Jonathan Cook — Long Read: The neoliberal order is dying. Time to wake up

Analysis from the left mostly about British politics but inclusive of all aspects of neoliberalism as the policy, strategy and tactics of elite power.

Says "long read," but it is not that long. Worth a read even if you are not British since it is also an analysis of elite power as it relates to national politics and neoliberal globalization.

Let's hope Cook is correct in seeing the wave cresting. The question then becomes will the breaking of the wave result in world war as the elite desperately tries to hang on to its waning power and control.

True Publica
Long Read: The neoliberal order is dying. Time to wake up

Jonathan Cook, award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel; author, and public intellectual as a voice of conscience

Dani Rodrik — The great globalisation lie

Third way evangelists presented globalisation as inevitable and advantageous to all. In reality, it is neither, and the liberal order is paying the price....

The fundamental thing to grasp is that globalisation is—and always was—the product of human agency; it can be shaped and reshaped, for good or ill. The great problem with Blair’s forceful affirmation of globalisation back in 2005 was the presumption that it is essentially one thing, immutable to the way that our societies must experience it, a wind of change which there could be no negotiating or arguing with. This misunderstanding still afflicts our political, financial and technocratic elites. Yet there was nothing preordained about the post-1990s push for hyper-globalisation, with its focus on free finance, restrictive patent rules, and special regimes for investors. 

The truth is that globalisation is consciously shaped by the rules that the authorities choose to enact: the groups they privilege, the fields of policy they tackle and those they lay off, and which markets they subject to international competition. It is possible to reclaim globalisation for society’s benefit by making the right choices here.…

A world economy in which these alternative choices are made would look very different. The distribution of gains and losses across and within nations would be dramatically altered. We would not necessarily have less globalisation: enhancing the legitimacy of world markets is likely to spur global commerce and investment rather than impede it. Such a globalisation would be more sustainable, because it would enjoy more consent. It would also be a globalisation quite unlike the one we have at present.

Longish article with lots of history. Worth reading all of.

Dani Rodrik's Weblog
The great globalisation lie
Dani Rodrik | Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

Dean Baker — Tony Blair, Who Brought Us the War in Iraq, Lectures on the Evils of Populism

Dean Baker illustrates the close connection among politics, policy, economics and the social fabric, showing how the globalist centrists are not only self-interested but clueless about the consequences, "populism" being a prominent one. 

The same can be said for the New Democrats in the US and the European globalist centrist leaders. 

They have no conception of historical dialectical and the inevitability of overreach calling froth its opposite to complement it. The pendulum of historical time is always swinging.

Beat the Press
Tony Blair, Who Brought Us the War in Iraq, Lectures on the Evils of Populism
Dean Baker | Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C

Harper on the 28 pages

Timing is everything, and the timing of George Bush's decision to classify the 28 page chapter is a perfect case in point. In December 2002, when the President banned the publication of the chapter, the Administration was in the final phases of planning the invasion of Iraq. The two "reasons" given for the plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein were: He was amassing weapons of mass destruction, and he had been behind 9/11.

Had the chapter been published, it would have been near impossible for Bush and Tony Blair to get away with the Iraq invasion. It would have been like FDR announcing he was declaring war against China, not Japan after Pearl Harbor.

The issues behind the evidence of Saudi involvement in 9/11--whether at the very top of the regime and the Monarchy, as former Joint Inquiry co-chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) insists, or at some mid-level where Al Qaeda sympathizers had resources to pour into the 9/11 plot--are still with us, and will not be laid to rest by the release of the 28 pages.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Harper on the 28 pages
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Calvin F. Exoo — The Chilcot Report Fails to Speak Plain Truth: Bush Lied, So Did Blair

The newly released Chilcot Report on Iraq is British understatement, to a fault. In fact, it is understated so far as to miss the plain truth of the matter. Saying only that extremely questionable intelligence "was not challenged [by the Bush and Blair regimes] and it should have been" is failing to say plainly what the evidence so clearly shows: George W. Bush lied; so did Tony Blair.…

