fahrenheit451:128

The trouble with people who suffer from paranoid delusions is that, clearly there might well indeed be someone out to get them. But not right now. Various cities across  Britain were ,on Monday 20 February once again awash with the flotsam and jetsam of placard waving detritus. Yes, exactly the same shills out earning their CIA funded stipend who were placard waving and reciting platitudes with all the fervour of a papist penitent the previous week,were out metaphorically flagellating their own consciences yet again. #stoptrump was supposed to be the catechism,although as the seemingly interminable hours of faux-rhetoric and student common room sedition passed, all manner of vituperative hyperbole ended up getting spouted and placards waved at it. #brexit was a popular target along with plaintive invocations against racism,islamophobia and the recently rediscovered complaint of xenophobia. The most bizarre rant amongst such a crowded field of idiolect terminology was the now trending and therefore fashionable lamentation involving the fate of EU citizens working and sojourning within the borders of the UK. For those who genuinely haven't the foggiest notion as to how the world came to have such a thing as an " EU citizen ",it maybe worth noting how this quasi-legal abortion came into existence. Via the 1992 Maastricht treaty as it happens. Which is :-

The Maastricht Treaty (formally, the Treaty on European Union or TEU) undertaken to integrate Europe was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands.^[1] On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Councilwhich drafted the treaty.^[2] Upon its entry into force on 1 November 1993 during the Delors Commission,^[3] it created the European Union and led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro. The Maastricht Treaty has been amended by the treaties of Amsterdam, Nice andLisbon.

A referendum was expected to take place in the United Kingdom in 2006 to decide whether the country should ratify the proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. However, following the rejection of the Constitution by similar referendums in France in May 2005 and the Netherlands in June 2005, the UK vote was postponed indefinitely. The question was rendered moot when the constitution was superseded by the Treaty of Lisbon, which Parliament ratified in 2008 without holding a referendum.

Well bollocks to all of that! Schadenfreude all around.

fahrenheit451:124

Yawn. Either the world has in fact gone crazy or a voluble,volatile cadre of faux-leftists are trying to make it appear so. The Democratic Party and its global elite corporate backers were never ever going to accept Donald Trump's maverick,outsider victory over their chosen one, HRC. The historically moribund and existentially irrelevant forces of the liberal ( and on paper not so liberal ) Left across the West are simply a situationist ,performance installation art re-enactment society on a grandiose scale. #stoptrump rallies/marches/demonstartions were promoted with  Pravda propagandist alacrity across the UK for Saturday,February 4 2017. Alas the heroic vanguard of Slogans With Placards was missing some of its stalwarts:-

Gill Mooney

5 mins · Leeds · 

 I'm afraid I'm full of cold today, so I can't come

  Will Shaw

21 hrs · 

Would love to attend but unfortunately have prior engagements!

.................

The future, let alone any tomorrow clearly will never belong to them!

 

fahrenheit451:119

 A few days ago ,once upon a time,barely remembered Civil rights agitator, now Congressman, John Lewis slandered,defamed and demeaned the American Constitution, the legitimacy and outcome of democratic elections and the office of POTUS,whilst making a clearly intended libellous attack on President-elect Trump himself. The MSM and virtually all media platforms reported the basic facts as:-

On Saturday, Georgia congressman  and former Civil rights activist,Lewis told NBC News that he did not regard the incoming president as legitimate. Within hours,Trump criticised the Democrat congressman in a tweet, " “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart".

The " Guardian " somewhat triumphantly noted that :-

Hours,after Trump tweeted: two graphic novels and a memoir by Lewis took the top three spots on Amazon.

Here's how the " Guardian " in its usual exemplary PC liberal,global multicultural elitist tones concluded its massively distorted " report " on what began as  Lewis' egregious verbal broadcast assault on Trump.

" Donald Trump’s attempt to discredit US politician and hero of the civil rights movement John Lewis in a series of tweets has backfired. "...

Defending one's own integrity and the Office of the President by countering an initial unprovoked assault is somehow rendered as " Trump's attempt to discredit Lewis.."

Clearly, the liberal elites and their MSM lackeys have deep seated issues, not least of which is their innate propensity to mimic Goebbels whenever the going gets a little too tough even for them.

Citing Humpty Dumpty or even " 1984 " would be lost on those liberals.

fahrenheit451:110

Ken Loach's current film , " I, Daniel Blake " has had a significant an impact as any film in the last 30 years. As someone who was wrongly sanctioned in 2015 by politically motivated scoundrels,thieves and liars ;a placement Charity, Interserve and DWP - I know what it feels like to get shat on from the great heights of a Stasified state apparatus. I won my Sanctions Appeal on October 1st 2015. I still maintain and refresh my dedicated facebook page ,#DansLaMerde which served as the fulcrum for a pretty effective social media campaign which I conducted from April 2015 when I was first denounced and recommended for punitive sanctions. Comments to a more recent report on the ineffectiveness and massive implementation expenses of the Benefits Sanctions Regime, argued that the very existence of foodbanks helps to encourage DWP staff to issue Sanctions against claimants. Two years ago  at thoughts.com ,kulturist no.446 on 8 December 2014, I addressed not too dissimilar concerns aired in Parliament.

