A US Coup d'etat ?: Trump Is Trying to Overturn the Election, but I’m Not Panicking—Yet - by Elie Mystal

Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the United States. He will be inaugurated on January 20 and take power at noon that day. There is nothing, legally, that Trump can do to stop that.

What Trump and his feckless Republican Party might do illegally to try to overturn the results of the election and prevent Biden from taking power is a different matter. Trump has evidently intimidated the administrator of the General Services Administration into refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory and thus prevent his team from starting the transition process. Only a smattering of Republicans have acknowledged that Biden won, and most of those who have, like George W. Bush, no longer hold any political power. Trump has already filed a raft of baseless lawsuits. His people are drumming up talk of some kind of Electoral College devilry to overthrow the popular will. And Trump fired the Secretary of Defense, Mike Esper, yesterday, which seems like the kind of thing one does before one launches a coup d’état.

Read more at: Trump Is Trying to Overturn the Election, but I’m Not Panicking—Yet | The Nation

US Political System: A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party (US Political System) is - by Jennifer Rubin

Disaster: level explosive

President Trump has had more-scandalous weeks. He has had weeks with more bombshell bad-news stories. But no week has matched this one in revealing the moral and intellectual rot at the center of the GOP. Pandemic intellectual dishonesty and celebration of uncivilized conduct now permeate the party and its support in the conservative ecosystem. Consider what we saw and learned this week:

• Trump in Saudi Arabia disclaims any concern for human rights.
• Trump bullies NATO allies in public (and physically shoves one leader).
• Trump’s budget is built on a rickety scaffold of math errors, economic nonsense and fantasyland predictions.
• Trump’s advisers defend massive cuts to the safety net, coupled with huge giveaways to the rich.
• The Congressional Budget Office score, which the House did not require before voting on a mammoth health-care bill, confirms that GOP leaders falsely claimed they protected people with preexisting conditions.
• Trump’s lawyers contemptuously swat away a request for information relating to his receipt of foreign monies, finding that it is too impractical to abide by his own promise and the Constitution.
• Trump has nothing but praise for thuggish autocrats, including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
• Trump continues to pursue a Muslim ban, repeatedly struck down by the courts as bigotry disguised under the cloak of national security.
• A GOP congressional candidate, conclusive evidence suggests, attacks a reporter and apparently lies about it (he later apologizes for actions he denied less than 24 hours earlier), but party leaders do not repudiate him or demand that he withdraw.
• Jared Kushner, the beneficiary of egregious nepotism, now is a focus of the FBI’s Russia investigation, bringing a once-in-a-lifetime scandal one step closer to the presidency.
• Sean Hannity is forced to stop propagating a detestable hoax about a young man’s murder; Fox News after a week withdraws the original false report without much explanation or an apology.

This is the state of the GOP (and the US political system) — a refuge for intellectual frauds and bullies, for mean-spirited hypocrites who preach personal responsibility yet excuse the inexcusable.

Note EU-Digest: One can not only blame the Republicans for this political mess, but must also include Democrats and voters in general for creating it.   This is not business as usual, it is the recipe for disaster and the collapse of Western Democracy as we know it.

Read more: A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party is - The Washington Post

EU: The future of Europe is in unity, not uniformity- by Gunnar Hoekmark

Unity not Uniformity

Brexit, Le Pen and Geert Wilders. These are only three expressions of the new European discontent that trembles though the corridors of Brussels.

Amidst confusion and panic, and various attempts to display force, decisiveness and action are considered to be a remedy. Almost invariably the response is “More Europe”. And more Europe tends to be defined as more Brussels.

That is the wrong way to go.

The discussion about new institutions and new ways to balance power leads to centralism, which will not make Europe stronger. Nor will it make difficult political decisions easier. Rather to the contrary, it will create the illusion that the EU is responsible for all of the shortcomings in our societies.

The belief that reforms of EU institutions can solve political problems is an illusion that will only provide an excuse for not showing political leadership in reforming Europe today.

