Blackcap Blog

Published at 00:22 on 24 April 2018

Marcon can’t bargain with Trump.

He thinks he can, but he can’t. Orange Julius Caesar will say whatever Marcon most wants to hear at the moment, then just change his tune and pander to his base after the visit ends. Marcon will end up looking like the fool he was for thinking otherwise.

After all, even members of Trump’s own cabinet have trouble working with him, because Trump’s line on what he wants keeps continually changing. Trump’s own well-demonstrated personal flaws make cutting any sort of lasting deal highly improbable.

It’s somewhat surprising a reasonably intelligent person like Marcon could think his effort will end up otherwise. I guess in some sense he has to make a good faith effort to try and save the doomed Iran deal; it would look really bad for him to just write Trump off from the get-go. It’s one of those pointless formalities that must be gone through.

On a different matter, so much for the idea that Rand Paul might act as something other than Trump’s dutiful lapdog. The lapdog might yap a lot and even let out the occasional growl, but it’s always the smallest and most pathetic dogs that are the most vocal.

Published at 06:51 on 23 April 2018

Even an Establishment paper like the Washington Post basically admits as such when they write paragraphs like:

Participation and enthusiasm appear to have slowed since. Several street rallies have been sparsely populated by white supremacists — but overwhelmingly attended by counterprotesters — and by the time Spencer ended his college speaking tour, few supporters were coming to his speeches.

You see, fascists (and that’s all “alt-right” is: rebranded fascism) aren’t interested in participating in the dialogue of an open society. They want to destroy open society and replace it with a totalitarian fascist dictatorship.

Fascists’ public appearances aren’t about debate, they’re about projecting an image of force and power, and attracting support based on that alone. Outnumbering fascists, shouting them down, shutting their events down, firing them from their jobs, disowning them from families and sometimes beating them up undercuts and subverts that message of force and power, replacing it with an image of weakness and powerlessness.

It may make nice liberals queasy and even pity the poor roughed-up fascists, but liberals aren’t the target group the fascists want to recruit from, anyhow. There really is a paradox of tolerance, and acting on this fact really does appear to work.

Published at 09:30 on 22 April 2018

Decades ago, well before blogs (or even the World Wide Web) existed, it was obvious to me that the US policy with respect to Cuba was a colossal failure: despite its stated aim being to drive Fidel Castro from power, his grip on the reins of state were as firm as ever. I predicted that he would never be overthrown and would die in office, the standard outcome for Stalinist leaders who are not overthrown.

Close, but no Cohiba; instead, he chose to retire. The Castro regime, however, survived, because he appointed his brother to replace him. (Monarchy, anyone?) And now the Castro regime itself is ending in a fashion planned by the regime itself, on that regime’s timetable.

Note how I wrote “ending” instead of “over;” this choice of wording is significant. Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez is merely being appointed president. Raúl Castro remains chairman of the Communist Party, which in a Leninist one-party state is the real position of ultimate power.

I was wrong on the particulars but the end outcome is still that the Castro regime extremely likely to fully survive the stated policy of overthrowing it. A large part of that is because the policy itself was ridiculous. It ignored certain realities of the Cuban Revolution; namely, that it was a genuinely popular expression of revolt against US-backed dictatorship.

Acknowledging the above, of course, means acknowledging the painful truth that the USA runs an oppressive imperialist order, and that’s just something that the political Establishment prefers to lie about and claim doesn’t actually exist. Trump is hardly the first politician to be blinded by his own ego; he’s merely the most egregiously obvious one.

As to what comes next, who knows? The goal of the Cuban Communist Party is to copy the example set by the Chinese and Vietnamese ones, and to continue the existence of an authoritarian regime, dominated by the Party, that survives and outlasts a transition to a more capitalistic economic order.

And just like in China and Vietnam, it’s certainly possible, because capitalism in no way implies the existence of freedom.

Published at 20:22 on 21 April 2018

It’s talk, and talk is cheap. Talk is particularly cheap coming from a nation whose government has, more than most governments, exhibited a lack of transparency and trustworthiness (and I’m putting it very mildly here). It’s a promise with no safeguards or independent verification whatsoever.

It is, in other words, basically meaningless as to its literal stated purpose. The only thing it signifies is a willingness to talk, nothing more. Given that we already knew the North Koreans were willing to talk, it’s non-news.

It’s also highly unlikely. Saddam Hussein gave up his nuclear program, and what did it ultimately get him? Overthrown by US military action, that’s what. North Korea (also on George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”) refused to give up its nukes and remains. There is a lesson in that for the North Korean state, and that lesson is not that it pays to denuclearize. This was an entirely foreseeable consequence of going to war against Iraq.

Published at 09:50 on 21 April 2018

Since this is the United States, land of both widespread historical ignorance and ignorance of foreign countries, I will begin by pointing out that Daniel Ortega is the president of Nicaragua. Actually, he’s been president twice, once in the wake of the 1979 revolution, and again since 2007.

When he returned to power in 2007, he promptly banned abortion and sought and took kickbacks from those seeking government favors, then engaged in repressive measures against journalists who attempted to document the corruption. He followed that up by banning the two of the largest opposition parties from participating in the 2009 municipal elections.