The trouble with " moral outrage " is that you need to identify who in fact is generating it and what the supposed object of the " outrage " is.  People suffering  Hunger ; that's a good one to start with. In conditions more shocking than can be seen in Congolese refugee camps ; wow,that's another one. Let's complete the picture ; The Church of England and two of the three largest parties in parliament all agree on the aforementioned. Blimey, it's serious after all. The Daily ten plagues Mail asserts its usual place in the media ruck and maul of such issues with :-

" The all-party Commons group on hunger warned that some parents spend far too much money on cigarettes, alcohol, takeaways and other ‘non-essential items of expenditure’ because they lack basic budgeting skills.

Many more cannot cook even the simplest meals for their children – leaving them to go hungry.

The MPs call upon teachers to do more to report parents from chaotic households so they can receive help from ‘troubled families’ units.

However, they conclude: ‘We should not leave the duty resting with schools. Parents have duties, and these duties are not abated by the chaos resulting from their lifestyle.’

The report, Feeding Britain, is released today. Chaired by Labour MP Frank Field, the all-party group calls for:

• A new publicly funded body, also to be called Feeding Britain, to work towards a ‘hunger-free’ UK with the help of eight Cabinet ministers;
• Bigger food banks to distribute more free food, and advise how to claim benefits and make ends meet;
• A rise in the minimum wage, and the provision of free school meals to children even during school holidays;
• New measures to make it harder to withhold benefits, including ‘yellow cards’ instead of outright bans; and
• A request from the Government for food bank funding from Brussels.

As a Christian,revolutionary activist and campaigner I argue that it would be politically counter-productive and socially regressive to implement any single one of the five bullet points mentioned above.For in truth there is no food crisis ,there are no shortages.No-one is starving in Britain.Lost in their own little Narnia-worlds of soon-to-be-nice to one another again; heretics and traitors to the Reformation and heretics and traitors to the cause of Organised Labour are trying belatedly to save ,not the masses from further suffering,but rather the Ruling Elites from their own hubrisitc follies that have brought us all to the edge of something rather wonderful and exciting;not seen in this country or in Europe properly since the 1640's.
They act and posture naively , as if all of this has nothing at all to do with the inexorable logic of  the immutable historic Laws governing the accumulation and centralisation of Capital and the attendant and necessary socio-economic developments that accompany such remorseless economic Laws. The point of the global system of Usurer-Capitalism is the continuing,unabated and increasing exploitation and pauperisation of the mass of the proletariat and sub-proletariat as a natural consequence of the inherent and intrinsically dysfunctional division of wealth and appropriation thereof by the 1% Ruling Elites. Their sole purpose of all of this, is for their own self-gratification and self-aggrandisement ;the fulfilment of their immutable historic destiny of the 1% ; to utterly consume as much of  the planet's wealth irrespective of any implied social/humanitarian cost to the 99 % and the state of the planet itself. The point of exploitation is,as Orwell pointed out, exploitation.

 

fahrenheit451:109

Elections, referendums* (* referenda is the correct Latin plural,but we're not in Ancient Rome ) here there and every bleedin' where. The thing with Democracy is that you can never have too much of it. Back in the 1640's the Levellers- the radical wing of the Parliamentary forces- were calling for annual parliaments for heaven's sake.Four Centuries on and we still haven't got there.  The current fashionable theory amongst left-liberal inclined intellectuals-manque is that in the event of any election/referendum result going against their expected and hoped for outcome,then the default explanation of any such unlikely occurrence is that those who contributed to the actual verdict were somehow misled,misinformed,mistaken and misjudged,miscalculated the consequences of them individually and collectively casting their votes in the way that they did; i.e. against the explicit,considered,expert and wise advice of the commentariat/academics,experts and men of vast experience who truly understood the issues being voted upon. My, that was a bit long winded - but I went for it anyway. Today happens to be Saturday, 3rd December and the metropolitan-domiciled elites' ideological war drums are already beating all across MSM. Tomorrow,Sunday 4th December there is to be a plebiscite in Italy regarding proposals from the incumbent Premier,Renzi on the streamlining of Italy's constitution, which he amongst others feels is too cumbersome and no longer fit for contemporary purpose. Across the border over in Austria, due to a preceding procedural cock-up, there is the re-run of what had been an excruciatingly closely run Presidential contest between the Green Party's Van Der Bellen and the Freedom Party's Hofer. the likeliest of outcomes in both referendum and presidential Election will not be to the liking of the elites and their shills in the political classes in western europe. The oppositional 5 Star Movement is mounting a dynamic campaign for a " No " vote against Renzi, and Hofer's Freiheitliche Partei ought to attain a valuable,if largely wholly symbolic victory. I shall certainly be celebrating with unalloyed joy and basking in either or both such tremendous outcomes tomorrow.

fahrenheit451:098

The law should not compel businesses to aid political messages

On October 24 ,2016, the Appeal Court in Belfast  ruled that a local Christian-run business, Ashers Bakery, was wrong to refuse to decorate a cake with a pro-gay marriage message.Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said :-

“This verdict is a defeat for freedom of expression. As well as meaning that Ashers can be legally forced to aid the promotion of same-sex marriage,It seems that businesses cannot now lawfully refuse a customer’s request to propagate a message,even if the business has a conscientious objection to it." Tatchell concluded,“Although I strongly disagree with Ashers opposition to marriage equality, in a free society neither they nor anyone else should be compelled to facilitate a political idea that they oppose."