Centralisation at the cost of subsidiarity will only make the EU more exposed to criticism and more vulnerable when people realise that average solutions do not fit.

We are a political union as well as an economic one, but above all we are a union of European member states and citizens based upon the rule of law.

I have lived in Europe my entire life and I am a Member of European Parliament, elected by Swedish voters to represent them on a pro-European platform. But I am getting more and more convinced that we need to change our perspectives.

The solution to the crisis is not changes to the European institutions, but changes in what is not working in Europe.

In Brussels, institutional competition is sometimes understood as rivalry between EU bodies, such as the parliament and the executive, the EU commission. But in the social sciences, this concept means that diversity in policies creates competition between various political alternatives, displaying how some policies work better than others.

The internal market has greatly enhanced this process, showing how and why some economies create more wealth and jobs than others and that those who are lagging behind should learn from those who are more successful.

This aspect of the internal market and the road to competitiveness, cohesion and convergence should be strengthened, not weakened.

Rather than more Brussels in Europe, we need more Europe in Brussels, in the sense that plurality provides more strength and better dynamics than average decisions and uniformity. We don’t need new mechanisms or methods of decision tomorrow, we need decisions and political courage today.

We need to do what we have set out to do: to fulfil the promise of the free flow of goods, services, capital and people across borders, a real energy union and a common foreign and security policy worth its name.

Brussels should be a catalyst of national reform, not its inhibitor.

Reform is needed in Europe, not in the EU institutions.

While the EU boasts five of the ten most competitive countries in the world, the World Economic Forum shows that some member states are facing huge challenges in becoming modern and globally competitive.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach for such a variety of countries and situations. A Europe that focuses on the median will be stuck in mediocrity. That is not good enough.

The threats and the challenges we face today are of the same kind as the ones that once made us turn the vision of Europe into a legal framework of open borders, cooperation and solidarity.

We need to make all of this function better by being more courageous and decisive in order to make the union stronger with its policies, not by never-ending discussions on new institutions.

The 28 (or 27) social pillars, adapted to our differences, provides for more stability and social security than one pillar neglecting them all.

The openness over borders and between different models fosters something better than uniformity - unity. That’s the way to stay together in difficult times, standing strong as a unit and allowing for all of us to contribute in the best way possible.

There is a saying often credited the old roman Petronius Arbiter: “We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation.”

This line of thinking is prevalent in the Commission White Paper and in the first scenario Jean-Claude Juncker presents as “Carrying on”. It is described as “unwieldy” and that such a path would “only deliver incremental progress”.

But what we need today is to develop what we have and what we are.

That is not simply to carry on, but to make full use of the proud achievements we have so far accomplished.

We should define a way forward that is characterised by unity, not by uniformity, and common goals rather than common societies.

Decisiveness on policies is needed today, instead of discussions on institutional make-overs tomorrow.

Gunnar Hoekmark is leader of the Swedish EPP delegation in the European Parliament and Member of the Committee on Economic Affairs.

Read more: The future of Europe is in unity, not uniformity

European fascists embrace Trump - by John J. Dunphy

European Fascism 2017

Members of what Tom Brokaw calls our nation’s Greatest Generation defeated fascism in World War II. Fresh out of the Great Depression of the 1930s when, as kids, many of them had experienced deprivation firsthand, they fought the combined might of Germany, Italy and Japan on land, on sea and in the air. Many of these young patriots didn’t wait to be drafted. They eagerly enlisted because they knew they were needed to turn back this threat to global civilization.

My late father served in the army and earned a Purple Heart. Dad rarely talked about his wartime experiences. Once in a very great while, however, he let something slip out. I recall when the TV news was broadcasting a story about an aged Nazi war criminal, who had been located living quietly in the United States. “Hang him! I saw what they did!” my father exclaimed. The implication was obvious. At some point while stationed in Europe, Dad had seen some of the horrors of the Holocaust.

