Re Brexit – the British haven’t solved their Irish problem and Scotland wishes to remain in the EU. I see no easy, good solution to the mess. Yes, Brussels is full of unelected bureaucrats with a dictitorial bent, but so is London…
Saudi Arabia has bombed a detention facility in Yemen killing or wounding over 100 prisoners claiming they were targeting a missile factory. The Houthies have invited the Red Cross to investigate. Maybe the Saudis were trying to remove a bargaining chip by killing the prisoners or perhaps the facility had multiple uses – although it would seem a security risk to manufacture missile components near a prison.

Posted by: the pessimist | Sep 1 2019 15:21 utc | 3

thanks for all the information and insights b!

Posted by: james | Sep 1 2019 15:53 utc | 5

” Brussels is full of unelected bureaucrats with a dictatorial bent, but so is London…”
The significant difference being that, in London, there is a legal way of getting rid of them and thwarting their policies. In Brussels it is virtually impossible to control the Commission. Now that the majority of EU governments are US Satellites, not merely occupied like Germany, but bootlicking semi fascists as in Poland, there is little chance of prevailing in the Council of Ministers. And the Parliament is an impotent joke, nothing more than a talking shop (with the mikes turned off) full of over paid careerists happy to collect salaries without having any responsibility.
I am all for a United Europe, but not at the sacrifice of the possibility of democracy and not including countries dominated by enemies of democracy.
It is an irony of history that what has made the EU unacceptable is that, under UK influence it has become a Thatcherite institution. The UK’s governments bear a large part of the responsibility for turning the Common Market into a neo-liberal command post to roll back popular rights and lower living standards with foreign policies built around the commands of the US Empire.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 1 2019 16:01 utc | 7

For those defending the ‘poodle nation’ trying to break free of the tyranny of Brussles, (author of the recent Skripal affair, tanker pirate, eager participant in Iraq, Lybia, Afghanistan, Syria, Hong Kong, India, N. Ireland, money laundering capital, etc) I seriously doubt that the lot of ordinary British citizens will improve in a Boris Johnson crash out.

Posted by: the pessimist | Sep 1 2019 16:49 utc | 9

I seriously doubt that the lot of ordinary British citizens will improve in a Boris Johnson crash out.
Posted by: the pessimist | Sep 1 2019 16:49 utc | 9
That’s not the aim. The aim is that the lot of the 0.01% improves (at the expense of the 99.99%, naturally. Most importantly, they are desperate to avoid EU transparency regulations getting their hands on offshore finance/money laundering data.

Posted by: BM | Sep 1 2019 17:46 utc | 11

August 31 – Syria – Coordinated Foreign Airstrike Kills Leaders Of Two Al-Qaeda Aligned Groups
Both Syria and the Russian mod has said this is not true and the strikes only killed civilians. Also that they were not informed before hand on the strikes either.. And Turkey was not involved at all.

Posted by: Igor Bundy | Sep 1 2019 18:10 utc | 13

@16 laguerre… what explains the eu’s subservience to the usa on all levels?? i get that the uk is tied at the hip with the usa, but why also eu??

Posted by: james | Sep 1 2019 19:00 utc | 15

@Mischi: Word. That comes from a German. The EU is a anti-democratic monster, for the neoliberal “reform” of their so called “souvereign” member states. Many on the left fanatsy that combining national states in super-states would somehow prevent wars, and unite the people. Truth is the total opposite: They kill democracy, they inflame conflicts, and only serve the neoliberal globalists elite.
Only souvereign countrys, that unite in free will when their interests align can be a Europe that serves their people and peace.
But the national states are seen as evil, and backwards.
Many on the left are caught in their delusion, and live not by reality, but by the utopia in their heads. And that comes from a social democrat. My party is gone nuts for many decades.

Posted by: DontBelieveEitherPr. | Sep 1 2019 19:15 utc | 17

what explains the eu’s subservience to the usa on all levels?? i get that the uk is tied at the hip with the usa, but why also eu??

Posted by: james | Sep 1 2019 19:00 utc | 17
I don’t think they are really, but still too much. There’s increasing tension between the EU and the US, Trump having foolishly revealed how the US takes the EU to be a rival, a long-standing American policy which was kept a secret previously. Old habits die hard, I think. We’ve been used to a Western alliance which was in the common interest, more or less. Now it is no longer, but the lagards like Stoltenburg haven’t caught up.

Posted by: Laguerre | Sep 1 2019 19:19 utc | 19

in London [unlike in EU??], there is a legal way of getting rid of them and thwarting their policies. Now that the majority of EU governments are US Satellites, not merely occupied like Germany, but bootlicking semi fascists as in Poland, there is little chance of prevailing in the Council of Ministers bevin | Sep 1 2019 16:01 utc
EU councils are elected, if in somewhat convoluted manner, but will leaving EU empower UK to be less bootlicking? Nobody forces UK to be more or less of a poodle, least of all, EU.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Sep 1 2019 19:22 utc | 21

Hong Kong: ‘Revolution is war, and no war is without bloodshed’
Ok, good to know.

