Politics & Stuff

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

Boris Johnson failed to disclose that he met a uranium lobbyist while prime minister before entering into a new business with a controversial Iranian-Canadian uranium entrepreneur, the Observer can reveal.

Johnson’s new company Better Earth Limited also employs Charlotte Owen, a junior aide with just a few years work experience whom he elevated to the House of Lords last year at the age of 29, sparking intense controversy.

Transparency campaigners say there appear to be “serious public interest questions to be answered” over the nature and timeline of Johnson’s relationship with his co-director, Amir Adnani, the founder, president and CEO of Uranium Energy Corp, a US-based mining and exploration company, championed by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.

Amir Adnani, a Canadian citizen who is the director of a network of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, incorporated Better Earth in December last year. On 1 May, Companies House filings reveal, “The Rt Hon Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson” was added as a director and co-chairman. And this summer, Charlotte Owen – now Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge – joined the company to work alongside him as its vice president.

Times

So that will be his next armpit hes sniffing, another young filly, who he will impregnate with his caffeine polluted carbohydrate heavy Etonian sperm to add to his fourteen kids from different women.....

[Vesper 30,120]

French protesters rage at ‘stolen election’ as Macron picks conservative Barnier for PM

Two months after snap parliamentary elections that threw France into political turmoil, thousands of left-wing demonstrators rallied in central Paris on Saturday in protest at French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to name conservative Michel Barnier as prime minister in what they termed a “power grab” and a “stolen election”.

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240907-french-protesters-rage-at-stolen-election-as-macron-picks-conservative-barnier-for-pm

Two months after France's inconclusive snap elections, and just days after Michel Barnier's appointment as prime minister, the mood among demonstrators in downtown Paris on Saturday was one of rage and despair.

Amid cries of “Macron Out!, Resign Macron!” leftist demonstrators gathered in the autumn sun in their thousands to protest against French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to appoint the veteran conservative prime minister, rather than a candidate from among their ranks.

While falling short of an absolute majority, the left-wing coalition the New Popular Front (NFP) (made up of the Greens, the Socialists, the Communists and the hard-left France Unbowed) won the most votes in the July 7 snap poll.

But Macron refused to appoint their candidate, civil servant and economist Lucie Castets, 37, claiming she would not survive a confidence vote and on Thursday named Barnier, whose Les Républicains party came a distant fourth, as France’s new prime minister.

“I’m so angry,” said Rocio, 59, as demonstrators gathered at Place de la Bastille in central Paris, a focal point of protests and marches.

“The results of the elections have not been respected. The people are fed up. The people want respect," said the data entry operator, describing France’s polarising and unpopular president as a “monarchist” and a “bankers’ stooge”.

“Macron should clear off for good and show us some respect,” she added, saying that she wanted him to be impeached.

‘Power grab’

As the crowd began to swell, protesters held aloft a sea of flags and placards denouncing a “stolen election” and “Macron’s power grab”.

Families carried their children on their shoulders and the rally’s organisers led the crowd in a round of “On lâche rien” (We’re not giving up’) as the procession headed off towards Nation in eastern Paris.

“We came because we voted en masse against Macron's policies,” said Léo, 23, a student and teaching assistant.

“Usually the left fight all the time but this time they really came together and forged a union,” he said, referring to the hastily assembled leftwing coalition, the NFP.

Léo accused the president of breaking with tradition by refusing to appoint a prime minister from the party or coalition that came first in the election.

“Normally the prime minister comes from the majority party,” he explained. “But Macron didn’t give a damn, he just did what he wanted.”

Macron’s gamble backfires 

Macron announced the surprise parliamentary vote on June 9 in a call for “clarification” from the French electorate after the far right trounced his centrist party in European parliamentary elections.

Many expected the vote to go the way of the European elections, with the far right coming to power for the first time since WWII and National Rally President Jordan Bardella being named prime minister.  

So when the far right led a first round of voting on June 30, the New Popular Front and French centrists employed massive tactical voting to block them from taking the reins.

The protesters in Paris were incensed that Macron had repeatedly presented himself as the only barrier against the far right since 2017, when they felt he had simply handed them the keys to power.

“We voted for Macron to block Le Pen – but actually we had a choice between Le Pen and Le Pen,” said Léo, accusing Macron of pandering to the far right on immigration. 

The second round of the high-stakes vote on July 7 saw the highest turnout in decades – with votes split between three main blocs but no clear majority, handing the country a hung parliament and throwing France into political turmoil.

The NFP won the most seats while Macron’s Ensemble coalition came in second place – losing 72 seats and its relative majority in the National Assembly.

Despite its third-place finish, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won a record number of seats – 143 – to become the single largest party in a fragmented parliament. 

Macron’s dangerous gamble had backfired: the French electorate had voted for change, the far right made huge gains and the left declared victory.

At first Macron declared that “no-one had won the election”, in a letter that sparked a furore among the left – and asked then prime minister Gabriel Attal to stay on in a caretaker role “to ensure the stability of the country”.

Then he called for a “political truce” during the Olympic Games over the summer. Only in late August did he begin a stream of “consultations” with a series of potential candidates.

Barnier’s policies are ‘incredibly patriarchal’

Macron grappled to find a prime minister who would not undo his highly contested pension reform, which saw the retirement age raised from 62 to 64, and who would not immediately be voted down by rivals.

He sought reassurance in particular from the far-right National Rally on who they might accept, effectively casting Marine Le Pen in the role of kingmaker.

Le Pen vetoed two other contenders for the PM job, former Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and former Conservative minister Xavier Bertrand, the head of the northern Hauts de France region. But she gave tacit approval to Barnier, saying she would wait for him to outline his policies in parliament to decide whether or not to back him.

The appointment sees France switch from its youngest-ever prime minister – Attal – to the oldest yet.

“Now we've got a guy who's 73 years old,” said Léo at the rally in Paris. “How can he understand the youth?” he said, looking incredulous.” “His policies are incredibly patriarchal. And he doesn't like minorities and he’s against homosexuals,” he said, referring to the fact that Barnier has twice voted against gay rights.

The incoming PM vowed in a primetime TV interview on Friday night that he had "not much, in common with the theories or ideology of the National Rally" but that he "respected it”, adding that he would take a stronger stance on immigration.

He also said that his government would be open to members of the left and made political overtures towards the NFP by suggesting "more tax justice" while calling for faster growth powered by business.

But this did little to assuage protesters’ anger. Afasaneh, 63, an Iranian who had lived in France for the past 41 years,  viewed Barnier “as an extreme right-winger in disguise".  

“He’s just a pawn that Macron chose so he could continue governing,” she said.

But the protesters’ greatest wrath was reserved for the wildly unpopular Macron, with many of them calling for him to be impeached.

“Macron knew from the offset that he was going to appoint Barnier,” claimed Pierre, 62, a graphic designer and supporter of the hard-left France Unbowed party.

“He's so manipulative. Macron talks about the values of the Republic, but he doesn't even know what the Republic is,” he said. “The whole process was just a sham.”

Edited September 7, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,120]

9 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Boris Johnson failed to disclose that he met a uranium lobbyist while prime minister before entering into a new business with a controversial Iranian-Canadian uranium entrepreneur, the Observer can reveal.

Johnson’s new company Better Earth Limited also employs Charlotte Owen, a junior aide with just a few years work experience whom he elevated to the House of Lords last year at the age of 29, sparking intense controversy.

Transparency campaigners say there appear to be “serious public interest questions to be answered” over the nature and timeline of Johnson’s relationship with his co-director, Amir Adnani, the founder, president and CEO of Uranium Energy Corp, a US-based mining and exploration company, championed by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.

Amir Adnani, a Canadian citizen who is the director of a network of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, incorporated Better Earth in December last year. On 1 May, Companies House filings reveal, “The Rt Hon Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson” was added as a director and co-chairman. And this summer, Charlotte Owen – now Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge – joined the company to work alongside him as its vice president.

