Natylie's Place

"Privatization of freshwater resources is a crime, but it’s the name of the game. Just look who is prominently represented in the World Bank-created Water Resources Group – it’s IFC, the International Finance Corporation, the private sector development branch of the World Bank Group..."

---

The unrelenting, ruthless and ultimately sociopathic attempts by myriad individuals and entities in the capitalist orbit to turn everything into a commodity,  a "profit center", no matter how vital and sacred, testify to the fact that capitalism must be seen and combated as a system with an irrepressible malignant dynamic.

Today, 22 March 2018, marks World Water Day. It is also the week, when the 8^th World Water Forum (WWF-8) convenes, 18 to 23 March 2018, in Brasilia. It is no coincidence, for sure, that Brazil was chosen for this noble WWF – about the water equivalent to the political and corporate elites, represented at the WEF – World Economic Forum, in Davos. The two are intimately related, and interlinked, as we will see.

The WWF is organized by the World Water Council, just another layer to confuse who is who in the circus of water elitists attempting to control a vital source of life – freshwater. The WWF prides itself with an honorable mission statement: “To promote awareness, build political commitment and trigger action on critical water issues at all levels, to facilitate the efficient conservation, protection, development, planning, management and use of water in all its dimensions on an environmentally sustainable basis for the benefit of all life”.

There you have it. Nestlé, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Dow Chemicals and other transnationals with strong water interests, Veolia, Suez (French), Thames (UK), Bechtel (US), Petrobras and a myriad of others, join together with the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), different UN bodies, and many multi- and bilateral donors, so-called development institutions – as well as dozens more ultra-liberal organizations, NGOs and corporations, pretending to work for the good of humanity; for the good of hundreds of millions of people who persistently are deprived of affordable potable water by an onslaught of water privatization (Organizers and supporters of the WWF: http://www.worldwaterforum8.org/en/organizers-and-supporters).

Another layer of this prominent international water forum is the World Bank-created Water Resources Group (WRG). Its chief purpose is to pursue the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG-6), “Clean Water and Sanitation”. The WRG’s leadership is composed of an interwoven group of individuals and institutions, such as the head of the WEF, leadership of Nestlé, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Dow Chemicals, the UN (UNDP) … and the Global Water Partnership (GWP), yet another layer within the maze of the global water mafia, created by the usual ‘suspects’, World Bank, UN (UNDP), and a number of multi- and bilateral development agencies, whose priority focus is on water, i.e. the Swiss, the Swedes, the Dutch…

And not to forget – also present at the WWF is the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC), part of UNESCO, based at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, whose mission is sharing information on worldwide groundwater resources, in view of protecting them, and focusing mainly on transboundary aquifer assessment and groundwater monitoring. 

By and large, the WWF is the sum of this tremendous non-transparent, complex colossus of institutions and technocrats that is gradually taking over control of the global freshwater resources. This is happening under our eyes and under a seemingly anodyne promotion logo – PPP = Public Private Partnership which means in reality, the Public puts at disposal of the Private sector its publicly funded and publicly-owned infrastructure and water resources, to be exploited for profit at the detriment of the very public, who paid for the infrastructure and whose life depends on this vital resource, water.

Privatization of freshwater resources is a crime, but it’s the name of the game. Just look who is prominently represented in the World Bank-created Water Resources Group – it’s IFC, the International Finance Corporation, the private sector development branch of the World Bank Group.

The result of these multiple and often repetitive meetings and gathering is largely zero – safe for a litany of recommendations and resolutions whose implementation hardly ever see the light of the day. Imagine the tremendous annual cost of running this multi-agency sham; mostly business class travel, food and lodging (five-star accommodations), of the high-level technocrats crisscrossing the globe from one conference to another! – Millions and millions of dollars per year. How many people could be served with drinking water and safe sanitation for this amount of money?

The WHO / UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) estimates (July 2017) that “some 3 in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation.” – This, out of a world population of about 7.4 billion.

Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians and of World Water Watch, and author of “Blue Gold” (2002), “Blue Covenant” (2007), and of “Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever” (2013), refers in the latter to the WEF 2010 which under the aegis of the WRG was launching a platform of public-private partnership, to help engage mainly developing country governments in ‘reforming’ the water sector, i.e. putting it into the hands of private water corporations. Many of these countries have no choice, if they want to continue receiving “development” funds from the World Bank and Co. Barlow is also the founder of the Blue Planet Project, seeking to protect vital water resources, like the Guarani Aquifer for future generations.
-----

Flashback to the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 2018). Brazilian President Temer attended this year’s WEF. Temer, a corrupt criminal, should be in prison rather than running a most wonderful country, Brazil, into the ground. Literally. His only purpose to be in Davos was to tell this elite forum about his intention to sell out and privatize his country, foremost water resources.

How did such a dishonest person become president of Brazil? – Washington, who else, put him there. Against all odds. The dark Zion-handlers representing the US financial sector removed an honest Dilma Rousseff and replaced her with Michel Temer, at that time an indicted crook. The indictment was lifted as he was supposed to be made President. It is still beyond me how this could happen, as Dilma had the entire military on her side and could have called a state of emergency to halt the parliamentary ‘regime change’ charade, instigated by the US. She didn’t. Somebody must have threatened her.

By now we know how Washington manipulates elections and other political processes around the world – by the shady methods of Cambridge Analytica (CA) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49028.htm, a ‘marketing’ consultancy that steals personal data from internet, foremost from facebook, to target specific segments of a population with specific messages to influence their opinion. By their own account, CA methods have been applied in over 200 cases around the globe within the last 3 to 4 years, to influence elections and other political processes, including in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, the UK (Brexit), Germany, France and many more. This is true meddling in other countries’ sovereign affairs, by the one and only rogue state of this globe, the United States of America. And they are talking about Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential Elections!

Stealing by stealth is one of the neoliberal crimes we haven’t quite understood yet, let alone mastered. Hindsight is always 20/20. This article hopes to contribute to foresight.

----------

Brazil, with about 8,200 km3 annually renewable freshwater, ranks number one with about one eighth (1/8) of the world’s total renewable freshwater resources which are estimated at 45,000 km3. The Amazon Basin holds about 73% of all of Brazil’s freshwater. Renewable freshwater is the composite of annually sustainable surface and groundwater recharge combined (recharge by precipitation and inflow from outside). The second most water-abundant country is Russia with 4,500 km3 / year, followed by Canada, Indonesia, China, Colombia, US, Peru, India – all with renewable water resources of between 2,000 and 3,000 km3 / year.

By Continent, the Americas have the largest share of the world’s total freshwater resources with 45 percent, followed by Asia with 28 percent, Europe with 15.5 percent and Africa with 9 percent. This scenario immediately points to Africa’s vulnerability. Africa is clearly the most vulnerable Continent from a water resources – survival – point of view. Africa is also home to about 60% of the world’s remaining and known available natural resources; resources the west covets and goes to war for.

Is it, therefore, a coincidence that the 8^th WWF is held in Brazil? – I don’t think so. Especially not with Temer going to Davos, where the cream of the crop of the world’s corporate, finance and institutional elite meets, to offer Brazil’s water resources for privatization.
-----

We are talking about privatizing the largest single underground renewable freshwater reservoir in the Americas, arguably in the world, the Guarani Aquifer which underlays 1.2 million square kilometers – km2 (about the size of Texas and California combined), of which 71% is under Brazil, 19% under Argentina, 6% under Paraguay, and 4% under Uruguay.

The Guaraní aquifer was discovered in the 1990s. It is named after the indigenous people who have inhabited the area for centuries. The Guarani holds an estimated 46,000 km3 of freshwater (not to confound with the annual renewable freshwater, of which Brazil has about 8,300 km3 – see above). The current Guarani’s extraction rate is a little over 1 km3 per year, while the potential recharge rate is between 45 km3 and 55 km3/year, meaning that there is so far no risk of over-abstraction. This could however, change quickly. It is said that the Guaraní could supply the world population for the next 200 years with 100 liters per capita per day.

About 30 million people inhabit the Guarani region. In the Brazilian section of the Guaraní, some 500 to 600 cities are currently supplied with Guaraní water – how many of these municipal supplies are already privatized?