Posted by: vk | Sep 1 2019 19:37 utc | 23

@1 Mischi The EU quite simply is incapable of making decisions. There isn’t a single initiative in the past 4 years which wasn’t simply a follow through of from 1980 or before.
The strategy to combat or welcome African immigration? There isn’t one. Still.
@4 Don’t think of lies being sold to people over Trump or Brexit. Rather think of a large group of people who have seen no increase in income in 35 years while GDP has doubled and the top quartile have taken almost all the wealth increase. Inequality peaked in the 1980s and is back to 1930s levels.
These people have been completely alienated by Westminster and Brussels, by old Republicans and modern democrats. By Obama most of all (including BLM).
They are desperate for anything that sounds like politicians that listen. They jump for Trump and Brexit with no real concern that it helps them, simply that it makes threats against the elites that they don’t like. Brexit and Trump are unfortunate side-effects of some powerful underlying forces that will rip apart old politics.
(Ditto Italy, Germany, France, Poland, Hungary AND Hong Kong).

Posted by: Michael Droy | Sep 1 2019 20:43 utc | 25

@ vk with the joke of the week….Thanks! Glad to read focus on the public/private finance issue.
@ chu teh with the education about the C of N…..Thanks also! I have not looked at the C of N like that in a while and it is good to be reminded…..Hail to the Queen and all that…My question would be how many would stay if they had a choice of a public finance alternative? Maybe we will see my question answered soon.
Can the Queen, christian faith and 24/7 brainwashing/propaganda keep the US/UK/Occupied Palestine and ??? masses from saying no to public finance….and for how long? Gawd knows Trump, Boris , Bibi and ???? represent questionable staying power…..like the Queen….grin
I had the fortune of studying the future for a year+ (1973) led by an anthropologist and have never looked at the social organization of our species the same since.
The West remains in the feudal era of global private finance only we don’t get to know who the Lords are for sure because they have Trump, Boris and Bibi faces and all that media brainwashing and control of the narrative in front of the curtain.
The civilization of China is ascendant now and Hong Kong is not the same as the old Opium Wars BS. China has created and instantiated 13-14 five year plans as a Public Finance centered organization. And they are gathering various nations around them that are interested in NOT private finance led social organization.
We can only hope that the veils of ignorance about this stark choice in the core tenant of our social contract will fall quickly and the private finance social organization model evolves quickly.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 1 2019 21:09 utc | 27

@psychohistorian 4:
Exactly right; thank you.
The amount of pseudo-populist support for Brexit among the readers of this blog is stupefying, and so is the false dichotomy when a Remainer is accused of being pro-EU as the only possible alternative.
The present EU is utterly non-democratic, neoliberal in its economic policy, and neoconservative in its submission to Uncle Shmuel. Similarly, a Brexited UK will simply take even more from its increasingly impoverished citizens. The Brexit saga is nothing more than smoke-and-mirrors, where the ruling class fops like BoJo and Rees-Mogg will continue to laugh all the way to the Rothschild bank.

Posted by: Theophrastus | Sep 1 2019 21:52 utc | 29

UN@30 Then they need to go visit Taipei with that request, as the Nationalists cleaned out the mainland gold and currency reserves when they fled.

Posted by: the pessimist | Sep 1 2019 22:04 utc | 31

@ UN observer 29
re: Jim Mattis: Duty, Democracy and the Threat of Tribalism — “Interesting reading”
How about reading more from Jim Mattis, the “Butcher of Fallujah?”
It’s ‘fun to shoot some people’

“Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot,” Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience. “It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.
“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” Mattis said. “You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 1 2019 22:26 utc | 33

Posted by: Jen | Sep 1 2019 22:17 utc | 35
“If the government currently in charge of Taiwan still claims to be the legitimate government of all mainland China (and now Hong Kong and Macau) in the form of the Republic of China, it should be responsible for all outstanding pre-1949 debts to the United States.”
I suspect they would say give us back our seat on the UN and take away the PRC seat and we will be happy to pay those bonds. China owes the US so much, recognition, MFN, no sanctions despite human right abuses, free flow of technology and dollars to help them modernize. Certainly not treated like Cuba or Venezuela, or the former Soviet Union
This is as fake a trade war as I have ever seen. Tarrifs are paid by the American consumers, small farmers go bankrupt as China buys elsewhere. China used it as an excuse for its slowing economy and increasing unequal wealth distribution, and use nationalism to unite the people with Trump serving as their Goldstein. Trump looks like he is doing something for his mindless supporters. Win Win

Posted by: Pft | Sep 1 2019 22:47 utc | 35

Hong Kong protests will continue at least until October 1, as promised by Joshua Wong in a NY Times op-ed in which he describes the protests as constituting a “front-line” against the PRC. Articles in New Yorker and The Guardian this weekend feature protest supporters musing on “meaningful violence” and espousing literal Black Bloc theorizing on violent direct action.