Fascists feared and hated the American flag because it represented values such as justice and equality, which they abhorred. Our flag also symbolized military defeat for fascists, since it was carried into areas liberated by our fighting men. It made me sick and angry when I read that the Stars and Stripes, once the bane of fascists, is now carried by them during demonstrations.

The 62 million Americans who voted for Trump betrayed the legacy left to us by the Greatest Generation. Men such as my father fought to save the world from fascism. Trump voters allowed fascism to entethe USA  through the ballot box.

Read more: The Telegraph | Dunphy: European fascists embrace Trump

EU And US: A Relationship Of Concern

gnore the world. Accordingly, they do not appreciate reminders that, like it or not, the rest of the world is out there. Worse, some of its “leading leaders” have rabies and “bite”. Aware of the provocation, Duly Noted has often indulged in its own version of “globalism”. In doing so, the European Union had received much attention.

If by your unearned luck you are an American reader, you wonder why the EU should be of concern to you. The evolvement of the Union will determine the quality of that entity and thereby its worth as a major ally. A federation might emerge that will, in a future crisis, be “neutral against the USA”. If some of this is true, the way Europe’s content will develop is of geopolitical significance.

Be reminded that Europe is a major world player. However, by its choice, it punches well under its weight class. With 500 million inhabitants and members rated as leading economies and with three of them listed among the great powers –England, France and Germany- Europe matters. It also counts as it had generated the forces that made the modern world. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, modern science, from rocketry to cybernetics is, besides some key components of democracy, Europe’s contribution to the present. At the same time, two world wars and some of destructive systems of mass murder - Fascism, National Socialism and Communism- are also European products. 

Viewed globally, Europe’s achievements - rounded out by the contribution of her overseas extensions- have made it a culture of reference. However, the caveats of that evaluation counsel to caution.

By the 20th century, the highs achieved in the arts, science, medicine, economics, have been unmatched by the Continent’s political performance. Staging the world wars expresses that. Europe’s efforts to protect past achievements and to project these into the future have been less than satisfactory. This holds especially true in the post WW2 period when the independence of Western Europe had to be maintained –even after the post-war recovery- by an extra-European power.

Europe’s weakness is caused by an amalgam. Its components are failing vision, misjudged threats, unfounded assumptions about security, and an unwillingness to sacrifice to protect values declared non-negotiable.

An adjunct is to be added. Politicians are inclined to underrate threats, so they promise to voters that should know better that there are no enemies, and that the proclaimed intentions of these are not meant seriously. The notion of “security for free” is a drug. Its lulling consumption is difficult to cut when illusions dissipate and resistance is called for.

Disturbing trends emerge once the Union’s development is examined. To begin: the analogy of the United States of America and the United States of Europe is misleading. America’s union project –even if there might have been an emerging Southern nation- has not encountered functioning, historical and conscious national entities. The Civil War has determined that America would not continue to develop as a confederation. Given “federalism’s” practice, the components of an expanding USA could live with that result.

East or West, Europe is peacefully and consensually not unifiable the way “United” in “United States” suggests. To create a unitary state here, one needs to weld together what does not wish to fit together. Europe’s states are not administrative conveniences but the products of diverging traditions and languages. Since Europe is an entity without a matching people, any plan to unite it administratively while also upholding liberty and identities, implies a commitment to contradictory concepts. This testifies to ignorance, to the pursuit of a hidden agenda –or both.

The foregoing should not be taken to indicate that some sort of a European Union must be a threat to the collective personality of its member nations. Decisive is the nature of the federation that can be had, while the values of democracy and the goal of prosperity are preserved.

Therefore, the question is what kind of a union is achievable that does not make the resulting entity into a “jailhouse of nations” as was the Russian Empire, the empire of the Habsburgs, Hitler’s Reich and Stalin’s uncompleted project.

