and much more [such as snake and alligator moats, mass deportation and prison camps for Immigrants.]

Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term

Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett, November 6, 2023 [Washington Post, via downwithtyranny.com]

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family….

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act….

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 5, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 5, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

The Great Reordering  

Rana Foroohar, October 29, 2023 [Washington Monthly, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-31-2023]

There can be no doubt now that an epochal shift is underway in how the economy—in America and across the globe—is governed. The mystery is how a moderate, conventional politician like Joe Biden engineered it….

The record on that score is unequivocal. His COVID-19 stimulus bailed out people, not banks. His domestic economic policy has been about curbing giant corporations and promoting income growth. His infrastructure bills invested in America in a way not seen since the Eisenhower administration. He has taken commerce back to an earlier era in which it was broadly understood that trade needed to serve domestic interests before those of international markets.

The contrast with the so-called neoliberal economics of recent decades, in which it was presumed that markets always know best, and particularly the Clintonian idea that “free” trade and globalization were inevitable, could not be starker. With a few notable exceptions (Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jared Bernstein), Bill Clinton’s administration, like Barack Obama’s, was filled with neoliberal technocrats who bought fully into the idea of the inherent efficiency of markets. Although they might have occasionally looked to tweak the system, many of the academic economists running policy basically believed that capital, goods, and people would ultimately end up where it was best and most productive for them to be without the sort of public-sector intervention you’ve seen during the Biden administration.

In this world, so long as stock prices were going up and consumer prices were going down, all was well. Monetary policy trumped fiscal stimulus. And if the latter had to be used, it should be, in the words of the economist Larry Summers, “timely, targeted, and temporary.” (The Biden stimulus, by contrast, is designed to be broad based and long term.) In this political economy, outsourcing wasn’t a bad thing. China would get freer as it got richer. Americans should aim to be bankers and software engineers, not manufacturers….

“Rather than speaking to Goldman Sachs, Biden spoke to autoworkers.”

Winning the Anti-monopoly Game

Will Norris, October 29, 2023​​​​​​​ [Washington Monthly]

Despite press accounts to the contrary, the Biden administration’s revival of antitrust policy isn’t failing. It’s just getting started.

How the Youth Boom in Africa Will Change the World

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-31-2023]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 29, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 29, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Is There a New Left Stirring Within The New Right?

John Judis [The Liberal Patriot, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-24-2023]

“[T]here is a segment of recent politics that is sometimes identified with the ‘new right’ but in reality offers a much more heterodox—and interesting—approach to politics and policy, one that’s well worth considering by liberals and left-wingers alike. This new tendency can be found in the policy group, American Compass, the online magazine Compact, and the journal American Affairs. Its leading intellectuals are Oren Cass of American Compass, Julius Krein of American Affairs, Sohrab Ahmari of Compact, and author Michael Lind. What distinguishes these thinkers from others is their engagement with what used to be called ‘the labor question’ namely, how America can fulfill its original promise of political and economic equality in a society where the owners and managers of capital have inordinate power over labor and politics. These thinkers consider questions that were once confined to the left: how to revive the American labor movement and now to tame the power of multinational corporations and global banks. They often cite left-wing and liberal writers like John Kenneth Galbraith and Karl Polanyi. The most recent and noteworthy examples are Lind’s Hell to Pay, Ahmari’s Tyranny, Inc., and Oren Cass and American Compass’s Rebuilding American Capitalism.”

33 States Sue Meta and Instagram Over Harms to Teen Mental Health

October 24, 2023 [Mother Jones]

On Tuesday, 33 states filed a 233-page complaint against Meta and Instagram. The bipartisan lawsuit, in federal district court in California, alleges that Meta knew more about the mental health impacts of Instagram on teenagers—including addiction—than it had publicly acknowledged.

According to the complaint, Meta—which owns Instagram, Facebook, and now Threads—”created a business model focused on maximizing young users’ time and attention.”