Truthout
The Chilcot Report Fails to Speak Plain Truth: Bush Lied, So Did Blair

Calvin F. Exoo

Also

Truthout
The Real Problem With the Iraq War: It Was Illegal

Juan Cole

Jeremy Corbyn — The Iraq War Was an Act of Military Aggression Launched on a False Pretext: Remarks on the Chilcot Inquiry Report

Transcript of Jeremy Corbyn’s remarks in the House of Commons on the Iraq Inquiry report.

Counterpunch
The Iraq War Was an Act of Military Aggression Launched on a False Pretext: Remarks on the Chilcot Inquiry Report
Jeremy Corbyn

See also

The real lesson? The Americans were clueless and the British stupidly followed them over the cliff. 

Blaming either George W. Bush or Tony Blair for the entire mess misses the point that the establishments of both countries were deeply involved and share the blame.

The Real Lesson of Iraq: Nothing Was Learned, No Good Was Done

Patrick Cockburn

Mostly about Obama's perfidy after a short lede on Trump.

If You Like Obama, You’ll Love Trump!

William Blum

Paul Robinson — Reflections on the war in Iraq and the Chilcot report

How shit happens, aka slouching toward war.

Chilcot suggests that the main reason Britain invaded Iraq in 2003 was that Prime Minister Tony Blair decided that the United Kingdom should stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the United States come what may. Indeed, on 28 July 2002 Blair wrote a note to US President George Bush saying, ‘I will be with you, whatever.’

Blair preferred that the USA and UK not act unilaterally. Instead, he wanted them to gather international support for action against Iraq through the United Nations. Blair hoped that by standing resolutely alongside the Americans he might ‘influence’ them to go down the UN path. It also seems that he may have hoped that he could avoid war by persuading the UN to take a very firm stance against Iraq. The logic was that Saddam Hussein might back down if faced with the united opposition of the entire rest of the world. By threatening invasion, the UK could thereby prevent a war which was otherwise inevitable (given American preferences). The problem with this paradoxical logic was that a) Saddam didn’t actually have weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and so couldn’t ‘back down’, and b) Blair couldn’t persuade the rest of the world to support him in the UN. But once it became clear that this support was lacking, Blair had committed himself to supporting the Americans, and so had no option but to follow through with his threats, and to wage war.

Analysis: This story reveals the folly of the often repeated mantra that showing strength and resolution is the best way of preserving peace. Unfortunately, all too often such displays of resolution instead produce war. The story also provides further evidence of the folly of the idea that by standing alongside the Americans, you can somehow gain some useful ‘influence’ over them, and thereby promote your own country’s national interests, whereas if you fail to support America you will damage those interests.…

Pretty damning of all involved on the British side. The Americans come across as clueless and resolved to do what it takes, come what may. To the Hague with the lot of them.

Irrussianality
Reflections on the war in Iraq and the Chilcot report
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Joe Mellor — British people ‘will never forgive’ Blair, says poll

Another legacy down the toilet. History will not be kind. America, we're waiting.

There have already been rumours that the Chilcot inquiry will come down hard on Tony Blair, and a lot of the British people blame him for entering a war that was unnecessary and possibly illiegal.

Recently Blair himself admitted that he “profoundly” underestimated the complexity of Middle Eastern politics.

Now a survey by pollsters YouGov in the Independent ahead of the report by Chilcot, which will be released in July, found only eight per cent think he did absolutely nothing wrong.

Even worse for Blair more than half of the people polled said they will “never forgive” him for taking the UK into a bloody conflict in Iraq, the backlash which still persists today, and has seen the formation of IS, a terror group who many would argue is a lot worse than Sadam Hussein.…

A majority (53 per cent) say that they could never forgive him. Just 8 per cent think Mr Blair did nothing wrong, whilst 15 per believe it’s time we forgave him for his misjudgments.…

As time passes fewer and fewer people are comfortable with the Iraq war and its reasons for it. Tony Blair may have a lot more questions to answer in the coming months and years. It seems unlikely that there are going to be many new fans of Mr Blair anytime soon.

