Winseer:
Tsipras is another classic example of “Mis-management”.
He could have turned on the printing presses, which is what I reckon Varoufakis wanted to do - but wasn’t allowed to by Tsipras.
Incapable of thinking outside the box, or deferring more power to Varoufakis - Tsipras thought the only source of future cash in the world - was the ECB which required him to sell his soul to keep being able to borrow from them. - And so that’s exactly what he ended up doing.
Varoufakis resigned, and now Greece is well and truly broken.
Unlike the UK - Greece doesn’t have to ability to wage war to dig itself out of this bottomless pit of despair of Tsipras’ own making.
The best leader a struggling EU member country can have right now - is an Economist. The best leader needed in the years to come - will be a General.
I thought, along with many others, that my view of the future was pretty grim. At least I`ve never looked forward to another war. . .
What do you think Americans looked forward to in the 1930’s? - Their economy was rubbish, there was the dust bowl, and most people’s savings had been wiped out by the collapse of banks following the 1929 wall street crash. Gangsters had great power thanks to a thriving black market brought on by Prohibition, which wasn’t ended until 1933.
Germany’s economy meanwhile - was booming. No one wanted a war - but in the end it was exactly a war - a WORLD war at that - which dug America (and Britain!) out of the doldrums, and left America as the world’s only superpower, until the Rosenbergs leveled the playing field by sharing atomic secrets with Stalin’s Russia. They were duly fried one after the other on the electric chair for their trouble. FDR even authorized the pirating of German merchant trading vessels in peacetime - something that would nowadays be considered a “War Crime” - for simply attacking a foreign power’s civilians without a formal declaration of war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour is often argued to be a “war crime” for similar reasons.
No one doubts that Hitler got his own people to “Look forward to a war”. Germany was heavily bullied by the other world powers during his early years in office, in particular by the American fleet. One might even wonder if he went bonkers over “failing to make real headway against such poor world treatment of him”, bearing in mind the number of Jewish people in the highest offices around the world, in particular American offices.
Like I said in my earlier post - If one country treats another country badly enough - there WILL be war between those two countries. This is the lesson of History.
Alas, History teaches us that mankind learns nothing from History.
Many of us have heard the story of how Churchill let American shipping be sunk - to bring America into the war.
Politics is a b!tch. And then YOU die.
Winseer:
What do you think Americans looked forward to in the 1930’s? - Their economy was rubbish, there was the dust bowl, and most people’s savings had been wiped out by the collapse of banks following the 1929 wall street crash. Gangsters had great power thanks to a thriving black market brought on by Prohibition, which wasn’t ended until 1933.
Germany’s economy meanwhile - was booming. No one wanted a war - but in the end it was exactly a war - a WORLD war at that - which dug America (and Britain!) out of the doldrums, and left America as the world’s only superpower, until the Rosenbergs leveled the playing field by sharing atomic secrets with Stalin’s Russia. They were duly fried one after the other on the electric chair for their trouble. FDR even authorized the pirating of German merchant trading vessels in peacetime - something that would nowadays be considered a “War Crime” - for simply attacking a foreign power’s civilians without a formal declaration of war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour is often argued to be a “war crime” for similar reasons.
No one doubts that Hitler got his own people to “Look forward to a war”. Germany was heavily bullied by the other world powers during his early years in office, in particular by the American fleet. One might even wonder if he went bonkers over “failing to make real headway against such poor world treatment of him”, bearing in mind the number of Jewish people in the highest offices around the world, in particular American offices.
Like I said in my earlier post - If one country treats another country badly enough - there WILL be war between those two countries. This is the lesson of History.
Alas, History teaches us that mankind learns nothing from History.
0
Many of us have heard the story of how Churchill let American shipping be sunk - to bring America into the war.
Politics is a b!tch. And then YOU die.
I still don’t get the idea of any type of connection between Brexit at this time v any type of shooting war.When at worse it will just take a trade war to sort it. The idea of any war of secession within Europe would only be a potential issue in the much longer term.IE we’re arguably at the point now where America was at least 60 years or more before the war of secession when it was still actually arguing out the formation of its constitution.In this case we’ve rightly gone for secession and state sovereignty rather than go along with the EU federation with as expected the Federalists not admitting defeat and throwing their toys out of the pram.