In late February 2018, Blue Planet founder, Maude Barlow, tweeted, "Terrifying! Coke and Nestle want to buy up the Guarani Aquifer! Must be stopped!!!". As Mint Press reports "A concerted push is underway in South America that could see one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water soon fall into the hands of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola and Nestlé. According to reports, talks to privatize the Guarani Aquifer – a vast subterranean water reserve lying beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – have already reached an advanced stage. The deal would grant a consortium of U.S. and Europe-based conglomerates exclusive rights to the aquifer that would last over 100 years."

Under such concession arrangements, quantities to be abstracted are usually unlimited, which would leave the entire aquifer in the hands of those private corporations which are part and parcel of the Temer negotiated deal.

The article adds, "In Brazil, intense lobbying has been underway since at least 2016 to tap into the aquifer. These efforts fell under the spotlight late last month [in January 2018] at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where private talks were reported between Brazil’s President Michel Temer and a range of top executives with interests in the aquifer, including Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Carlos Brito, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris."

The article further mentions, "As leading Brazilian water-rights activist Franklin Frederick noted in Brasil de Fato, these companies belong to the 2030 Water Resources Group (2030WRG), a transnational consortium that includes AB Inbev, Coca-Cola, Dow, Nestle and PepsiCo. 2030WRG bills itself as 'a unique public-private-civil society collaboration' and hides its intention to privatize developing nations’ water supplies by claiming to 'facilitate open, trust-based dialogue processes to drive action on water resources reform in water-stressed countries in developing economies' and 'close the gap between water demand and supply by the year 2030'."


Already in September 2016, Reuter reported that Brazil – Temer – “launched a multibillion-dollar plan to auction off oil, power rights and infrastructure concessions.” And the Correio do Brasil retorted that this "privatizing wrath" could extend to the Guarani Aquifer. A senior official at the National Water Agency (ANA) has revealed that the Guarani aquifer will appear on the list of public goods to be privatized.


Barlow, in a Conference in Florianapolis, Brazil, already in November 2011, said, the biggest concern for humanity is the potential for the Guarani to become controlled by private interests. She added, corporations have already preferential access to these waters. “You are sitting atop a vast reserve of water in a very thirsty world, a reserve that is not only vital to the health and future of this region but to all of humanity. It is a treasure that must be protected by governments on behalf of the people and the ecosystems of the region."

Recent studies point to an even larger underground water reservoir system, the “underground ocean” of Amazonia. It is projected to hold 160 trillion m3 (160,000 km3) of freshwater, underlaying mainly Brazil, but also Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Studies are still ongoing and it might be too soon to draw definite conclusions. However, these gigantic water reserves under Latin America plus the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) which is the world’s largest known fossil aquifer of an estimated 150,000 km3 of non-renewable groundwater, must be protected for humanity.

The NSAS is located under the Eastern end of the Sahara Desert. It stretches over 2 million km2 and spans four countries in North and Central Africa, Libya, Sudan, Chad and Egypt.  
-----

Back to the WWF in Brasilia, where the “water mafia” is convening as this article goes to print, and while in São Lourenço, Minas Gerais, 600 “Women Without Land” occupy Nestlé’s Brazil headquarters, since 6 AM Tuesday morning, 20 March. Nestlé, the Swiss food and water giant, declared water number one in its field of business expansion. Nestlé controls already more than 10% of the world market of bottled water. The “Women without Land” denounce Temer’s policy of handing out their precious water resources to international corporations. Aware of the ongoing WFF, they warn of further concession contracts being negotiated on the sidelines of this forum.


One of the leaders said, “Imagine you are obliged to buy your water in bottles to quench your thirst. This is what they want these transnational corporations, officially debating improved water management in Brasilia, when in reality they are negotiating concessions of our water at fire-sales prices.”

We, the People, the 99% of this globe, have the moral obligation to stand up against this globalized, neofascist clandestine onslaught to privatize and steal our vital water resources – humanity’s survival. Water is Life. If we don’t have the foresight to stand up now, to stop this criminal privatization of OUR, humanity’s water resources – humankind may be doomed.