Times

So that will be his next armpit hes sniffing, another young filly, who he will impregnate with his caffeine polluted carbohydrate heavy Etonian sperm to add to his fourteen kids from different women.....

Charlotte Owen becomes youngest life peer in British history

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/charlotte-owen-boris-johnson-peer-job-b2608283.html

 

[Vesper 30,120]

https://archive.ph/AToB8

With just 60 days to go in what is shaping up to be the most bonkers presidential election since, well, the last one, the person I most wanted to talk to for my Impolitic podcast was Dan Pfeiffer. Dan, of course, was one of the wunderkind-ish Obama guys who worked on the 2008 campaign, then followed his boss into the White House, where he served as communications director and then senior advisor for strategy and communications. Since departing the swamp, Dan has written New York Times bestselling books (most recently Battling the Big Lie), co-hosts Pod Save America (alongside former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor), and has a must-read Substack (The Message Box). In our conversation, Dan and I chopped up the post-Labor Day state of the presidential race, talked strategy for next week’s ABC debate, and looked at Donald Trump’s efforts to get right with America’s women. Herewith, a lightly edited and condensed version of our full conversation.

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“Everything’s a Coin-Flip”

John Heilemann: For much of this campaign, Trump’s favorability rating hovered in the high 30s, low 40s. But in the battleground states, Trump is now regularly seeing favorability ratings in the mid-40s, his highest ever. How do you explain that?

 

Dan Pfeiffer: It’s similar to the difference between the 2016 and 2024 Republican conventions. In 2016, you had a bunch of people who didn’t love Trump, but were going to vote for him. But now this is Trump’s party, and so it’s primarily his numbers with Republicans that have gone up. And he’s doing better with independents in 2024 than he was in 2020. He’s won over some groups of mostly young men, some Black and Latino. The other thing that’s important is that he represents change more than Kamala Harris does, and you can see this in the polls. Obviously, Harris represents change much more than Joe Biden did—exponentially more. But in a global anti-incumbent environment, and when people are unhappy with the economy, the candidate who represents change is going to be more popular. 

 

It’s two days after the traditional start of the fall campaign, and The New York Times has Harris at 49 and Trump at 46; Nate Silver has Harris at 49 and Trump at 45; 538 has Harris at 47 and Trump at 44. The most recent high-quality national poll, the ABC News/Ipsos poll, has Harris at 50 percent—the first time I’ve seen 50 for Kamala Harris—and Trump sitting at 46 percent among registered voters. Among likely voters, they have Harris at 52 and Trump at 46. That’s a pretty consistent picture nationally, and obviously much tighter in every battleground state. Give me your sense of just where things are today, understanding the election is held 60-some-odd days from now. 

 

If you polled the press corps and most Democrats who are not working for the Harris-Walz campaign, 85 percent would say that Kamala Harris would win if the election were held today. If you ask the people who are actually deep in the numbers and paying really close attention to what’s happening in the battleground states, it’s closer to 50-50. And I think it’s very possible that if the election were held today, Trump would win. 

 

Is the disparity because the reporters who are out covering the race, and Democrats more broadly, overstate the love, the enthusiasm, the vibe, and the momentum so much that it outweighs the national polling? 

 

Dramatically. When you dig into the battleground state poll numbers, they’re all toss-ups, every single one of them. There’s not a single battleground state poll where one of the candidates is up or down by more than two points, and most of them are tied, or at one point. And when you start doing the math of what happens if one of the candidates does not win Pennsylvania, it all gets very complicated, very quickly.

 

What number, in your judgment, would make you comfortable? What would Harris’s lead need to be—nationally and in battleground states—that would allow you to sleep the night before the election?

 

There is no number like that. We hit that number in 2020, and we sweated that thing out until the Friday after the election. The polling industry has made adjustments to try to solve for the problem of underrepresenting Trump voters. But no one knows. We haven’t had an election since 2020 with Trump on the ballot to actually test these new methodologies. Now, there’s better battleground state public polling today, whereas there was very little in 2016, a bit more in 2020, and we don’t have Covid this time, which I think did affect things on the margins. But I’m always struck by the fact that the American Association for Public Opinion Research had a conference—they got together to try to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it—and they just lifted up their hands and said, We can’t figure it out, because all the polls were all wrong for different reasons. 

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The Pennsylvania Question

Okay, so I understand why Georgia is hard for Democrats to win. It’s a Republican state, trending a little bit purple, but it’s tough. I also understand why Pennsylvania is tough. Are there particular challenges there for Harris? Why is Pennsylvania so much harder than Wisconsin and Michigan, for instance?

 

The fact that Pennsylvania is harder than Wisconsin just speaks to the change in politics since 2020. Remember, Biden won Michigan by almost three points, Pennsylvania by one and a half, and he won Wisconsin by 0.6 percent. Wisconsin is the one that people keep waiting to tip over into Ohio land, because Trump has made gains with Black voters, younger men, and continues to hold his margin with white non-college-educated voters. Pennsylvania doesn’t have a particularly elastic electorate. We can’t go get a bunch of new voters, whereas Georgia has huge swaths of unregistered, very likely Democratic voters, Black voters, younger voters. There’s migration into Georgia from the rest of the South, from younger voters who profile as Democrats. And so Georgia has this growth pot, it’s growing in the right direction. But Pennsylvania is static. Harris is still struggling to reach Biden’s 2020 numbers with Black voters, both in terms of support and turnout—in Philly, in particular. Is Harris going to bleed some non-college-educated white voters, and can she make that up with non-college-educated white women because of abortion? This is the problem with these races. There’s no one simple thing you need: You need a little bit from every single pot, and all the pots are in Pennsylvania. 

 

Whenever anybody says that Harris is going to be able to drive turnout through the ceiling in Philly and parts of Pittsburgh, I recall what Biden did in 2020—and Kamala’s numbers with Black voters are not as good as Biden’s, though they’re getting there. And you’ve got that giant part of the state that James Carville used to say is like Alabama. Even for a candidate like Barack Obama, Pennsylvania was tricky because of those weird dynamics.

 

It’s hard, and it gets harder with a candidate like Trump, who is maxing out turnout in rural areas in Pennsylvania in ways Mitt Romney and John McCain certainly did not. Trump is netting more voters from that part of the state than any other Republican going back to basically Reagan.

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The Debate Debate

So we had the long-awaited and much-anticipated—at least by the political class—Kamala interview with Dana Bash. It’s a little bit old news, but since everybody basically took off the week after the convention, I want to ask you, as a consummate communications professional, how did Kamala do?

 

This was a test that was set up by the press, for the press, and she had to pass it. There’s no great, amazing answer to the question of, Why did you have all these positions in 2019 and why do you have different ones now? But she didn’t do herself any damage, she did herself some good, and she passed. Now she has to get back to the actual business of winning votes, because this was not about that. The number of undecided voters who are watching a Thursday-before-Labor Day interview on CNN at 9 o’clock at night is quite small. 

 

Even though I know that many people in my business are egomaniacal, and even though the press does all kinds of shit that I think is ridiculous and not in the country’s interest, I still believe in the notion that voters should be able to get a look at candidates in unscripted settings, and not just get by on scripted speeches and from digital video shorts made for TikTok or whatever platform. Voters have a right to expect more, to see the candidates challenged and have to think on their feet. 

 

She should do interviews that are in her interest, and some of those interviews will be with traditional, mainstream press organizations. I hope she is going to sit down and do an hour of satellite TV interviews once a week for the rest of this campaign. That is absolutely the right thing to do. And we have to broaden the definition of what people do. Trump did a podcast interview with Lex Fridman. He did Theo Von’s podcast the other day. He’s doing a ton of things with very targeted media that’s reaching his core target. She has not done those things yet, for the same reason she hadn’t done the CNN interview, but she’s going to have to, to win the election. Yes, voters have a right to expect it, but I’m not sure their expectation about who should be asking the questions is the same as it used to be.