Then Ortega packed Nicaragua’s supreme court with sympathetic justices, who by some twisted logic ruled Nicaragua’s constitution to be unconstitutional, specifically the parts about presidential term limits. The 2016 election was the first since the 1979 revolution in which foreign observers were not allowed (with the exception of one very small delegation). It’s almost as if someone wants to be President for Life.

Now it looks like there’s finally starting to be some popular pushback against the dictator.

Fuck Ortega. Fuck all dictators.

Published at 06:36 on 20 April 2018

Buried in an article about the Senate majority leader’s waning power is a paragraph that probably slipped by the radar of all too many:

The same routine is playing out on the nomination of Gina Haspel, the deputy CIA director, to replace Pompeo. Most Democrats have voiced opposition, before she has even had a hearing, and Paul also intends to vote no because of her role in harsh interrogations during the Bush administration.

“Harsh interrogations?” Get it straight: it’s torture. T-O-R-T-U-R-E. There’s already a perfectly good English word that perfectly describes how the Bush II regime ordered some of its prisoners treated. No need to waste ink or pixels on some longer neologism.

Torture is torture and torture is wrong no matter who does it. It doesn’t cease to be torture or to be a moral abomination just because the USA and not some foreign power happens to be the one doing it.

Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
— George Orwell

Published at 07:00 on 19 April 2018

Some points:

1. It’s a good thing that talks, and not threats of nuclear annihilation, are happening.
2. It would have been far better if the threats of annihilation had never happened.
3. We got lucky that the threats stayed mere threats.
4. Trump is still Trump, and thus an unreliable partner for anyone to cut a deal with, so we may well go back to threats (or worse) of annihilation.
5. Trump is also emotionally immature, which leaves him vulnerable to being manipulated in any dialogue with an adversary.
6. North Korea is still a very difficult problem to solve, thus an overall solution remains highly unlikely.
7. The secret talks in all likelihood were not planned to help Pompeo’s chances of being approved as Secretary of State; such a claim gives the Trump regime far more credit for being able to effectively plan and govern than it has exhibited to date.

Published at 06:29 on 18 April 2018

Comey Deserved to Be Fired for How He Handled the Clinton Investigation

A lifelong Republican, who has now openly admitted that he treated an investigation into a Democratic candidate for office different than he would have normally treated an investigation? And, of course, he treated it differently than he did a corresponding investigation into the Republican candidate for the same office in the same election. If you’re the head of a law enforcement organization that’s supposed to avoid even the slightest hint of partisan bias, that’s a fireable act.

Yes, there’s all the other factors which Comey cited that made it a hard decision. That doesn’t matter. Being director of the FBI is a hard job; that’s not precisely new news. If Comey can’t do the hard job he was hired to do, he should have been replaced by someone else who more likely could.

There’s No Way Trump Could Have Fired Comey Without It Looking Bad

By the time he fired Comey, Trump had already revealed himself to be an extremely ethically compromised individual: he had invited a hostile foreign power to interfere in the election that brought him to power, that hostile power had actually intervened, he had a lifetime of sociopathic behavior behind him, and he had expressed to Comey and other top Federal employees that the new president valued personal loyalty above all else. And, of course, Trump himself was under investigation.

Of course it was seen in the worst possible light when Trump fired Comey. How could it not have been?

Trump is Incapable of Serving as President

He’s not only incapable by the standards of personal integrity (he doesn’t have much, if any, of that), he’s situationally incapable.  Even if he were to magically (and unbelievably) start behaving like the most virtuous president ever, it wouldn’t much matter now. He has simply dug too deep of a hole for himself.

The situation he’s presently in (as a result of the consequences of the past actions) makes it impossible for his motives to not be questioned in the most fundamental ways. This makes him unable to lead effectively.

The Takeaway

Comey deserved to be fired, and so does Trump. One down, one to go.

Published at 07:26 on 17 April 2018

Why did I claim earlier that the missile attacks are “mostly for show?” Because that’s what they genuinely appear to be. There’s no sign of any broader strategy existing. Quite the contrary: after all the dust settled, Cadet Bone Spurs strutted around boasting “Mission accomplished!”

Assad’s forces were attacked by US missiles last year and it had no lasting impact. There’s no reason to believe the long-term effect of the most recent attack will be any different.

Finally, there’s no reason to take the Islamophobe-in-chief’s professed humanitarian concern for Syrians very seriously. The same guy who’s tried to ban Muslim immigration and who’s blocked most such refugees from finding asylum here? Give me a break.

Published at 12:51 on 16 April 2018

Why? It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Trump is a Russian asset, because he’s been blackmailed into it by them. There’s the pee video, which as I just posted, probably is real, and then there’s Trump’s long past history of business financial issues and transactions with the Russian oligarchy. The Russian ruling class is almost certainly exerting financial coercion on him as well.

Why now? Because of something touched on in another recent post. The fascist part of Trump’s base positively admires Putin’s Russia, because it is the sort of right-wing authoritarian state they dream of. It’s his way of trying to kiss and make up to them after having double-crossed them on Syria. Also, the Russian ruling class is upset about said double-crossing. They need some kissing and making up, too, and bigly.