The Brexit thread

[Agent Orange Cooper]

It is more when he tries to counter "Mr. Global" with China and Russia, as if they all aren't pushing towards the same thing, and it isn't UN one-world domination...

So it IS all one big monolithic conspiracy? There's no room for infighting or power struggles, different primate factions jockeying for position? Isn't this like the caricature argument of a conspiracy theorist?

[SonicG]

It is more when he tries to counter "Mr. Global" with China and Russia, as if they all aren't pushing towards the same thing, and it isn't UN one-world domination...

So it IS all one big monolithic conspiracy? There's no room for infighting or power struggles, different primate factions jockeying for position? Isn't this like the caricature argument of a conspiracy theorist?

No exactly, all pushing for capitalist domination and thus, yes, various infighting, exactly, but not a "single conspiracy", but rather the playing out of a certain controlled system...But again, Hatty McWakadoodle showed no evidence of a cogent analysis of these "primate factions" or even a hint of an idea of what actually happened with people basically being lied to about what will happen vis. moneys paid to the EU and immigration.

That is all, done with this.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

Just curious, but have you read any of the 20+ books Mr. Wakadoodle has published? There's, uh, at least a hint of cogent analysis (which might inform his conclusions here) somewhere in there.

[SonicG]

Just curious, but have you read any of the 20+ books Mr. Wakadoodle has published? There's, uh, at least a hint of cogent analysis (which might inform his conclusions here) somewhere in there.

Like the Giza Death Star? No thanks. Don't have the time. Many more important books to read...

[Agent Orange Cooper]

[Nordic]

This is good. H/t Willow

[SonicG]

Makes a lot more sense than Rothschild reptilians Nephilim DNA...

[Joe Hillshoist]

I'm stunned, stunned at the prevailing opinion (programming) I'm seeing everywhere that this is a horrible thing and the world as we know it will be coming to an end. since when was the EU some sanctified bastion of common sense and decency? no folks, it's a globalist conglomerate of fascist oligarchs who want to start WW3, always has been.

Says an American as the country that is the most chock full of globalist fascist oligarchs who want to start WW3 in the EU votes to leave.

Seriously who gives a fuck.

The Great Barrier Reef is dying and they're about to build a mine in Qld that will blow whatever is left of the world's carbon budget out of the "water".

So what'll probably happen is that in 10 years the Gulf Stream will fail and then all of europe will be sailing south across the med anyway.




B R E X I T is an interesting word tho.

Its almost actually an example of a functioning sigil given what actually happened.

[Joe Hillshoist]

The Mark Blythe thing is really good. Cheers.

[divideandconquer]

#Brexit is a brilliant move as "none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Yes, the EU is a horrific institution that should be, but what happens when its replaced with an even more horrific institution that actually functions?

I live in America and I see UK flags flying from houses as if #brexit is a huge victory over the oligarchs, the globalists. And with Trump on their side, the global elite don't have a chance, right? Well, let's see what happens when #brexit leads to chaos and financial crisis everywhere. Who will they blame? What will result? In my humble opinion, as history has proven over and over again, a much stronger and much more centralized government. It's the old Hegelian dialectic once again.

Brexit: Global Trigger Event, Fake Out Or Something Else? June 22, 2016

Those people who do not avidly track global economic events may be a bit confused by the growing tensions surrounding the U.K. referendum to exit the European Union, otherwise known as the “Brexit.” Or, they are completely indifferent. Unfortunately, the potential fallout surrounding the event could very well affect the entire world, but perhaps not in the manner the mainstream media and international financiers would have us believe…

I would point out that under normal global economic conditions, the Brexit really shouldn’t matter much to anyone outside of the U.K. If the EU was fiscally stable, if its banks were solvent and its national debts well in hand, if the EU was actually a practical and successful supranational body, then the damage done by a British vote to leave the union would be minimal. Of course, this is not the case. As many other independent economic analysts and I have been outlining for years, the European Union is on the verge of economic breakdown. Look at it this way — if financial turmoil in a tiny member state like Greece can cause widespread doubts about the EU’s stability, then there is something fundamentally volatile about the entire structure.

The Brexit matters greatly to the future of the EU because, theoretically, if one of its most prominent members says adios, then other members may do the same. As it stands now, the EU cannot afford to have even one member, economically large or small, drop out of the system.