 

Let’s pivot to the upcoming Tuesday night debate. 

 

In whatever sort of fake debate prep, Trump has probably been forced to watch the infamous Kamala Harris-Brett Kavanaugh exchange, or the Harris-Bill Barr exchange from those hearings. And my guess is, he’s scared, and he’s been working through some pre-debate anxiety in public lately, as he handles most of his anxiety, which is on his sleeve.

If you were working for the Harris campaign, what would you say is her primary strategic objective?

 

This is so trite, but the debate is probably the most important moment of this campaign—full stop. We’ve seen in recent debates how important they can be. Thirty million people watched her convention speech, which is a huge number. That’s a very partisan number. I suspect this debate will be at least two times that. What happened with the Biden-Trump debate was that people who had not been paying attention to the campaign tuned in. People don’t want to pay a ton of attention to politics. But we live in an event culture, where the only time people will tune into linear television is when there’s a giant event—a live sports event, an awards show, or a debate. And I expect there will be a massive audience to see her. Most people do not know a ton about her, so this is her chance to introduce herself again, for people to take a measure of her. I think her primary strategic objective is to seem calm, steady, and strong, and make Trump seem old and erratic. It’s hard, being a candidate of color, because she can’t yell at him or tell him to stop speaking, the way Biden did in 2020—that is not available to her. That would be treated by the press and the public in a way that’s deeply unfair. And he’ll be able to get away with a thousand things she can’t get away with. But if she can have the discipline to not respond to him, or respond to him on her terms, it could be a huge, game-changing moment for this campaign.

[Vesper 30,120]

 

The far right actually hates America: Its dark ideology has foreign roots

Why do conservatives wrap themselves in the flag so desperately? Maybe because their ideas are un-American

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/07/the-far-right-actually-hates-america-its-dark-ideology-has-foreign-roots/

If there is one thing Republicans want you to know, it’s how much they bleed red, white and blue for America. None of their gatherings is complete without dozens if not hundreds of American flags, attendees sporting flag-themed costumes (some veering close to obscene mockery), Uncle Sam suits or Lady Liberty getups. Jimmy Cagney’s old schmaltz vehicle "Yankee Doodle Dandy" looks restrained by comparison.

Democrats, on the other hand, have borne the stigma ever since the Joe McCarthy era, if not the New Deal, of hankering after alien creeds — a suffocating European “socialism” (meaning anything to the left of Calvin Coolidge) or maybe outright Marxist-Leninism. Conservatives with intellectual pretensions have blamed progressives for following French deconstructionist philosophers. The cabal around Paul Weyrich, an early leader of the Heritage Foundation who left it because it was insufficiently conservative, held that every supposed evil in modern America was a consequence of the left employing the "cultural Marxist" ideas of the Frankfurt School (one of the right’s many antisemitic conspiracy theories) as a blueprint to conquer the culture.

These two contrasting identifications have embedded themselves in the national subconscious to the point that the media instinctively reflects them. Hence the anthropological expeditions to the “real America” (somewhere away from the coasts, where Bass Pro Shops outnumber Starbucks) to find a diner where genuine Americans congregate. By contrast, the press happily played along with the efforts of Vietnam-avoider George W. Bush's campaign to portray John Kerry, an actual Vietnam combat veteran, as decadently French. One half-expected Kerry to be taking along the works of Michel Foucault as beach reading to Martha’s Vineyard.

Related

There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power

 

To the extent there is any truth to this caricature, it serves as a superficial explanation of the GOP’s xenophobia (remember “freedom fries?”) and near-pathological parochialism. It also dovetails with an aggressive anti-intellectualism: One would no more expect a Republican politician to speak a foreign language than to play the cello. 

What, then, accounts for the GOP’s adulation of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán? As one observer puts it: “The American right’s love affair with Hungary seemingly knows no bounds.” That country’s wannabe dictator is now a regular feature at the annual CPAC convention (think of that event as the Burning Man festival, except for wingnuts), and luminaries of the American right regularly troop to Budapest to confer with Orbán and his cronies. American conservatives’ enthusiasm for foreign-based authoritarianism, and their readiness to cooperate with grandees like Orbán or Vladimir Putin, is now well established, a phenomenon I witnessed in its embryonic stage as early as 2016. 

Nearly every historically conscious person is able to trace at least some aspects of contemporary conservatism to their roots in early America. Present-day Republican hostility to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act has a straightforward genealogy: back to Nixon’s "Southern strategy," then to the Southern agrarians of the 1930s, to the post-Civil War Lost Cause movement, then the 1861-1865 secession itself and finally back to John C. Calhoun and his own ideological predecessor, John Randolph of Roanoke, who still receives sympathetic treatment from the conservative propaganda mill.

From Randolph’s dyspeptic political rants to the agrarians’ nostalgia-drenched manifestos, all the reflexes of the present-day American reactionary are prefigured: hatred of industry, cities, public education and internal improvements (the old term for infrastructure); distrust of cosmopolitanism, sophistication and the new;  a worship of “tradition” that amounted to stultification; an equation of democratic principles with mob rule. Above all, a fundamental distaste for human equality, especially racial equality, but including political and social distinctions of gender and class.

Joseph de Maistre, though less well-known than Edmund Burke, embodies the essential points of the 21st-century American conservative mind at a deeper level than taxes, spending or size of government.

Curiously, the agrarians, your-Americans of Southern Protestant extraction, were influenced by the leading figure of the French Counter-Enlightenment, the arch-reactionary ultramontane Catholic Joseph de Maistre. Even in the present day, a Southern apologist for slavery has written a screed for something called the Abbeville Foundation extolling Maistre’s hatred of republics. Evidently, despising the very governmental foundation of the United States has become fashionable for a certain type of reactionary conservative.

Those are hardly the intellectual roots of American conservative philosophy that post-World War II salesmen of conservatism like William F. Buckley Jr., Russell Kirk or George F. Will chose to peddle. They professed to find the source of their ideology with Edmund Burke, the 18th-century Anglo-Irish philosopher and politician.

Among Burke’s epigrams are such unexceptionable Rotary Club maxims as “All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter,” and “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Very uplifting, but hardly in the spirit of present-day conservatives, for whom compromise is betrayal.

Maistre, on the other hand, fits the dogmatic spirit of their creed. He considered the executioner to be the indispensable backstop of civilization, the better to save wayward souls: "Man cannot be wicked without being evil, nor evil without being degraded, nor degraded without being punished, nor punished without being guilty. In short ... there is nothing so intrinsically plausible as the theory of original sin.”

Émile Faguet, a French author and critic, called Maistre “a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous trinity composed of pope, king and hangman, always and everywhere the champion of the hardest, narrowest and most inflexible dogmatism, a dark figure out of the Middle Ages, part learned doctor, part inquisitor, part executioner.”

Maistre, though less well-known than Burke, embodies the essential points of the American conservative mind at a deeper level than taxes, spending or size of government. His Catholic zealotry prefigures present-day Catholic ideologues like Patrick Deneen and Leonard Leo, not to mention their political marionettes Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Isaiah Berlin, the great historian of Western ideas, considered Maistre the true father of reactionary Western conservatism, and, indeed, a precursor to the past century's fascist movements.  

Although worldly enough to have served as the Kingdom of Savoy’s ambassador to Russia, Maistre detested science and secular learning. And he positively wallowed in violence, in near-pornographic fashion: “The whole earth, continually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death.” 

That orgasmic vision is pretty strong meat for a tradition that claims to defend ordered liberty. But running through American conservatism like a red thread is a creepy fascination with violence, not to mention a habit of apocalyptic thinking and a longed-for showdown with satanic forces. Amid the invasion of Iraq, when self-righteous stupidity was en vogue, neoconservatives Richard Perle and David Frum wrote "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror," a paean to redemptive violence as a cure for violence.

