Friday, 30 August 2019

fahrenheit451:341

October 31st. had better eventuate. We had better Leave the EU on that date.
Just when you thought the interminably egregious, otiose cant and vacuous moralistic slogans of the EU funded seditionist Remain aka Peoples Vote campaign couldn’t delve any further into uncharted depths of paranoid delusion…
Corporate MSM and other platforms announce that, ” A judge sitting in Scotland’s highest civil court has rejected an interim interdict (injunction) to prevent to the suspension of parliament. Lord Doherty said he believed the full hearing set down for next Friday should be moved forward to Tuesday or Wednesday.”
The judicial foray in Edinburgh is contemporaneous with virtually similar legalistic manoeuvres in London and Belfast.
Parliament is being prorogued.Only this time, for the first time since Oliver Cromwell ,significant and influential sections of our metropolitan domiciled liberal europhile elite are keen to bring the uneducated masses into the polemical fray by dispensing their very own bowdlerised explanation of what is a pretty arcane, customary and heretofore uneventful parliamentary / constitutional mechanism.
Having insidiously slandered, defamed and demonised the 17.4 million, with a pathological intensity not heard since Josef Goebbels apogee ,the EU funded seditionist cabal are finding themselves desperately short of any appropriately nuanced denunciations of Prime Minister Johnson and his government. 
Even the customary bulk Remaoner hashtags have lapsed into quasi-comedic parody, simply through lack of editorial oversight;
#NoDealBrexit is trending as #NoDealBreixt and #StopTheCoup went sideways twice as #StopTheCoupe and #StopTheCoop .
The already lamentably procrastinating parliamentary persiflage lapsed quickly into the piteous ,uni-student common room agitator-manque speak ,best embodied by that fat stupid Scots twerp Ian Blackford whose record is stuck on calling our Prime Minister as a dictator.
And way too many Labour /other left commentators and academics self identifying as “marxist” have established now beyond reasonable dialectical doubt that they in fact have never been or are even remotely now, Marxist.

Saturday, 24 August 2019

fahrenheit451:340

Brexit having sucked virtually all the political debating oxygen out of the UK polity these last few years, has as I’ve posted before, curbed my penchant and enthusiasm for blogging from a previous average of 8 or 9 blog posts per month down to a bare average of 5 such posts per month.
And even that has me rummaging around , often in previous years for the really substantive posts on Brexit.
Even the predominant themes and issues currently holding sway in the West has been reduced to some kind of near-paranoia concerning The Peoples’ Republic of China and its economic prowess.
The imbroglio in Syria gets little coverage across the corporate MSM in comparison to what it once did 4 or 5 years ago.Mainly because the Syrian government forces with Russian and Iranian assistance have in large part prevailed.The US and its deluded EUNATO satrapies have neither the will,appetite or logistics any more to seriously alter the ,now seemingly ineluctable outcome.Only quasi-bankrupt Turkey under the egotistical maniacal leadership of Erdogan is still in position to perpetuate the looming folly of a third world war by accident or miscalculation.
Trump meanwhile causes barely concealed sniggering in enquring after the availability of Greenland for purchase by the USA.
Yes, it was ,as it turns out being serious. Snark turned to faux- outrage,compounded by his unilateral cancelling of a state visit to Denmark after their Premier stated the blindingly obvious that its territory of Greenland was not up for sale.
And in conclusion, even the last chance saloon ,eleventh hour desperate gamble against overwhelming diplomatic odds to force through Brexit by Premier Johnson seems to be to enamoured of caution and overshadowed by the ghost of premiers past such as May rather than the putative future seemingly vouchedsafe to the Leave voters.
Postscript – The Amazon Rainforest is burning. Quite a lot it seems.Cue Saint Greta and more eco-millenarian hysteria from leading western politicians.