Being a ' fly on the wall ' is not such a bad thing... unless of course you get swatted.  Listen to what this fly overheard at the Fat Cats Private Club the other day:

Fat Cat # 1 - Well I'll tell you dear friend, things really seem to be running smoothly for us lately.

Fat Cat # 2 - Yes, it was brilliant of those of us who allowed Trump to get the Republican nod.

              #1-  Funny how when things go right they can accomplish so much. A) We got him to select our people to run his administration; B) Like a dedicated 'Pied Piper' Donald had millions of those blue collar and white collar white faces to follow him... and guess what, the majority of them still do!

              # 2 - ( Laughing) They don't care that they're getting screwed in spades, so long as he pumps them up with his rhetoric of ' The Wall ' and ' Ragheads out' and ' Drain the swamp'. Magnifico!

              # 1 - And, the icing on the cake is this whole Russia and ' Putin is Hitler' crap. It just makes Donald a most sympathetic character. We don't even have to use our guys in the media to go to work on counteracting things. The Democrats are doing our work for us.

               #2- Plus the fact that all this is opening it up for our agenda to really amp of the military spending even more...

               #1- ( interrupting him) Defense spending. Always use ' Defense spending' and not the other term. That way we get the natives to wave the flag and salute our ' Brave warriors' .

               #2-  Sorry. I just wonder how far can we go with this increased spending. I mean it's already over 50% of their tax money, isn't it?

               # 1- Are you kidding me!? We have the best of allies in this endeavor... The Democrats! They go all in for these requests, and all of that flag waving crap. Look at how they reacted to McCain's death. They made him into an icon for goodness sakes! I mean, honestly, the guy couldn't even fly a fighter jet properly, and remember how we had to bail him out during that whole Keating banking scandal?

                 #2 - Yeah, you really have to give it to those Democrats. They always seem to come around to our big issues. Look at Obama. The guy massaged the natives right into the White House, and then what; He continued to give away the store to our Wall Street friends...

                  #1- And then the military spe... oh sorry, even I do it too... the defense spending actually increased under him.

                  #2- So much has been accomplished by our people. This Russia thing has allowed Donald to put through every agenda we push in his face. The suckers don't even know what's hitting them ( laughing ) .

                    # 1 - Absolutely! I mean, even those ( laughing ) so called ' Jobs Reports ' make them think that everyone can find a job. What's wrong with millions working at Wal-Mart or some box store for $ 9.00 or $ 10.00 an hour? Get a second job if you need more!

                    # 2 - The companies my group owns just love the fact that we don't have to worry about unions at all. We just need to get more states to push through ' Right to Work' to really kneecap the whole union movement...

                    #1- And don't forget that our people own most of the major unions anyhow. A little perk here and there and those union leaders bend and scrape for us.

                    # 2- I mean, look at that whole ' Public Option ' crap that the Democrats tried to push through in ' 09. Obama did have us in a corner on that one if he went ahead full speed.

                    # 1 Of course he didn't, and neither did most of his party and most of the union leadership. We got them to acquiesce and keep our insurance companies and health care industry on top of that one. I mean, look at Medicare now. We have our private insurers running things anyway.

                    #2 - What the suckers out there forget is that in '08 McCain got a little over $ 7 million from our health care industry while Obama received over $ 21 million in campaign donations. You think he was really going to go ahead with his ' Hope and Change' ?

                    # 1 - The same with the Wall Street bailout Part 2. We had Henry Paulson as our front man on Part 1. How many of the suckers out there realized that good ole Henry had just retired as CEO of Goldman Sachs at a compensation of $ 500 million? He did his best acting job to insure that Bush and Cheney got their bailout through pretty easily.

                    #2 - I loved it when Nancy Pelosi stood with him in front of the media and gave her support for it. Of course, with Obama in office in '09, we did need one of our guys, Rahm Emanuel, his new chief of staff, to make sure Part 2 breezed through.

                    #1- Just remember who Obama's main economic advisor was in '08 when he ran. None other than our guy Larry Summers, the guy who got Bill Clinton to push for the repeal of Glass-Steagall .