Posted by: jayc | Sep 1 2019 23:15 utc | 37

judith curry is a shill these days for the fossil fuel industry. she hasn’t published in years, and no it isn’t due to some conspiracy to silence her, it’s because she doesn’t produce anything but blog posts. the projections have largely been accurate, or underestimates. at this late date, claiming the science is a conspiracy is irresponsible shilling for the most dangerous industry on the planet.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Sep 1 2019 23:57 utc | 39

re Mischi | Sep 1 2019 15:56 utc | 6
Don’t be letting the facts get in the way of a bullshit yarn.
Interestingly that piece states “In 2006, John Bourn, then comptroller and auditor general at the UK’s National Audit Office, said he too would have been unable to sign off the UK’s accounts if he had been required to audit them in the same way as the ECA does.”
The audit stuff is one of the classic memes put out by cummings to lead the types too lazy to check out reality by the nose.
There are a number of good reasons to leave the EU, but that, like just about every reason that has been put forward by the tories, is not one of them.
Why pick the stupid reasons instead of sound ones? Because then Johnson & Co would have to say why they hadn’t amended england law to permit the re-nationalisation of failed privatised monopolies, or institute a more consultative method for making government appointments as those two areas (ban on re-nationalisation and the dictatorial way the EU Commission fills vacancies disregarding its own European Parliament) are the worst examples of EU neoliberalism, however these are repeated in the english political structure and the englander tory party has no intention of doing jot about either since the tories like un-consultative dictatorial governance when it is them doing the governing.
They are more interested in ensuring that the tax haven status of brit colonies (where more than 80% of the unpaid taxes of international corporations is routed) remains, so them and their cobbers can continue to collect their vig on the dodged taxes.
Regardless of whether leaving or remaining per se is good, only a dingbat would believe that a tory party brexit will be good for anyone other than the elite.
Still idiot englanders have been touching their forelocks as they act against their best interests since 1066 – why would anything change now. Stupid is as stupid does.

Posted by: A User | Sep 2 2019 0:30 utc | 41

@ laguerre… thanks for the response!
@37 jen… i don’t know or understand the mechanics of the EU or the UK in any significant way… as an observer looking out into the world today, it seems to me the idea of democracy has been beaten up pretty good and people from all over the world challenge this idea that these institutions are working for them in any way.. it seems like corporations, or the ceos from corporations have easy access to the political leadership in different countries – including where i live here in canada – but the ordinary person doesn’t have this same access.. so i see a break down in an appreciation for what these institutions were supposed to represent and mean to the masses… maybe i was naive in thinking they were ever designed in an all for one and one for all type of way… they sure aren’t behaving this way at present… so, the general malaise that we witness around the world today is testimony to all this… we all process it differently, by going into the details, or taking a broader view – forest for trees or trees for forest type of perspective… both are valid, but both are limited too..
reading others comments here is typically educational and informative.. we are all in this together.. no one has all the answers..as for brexit and the eu, i go back to how central the money set up is – finance – euro currency was introduced for who? how has it worked out for who it was set up for? sure, it has lessened exchange burden between european countries, but i think it has strengthened the importance of other major currencies and been a bit of a shell game for those who control finances on the world stage.. the euro currency has suffered in the long run, just like the british pound has suffered… here is a 10 year chart of us to euro exchange… i wish i could pull up a chart for the exchange rate on these currencies since the eu currencies beginnings..
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y
i guess it is boring to say everything boils down to finance.. maybe this is why pat lang always wanted to label me an economic determinist! regardless, i think money is central to why these changes are being pushed on the public… i can’t see the hand working behind the screen, but in general i always tend to view it like the 1% wanting to pull it over on the rest of us.. that must be my highland scottish-irish ancestry showing, although it is 7 generations back!

Posted by: james | Sep 2 2019 0:55 utc | 43

“I’ve never really understood this kind of meaningless abuse of the EU. ”
Laguerre@14
To say that the EU is just the opposite of a neo-liberal regime it is necessary to adopt an entirely original definition of neo-liberal. And that is what Laguere here does:
“Britain has a neoliberal regime, slashing regulation right and left to help profits. The EU is quite the opposite, full of the most detailed standards and regulations.”
Suffice it to say that both the EU and the UK are run by neo-liberal regimes. A point that I made clear above. The problem is that under EU rules future British governments are prohibited from instituting socialist reforms in, for example, the public utilities because by doing so they would be establishing monopolies.
As to Brexit being a project of the Financiers and The Establishment in the UK, it is certainly true that interest groups associated with them have sought to take advantage of Brexit. And that some ultra right Tories-known personally to me- have long supported it. But the great bulk of the votes, in the great majority of the Parliamentary Constituencies in the UK came from working people who had made up their own minds on the basis of their lived experience, that the EU was not to their benefit.
And, of course, the great bulk of The Establishment both Tory and Labour, campaigned against Brexit and argues against it. Those who believe that these people, who have dominated British politics for decades, do so out of their concern for the living standards and welfare of the working people ought to give their heads a shake.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 2 2019 1:28 utc | 45

@robjira #26: An excellent article. Thank you.

