Blackcap Blog

Published at 09:58 on 13 March 2024

In quotes only because it, and not the Israeli offensive that provoked it, will end up being labelled “terrorism” in the Establishment media. Because of course this will happen. “Terrorism” is, and always has been, a subjective label, used for propaganda purposes to delegitimize  violence with which one disagrees.

And yes, I have used the term in these pages before. Which, yes, means I was posting propaganda to delegitimize violence with which I disagreed. Because of course I post propaganda here. Pretty much everyone with a set of political beliefs (which means pretty much anyone who cares about things political) makes propaganda.

Propaganda per se is not evil or immoral. What is dishonest is to paint propaganda as if it were impartial news.

But I digress. A big new round of acts of political violence on the part of the Arab and Muslim world, particularly the Palestinian subset of it, against the West, particularly Israel and the USA, is coming.

Why wouldn’t it be, seeing as how brutalized Gaza has been in recent months? I really can’t think of any examples of comparable brutality that have passed without further cycles of retribution to some degree. Anyone who believes Israel’s disproportionate retaliation for the events of October 7th will be the final word in what is now a near century-long ongoing conflict is a fool.

And it seems as if the intelligence community, whatever its faults, is not run by fools. So it’s hardly just me that can see it.

Published at 09:50 on 3 March 2024

Really, it is hard to call this anything but pure, unvarnished barbarism. Probably the most damning part of the article is this bit:

Dr Husam Abu Safyia, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, said the majority of the injured taken there had gunshot wounds in the upper part of their bodies, and many of the deaths were from gunshots to the head, neck or chest.

So they deliberately opened fire on starving civilians and shot to kill. Pure barbarism.

And I think it is important to use the b-word to refer to what the Netanyahu regime is doing. That term has historically been used as part of gaslighting propaganda by Western nations to justify their own imperialist barbarism, by accusing those they are “civilizing” as being saved from it.

And Zionism is hardly exempt from this. From Theodor Herzl’s 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State):

We should there [in Palestine] form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.

Needless to say (but I have to say it, else some stooge for Israeli barbarism might bring it up) “but October 7th” is not a valid answer to this. Yes, what Hamas did on that day was barbarism, too. So what? As I wrote last November two wrongs don’t make a right.

Israeli barbarism is now causing more death and suffering than Palestinian barbarism ever did. It is the greater problem, and it is logical to spend more political energy on addressing it.

And it is barbarism. If the b-word fits, use it.

Published at 09:53 on 1 March 2024

One of the things I did when packing up and cleaning out in Bellingham was listen to NPR. You see, I live just below a ridge to my south, so my home is blocked by that ridge from receiving FM radio signals from the USA. It’s one of the mildly annoying features of my home.

One of the things I heard was a segment from On Point about the problems some US military barracks are having with mold infestations. So far, so good: the government is responsible for the housing needs of those enlisted to serve, and it is a dereliction of duty to fail to supply safe, hygienic housing.

The problem comes at the end when privatization was sold as a silver bullet. Not study to uncover the root causes of the problem. Not spending money to exterminate the mold and rectify those causes. Privatization.

Changing the ownership of a mold-infested building does absolutely nothing to make the mold go away. In fact, it can easily make it harder to get rid of the mold. Before, the Army owned the building. Issue the necessary orders and spend the necessary money to remove the mold and rectify the defects that let the mold fester. Now, someone else owns the building; everything is at an arm’s length. Not so easy to issue orders to a private business over what that business is to do with its own property.

The military already has plenty of problems overseeing private contractors, to the end that such contractors are already routinely implicated in wasteful spending. I once, long ago, worked in that sector, and from personal experience, private defence contractors combine the avarice of private enterprise, the insulation from market forces of government bureaucracy, and the secrecy of the national security establishment. Approximately as good an incubator of corruption and waste as those unsanitary barracks are of mold.

In fact, there has already been some limited privatization of military housing and (surprise, surprise) the military has already struggled with ensuring that the private contractors don’t cut corners and deliver unacceptable results.

The arguments offered for privatization were very weak. So weak, in fact, that if you look into those arguments, you find that they are actually arguments against privatization. First was the (totally unsupported) assertion that “this cannot be solved through the traditional military construction process.” Then there was some mumbling about how “Congress just won’t appropriate” and “We’ve got to use the capital markets to do this.”

Well, if Congress won’t spend money fixing up those barracks, why will private businesses? Just to altruistically be nice? It is to laugh: Capitalists are in business to make money. No, that money will have to come from the government, via the fees it pays to the contractors. Go look up cost-plus and get back to me.

If Congress won’t spend money on fixing up those barracks directly, why would it spend money on hiring private businesses to fix them up? Once again, capitalists are in business to make money. Now you not only have the labour and materials costs of construction to contend with, you have the profits of a capitalist as well. Those profits are not going to come from some secret orchard of money trees the capitalist knows about. They are going to come out of money the government pays the capitalist. In other words, costs to the government will go up, not down, if the traditional military construction process (done at cost) is privatized. Congratulations! The gap between available funds and necessary funds has now grown wider.

