What? Don't believe in "alternative facts"?

Covid-19 has exposed the limits of 'fact-denying populism', Merkel tells European Parliament

Yeah, but no.

The coronavirus pandemic is showing the limits of “fact-denying populism,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the European Parliament on Wednesday as she set out her country's plans for its six-month presidency of the European Union.

Germany took over the task of chairing EU meetings on July 1 and faces the challenge of seeking a compromise on a coronavirus recovery fund for the 27-nation bloc as well as the EU's budget for the next seven years as the continent faces up to the task of pulling out of a deep recession.

Russian interference?

Not a bad guess.

Russia strongly favors Brexit and anything that undermines institutions of Western supra-national unity.

Hackers hit UK Labour Party with back-to-back cyberattacks

Trump at the UN

From a hospital waiting room.

A national disgrace, a fool, and a drivelling ass reiterates every nationalist stupidity and lie at the heart of his "America First" agenda, about which he crows and crows as he denounces globalism and global institutions.

It's a campaign speech full of offensive nonsense and lies about defense, trade, and everything he touches on.

Not excepting Brexit and the European Union.

He even suggested China ought to be kicked out of the WTO and denied the status of a developing country.

And addressing the global phenomenon of mass, unauthorized migration, he repeatedly attacked the migrants as unfairly burdening the countries they go to.

Using Venezuela to attack socialism, for domestic consumption.

Not one moment's applause, and he's been speaking for a while.

Stoney silence through the whole thing.

Even when he lies that his administration supports things that his UN audience might support.

Democrats edging toward impeachment.

Warren now ahead of Biden.

Perhaps all to the good.

Perfunctory applause at the end, only.

Extraordinary.

Pat Buchanan continues his long, slow slide to almost fascism

Although not quite.

Anyway, not yet.

If you think that what, about supranational institutions like the EU, the UN, or even NATO, bothers the new nationalists of Europe and America in part is their democracy deficit you are a fool.

And if you think they are even in part moved by concern for the political position of the world's eurowhites, or the rayonnement of their civilization, the much touted and much damned Western Civilization, you are again a fool.

Their increasingly evident love for authoritarian nationalism wherever it is to be found, while strengthening racism and racist policies within infected states, undermines both.

Let Them Howl, Boris!

PB here continues to celebrate stupid things ever less compatible with the rule of law, with republicanism, with responsible representative government.

Does the EU have teeth?

The US constitution provides a federal guarantee to the states of a republican form of government.

The idea is that the general government could enforce that requirement, and that idea was involved during and after the Civil War to justify Union actions against the states of the Confederacy.

The EU provides an analogous guarantee to its member states, but the measures available to fulfill that guarantee are rather less potent. Or drastic.

Hungary’s far-right government vilifies Finland over rule of law inquiry.

Finland has pledged to pursue a hearing into alleged breaches of the rule of law by Hungary’s far-right government after a campaign of vilification led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Orbán and his spokesman, Zoltán Kovács, have launched a series of attacks in recent weeks ranging from criticism of the level of domestic violence in Finland to the purchase of strategically important Finnish islands by Russian oligarchs.

As the member state holding the EU’s rolling presidency until the new year, the Finnish government is responsible for chairing meetings of the member states and pushing forward the bloc’s agenda.

The European parliament took the unprecedented step last September of asking member states to determine whether Hungary had breached the bloc’s founding values in its overhaul of the country’s judiciary and alleged failure to respect freedom of expression, religion and equal treatment under the law.

. . . .

When its government assumed the presidency on 1 July it said it would respect the parliament’s vote in favour of pursuing the so-called article 7 process, under which Hungary could theoretically face the “nuclear” sanction of having its voting rights in EU institutions suspended.

. . . .

A spokesman for the Finnish government said the latest developments would not prevent it from “taking forward the ongoing procedures concerning the rule of law as appropriate”.

The spokesman said: “The article 7 procedure has been triggered, in the case of Hungary, by the European parliament. The treaty indicates that the next step will be a hearing in the council of the country concerned.

“The Finnish presidency believes Hungary has the right to be heard and that it is also in its best interest.”

The spokesman said the parliament had voted “nearly a year ago, so we think it is high time to move to the hearings. For some time already, a large number of member states have been demanding that hearings should begin.

“The article 7 procedure should not be seen as a process directed against a particular member state. The rule of law is part of our shared value basis and something that unites us all. We believe we must cherish it. The Finnish presidency intends to promote rule of law issues through a positive and constructive approach.”

