We shall see what Brexit means to this modern generation even among those who supported it. When it comes to politics one can never be too cynical. See below.
@hen Britain is at last out of the EU, will her leaders finally get control over Third World immigration? It’s by no means certain.
Following the announcement by Prime Minister David Cameron that he will resign, there is speculation that he’ll be replaced by Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London, who campaigned for Brexit.
Well, it’s nice that Johnson helped to make Brexit happen. But on immigration in general, he apparently favors open borders. When Mayor of London he made gushing speeches about what a gorgeous ethnic tapestry the city has become. [Boris Johnson’s acceptance speech after being declared mayor of London, The Guardian, May 3, 2008]
GWB’s Secretary of the Treasury has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Mostly known for falling to his knees in front of Nancy Pelosi to beg her to pass his bailout. A globalist clown and clueless in the way only a merchant banker can be. But it is this in particular that I wish to bring to your attention.
Paulson insists that “it’s wrong to tell the American people” that we achieve economic success by “walling ourselves off from the remaining 7 billion people and the markets they represent”.
This is the mentality that has caused modern economics to descend to the economic stupidities of the Mercantilists. A favourable balance of trade, and the import of gold, was the aim of every government. The aim was to sell and bring in gold. The value of the rest of the world’s economy to Paulson, and I suppose quite a few others, is that they will buy what you produce. I suppose it is true that you can only buy from others if you first sell. But that is not the point he is making. It is the selling that is the benefit. Exporting is what they think makes you wealthy.
So let me point out that the reason to export is to import what you cannot produce as cheaply as others. It is not done to create jobs, which will be created in any case. And it is not done to build up foreign exchange, which is economically useless unless it is spent.
Because the fact is that unless they buy from you they cannot sell to you. If the people you trade with are as crazy as Paulson, they will break their necks to sell and trade will go on without anyone having to do a thing. Without deliberately raising tariffs and other forms of protection, I wonder how it is even possible to wall off the US economy, or any economy, from everyone else. If your goods are cheaper than theirs, and their goods are simultaneously cheaper than yours – which is the paradox of trade how both can happen at the same time – trade will just go on without anyone else having to do a thing.
You might actually go into the link to see just how hopelessly out of it the people at the top of our economic tree are.
Brexit feels like a genuine turning point for the better of some significance. Not just unexpected in the sense of not forecast, but unexpected because we social conservatives expect the world to blunder from one low point to the next. Perhaps a false dawn, but at least it has the look of a brighter possible future. It is why those of us on the Brexit side are as happy as we are, since nothing like this has been on anyone’s radar for quite some time.
And if the young really think that this is for them to decide and not for anyone who will not share their glorious future in the latter half of the century, then their shallowness is all the more profound, since they are not counting in all of the generations past who have made England what it is. This is from James Delingpole who said it better than anyone on the day before the vote was taken.
My American friends asked me the other day what exactly I meant by Britishness. For me, though, all it means is a heartfelt sympathy with our island story – 1066; Magna Carta; the Civil War; the Glorious Revolution; Waterloo; 1940 “Our Finest Hour”; and so on; and an appreciation of the achievements of the heroes and heroines who made it possible, from Alfred the Great through to Queen Elizabeth I, from Shakespeare to Elgar, from Florence Nightingale and Isambard Kingdom Brunel to Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
My grandparents had been born in Poland and I grew up in Canada. But when I went to Agincourt and Crécy in 2014, I was celebrating battles that WE had won, just as I felt as I travelled along the Western Front towards Paris, visiting Fromelles and Vimy Ridge where WE – this time an Australian and Canadian WE – had fought. The great tragedy for our young is that they do not have any of this tradition made part of them. But some of them do and some of it is left and some of it will continue. We speak English and still read Shakespeare in Australia for a reason. Sydney and Melbourne are named after two peers of the realm. I live in Victoria. We have a heritage and a tradition that goes back a thousand years to the British Isles which is, of course, married to an indigenous tradition as well. Brexit has salvaged some of that for the future. It will now be up to others either to throw it away for no possible gain I can see, or preserve our past and our history for themselves and for those who come long after.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is now serving the twelfth year of his four-year term. He is an absurd and contemptible figure. In a perfectly timed companion to the Brexit referendum, Abbas had the honor of addressing the European Parliament this past Thursday. Abbas drew a standing ovation for his EU speech.
