EU Referendum - in or out?

[NickFaulks]

Kasparov on Brexit

Kasparov has piled in with Carney and Fifi Lagarde on "Britain should be a province of the European Co-Prosperity Sphere" circus. Yep, that clinches it.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Do the 'Leave' supporters make more noise than the 'Remain' supporters because they are more motivated to speak up, or because they realise they may well be in a minority? Is there a silent majority for 'Remain'? It would be really amazing if the 'Leave' campaign pulled off a victory in the face of all the pressure being brought to bear.

[NickFaulks]

If the British public, during brief moments when they can tear themselves away from EastEnders and Britain's Got Talent, decide that foreign bankers really have the best interests of families in Barnsley at their hearts, then they will get what they deserve. I'm not as worried as I would otherwise be because I know that the EU, led by its ridiculous monetary union, will implode in due time. I just want us to be at a safer distance when it does.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Do the 'Leave' supporters make more noise than the 'Remain' supporters because they are more motivated to speak up, or because they realise they may well be in a minority? ...

Both, I believe. I certainly detect an obsessive zeal to the nature of many brexiters. By contrast, much of the "in" camp have jobs and all that.

[Jonathan Rogers]

If the British public, during brief moments when they can tear themselves away from EastEnders and Britain's Got Talent, decide that foreign bankers really have the best interests of families in Barnsley at their hearts, then they will get what they deserve.

They might realise than even foreign bankers want our economy to be stable? "No man is an island" (Brexiters hate hearing that, in my experience).

[Mick Norris]

From the 2011 census (with some roundings):

England - 53 million
Scotland - 5.3 million
Wales - 3 million
Northern Ireland - 1.8 million

TOTAL: 63.2 million

London (2104) is between 8.5 and 13.8 million. Not sure what figure is used politically.
Gibraltar's population (2015 estimate) is 32,194.

Greater Manchester population is 2.7 million - our economy is bigger than Wales

I'd imagine we want to stay in the EU, but wouldn't be averse to independence from the rest of England

[John McKenna]

Adolf Hitler did not create the Third Reich all alone from scratch, or even only with the active help and connivance of a significant minority of the German people and a great deal of passive acceptance by the vast majority of the rest of the 'Volk'.

It and other facist militarist dictatorships (Imperial Japan and even Soviet Russia, for example) and their fellow travellers were the product of several hundreds of years of European Imperialism and Colonialism on a grand scale on the world stage. All those dictorships have been swept away, only to be replaced by others, but the modern UK, USA & EU are the successors to the architects of that imperial, colonial capitalist system and they are still doing the same things they did in the past, pursuing the same old policies, in a new guise, with a bit more care.

[Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan were outmatched by the Allies once they'd realised that only a more distant devil, Stalin, could save them from the local one, Hitler. The huge mistake that Hitler made was his attack on Soviet Russia. That guaranteed the might of the USSR would be on the 'right' side.

That was compounded when the Empire of Japan (modelled, oh so closely, on those of the British, French & Germans but armed to the teeth with modern weapons and a somewhat medieval mindset and totally militaristic leadership) made the huge mistake of attacking the imperial possesions of the USA and all the European powers in the Pacific and SE Asia. That immediately brough the mighty US into the fight.

When Hitler immediately came out in sympathy with Japan by declaring war on the US the Allies' jigsaw was luckily complete and the outcome never in doubt.

To have had any hope of success it is clear, with hindsight, that if Hitler was going to attack Russia he really needed to synchronise it with the Japanese. If they could have agreed to simultaneously attack the USSR from both West - through Poland and the Baltics as happened - and East - through Siberia and Mongolia, which never happened - AND thereby kept the US-USSR grand alliance from happening (at least until it was too late to matter) THEN the world would be a very different place today.]

Of course, you may be thankful that didn't happen and that the 'good guys' in their grey-white hats - whose past actions caused the (two) conflagration(s) to arise in the first place - won the day BUT that doesn't change the fact that the WWII is still not quite resolved.

Just as the end of the titanic struggles of WW I didn't obliterate its causes and left the way open for a rematch, so the failure to properly and equitably resolve the peace at the end of WW II has left the possibility of further conflict waiting in the wings.
All those who suffered most in the last war - from the Chinese and Russians... down to the Koreans, Poles.. and, last but not least, the European Jews have learned a bitter lesson from what happened. And, they want to have their place and time in the sun now.

They'll not be pushed around by the superior and supercilious N. Americans and W. Europeans anymore. They'll stand and fight, if necessary, for what they believe the world owes them - respect for their cultures and recognition of their equal rights to the planet.

The West is failing once again to deal with the rest of the world properly by feeding its rivals with finance and technology (although this has recently slowed to Russia due to their actions) that will eventually enable them to challenge the world hegemony that the West has enjoyed for the past 500 years. The great white hope is that those rivals can be con/subverted to "western values" and welcomed to the fold of the 'civilised' nations. That is not working well enough and may eventually fail completely.

Sure you can scaremonger with the name Vlad Putin, and his supposed henchmen, Boris & Don in the UK & US, respectively, but I was more afraid of Regan, Thatcher, G.W. Bush, Tony Blair and his co-conspirator Gordon Brown than I was of anyone else alive, because they called the shots, as in - "Tear down that wall Mr. G!" They upped the ante with "Star Wars", etc. The rest of the world are still playing catchup and they've a way to go... BUT THEY'RE TRYING.

The US is the guarantor of security for it's 'allies' ('clients' is better) through NATO and other alliances it has forged around the world (with S. Korea & Japan, for example) but, like the ancient Athenians' alliances, they serve the interests primarily of the predominate power - the USA.