Monday, 19 August 2019

fahrenheit451:339

If muskets and halberds were to hand,then all sides in the Brexit debate would by now have resorted to using them.
The current version of Leave / Remain -whatever happens next ,has the UK bidding the 27 adieu on October 31st.
And,of course the interminable exchange of invective and partisan ideological opinion,half-truth  and intemperate persiflage continues unabated; only the hashtags have changed and continue to do so over time.
#Yellowhammer refers to the cache of civil service documents exploring  possible scenarios of economic difficulties the UK might encounter following our actual departure from the EU,were it to go ahead,on October 31.
#RecallParliament is the cri de coeur of disparate forces under the Remain banner who are convinced that Prime Minister Johnson will in effect force the UK into what they feel is a wholly precipitous departure from the EU on October 31 via potential machinations involving what might be considered violations of acceptable parliamentary procedure.
However the  “Public Law for Everyone ” site sheds some considerable insight and understanding on the entire constitutional imbroglio. Herewith gleaned in full…

The Brexit Secretary says he has “set in stone” the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 — but the legal significance of this misleading claim is very limited

Earlier today, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Stephen Barclay MP, posted a tweet saying that he had “signed the legislation setting in stone the repeal” of the European Communities Act 1972 (ECA). (The ECA is the UK statute that gives effect to EU law in the UK’s domestic legal system.) He went on to assert that this is a “landmark moment” because it “underlines that we are leaving the EU on 31 October”.
Steve Barclay MP
✔@SteveBarclay
I have signed the legislation setting in stone the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972. This is a landmark moment in taking back control of our law. It underlines that we are leaving the EU on October 31.
View image on Twitter
There is no legal reason why this could not happen again — and, crucially, bringing section 1 of the EUWA into force makes absolutely no difference to this point. Whether section 1 is in force or not, it only produces legal effects from “exit day”. It follows that if, for example, Parliament were to require the Government to seek, and if the European Council were to grant, a further Article 50 extension, the definition of “exit day” could be further amended in order to ensure that the ECA was repealed only with effect from the new, later date of the UK’s departure from the EU.  This, in turn, means that — contrary to his claim — the Brexit Secretary has not “set in stone” the repeal of the ECA. The EUWA explicitly contemplates that “exit day” can be changed in order to enable it to be aligned with the actual date of the UK’s departure from the EU.
This leads on to a further, and critical, point. “Exit day” is a concept whose relevance liis wholly in domestic law. It is the date on which various provisions of the EUWA swing into action, in order to ensure that the domestic legal consequences of leaving the EU are appropriately managed — including by converting vast swathes of EU law into domestic law. However, the domestic definition of “exit day” has no bearing whatever on when and whether the UK leaves the EU. That is a matter that is governed exclusively by EU law. Similarly, whether the ECA is in force or not has no bearing on whether or when the UK leaves the EU — although if the UK were to repeal the ECA before leaving the EU, it would immediately be in breach of EU law. From this, it follows that whether the ECA is repealed or not is neither here nor there when it comes to whether or when the UK leaves the EU. All it is relevant to is whether, for as long as it remains a member, the UK does or does not comply with the legal obligations under the EU Treaties that are binding on it in international law.
All of this demonstrates that the legal significance of bringing section 1 of the EUWA into force is extremely limited. It does not “set in stone” the repeal of the ECA, because the legal meaning of “exit day” can be changed and the date of the ECA’s repeal deferred. It does not prevent the UK Government from seeking an Article 50 extension. It does not prevent Parliament from legislating to require the UK Government to seek an Article 50 extension. It does not prevent the European Council from granting an extension if the UK Government asks for one, whether of its own volition or at Parliament’s insistence. And it does not prevent Parliament, if it so wishes, from legislating to revoke the UK’s notification under Article 50, thereby stopping the Brexit process in its tracks. The politics, of course, are another thing. But any suggestion that ECA repeal has been “set in stone”, or that this somehow locks in 31 October as the inevitable date of the UK’s departure from the EU, is wrong as a matter of law. ECA repeal, and Brexit itself, are no more “set in stone” today than they were in the spring, when “exit day” was twice redefined in domestic law and the Article 50 period was twice extended as a matter of EU law.