Posted by: S | Sep 2 2019 2:07 utc | 47

jackrabbit and bevin lol.
Yes, brexit was driven by the little people. A leaderless wholly organic group fed pristine economic data by fellow little people named Robert Mercer Nigel Farage and Steve Bannon proving to them how much better off they will be under a populist nationalist government led by…the leaderless “little people” themselves.
In bevin’s fantasy these leaders would of course be socialists of the Labour Left.
Makes perfect sense since Corbyn himself is the very holographic image of a leaderless leader leading no one anywhere at any time.
Nevermind the “little people” behind Brexit were actually being led around by their downtrodden noses not by the Labour Left but secretly
by rightwingers, the same leaderless leaders who ran Trump’s equally successful US campaign.
Course we know how Trump winning worked out for the US “little people” don’t we Trump voter JR? All those pure promises made to win the election were quickly proven to be lies and the little people have gained exactly…nothing while the rich have only gotten richer. Globalisation has not been slowed even microscopically because political nationalism and economic equality aren’t even remotely correlated.
Any halfbaked leftist historian can tell you that.
Get ready for Brexit to work out a lot worse even for the British liliputians than for the Trump deplorables.
The lilliputians who are soon to find themselves transformed from EU slaves into miniature US poodles paying a very dear price (higher cost of everything) for following their leaderless nostalgia from its unreasoned, disinformational beginning to its illogical yet inevitable fascist conclusion under BoJo the Grate.

Posted by: donkeytale | Sep 2 2019 2:21 utc | 49

@donkeytale | Sep 2 2019 2:21 utc | 52
Orwell’s 1984 did not call it (UK) “Airstrip One” without reason.
They have a German monarchy with old Betty ‘Windsor’ well past her used-by date. A wimpy son they won’t let rise who ‘lost’ a wife to marry his cousin (he was screwing anyway) and the next in line (and most likely next monarch if they don’t ditch the system) caught with his pants down in Epstein’s dungeons with some very young US fluff. CCTV covering every street and corner and one of the largest crime rackets running the ‘City of London’.
It is fast becoming a ‘fly-in/fly-out’ of no special character and only if absolutely unavoidable. I think it’s called karma.

Posted by: imo | Sep 2 2019 2:42 utc | 51

@ Jen
When I read your 37 which included:
. . if the UK government wishes to introduce particular legislation that it knows the general public in Britain will oppose,
I wondered how any reading is ever taken of what the general public opposes or favors in Britain, or in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, as if anybody in government cared the least bit what the general public desires or opposes.
And then in your 51 you clarified it:
…voters theoretically can ask or pressure (through petitions, repeated requests, going on TV current affairs programs, chaining themselves to the front gates of Parliament House or nailing their nuts to the pavement
which (theoretically) reinforces my doubts about any government anywhere actually caring about what its citizens want, or don’t want.
That takes me back to Obama’s 2008 campaign. The Obama 2008 agenda included taking advantage of the internet to publicize legislative bills before were voted on in the Congress, with the public given an opportunity to comment on the proposed bills. It was a campaign gimmick, of course, it was never done, and probably Obama never even knew what was being proposed in his name. So matters stayed the same, the Congress legislating laws written by corporations, and who cares what the general public thinks, anywhere.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 2 2019 4:00 utc | 53

Because the EU Commission has the authority to introduce legislation, lobby groups representing special interest groups such as national, European and international organisations, business groups, NGOs and think tanks work on and pressure the EU Commission to introduce legislation favourable to their interests or those of their clients. This would be equivalent to business groups, professional associations, trade unions, religious groups, NGOs, think tanks or even foreign governments having the ear of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and persuading them to bring legislation before the House of Reps and the Senate for rubber-stamping. by: Jen | Sep 2 2019 2:09 utc | 51 <= no its because the legislation can be passed and made law without a mass multi-state vote of the governed. Its when the governed are kept at bay that outside influence ends up controlling the government. every person in the world practically, now has access to the vote button.. Each proposed law could be submitted in prospectus form so that all in the world could have a full copy of the law and all of the debate and substantial analysis of its its impact.. Even video explanations could be made.. so that everyone can now directly participate in law making and governmental decision . making.. at vote time, people come to their computer, wrist watch or other digital device and cast a ballot. if the affirmatives are short of 50% +1 or even 70% +1 then the law that those outsiders spent so much time getting into place would fail and the bureaucrats and their lawmaker sidekicks would have to go back to the drawing board for a new and different law.. .. we need the greedy, innovative, unconscionable wealthy and educated people to propose the laws, but it is up to the people in a democratic society on whether or not such laws rules or decisions of the supra s that govern get implemented or made into law.