Having said that it was ironic to see the peace loving Obama administration effectively calling for war against Russia and Assad on BBC news tonight in support of our loyal ‘good’ Islamist allies obviously in the form of the Saudi backed ex Al Queda then renamed Al Nusra now renamed Jabhat Fateh al Sham,anti Assad faction.When Al Queda were supposedly the bad guys who carried out the 9/11 attacks and who we were fighting in Afghan.On that note if there is war it will more likely be the EU and their zb wit Federalist US supporters like Obama and Clinton who’ll kick it off against Russia before we ever leave the EU.
That’s unless the whole Middle East issue is a big scam in which Russia and the Islamic world are all actually allied in fooling the US and EU into getting involved in a war on their terms,at a time,and in a place of their choosing.In which case an invading sleeper army already in place in Europe can only help in that.
To which our answer in either case is the brains of the caliber of people like John Kerry,Hilary Clinton,Merkel,Hollande and now bleedin Boris and May.
Here’s a little story, from a personal point of view as to why the financial implications of Brexit don’t worry me.
Yes a little rise in the cost of living is inevitable, but I work in a very fiscally strong company, engaged in deep sea container traffic. We’ve been busier the past couple of months than I can ever remember. I noticed diesel had gone up 2p. That cost me an extra 40p this week. My weekly shop for the truck went from £15 to just under £16. I won £112 on the football on Saturday though, so I reckon I’ll be Brexit safe for a couple of weeks yet. What I’m getting at is the retail price rises aren’t that bad. The big companies are the ones that get hit hardest, that’s why they’re desperate to avoid Brexit. One farmer said produce would disappear within 5 days. No it wouldn’t. His workers were saying they were on £50 a day while in Romania they were on £20 per day. You can see why they’re here. And you can see why the boss loves having them here, sharing a 2 bed flat, surviving on poor wages while an indigenous worker with a wife and kids at home couldn’t possibly survive. Why would the shelves not run dry I hear you ask? Because he will start paying £12 an hour and the indigenous workers will do it. The farmer will still earn, because whilst a million isn’t as good as 2, it’s better than none.
I’ll tell you what real term fiscal instability is. It came when the eu opened its doors to the ee and supply outstripped demand. A lot of people on here went from £700+ take home down to £4-500 take home jobs. That’s a noticeable drop on your wages, and that was all courtesy of the eu. And that’s why so many financial commentators want us to remain.
A lot of people have missed the fact, as the financial crash of 2008 was a thin veil used to disguise how bad we’ve all been treated. So nobody will convince me that we’re better off in.
I’ve wondered if any “trade war” would be between “ordinary” and “Multinational” businesses - rather than “The EU or any of it’s member states vs another member state trying to back out of the single market”…
From your container perspective - the view is a lot clearer. Well done for putting that perspective out here!
OVLOV JAY:
Here’s a little story, from a personal point of view as to why the financial implications of Brexit don’t worry me.
Yes a little rise in the cost of living is inevitable, but I work in a very fiscally strong company, engaged in deep sea container traffic. We’ve been busier the past couple of months than I can ever remember. I noticed diesel had gone up 2p. That cost me an extra 40p this week. My weekly shop for the truck went from £15 to just under £16. I won £112 on the football on Saturday though, so I reckon I’ll be Brexit safe for a couple of weeks yet. What I’m getting at is the retail price rises aren’t that bad. The big companies are the ones that get hit hardest, that’s why they’re desperate to avoid Brexit. One farmer said produce would disappear within 5 days. No it wouldn’t. His workers were saying they were on £50 a day while in Romania they were on £20 per day. You can see why they’re here. And you can see why the boss loves having them here, sharing a 2 bed flat, surviving on poor wages while an indigenous worker with a wife and kids at home couldn’t possibly survive. Why would the shelves not run dry I hear you ask? Because he will start paying £12 an hour and the indigenous workers will do it. The farmer will still earn, because whilst a million isn’t as good as 2, it’s better than none.
I’ll tell you what real term fiscal instability is. It came when the eu opened its doors to the ee and supply outstripped demand. A lot of people on here went from £700+ take home down to £4-500 take home jobs. That’s a noticeable drop on your wages, and that was all courtesy of the eu. And that’s why so many financial commentators want us to remain.