Fabian Zuleeg, from the European Policy Centre, a Brussels thinktank said the stakes for Orbán over the rule of law would be greater if France successfully argued that EU funding should be linked to respect for the bloc’s treaties.

“A greater focus on rule of law was always going to produce a counter reaction by Hungary, which under Orbán has always argued that its democracy is as good as anywhere else in Europe, and that any comments or actions reflect different political ideologies,” he said.

“But the real political fight is still to come when the EU gets into the final phase of agreeing the next multi-annual financial framework. Here, a lot is at stake for Orbán if funding is made conditional on rule of law, which a number of western countries want to push for.”

Europe must stop this disgrace: Viktor Orbán is dismantling democracy

What, then, should the EU do? 

Immediately, Weber should not be made commission president – mainly because he does not have the top-level governmental experience, but also because he has legitimated Orbán’s dismantling of Hungarian democracy by keeping Fidesz in the EPP. 

The EPP itself, following a report by its three “wise men” (who will be three blind mice if they don’t see in Hungary what I have briefly summarised here), should finally boot out Fidesz. 

This action has much wider importance, since a moral and political imperative of our time is for civilised centre-right parties to draw a clear line between them and xenophobic, populist extremists.

Then the EU must stop this tragic farce of its own funds being used to undermine European values. 

It should appoint as European public prosecutor the Romanian Laura Codruţa Kövesi, who knows exactly what post-communist, east European corruption looks like, and make signing up to scrutiny by that European public prosecutor a condition for receipt of those funds. 

It should also move to distribute more EU funding directly to local government and civil society, rather than letting it be used as a huge, centralised slush fund by a corrupt party-state.

Not least, all European institutions and heads of government must keep the spotlight on this tragedy in the heart of Europe. 

Orbán himself is never constrained by excessive politeness; nor should they be. What the EU does about Hungary matters not just for Hungarians but for Europe as a whole. 

The continent of Europe may have many different kinds of regime, but the European Union must be a community of democracies.

Boris refuses talks

Johnson refuses to meet EU leaders unless they scrap backstop

Trying to scare them with the prospect of a no-deal Brexit?

Or does he crave a no-deal Brexit?

A bit of both?

Resurgent nationalism

We are told it's about racist and ethno-nationalist reaction to mass immigration from outside Europe and the lesser migrations of Europeans among the nations of the EU.

The ethno-nationalist right believe they can do a better job maintaining national identity - and that's not just about keeping out the blacks - outside the EU than in.

That's a big part of it.

And they are probably right.

We are told that, in most European countries where nationalism is resurgent, it's about the right believing they can keep economies more business-friendly out of the EU than in it.

That's part of it.

But it's all a bit dicey, since some of the left notably think exactly the opposite, that they could take their societies further left outside the EU than in.

And anyway the whole trade picture makes it all a bit foggy; broadly speaking, free trade among the states of the EU is better for business than dealing with a lot of real borders and the various forms of trade restrictions that accompany them.

Last, a really big part of it that seems under-reported is resistance to the cultural revolution taking place in all Christian and post-Christian lands, perhaps only excepting Africa.

The soft spot in the heart of the American right for Putin is all about that.

So it's about abortion, yes, but also gay marriage and other offences against the traditional European morality, which is, of course, the traditional Christian morality.

It's about lots of people believing that they can keep their laws and their culture more in tune with traditional European morality out of the EU than in it.

And how far that is true may vary considerably by country.

PS. Didn't the left media used to rage it was all about Islamophobia?

There was truth to that, too, though it's not as though there wasn't plenty of reason to fear Islam.

Haven't heard much about that in a while, at least in the US.

A natural ally for the nationalist parties of Europe

Italian PM to address claims League sought money from Russia

The Cold War is soooo over.

And in European eyes, Communism is just gone.

Russian power, much diminished in any case, is no threat at all to capitalism or representative government, and Russia is not exporting any sort of revolutionary and crazy ideology just the thing to terrify everyone.

And Putin's authoritarianism, for these folks, just doesn't much matter; if it's anybody's problem, it's the Russians'.

Fewer Europeans, every day, have any interest in NATO and its Cold War II.

More and more people, not just in America but in Europe, and anywhere on the political spectrum but notably on the right, when asked "Should you or your kids be willing to fight and die in a full-scale, pan-European and maybe even global war for the independence of Estonia?", are inclined to answer with a wholly unabashed, "No."

They are equally skeptical of NATO and wholly opposed to the EU superseding Europe's individual nations as a military power.

