Anton Jäger, New Left Review:

Trump the hyperpolitician is a consequence of this elite disarticulation, providing agency absent a stabilizing structural frame.

What Trump catalyses, of course, is more incoherence, as the contemporary condition of Europe shows. Here, a set of pre-existing geopolitical and economic dependencies makes elite fracture and cross-class bloc failure far more disabling than in the us. Mainstream parties still hold power in Europe’s three largest countries, but their situation is precarious and—a sign of the hyperpolitical mood of the electorates—their leaders are deeply disliked. In Germany, Merz leads a directionless, ill-tempered coalition which collectively won only 45 per cent of the vote; his personal rating is on –64. Though Germany is the de facto leader of the eu bloc, its ruling elites cannot muster enough cohesion and popular backing to relaunch their own export industries against Chinese competition and American energy pressure, let alone craft a continental strategy.

Ω Ω Ω

This lack of vertical backing for European rulers is in part explained by their inability to unite capitalist fractions behind a coherent strategy to recharge their stagnant economies, trapped between the diktats of the bond markets, a faltering Energiewende, regulatory burdens of the eu’s ‘compliance capitalism’, the growing weight of social care for the elderly, failing public infrastructure, unbeatably cheap Chinese manufacturing and the crippling, self-inflicted gas-price shock resulting from their culpable failure to structure and support a diplomatic answer to the Ukraine–Russia question. Instead of directly grappling with these problems, Europe’s governing classes are issuing a call to arms against Russia and greedily tallying the martial stock of poor war-torn Ukraine for the inventory of a future eu army.

In their switch to intense Ukrainophilia—having long disdained the country as a troublesome peripheral mendicant in need of harsh neo-imperial financial discipline: viz., the 2013 eu–Ukraine association agreement—otherwise bureaucratic figures like Merz and Starmer launch into the mode of hyperpolitics, their energy and enthusiasm delinked from material and political reality. Despite patent lack of popular support, their eagerness for military spending swings from aircraft carriers and fighter jets to the best possible intercontinental ballistic missiles, like an oligarch’s mistress comparing handbags or earrings.

Ω Ω Ω

Instead of negotiating a lasting peace with Russia that would respect Ukraine’s self‑determination, the eu debate revolves—behind closed doors—around what credit system its member states should use to arm against their great continental neighbour. Accompanying this are sly attempts by each to stay in the Pentagon’s good books with logistics and supply for the Trump–Netanyahu war of aggression against Iran, while posturing about a rules-based international order.

Ho-fung Hung, New Left Review:

Thus, just when the US global military umbrella – the longstanding foundation of dollar hegemony – is showing signs of weakening, the CCP’s party-state is inadvertently prolonging the dollar’s dominance. Short of profound financial reform in China, the current stalemate, in which the world remains reluctantly trapped within the dollar system, is likely to persist. It is ironic that as US-China rivalry intensifies, China’s control over its economy has become a key factor in the staying power of the American empire.

Wikipedia:

The dombra, also known as the dombyra (Kazakh: домбыра, dombyra; Persian: دمبوره, dambūra), is a long-necked, plucked lute used in the traditional music of the Kazakhs, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Nogais, Bashkirs and Tatars, and the principal national instrument of Kazakhstan.^[1][2] Together with the bowed fiddle qyl-qobyz, it is one of the two most widely recognised symbols of Kazakh musical culture.^[3]

Until reading this I could not have named a single symbol of Kazakh musical culture.

Text of the ruling: here.

Guardian:

‘Ridiculous’ for US to maintain current Nato support, Trump warns ahead of alliance summit

President says Washington’s relationship with Nato is ‘not reciprocal’ and ‘they were not there for us’ in Iran war

…

The US president has repeatedly lashed out at European allies over their response to the war in Iran, as several countries restricted the use of bases for American forces.

“response to the war in Iran”? 🤔 The United States and Israel have been bombing Iran, dropping mines, attacking Iran with missiles, threatening Iran with invasion. The Guardian’s phrasing sounds so neutral here, as if the US were a concerned bystander.

Wikipedia:

Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas, that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by an SM-2MR surface-to-air missile fired from USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy. The aircraft, an Airbus A300, was destroyed and all 290 people on board, including 66 children, were killed.^[1]

Here, once again, as always in critical moments of history, the root contradictions of the two social and political systems on earth were laid bare.

—Chingiz Aitmatov, The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 202.

I read this paragraph, reread it, reread it again. The assumption of there being two social and political systems on earth was something completely taken for granted during my childhood and while I was a young adult. Thinking over the phrasing of news articles I read today I am struck by the extent to which the names of individual leaders are used, as if these leaders, not countries, were actors. When countries are considered they are presented as unitary forces of good and evil. There is no mention of political or social system, except as a form of schoolyard name-calling: the mayor of New York and the US Democratic Party are attacked as “socialist” or “communist”, The Radical Right-Wing™ is a bogeyman ever threatening European “democracy”, a seemingly demonic Russian horde revs tank engines just offstage, however there is no general discussion let alone understanding of what terms like “socialism” or “democracy” or “rule of law” may mean in practice. It is an odd dystopia.

Guardian:

A heatwave is not the same when you’re in a shared room with three other people and no air conditioning, as when you’re in a villa with access to a pool and air conditioning.

Here in Berlin BSW is looking pretty pathetic for September’s election.