A lot of people have missed the fact, as the financial crash of 2008 was a thin veil used to disguise how bad we’ve all been treated. So nobody will convince me that we’re better off in.
Again, please open your ears. It was the British Labor Gov with Tony Blair who with the help of US forced Western Europe to accept former communist EE countries. Western European countries were against EE acceptance as they new we were not ready. Tony Blair was promising Romania and Bulgaria accession to EU back in 1999 if we open our air space for you to bomb Serbia - this were his words from the tribune of the Romanian parliament. Then when the first countries got accepted in 2004 UK didnt impose work restrictions like everyone else, you had the right to do it for up to 7 years, what you did - exactly the opposite. You open your labor market to millions of poor EE migrants.
So please, just stop blaming EU or EE for your actions. It was your government who invited us and let us work legally in UK. And thats the facts.
Might be this was your plan all along: forcing economically poor EE countries onto EU, then bailing out in order to disintegrate EU…go figure. The Labor in this country are worst then our own communist(21 century socialist labor party), listening the other day as Jeremy Corbin wants more refuges into UK
OVLOV JAY:
One farmer said produce would disappear within 5 days. No it wouldn’t. His workers were saying they were on £50 a day while in Romania they were on £20 per day. You can see why they’re here. And you can see why the boss loves having them here, sharing a 2 bed flat, surviving on poor wages while an indigenous worker with a wife and kids at home couldn’t possibly survive. Why would the shelves not run dry I hear you ask? Because he will start paying £12 an hour and the indigenous workers will do it. The farmer will still earn, because whilst a million isn’t as good as 2, it’s better than none.
Probably wouldn’t be in 5 days, but certainly didn’t work well when a couple of US states tried a similar policy, the indigenous don’t want the work regardless of what it pays.
Labour’s problem with all this is that “Who pays” if everyone and his dog has “fallen out of tax” or “earns enough to avoid tax”?
Even raising taxes won’t pay for stuff - if those taxes are not enforced 100% so that there are no “get out” clauses.
I’m in favour of something radical like “scrapping all tax offsetting” for those things that are nothing to do with your job.
Why should suits that don’t work in the transport industry for example - get to claim “mileage” when those IN the transport industry do NOT - if they spend more than 40% of their working year “on a commute”?
How come Politicians get to claim for stuff like fitted kitchens, entertaining dinner guests, and even flights abroad not related to parliamentary duties?
OVLOV JAY:
One farmer said produce would disappear within 5 days. No it wouldn’t. His workers were saying they were on £50 a day while in Romania they were on £20 per day. You can see why they’re here. And you can see why the boss loves having them here, sharing a 2 bed flat, surviving on poor wages while an indigenous worker with a wife and kids at home couldn’t possibly survive. Why would the shelves not run dry I hear you ask? Because he will start paying £12 an hour and the indigenous workers will do it. The farmer will still earn, because whilst a million isn’t as good as 2, it’s better than none.
Probably wouldn’t be in 5 days, but certainly didn’t work well when a couple of US states tried a similar policy, the indigenous don’t want the work regardless of what it pays.
Perhaps this “Minimum Income” would be a good idea… To make it work though, you’d have to make disability benefits only for people actually missing body parts rather than all this “mental illness” tripe, unemployment benefits only for those made redundant, (i.e. you don’t get them if you’ve NEVER worked!) and income support only for those who actually take the job allocated to them by government - which in turn needs to be “local to that worker” rather than “pay above minimum wages”. If government take away all the excuses used by the workshy to get out of working, and discourage employers to go straight for the newly arrived immigrants - they might just crack this nut.
The easiest way to decide “which immigrants can stay, and which get kicked out” is to go through the benefits register.
That won’t get rid of the ones here illegally - but at least they won’t be costing the taxpayer hard cash whilst they don’t bother ever getting a job once here.
If you turn down a Mcdonalds job offer 50 miles away - you’ll get benefit sanctioned as I understand the current system.
I totally agree that the last labour government sold us out. If they’d have used their vetoes over the eastern block, none of this would be happening. There’s only so much propping up the east we can stand. This is what ■■■■■ our wages, not a weak pound. If labour had been happy to plod along with the eu status quo of the 90’s, there would never have been a working class backlash.