The Appeal Court ruling shows the extent of anti-Christian sentiment in our Society and just how far the bedrock of Western civilisation has been marginalised over the decades by a relentless campaign of institutionalised political vilification and slander. This does not bode well for the future. The sound we can all hear is that of the metropolitan elitist jackboots trampling down our historic liberty.

fahrenheit451:097

Otto von Bismarck is credited with uttering the aphorism that, " decisions are not made by the ballot box but by blood and iron ". And if you factor in the abrasive north German timbre it was originally delivered in, it will strike the largely,but not exclusively feminized 21st.century reader as being a somewhat harsh thing to say. Bismarck epitomised the art of Machiavellian realpolitik. Doing that which circumstances and logic deem it is necessary and effective to do. It's only Society's contemporary,feminized, ideologically debilitated  faux-intellectuals who would think otherwise. Let's be clear about our nation's current contrived and convoluted predicament; the Verdict of the 23rd. June referendum on the question of the UK's continued incorporation within the EU was blood and iron by other means. It heralded a singular historic moment of evolutionary transformation as significant as the Reformation of 1534 or the indictment and execution  in 1649 of Charles I or the Bloodless Revolution of 1688 ,( take your pick,since all three were intimately interwoven ). Were it not so decisive a shift in the political tectonic plates, there'd be no reason or purpose to  headlines such as this from the Independent of October 18 :-

Brexit legal challenge live: Final day of arguments heard against Article 50 being triggered without vote

" The outcome will decide whether Britain can leave the EU without it going through Parliament first." Well actually,no bloody chance not unless the bourgeoisie really do want a taste of real blood and feel some real iron.
What followed the 52%-48% Verdict in favour of #Leave was an appallingly conceited and hubristic public outpouring of contempt,loathing and visceral hatred by the supporters of the defeated Remain campaign toward those of the Electorate who voted Leave.  The  accompanying baying chorus of  stigmatisation and opprobrium was and remains breathtaking in its scope. epithets such as Racist, xenophobic, and just about every other calumny under the sun has been hurled with limp wristed impetuosity at the 17.4 million electors whose votes prevailed over the Phalange of eurozealots, Pharisees, #LabourIn etc. the ballot box is the site of struggle, it is no mere affectation or phantasm or denial of reality. Blood and iron are transcendent metaphors. Then again if those remain bastards really want to push matters...
Addendum : 19 October:- N.B. Starmer's concluding paragraph at the end of the report.

fahrenheit451:096

A lot of people, especially the rabble of benchwarmers of all parties in the House of Commons chamber,have been getting rather upset these last few days about yet another issue they can do nothing about other than have a collective pseudo-moral hissy fit over.  To put the aforementioned's hissy fit in context; The US and its NATO satrapies have, one recalls this past quarter century, pretty much screwed things up royally in a whole host of formerly stable, sovereign nation states. Iraq,Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,Iraq a second time,Libya and Syria. I exclude the Ukraine from this inglorious litany for the simple reason that NATO hasn't actually bombed anyone or anything as yet in that particular theatre of operations. Back to Syria. Said H.o.C. benchwarmers in August 29.2013 REJECTED a government motion that Parliament authorise UK military intervention in Syria in response to the alleged use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians. Fast forward to December 2 2015 and this time said H.o.C. AUTHORISED UK military airstrikes in Syria directed exclusively against ISIS/DAESH. As the former Head of MI6 observed whilst appearing of BBC Radio4's " Today " program, you can't really fight against both sides at once in a conflict. He ought to have added especially in a three plus sided conflict at that. The much vaunted and lauded sanctioned airstrikes in 2015, with the involvement of 2 planes and no actual effective strikes have been just a waste of effort. All the planning and conspiratorial shenanigans of the EU and NATO in their various forums trying to cajole the myriad hornets' nests of " moderate " i.e. non-ISIS opposition forces in Syria including Al Qaeda to evolve into something that can be financed and supplied with weapons-that too hasn't really worked for the US and its grandiose designs on a post-Assad Syria. And so we come to the five years long siege of Aleppo. Only this time, the faux wrath and ire of the H.o.C. benchwarmers is directed at Russia because it has been lending military assistance to the constitutional government of Syria.  How odd it appears that in International Law, let alone accepted norms of global diplomacy and peacetime relationships between Sovereign states,that the parliamentary body of one state whose armed forces are operating in and across Syria openly and covertly WITHOUT the permission of Damascus, denounces the actions of another state who ARE operating  in Syria WITH the permission of Damascus. Odder still, that the legally legitimate actions of Russia in conjunction with Syria are deemed to constitute a war crime comparable with Nazi Germany's use of the Luftwaffe in Civil War Spain of the 1930's.  Such is the destitution of learning and paucity of historic fact checking within the House of Commons that they are ignorant of when the term War Crimes actually entered the lexicon. Germany's intervention in 1930's Spain was never characterised by contemporary sources as a " war crime ". Whilst at the time Britain and France observed a strict neutrality that included a refusal to render any assistance whatsoever to the besieged, legitimate Republican Spanish government. Foreign Secretary Johnson's wantonly provocative call for demonstrations in front of the Russian Embassy in London are the classic tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing; as for Johnson himself, he is a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more..

