3 things to think about today (August 9th)
1) Working through the weekend the Senate neared passage of President Biden’s mammoth, bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill, one which seems likely to pass the upper chamber with significant Republican support. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far not obstructed its passage and even seems inclined to support the plan for significant spending to upgrade America’s roads, bridges, broadband, and electricity grid. On the other hand, former President Trump is raging against the bill, making plain that he will find it ‘very hard to support’ any Republican Senator voting for its passage. After approval in the upper house, the bill will head to the House of Representatives for debate and a vote.
2) This past weekend over 237,000 French protestors took to the streets, demonstrating against the Macron government’s Covid passport scheme, which goes into effect today. This marks the fourth consecutive weekend of French protests against the measure, which requires certification of complete vaccination or a negative test for citizens to gain access to bars, cafes, clubs, trains, and buses. The pass will also be necessary for those who want to be admitted to hospital for non-urgent treatment. The protest numbers have swelled each of the past four weekends, despite the fact that the French holiday season is upon us; after the holidays in September, Macron’s worry is that the protests explode. Contrary to the French mood, an August poll by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera finds a dominant 66 percent of Italians in favour of that country’s similar green pass measures.
3) Over the weekend, five regional capitals in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, including Kunduz, Sar-e Pol and Taloqan, leaving the insurgents in charge of much of the north of the country. Earlier, the Taliban overran Zaranj in Nimroz province in the southwest bordering Iran. Predictably, following the failure of 20 years of American nation-building, the inept, corrupt government of Ashraf Ghani—wholly without genuine local political legitimacy—is dramatically and quickly losing control of the country following the final formal US troop withdrawal. The CIA has estimated that the Ghani government has six month or less to survive; my firm thinks this is on the overly-optimistic side.