The Brexit matters to the rest of the world including the U.S. because of the brilliantly-destructive program of interdependency and globalism that has shaped our financial house for decades. Interdependency leads to extreme economic weakness because no piece of the global system has the tools to survive without the other pieces; and on top of this, when one part of the machine goes down, ALL the other parts are affected.

It is a truly horrible and seemingly idiotic system; but not so idiotic if you accept the reality that it is deliberately engineered to fail.

When you examine the fiscal foundations of every major economy in the world today, what you find is a financial shell game. The fundamentals tell us the truth; with global exports and imports in decline, global shipping of raw materials in decline, manufacturing in decline, retail in decline, employment in decline, real unemployment numbers including those people no longer counted by the Labor Department skyrocketing and the number of people on welfare and food stamps skyrocketing.

In reality, the global economy is one massive thin-skinned bubble searching for a sharp object to impale itself on. The Brexit may very well be that sharp object.

Before I go into the various details surrounding Thursday’s vote, I want to state that I am in full support of the British movement to leave the European Union. The reasoning behind a successful Brexit is solid. The European Union’s rabid socialist tendencies have created a doom scenario for all those shackled to the supranational body. Forced multiculturalism and cultural Marxism has opened a floodgate of Islamic refugees which hold ideological beliefs completely incompatible with western principles and heritage while at the same time introducing a massive vampiric drain on the prevailing social welfare systems.

The EU’s governing body is a mostly faceless and unaccountable bureaucracy that hands down legal dictates from on high while the general population of the member states have little or no input. The European Central Bank’s monetary policies support failed financial institutions and fraudulent markets while siphoning tax dollars from stronger and more successful nations in order to feed the debt addictions of weaker countries. The very philosophical engine behind the EU is one of collectivism; it is a system that requires a hive mentality in order to function. Only a fool would WANT to participate in such a political and financial farce.

That said, I think we need to take stock of certain underlying realities.

First, as mentioned earlier, the EU, like most other economies today, is an interdependent structure and is thus designed to fail. The EU is not the golden goose for globalists, it is just another appendage that can be sacrificed or rearranged in order to achieve greater goals. The EU is a means to an end, it is not the ultimate prize.

The ultimate prize for globalists would be a system like the EU with a single currency and a single monetary authority, but this new system would erase all sovereign borders and install a single governmental authority as well.

What does this mean? It means that the failure of the EU does not necessarily mean a failure for the internationalists. For groups of globalists that promote an ideology of Fabian Socialism, a breakdown of the EU, whether partial or total, can be used as leverage for a larger and more centralized global power structure in the long term. Mark my words, when the system comes crashing down (whether after the Brexit or after another trigger event), internationalists will say that the EU failed not because it was centralized, but because it was not centralized ENOUGH.

Even though I support the Brexit movement based on the principle that supranational unions are a heinous affliction upon free individuals and nations, I have no illusions that a successful Brexit vote will actually harm the globalists. In fact, they may very well desire the U.K. to leave the EU.

Why? As noted, the global economy is on the verge of implosion. The ONLY elements of the system that are not yet crashing are stock markets. This is because stock markets do not in any way reflect the fundamentals of the economy, they only reflect investor perceptions of the economy. Perceptions can be manipulated for a time, and public psychology can be subdued by false optimism and lies. It can take years for a population to psychologically accept the idea that they are in the midst of a recession or depression. Therefore, it can take years for stock markets to finally reflect the legitimate dangers within the economy.

Central banks at the behest of globalist institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank For International Settlements have spent incredible amounts of capital and energy managing public perception. Through subversive monetary policies, they have weakened national economies to the point of collapse, and this collapse is meant to create enough chaos to inspire the masses through fear to support greater centralization.

While certain banking institutions may fall, the bankers themselves have no intention of taking any blame for the inevitable collapse.

If you examine modern history (the past century), you will find in the aftermath of every crisis that globalist organizations have consistently blamed nationalism and sovereignty while promoting socialism and centralization as the most civilized solution. That is to say, globalists create widespread war and financial terror, blame conservative ideals such as sovereignty, then argue that such ideals must be eradicated for the greater good of the greater number.

We have to be honest in our exploration of the Brexit event and admit that in this case the globalists win either way.

If the Brexit succeeds, the globalists can allow the market systems they have been inflating for years to finally crash. They can then blame those dastardly "far-Right extremists" in the U.K. for triggering a domino effect within the global financial system, conveniently scapegoating British conservatives, moderates and sovereigns for a breakdown that was going to happen eventually anyway. Their solution will once again be to argue for the end of “barbaric” conservative principles and install complete centralization and socialism as the cure.