Footnote:-

see also this blog #081 on 25 August 2016

fahrenheit451:095

Quite a lot of people, predominantly in academia and amongst the media Commentariat have been terribly upset recently by a thoroughly sound and common sense suggestion made by HMG's Home Secretary during the Tory party conference. Companies ought to publish data on the numbers of non-British workers in their employ.There was,headlined  in the relentless  24/7 media  environment a report of compulsion,which added a certain frisson to the original idea as floated. The egotistical rabble of Metropolitan domiciled,hard core eurozealots went into their customary righteous meltdown over a subject and an issue they have no real life,lived experience of nor even some remote understanding and empathy with. At present the previous non-announcement has been clarified; Companies won't have to make available any data on the composition of nationalities on their books. There, happy? well the antidemocratic,Seditionists of the eurozealot,anti-British, Remain campaign are not in business to seek contentment - all they want is to maintain unrestricted competition in the national labour market and to perpetuate falling wage levels and the marginalisation of British workers. Nominally UK based Job Agencies and their booming Zero Hours contracts goldrush can only become ever more rapaciously profitable if there is an endless supply of migrant labour as at present. There are of course, an infinite number of possibilities in any set of negotiations but usually the protagonists tend to stick to what they see as a handful of manageable options. How's this for one; which I originally emailed to my local/regional newspapers early in September :-

" A strong negotiating position would be that only citizens of EU member states prior to January 2004 ,might be eligible to apply for extended residency permits.This measure would provide a substantial corrective to the indiscriminate and unprecedented imbalances and disadvantages foisted on the UK  who in 1975 only previously consented to be part of a 6 member states group and nothing more."...

As any experienced competent negotiator knows, the process of negotiating tends to resemble a game of Poker.Bluff ,counter bluff and raising the stakes are intrinsic to the process itself. How skilled any side is, determines the likelihood of them getting most of what they want

A grasp of these rudimentary principles seem to be eluding our government as they near the time for invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and so begin the  process of " Brexit "from the EU. Apart from the disillusioned euro-fanatics of the defeated Remain campaign, the consensus is that we want to maximise the advantages and benefits for the UK predicated on what are basic objectives - reasserting our sovereign control of our borders which entails ending the EU imposed diktat of free movement of labour. 

it does not bode well that,even before substantive talks begin, our future negotiating position is compromised by specious and ill formed public concessions to the defeatist agenda of the likes of LabourIn,most of whose 200 MPs are wildly out of step with their own constituents. Brexit need not be a long complicated process,nor does it have to be dragged out over the prescribed two years. It is axiomatic that in any given negotiation the side that is most determined wins. 

Rather than capitulate before  a card is dealt, let's declare a moratorium on  the moribund and no longer fit for purpose freedom of movement for labour. Given the 40+ years of economic and social depradations inflicted upon us by the EU, let's have a general reset on what are " guest workers " from the EU,whose rights have as of 23 June de facto been rescinded,A strong negotiating position would be that only citizens of EU member states prior to January 2004 ,might be eligible to apply for extended residency permits.This measure would provide a substantial corrective to the indiscriminate and unprecedented imbalances and disadvantages foisted on the UK  who in 1975 only previously consented to be part of a 6 member states group and nothing more.

Company lists could have been a pathway to a transparent and accountable system of managing what is,after all, the economic and social aftermath of a 40 year long tsunami.

fahrenheit451:091

When erudition no longer avails one has to resort to using facts.  On Friday June 24th.2016,Independence Day dawned for the People of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And as the tsunami shock waves of that Historic National Epiphany spread exponentially across the world, the high powered, entrenched forces of ( Metropolitan-domiciled ) Wealth,Elitism and Neoliberlism set in motion their putative counter revolution. Once upon a time such malevolent conspirators would have been dealt with by the now sadly absent Sedition Act of 1661. Nowadays it falls to the People themselves and the true ,honest and authentic representatives of their expressed Will,to deal with such unconstitutional perturbations. We are The Watchmen of our democratic polity now and for the forseeable future. The Sanctity and inviolability of that uniquely sublime and transcendent inheritance must be secured and History has appointed by fiat those who shall fulfill that duty and render invaluable service to generations yet unborn. Here are the facts, as gleaned from some excellent post-referendum numbers crunching from, Chris Hanretty, Reader in Politics, University of East Anglia.