Meta “has ignored the sweeping damage these Platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of our nation’s youth,” the complaint reads. “In doing so, Meta engaged in, and continues to engage in, deceptive and unlawful conduct in violation of state and federal law.”

Behind the Curtain: Rattled U.S. government fears wars could spread 

[Axios, via Naked Capitalism 10-22-2023]

“Not one of the crises can be solved and checked off. All five could spiral into something much bigger.” Not a good time for a collapse of executive function in our governing class.

“American leadership is what holds the world together.” Joe Biden October 2023 … just let that sink in. 

Adam Tooze [Substack, via Naked Capitalism 10-25-2023]

...This idea, that there is a “place” in the world, which is that of “America as the organizer”, and that without America occupying that place and doing its job, the world will fall apart, or some other power will take America’s place as the organizer, is deep-seated in US policy circles.

As a metaphysical proposition it is silly and self-deluding. It is bizarre to imagine that the world needs America to “hold it together”. America itself is hardly in one piece….

For the most part, to make sense of the sort of thing that Biden and Blinken say, you have to realize that they are talking not to the world or about the world, but to Americans about America. Above all, Biden and Blinken’s rhetoric is directed against Trump, who conjured up a scenario in which America was, as Biden and Blinken see it, a chaotic, disruptive and untrustworthy force. This shames their self-understanding as a liberal elite. With a tight election in 2024 those fears will overshadow all America’s interactions with the world, whoever actually sits in the Oval Office.

American democracy, the system that produces the leadership that Biden and Blinken so self-confidently evoke, is clearly broken. Pervasive and well-merited skepticism about America’s system of government, is now a massive reality in world affairs.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 22, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 22, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Deb Chachra’s ‘How Infrastructure Works' 

Cory Doctorow [Pluralistic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-18-2023]

“Infrastructure isn’t merely a way to deliver life’s necessities – mobility, energy, sanitation, water, and so on – it’s a shared way of delivering those necessities. It’s not just that economies of scale and network effects don’t merely make it more efficient and cheaper to provide these necessities to whole populations. It’s also that the lack of these network and scale effects make it unimaginable that these necessities could be provided to all of us without being part of a collective, public project. The dream of declaring independence from society, of going ‘off-grid,’ of rejecting any system of mutual obligation and reliance isn’t merely an infantile fantasy – it also doesn’t scale, which is ironic, given how scale-obsessed its foremost proponents are in their other passions. Replicating sanitation, water, rubbish disposal, etc to create individual systems is wildly inefficient. Creating per-person communications systems makes no sense – by definition, communications involves at least two people. So infrastructure, Chachra reminds us, is a form of mutual aid. It’s a gift we give to ourselves, to each other, and to the people who come after us. Any rugged individualism is but a thin raft, floating on an ocean of mutual obligation, mutual aid, care and maintenance. Infrastructure is vital and difficult. Its amortization schedule is so long that in most cases, it won’t pay for itself until long after the politicians who shepherded it into being are out of office (or dead). Its duty cycle is so long that it can be easy to forget it even exists – especially since the only time most of us notice infrastructure is when it stops working.”

In the Nineteenth Century, Scientists Set Out to Solve the “Problem of American Storms” 

[Humanities, via The Big Picture 10-21-2023]

[In the 1830s, telegraph] operators had discovered something both interesting and paradoxical, the writer Andrew Blum observes in his book The Weather Machine. The telegraph had collapsed time but, in doing so, it had somehow simultaneously created more of it. Now people could see what the future held before it happened; they could know that a storm was on its way hours before the rain started falling or the clouds appeared in the sky. This new, real-time information also did something else, Blum points out. It allowed weather to be visualized as a system, transforming static, localized pieces of data into one large and ever-shifting whole….

Morse’s invention promised to finally help shed light on what Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the newly founded Smithsonian Institution, called in the 1847 annual report the “problem of American Storms.” Henry was referring to an ongoing scientific spat known as the “storm controversy,” which had been raging in the pages of journals for nearly two decades….