Maistre hits many of the key themes of American conservatism: religious dogmatism, belief over evidence, anti-scientism, the imperative of obedience to hierarchy and a habitual brooding over violence. But those themes do not satisfy certain paradoxical values that also make up the conservative mindset: a rather irreligious appetite for worldly possessions, and the desire for a pseudo-empirical justification for greed.  

Here one might be tempted to believe that conservative economic theory rests on solid domestic foundations: rugged American individualism, the Horatio Alger fable and the (entirely spurious) quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich."

America was largely founded on greed, exemplified by land-grabs, gold rushes and real estate flimflams, not to mention the institution of slavery. But before Hayek and Mises, greed lacked a sophisticated theoretical foundation.

To be sure, America was largely founded on greed, exemplified by land-grabs, gold rushes and real estate flimflams, not to mention the institution of slavery — the theft of others’ labor. But it lacked a sophisticated theoretical foundation, and its justification was sorely wanting in the wake of the Great Depression and the New Deal’s widely popular efforts to combat the ill effects of greed through fiscal stimulus and the creation a social safety net. 

Ironically, then, just as 20th-century socialism rested on German thought of the previous century, post-World War II conservative economic thinking in America was largely based on the groundwork of German-speaking intellectuals. 

Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises are generally considered to be among the principal founders of radical free-market doctrine in the postwar era. Hayek, the more famous of the two, described himself as a pragmatist and empiricist, but, as is common in the transmission of ideas, his followers dogmatized his theories to the point where they became a materialist religion, a mirror image of Marxist-Leninism. Hayek is frequently invoked in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the American overclass.

Hayek, like other founders of neoliberal economic theory such as Wilhelm Roepke, claimed that their championing of laissez-faire was a remedy for the horrific wars and state oppression that plagued Europe between 1914 and 1945. But in later life, he appeared to develop a soft spot for authoritarianism. In the 1970s and 1980s, Hayek was feted by Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean military dictator who seized power (with help from the CIA) in 1973. In the course of several visits, Hayek claimed he had “not been able to find a single person, even in much-maligned Chile, who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than under Allende” (the elected social democrat overthrown in the 1973 coup). Doubtless Hayek did not have many encounters with the relatives of the roughly 3.000 people murdered by the Pinochet regime.

Mises, an economist who in the early 1930s had advised the Austrofascist chancellor of Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss, settled in the U.S. in 1940. His laissez-faire views were so uncompromising that even Milton Friedman, most people’s idea of a hardcore libertarian, considered his thinking overly inflexible. Mises became the namesake of a tax-exempt foundation in Auburn, Alabama, that's so far out on the libertarian fringe it makes the Cato Institute look like the Ford Foundation. Its bullpen of “scholars” have included neo-Confederate apologists, crackpots out to disprove Einstein’s relativity theory and — wait for it! — crusaders for the legalization of drunk driving.

Perhaps the most influential European of all — at least to Americans in permanently arrested adolescence — was the Russian immigrant, Hollywood screenwriter, novelist and cult leader Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, better known as her Promethean alter ego, Ayn Rand. Her works achieve the difficult feat of synthesizing a coma-inducing dullness with piercingly shrill extended diatribes to create reverse masterpieces worthy of the most risible North Korean propaganda. To an even greater extent than the neoliberal economists, she fashioned an ideology that is simply the worst of the Marxist-Leninism she escaped stood on its head, with a heroic Übermensch substituting for the proletarian masses. It is a pity the film version of "Atlas Shrugged" hasn’t featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

---

Such is Rand’s cult following that former Republican congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, a senior fellow of the Mises Institute, saw fit to name his spawn Rand, who is now the junior senator from Kentucky. Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was an enthusiastic fan of Ayn Rand, supposedly requiring his office interns to read "Atlas Shrugged," a clear example of unfair labor practices. Oddly, Ryan claimed to be an observant Catholic, yet idolized an author who contemptuously called Christianity a “slave religion.” Such is the syncretic nature of contemporary conservatism that blatantly contradictory elements can be fused into the monstrous ideological confection we see all around us.

Functional adults can dismiss Ayn Rand and her petty tyrannizing over acolytes, her psychodramatic love affair with cult deputy Nathaniel Branden, and her continuing ability to inspire teenagers with a Nietzsche complex. But how can we account for the fact that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve for 20 years, was an early member of her circle, and that her writings have sold 37 million copies? Unreadable doorstops her books may be, but they would seem to reveal something about the psychology of a significant slice of Americans.

Perhaps the most influential European of all — at least to Americans in permanently arrested adolescence — was the Russian immigrant, Hollywood screenwriter, novelist and cult leader Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand.

Other sources of modern conservative ideas have a somewhat less direct influence on the current right-wing American zeitgeist. Carl Schmitt, the 20th-century German jurist, political theorist and Nazi official, never set foot on U.S. soil, and remains mostly unknown here. He believed that the fundamental concept in the political realm from which all else flowed was the distinction between friends and enemies, and that to be a sovereign meant being completely unrestrained by law. 

Schmitt employed his judicial and political theories to defend the early Nazi-era Enabling Act (which suspended the Weimar Republic's constitution), to justify Hitler’s assumption of dictatorial rule and to support Joseph Goebbels’ campaign to burn “decadent” books. After the war, Schmitt refused to submit to denazification, and remained completely unrepentant of his prewar beliefs.

Just before the Nazi seizure of power, Schmitt had a Jewish follower and protégé, Leo Strauss, who was able to emigrate from Germany for employment by the Rockefeller Foundation thanks, ironically enough, to a supportive letter from Schmitt. According to surviving correspondence, Strauss and Schmitt had previously carried on a political dialogue in which Strauss agreed with the jurist on most points, sharing a distaste for liberal democracy, a belief in authoritarian rule and a contempt for the masses. It seems he bought into the rising tide of European fascism on all issues except antisemitism.

Strauss arrived in the U.S. in 1938, and taught philosophy, most notably at the University of Chicago, for the rest of his life. He focused mainly on the works of Plato and Aristotle and their application to politics. His method was ambiguous and esoteric — using rhetorical concealment, with a surface meaning for general readers and a hidden truth for the wise — and usually avoided any direct statement of the immediate political relevance of Greek philosophy.

Living in a liberal democracy that had given him refuge from the Holocaust, Strauss soft-pedaled his earlier enthusiasm for fascism, but consistently emphasized the authoritarian implications of Greek philosophy while praising the American constitutional system with faint damns. He also highlighted to his students Plato’s belief in the necessity of “the noble lie,” the veneer of comforting falsehoods with which wise rulers must placate the untutored masses while going about the serious business of exercising power.

A large number of Strauss' students and followers became prominent neoconservatives, including Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama, Harvey Mansfield, Gary Schmitt, Walter Berns and Abram Shulsky, who all later achieved notoriety either as political operatives or publicists advocating for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq based on false claims of hidden weapons of mass destruction.

A large number of Leo Strauss' students and followers became prominent neoconservatives, who later achieved notoriety either as political operatives or publicists advocating for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Once the wheels began to fall off the Iraq crusade, critics, pivoting off the earlier work of political theorist Shadia Drury, began to notice the sheer number of Straussians in high places who had been among the war's most vociferous proponents. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh related that Straussians filled the Pentagon’s ad hoc Office of Special Plans, and  had bulldozed the government’s intelligence agencies in order to cherry-pick dubious evidence to fit their preconceived notions. They even called themselves the “cabal,” in what seemed a parodic tribute to Strauss’ clique of wise men.

In March 2003, on the eve of war, I staffed a House Budget Committee hearing in which Wolfowitz, at the time the second-ranking official in the Pentagon, predicted that total U.S. casualties from the invasion and occupation of Iraq might amount to fewer than those suffered in the recent U.S. military intervention in the Balkans. (In other words, nearly none at all.) Did a man with access to the most extensive intelligence apparatus in the world actually believe what he told us, or was this a textbook example of Plato’s noble lie?