And so it goes…

Saturday, 10 August 2019

fahrenheit451:338

As the major Western powers continue their slide into irrelevance and become increasingly mired in the imbroglios of their own metropolitan ruling elites'making; bigger problems and more pressing issues of international import continue to spiral out of control even as the main western actors distance themselves from the realms of global, diplomatic Realpolitik.

The Trump administration's largely contrived trade contretemps with the PRC and the UK's almost sublimely surreal implementation / revocation of the EURef2016 decision to Leave the EU still hold centre-stage.

And meanwhile Syria and its peoples burn. This update on the atavistic urges of Turkish President Erdogan's drive to re-invent an ottoman empire,gleaned from SMM Syria  :

"  As Turkey and the United States achieved an agreement on the fate of Northern Syria, the legal government of Syrian Arab Republic has strongly condemned it claiming that this achievement constitutes a flagrant aggression against Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

While the sides of talks call the results of negotiations as “good start”, international community continues to keep silence and prefer not to comment why two independent states shape the destiny of the third one. Neither UN representatives nor Arab League countries pay its attention on the talks and are still unmoved by Northern Syria.

Nowadays Turkey is the state which tries to play a double game in Syria but falls between two stools. On the one hand the United States of America – Turkey’s NATO ally –  consider Syrian Kurds as the closest partner in Syrian conflict. That’s the main reason why Turkey presidents’ threats are still on the “threat” level.

We’ve asked political commentator and Middle East researcher Marwa Osman her opinion on this issue. According to Marwa Osman the main goal which stands behind the talks between Turkey and the United States is the annexation of Northern Syria.

“What Turkey and the US are trying to do is to fight over who shall annex northern Syria first. They will both fail. The US is not capable of doing so militarily and Turkey will doom itself out of any future resolution if it continues to illegally occupy Syrian land. Turkey needs to remember that occupation creates resistance. Turkey won’t be able to handle the resistance…or at least for now since Erdogan is not doing so good politically in Turkey to begin with”, – Osman said.

“Northern Syria is Syrian. Kurds in Syria are Syrians even if they still support the American occupation of eastern Syria. This war will not end until all illegal foreign presence is removed. If you are a state not invited by the sovereign Syrian government then you will have to leave or face the consequences”, – Osman added.

On the other hand Hayat Tahrir al Sham militant group, which is partly funded by Turkish officials, looses its positions in Idlib province. Despite the agreement which was reached by the states of Astana format, Turkey continues to ignore its obligations regarding the de-escalation zone. It results in sufferings of civilians who lives in HTS-held areas. "


There you have it,two foreign powers both having violated Syria's territorial integrity and engaged in military action contrary to International Law.

In Erdogan's case,he instigated a reckless foreign military adventure designed to shore up his rapidly depleting domestic political stranglehold on the levers of power.The Turkish Lira is perpetually under siege on foreign currency markets,his country's credit rating is shot to hell and gone and domestic inflation and increasing unemployment are all heaping up social & economic powder kegs waiting for a match.

In Trump's case,he is utterly under the direction and influence of born again Washington neocon hawks who having gorged themselves on the spoils of militarism during the Bush and Clinton years are back for second helpings on a drastically curtailed foreign policy menu offering only charred remnants and slim pickings from what they had originally planned as a universal Arab Spring and a swathe of " colour " revolutions across the former USSR's landscape.

And so it goes...

