... The EU has never been good at “control”, as the veto of the EU-Canada deal by the Walloon parliament in Belgium has demonstrated. Instead, it has a political culture characterised by compromise and consensus. The language of Europe is littered with “-ities”: mutuality, solidarity, subsidiarity … Power is diffused, for historical and cultural reasons we all understand.

But this EU culture has always been at odds with that elective dictatorship, the UK constitution. Fundamental principles, entrenched rights, legal scrutiny of political decisions, these had never been the English way (they may see things differently in Scotland); instead we rely on precedent and convention...

... The danger is that Brexit will further empower the strong state of which the prime minister is an admirer... A frightening demonstration of who, post-referendum, is “taking back control”.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/nov/01/universities-suffer-brexit-britain-refugee-children


... They (far-right parties across the EU) have made a very public break with the symbols of the old right’s past, distancing themselves from skinheads, neo-Nazis and homophobes. They have also deftly co-opted the causes, policies and rhetoric of their opponents. They have sought to outflank the left when it comes to defending a strong welfare state and protecting social benefits that they claim are threatened by an influx of freeloading migrants.

They have effectively claimed the progressive causes of the left – from gay rights to women’s equality and protecting Jews from antisemitism – as their own, by depicting Muslim immigrants as the primary threat to all three groups. As fear of Islam has spread, with their encouragement, they have presented themselves as the only true defenders of western identity and western liberties – the last bulwark protecting a besieged Judeo-Christian civilisation from the barbarians at the gates...

... They have shed some of the right’s most unsavoury baggage while responding to both economic anxiety and fear of terrorism by blending a nativist economic policy – more welfare, but only for us – and tough anti-immigration and border security measures. Their message is beginning to resonate widely with a fearful population that believes the liberal governing elite no longer listens to them.

Brexit was just the start. Europe’s new far right is poised to transform the continent’s political landscape – either by winning elections or simply by pulling a besieged political centre so far in its direction that its ideas become the new normal. And when that happens, groups that would never have contemplated voting for a far-right party 10 years ago – the young, gay people, Jews, feminists – may join the working-class voters who have already abandoned parties of the left to become the new backbone of the populist right...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/01/the-ruthlessly-effective-rebranding-of-europes-new-far-right

... Johnson’s task in the Commons debate, it should probably be conceded, was not as easy as he might have made it look. He had essentially to hold the government line against a barrage of highly emotive appeals for action – action that was rejected by MPs three years ago in a decision that arguably opened the way for the desperate situation in which eastern Aleppo finds itself today.

Essentially rejecting the proposal for a no-fly zone as too risky, given the Nato-Russia air clashes it could precipitate, he was left with the threat to take Russia to the international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes. That was a threat made earlier by US diplomats including the secretary of state, John Kerry, at the UN, and by the French President, François Hollande, in a move that led President Putin to cancel a planned visit to Paris.

Here again, though, the UK faces difficulties. The actual crime Johnson cited was the attack on the aid convoy that effectively ended the latest US/Russia-brokered ceasefire, and it is still not at all clear where the blame for this lies.

Talk of the ICC and war crimes also places the UK on somewhat insecure terrain. At a time when the prime minister has undertaken to exempt UK military personnel from the provisions of European convention on human rights as it applies to the battlefield, the foreign secretary’s threats suggested a government speaking with forked tongue, and a minister overcompensating with rhetoric for an inability, or unwillingness, to act.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/protest-russian-embassy-boris-johnson

... The imminent ratification of the Paris Agreement – a global deal to keep global temperature rise below 2°C – is a huge achievement and a real triumph for multilateralism. It also focuses the mind on the next step: how the Agreement will be implemented across the world?

Here, we get our first inkling as to why the finance ministers, central bankers and regulators meeting in Washington DC are so relevant to our story. Right now, progress is being made towards mobilizing $100 billion in annual financing flows from rich countries to developing economies by 2020. Practical implementation is also taking place on the ground. Funding from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is helping to build resilience into coastal and urban infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, while in Tanzania over 100,000 homes now have electricity through Off-Grid Electric, a clean energy company backed by debt financing from the Million Solar Homes Fund.

Yet overall, the cost of making the transition to a low-carbon future is measured in trillions. This quickly takes us far beyond the realm of public funds since no government – no matter how rich – can finance climate action through taxation and borrowing alone. One estimate suggests that around US $90 trillion will need to be invested by 2030 in infrastructure, agriculture and energy systems, to accomplish the Paris Agreement.