I’m in a Brexit silo of some kind. To my astonishment, every single one of the websites and blogs I habitually follow has charmed and made happy by the British exit from the EU. Normally, there are a range of views and I can get to both sides of a question, which I then get to mix with the normal MSM news reporting. But on this occasion, everyone has been on the same side, and this is my side. The very opposite of how it’s been with Donald Trump, say. So let me pick a few choice bits from the things I have been reading.
The world is looking at Britain and asking: What on Earth just happened? Those who run Britain are asking the same question.
Never has there been a greater coalition of the establishment than that assembled by Prime Minister David Cameron for his referendum campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union. There was almost every Westminster party leader, most of their troops and almost every trade union and employers’ federation. There were retired spy chiefs, historians, football clubs, national treasures like Stephen Hawking and divinities like Keira Knightley. And some global glamour too: President Barack Obama flew to London to do his bit, and Goldman Sachs opened its checkbook.
And none of it worked. . . .
The Brexit campaign started as a cry for liberty, perhaps articulated most clearly by Michael Gove, the British justice secretary (and, on this issue, the most prominent dissenter in Mr. Cameron’s cabinet). Mr. Gove offered practical examples of the problems of EU membership. As a minister, he said, he deals constantly with edicts and regulations framed at the European level—rules that he doesn’t want and can’t change. These were rules that no one in Britain asked for, rules promulgated by officials whose names Brits don’t know, people whom they never elected and cannot remove from office. Yet they become the law of the land. Much of what we think of as British democracy, Mr. Gove argued, is now no such thing.
Instead of grumbling about the things we can’t change, Mr. Gove said, it was time to follow “the Americans who declared their independence and never looked back” and “become an exemplar of what an inclusive, open and innovative democracy can achieve.”
This amazing statement is from Senator Geoff Sessions, Donald Trump’s number one supporter: NOW IT’S AMERICA’S TURN. This is his statement in full.
The British people, our special friends and allies, deserve our full support following their sovereign and considered decision to leave the European Union.
The people spoke from their hearts and with conviction. They considered deep and critical issues never discussed by the international elites. Their strong vote arose not out of fear and pique but out of love for country and pride of place. Their experience with a distant government in Brussels was given a long and fair chance to succeed. In the end, however, they concluded that the costs outweighed the benefits. Often, Britain makes changes that precede U. S. action. The Thatcher movement preceded the Reagan revolution. Both were victories for the people over outdated and corrupt forces. Both were achieved against powerful and determined establishment forces. Both resulted in historic and positive periods in their nation’s history.
Now it’s our time. The period of the nation state has not ended. No far off global government or union can command the loyalty of a people like their own country. Vague unions have no ability to call on the people to sacrifice for the common good. They seem incapable of making decisions and when they do, they have difficulty executing the decision.
Far better to celebrate the wonder and proven worth of good nation states and to work hard to use that foundation to build harmonious political and trading relations among the nations. This is the best basis for peace and prosperity.
In negotiations and relationships, national leaders should first ensure they have protected the safety and legitimate interests of their own people. This principle has been eroded and Brexit is a warning for America. Our British friends have sent the message loud and clear.
The interests of powerful international corporations, media, special interests, and leftist international forces are not coterminous with those of our people. This we must understand. The ultimate interest that our government is legally and morally bound to serve is that of our people.
Just as in the U.K., our November presidential election presents a stark contrast. The establishment forces, the global powers, are promoting their values and their interests. They want to erode borders, rapidly open America’s markets to foreign produced goods, while having little interest in advancing America’s ability to sell abroad. These forces have zero interest in better job opportunities and higher wages for our citizens.
It has been known for years that the European Union has often served as a barrier to its members taking action that would serve their own interests. Perhaps nothing proves this more definitively than the current migrant crisis, where the EU has clearly been part of the problem, not the solution.
And, consider the promotion of radical trade policies that erode the power of the people to control their lives. Millions upon millions of dollars from around the globe are being spent to get America to agree to the massive, twelve-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. While sold as a trade deal, in reality, the TPP is a Trojan Horse for yet another sovereignty-eroding global pact. If implemented, it would create a new governing body that would exercise power and make decisions that the United States Congress would be effectively powerless to block. Like the EU, each nation gets one vote. Brunei and Vietnam get one vote as does the President of the United States.
We must remember that the European Union began as a seemingly benign economic agreement, and we must not forget, that as Secretary of State, with negotiating responsibility for the TPP, Hillary Clinton promoted it and called it the ‘gold standard’ for a trade deal. That should give us all pause. This sovereignty eroding trade deal is in perfect accord with her globalist agenda.