If the Brexit fails, or if it is a controlled fake out, they can artificially boost markets for perhaps another month while distracting the public away from the negative fundamentals yet again.

We should also not overlook the possibility that the referendum vote may be rigged one way or the other. Current polls indicate a tie between the “Leave” crowd and the “Remain” crowd. Any vote this close is the easiest kind of vote to rig a few percentage points to either side.

I believe the Brexit vote may be allowed to succeed, here’s why…

1) Elites including George Soros have suddenly decided to dive into the market to place bets on the negative side. Dumping large portions of their stock holdings, shorting equities and buying up gold and gold mining shares. Soros has been preparing his portfolio for a successful Brexit vote while at the same time publicly warning of the supposed dire consequences if the referendum passes. The last time Soros put this much capital into the markets was in 2007, just before the crash of 2008.

2) The IMF and the BIS have been warning since late 2015 (for six to eight months) that a global economic downturn is on the way in 2016. We saw considerable volatility at the beginning of this year, and markets are due for another shock. The last time the BIS and IMF were so adamant about an impending crash was in late 2007, just before the 2008 market plunge.

3) While the Federal Reserve has not yet implemented a second rate hike (I still believe they could use a rate hike this year to stab markets in the back if necessary), Janet Yellen pulled a maneuver which was almost as upsetting to investors. After the Fed policy meeting last week, markets were moderately exuberant and stocks were rising, then, Yellen opened her mouth and blamed the Brexit for the rate hike delay…

Here is what the Fed has done: By delaying the second hike for another month, and then blaming the Brexit vote as a primary reason, they have created a bit of a paradox. If the Brexit vote passes, the Fed is asserting that they may not hike rates for a while, giving market investors the impression that the global economic recovery is not all that it is cracked up to be. If the Brexit vote fails, then the Fed MUST hike rates in July, otherwise, they lose all credibility. I believe Yellen’s claim that the Brexit vote was the cause of the hike delay was highly deliberate. It has triggered what may become a growing firestorm in equities and commodities.

From the point of view of investors, if the Brexit passes, then all hell breaks loose. If the Brexit fails, then the Fed will hike rates and once again, all hell breaks loose. Or, the Fed refuses to hike rates even though its number one scapegoat is out of the picture, it loses all credibility, and all hell breaks loose.

It’s a lose/lose/lose scenario for the investment world, which is probably why global markets plunged after Yellen’s remarks. Investors have been relying on the predictability of central bank intervention for so long that now when ANY uncertainty arises, they run for the hedges.

The Fed decision to blame the Brexit for their rate hike delay could indicate foreknowledge of a successful Brexit vote.

4) The recent murder of British lawmaker Jo Cox is perhaps the weirdest piece in the puzzle of the Brexit. For one thing, it makes no sense for a pro-Brexit nationalist (Thomas Mair) to attack and kill a pro-EU lawmaker when the polls for the “Leave” group were clearly ahead. One could simply argue that the guy was nuts, but I’m rather suspicious of “lone gunman,” and his insanity has yet to be proven. I see no reason for this man, insane or not, to be angry enough to kill while the Brexit side was winning in all the polls.

If someone was using him as a weapon only to discredit the Brexit vote or sway the public towards staying in the EU, you would think that they would have initiated the murder closer to the day of the referendum when it would have the most effect. The information flooded public has days to digest new data and forget Jo Cox.

My theory? Thomas Mair has handlers or he is just a mentally disturbed patsy, and his purpose is indeed to paint the Brexit movement as “angry” or crazy. But this does not necessarily mean the intent behind the assassination of Jo Cox was to break the back of the Brexit movement. Rather, the goal may only be to perpetuate a longer term narrative that conservatives in general are a destructive element of society. We kill, we’re racists, we have an archaic mindset that prevents “progress,” we divide supranational unions, we even destroy global economies. We’re storybook monsters.

Even the cultural Marxists at the Southern Poverty Law Center somehow produced documents allegedly linking Mair (a veritable unknown) to Neo-Nazi groups in 1999. Wherever the SPLC is involved, the official story is always skewed.

The murder of Jo Cox has had a minimal effect on Brexit polling numbers. In the end, the elites may find Thomas Mair more useful as a mascot for the Brexit AFTER the vote, rather than before the vote.

So now the Brexit movement, which is conservative in spirit, is labeled a “divisive” and “hateful group”, and if the referendum is triumphant, they will also be called economic saboteurs.