And just as European parties of the West were not much bothered by, and often actually colluded in, American meddling in their elections to keep power out of the hands of anybody soft on defense against the Soviet bloc back in the day, some parties now seek or tolerate Russian meddling on behalf of nationalists seeking to lead their countries away from the old Cold War alliances and even, sometimes openly and specifically, the power of the US.

How to speed the death of the EU

Europe’s patchwork of abortion laws is absurd. Rights must be made universal

That will thrill the voters in Poland.

Brexit effect forces women to go to Netherlands for abortions

Of course, the objection isn't that rules need to be all the same, but that rules need to be all equally permissive of abortions throughout Europe.

Or some women interested in killing their unborn babies might find it inconvenient, confusing, and annoying, poor things.

A stronger push for control of the laws regarding sex throughout Europe by the post-Christian, PC, feminist, liberal morality, and especially laws regarding abortion, will help drive the breakup of the EU almost as much as liberal, post-national and post-nationalist convictions regarding the morality of immigration and the rights of prospective and actual migrants have done.

That is unfortunate in many ways, for Europe and for Europeans.

But the truth is that liberals, like anybody else, are only willing to tolerate kinds of diversity that they just don't really care about.

Those they hate they want to outlaw, persecute, and abolish.

Leaving the EU is an obvious way for more conservative European countries to escape domination by the nearly universal post-Christian moral orthodoxy.

The more liberal countries, on the other hand, would be free to legalize infanticide at will, suicide and assisted suicide, and euthanasia, probably rather more often than I would.

And I am confident they would.

Sounds like Chamberlain in Munich, eh?

So, feel safe, tankers?

UK defence minister rebuffs criticism over tanker seized in Gulf

Think of the costs of such a loss and consider how long commercial tankers will be able to continue in these waters, so clearly unprotected.

What does it tell you when even the hawks seem more afraid of war than of the message sent by their inaction?

Or are they?

Britain must seek to reduce tension but its first duty is to protect ships and crews

Phooey.

Bravado belied by the rest of the content of this op-ed.

While Britain alone cannot afford any longer to be anything like a real global power, the EU could and can.

Another proof the idiot Tories and Brexiteers are stupidly going in exactly the wrong direction.

And while all this goes on American media continue with their utter fixation on partisan propaganda, most of them pouring the most vile, lie-based hatred and outrageous vilification on Trump and the Republicans.

No deal Brexit is coming

Or anyway so it appears.

Boris Johnson 'not bluffing' about quitting EU on 31 October with no deal

A position that absolutely terrifies most Britons will make him PM.

Representative government in the land of the Mother of Parliaments

The 0.3% of U.K. Voters Who Will Pick the Next Prime Minister

Some 160,000 members of the Conservative Party will make the choice.

This sliver of the population, just 0.3 percent of registered voters, is mostly white, aging and male. And it is poised to use its new clout — the party’s grass roots have never before picked a prime minister — to catapult Boris Johnson into Downing Street, potentially cleaving the world’s oldest and most successful political party as it sends Britain on the path to what could be a tumultuous Brexit.

As the Brexit mess has unfolded, Conservatives have grown ever more impatient, ever more fixated on leaving the European Union, come what may. 

Most members said in recent polling by YouGovthat leaving the bloc was worth enduring significant damage to the economy, secession by Scotland and Northern Ireland and even a shattering of the Conservative Party itself.

. . . .

Conservative membership has plunged since the 1950s, leaving behind a small core of politically active and increasingly right-wing supporters. 

Once effectively a social club where the upper classes mingled with their representatives and perhaps met a spouse, the party has remade itself as class-based politics fragmented and voters realigned themselves by education levels and age.

. . . .

One of the great concerns among Conservatives is the rise of the Brexit Party under Nigel Farage, the former leader of the anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party. 

The Brexit Party crushed the Conservatives in the European elections last month with its message of Brexit at any cost. 

Mr. Johnson is seen as far and away the best equipped to blunt that charge.

. . . .

A no-deal Brexit, seen as the salvation of the party by some members, looks to others like its ruin. 

Economists warn it could drive up food prices, cost jobs, choke off the supply of medicines and badly disrupt British industry.

“It scares my mum, and I don’t want anything that scares my mum,” Jo Bartley, 49, a Conservative in Canterbury, said. 

“I think as a party, we should avoid things that scare people.”

Ms. Bartley is in the minority, with two-thirds of members preferring a no-deal Brexit.

Roughly 40 percent of the party’s members are older than 65, according to research led by Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, whose coming book on the members is called “Footsoldiers.” 

And they are disproportionately wealthy.

Not exactly an open door, eh?

It has been noted before that the Brexit movement is a development of specifically English nationalism.