Posted by: snake | Sep 2 2019 4:25 utc | 55

Here is the logic behind brexit:
In the short run, it robs transnational elites of their authority and keeps the devil you know, local elites, accounted for and with a gun to their head.
In the long run,…haven’t got that far.
Dummies are overthinking it. If it fails their lot in increasing the chances of legislators and regulators enacting laws that benefit their nationals, this means that their lot will worsen and so hasten in real public movements complete with pitchforks.
I don’t understand how anyone can look at the eu and not have an image of a Barack Obama figure kicking the can down the road.
One can argue that maintaining the eu will result in a similar hastening to calamity, but by virtue of the idea of brexit, at least you have a chance and hope of reps defending the interest of their countrymen.
A clandestine meeting table in Brussels is the demonic “end of history” the globalists knew could not last but stupidly went ahead with it anyway.

Posted by: Nemesiscalling | Sep 2 2019 6:13 utc | 57

apropo of nowt in particular (AONIP) some may be interested to know about a case currently running in Australian courts about the way Oz security services kowtowed to global energy interests when it offered to build an administration block for the Timor Leste government following Indonesia’s scorched earth departure from Timor in 2002.
Dili the capital had no public service infrastructure still standing after the Javanese imperialists left, so the Australian government offered to build a new executive center as part of its Pacific foreign aid strategy. Unbeknownst to the Timorese a complex system of audio intelligence gathering was incorporated into the construction.
The bugs were used to spy on Timor’s negotiating team when Oz & Timor were arguing over the split of the Timor Gap oilfield, a huge prospect. How the final divvy-up goes is SFA economic interest to Oz the nation, but a vital interest of those energy corporations Australia is giving their share of the prospect to.
Translated: “Big mobs of ‘sweeteners’ to be had over here boys n girls”.
Apparently some old stick in the mud ASIS operative decided that swindling a neighbour, at that time whose children were starving cause the world’s newest nation state was totally poverty stricken, was not a decent use of Oz intelligence resources.
He blew the whistle – the ultimate result of which was a re-negotiation of the Timor Gap treaty.
Now 12 years later the ASIS agent and the security cleared lawyer the agent employed to help defend him, are up on espionage charges. A very silly servant of the elites Oz politician is going for putting out a fire with gasoline.
There is a 4 corners documentary with the details of this shameless betrayal of a loyal neighbour (East Timorese villagers bravely protected Aussie diggers from japanese arrest and execution during WW2) and how it led to Australia’s justified humiliation in the International Courts of Justice.
The doco titled “Secrets, Spies and Trials” can be found here

Posted by: A User | Sep 2 2019 7:30 utc | 59

@pretzelattack #42
Your tradition of zero credibility, ad hominem attacks continues.
Failure to address the data provided by “establishment” science shows just how weak a hand is being pressed in climate panicmongering.
What would be highly ironic would be if RCP8.5 follows the now generation old Hansen scenario A where emissions were at the worst case (i.e. business as usual), but temperatures didn’t follow.
In any case, the great thing about reality is that failure to predict will continue to destroy the credibility of those who cry wolf.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 2 2019 8:54 utc | 61

One of the key issues with the EU, one that the major and the uber-liberal members (France, Germany, UK until a couple of years ago) can’t see, because they’re always in the inside and barely hear about the EU dealing with smaller countries but only when it comes to negotiations with China or US, is that when the EU deals with weaker countries (including at times uncooperative smaller members, like Greece a few years ago), it just as bad as the US in strong-arming, racketeering and ordering around. The EU is very lucky that the USA does exist, because they take the bulk of the outrage against such behaviour, and EU members themselves are at times subject to such a shameful treatment and can routinely lament the hegemonic and autocratic US trends – if the USA didn’t exist, the EU would basically be the worst political power around. Let’s just say that it’s basically Vader at the end of The Empire strikes back: “We’ve altered the deal, this is what you’re going to do now and what you owe us, and pray we don’t alter it further in our favour”.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Sep 2 2019 9:40 utc | 63

Posted by: Hmpf | Sep 2 2019 10:13 utc | 67
Problem is people “believe” in what they see and not in science. Ecologically, it is getting to a point that is non reversible. Expected lifestyle per person wise, this point has been crossed during the last 100 years or so.

Posted by: somebody | Sep 2 2019 10:23 utc | 65

pommer report <=thoughtful images

Posted by: snake | Sep 2 2019 11:49 utc | 67

That’s an interesting opinion, given that the EU was created in 1993.

Posted by: Norwegian | Sep 2 2019 7:33 utc | 63
Yet another disingenuous comment from a Europhobe. A worn-out cliche you find twenty times a day (probably a substantial underestimate) in the British comment columns. “An ever closer union” was predicated in the Rome treaty of 1957. Everyone knew what was coming. Certainly the British did.
And in case you were going to come back with it, no, a federal European state is not likely. Nationalist forces don’t permit it.