There is also the possibility that the Brexit is yet another fake out. We have seen many of them over the past few years. So many in fact that a lot of analysts in the Liberty Movement have grown pretty cynical, as if the system could be propped up forever. The issue is always, of course, one of timing. All fundamentals indicate that the global economy is going down regardless of what central banks and international financiers do in the long run. The only question is whether or not they feel it is time to pull the plug on one of the last remaining bubbles (stocks). A successful Brexit could be a perfect scapegoat for the next leg down in the economy, or it could be a perfect placebo to boost markets for a short time if it fails. In either case, I have no doubt that the outcome has already been decided.

[American Dream]

http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com/20 ... -it-3.html

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Post-It #3

Over on Michael Roberts' blog, I came across this which sums it all up:

If you are this squeamish about (possible) consequences and retaliations of a Brexit, then, gentlemen, I suggest you go back to your dinner parties, essay writing, painting and embroidery, and forget everything about the revolution.

The fact that those reading that blog, squeamish and un-, might not be gentlemen, does not detract from the accuracy of the comment. Props to its author

The prospects, terms, relations, and needs of accumulation are not what they were 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, even 7 years ago. The structures embodying those relations and mechanisms are no longer adequate. They break down; they decay; they wobble, stagger, come apart. No getting around it. That's history, or more precisely, when the structures become inadequate, history erupts, and the eruption is anything but neat. It's a mess, as it could only be, given these conditions of its origin.

Britain's disengagement from the EU, along with incredible contortions the EU has gone through, making a shambles of its own refugee policy; its assaults on the living standards of workers in order to preserve bankers and bondholders, is indicative that the existing institutions, relations. structures of capital, no longer correspond to the needs of accumulation; and that the needs of accumulation are more than ever in conflict with the limitations of both private property in the means of production, and the reproduction of the working class.

In or out of the EU, the bourgeoisie everywhere are forced to find ways to drive the cost of labor below its value; below what is necessary for its reproduction as a working class in order to extract a level of surplus value that will also be adequate to levels of profitability. What's in the cards are continued assaults on workers' living and labor standards across the EU (and capitalism) as "economic adjustment" requires liquidation-- liquidation of jobs, liquidation of job protections, liquidation of social welfare, liquidation of "stability" in favor of aggrandizement.

That it takes a toll on what some of the so-called "enlightened bourgeoisie" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) consider institutions of "progress" "cooperation" "humanity" shows just how contingent progress, cooperation, and humanity are on expanding capitalist reproduction, and how meaningless those concepts are to capitalism.

After Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal; after the EU ploys against refugees, and the EU play in the Ukraine-- does anyone truly think remaining in a union of European capitalists offers a future different, more "hopeful," than its immediate past? That there's a shred of "progress" "cooperation" "humanity" involved in the grand confederacy of European capitalists?

This "mess," this eruption of history, also contains class struggle. So the workers of Northern England, of Wales, of that portion of the "United Kingdom" asset-stripped, beat down, abandoned, zombified by banks and property speculators didn't miss the opportunity to tell the too-clever-by half Cameron to "sod off" with his prospects for a "greater Britain in Europe." Those workers have been living in the "greater Britain in Europe" ever since Callaghan.

And what a genius Cameron is-- thinking 2016 was just like 2015, and his plebiscite would quiet the voices of the old Tories; that he could sell coal to Newcastle, since the mines were now all closed. I know there's at least one lady who's less than happy with this self-important posh twit-- Queen Elizabeth II who will now have to remember her passport when she wants to visit Balmoral Castle. "Oh bring back the days of hanging by the neck until dead at the pleasure of the sovereign," she tweeted just the other day to Helen Mirren.

Heads on pikes, anyone? Eton schooled heads in particular on pikes?

This "mess" is not the product of the British working class' xenophobia; its conservatism; neither its betrayal nor its duping. The dysfunctionality is capitalism breaking down capitalism. It's ugly. It's unavoidable. It's history. It's also a shift in class struggle, bursting through but still covered in the grime, muck, and blood of bourgeois "progress," bourgeois "opportunity," bourgeois "order."

S.Artesian
June 25, 2016

[American Dream]

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2724-a- ... disruption

A Time of Disruption

By Cédric Durand / 25 June 2016

This piece was first published in French in Contretemps.