                    # 2- That opened the door for our people to empty out the henhouse  ( laughing ) and really fortify the Subprime agenda. I tell you, I personally made mega millions on that one. Imagine, that law was on the books for over 66 years until Summers and company got it repealed in 1999.

                    # 1- And it was the Democrats who did it! ( laughing )

                    # 2- We have a lot to be thankful for my friend... from both of our friends on both sides of the aisle. Now, we just have to keep it going for a little longer. I mean, with the new Chinese empire on the horizon, you know this is not going to last too long.

                    #1 - It'll be time to bail out sooner than later...

                    #2- We need to find a nice safe country to relocate to, and count our gold.  You have begun to convert into gold I hope?

Jim Kavanagh
@ThePolemicist_ 

So, Paul Manafort, described by the New York Times as “a longtime lobbyist and political consultant who worked for multiple Republican candidates and presidents,” was convicted of bank fraud, tax fraud and failure to report a foreign bank account. And Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, pled guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud (making false statements to obtain loans), and breaking campaign finance laws by paying off two women who claimed to have had sexual affairs with Trump. Because Cohen says those payoffs were made at Trump’s direction, that is the one charge that directly implicates Trump.

On the basis of the these results, the NYT editorial board insists: “Only a complete fantasist … could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a ‘hoax’ or ‘scam’ or ‘rigged witch hunt.’” Democrats concur, saying the results “put the lie to Mr. Trump’s argument that Mr. Mueller was engaged in a political investigation.”

But these crimes are tax fraud, money laundering, and credit app padding that have nothing to do with Donald Trump, and campaign-finance violations related to what a critic of Trump aptly describes as “a classic B-team type of bumbling screw-up of covering up mistresses.” I question the level of word play, if not fantasizing, necessary to claim that these crimes validate “this investigation of foreign subversion.” None of them has anything to do with that. The perils of this, that, these, and those.

Do these results disprove that the Mueller probe is “a political investigation”? I think they imply quite the opposite, and quite obviously so.

Why? Because these convictions would not have occurred if Hillary Clinton had been elected president. There would be no convictions because there would have been no investigation.

If Hillary had been elected, all the crimes of Manafort and Cohen—certainly those that took place over many years before the election, but even, I think, those having to do with campaign contributions and mistress cover-ups—would never have been investigated, because all would have been considered right with the political world.

The Manafort and Cohen crimes would have been ignored as the standard tactics of the elite financial grifting—as well as of parasitism on, and payoffs by, political campaigns—that they are. Indeed, there would have been no emergency, save-our-democracy-from-Russian-collaboration, Special Counsel investigation, from which these irrelevant charges were spun off, at all.

The kinds of antics Manafort and Cohen have been prosecuted for went unnoticed when Donald Trump was a donor to the Democratic and Republican parties, and if he had stayed in his Tower doling out campaign contributions, they still would be. It’s only because he foolishly won the Presidency against the wishes of the dominant sectors of the ruling class that those antics became the target of prosecutorial investigation. Lesson to Donald: Be careful what you wish for.

If Trump weren't such an idiot, he probably would have realized that this is what happens when you run for president without prior authorization from the ruling classes, and win. #ManafortTrial #MichaelCohen #Trump pic.twitter.com/tyrpuLHRNT

— Consent Factory (@consent_factory) August 21, 2018

What the NYT calls “a culture of graft as well as corruption” that “suffused” the Trump campaign is part and parcel of a culture of politico-capitalist corruption that suffuses American electoral politics in general. Manafort, who has indeed been “a longtime lobbyist and political consultant,” is only one in a long, bipartisan line that “enrich [themselves] by working for some of the world’s most notorious thugs and autocrats.”

Have you heard of the Podestas? The Clinton Foundation? Besides, the economic purpose of American electoral politics is to funnel millions to consultants and the media.  Campaign finance law violations? We’ll see how the lawsuit over $84 million worth of funds allegedly transferred illegally from state party contributions to the Clinton campaign works out. Does the media report, does anybody know or care, about it? Will anybody ever go to prison over it?