The London Economic
British people ‘will never forgive’ Blair, says poll

Joe Mellor

John Helmer — Bill Clinton And Tony Blair – Moose Lips Sink Yeltsin’s Ships, Putin’s Too

John Helmer looks at a recent document dump and the stories behind the story this reveals. Interesting peek behind the curtain.

Dances with Bears
Bill Clinton And Tony Blair – Moose Lips Sink Yeltsin’s Ships, Putin’s Too
John Helmer

Bill Mitchell — Rejecting the TINA mantra and the second ‘Gilded Age’

Cuts to the core of it. Confronting neoliberalism.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Rejecting the TINA mantra and the second ‘Gilded Age’
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Corbyn should stop saying he will eliminate the deficit

The New Labour group are clearly getting desperate in Britain and Blair himself has come out again to vilify Jeremy Corbyn and predict a Labour annihilation at the next general election. Clearly Blair and his cronies haven’t understood that their time in the sun is over. They recreated the Labour Party into a Tory mirror image on key issues and the grass roots of the Party is now reclaiming the lost ground. The UK Guardian article (August 12, 2015) – Syriza’s Greece: the canary in the cage for Corbyn’s Britain? – illustrates how stuck in the neo-liberal mud the British economic debate has become. It tries to claim that Corbyn is a throwback to the past and the policies that old Labour tried in the 1970s failed and would fail again. Clearly, the writer and most of the commentators which resonate the same message haven’t really understood the difference between a currency-issuing government and one bound by a mania for fixed exchange rates and fiscal surpluses. Increasingly, the attempts by Corbyn’s support base to appear to be ‘fiscally responsible’ tells me that he will not succeed in altering the debate if he continues to promote ideas that equate fiscal responsibility with deficit elimination. Fiscal responsibility is equated with achieving full employment with price stability – and in the current climate that would require a fiscal deficit some percent of GDP larger than what it is at present. Corbyn’s camp should be talking about that rather than deficit elimination, which is a ridiculous policy target to aspire to.

In 2002, at a dinner in Hampshire, Margaret Thatcher replied to a question about her greatest achievement. She said:

Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds.
That about sums it up when we read statements from the modern Blairites that electing Jeremy Corbyn would be the best thing for the Tories.

My view, from afar, is that the Tories would be terrified of a modern left leader and a progressive labour policy platform. That is, as long as the change translates into a re-framing of the debate and challenges the basic macroeconomic myths that go through to the keeper too often these days without scrutiny.

That was one of the legacies of Blair. New Labour propagated the neo-liberal economic myths too and gave the Tory narrative credibility when it had (and has) none.…

Between Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the UK is flushed down the tubes.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Corbyn should stop saying he will eliminate the deficit
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Eric Zuesse — How Trustworthy Are U.S. & Western ‘News’ Media?

Rhetorical question, of course. Zuesse furnishes us with the evidence.

It's why we provide counter-narratives here from the world press and alternative media here at MNE.

Washington's Blog
How Trustworthy Are U.S. & Western ‘News’ Media?
Eric Zuesse

Andrés Velasco — The Third Way's Second Chance

Remember Tony Blair and Bill Clinton’s Third Way? It is back. The faces and names have changed, but the idea that governments can – and should – combine social-democratic values and modern liberal economics has returned to center stage.

Triangulation and trickle down. Heaven help us.

Project Syndicate
The Third Way's Second Chance
Andrés Velasco | Professor of Professional Practice in International Development at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs

Neil Clark — Blame neoliberalism, not Salmond, if the UK breaks up

History lesson.

RT
Blame neoliberalism, not Salmond, if the UK breaks up

Neil Clark