Boris Johnson Says Immigrants to U.K. Should Be Forced to Learn English

Boris Johnson, the front-runner to succeed Theresa May as Britain’s prime minister, has said he would require immigrants to Britain to learn English, echoing remarks made by Nigel Farage, the former leader of the populist U.K. Independence Party.

“I want everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be and to feel British, that is the most important thing. And to learn English,” Mr. Johnson said on Friday at a gathering of Conservative association members, who are voting in a contest between Mr. Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary.

“Too often there are parts of our country, parts of London still and other cities as well, where English is not spoken by some people as their first language,” Mr. Johnson said. 

“And that needs to be changed.”

BJ is a Brexiteer who has openly favored a no-deal Brexit.

Mr. Johnson’s remarks were greeted with anger by lawmakers from Scotland and Wales, who represent areas where voters speak Gaelic and Welsh.

A legislator from the Scottish National Party, Angus MacNeil, derided Mr. Johnson as “moronic and clueless,” and compared his remarks to “arrogance of centuries past” that put down “native Celtic languages for the Germanic import.”

. . . .

Mr. Johnson, also a hard-liner on Brexit, seems poised for a landslide victory when roughly 160,000 Conservative Party members vote for a new party leader, and by default, the next prime minister. 

He has the support of 74 percent of party voters, compared to the more than 26 percent backing Mr. Hunt, according to a poll by YouGov for The Times of London. 

Ballots are being sent by mail to the members, who must return them in time for the end of voting on July 22.

The voting, already heavily criticized for being open only to 0.3 percent of British voters, faced fresh attacks on Saturday when it emerged that more than 1,000 Conservative Party members had received duplicate ballots. 

. . . .

Mr. Johnson has tacked to the right during the contest, reflecting the right-wing views of the Tory grass-roots members, who are — compared to the electorate as a whole — older, more likely to be white and male, and concentrated in the prosperous south of the country.

And who is surprised the Tories have done this?

And they want to do more harm, still.

Ever since the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, abolition of the Welfare State and the utter immiseration of the working masses has been the whole point of withdrawal from the EU.

U.K. Austerity Has Inflicted ‘Great Misery,’ U.N. Official Says

And who is surprised these same Tories have denounced the report as, essentially, fake news?

Defeating politicians' lies

Remain voters are left with no choice but to ignore Labour next week

hall we take a nostalgic trip back to the distant past of two weeks ago?

You’ll remember there were local elections in England, in which the pro-Brexit parties took a pasting, while the anti-Brexit parties surged.

You might also recall how the main parties interpreted those results: they hailed them as a heartfelt plea from the voters to get on with Brexit.

Here, then, is a warning to remain-minded voters ahead of Thursday’s European elections.

If you want to send a message about Brexit, you’ll need to send it as clearly and as unambiguously as possible.

Up against a spin machine capable of hearing a repudiation as an endorsement, voters will need to be louder and clearer this time, closing down the scope for wilful misinterpretation.

Corbyn lets his undies show

Labor is not going to run for the EP with a visible commitment to remaining in the EU or a serious commitment to a plebiscite allowing the voters to choose between remaining in the EU or leaving with a definite deal in place, if and when parliament agrees on a deal the EU is willing to accept.

So, if you forget, Corbyn as an individual is further left than his party and wants out of the EU because that would allow the government of the UK to take the country further left than it could within the EU.

Just as the right wingers who started it all (remember Euro-skepticism?) back under Thatcher were convinced the government of the UK could take the country further to the right out of the EU than within.

So, a voter who really wants to remain in the EU needs to vote for a party committed to that: Liberal Democrats, Greens and Change UK.

Brunei defends killing gays by stoning them to death

Brunei defends death by stoning for gay sex in letter to EU

Brunei has written to the European parliament defending its decision to start imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, claiming convictions will be rare as it requires two men of “high moral standing and piety” to be witnesses.

In a four-page letter to MEPs, the kingdom’s mission to the EU called for “tolerance, respect and understanding” with regard to the country’s desire to preserve its traditional values and “family lineage”.

The cheek of the bastards, asking the EU to show tolerance, respect, and understanding to them regarding their decision to deny both to gay men in the most violent manner possible.

The new penal code, which also provides for the amputation of thieves and whipping of people wearing clothes associated with the opposite sex, was brought in on 3 April, despite international condemnation.

But in the letter, the kingdom claimed the outcry is due to a misconception that it wanted to clarify.

“The criminalisation of adultery and sodomy is to safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage to individual Muslims, particularly women,” it said.