Saturday, 3 August 2019

fahrenheit451:337

Without too much further recapitulation; I posted this under fahrenheit451:337 on 4 August 2018.
The existential threat to life and the pursuit of liberty has,in the interim,increased exponentially;we have ineluctably become less ” free ” to express our beliefs and views than when I blogged this a year ago…
A couple of weeks or so ago, members of the Manchester University Students Union Executive ordered the painting over of a Rudyard Kipling poem in their building that had been put there as part of some recent very expensive renovations.
Their official rationale for this impromptu act of philistinism was that Kipling represented white patriarchy and racism.Or something along those lines.
Welcome to the alternate cosmic reality that is:- Virtue signalling,socialjustice warriors,safe-spaces,no-platforming; in other words the full unmitigated gamut of contemporary western identity / gender politics intruding into cultural and artistic expression.
Poetry was mainstream,controversial and exciting. And so it proved to be again a few days ago,when a largely unknown,unremarkable american poet-manque was thrust into the glaring headlines of social media when one of his poems got published.
I was going to recapitulate at length and had fully intended to do so,but occasionally,very rarely indeed someone says all I was going to on the matter at hand.
Here’s the New York Post  from 2 august 2018.- ” The PC police are ruining poetry ”

A mediocre poet wrote a mediocre poem. The Nation decided to publish it.
In a normal world, criticism of the poem, and of the poet, would center on the quality — or lack thereof — of the work. But we don’t live in a normal world anymore.
Anders Carlson-Wee’s 14-line poem “How-To” is not much more than a collection of indiscriminate ramblings. Percy Shelley, he is not. But neither was it offensive.
Apparently, the Twittersphere disagreed. And in the wake of criticism, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith, the Nation’s poetry editors, penned an apology that was longer, and significantly more disappointing, than the original poem. They claimed to have made “a serious mistake by choosing to publish the poem,” and insisted they were “sorry for the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem.”
The poem reads as Carlson-Wee’s top tips to the homeless on how to secure donations. He advises those who live hard lives to say they are even harder: “if you got hiv,” Carlson-Wee writes, “say aids.” “If you’re a girl, say you’re pregnant,” and so on.
That the editors chose to capitulate to the loud voices of an ever-growing mob is bad enough. That they chose not to stand by a person and a poem they decided to publish is even worse. But what’s most disturbing is this: “Some of our readers have asked what we were thinking. When we read the poem we took it as a profane, over-the-top attack on the ways in which members of many groups are asked, or required, to perform the work of marginalization. We can no longer read the poem in that way.”
What the editors have effectively announced to the public is that they, people who presumably have some training or background in the study of poetry, cannot stand by their interpretation of a poem once they have had their eyes opened to the critiques of an activist mob.
Spend five minutes in a high-school poetry class, and you’ll learn that great — and even mediocre — poetry is layered. That multiplicity of meaning and of interpretation is precisely the point. But now there’s only one way of looking at things. Write a poem that someone, somewhere will interpret as offensive, and the hordes will descend.
The left has been silencing voices it disagrees with for a long time. First, it was the far right. Then it was centrists. Now it’s anyone — even a good soldier of the left — who dares to once open their mouths and contradict the illiberal zeitgeist. Not even comedians get a pass.
For a while, it seemed that this determination to control speech would limit itself to the political sphere. But there’s no denying that it has fixed its aim at art.
The editors had a perfect opportunity to stand by the poem, and the poet, and say that criticism or letters to the editor were one thing, but that they would not be cowed into issuing any sort of apology for daring to publish art that offended some people.
But they failed — and the poet, Carlson-Wee, failed as well. He pinned his own apology on his Twitter account, writing that he “intended for this poem to address the invisibility of homelessness,” but that it clearly “doesn’t work.” He went on to apologize for “treading anywhere close to blackface,” which is apparently what we now call it when people write from the perspective of others.
Carlson-Wee called the fact that he did not “foresee this reading of the poem and the harm it could cause . . . humbling and eye-opening.” He’s now “reevaluating what it means to make art in this world from a place of privilege.”
Poets have often gone against the grain and earned their share of criticism. During his lifetime, and in the immediate aftermath of his death, much was made of the unconventional life choices that Percy Shelley had made. His critics were preoccupied by his philandering and his unapologetic atheism, qualities that were not as tolerated or smiled upon as they are today.
In one of his greatest essays, he mused: “I have found my language misunderstood like one in a distant and savage land.”
We are living in savage times. If only our artists would stand up and say so.
Daniella Greenbaum is a writer living in New York.

Amen.