Considering that Strauss was a relatively obscure academic who had been dead for many years, it was surprising that revelations of his influence on the neocons produced such a well-organized and extensive pushback. The New York Times, which had vigorously supported the Iraq invasion published four op-eds defending  Strauss, polemics that employed ridicule and condescension against the unsophisticated critics who supposedly didn’t “get” the philosopher’s subtle arguments. Ever since, there has been a cottage industry of conservative academics writing books and essays supporting Strauss, which almost invariably receive laudatory notices in right-wing vehicles like National Review or the Claremont Institute.

Strauss apologists never directly engage the points raised by critics. They are mostly mute on Strauss’ early dalliance with fascism, such as in a 1933 letter where he endorses  “the principles of the Right — fascist, authoritarian imperial and not the pathetic and laughable imprescriptible rights of man.” He never repudiated any of those early statements, and Straussians went to some lengths to conceal from critical scholars the more controversial writings in his collected papers.

If Strauss, an unworldly academic lecturer, had no conceivable link with the neoconservative project to unleash redemptive war and exalt untrammeled executive power, why did two of his followers, neocon operatives Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt — who had both held government positions in foreign intelligence — write a 1999 essay crediting Strauss with having helped them conceptualize intelligence matters? Apparently the Platonic method of ferreting out hidden meanings was key to the neocons' certainty that Iraqi WMDs existed. Whatever Strauss intended, his followers applied what they held to be his teachings to justify a disastrous war of aggression based on imaginary evidence.

The neocons were always a small fraction of the conservative movement, and their sheer, agonizing incompetence in engineering the Iraq debacle all but finished them as a driving influence by the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. As the conservative movement became cruder and more extreme, it no longer cared to perform analyses of Plato to guide its ideology. And as the culture wars became a right-wing obsession, the locus of coercion and violence was transferred from foreign crusades to domestic soil. But it still found a foreign model to help guide it.

A moment’s reflection suggests the reason behind conservatives' tendency to lavish praise on foreign regimes and their theoreticians: The right does not much care for America, as its leading voices have been telling us for years.

As everyone knows, Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin, and so a large portion of the Republican Party admires Putin in an imitative and slavish manner. But even before Trump became a candidate, the most regressive elements of conservatism — the paleoconservatives who developed around former Nixon and Reagan staffer (and Hitler apologist) Pat Buchanan, Christian nationalists and reconstructionists inspired by Francis Schaeffer, and the tech-obsessed neoreactionary movement fueled by Silicon Valley money, which has produced JD Vance — discovered how much there was to love about Putin’s Russia.

This New Right also seems to have an easy familiarity with the theorists of totalitarianism. In an interview this June with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Vance invoked the legal architect of Nazi rule, Carl Schmitt — in an effort to blame liberals, the very people Schmitt despised, for wanting to carry out his precept of power over justice. As most people in the reality-based community have noticed by now, operatives of the right habitually project every desire they dare not express onto their opponents. One also wonders where Vance gained his expertise on Schmitt; I doubt the Nazi jurist was a subject in the Yale Law School curriculum.

A moment’s reflection suggests the reason behind the right’s tendency to lavish praise on foreign regimes and their theoreticians: The right does not much care for America, as its leading voices have been telling us over and over for years. Donald Trump, the exalted leader of the gang, habitually refers to his native land as a “third-world country” or a "laughing stock,” and has called fallen U.S. service personnel “suckers” and “losers;” According to one of his social media posts, “WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!” Vance, his running mate, makes similar disparaging remarks about the country he wants to run.

All of this is logical enough, in that it necessarily flows from their views. The right has told us for some time that it has no use for non-subservient women, minorities, college students (excepting Turning Point USA’s storm troopers), non-Christians, bureaucrats, public school teachers or any other group it wants to target. A Venn diagram of all these groups certainly adds up to more than half the population. The right scorns America as it is, and, contrary to conservatives’ anti-historical nostalgia, as it always has been.

The logical weakness of reactionary movements has actually been their political strength. The seemingly contradictory elements of their platform do not bother their adherents; as we have seen countless times with the GOP, a new party line that flatly negates supposedly timeless Republican principles elicits barely a murmur among the true believers. If the leaders of the party know this fact, they are certainly not going to wise up their foot soldiers.

Perhaps the biggest contradiction of all is that the so-called thought leaders of the GOP — a party that wraps itself in the flag and feels called upon to judge the patriotism of others — are profoundly alienated from the real America as it exists today, the America in which normal people quietly live their lives, work and raise families, and dream their own private dreams. Unable to find solace in such petit-bourgeois domesticity, the socially estranged scholars of Claremont or Hillsdale or some mother’s basement have no problem ransacking the intellectual underworld of Europe during its most blood-soaked eras to find voices that can articulate their grievance, and their rage, more eloquently than they themselves.

As Austrian writer Robert Musil observed, “A man can't be angry at his own time without suffering some damage."

Read more

from Mike Lofgren on history, politics and power

• Why America is going backward: Being the richest nation in history isn't enough
• Right-wing fake history is making a big comeback — but it never went away
• What a fool believes: Donald Trump and America's bogus respect for "faith"

 

By Mike Lofgren

Mike Lofgren is a historian and writer, and a former national security staff member for the House and Senate. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller "The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted."

[robsblubot 3,595]

3 hours ago, Vesper said:

Right wing politicians and pundits as well, as they use it as a wedge issue, a tribal stance to keep their followers on 'the team'. It is classic 'let's play game of YOU and THEM fight'. It is emotional identity manipulation.

Right and imagine the money pressure coming from the oil industry. I mean there is a huge momentary incentive *for* the identity manipulation.
I was inevitable for the "smart moneys" to find their way into politics... low-hanging fruit.

[Vesper 30,120]

Multiple people shot along highway in Kentucky; suspect at large, authorities say

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kentucky-shooting-london-laurel-county/

 

[cosmicway 1,333]

Socialism in one wod:

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

12 hours ago, Vesper said:

Charlotte Owen becomes youngest life peer in British history

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/charlotte-owen-boris-johnson-peer-job-b2608283.html

 

Adnani has appeared at least twice on former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, and on one occasion told him that his ambition was to achieve “full spectrum energy dominance”.

Headquartered in a serviced office building in Sevenoaks, Better Earth describes itself as an “energy transition company”. Its website, which is currently under construction, says it will “work directly with national governments and regions that are seeking both inward investment and/or to reduce their emissions ahead of 2030”.

The apparent lack of transparency extends beyond the nature of the firm’s clients: the company no longer has a person of significant control registered at Companies House. The initial filing states that its single share is owned by another company called “Emissions Reduction Corp” registered in Carson City, Nevada.

US company searches reveal the firm was previously called Carbon Royalty Corporation, a Delaware-based company whose directors include Adnani and Nicole Shanahan, who was until recently Robert F Kennedy Jr’s running mate in his campaign for US president before he endorsed Trump. Delaware is a “dark” jurisdiction but sources suggest Carbon Royalty Corporation has raised $40m since it was incorporated in 2021 and its investors appear “undisclosed”, although this is not illegal.

Baroness Margaret Hodge, the former Labour MP who led parliament’s Public Accounts Committee from 2010-2015 said there were “at least four very serious public interest questions” to be answered about the appointment.

“What on earth is an ex-prime minister of the United Kingdom doing, working for a company with an opaque structure? In my experience those who choose to have a UK company owned by a foreign entity only do that because they may have something to hide. What is it in this case? Given the sensitivities around nuclear capabilities we should know who he is in business with, where the money is coming from and why he is using a financial structure that appears to hide the beneficial ownership of the company.”

Better Earth, Amir Adnani and Boris Johnson declined to respond to the Observer’s inquiries about Better Earth’s line of work, funding or any other matters.