The EU does play a primary economic and diplomatic, and a secondary military, part in cooperation with the US in world affairs and is a convenience for the Americans, but it is probably ultimately dispensable - just was Rome was left to fall by Byzantium (which carried on through another 1,000 years of strife most of it with Islamic conquerors) so Brussels-Strasbourg, Berlin & Paris and eventually even London could be let go by Washington.

Where does that leave us?

Standing on a planet where there's not necessarily going to be enough to go round with unreconciled major differences and a distinct danger of future conflicts waiting to happen if we're not careful.

At least that's how I see it.

Fin. (Everything has to stop for tea - even armchair strategy.)

[Paolo Casaschi]

Adolf Hitler...

I'm sorry but it's a very well known ground rule of Internet discussions that, since you mentioned Hitler, this discussion is now over and you just lost the argument.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

[John McKenna]

Thanks Paulo I thought I'd get caught out on that score, ha-ha

I won't promise not to do it again, but I'll soon have to give it a rest as I've (nearly) had my say

The deadline is 01:15 on Saturday

If you don't hear anything from me on this subject after that you know it's all clear

Hopefully in the short time until then war will not be declared.

Edit: Actually I am not sure that I've fallen foul of Goodwin's law - mention of AH in a debate about the future of the EU may be allowable since he had so much to do with its creation. In fact he was trying to create its evil twin in what he did.

[Carl Hibbard]

I am here again.

[NickFaulks]

Edit: Actually I am not sure that I've fallen foul of Goodwin's law

You have not. I had a post excised from here, quite improperly, because a moderator felt that it infringed Godwin's Law. In fact, if he had bothered to check, he would have discovered that Mike Godwin stated explicitly that, when discussing the snuffing out of lesser democracies by an administration in Berlin, references to AH are fully appropriate.

[John McKenna]

One final late-night groan, not as big as my previous titanic groan -

The Turks, and I'm not talking about the ones who have already migrated over the last 100 years or so into Europe. I'm talking about the whole country and its population and institutions. Their current President, Erdogan, is out to revive his nation's battered pride (just like Putin in Russia and Shi in China). It consists for restoring the commemoration of events like the fall of Constantinople in 1453 - the end of 2,000 years of unbroken civilisation - and the lesser, but just as brutal fall of Kut in 1916 -"following the surrender of the Bitish-Indian Army garrison (13,000 men approx.) on 29 April 1916, the survivors of the siege were marched to imprisonment at Aleppo" (Wiki), which turned into something of a death march.

Prior to Erdogan it might have been possible to integrate Turkey into the EU, but now they are going to try to get in using other means than changing their institutions to be fit for the EU. Look at what's happened to the flow of migrants through Turkey since the EU caved in and agreed bribe the Turks with loads of money and, soon to be granted, visa-free travel to the Schengen area. The migrant flow has suddenly slowed to a trickle - that shows that the Turks always had the ability to turn it off, but that they wanted to get their way before doing so. That's blackmail, pure and simple.

Then in answer to the EU's demand that Turkey relax their terrorism laws, treatment of the political opposition, journalists critical of the state and of the Kurdish minority, Erdogan flatly refused. He knows that the EU need him more than he needs them and that instead of waiting any longer to invited in he can just gate-crash as his predecessors did at Constantinople and Kut.

As I've said before, in order to achieve the Holy Grail of the modern Crusaders the Holy Land will have to be bought within the boundaries of the EU - as was done in ancient times when it was absorbed by the Roman Empire. In order to get that jewel into the crown of stars on the EU flag first Turkey, then Syria and then Lebanon will have to be 'admitted'. Then Israel, followed probably by Jordan, so that a lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine problem can finally be imposed by the great power - the US, through the good offices of its EU allies.

Even if there is no cogent plan in Washington & Brussels-Strasbourg to do it they will be drawn into doing it by events, either that or the US will gradually disengage from a frontline defence of its allies in Europe and the Middle East and rely on an anti-missile shield and nuclear missile sword to defend from a deeper position.

If the US goes isolationist and turns its back and neither of those is possible then the lights of civilisation in Europe and the Middle East will gradually dim and go out as they did in the face of the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman Empire in West Europe and North Africa between the 5th and 8th centuries A.D. If not we can perhaps look forward to another 300 years of the Pax Americana - increasingly on their terms and conditions, of course.

[John McKenna]

Edit: Actually I am not sure that I've fallen foul of Goodwin's law

You have not. I had a post excised from here, quite improperly, because a moderator felt that it infringed Godwin's Law. In fact, if he had bothered to check, he would have discovered that Mike Godwin stated explicitly that, when discussing the snuffing out of lesser democracies by an administration in Berlin, references to AH are fully appropriate.

Thanks, Nick.

We have to defend our corners.

I hope our paths eventually meet. We've had a few near misses in Surrey.

All the best in your struggles on and off the board.

Cheers, John

[Mick Norris]

Kasparov on Brexit

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... r-putin-eu

pointing out that the main worldwide political supporters of Brexit are Trump, Johnson, and Putin, just the sort of people who have the interests of working English people at heart and who couldn't possibly have underhand motives for supporting the cause. Includes the line

"If you’re not sure of the best course of action, you could do worse than look at what Putin wants and do the opposite."

Well, we'll see tonight about that, as Putin seems to have invested a lot in Russia winning Eurovision

[John McKenna]

Pleased to hear that he's so interested in the "soft power" of pop culture, Mick.

No matter what the result, tonight, he's already very upset with the Romanians -

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/u-miss ... 173317116/

Edit - This is also in the pipeline-

https://utopiathecollapse.com/2016/04/2 ... n-s-korea/