So far as the “capital markets” go, again, the problem is worse with privatization. Capitalists get to borrow money from the private capital markets. Banks charge borrowers rates in excess of interest paid to savers. Of course they do: bankers are capitalists, too, and have to get their profits from someplace. You can cut the bankers out of the picture with bonds, of course, but the government can do this as well. And since government bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the government, while private businesses can and sometimes do go bankrupt, the government can get away with paying bondholders less interest, because it doesn’t have to reward them for accepting the additional risk of private bonds. Again, congratulations! You are now spending more to borrow money.

It all makes me wonder who is paying the two “experts” this show interviewed. I would be very surprised to learn that they and/or their spouses are not in some way invested in businesses likely to be hired as contractors under the privatization schemes they are arguing for.

None of the above downsides of privatization were, of course, mentioned in the program. It just ended on a high note of free-market pixie dust being able to work its magic, if only the bad old Congress would allow it to.

And this was on NPR, the allegedly left-leaning public radio network that is supposed to be at the best capitalism-sketpical. No wonder the parameters of public dialogue are so badly skewed in the USA.

Published at 23:26 on 23 February 2024

Frankly, that’s what this sounds like. And I doubt it will be significantly more effective than the original sanctions.

Sanctions have their limits, particularly when the world is addicted to the fossil fuels that are the sanctionee’s main export.

Published at 08:09 on 16 February 2024

Of course Putin did it. If Putin didn’t order it directly, he did so indirectly by having Navalny jailed and sent to a penal colony in Siberia famed for its harsh conditions. And why wouldn’t Putin order it directly? An astounding number of his opponents have suddenly, mysteriously, and prematurely dropped dead. The odds of all those deaths simply being coincidence are so small as to be safely disregarded.

The West, particularly the USA, is being hypocritical about it. There has recently been a little bit of daylight allowed to show between US and Israeli foreign policy, but the USA is still shovelling military aid Israel’s way as it ruthlessly pummels the troublesome Palestinians in Gaza. Plus the USA is now dropping bombs on Iraq with the stated aim of offing more enemies (and no doubt some innocent civilians as well). Plenty of disrespect for human life there, yet not a whole lot of concern about it. So spare me the excess sanctimony.

Trump, and many of his followers, dream of being able to do this. Because of course they do. They, and only they, are in their eyes the only “real” Americans; everyone who dissents from their politics is a threat to the nation. Trump and his followers openly admire Putin, and they do so not in spite of his tactics, but because of them. Trump already regularly uses words like “vermin” to refer to his adversaries. What does one do to vermin? What does one do to rats or roaches if one finds them in one’s house?

Published at 15:19 on 12 February 2024

This is what a win on Palestine looks like at this point.

You didn’t think the decades-long policy of backing Israel no matter what would suddenly end completely, did you? Because longstanding policies locked in by iron triangles just do not vanish in one fell swoop.

That there is any daylight now publicly showing between US and Israeli foreign policy is nothing short of amazing. That it is happening via a joint message from a US president and an Arab leader adds to the significance.

That accelerating decline in the State of Israel’s reputation of which I mentioned earlier, plus growing public sympathy for the Palestinian cause, is starting to work its changes.

Published at 20:22 on 11 February 2024

I think they might have.

One of Biden’s big weak points the last time was his age. That problem has only grown worse, since none of us are getting any younger. The Special Counsel’s report certainly didn’t help in that regard.

Biden’s candidacy was defensible last time in part because he strongly suggested he would voluntarily choose to be a one-term president, and let someone new have a chance at it this time ’round. Whether it’s love of power, or a belief that he is special and the normal aging process doesn’t affect him, he changed his mind.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the Democrats didn’t cede the narrative-framing to the other party. But they do, so here we are.

None of this proves Trump is going to win this time. It just makes this outcome far more likely than it should be.

Published at 07:26 on 8 February 2024

After thinking about it a bit more, that is my conclusion.

First, it was inevitable that the Supreme Court would take this case, and expedite it. Not taking it would result in fifty different states with fifty different processes for disqualifying Trump. Some states would end up striking him from the ballot, some would not. Yes, there would be partisan bias at play here, but the important thing is a leading candidate that does not appear on all ballots.

Second, it would then build. Right-leaning states would retaliate by cooking up some justification for striking Biden from the ballot while leaving Trump on it. Now we have a situation where both leading candidates do not appear on all ballots.

The Court remaining silent would, in other words, be a recipe for nationwide chaos due to a profound constitutional crisis. So the Court has to rule.

Now the question is how the Court will rule. And here we get to a simple issue of expediency: it will be easier for the Court to compel all states to leave Trump on the ballot than it will for it to compel them to all strike him from the ballot. Moreover, by setting the bar really high, such a ruling will nip such chaos in the bud generally.