Too many politicians and pundits here in America have been woefully oblivious to, or in some cases complicit in, what is going on around us. The failed European Union experiment, and Great Britain’s rejection of it must serve as a wake-up call for all of us in America.
I applaud yesterday’s strong and patriotic action taken by America’s special friend, retaking its independence. I know that moving forward the deep and historic ties between Great Britain and America will grow ever stronger. I believe the American people too will choose independence this November.
Levels of dissatisfaction with leadership have reached revolutionary levels. It’s a paradox of mass modern democracy that voters feel themselves governed by rulers who “neither see nor feel nor know,” a political-business nexus that feeds on itself and promotes its own interests while mouthing platitudes at election time to keep the populace at bay. In Europe and the U.S. today, traditional political authority is worn like a scarlet letter. . .
The very idea that the state has a primary obligation to its native citizens has become unfashionable and virtually unsayable within the tightly controlled bounds of political correctness. . .
The stunning reality of Brexit needs to be understood as simply the most dramatic development yet in these trends. The British people have spoken, the first to break publicly from the institutional structures that define our modern, integrated international system.
They are very unlikely to be the last.
We all seem to see the same thing. The other side, when I run across something they say, has no purchase on anything I think since they don’t seem to have any sense of what is at stake.
Here is the story I have just stumbled across from The Age: Hundreds of St Kilda Road trees to get the chop as part of Metro tunnel project. If they think Melbourne will remain as the World’s Most Liveable City after this, they are more out of it than it is possible to believe. They paid a billion to stop a road but now there is this:
They are one of Melbourne’s most distinctive sights but it will not be enough to save them. Hundreds of mature trees will be removed from St Kilda Road to make way for the Metro rail tunnel, fuelling concerns about the environmental impact of the project.
As the Andrews government starts awarding contracts for the $10.9 billion train line, documents have revealed a range of issues, including the loss of trees, traffic disruption and the possible relocation of residents put out by noise and vibration during construction.
According to the environmental effects statement, about 900 trees could be removed along the tunnel route – including up to 223 trees in the precinct surrounding the Shrine of Remembrance, where a new underground station will be built.
For more on a $10.9 billion project that will ruin Melbourne to create a rail connection between Carlton and South Melbourne, you can read it up here. If they are looking for a cheaper way to drive from the south of the city to the north, they might just remove the bicycle lane across Princes’s Bridge. In the meantime, they will sink billions into a project that will never bring a positive return on the money spent but has the potential to ruin the most beautiful part of Melbourne. But I am sure it will divert jobs and add to pseudo-GDP. You can see the supposed benefits here which come to nothing at all.
How can we save ourselves from such visionaries? And if you think that The Greens are somehow on the side of trees and parklands, this is what they’ve said:
Turnbull can fund Melbourne Metro Rail
With a positive business case released for Melbourne Metro Rail, the Greens have said there is no excuse for the federal government to deny Victoria funding for the project.
“Metro Rail adds up and the Prime Minister must put his money where his train selfies are,” said the Australian Greens transport spokesperson Senator Janet Rice.
We understand that not everyone marries their high-school sweetheart, but if you reach age 21 and have never dated anyone longer than “a few months,” you may be headed toward the Darwinian dead end.
The “check engine” light is flashing on your dashboard, OK? Most people start dating in high school and, somewhere between age 16 and 19, form their first “serious” relationship. Maybe this adolescent romance doesn’t become Endless Love — cue the Diana Ross-Lionel Richie duet — but if you’re 21 and have never had a relationship that lasted at least a year, you have a problem, and that problem is you. The most common cause of this particular problem is failure to accurately assess your own attractiveness.
This is a typical problem for loser guys, the kind of dude who is below average, but doesn’t realize it. He’s seen too many Seth Rogen movies, in which Seth Rogen ends up with a hot chick, despite being Seth Rogen.
Hollywood is always making movies where the hapless schlub somehow manages to win the heart of a chick who’s way out of his league. The classic of this genre was When Harry Met Sally — a truly great comedy, but let’s be brutally honest: Guys who look like Billy Crystal do not end up with women who look like Meg Ryan, at least not often enough that you actually expect to see such a pairing in real life.
Nevertheless, clueless losers latch onto the foolish idea that they’ll hit the jackpot and woo a Meg Ryan lookalike and, as a result of this absurdly unrealistic delusion, guys get stuck permanently in Loserville.
Law of Markets 