By such standards, disturbing problems emerge. The original concept of an EU had been to guarantee the independence of sovereign states that were committed to defend shared values. These were “democracy”, limited self-government to cultivate localism, and a free market. The collective pursuit of shared objectives assumed freely extended cooperation among like-minded states. This is the juncture where the original principle departs from contemporary practice.

Operating a federation demands patience and the modesty of its managers. Europe’s tradition of centralism, enhanced by the natural craving for power, has resulted in a construction that defies its original purpose. 

Read more: EU And US: A Relationship Of Concern | The Brussels Journal

Poland: The New European Fascists - by Chris Hedges:

Is Fascism raising its head in Poland and Europe again?

Jaroslaw Kurski and Piotr Stasinski embody the hope that once was Poland. They struggled against the Communist regime for years in the underground press and as Solidarity members. They built Gazeta Wyborcza, now one of the most influential newspapers in the country, after the 1989 fall of communism.

They helped usher in a period of democracy and open debate, one that included cultural space for historians such as Jan Gross, a Polish-born American who courageously confronted the taboo topic of Polish complicity in the Nazi extermination of nearly all of Poland’s 3 million Jews.

And then neoliberalism, imposed by global capitalism and international banks, began to spread its poison. Legions of unemployed or underemployed were cast adrift. Two million Poles, many of them young people desperate for jobs, have left to work abroad. Governmental austerity programs devastated cultural institutions, including public schools, the arts and public broadcasting. And finally,

following a familiar death spiral, the October 2015 elections brought to power the nationalists and demagogues of the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS). There is no left-wing party represented in the parliament.

Not much of Poland’s promise remains. PiS is rapidly rolling back constitutional rights. It blocks state media coverage of the fading political opposition, especially the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), which has held a series of protest demonstrations. PiS shamelessly uses the airwaves and the schools for rabid nationalist propaganda. The public broadcasting system—in which the party purged more than 100 staff members—twisted President Barack Obama’s recent criticism of the Polish government’s assault on the judiciary into praise for Polish democracy. And the ruling party has forced state institutions to cancel subscriptions to Gazeta Wyborcza and pressured distributors throughout the country not to display or sell copies of the newspaper.

“There is no longer genuine parliamentary debate,” Stasinski said when I met with him and Kurski at the Gazeta Wyborcza offices in Warsaw. “There are no longer checks and balances of power. The parliamentary system is dysfunctional. The Constitutional Court and judiciary are paralyzed. New laws passed by the parliament cannot be challenged or changed. The government is supposed to publish sentences of the Constitutional Court in The Journal of Laws [Dziennik Ustaw] for them to become legally effective. This is required by the Constitution. But the government, by not printing them, paralyzes the Constitutional Court, which has been reduced to announcing its sentences on the internet without any legal effect. It is a very dangerous time.”

“We operate under two systems of law,” said Kurski. “One is constitutional and legal. The other is unconstitutional and illegal. The problem is that the illegal and unconstitutional system runs the country.”

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the founder and head of the ruling party, governs Poland like a private fiefdom. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and President Andrzej Duda are political puppets. Kaczynski, reclusive and morbid, is referred to with fear or reverence as “the Chairman.” His words, and his obsessions, are law.

And it is not only Poland that is in trouble. Europe, especially EU countries on the fringes of the union, is devolving into proto-fascism. The Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban has destroyed his country’s democracy. Neofascist groups are gaining strength in France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Greece.

These movements are rabidly xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic and homophobic, and they demonize immigrants and brand internal dissent as treason. When they take control they rely on ruthless internal security and surveillance systems—Poland has established 11 intelligence agencies—to crush dissent. They seek their identity in a terrifying new nationalism, often, as in Poland, coupled with a right-wing Catholicism. They preach hatred of the outsider and glorification of obedient and “true” patriots. This lurch to the right will be augmented in Poland later this year with the establishment of an armed militia of more than 30,000 whose loyalty, it seems certain, will be to the ruling party.

“If you are a Pole, you should be Catholic,” said Stasinski. “I’m not. So for some, I’m not a Pole.”