The Republicans and Democrats would just as soon leave this entire culture of graft and corruption undisturbed by the prosecutorial apparatus of the state. That kind of thing can get out of hand. Only because the election of Donald Trump was a mistake from the establishment point of view has that apparatus been sicced on him. The frantic search, anywhere and everywhere, for some legal charges that can stick to Trump is driven by a burning desire to get something on Donald Trump that will fatally wound him politically, and serve as “objective” grounds for impeachment or resignation.

Ar any rate, there can be no doubt that the Manafort and Cohen convictions have upped the political ante for everybody. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal (second wealthiest Senator; net worth ~ $80 million) has now invoked the dreaded word, from which it’s hard to retreat: "We're in a Watergate moment.”

Yup, the anti-Trump establishment, led by the Democrats, has now succeeded, via a legal ground game, in moving the ball into the political red zone where impeachment talk is unavoidable. But going forward from here, the plays and paths available are very dangerous to the establishment and the Democrats themselves, and the whole game is getting to the point where it can—indeed, almost inevitably will—seriously disrupt the system they want to protect.

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]irst of all, the Democrats will now face increasing demands for impeachment from the impassioned members of their base whom they have riled up to see Trump as the epitome of the Putin-Nazi evil that threatens “our democracy.” If the Democrats insist these convictions are not just matters of financial hijinx, irrelevant to Mueller’s “Russia collusion” investigation, and irrelevant in fact to anything of political substance; if they assert that the payoffs to Stormy and Karen (the only acts directly involving Trump) disqualify Trump for the presidency, then they will have no excuse but to call for Trump’s impeachment, and act to make it happen. Their base will demand that Democratic candidates run on that promise, and if the Democrats re-take the House, that they begin impeachment proceedings immediately.

So, if, after all the “only a complete fantasist” talk, the Democrats don’t act to impeach Trump, they will further alienate their base, and drive more liberals and progressives to withhold their votes, if not abandon the party altogether. And evil Putin-Nazi Trump will be strengthened.

If they try to impeach and fail (which is likely), well, then, as happened to the Republicans with Clinton, they will just look stupid, and will be punished for having wasted the nation’s political time and energy foolishly. And Trump will be strengthened.

If they were to impeach, convict, and remove Trump (even by forcing a resignation), a large swath of the population would conclude, correctly, that a ginned-up litigation had been used to overturn the result of the 2016 election, that the Democrats had gotten away with what the Republicans couldn’t in 1998-9. That swath of the population would likely withdraw completely from electoral politics, leaving all their problems and resentments intact—hidden for a while, but sure to erupt in some other ways. It would deeply undermine any notion that the political system holds the confidence of the people, and intensify division, disruption, and the sense of incipient civil war in the country more than any number of Russian Facebook posts.

Furthermore, if the Democrats were successful in removing Trump, their own base would be confronted with the terrible beauty of the Pence presidency to which they had given birth. After such a fight, Pence, who is a much more serious, organized, and ideologically-coherent religious proto-fascist than Trump, will benefit from the inevitable propensity of Democrats to calm things down and protect the stability of the system. Progressive Democrats will find, again, that the two-party system has produced no good result. In other words, the result of a successful impeachment effort might very well be more disaffection from “our democracy” by Democrats.

In short, through a process of litigation and prosecution, the Democrats are getting what they asked for: The field of political discourse and action will now increasingly center on the possibility of removing or impeaching the president. Given their construction of the Manafort-Cohen verdicts, they must move forward on that, or they will be perceived as weak and back-pedaling, and Trump will be strengthened. But if they do move forward, that will initiate a political battle that will tear the country apart and end up either with their defeat or the victory of Mike Pence.

Of course, the Democratic leadership knows all this. Which is why they have always said they do not want to push for impeachment or removal, and probably will not. They also know—and they know that Trump’s supporters know—that a campaign-law violation has no more political substance than Bill Clinton’s perjury. They know that they are not likely to win that fight in the Senate. They know the can of worms they are opening with charges that could be levied against most rich politicians. And, most importantly, they know the fight they will have to wage will be intensely divisive and will deeply undermine confidence in the political system, however it ends up.