So the time of disruption has come. Against the backdrop of economic disaster, bureaucratic arrogance and a contemptuous lack of concern for social questions, the appeal of the European project has constantly weakened over recent years. And the centrifugal forces that had been building up have today got the upper hand. The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union is the first movement of what has now become a very likely — if not yet inevitable — process dismembering the EU.

As well as the difficulties this proto-state was already wrangling over there is now the wave of financial and economic shocks coming from Brexit; divisions over what attitude to follow in implementing it; and the contradictory interpretations of what new direction should now be taken. For those who remain, should there be more or less Europe? This is a rhetorical alternative that masks a genuine impasse: increasing integration is utterly impossible in a context in which public opinion is more and more hostile to the EU, but not making a leap forward in integration would forbid any repair of its powerfully dysfunctional institutions… The trap of the democratic deficit thus ensnares the Europe of capital.

The UK vote is a class vote. Those who have lost 10% of their wages since 2008 struck a heavy blow at prime minister David Cameron and the bosses, unanimous in their support for the EU. There is evidence that this vote is partly motivated by racist sentiments and that the far Right dominated the Leave camp. But the incapacity to articulate a Left Leave — beyond small formations like the Socialist Workers Party and a few union bodies — is a failure of the whole British Left. In particular it is a missed opportunity for the new Labour leader — and historic Eurosceptic — Jeremy Corbyn, who made his own small contribution to delivering the popular classes into the arms of his enemies.

This fresh electoral insurrection expresses the large-scale political recomposition now underway in the West: almost everywhere the extreme centre — centre Right and centre Left alike — is being put in difficulty by forces and figures as politically opposed as Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, Podemos, and Marine Le Pen. The EU is the archetypical incarnation of the extreme centre project. In the 1970s continental integration was almost at a standstill, progressing only through the slow sedimentation of European Court of Justice decisions. Its resumed takeoff in the 1980s, which led to the realisation of the single market and then economic and currency union, coincided with the affirmation of neoliberal ideology and financial hegemony.

The product of this short historical sequence, the EU’s institutions definitively bear its stigmata. As the almost perfect institutional incarnation of the Zeitgeist of the neoliberal era, the EU does not have the historic depth that would allow it to address the great turbulence unleashed by the 2008 crisis and rearm itself for the new period. Lacking in any democratic roots, nor does it have the legitimising procedures that would allow it to reinvent itself. A space of compromise among "responsible" governmental partners, the EU is the terrain of a permanent grand coalition excluding any popular involvement.

This permanent coalition moreover reduces national democratic processes to a masquerade, because in its very construction it forbids any possibility of substantially different economic and social policies. So how can we be surprised that the EU no longer exercises any power of attraction for the British citizens who remained on its margins?

After the referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005, in Ireland in 2008 and Greece in 2015, the Brexit vote confirms that the pro-EU bullying does not work. And to align with it would be deadly for the Left. It would mean leaving the ground open to the far Right. As a recent Pew Institute study tells us, opposition to the EU is spreading. Unfavourable views of the EU are very much in the majority in Greece (71%) and France (61%) but also now very high in Spain (49%) and Germany (48%). If we just stick to economic questions, they are in the majority across the EU. Another interesting lesson is that the rejection of the EU is not monochrome. While mainly of the Right in Northern Europe, it is more on the Left in the South.

The EU is not a battlefield, for the Left and social movements do not have any significant position at this level. Today hostility toward the EU is the central terrain of struggle. This is the site where the Left has to fight off xenophobic and authoritarian currents by articulating an internationalist class project.

[seemslikeadream]

John Pilger: Why the British Said No to Europe
By John Pilger
teleSUR
Sunday, Jun 26, 2016



The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.

This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and demoralized by the sheer arrogance of the apologists for the "Remain" campaign and the dismemberment of a socially just civil life in Britain. The last bastion of the historic reforms of 1945, the National Health Service, has been so subverted by Tory and Labour-supported privateers it is fighting for its life.

A forewarning came when the Treasurer, George Osborne, the embodiment of both Britain's ancient regime and the banking mafia in Europe, threatened to cut £30 billion from public services if people voted the wrong way; it was blackmail on a shocking scale.

Immigration was exploited in the campaign with consummate cynicism, not only by populist politicians from the lunar right, but by Labour politicians drawing on their own venerable tradition of promoting and nurturing racism, a symptom of corruption not at the bottom but at the top. The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East - first Iraq, now Syria - are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and Nato. Before that, there was the willful destruction of Yugoslavia. Before that, there was the theft of Palestine and the imposition of Israel.