The appointment also raises further question marks over Johnson’s relationship with Baroness Owen, a previously unknown junior political adviser who had worked for a matter of months with Johnson at Number 10. Her appointment to the Lords, where she took the title Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge in July last year, became the subject of intense speculation. With just a few years’ job experience under her belt, she now holds the position for life. In her maiden speech in November last year, she thanked Johnson for “putting a great deal of trust in me”.

That trust has now been extended to a senior role in his new company, Better Earth, though her role has also not been widely publicised. She recently updated her House of Lords page to note that she has a paid position as “Vice President, Better Earth Limited (energy transition company)” though she does not appear on the company’s website, X feed or LinkedIn page.

Former Boris Johnson aide joins Lords as youngest ever life peer

Owen mentioned climate only briefly in her maiden speech earlier this year, preferring to showcase her interest in technology, and has no previous employment experience in environmental, nuclear, or green issues. She declined to answer any of the Observer’s questions about her role.

Owen joins two other former Conservative ministers at the firm: Chris Skidmore, who resigned the whip and the party over Rishi Sunak’s oil and gas plan, is Better Earth’s COO, while Nigel Adams, a Johnson ally and former minister without portfolio, is CEO. There is no suggestion that either Skidmore or Adams were in breach of transparency rules.

Before Johnson became a director of Better Earth in May this year, he wrote to Acoba, the government watchdog, alerting them to the appointment. This came during the same period Acoba had accused him of refusing to answer its questions about whom he’d met as a consultant on behalf of a hedge fund, Merlyn Advisors, during a trip to Venezuela.

The incident led the committee’s chairman, Eric Pickles, to warn that Johnson’s behaviour had proved its rules were “unenforceable”.

Like Trump he puts money and pussy as top priorities

[Vesper 30,120]

Michael Gove: Treasury blocked my efforts to punish Grenfell cladding firms

 

Efforts to restrict products made by Kingspan, Arconic and Celotex ran up against the commercial purism of Treasury Mandarin Brain

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/michael-gove-interview-grenfell-tower-victims-b8kbmsrdp

Key points

 

Former housing secretary speaks after official inquiry criticised firms responsible for Grenfell Tower cladding

 

French and Irish governments were reluctant to take action against companies in their jurisdictions, he says

 

Up to 558,000 people in 300,000 flats in UK still in danger as only 10 per cent with known or estimated fire risks have been fixed

It has to begin with an apology. The bereaved, relatives and survivors of the Grenfell tragedy were let down by successive governments. Including governments of which I was a part.

For decades, we did not take building safety as seriously as we should have. We did not treat tenants in social housing with the respect they deserved. We did not respond to the tragedy in the hours and days afterwards with the grip required. And progress on the path towards justice has been painfully slow.

In the seven years since the fire, there has been change for the better. We managed to strong-arm developers into paying for the remediation of unsafe buildings. We passed laws to ensure social housing tenants were listened to with respect and their complaints were quickly addressed. We improved building safety standards, created a new building safety regulator, mandated second staircases in all new buildings over 18m and had reached agreement on funding personal emergency evacuation plans for residents who needed assistance. We reformed the rules to ensure leaseholders didn’t have to pay for the faults in their buildings which they never caused.

 

But the publication of Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report underlines how much more there is to do. It reinforces in particular the need to pursue those who bear the gravest responsibility for this tragedy with every weapon at the state’s disposal. Especially the companies that manufactured the materials used on a cherished home that became a hecatomb. And that have still not shown proper awareness of their guilt, contrition for their crimes or restitution for their wrongs. A reckoning must come.

Kingspan, Arconic, Celotex. Three companies whose actions meant that products encased a high-rise building which were not just unsafe but positively lethal. Three companies whose employees knew they were lying about the materials they were marketing. Three companies that cheated the tests designed to keep people safe.

• Grenfell Tower report: the five key takeaways from the inquiry

There are many others who failed the victims of Grenfell. The tenant management organisation that dismissed their concerns. The council whose building control system was inadequate. The testing and certification centre, the Building Research Establishment, which was captured by corporate interests after being privatised. And the developers who were at the apex of a dysfunctional system. There has been, over time, an acknowledgement of responsibility from each of them. There is more still to be done to put things right. But progress has been made.

The failures of these bodies were, primarily, failures to protect. They were serious. But they rank behind the failures of Kingspan, Arconic and Celotex, which willingly, knowingly, recklessly put greed ahead of decency.

The Sunday Times columnist Dominic Lawson reported in 2020 the damning evidence the inquiry heard about the dark cynicism of those working for these organisations.

As he wrote: “Kingspan employees joked about the way the firm had managed to get its Kooltherm K15 insulation categorised as ‘class 0’ — that is, appropriate for use in buildings higher than 18 metres — in part by using a different material in the official tests from what was actually being sold.”

In email exchanges they celebrate their own dishonesty:

Kingspan employee 1: “Doesn’t actually get class 0 when we test the whole product tho. LOL.”

Kingspan employee 2: “WHAT. We lied? Honest opinion now.”

Kingspan employee 1: “Yeahhhh …”

And later in the conversation: “All lies, mate … Alls we do is lie here.”

A week earlier the inquiry heard that when a constructor questioned whether Kooltherm K15 was suitable for a high-rise, the Kingspan executive Philip Heath emailed a friend: “I think [they] are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic].”

Arconic’s executives declined to give oral evidence to the inquiry but Sir Martin concluded that they too “deliberately and dishonestly” misled regulators. He also found that Celotex similarly engaged in a “dishonest scheme to mislead its customers and the wider market”.

None of these companies has even begun to make amends, let alone acknowledge fault. Despite our best efforts so far.

• What next for the families and those held responsible?

Because Kingspan is based in Ireland, and Arconic’s European operations and Celotex are in France, our jurisdiction was limited. But we were determined to go after them. Working with the brave activists of Grenfell United we got Mercedes-Benz, and then Ulster Rugby, to shun any association with Kingspan. We set up a recovery strategy unit, headed by a former special forces commander, to alert investors to these companies’ shameless irresponsibility and to put the heat on their collaborators. We were making some progress before the election was called.

But from bureaucracies, both ours and others, there was insufficient action. I pressed the Irish government to act against Kingspan without success. From France only haughty froideur. What made the task more difficult was the compromised nature of our own establishment. Saint-Gobain, the parent company that previously owned Celotex, continues to sponsor the Franco-British Colloque, an annual get-together of French and British politicians, journalists and academics. Efforts on my part to restrict the import of these companies’ products ran up against the commercial purism of Treasury Mandarin Brain.

The task now falls to others to secure the justice I sought but failed to bring. I hope the Crown Prosecution Service and Metropolitan Police will do all they can to bring criminal prosecutions quickly. But pursuing a few of the most guilty individuals is not enough when these companies are still making vast profits without acknowledging their full responsibility.

• The cladding bosses who’ve made millions since Grenfell

Taking the necessary action will require toughness. I worry that the new government may be dissuaded from doing everything necessary by those counselling caution. The officials with whom I worked were determined to pursue the wrongdoers and we were developing a Grenfell justice bill to give us all the tools required. But elsewhere in Whitehall I know there will be voices opposed to robust action. Those saying these companies can be partners in combating climate change. Those arguing that we shouldn’t pick fights with EU neighbours when we want a closer commercial relationship. Those claiming that pursuing individual companies abroad will send a negative signal on foreign investment when the priority is growth.

I understand all those arguments. But you cannot purchase prosperity at the price of justice. You cannot build a safe home for the vulnerable on an unquiet grave. You cannot allow the unacceptable face of capitalism to be left smirking when the tears of victims are still wet. Those who are the guiltiest must pay, and pay the most.