This won’t happen without private capital and underlines why aligning the world’s financial system with the needs of climate action and sustainable development is every bit as important as emission reduction pathways and removing fossil fuel subsidies. Moreover, set against the US$300 trillion of assets – held by banks, the capital markets and institutional investors – we’re faced with a problem of allocation rather than outright scarcity...

http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc-newsroom/the-paris-agreement-will-soon-enter-into-force-now-we-need-to-move-the-money/

... The basic view of neoclassical thought is that we must allow for the most markets possible in the world. To this extent, we see neoclassical politicians support privatizing infrastructure, busting unions, and monetizing all aspects of human relations possible. Perhaps it bears mentioning here that the basis of the neoclassical economic thought are John Nash’s game theory equations, a set of mathematical formulas that fail to take into account the basic elements of economics (value, profits, supply and demand, competition, regulatory oversight, et cetera) and therefore are premised on a utopian notion of post-capitalist society. This integration of the game theory equations into the underlying structure of political economy forever altered the nature of capitalism, making it different than the Gilded Age and Victorian systems that Marx and Lenin wrote about. Prior to this integration of game theory, the study of economics did include math but in a way that was typical of social sciences like sociology or anthropology. The inclusion of game theory in the economics discipline forever changed its orientation towards a paradigm that would be akin to any mathematical discipline, failing to account for the humanitarian elements that would be normally be required of such analysis. As a result, neoclassical economics is an imperial project where the search for markets becomes internationalized and is done on the behalf of the 1%.

However, due to the intentions of the 1%, this post-capitalist society would not be a socialist or pure communist one, it would be a neo-feudal rentier economy. As such, we find ourselves in a situation where class warfare is not a fight for traditional leftist goals of socialism as much as preventing a step backwards into feudalism, at which point we see as potential allies the Libertarian movement’s center and left wings. Hudson is very clear about this in his book, making it all the more vital to read.

However, because neoclassical politicians in the Democratic Party (neoliberals) and the Republican Party (neoconservatives) do not believe in truly free markets and instead create these markets only to benefits a select group of financiers on Wall Street, we are discussing an imperial project with a new form of aristocracy, made up of 1% of the human population. Neocons believe that the way to build the most markets possible is by attacking the Levant directly, beginning with Palestine and culminating with conquest of Iran. Neoliberals prefer a northern approach, attacking Russia through sanctions and military encirclement before going south into China and the Levant...

... Americans specifically must destroy this 1% by nationalizing the banking system and removing the income cap on Social Security that allows for such accumulations of wealth while instituting a progressive tax on all corporations like Apple and individuals like Mitt Romney that utilize foreign tax shelters and offshore bank accounts. This is the nature of genuine solidarity with any resistance movement in the postcolonial world today and not a delusional imitation of the paradigm created in the Spanish Civil War. We must, as Marx and Engels said, expropriate the expropriators, yet we must recognize that the expropriators are just the select 1% of the population and not anyone else. If we mean to create solidarity, we must do so through the generation of a source of capital that is autonomous from Wall Street...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/16/86748/

Berlin’s Social Democrats, who have ruled the capital city for 15 years, including the last five in coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, took the most votes on Sunday with 23 percent, according to separate exit polls by broadcasters ARD and ZDF. The CDU came in second with 18 percent, while Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won seats in the city-state’s parliament for the first time.

The CDU’s defeat is the second straight electoral setback for Merkel’s party after finishing third behind the AfD for the first time in another state election two weeks ago. The AfD has siphoned voters from established parties with its call to halt migration and deport rejected asylum seekers more quickly. In Berlin, both the CDU and SPD -- which govern together at the national level -- lost about 5 percentage points of support on Sunday.

The Greens and the anti-capitalist Left Party each took 16.5 percent, while the pro-business Free Democrats were poised to return to the Berlin city assembly with 6.5 percent, according to the exit polls.

The latest defeat means Merkel’s party may exit the government in Germany’s largest city. Berlin’s Social Democratic mayor, Michael Mueller, has said he’d prefer a coalition with the Greens, for which he’d also lack a majority if the results are confirmed. That raises the prospect of a three-way coalition between the SPD, Greens and Left Party...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-18/merkel-s-party-slumps-in-berlin-election-amid-populist-surge

... A new documentary, Stealing Paradise, provides an unprecedented insight into how international corruption is carried out. The story is told through data obtained from three of former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb's smartphones and dozens of confidential documents. It also features secretly recorded confessions of three men who embezzled millions and delivered the stolen cash on the orders of the president and his deputy.