The Smithsonian’s weather “crusade” would become the institution’s first major scientific undertaking, and it consisted of two parts. The first involved recruiting the telegraph companies to provide daily, nationwide weather updates. Starting in 1849, instruments were sent out to several offices around the country with a request that operators pause traffic on the lines in the morning to submit brief descriptions of local conditions. A few years later, Henry installed a map in the lobby of the Smithsonian Castle, where the collected information was displayed using a series of color-coded cards and arrows. Any time after 10:00 a.m., members of the public could stroll in and see for the first time “one view of the meteorological condition of the atmosphere over the whole country.”  ….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 15, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 15, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

US science agencies on track to hit 25-year funding low 

[Nature, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-2023] 

The Smart Corporate Tax Idea That Might Have Prevented the UAW Strike

Jessica Church, October 9, 2023 [washingtonmonthly]

Targeting out-of-control CEO pay by using the tax code is the right policy for this moment. Here’s how it works….

Indeed, this strike could have been avoided were company profits shared more equitably among workers and management. But despite taxpayer largesse that not only rescued the auto industry during the Great Recession but led it to thrive, that has not been the case. Under the Barack Obama-era bailout, workers and company executives were supposed to make sacrifices. But while unions accepted that two-tier wage system that the UAW is fighting, executive compensation has soared.  

A situation where executive compensation shoots up like a missile while workers’ wages flatline was not inevitable. In 2021, Congress debated a measure that might have made the strike unlikely and unnecessary. Both chambers considered versions of the Tax Executive CEO Pay Act, introduced by Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont.  

The clever and potentially revolutionary legislation (discussed extensively in Washington Monthly) aimed to rein in excessive executive compensation by levying a tax on companies that pay their CEOs 50 times or more than their median employee earns. The tax came as a surcharge on corporate income tax, meaning that it only applied to profitable companies with federal corporate income tax liability. That surcharge increased as the CEO-to-median worker pay ratio worsened (0.5% for ratios between 50-100:1, 1% for ratios between 100-200:1, 2% for ratios between 200-300:1 and so on, up to 5% for ratios more than 500:1)….

How red-state politics are shaving years off American lives

[Washington Post, via The Big Picture 10-09-2023]

Americans are more likely to die before age 65 than residents of similar nations, despite living in a country that spends substantially more per person on health care than its peers. Many of those early deaths can be traced to decisions made years ago by local and state lawmakers over whether to implement cigarette taxes, invest in public health or tighten seat-belt regulations, among other policies, an examination by The Washington Post found. States’ politics — and their resulting policies — are shaving years off American lives.  

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 8, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 8, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

War

Hamas Attacks, What Does It Mean?

Ian Welsh, October 7, 2023

Hamas actually captured the Israeli southern command base briefly. It was retaken with massive air strikes (meaning Israel was willing to hit its own people.) In the initial 12 hours or so they wiped the floor with local Israeli forces….

As I have said repeatedly, and as the last war with Hezbollah showed, the Israeli army, no matter how many weapons or men or planes it has, is weak and incompetent. This is not the military of 1967 or even 1980, when the legend of Israeli military brilliance was created.

This is due to serving primarily as an occupation army. All occupation armies, fighting against the weak, become weak, brutal bullies incompetent at fighting real opposition.

The Israeli army was slow to respond, a general was captured and a command base. This is, again, humiliating.

Humiliation

Humiliation is the word of the day. Just as a bully whose victim manages to get in a few good punches has to be brutal in response, so Israel will lash out massively….

Nukes

In some ways this is the bottom line. Israel has nukes. If they did not, I would expect Iran to join in and if I were Egypt, I might invade. Israel is weak and humiliated. But as long as they have nukes, other countries will shy off from direct war unless they think they have a way of taking out those nukes.

Diplomatic Damage

Israeli-Saudi Arabia negotiations are dead for the time being and other Arab allies will not be able to do anything but condemn Israel. There are massive demonstration in support of Hamas in Turkey, Egypt and many other Muslim countries….