OVLOV JAY:
I totally agree that the last labour government sold us out. If they’d have used their vetoes over the eastern block, none of this would be happening. There’s only so much propping up the east we can stand. This is what ■■■■■ our wages, not a weak pound. If labour had been happy to plod along with the eu status quo of the 90’s, there would never have been a working class backlash.
Americans are also very much responsible, not the Labor alone. You know who they fear and were in a hurry to shove us all(EE) into NATO and EU, afraid left governments might put us under the influence of Putin and his Euroasian union idea at the time.
Its all politics and interest, they(political elite and big business) don’t give a f**k about the people of Britain, Bulgaria, Italy or Estonia etc. or any other country.
Dolph:
Its all politics and interest, they(political elite and big business) don’t give a f**k about the people of Britain, Bulgaria, Italy or Estonia etc. or any other country.
At last, something we can agree on. Just wondering how you make this statement while believing their bs is for your benefit
The common denominator between the EU and the Americans - is of course NATO.
We’re told that “If we didn’t have NATO - we’d get invaded by Russia tomorrow”.
Wot a load of bull!
In all fairness, NATO should have started to have been dismantled after the collapse of the Soviet Untion.
It was only there for “Balance of Power” purposes in the first place.
During the years since, - None other than Gorbochev has gone on the record saying "Why on Earth are the Europeans trying to re-create the Soviet Union in EUROPE? whilst talking about the EU and it’s money-wasting planned economy institutions…
I know I’d be more comfortable with a potential “Friend of Russia” becoming President of the United States than Hitlary Clinton who wants to burn her allies as much as her “enemies” - which all too often seem like the very people she expects to VOTE for her next month!
Trump might be an oaf - but he’s a safe Oaf I reckon.
Dolph:
Its all politics and interest, they(political elite and big business) don’t give a f**k about the people of Britain, Bulgaria, Italy or Estonia etc. or any other country.
At last, something we can agree on. Just wondering how you make this statement while believing their bs is for your benefit
Who sad I believe in their BS. One way or another they gonna get what they want. You think we can stop outsourcing, privatizing NHS, devalue of the pound and who know what else? Good luck, for the past 100 years my home country was devastated one way or another(I can name a few) for thinking it can do what and when it wants it. Better stick to the status quo(EU and NATO) and live my life as good as possible, life its to short anyway…
Now we’ve got channel RT being closed down in Britain by withdrawal of support from the nationalized banks they’re holding accounts with.
This sort of story is hard-core ■■■■ for conspiracy theorists like moi. I’m not sure if I should be reaching for the Phone or reaching for my ■■■■.
Typing this is gonna have to do then…
Nationalized UK bank freezes assets and closes accounts with no explanation nor apology.
Nationalized banks are officially “owned by the taxpayer”, but are of course run by the establishment.
Our establishment gets on with the American establishment, of which Hilary is queen before even approaching the forthcoming election.
WikiLeaks uses RT as it’s main outlet.
Wikileaks have promised a release of material that’ll “bury Hilary for all time” between now and the election next month.
…So Hilary orders the lapdog Media following her and the British lickcocks that actually value the “Special Relationship” (or maybe have just been “bought over”)
… to press the UK government to press the Government owned Banks - to start bringing financial pressures upon this “Heretic” TV channel, hoping that after the smoke clears
there is only the Hitlary controlled media left to provide 100% tilted towards HER coverage in the lead-up to the US elections…
Dolph:
Again, please open your ears. It was the British Labor Gov with Tony Blair who with the help of US forced Western Europe to accept former communist EE countries. Western European countries were against EE acceptance as they new we were not ready. Tony Blair was promising Romania and Bulgaria accession to EU back in 1999 if we open our air space for you to bomb Serbia - this were his words from the tribune of the Romanian parliament. Then when the first countries got accepted in 2004 UK didnt impose work restrictions like everyone else, you had the right to do it for up to 7 years, what you did - exactly the opposite. You open your labor market to millions of poor EE migrants.
So please, just stop blaming EU or EE for your actions. It was your government who invited us and let us work legally in UK. And thats the facts.