Poland, like Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, has rejected the European Union’s call for its nations to accept refugees fleeing the chaos in the Middle East. The ruling party in Poland employs rhetoric to describe Muslim immigrants that echoes prewar Polish anti-Semitism. Immigrants are condemned as diseased, painted as rapists and excoriated for supposedly having barbaric religious practices. When Gross, who teaches at Princeton University, decried the hate campaign against immigrants and made the links with anti-Semitism, reminding Poles that they killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war, PiS began legal proceedings to challenge Gross’ assertions and called for his Polish Order of Merit to be revoked.

“It’s the same right-wing populist melody as in the United States,” said Stasinski. “Isolationism becomes appealing. Maybe there is something rotten in human nature. Maybe we are selfish people who don’t care about the other. Maybe this story about how we are Christian and altruistic is rubbish.

“There is a fear that grows from ignorance,” he said. “These parties manufacture and strengthen this resentment against those they allege are privileged and the powerful, as well as the European Union.

They say these forces can’t tell us what to do. They say the nation-state should organize societal living, not global institutions. They say things are out of control. They say there is no real democracy. This leads to the mental and physical militarization of the society. The demagogues promise security. You are safe with us. We care about you.

We care about your family. Chauvinism defines public discourse. We are a proud people. We are a proud nation. We don’t accept that other nations can humiliate us. The government devoted a hundred million zlotys to create a special foundation to defend Poland’s good name.” 

To read the complete report click here: : Chris Hedges: The New European Fascists - Truthdig

Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign Has A Lot In Common With Brexit And Other Nationalist Movements - by Scot Detrow

When Donald Trump arrived in Scotland Friday morning, hours after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was quick to draw parallels between the U.K.'s political earthquake, and his own campaign for president.

"People want to take their country back," Trump said, "They want to have independence, in a sense. And you see it in Europe, all over Europe."

And while Scotland itself voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union, Trump is right. Right-wing nationalist movements, fueled by anger toward political elites and mistrust of immigration — and primarily backed by white voters — are gaining more and more momentum on the continent.

"This is not a unique phenomenon to the United States, and 2016 is not a short moment that will pass," says Yascha Mounk, who teaches political theory at Harvard University and has studied the rise of nationalist movements. "This is a real populist turn that has been happening for the last 15 or 20 years."

In recent decades, nationalist movements have shifted from vocal minorities to powerful parties that gained control of governments in places like Hungary, have lost national elections by the slimmest of margins in countries like Austria, and, this week, forced the United Kingdom out of the European Union.

Read more: Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign Has A Lot In Common With Brexit And Other Nationalist Movements : NPR

EU -2015: The Year of All Elections for Europe? - by Denis MacShane

2015 is the year when, for the first time in the 65-year-old history of supranational European construction, voters may finally decide if the EU will survive.

Elections to be held in Greece, Britain, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Portugal and Estonia will answer two big questions:

1. Has the disenchantment with the European Union reached a tipping point?
2. Is the 20th century model of big political parties that represent mass political movements in society now over?

The two issues – Europe and the future of political parties – overlap. It is too simplistic to present this as a contest between populist and smoothly functioning politics. After all, no party wins power without a dose of populism.

The core problem is this: So far this century, the traditional 20th century center-right and center-left parties have not shown themselves to be very good at governing.

These two issues have now come to a head in Greece, which will have to hold early elections. This outcome is the result of the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn aligning themselves with the populist left of Syriza and the so-called independent leftists.


Read more: 2015: The Year of All Elections for Europe? - The Globalist

Turkey Unrest Continues: Thousands rally in Istanbul against death of protester

Turkish police used teargas and plastic bullets Tuesday to prevent up to 3,000 protesters from entering Istanbul's Taksim Square as they rallied to protest against the death of a 22-year-old demonstrator in southern Turkey a day earlier.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 people rallied on the outskirts of Taksim Square, scene of unprecedented mass anti-government protests in June, and shouted slogans including "Taksim will be the graveyard of fascism", an AFP journalist witnessed.