The results of the referendum were not announced according to Westminster constituencies, but by local authority area. 

Chris Hanretty

Reader in Politics, University of East Anglia.

Aug 18

Revise estimates of Leave vote share in Westminster constituencies

Shortly after the referendum I published estimates of the share of the vote won by Leave in parliamentary constituencies in England and Wales. These estimates showed that most parliamentary constituencies in England and Wales had voted to Leave (421 of 574 if you're counting), and that most Labour-held seats had also voted to Leave.The difference between the two estimates are slight. 32 constituencies were formerly estimated to have voted Leave, but are now estimated to have voted Remain; 11 went the other way. This means a net change of +21 for Remain in England and Wales. Including Scotland, this means that 401 of 632 constituencies (63%) are now judged to have voted for Leave.

Hanretty estimated that 7 out of 10 Labour held parliamentary constituencies voted for Leave.

Some more facts:- Of the present 230 Labour Members of Parliament, only 10 openly declared themselves for the Leave campaign and as such formed the #LabourLeave campaign ; their 220 " comrades " organised #LabourIn.

Final fact:- The 2016 Labour Party National Conference " voted " not to debate Brexit.

fahrenheit451:090

When it comes to sheer brass-necked impudence, the 200+ Labour Party parliamentary benchwarmers that constitute the official #LabourIn campaign, take first prize. Unmitigated Petainist trash that they are,they had and still have, as their sole political objective the continued subjugation of the British people to the diktats and tyranny of the European Union.  200+ Sediton preaching, street corner rabble rousing demagogues who tried in vain to persuade the British electorate that We somehow,were really  " Europeans ", and that the British have a european identity or values in common with say Poland or Latvia or whomever. They might've well as said that a dog shares a common identity and has values in common with the fleas that infest it.  And #LabourIn ,the very heart and sinews of the campaign to maintain EU servile lackeydom, pre-planned and co-ordinated demonstrations with platform speakers such as that vile treasonable wretch Lammy inciting crowds of euro-zealots to attempt the overthrow of the UK's constitutional government. At the time of posting, there are still quite significant legal challenges to the Referendum result in the offing. And given what seems to be a significant highly motivated anti-democratic upper middle class and academically elitist bias in the ranks of the #Remain zealots' camp,no doubt we can expect further inordinately complex tactics and strategies to be launched by them against the implementation of the Will of the Sovereign British Electorate. Though not all the news is bad for the Victorious #Brexit . Gleaned from the 19 September edition of Huffington Post :-

Labour needs to stop “sulking” about the EU referendum result and vow to end freedom of movement, one of the party’s northern heartland MPs has warned.

Jonathan Reynolds, who has represented the Greater Manchester seat of Stalybridge and Hyde since 2010, believes keeping the EU’s free movement rules in exchange for Single Market membership would be “unacceptable” to millions of Labour voters.

The Remain-campaigning Reynolds told HuffPost UK that people’s “genuine emotional concerns” about uncontrolled immigration cannot be dealt with just by pointing to reports and statistics which talk up the economic benefit of freedom of movement.

In a dig at colleagues such as Chuka Umunna who are calling for the Government to try and negotiate a compromise over freedom of movement in a Brexit deal, Reynolds said a “tweak” to the status quo “would not wash with people.”

UPDATE: Chuka Umunna: We Should Be Prepared To Sacrifice Single Market Membership To Axe Freedom Of Movement

The European Union and all  that it stands for and all of its works is merely the bacteria on the toilet seat of history. Time for some cleansing,don't you think?

fahrenheit451:089

So endeth the great Hohenzollern Imperial Diet in Pressburg ( Bratislava ) of September 16,2016. Berlin's principal stooge of the provincial satrapy of former Italy was quoted far and wide afterwards:-

" Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi stressed that the summit on Friday was a “wasted opportunity” and expressed his disappointment of the officials, especially the French and German ".

Such a wondrous expression of the Greater German Reich's remarkable cohesion.

To add to the surreal and at oft times anarchic mirth and jollity at the Imperial Diet in Pressburg, representatives/hetmen of a supra-national alliance of backward peasants calling themselves the Visegrad Four attempted to forecast,in the manner of their own shamanic cultural traditions, the official position of the Hohenzollern Reich vis a vis its evolving contretemps with the United kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland in respect of the matter of the latter electorate's expressed wish and desire not to be an underling and footstool of said teutonic tyranny in the foreseeable future.

 The Visegrad Four, being composed of the meagre hotch-potch shovelling together of shards of four preceding  eminent continental Empires, uttered an ill considered  calumny against Her Majesty's Government on the matter of continued unrestricted outflows of their poor and destitute mendicants into Britain in order to continue to lower the standard of wages for all workers.