The pith helmets may have long gone, but the blood has never dried. A nineteenth century contempt for countries and peoples, depending on their degree of colonial usefulness, remains a centerpiece of modern "globalization", with its perverse socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor: its freedom for capital and denial of freedom to labor; its perfidious politicians and politicized civil servants.

All this has now come home to Europe, enriching the likes of Tony Blair and impoverishing and disempowering millions. On 23 June, the British said no more.

The most effective propagandists of the "European ideal" have not been the far right, but an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes of the 21st century zeitgeist, even "cool". What they really are is a bourgeoisie with insatiable consumerist tastes and ancient instincts of their own superiority. In their house paper, the Guardian, they have gloated, day after day, at those who would even consider the EU profoundly undemocratic, a source of social injustice and a virulent extremism known as "neoliberalism."


People walk past a row of boarded up terraced houses in Liverpool in 2013. | Photo: Reuters

The aim of this extremism is to install a permanent, capitalist theocracy that ensures a two-thirds society, with the majority divided and indebted, managed by a corporate class, and a permanent working poor. In Britain today, 63 per cent of poor children grow up in families where one member is working. For them, the trap has closed. More than 600,000 residents of Britain's second city, Greater Manchester, are, reports a study, "experiencing the effects of extreme poverty" and 1.6 million are slipping into penury.

Little of this social catastrophe is acknowledged in the bourgeois controlled media, notably the Oxbridge dominated BBC. During the referendum campaign, almost no insightful analysis was allowed to intrude upon the clichéd hysteria about "leaving Europe", as if Britain was about to be towed in hostile currents somewhere north of Iceland.

On the morning after the vote, a BBC radio reporter welcomed politicians to his studio as old chums. "Well," he said to "Lord" Peter Mandelson, the disgraced architect of Blairism, "why do these people want it so badly?" The "these people" are the majority of Britons.

The wealthy war criminal Tony Blair remains a hero of the Mandelson "European" class, though few will say so these days. The Guardian once described Blair as "mystical" and has been true to his "project" of rapacious war. The day after the vote, the columnist Martin Kettle offered a Brechtian solution to the misuse of democracy by the masses. "Now surely we can agree referendums are bad for Britain", said the headline over his full-page piece. The "we" was unexplained but understood - just as "these people" is understood. "The referendum has conferred less legitimacy on politics, not more," wrote Kettle. " ... the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again."

The kind of ruthlessness Kettle longs is found in Greece, a country now airbrushed. There, they had a referendum and the result was ignored. Like the Labour Party in Britain, the leaders of the Syriza government in Athens are the products of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, groomed in the fakery and political treachery of post-modernism. The Greek people courageously used the referendum to demand their government sought "better terms" with a venal status in Brussels that was crushing the life out of their country. They were betrayed, as the British would have been betrayed.

On Friday, the Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was asked by the BBC if he would pay tribute to the departed Cameron, his comrade in the "remain" campaign. Corbyn fulsomely praised Cameron's "dignity" and noted his backing for gay marriage and his apology to the Irish families of the dead of Bloody Sunday. He said nothing about Cameron's divisiveness, his brutal austerity policies, his lies about "protecting" the Health Service. Neither did he remind people of the war mongering of the Cameron government: the dispatch of British special forces to Libya and British bomb aimers to Saudi Arabia and, above all, the beckoning of world war three.

In the week of the referendum vote, no British politician and, to my knowledge, no journalist referred to Vladimir Putin's speech in St. Petersburg commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. The Soviet victory - at a cost of 27 million Soviet lives and the majority of all German forces - won the Second World War.

Putin likened the current frenzied build up of Nato troops and war material on Russia's western borders to the Third Reich's Operation Barbarossa. Nato's exercises in Poland were the biggest since the Nazi invasion; Operation Anaconda had simulated an attack on Russia, presumably with nuclear weapons. On the eve of the referendum, the quisling secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Britons they would be endangering "peace and security" if they voted to leave the EU. The millions who ignored him and Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, Obama and the man who runs the Bank of England may, just may, have struck a blow for real peace and democracy in Europe.

[coffin_dodger]

Over the past couple of days I've had time to talk with Brexiters - and experience the BBC scaremongering coverage of the exit aftermath - and concluded that I wanted change and now I've got it. Where it leads is up to us.

[Harvey]

Over the past couple of days I've had time to talk with Brexiters - and experience the BBC scaremongering coverage of the exit aftermath - and concluded that I wanted change and now I've got it. Where it leads is up to us.