Police prevented the protesters from entering the square, before pushing them back using tear gas and plastic bullets.

The tear gas disrupted a football match between the national under-21s and their Swedish counterparts taking place near the square, the Dogan news agency reported.

Ahmet Atakan died in hospital Monday night after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister during clashes between police and around 150 protesters in the southeastern city of Antakya in Hatay province near the Syrian border, Dogan said.Read more: Thousands rally in Istanbul against death of protester

Read more - TURKEY - FRANCE 24

Soccer: Turkey: Football Fans Call For PM To Resign

Rival football fans from Istanbul's three main clubs have rallied in Taksim Square calling for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to resign.

Supporters of Fenerbache, Galatasaray and Besiktas marched to the square to join thousands of protesters in a mass anti-government demonstration.

The three sides are usually sworn enemies, but on Saturday they applauded each other and sang anti-fascist songs together.

They lit flares and jumped up and down together chanting "resign, Erdogan, resign" and "we are united together against fascism".

Read more: Turkey: Football Fans Call For PM To Resign

Geert Wilders "frames" his arguments to make them believable - it sounds familiar ...

"Our idea is moving the world, it is forcing humanity to choose for us or against us. It forces the Jews from behind their lackeys. They must fight. We want that fight, for we know that if we do not succeed in winning enough ground for our people, everything we have done will be in vain". That was part of a speech made by Robert Ley in Germany on May 3, 1939.

On October 2, 2010, Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-Islam/immigrant populists and leader of the Party of Freedom in the Netherlands said in a speech in Berlin: "Today I am here, however, to warn you for looming disunity. Germany’s national identity, its democracy and economic prosperity, is being threatened by the political ideology of Islam. Are we about to repeat the fatal mistake of the Weimar Republic? Are we succumbing to Islam because our commitment to freedom is already dead? No, it will not happen. We are not like Frau Merkel. We do not accept Islamization as inevitable. We have to keep freedom alive."

There is no doubt, the two speeches sound similar. The ghost of fascism and racism has reappeared in Europe through politicians like Geert Wilders and other like-minded politicians who are trying to set the political pace and tone in many European countries. Sometime this year, a verdict is due in the trial of Wilders for making anti-Islamic statements — such as calling the Koran a "fascist book" that should be banned.

At the same time, the Netherlands' center-right coalition government depends for its survival on Wilders' Party for Freedom, which won more than 15% of the vote in the last general election.  The Dutch coalition deal was copied from Denmark, where the Danish People’s Party has backed a minority government since 2001. In Sweden’s recent election the far-right Sweden Democrats won seats for the first time, denying Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister, a center-right majority (he is now running a minority government). These parties, all with their own special characteristics, are distinct from older far-right groups such as France’s National Front and Italy’s Northern League, and have still less to do with thuggish movements in eastern Europe. But a common theme is a dislike of foreigners, especially Muslims.

Wilders' price for participating in the Government included a commitment to a burka ban. In the Netherlands, as elsewhere in Europe, center-right parties have been trying to win back voters who have turned to such anti-foreigner populists by adopting toned-down versions of their rhetoric and policies It is a dangerous approach, which can only backfire.

Last week Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom Party, which provides the minority government with backbench support, attacked its Government partners plans to extend further financial backing to Greece. The government defeated his parliamentary motion urging it “not to pay another cent”, after Mark Rutte, the prime minister, scrambled for the support of the opposition Labour Party. But Mr Wilders, better known for his attacks on Islam than his concerns about Greek solvency, saw his popularity rocket. Polls suggest most Dutch favor his populist position.

Mr Wilders’ grip on Dutch politics may even become stronger after the Rutte ruling coalition failed to secure a majority in the Senate by just one seat on May 23rd. One can only hope for the Netherlands (which used to be the "Mecca" for tolerance) and the rest of Europe, that the past horrors of fascism and racism do not raise their ugly head again.

EU-Digest