 The Visegrad Group having a priori taken umbrage at the somewhat timid assertion thus far, by HMG that it might wish to exercise sovereignty over its own borders in preference to and at the expense of, millions of  uncouth turnip chuckers and cap doffers.

 Such are the vicissitudes of international politics and diplomacy.

Quite what we'll all make of it in another six months time,i.e. March 2017,is the proverbial anyone's guess. But woe betide HMG were they in the upcoming course of inexorable events to prove less than loyal and less than obedient to their true Masters, the wonderful,contrarian British Electorate.

fahrenheit451:088

GDP is the main measure of UK economic growth based on the value of goods and services produced during a given period.

My  " facts " are harder than your " facts ". That's about the infantile level of public political discourse in Britain regarding the actual state of the national economy. For years now the DWP ( Department of Workslavery & Penury ) has bleated on and on and on ad nauseam about the record numbers of people " in work ". Their latest stats put it at close to 32 million or something like that. Who cares? It really is Ministry of Truth stuff.  Great news citizens of Oceania, the chocolate ration has been increased! Wherein fact the hapless Winston Smith had just disposed of all written records showing that the chocolate ration had been in fact decreased only the previous year and  he had just consigned those records to the oblivion of the Memory Hole. And still the punitive-Sanctions imposing, human rights and human decency shredding DWP carry on announcing in triumphalist overtones ( ( weirdly reminiscent of the Argentine military junta of 1982 and its successes in the Falklands ) that more and more people are in work or have taken up self-employment. But in the end Capitalism has to maintain rationality and objectivity; if a business is doing badly and making losses or insufficient profits they do get found out and punished by the marketplace in the end. To be pedantic, companies do really need to sell whatever it is they are in business to sell. Governments and the political classes in general don't get this.Neither do the far from impartial,far from dispassionately objective civil service bureaucrats who manufacture propagandistic pigswill that wouldn't have passed for credible even in Maoist China. And so the declining and increasingly moribund western capitalist democracies are atrophying economically,socially and culturally.Insane, indiscriminate punitive social welfare regulations actually inflict quasi-legal punishment on citizens deemed not to be sufficiently actively,in the opinion of a bureaucrat,  "searching " for additional hours of work. There are no, ( how shall I phrase this bearing in mind pseudo-effete/genteel aspirational middle class sensitivities might be involved ?) fucking jobs,ok? geddit? Across the entirety of the , (the UK is still in there at the minute) 28 satrapies of the European Union,there are officially some 30 millions unemployed. The UK's apparent phenomenal jobs growth, which alas the more deluded Brexiteers are harping on about as being an indicator of some outworking of special economic thaumaturgy, is utter fantasy. Gross Domestic Product has barely recovered to its 2007 levels. There are now a million workers on zero hours contracts. Inner EU migration is still in full flow.Vast numbers from south of the Danube and east of the Oder are in effect continuing their colonisation of British society. The tyrannical European Union's great shibboleth of  " freedom of movement of labour " needs to be taken down. take that down, you take the entire EU down.

Footnote:-

On this day,September 15,1940,when that which was necessary for national survival was accomplished, the grandchildren  of those Heroes alas turned out unworthy of the inheritance and life which those Heroes had helped in securing.

fahrenheit451:083

A flurry of social and mainstream corporate media activity accompanied Jeremy Corbyn's  recent launch of his " Digital Manifesto ". One paragraph in particular struck me as more than just a little sinister in its implications.

 

" We will develop a voluntary scheme that provides British citizens with a secure and portable
identity for their on-line activities. The Digital Citizen Passport will be used when interacting
with public services like health, welfare, education and housing. "

 

Clearly we're deep inside Humpty-Dumpty territory where words mean precisely what those who use them want them to mean, no more and no less. " We will develop a voluntary scheme.." The use of the royal " we " in this particular context refers to a notionally future Labour Government where Corbyn, presumably is Prime Minister. Repeat apres moi develop a voluntary scheme.Presumably participation in the development of the scheme itself will be voluntary, as will the actual participation once this scheme is implemented. This scheme, " The Digital Citizen Passport " will be used when interacting with various public services. Where does that place the,currently estimated, 6 ,000,000 digitally excluded citizens? Surely the customary face to face interpersonal, over the counter transactions will be allowed to continue, won't they? In which case why introduce a digital citizens passportat all? Is the current blight of mass digital exclusion to be tackled first and every household and every citizen included via a government backed programme?

There will have to be either a very steep learning curve or a very long lead time ahead of implementation. Then again virtually all politicians of all persuasions adopt that insufferably haughty manner whenever trumpeting the next big thing that they'll be involved in bringing to pass.

Can't wait for the, what was it again? oh yeah, digital citizen passport..