This is likely to result in standards that make it effectively impossible to bar an insurrectionist president from the ballot. This will of course continue the slow rot in the Republic that has turned the presidency into in an increasingly imperial position. That rot, however, is something that has been ongoing for decades, and liberals as well as conservatives have been willing co-participants in it. It is also something to easily remain in denial of due to an attitude of American exceptionalism (“that sort of thing can never happen here”). Again, both liberals and conservatives harbour this attitude, which is widespread to the point of ubiquity in the USA.

So the decision will not only come out in favour of Trump, but it will be possible for such a decision to be easily rationalized by the Court’s more liberal justices. As such, it would not surprise me in the least to see more than six votes in favour of Trump, and even a 9–0 decision is within the realm of plausibility. In fact, I would have to say that the odds favour at least one liberal pro-Trump vote, because this will be perceived as increasing the Court’s legitimacy. Chief Justice Roberts is likely to push hard for a ruling that will attract at least one liberal vote.

Note that this does not mean that all justices would issue the same decision. It is entirely possible for there to be multiple explanations issued for a pro-Trump vote, with the moderates and liberals signing onto one and the conservatives onto another.

The main point is that a decision in favour of Trump is way more likely than one against him.

Published at 13:04 on 5 February 2024

Update: She resigned, probably because she was told that she could either resign or be fired.

If she doesn’t resign, she should be fired.

Free speech is a thing, and as such she had the right to say what she did. If she had been a member of the US Republican Party, her words would have helped her reputation within her party. But she is not a member of a proto-fascist right-wing party. She is a member of a social-democratic government. Social democracy has generally been critical of imperialism.

As a minister in such a government, she had to watch her words, as should any minister in any government. If she didn’t like that, she shouldn’t have gone into politics.

Her apology said almost all of the right words. It’s just that two critically important words — “I resign” — are missing. If she was really as concerned about her previously unquestioned beliefs as she claims to be, she would want to step back from power for a while to reexamine those beliefs.

But she did not do so. As such, the so-called “apology” comes across as just that: the insincere words of someone desperately trying to cling to her position of political power.

It is a general principle of politics, going back to the time of Plato, that they who most desire power for power’s sake are those least worthy of holding it.

To reiterate: Selena Robinson should resign. If she doesn’t resign, she should be fired.

Published at 16:54 on 1 February 2024

That is to say, how will the United States Supreme Court rule on whether or not the 14th Amendement bars Trump from running for president?

Anyone claiming that the Court’s conservatives “have to” rule against Trump because of the doctrine of originalism is a rank idiot who does not know even the most elementary basics about politics. Would it be hypocritical to suddenly forget about originalism the instant it becomes politically inconvenient? Of course it would! But so what?

To reiterate, anyone arguing that hypocrisy makes taking a position impossible is an idiot. Such an individual knows nothing about politics in general and right-wing politics in particular. If hypocrisy played no role in politics, politics would be so radically different as to be virtually incomprehensible.

The right-wing justices could rule in Trump’s favour with the greatest of ease, and without the slightest of hesitation, and the political right would loudly celebrate the ruling as a great blow for the cause of justice. Any attempts to point out the hypocrisy of it all would go exactly nowhere with the right. As Upton Sinclair once observed: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

The question is not whether they “have to” in the name of some imaginary principle against hypocrisy, but whether or not they will rule against Trump as a virtue of some other principle (which, given human nature, will most likely be one grounded in self-interest). And this is far more difficult to say.

On the one hand, ruling in Trump’s favour helps their political team win. And make no mistake: that would be the calculus behind the ruling. There would of course be a lot of verbiage about higher principles, but that would be a mere pretext cooked up to justify the desired action, nothing more.

If they do rule for Trump, a ruling based on the pretext of due process is most likely. That is, it will be argued that the 14th Amendment is co-equal with the 5th Amendment, and that as such the guarantees of due process in the latter still apply. Trump has not been found guilty of any seditious crimes, and therefore he will be ruled an eligible candidate.

On the other hand, Trump is acting more and more like an aspiring dictator, and dictators are never friendly to the idea of an independent judiciary. And here we have another team to consider: the judiciary in general. Government bureaucracies are many and varied, but they all have a common thread: they want to preserve themselves and their power. Those right-wing justices may be on the right, but they are also part of the judiciary branch, and want to see that branch continue to be powerful and relevant in national politics.

That this incentive exists, and could act to frustrate the evolution of tyranny, is no accident. From Federalist 51 (emphasis added):

It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices. Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of the legislature in this particular, their independence in every other would be merely nominal. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

If the Court’s conservatives rule against Trump, this, not originalism, is likely to be the most powerful motivator. Oh, sure, originalism will dovetail nicely with such a ruling, and that will make the conservative justices ruling so pleased with it. I am sure they will wax eloquent about originalism in that ruling, and they will do this while remaining silent about sticking up for their own power. Professed motives should never be confused with actual ones.

So this, then, is the real question: how will the justices perceive the butter on their toast? If they perceive it to be buttered on the side of a second Trump presidency advancing their interests, they will rule for Trump. If they perceive the opposite, they will rule oppositely. And there is no easy way to say ahead of time which it will be.