The Ukraine Connection

Of significant amusement is that it appears that much of the weaponry used by Hamas is from stockpiles sent to Ukraine and sold on the black market. This spread of weaponry was predicted and lo….

Invading Mexico to Destroy the Drug Cartels? Here’s How!

Harold Meyerson, October 5, 2023 [The American Prospect]

The Republican candidates for president, The New York Times reports, have united around a common solution for the scourge of fentanyl and other drugs coming across the border: invading Mexico. Almost to a person, they are calling for sending our armed forces—chiefly, special operations troops—into Mexico “to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels,” as Vivek Ramaswamy recently put it.

More than 20 Republican House members are co-sponsoring a bill that would authorize the deployment of U.S. forces against nine of those cartels. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll from September shows considerable public support for such action: By a 2-to-1 margin (52 percent to 26 percent), respondents favored sending troops there to take on the cartels. Even Democrats were narrowly divided: While 47 percent opposed such action, 44 percent backed it.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 1, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 1, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

80 Years Ago Denmark Miraculously Saved 8,000 Jews From Nazi Murder

Harvey Wasserman, September 25, 2023 [downwithtyranny.com]

Strategic Political Economy

VACCINE SPECIALIST PETER HOTEZ: SCIENTISTS ARE ‘UNDER ATTACK FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S POLITICAL GAIN’ 

Julian Nowogrodzki, September 21, 2023 [Natue, via Overnight Science News: Politically motivated bullies want to 'tear down the fabric of science', DailyKos 9-23-2023]

The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning, Peter Hotez, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (2023)….

You prefer to say ‘anti-science aggression’ rather than ‘misinformation’. Why?

Misinformation makes it sound like it’s random junk that appears out of nowhere on the Internet. It’s not: it’s an organized, well-financed, politically motivated campaign that’s meant to tear down the fabric of science. And we have to frame it in that way.

Anti-science rhetoric is not new. What’s changed?

Now, it’s fully embraced by a major political party in the United States, and by authoritarian regimes in other countries such as Hungary and, previously, Brazil. It’s sanctioned by elected leaders in the US Congress. It’s reached a new level of organization and aggression — it’s starting to resemble the 1930s, when Joseph Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union portrayed scientists as enemies of the state.

How did you see this play out during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Some 200,000 Americans died because of anti-science aggression…. When I went into the more conservative, rural areas of east Texas, essentially everyone I talked to had lost a loved one because they refused a COVID-19 vaccine. In the intensive-care unit, you saw some people deny COVID-19 existed, yet in their dying words feel remorse and advise their friends: ‘Don’t do what I did, get your COVID-19 immunization.’ These are good people. [Anti-science campaigners] took advantage of that….

...I’ve been leading this dual life, having to combat aggression against science and scientists. It’s hit me hard because now I’m a major target of far-right extremists. It’s odd to have [former White House strategist] Steve Bannon call you a criminal on social media. Those [statements] act as dog whistles, and then it’s followed by a wave of threats online and by e-mail, and even physical stalking.

Right now, you’re seeing individual scientists getting picked off by anti-science bullies on the Internet, or getting subpoenaed to testify at show-trial-like hearings. It’s terrible to watch my virology colleagues get paraded on [television network] CSpan as though they’ve done something wrong, when all they did was what I do — science for humanitarian purposes.

And I see the aggression getting worse as we head for the 2024 election.

So how can this be stopped?

This is the hardest question to answer. People in the health sector don’t know what to do; scientific societies discuss it in bland, defeatist language and talk about meeting with social-media companies. But no one seems to be willing to say, as I do, that this is political. As scientists, we are trained to have neutrality, we’re not supposed to talk about Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. But what do we do when the attacks are partisan?

We’re not seeing vigorous pushback or response, and neutrality favours the tormentor or the aggressor. We’re not hearing from the leadership of scientific societies, from university presidents, to defend science. I think they don’t want to offend donors coming from that political side, or state legislatures or the federal government. But they need to speak out in a forthright way.