“The penal sentences of hadd – stoning to death and amputation – imposed for offences of theft, robbery, adultery and sodomy, have extremely high evidentiary threshold, requiring no less than two or four men of high moral standing and piety as witnesses, to the exclusion of every form of circumstantial evidence.”

. . . .

The letter was sent before a vote last week in which MEPs backed a resolution by a show of hands strongly condemning “the entry into force of the retrograde sharia penal code”.

The parliament also called on the EU to consider asset freezes, visa bans and the blacklisting of nine hotels owned by Brunei Investment Agency, including the Dorchester in London, Beverly Hills hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

Celebrities including Elton John and George Clooney have called for the hotels to be boycotted.

. . . .

Homosexuality has been illegal since the country broke from British rule, but before the recent move to a more conservative interpretation of Islam, it was punishable by jail.

Britain, France, Germany and the UN are among those who have condemned the hardening of the kingdom’s laws.

It looks like the EU and the UN are leading on this.

The only reference I find to US reaction is some no name State Department fellow wagging a finger.

Trump, Pence, and the other heavies are conspicuously quiet.

An unqualified airhead will lead a nation of feckless airheads

Ukraine Election: Volodymyr Zelensky, TV Comedian, Trounces President

Imagine America facing a choice between Trump and Pat Paulsen with joy.

The comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election, according to official results with nearly all of the votes counted, making a comic actor with no experience in government or the military the commander in chief of a country that has been at war with Russian proxies for over five years.

With more than 95 percent of ballots cast on Sunday counted, Mr. Zelensky had won 73.17 percent of the vote, compared with just 24.5 percent for Petro O. Poroshenko, Ukraine’s incumbent president. 

Mr. Zelensky triumphed in every region, except for the area around the city of Lviv, a center of Ukrainian culture and nationalism in the west of the country.

Ukraine’s central election commission said that final official results might not be ready until April 30 because of the upcoming Orthodox Easter holidays.

Mr. Zelensky’s victory will give Ukraine its first Jewish leader and deliver a stinging rebuke to a political and business establishment represented by Mr. Poroshenko, a billionaire candy tycoon who campaigned on the nationalist slogan “Army, language, faith.”

If this flies nearly all of Europe could bleed Germany white

The Germans literally could not pay the bill if they spent every penny they have for the next fifty years.

Imagine the Polish claims.

And the biggest of all, the Russian claims.

Have the Jews ever gotten reparations?

Greece to ask Germany for billions in war reparations

Where things stand

What are PM's Brexit options now that EU has granted extension?

Subhead: Theresa May has until 31 October to get her deal through parliament - but the way forward remains unclear

That is not quite true.

The UK has until 31 October to accept her deal, both the withdrawal agreement and the (legally non-binding, whatever the hell that really means) political declaration, cancel Brexit, or go out with no agreement and then still have to accept her deal and no other before the EU will even begin to talk about anything to do with the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

It will be WTO rules for the UK, without a bit of softening from any bilateral agreement, until and unless they agree to May's deal.

And it is just that fact, that controlling and irremovable, rock-hard fact, that only one deal is on the table and they must, in the end, cancel Brexit, live rough forever under WTO rules, or accept it, that the Parliament - and perhaps most of the UK classe politique - have refused to get through their thick skulls since the day she brought it back to them from long and hard negotiations with the EU.

Despite the fact that the EU has repeatedly told them that all along and never even hinted otherwise.

[Tusk apparently did hint a while back that there might be a small bit of wiggle in the finer details of the political declaration, but nothing much and nothing else].

When they say things like this what on earth are they thinking of?

May believes her deal – which would allow the government to control migration – is closer to what Brexit voters want, than the alternatives.

What alternatives? A WTO Brexit? No Brexit at all? Because those are the only alternatives to a Brexit very much softened by the only available deal, her deal.

The Brits are in a fix of their own making and are like so many fish already caught and flapping around uselessly on the deck as they expire.

There is still no majority in Parliament for any of their actual three options and they crash out with no deal on October 31 of this year by default if there is no majority for any option by then.

Unless the EU prefers yet more delay of Brexit to actual occurrence of a no deal Brexit - and that may well be so.

This all so much reminds me of a person who does not know his own mind promising to do X and then delaying and delaying until he finally realizes he just cannot bring himself to do X.

Perhaps the EU is just patiently waiting for the people and rulers of the UK to realize, to accept, that they really cannot bring themselves to do Brexit.

Update. So, OK, some people get it. Or nearly do.

This might work, but likely won't happen.

And this is true: the right has become an Alex Jones bullshit right fronting for Thatcherism, in Europe as well as the USA.