Posted by: Laguerre | Sep 2 2019 12:34 utc | 69

Posted by: UN observer | Sep 1 2019 21:57 utc | 32
[Google translation of Macron]: “We are experiencing a crisis of the market economy. Some accumulate wealth, others are victims of undue inequalities. This crisis must lead us to recreate balances in our economies and regain our share of control.”
aka: Macronyism…

Posted by: Anacharsis | Sep 2 2019 12:48 utc | 71

@ Bill 77
CIA. . .largely depend on the military for airstrikes,. .
Yes, CIA also depends upon special forces, dating from (at least) Operation Phoenix times in Vietnam, assassinations on steroids. Also Trump has previously compared his Afghanistan strategy to the aerial destruction of Mosul (and many of its citizens) in Iraq.
This is why Taiban keeps fighting, currently attacking provincial capitals, because the “pullout” has become a farce.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 2 2019 13:45 utc | 73

“Yes, brexit was driven by the little people. A leaderless wholly organic group fed
pristine economic data by fellow little people named Robert Mercer Nigel Farage
and Steve Bannon proving to them how much better off they will be under
a populist nationalist government led by…the leaderless “little people” themselves.”
Donkeytale.
The industrial working class and the North in general have been opposed to the Common Market
for much longer than the internet has existed. Experience has demonstrated to them,
or what is left of them, that their fears were justified. Difficult as it has been to
assert their interests in the UK, in the EU it has become almost impossible. They have no political power.
Incidentally Brexit is merely the latest in a long series of popular rejections at the ballot box.
The net result of which has been the shying away from referenda. France and
the Netherlands clearly, rejected the EU Constitution. They have not been asked since.
The Constitution, on the other hand, essentially intact, is in operation.
The reality is very simple: the EU is and always has been an undemocratic
institution run by the worst sort of bureaucrats-those chosen by political patronage.
There is no intention of the EU’s institutions ever being made susceptible to
popular pressure. The “Parliament” is a powerless talking shop which has no real
power to impose its resolutions on the unelected Commissioners.
The real power in the EU lies with corporate lobbies and the US which
not only owns several member governments but through NATO and its basis,
massive military bases across and around Europe.
This article in the Boston Review, and the book discussed, is a
good intro to the ideological origins of the EU.
http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/j-w-mason-market-police
Throughout the EU it is obvious in whose interests it is being run:
in Germany, for example, the social safety net, established after the war,
has been greatly shrunken. The promises made to the east at re-unification have not been kept.
In order to justify the removal of unemployment benefits and the establishment of
a mini-job precarious economy it is always necessary to whistle up the worst elements
in politics, those closest to fascism. They are told that “reforms” are aimed at the
“lazy”, the ‘immoral'(unwed mothers) or “Economic immigrants” posing as refugees
(from countries pretending to have been invaded and reduced to rubble no doubt).
These are the Praetorian Guard of Capitalism. Thatcher invoked their support and
built them up into a powerful force. Macron is milking them for support as he
attempts to take France back to the glories of the ’30s- he rewards them by using the
police, and army, brutally repressing opposition.
It is all very well to conjure up nightmares (see above) in which the pathetic Bannon,
who couldn’t even influence Trump to keep him on the payroll, manipulates the world.
(And all is controlled by the same sort of internet alchemy that Russia was alleged
to have employed to elect Trump.) But the truth is much simpler. People voted
against the EU because their living standards have been declining rapidly for
decades. The Healthcare system is being dismantled-Laguerre’s hero Macron is
doing the same in France too. Social mobility, the chance for poor kids to get
educated and join the elites, is declining quickly: education is privatised,
the market rules. The weak suffer. Permanent full time work, with increasing
economic security has ended, for all but the privileged few (who do as they are bid).
Insecurity rules. And all these things are beginning to be seen demographically:
life expectancy for the many declines while that for the few rises.
Happily for the ‘political class’ and the intelligentsia-the journalists, the lobby
fodder back benchers and politicians at every level (whose pay and benefits are at
an all time high, everywhere), the pundits and academics- now divided into tenured
elites and a mass of freelances auditioning for decent pay and conditions, just like
everywhere else in society- the EU and the Empire are fine. They pretend not to see
what is wrong, the rot that has set in, the explosions that are bound to come. They
have never had it so good. And they will defend the EU to the death-or until they get
offered more to attack it.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 2 2019 14:19 utc | 75

A classic piece of ancient Bennism, bevin re 80, full of half-truths, and some outright falsehoods. You’re right the northern working class don’t need to eat, so we can re-erect the barriers on the frontiers, and trucks can wait for 30 hours to get their customs declarations right. They only go abroad for a holiday in the sun, so they won’t mind waiting an hour or two in the passport queue, like you do when you go to the States. They don’t need jobs either, because in order to attract inward investment, that would involve a relationship with the outside world. The decline in working class living has absolutely nothing to do with the EU, it’s rather the Tories in London, the ones who are leading Brexit, which is a massive deceit played on people in the UK. And yes, I do know, I come from such a working class family (2nd gen). You’ll find that the younger generation of working class people are today forced to move abroad to find work, and, yes, they go to the EU. Much as I was forced to get on my bike under Thatcher, and go and look for work in Europe. Your anti-EU obsession is facilitating the Brexit carve-up, so there will nothing left for ordinary people in the UK.
Oh yeah, and by the way Macron has not dismantled the health-care system in France. I can and do get as good treatment as I got 20 years ago. The people who are complaining are the one in the rural villages, because it’s difficult to attract doctors for one in each village. You’d do better to complain about the decline of the catholic church, where’s there’s only one priest for five, or six, or ten parishes, and you would only be able to go to mass every month or two. Now that’s real decline.