The Democrats much prefer to have Trump in office to kick around politically. The most likely scenario is that they will make a cloakroom agreement with Republicans not to go too far, while they continue to whip up Trump-Putin “Russiagate” fever among their constituency. They will continue to stoke anticipation of a smoking “collusion” gun from Mueller, which will probably never come. The Democrats are not really after impeaching Trump; they are after stringing along their progressive voters.

In the meantime, the delightful Trump-effect—his constant embarrassment of American political self-righteousness and discomfiting of both political parties—will continue apace.

By the way, for those who think that Manafort’s conviction portends a smoking gun, based on his work for “pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych,” as the NYT and other liberals persistently call him, I would suggest looking at this Twitter thread by Aaron Maté. It’s a brilliant shredding of Rachel Maddow’s (and, to a lesser extent, Chris Hayes’s) version of the deceptive implication—presented as an indisputable fact—that Manafort's work for Yanukovych is proof that he (and by extension, Trump) was working for Putin. As Maté shows, that is actually indisputably false. Manafort was working hard to turn Yanukovych away from Russia to the EU and the West, and the evidence of that is abundant and easily available. It was given in the trial, though you’d never know that from reading the NYT or listening to MSNBC. As a former Ukraine Foreign Ministry spokesman said: "If it weren't for Paul, Ukraine would have gone under Russia much earlier. He was the one dragging Yanukovich to the West." And the Democrats know this.

And if you think Cohen is harboring secret knowledge of Trump-Russia collusion that he’s going to turn over to Mueller, take look at Maté’s thread on that.

We are now entering a new period of intense political maneuvering that’s the latest turning point in the bizarre and flimsy “Russiagate” narrative. I’ve been asked to comment on that a number of times over the past two years, and each time I or one of my fellow commentators would say, “Why are we still talking about this?” It was originally conjured up as a Clinton campaign attack on Trump, but, to my and many others’ surprise and chagrin, it somehow morphed into the central theme of political opposition to Trump’s presidency.

Donald Trump is a horrid political specimen. I witnessed his flourishing into apex narcissism and corruption over decades in New York City, as chronicled by the dogged reporter, Wayne Barrett, and I would be surprised if there weren’t financial crimes in his closet that any competent prosecutor could ferret out. Anyone who knows his history knows that this is the kind of dirt the Mueller investigation was most likely to find on Donald Trump; anyone who’s honest knows that this is the kind of dirt it was meant to find. Russiagate was a pretext to dig around everywhere in his closet. Trump was clueless about the trap he was setting for himself, and has been relentlessly foolish in dealing with it. It is a witch hunt, and he’s riding around on his broom, skywriting self-incriminating tweets.

There are a thousand reasons to criticize Donald Trump—his racism, his stupidity, his infantile narcissism, his full embrace of Zionist colonialism with its demand to attack Iran, his enactment of Republican social and economic policies that are destroying working-class lives, etc. That he is a Kremlin agent is not one of them. His election was a symptom of deep pathologies of American political culture that we must address, including the failure of the “liberal” party and of the two-party system itself. That Donald Trump is a Russian agent is not one of them. There are a number of very good justifications for seeking his impeachment, starting with the clear constitutional crime of launching a military attack on another country without congressional authorization. That he is a Kremlin agent is not one of them.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party and its allied media do not want to center the fight on these substantive political issues. Instead, they are centering on this barrage of Russiagate litigation—none of which yet proves, or even charges, Russian “collusion”—which they are using as a substitute for politics. And, in place of opposition, they’re substituting uncritical loyalty to the heroes of the military-intelligence complex and “our democracy” that only a complete fantasist could stomach. I mean, when you get to the point that you’re suspecting John Bolton’s “ties to Russia”….

Now, with the Manafort and Cohen convictions, the Russiagate discourse is moving to a new stage, and it’s unlikely that we will ever stop talking about it, as long as Trump is president. Nothing good can come of it.

Our country is in, and on the verge of, multiple crises that threaten to destroy it. That Donald Trump is a Russian agent is not one of them. Political time is precious.

What a waste.