 

fahrenheit451:082

In spite of the British Electorate's continuing, unambiguous, disdain of mass immigration, all major political parties ( as well as the plethora of non-parliamentary Leftist parties ) support and promote mass immigration. Quite why this should be so remains at best, somewhat of a mystery and at worst a systematic,conscious betrayal of the fundamental economic interests of the Electorate as a whole. Immigration is the Great Shibboleth of British political discourse. Even in the aftermath of the groundbreaking historic vote for Brexit, idiots such as Jeremy Corbyn argue, ad nauseam, that it's incumbent upon the British people to get used to the idea of large numbers of immigrants permanently altering the British way of life.Why? because in his view ( and that of the rest of the Labour Party ), immigration is a good thing which brings with it benefits to wider society. An ageing workforce is one threadbare unsubstantiated claim they make, as is NHS staffing levels and how dependent the NHS is on immigrant workers. As if by some inexplicable act of thaumaturgy workers with the prefix " immigrant " are somehow intrinsically morally superior or have an innate noble quality about them that are simply absent in the bog standard british worker. It is, surprisingly, politicians of the Centre Right to whom it has fallen to be the ones to explain the basic laws that govern the operation and functioning of capitalist economics. Immigration increases and intensifies competition within national labour markets and depresses wages. And as we have seen in the UK economy as a whole, since even before the onset of the Recession in 2007/08, labour market competition galvanised by unrestricted EU migration has been at its most intense at the unskilled, entry level industrial end of the economy. Official data such as it is, puts the current aggregate figure of unemployment amongst the EU's 28 member states at around 30,000,000.It has always been the case that the EU's " freedom of movement " for labour, has simply been a mechanism for allowing and facilitating the transferring of jobless from one country to those countries where the national economies have fared better; generally from south to north and since 2004 from east to west. The bankrupt, rustbelt economies of the former Warsaw Pact, Poland chief amongst them, have been major beneficiaries:-

Poland's unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in July 2016 from an all time high of 20.70 percent in February of 2003.Unemployment Rate in Poland is reported by the Central Statistical Office of Poland (GUS).  It was in 2004 that Poland along with Hungary,Czech Republic, Slovakia,Estonia,Latvia and Lithuania became full members of the EU. Britain was only one of three existing member states that allowed these new member states immediate access to its national labour market. 

The recent accession of the even more economically sclerotic and dysfunctional Bulgaria and Romania has exacerbated beyond measure the chaos and turmoil engendered by inner-EU migration. Quite where the benefits to the host nation state are supposed to accrue from in all of this, is the question the Left and most other political parties refuse steadfastly to answer let alone engage with in a rational and meaningful discourse. And yet, despite all the specious and convoluted posturing, attempted manipulation and snake oil salesmanship of the Pro-mass Immigration lobby, the vast majority of British People have never actually believed one goddamn single word told them by the establishment or by their political representatives on this issue.

 

fahrenheit451:080

And on it rumbles, on and on and on. One of British politics' bona fide dinosaurs, Ken Clarke has, as is his wont, now embroiled himself in the ongoing Article 50 farrago. As reported across the media on Saturday 20 August, Clarke in his upcoming book, alludes to 100 Tory MPs being prepared to block what is popularly referred to as the triggering of Article 50 ( of the Lisbon Treaty which came into effect on December 1, 2009).  The parliamentary Labour Party for example, split roughly 200 to 20 MPs in favour of Vote Remain. The Liberal Democrats, SNP, Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru also lined up on the Remain side. So the idea that the House of Commons could quite comfortably torpedo Brexit remains a plausible threat and a clear and present danger. It would be mischief on the grandest possible scale. Whether or not the H.o.C. has the collective cojones to actually do this, is I believe balanced on the proverbial knife's edge. In any political campaign for any given objective, momentum is just about everything.Winning an argument is not the same as defeating the counter argument; ideally both occur at round about the same time otherwise a surly,quasi-defeated opponent will seek to recover all the ground lost in the initial campaign struggle. And if they're allowed to get away with that, it's the quasi-victorious side that finds itself on the defensive and the entire matter of legitimacy of the victory just won is called into question. And then on it rumbles and on and on.  The once axiomatic dictum that History is written by the Winners is itself undermined. At this moment in time the Losers are actively preventing the Winners from  getting on with writing that history.Of course once upon a time the State took a much more jaundiced view on matters of who won got to write history. In some ways it's a pity that we got rid of the Sedition Act 1661.

• causing hatred or contempt, or incit[ing] disaffection against the Crown, the government, constitution, either House of Parliament or the administration of justice;
• to incite subjects to unlawfully attempt to alter matters of the church or state that were established by law;
• to incite crime or disturbances of the peace; raise discontent or disaffection amongst the Crown’s subjects; or
• to promote feelings of ill will and hostility between different social classes of the Crown’s subjects.