Michael Gove was the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath 2005-24, and housing secretary 2021-24

 

 

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Michael Gove: Treasury blocked my efforts to punish Grenfell cladding firms

 

Efforts to restrict products made by Kingspan, Arconic and Celotex ran up against the commercial purism of Treasury Mandarin Brain

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/michael-gove-interview-grenfell-tower-victims-b8kbmsrdp

Key points

 

Former housing secretary speaks after official inquiry criticised firms responsible for Grenfell Tower cladding

 

French and Irish governments were reluctant to take action against companies in their jurisdictions, he says

 

Up to 558,000 people in 300,000 flats in UK still in danger as only 10 per cent with known or estimated fire risks have been fixed

It has to begin with an apology. The bereaved, relatives and survivors of the Grenfell tragedy were let down by successive governments. Including governments of which I was a part.

For decades, we did not take building safety as seriously as we should have. We did not treat tenants in social housing with the respect they deserved. We did not respond to the tragedy in the hours and days afterwards with the grip required. And progress on the path towards justice has been painfully slow.

In the seven years since the fire, there has been change for the better. We managed to strong-arm developers into paying for the remediation of unsafe buildings. We passed laws to ensure social housing tenants were listened to with respect and their complaints were quickly addressed. We improved building safety standards, created a new building safety regulator, mandated second staircases in all new buildings over 18m and had reached agreement on funding personal emergency evacuation plans for residents who needed assistance. We reformed the rules to ensure leaseholders didn’t have to pay for the faults in their buildings which they never caused.

 

But the publication of Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report underlines how much more there is to do. It reinforces in particular the need to pursue those who bear the gravest responsibility for this tragedy with every weapon at the state’s disposal. Especially the companies that manufactured the materials used on a cherished home that became a hecatomb. And that have still not shown proper awareness of their guilt, contrition for their crimes or restitution for their wrongs. A reckoning must come.

Kingspan, Arconic, Celotex. Three companies whose actions meant that products encased a high-rise building which were not just unsafe but positively lethal. Three companies whose employees knew they were lying about the materials they were marketing. Three companies that cheated the tests designed to keep people safe.

• Grenfell Tower report: the five key takeaways from the inquiry

There are many others who failed the victims of Grenfell. The tenant management organisation that dismissed their concerns. The council whose building control system was inadequate. The testing and certification centre, the Building Research Establishment, which was captured by corporate interests after being privatised. And the developers who were at the apex of a dysfunctional system. There has been, over time, an acknowledgement of responsibility from each of them. There is more still to be done to put things right. But progress has been made.

The failures of these bodies were, primarily, failures to protect. They were serious. But they rank behind the failures of Kingspan, Arconic and Celotex, which willingly, knowingly, recklessly put greed ahead of decency.

The Sunday Times columnist Dominic Lawson reported in 2020 the damning evidence the inquiry heard about the dark cynicism of those working for these organisations.

As he wrote: “Kingspan employees joked about the way the firm had managed to get its Kooltherm K15 insulation categorised as ‘class 0’ — that is, appropriate for use in buildings higher than 18 metres — in part by using a different material in the official tests from what was actually being sold.”

In email exchanges they celebrate their own dishonesty:

Kingspan employee 1: “Doesn’t actually get class 0 when we test the whole product tho. LOL.”

Kingspan employee 2: “WHAT. We lied? Honest opinion now.”

Kingspan employee 1: “Yeahhhh …”

And later in the conversation: “All lies, mate … Alls we do is lie here.”

A week earlier the inquiry heard that when a constructor questioned whether Kooltherm K15 was suitable for a high-rise, the Kingspan executive Philip Heath emailed a friend: “I think [they] are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic].”

Arconic’s executives declined to give oral evidence to the inquiry but Sir Martin concluded that they too “deliberately and dishonestly” misled regulators. He also found that Celotex similarly engaged in a “dishonest scheme to mislead its customers and the wider market”.

None of these companies has even begun to make amends, let alone acknowledge fault. Despite our best efforts so far.

• What next for the families and those held responsible?

Because Kingspan is based in Ireland, and Arconic’s European operations and Celotex are in France, our jurisdiction was limited. But we were determined to go after them. Working with the brave activists of Grenfell United we got Mercedes-Benz, and then Ulster Rugby, to shun any association with Kingspan. We set up a recovery strategy unit, headed by a former special forces commander, to alert investors to these companies’ shameless irresponsibility and to put the heat on their collaborators. We were making some progress before the election was called.

But from bureaucracies, both ours and others, there was insufficient action. I pressed the Irish government to act against Kingspan without success. From France only haughty froideur. What made the task more difficult was the compromised nature of our own establishment. Saint-Gobain, the parent company that previously owned Celotex, continues to sponsor the Franco-British Colloque, an annual get-together of French and British politicians, journalists and academics. Efforts on my part to restrict the import of these companies’ products ran up against the commercial purism of Treasury Mandarin Brain.

The task now falls to others to secure the justice I sought but failed to bring. I hope the Crown Prosecution Service and Metropolitan Police will do all they can to bring criminal prosecutions quickly. But pursuing a few of the most guilty individuals is not enough when these companies are still making vast profits without acknowledging their full responsibility.

• The cladding bosses who’ve made millions since Grenfell

Taking the necessary action will require toughness. I worry that the new government may be dissuaded from doing everything necessary by those counselling caution. The officials with whom I worked were determined to pursue the wrongdoers and we were developing a Grenfell justice bill to give us all the tools required. But elsewhere in Whitehall I know there will be voices opposed to robust action. Those saying these companies can be partners in combating climate change. Those arguing that we shouldn’t pick fights with EU neighbours when we want a closer commercial relationship. Those claiming that pursuing individual companies abroad will send a negative signal on foreign investment when the priority is growth.

I understand all those arguments. But you cannot purchase prosperity at the price of justice. You cannot build a safe home for the vulnerable on an unquiet grave. You cannot allow the unacceptable face of capitalism to be left smirking when the tears of victims are still wet. Those who are the guiltiest must pay, and pay the most.

Michael Gove was the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath 2005-24, and housing secretary 2021-24

 

 

Lying piece of shit -he was part of the problem and financially benefited from it

[Vesper 30,120]

Labour ‘must take on Reform’ before it poses election danger

Nigel Farage’s party is setting up local branches in Labour-held seats, and MPs fear the threat is not being taken seriously

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-must-take-on-reform-before-it-poses-election-danger-rnwvtjfd5

Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to stop “shying away” from attacking Reform UK policies and Nigel Farage if he wants to keep power for a decade.

Reform is setting up about 120 local branches to focus on Labour-held seats, mainly in south Wales and the north of England.

Labour MPs in seats where Reform came second or a close third in the general election say they have noticed a considerable increase in activity from pro-Reform activists over the summer.

“Reform is dangerous if we don’t take them on now,” said one Labour MP who faced a close race with a candidate from Farage’s party, despite no support from Reform headquarters.

“I’m not convinced we got it right in the general election. I think there was this attitude that they’re taking more votes off the Tories than they are at Labour, so we shouldn’t challenge them. We were willing to stay quiet while the Tories morphed into Reform, but we can’t shy away in the future.”

The MP said Labour’s attitude meant there was little scrutiny of “how absolutely loopy [Reform] policies are”.

Labour Together, the think tank close to the party’s leadership, has commissioned polling analysis to identify where the party lost votes and to create a strategy to win next time.

The first part of the report will be presented at the party conference in Liverpool this month. It will show that those who switched from Conservative to Labour were the decisive group in the constituencies that mattered — more so than Tories staying at home or switching to Reform.

 

But MPs said the “red wall” — seats in Labour’s traditional heartlands in the north of England — should not be taken for granted for the next election, adding that ministers should exploit a gap between the Reform leadership and its voter base.

“One of the reasons Ukip didn’t do as well as they were hoping to in the 2015 election is because this video went round of Farage talking about an American-style healthcare system,” the MP said.

“He learnt from that, because this time he stepped around it in debates, but fundamentally Reform’s policies mean a much smaller state and a much reduced ability to spend.