Posted by: Laguerre | Sep 2 2019 15:45 utc | 77

bevin I get it. In a better world there would be no need for the EU and globalisation would be a harmonious system driven by socialist humanist principles. Globalisation isnt going away. This is not to say I support or don’t support. This blog is a product of globalisation. We live in different countries and yet can easily
Communicate with each other. Capital transactions also occur instantaneously. Like all human endeavors it is a mixed bag with the potential for good and evil. But it is what it is and the masters everywhere will not let it go. China obviously included has benefitted tremendously as have the nations of Europe including Russia. The elites have tilted the field in their favour and this is the crux…rebalancing the economic distribution…
Surely you also get that this version is driven by and for the benefit of the ruling classes at the expense of the poor? The so-called cure is worse than the disease. Brexit is a dead end. It is completely controlled by a fascist element of the elites who sold the little people a bill of goods.
Far better in my view to work on changing the political dynamic imho towards income equality short term leading to socialism long term. A long difficult class struggle not an identity nationalist movement is required.
Brexit ain”t that movement.

Posted by: donkeytale | Sep 2 2019 15:54 utc | 79

nobody @76
What an excellent article. Sarcastic, satirical, and very real. The only one that can rival them in good press in the US is the Queen of England. Something the average thoroughly programmed US citizen will never understand.

Posted by: dltravers | Sep 2 2019 16:27 utc | 81

What we have today is a class divide that is so stark that it’s become a replay of unions vs. management (think GM vs. UAW).
In such a case, union solidarity becomes paramount. And that’s what Brexit ultimately is: rejecting the outsiders (aka “scabs”).
The “elites” call this racist because those outsiders drive down wages and help them to divide and conquer.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to have a political union. Many people in Europe believe that the EU is doing it the wrong way (not just British) but all objections have been squashed (until Brexit).
As I’ve previously noted, the problem for the EU is that if Brexit succeeds Italy may be next. The EU/Euro are projects where a Democratic choice is simply not allowed. And that grates on people that have been fooled into believing that they live in Democracy and their vote is paramount.
Welcome to the rabbit hole.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Sep 2 2019 16:44 utc | 83

once again.. when the people of Britain rely on the UK to solve their problem and to lead them to the way of justice for all the people of Britain, the people of Britain can count on being mislead.
if the people of Britain were to develop a new constitution and offer it to the masses for ratification. what would be the election result?
Governments have been preempted .. there is no correlation between those who operate the government and the rights of mankind.
Governments have become the gate keeper and slave driver for the powerful, rich and greedy and the
masses have been stuffed into a high tech people container where they are gated like mice in a cage,
feed propaganda 24/7 and programmed in true Pavlovian style..

Posted by: snake | Sep 2 2019 17:53 utc | 85

I have a name for your union JR: the Cranky Caucasian Conservatives Club or the CCCC as I like to call them.
The younger people, a majourity of whom tend to favour socialism, also favour remain. The majourity of the Labour Party favour remain. But bevin and you by all means pull up a rocking chair and organise organise organise. But hurry. Your revolutionary union is fast dwindling due to the effect of time.
Ignore the concerns of those with a future and align with those whose boats beating ceaselessly into the past, hitching your wagons to fascist clowns Trumpy and his trusty side kick BoJo and pretend this movement leads anywhere passed the graveyard.

Posted by: donkeytale | Sep 2 2019 19:06 utc | 87

donkeytale @92: Ignore the concerns of those with a future …
What kind of future will it be with a fake democracy?
What you are really advocating is thuggery:

Ignore the power plays of the elite … if you know what’s good for you.

If nothing else Epstein’s blackmailing has shown us that we can’t trust our elites. They act from selfish interest or on command of thugs that have compromised them.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Sep 2 2019 20:18 utc | 89

I’ll keep it very short and very simple.
The EU is a neo-liberal enterprise. That is what is was designed to be.
The point is to protect property from democracy. Neo-liberalism’s founders-von Mises
and Hayek never disguised their aim: to set up a supranational body to enforce rules
on national governments which would prevent those governments from instituting socialist policies.
Hayek not only worked for Thatcher. A fan of Mussolini’s he wrote constitutions for both
the Portuguese dictator Salazar and Pinochet.
Anyone who has access to the London Review of Books should look up the August 15th issue and
read Alexander Zevin’s review of Quinn Slobodian’s book “Globalists: The End of Empire and the
Birth of Neo-liberalism.”
Some years ago it struck me that the EU was a refoundation of the Hapsburg Empire.
I had no idea how close to the truth I was.
Leaving the EU, destroying the EU and other institutions like it is a necessary preliminary to
the introduction of socialist policies. Which, in turn, is the necessary means of tackling the
massive economic, social and environmental problems caused by capitalism.
It is not too much to say that Brexit is the first small step towards solving humanity’s
problems: all of which are the product of capitalist class rule.
Do not be surprised if you do not see these opinions in the MSM, the voice of capitalist class rule.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 2 2019 21:13 utc | 91