Now that was one heck of a piece of robust legislation and so practical and purposeful, don't you think?

fahrenheit451:075

As the ISIS/DAESH contagion has spread, so too has the deployment of NATO forces. And in the last few days, the number of official announcements as to the " success " of aircraft and " special forces " of various NATO member states has also increased. Libya and Iraq seem to be front and centre of Washington and its satrapies' current round of bellicose media pronouncements as to the much vaunted efficacy and impact of  US imperialism's aggression. Not Syria though, where the hydra-headed multiplicity of identities which are in effect Al-Qaeda in disguise, are maintaining their brand of psychotically deranged carnage against an encircled and besieged civilian population long since dissuaded of any romantic notions of  domestic political reform, let alone liberation from any such arrangements driven by moronic jihadi nihilists. Even the, newly awaiting-Brexit, lost sovereignty in remission, UK has managed to wade in with its two Tornado strike aircraft. Those self same two Tornadoes lionised by that idiotic, now former shadow foreign secretary Son of Benn, during his stupefyingly crass and verbose parliamentary petomainage that legitimised the UK's volte-face in assisting  the US to bomb Syria.  Ho-hum, such are the quotidian concerns of everyday Imperialism, the footpads to Global Corporate Capitalism's Ruling Elite Moriarty - the Napoleon of Crime.

fahenheit451:074

There is something sinister afoot across the eastern half of the continent. Countries such as Estonia, Croatia,Latvia and the Ukraine have held official ceremonies and public celebrations in connection with the rehabilitation of individuals and groups who had until recently been condemned by post WW2 History as Nazi collaborators or outright Nazis in their own right. The most recent such incident being quoted by B.92,Belgrade :-

Croatian cabinet minister praises Ustasha terrorist

The unveiling of a monument honoring Croatian Ustasha terrorist Miro Baresic has been attended by two Croatian ministers, the N1 broadcaster has reported.

SOURCE: BETA MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2016 | 13:16

Croatia’s ’40’s nostalgia mania seems to be in overdrive, as their Highest Court also recently annulled a 1946 war crimes verdict handed down by Tito’s Yugoslavia against the Croatian Cardinal Stepanic. Estonia and Latvia have both held high profile reunions and demonstrations  honouring the members of their respective nations’ Waffen S.S. Divisions and the contribution they claim to have made in Europe’s war against Bolshevism. As for the Ukraine, the deluded fantasist imbeciles catapulted into power in the EU/NATO instigated coup have also binged on revisionist nostalgia that have recast the fascist mass murderer and terrorist chieftain Bandera as some kind of national liberation hero. All of this hive of activity is deadly serious, perhaps more serious than the western liberal warmongers would care to imagine. If the  definitive regional / global tipping point for all out war hasn’t been reached yet, then clearly it will be reached very soon because this US neocon bellicose strategic nonsense has no other end point other than conflict with Russia and not soon thereafter with China over in the Pacific. The intertwined EU and NATO, with Berlin on its own revisionist helter skelter toward an abyss it wishes that we all eventually jump into, is a mightily daunting prospect. Brexit and a growing, exponential series of ructions against the EU hegemonic project are perhaps the only brakes we have that might slow down this apocalyptic adventurism at present.

fahrenheit451:073

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. That's what's so wonderful about capitalism. Especially the serious, grown-up institutions of Global finance and those who oversee them. When all the needless economic pain and hardship inflicted upon millions is over and done with, when all the attendant , negative-qualitative impacts on civil society have been duly inflicted as a sort of de-facto collective punishment on a nation's citizens; when ALL is done it turns out that it really was a complete and utter balls-up from the very beginning. Or as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Daily-We're lovin'Global Usurer-Capitalism-telegraph writes:-

IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro, apologises for the immolation of Greece

 

28 JULY 2016 • 8:38PM

The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made a series of calamitous misjudgments in Greece, became euphoric cheerleaders for the euro project, ignored warning signs of impending crisis, and collectively failed to grasp an elemental concept of currency theory. 

This is the lacerating verdict of the IMF’s top watchdog on the Fund’s tangled political role in the eurozone debt crisis, the most damaging episode in the history of the Bretton Woods institutions. 

Many documents were prepared outside the regular established channels; written documentation on some sensitive matters could not be locatedIEO report

It describes a “culture of complacency”, prone to “superficial and mechanistic” analysis,  and traces a shocking break-down in the governance of the IMF, leaving it unclear who is ultimately in charge of this extremely powerful organisation. 

The report by the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) goes above the head of the managing director, Christine Lagarde. It answers solely to the board of executive directors, and those from Asia and Latin America are clearly incensed at the way EU insiders used the Fund to rescue their own rich currency union and banking system.

The three main bail-outs for Greece, Portugal, and Ireland were unprecedented in scale and character. The trio were each allowed to borrow over 2,000 percent of their allocated quota – more than three times the normal limit – and accounted for 80pc of all lending by the Fund between 2011 and 2014.

...            
You can't make all that up. It belies the otherwise unimaginable bounds of speculative fiction. Paul Erdman, back in the '70's wrote a couple of international financial thrillers along similar lines. This mea culpa from the IMF is that preposterous. Even within the hegemonic dominant ideological constraints and norms of the IMF, what the hell were the Asian and Latin American executive directors doing? Minding their bankrolled exotic lifestyles?
On the other hand, taking a somewhat longer term view of this imbroglio and its ramifications, one might surmise that one helluva blow has been landed against the system.And that is to be welcomed.The only pity is that the bastards will, no doubt, be able to worm their way out of it,again.