The programme finds that the president's ministers and aides have plotted to launder up to $1.5bn through the South Asian nation's central bank, with the help of secretive businessmen from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. They planned to fly in cash at up to $100m at a time, pass it through the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) and transfer it back out...

... The former vice president's phone messages expose serious abuses of power. Ahmed Adeeb ordered the police commissioner to "blast" a TV station that had already been burned down in 2013. He also conspired with police to "light up" a government office housing 200 members of staff. The target of the attack was Niyaz Ibrahim, then auditor-general investigating the vice president's corruption...

... The testimony also suggests the length of former President Mohamed Nasheed's 13-year terrorism sentence was determined directly by the president... Sources and text message conversations reveal the Maldives judiciary is far from independent. Senior judges have received money and luxury flats and meet regularly with the president and his deputy, who meddle in high-profile cases and judicial appointments...

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/exclusive-maldives-president-corruption-revealed-160904110226846.html

The police have raided the Maldives Independent office in Malé with a court warrant over an alleged coup plot, hours after an explosive Al Jazeera corruption exposé was released on YouTube.

The highly-anticipated documentary Stealing Paradise features an interview with Zaheena Rasheed, the editor of this publication, along with leading figures from the opposition and former members of watchdog bodies...

... Shahinda Ismail, whose Maldives Democracy Network shares the floor with the offices of MI, called the incident an intimidation tactic by the government. “Compared to the seriousness of the allegations, the search was very superficial and was over within minutes. It seems to me that it was directed at the people, not the place they shared,” she said, referring to the editor of Maldives Independent, who is currently out of the country.

Over last week, this publication has been repeatedly targeted by certain sections of the local media “for its involvement” in the making of the documentary. Will Jordan, the Al Jazeera producer, was previously the editor of Minivan News in 2007 before it was rebranded to Maldives Independent in 2015...

http://maldivesindependent.com/politics/police-raid-maldives-independent-office-over-coup-plot-126418

... Lucas, who led the party from 2008-12, used her section of a joint acceptance speech to lambast the legacy of Brexit, describing a political landscape where “trust has been shattered and the truth lies buried”.

“At what point did it become OK to produce posters so dehumanising, so degrading and so despicable that they are compared to 1930s propaganda – even by a Conservative chancellor of the exchequer? ... Our political class – so gravely out of touch that they are surprised when years of scapegoating migrants for our social and economic ills come home to roost...”

... Bartley noted Jeremy Corbyn’s recent idea of a universal basic income, saying the policy “offers genuine social security and opportunity to all – even a Labour party looking for more of our policies to adopt.”

In a direct appeal to Labour voters he said: “Our message to others who share a belief in a progressive modern Britain is this – old tribal loyalties are dying and voters can no longer be taken for granted. The era of two-party politics is over. It’s the voting system that is still stuck in the past...”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/02/caroline-lucas-and-jonathan-bartley-voted-joint-leaders-of-green-party

it still played a huge role in embedding the connection between most of Britain’s ills and the EU, and thereby carrying its cause from the margins of politics to its very centre. Here is an example of postmodern politics from which people on the left would do well to learn...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/26/forget-nigel-farage-people-ukip-exploits

... Dear 1%ers, many of our fellow citizens are starting to believe that capitalism itself is the problem. I disagree, and I’m sure you do too. Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.

The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.

What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?...

http://www.anonews.co/ultra-rich-mans-letter/

The government’s reckless pursuit of fracking has reached new lows with the announcement that ministers will attempt to buy off widespread community opposition to the controversial new fossil fuel source through the introduction of a £1bn Shale Wealth Fund. At a time when we need to be making the transition to a jobs-rich zero-carbon future, this would be a gross violation of the commitments made in Paris last year. Already 2016 is set to be the hottest year on record and without a global step-change we will blow the 1.5C goal within years. Nobody can buy the silence of a climate that is spinning into chaos and turmoil...

... Later this year, the government must publish a new carbon plan that will outline the path to a 57% reduction in emissions by 2030 to meet its commitments under the Climate Change Act. Alongside the decision to embark upon a new industrial strategy, this plan, if taken seriously, could be a real opportunity to put climate change at the heart of government decision-making.

Rather than betting on shale gas, which takes us further in the wrong direction, England should follow Wales and Scotland and announce a moratorium on fracking. Then it should do the only thing that makes sense – economically, environmentally and socially: invest in the shared wealth that can be generated by renewable energy and energy efficiency. In other words, invest in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/09/climate-ministers-bribe-local-fracking-environment