Third Worlders, grab your popcorn: the Western machine has entered into error mode, and is now doing color
revolutions on themselves. vk @ 8
Ha ha ha, vk, that is a wonderful line.
I’d make an exception for the Gilets Jaunes, which is grassroots. Which is why the MSM doesn’t cover it or in F
only to denigrate and minimize but not too strongly, oh the plebs deserve a say and demos must be allowed,
the MSM have that spiel down pat, some serious frowning, nervous foot tapping, being very worried about national unity,
discussions etc. that obfuscate and trail off into nebulous, meaningless, crap philosophy, side issues
personal stories, BS, etc.
Germany’s reunification was a monumental failure.
I believe this as well, and funnily enough just this evening I was at dinner with two Brits (two separate ppl,
both men with ‘intl’ positions), and mentioned this point, and they jumped on me, East G, was communist,
the communists did everything wrong, the place was a wreck. Implying it could not, ever, climb out of
its ‘hopeless condition’ while actually joining .. a supposedly ‘fair, efficient, performing’ economy
and a unity of ppl in some sense, post war repair, etc.
Very strange. Surely a decent ppl who escaped the clutches of Communism and the Stasi ‘horrors’…
should have blossomed !! Apparently not.
As the hors d’oeuvres were being served, in the interest of harmony, the topic was dropped.

Posted by: Noirette | Sep 2 2019 21:32 utc | 93

https://www.nordicmonitor.com/2019/08/turkeys-ruling-party-official-seen-brandishing-severed-head-in-syria/
“A Turkish Islamist militant who appeared in a video brandishing a decapitated head turned out to be an official of the youth branch of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) before joining the jihadist cause in Syria.
Emrah Çelik (born April 5, 1987), a member of the AKP youth branch in the Kapaklı district of northwestern Tekirdağ province, was seen posing in both a video and still shots while holding a severed head in his hand. The recording shows him saying that the victory belongs to Islamist jihadists and that whoever takes on Islam’s soldiers would share the same fate as the severed head, which he said belonged to a soldier in the Syrian regime forces. In the end he says victory belongs to Islam while raising a single index finger, similar to a gesture used by militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”

Posted by: reader | Sep 2 2019 21:53 utc | 95

https://www.nordicmonitor.com/2019/08/turkish-embassy-in-bulgaria-accused-us-of-staging-coup-against-erdogan/
“The Turkish Embassy in Sofia posted several social media messages in August accusing the US and its consulate staff of conducting clandestine operations to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.
Via its official postings on Twitter, the embassy claimed that Metin Topuz, a local staff member at the US Consulate General in İstanbul, had been in frequent contact with police officers who led a 2013 corruption investigation in Turkey and that the investigation was a “coup attempt” planned and staged by the US and the Gülen movement, a civic group that has been active in education, interfaith and intercultural dialogue and charity work in many countries.”

Posted by: reader | Sep 2 2019 21:55 utc | 97

@b: Please add the following line to your CSS file:

div.comments-body, div.comment-content { word-break: break-word; }

This will fix all word-wrapping problems. The “div.comments-body” selector selects all comment HTML elements. The “div.comment-content” selector selects the comment preview HTML element. The “word-break: break-word;” setting specifies the following behavior: if the word is too long to fit on the line, it will be moved to the next line; if it still doesn’t fit, it will be broken.
The reason the first page of the comments under this post looks okay to you is that you’re probably using Firefox. Firefox auto-breaks long words at forward slashes “/”, while Safari does not (it only auto-breaks at hyphens “-”). So everyone who uses an iPhone, an iPad, or a Mac sees a horribly stretched page. Also, you should know that if someone posts a link like http://website.com/something_something_(…)_something, it will stretch the page even in Firefox (because there’s only one forward slash after the domain name).
The solution I’m proposing fixes these problems. I’ve verified it under both Safari and Firefox.
Note that the Mozilla documentation lists the “word-break: break-word;” combination as deprecated, but it works fine (and will still work for many years); Mozilla’s recommended substitute “overflow-wrap: break-word;”, on the other hand, doesn’t work in Safari.
Also note that this line:

#comments-body p a { display: inline-flex; word-break: break-all;
}

in your CSS file does absolutely nothing, because “#comments-body” selector selects nothing (there is no HTML element with id=”comments-body”). You can safely remove it.

Posted by: S | Sep 2 2019 23:11 utc | 99