Might be this was your plan all along: forcing economically poor EE countries onto EU, then bailing out in order to disintegrate EU…go figure. The Labor in this country are worst then our own communist(21 century socialist labor party), listening the other day as Jeremy Corbin wants more refuges into UK
You’re confusing the totally different aims of US foreign policy,of which Blair was just a puppet and misrepresentation of what the electorate wants when viewed under artificially drawn constituency lines,with what we actually want when we get the chance to by pass the gerrymandered rigged electoral system which gives UKIP 1 seat for 4 million votes for example.While constituency type GE results are based on votes for a Party not on specific issues.The result being that we never actually had the chance to vote in a referendum on the specific issue of East Euro membership let alone free movement nor Labour Party policy in that regard which was no different to that of the Cons anyway.While the issue in that case was/is free movement regardless not a 7 year delay.
As for the Serbia situation that was obviously just another US foreign policy zb up that again strengthened the hand of the Islamists in Europe and came close to kicking off a war with Russia in the process.When we should have just said we support Slovenian and Croatian secession and the breakup of Yugoslavia ‘but’ we ‘also’ recognise and support the interests of Serbia regards its Islamic problems as part of that.
In which case your support of the EU and with it by implication the ongoing cluster zb of US foreign policy fixes any of that how and is as stupid as BG’s support of Germany and Ottoman rule in WW1.
Dolph:
Its all politics and interest, they(political elite and big business) don’t give a f**k about the people of Britain, Bulgaria, Italy or Estonia etc. or any other country.
At last, something we can agree on. Just wondering how you make this statement while believing their bs is for your benefit
And yet when anyone says let’s go for a Confederal Europe,which gives us all democratic control over our respective national MEP groups and state sovereignty over the Union,he says he prefers to be ruled by Juncker and Merkel and the CBI.Go figure.
Winseer:
The common denominator between the EU and the Americans - is of course NATO.
We’re told that “If we didn’t have NATO - we’d get invaded by Russia tomorrow”.
Wot a load of bull!
In all fairness, NATO should have started to have been dismantled after the collapse of the Soviet Untion.
It was only there for “Balance of Power” purposes in the first place.
Firstly distrust of Russia is a well founded idea that goes with the territory regardless of what they are calling themselves whether USSR or something else.The bit that the US got wrong was going for a defence policy of containment by moving NATO’s remit eastward into what should have been de militarised neutral buffer states to show good will when Russia moved out.Instead of which we’ve now got Poland and the Baltics looking for a fight which they intend to drag us into.IE the Cold War turned offensive instead of defensive and more conventional than nuclear because the Americans lost their bottle,for a defence policy based on mutually assured destruction,at home.The result of which could turn out to be catastrophic for Europe.
Winseer:
Ergo: The main reasons for "getting out"of both the EU AND NATO then.
Out of the EU but remain in NATO subject to review which demilitarises the East Euro buffer states to be replaced with strengthened strategic nuclear capability along the lines of the old mutually assured destruction defence policy.Without that it’s difficult to see how Europe will get through the coming decades without NATO eventually kicking off a catastrophic conventional war with Russia anywhere along numerous potential flashpoints between the Baltic States to Ukraine or possibly even Turkey and Syria with it being by no means guaranteed which side Turkey would choose.With Russia certainly not likely to be deterred by NATO’s conventional opposition to it on its own borders.More like just provoked and encouraged in the type of conventional fight on its terms,along massive lengthened fronts,which it prefers.
IE we’re sleepwalking into the type of trap which the western leaders skilfully avoided in 1945,by them refusing to pointlessly paint a paranoid Russia into,what Russia sees,as a corner.While keeping any potential conventional front as short as possible between the North Sea to the Adriatic backed by a credible strategic nuclear deterrent.Which the EU and NATO now seems all to keen to forget. Probably on the basis that the US prefers the potential worse case scenario of Europe taken out by Russia in a conventional war than both the US and Russia taken out in a major nuclear exchange.
The idea of any war of secession within Europe would only be a potential issue in the much longer term.IE we’re arguably at the point now where America was at least 60 years or more before the war of secession when it was still actually arguing out the formation of its constitution.In this case we’ve rightly gone for secession and state sovereignty rather than go along with the EU federation with as expected the Federalists not admitting defeat and throwing their toys out of the pram.