“That’s not where their voters are, and most of the stuff is completely impractical. There’s a naughty part of me that wishes the country could be governed by Reform just for a week, just because I think it would kill dead any chance they’ve got of getting power again.”

Reform led an organised campaign of leaflets and door-knocking only in four seats at the general election: Clacton, Boston & Skegness, Great Yarmouth and Ashfield. It won all four, and took the South Basildon & East Thurrock constituency from the Conservatives with a majority of 98 votes.

The party also came within 20 votes of defeating Richard Holden, the Tory party chairman at the time, in Basildon & Billericay.

Reform’s membership has swelled to 76,000, having added about 10,000 since the election and 25,000 in the final four weeks of the campaign.

The increase in Reform members seems mostly driven by “keyboard warriors”, one MP said. “Many of these are in their Transformers pyjamas in their mum’s basement. But what we haven’t seen yet is Reform on the doorstep or speaking to voters.”

The parliamentary register of interests shows that Farage is paid almost £100,000 a month to present a show on GB News, meaning he would have earned more than £1 million a year on top of his MP’s salary of £91,346. But the Reform leader said the sum included VAT, was paid to his company, which incurs expenses, and covers work carried out since April.

Farage’s popularity took a dent during the unrest in July, after he was accused of encouraging some of the early online misinformation. But Starmer refused to criticise him, saying he was “not going to stand here and cast judgment on what others have been saying”.

MPs raised concerns that misinformation spreading on social media companies would continue to help the Reform vote.

“We need social media companies to step up to squash that misinformation quicker, more efficiently,” one said. “Unfortunately, that is how a lot of people, especially Reform voters and more working-class voters, are taking in their news now.”

Most MPs still cannot conceive of Reform achieving its stated ambition of winning the next election. “I suppose anything is possible in politics,” one said. “But that’s not possible.”

[Vesper 30,120]

7 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Lying piece of shit -he was part of the problem and financially benefited from it

Yes, and I am not defending him, just put up the article for discussion as it is major news.

[Vesper 30,120]

Elon Musk on pace to become world’s first trillionaire by 2027, report says
In addition to world’s richest person, who has $251bn, report names others on track to receive trillionaire status

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/sep/07/elon-musk-first-trillionaire-2027

 

Elon Musk is on pace to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, according to a new report from a group that tracks wealth.

Informa Connect Academy’s finding about the boss of electric carmaker Tesla, private rocket company SpaceX and social media platform X (formerly Twitter) stems from the fact that Musk’s wealth has been growing at an average annual rate of 110%. He was also the world’s richest person, with $251bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as the academy’s 2024 Trillion Dollar Club report began circulating Friday.

The academy’s analysis suggested business conglomerate founder Gautam Adani of India would become the second to achieve trillionaire status. That would reportedly happen in 2028 if his annual growth rate remains at 123%.

Jensen Huang, the chief executive officer of the tech firm Nvidia, and Prajogo Pangestu, the Indonesian energy and mining mogul, could also become trillionaires in 2028 if their trajectories hold. Bernard Arnault, the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton boss and the world’s third-richest person with about $200bn, is on track to eclipse a trillion dollars in 2030 – the same year as Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta.

A handful of companies have secured valuations of more than $1tn. Berkshire Hathaway most recently topped the valuation in late August, days before its architect Warren Buffett celebrated his 94th birthday. Nvidia joined the $1tn club in May 2023 and in June hit $3tn, positioning it at the time after Microsoft and before Apple as the world’s second-most-valuable company.

However, as CNBC noted, the question of who might be the globe’s first trillionaire has fascinated the public ever since the world crowned its first billionaire in 1916. That was the US’s John D Rockefeller, the founder and at the time largest shareholder of Standard Oil.

Despite that fascination, many academics see the accumulation of immense wealth as a social ill. One report calculated that the richest 1% of humanity account for more carbon emissions – a primary driver of the ongoing climate crisis – than the poorest 66%.

Just days before Informa Connect Academy tapped Musk as the most likely to become the world’s first trillionaire, one of his posts on X earned him backlash from many of the site’s users.

His post said an interview between former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and podcaster Darryl Cooper – a fellow rightwing media figure – was “very interesting. Worth watching.”

Cooper claimed in the interview that the Nazis did not mean to murder so many people when they carried out the Holocaust and killed 6 million Jews during the second world war. Instead, Cooper remarked, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime simply was not equipped to care for them – and the podcaster blamed British prime minister Winston Churchill for “that war becoming what it did”.

Musk ultimately deleted his post, and the White House condemned Carlson’s interview of Cooper as “a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans”.

The billionaire announced in August that he is supporting Donald Trump as the Republican nominee seeks a second presidency in November’s election. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-president, is also running in the election.

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Keir Starmer urges Labour MPs to back ‘unpopular’ plan to cut winter fuel allowance

PM refuses to say if MPs who rebel will be stripped of the whip – but makes clear he expects their support in key vote

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/sep/08/keir-starmer-urges-labour-mps-to-back-unpopular-plan-to-cut-winter-fuel-allowance

 

Keir Starmer has urged Labour MPs to support his “unpopular” plan to remove the winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest pensioners, saying the government could not run away from difficult choices.

Speaking in his first major TV interview since taking office, the prime minister also hinted at increased support for Ukraine, saying his visit to the White House next week to see President Biden would be focused on the “strategic” situation there, and in the Middle East.

Asked about Tuesday’s vote on the changes to the fuel allowance, forced after the Conservatives submitted a motion to annul the government’s change to regulations, Starmer refused to say if Labour MPs who rebelled would be stripped of the whip – but made it clear he expected their support.

“That will be a matter for the chief whip,” he told BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. “We’re going into a vote. I’m glad we’re having a vote, because I think it’s very important for parliament to speak on this. But every Labour MP was elected in on the same mandate as I was, which was to deliver the change that we need for the country.”

The new government has already suspended the Labour whip from seven MPs who supported an amendment in July to end the two-child benefits cap.

Starmer stressed that restricting access to the payments was a vital part of reducing spending he said had spiralled under a Conservative government which had “run away from difficult decisions”.

“I‘m absolutely convinced that we will only deliver that change – I’m absolutely determined we will – if we do the difficult things now,” he said. “I know they’re unpopular, I know they’re difficult. Of course, they’re tough choices. Tough decisions are tough decisions. Popular decisions aren’t tough, they’re easy.

“I do recognise how difficult it is for some people. I do recognise it’s really hard for some pensioners. But of course, they do rely on the NHS, they do rely on public transport. So these things aren’t completely divorced.”

Worries about the impact of the policy change are known to be shared by some cabinet ministers, with some frontbenchers believing the government will have to announce extra support in the budget.

Starmer, however, argued that with the triple lock policy of pension increases, he could guarantee that the annual increase in the state pension “will outstrip any reduction in the winter fuel payment”.

Starmer is due to be in Washington on Friday for talks with Biden, a trip not yet set out by No 10 but announced by the White House.

Asked if this was an attempt to assuage anger among US officials about the UK’s decision last week to suspend some arms export licences to Israel because of risks they could be used in violations of international law, Starmer rejected the characterisation.

“You’re wrong about that,” he said. “We’ve been talking to the US beforehand and afterwards, and they’re very clear that they’ve got a different legal system, and they understand the decision that we’ve taken. So that’s very clear.

“The reason I’m actually going and having the visit is not about that at all. It’s because the situation in Ukraine is becoming ever more pressing, as is the situation in the Middle East.”

The talks with Biden would focus on “the tactical decisions we have to make” on those areas, he added, saying that the next few months would be crucial for Ukraine, as well as in the Middle East.

Asked if this could lead to an increase in support for Ukraine, or a decision to allow Kyiv to use donated weapons on targets inside Russia, Starmer said he was “not going to get into a discussion about that on live television”.

He added: “But of course, I want to make sure that we give Ukraine the support that it needs for as long as it needs.”