The beginning of the end for the EU …

Keep-calm-and-get-out-of-the-european-union

A few observations on the vote to withdraw the UK from the EU:

  • IMO this election result was driven by elitist/Borg visions of a Europe and eventually a world re-organized; without countries that are more than  a sentimental memory, a fully globalized economy governed by the principle of comparative advantage accompanied by the inevitable poverty of those dispossessed of prosperity by capitalist magnates who revel in their opportunism,  a world in which the ancient ethnic nations of Europe are expected to accept inundations of people alien to their cultures who would inevitably and irreversibly make, for example, France into a different country.
  • Resistance to this set of ideas is variously described as "traditional xenophobia,"  and the "ideas of the ignorant, elderly and unsophisticated."  These are characterizations heard today in American Borgist media.  Christopher Dickey referred on the air today from Paris to the French as "the present residents of France."
  • Is it not likely that the French are looking across La Manche to Dover with envy at the possibility of regaining control of their fate?
  • This must be a great blow to Obama, the prophet and organizing force in his imagined coming world utopia.  For Hillary Clinton, not so much, she will "go with the flow,"  but Obama's vision of a world increasingly globalized under American hegemony (leadership) is badly damaged in its prospects by the English decision to leave the EU. 
  • The American media have already begun to describe the menace of analogous revolt in November, once again implied to be a revolt of rural, ignorant buffoons.
  • A question – Why did Scotland vote so uniformly to "remain?"  The regions of England just south of the border voted to "leave."
  • England will remain in NATO.
  • Intelligence cooperation between the UK and US dates from WW2, is very close and will in no way be affected by this change.  pl
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251 Responses to The beginning of the end for the EU …

  1. Ishmael Zechariah says:

    Colonel Lang,
    Re “This must be a great blow to Obama, the prophet and organizing force in his imagined coming world utopia.”
    Perhaps this “world utopia” idea transcends Obama, the affirmative-action trained house elf, and finds its origins in Soros & co. I am waiting for them to blame Putin for the Brexit, and send yet another armored division to parade in Latvia.
    Interesting times.
    Ishmael Zechariah

  2. b says:

    I don’t believe that this is the EU coming to an end, but to a hopefully much shrunk and better form of a European Union.
    De Gaulle and Adenauer did not want the UK in the EU for good reason. It was a U.S. horse that didn’t belong to the stable. Likewise the Slavic people east of Germany (except the former Austrian-Hungarian maybe) do not belong into the EU. It was U.S. pressure that pushed for their integration.
    The ideal would be a remake of the Carolingian empire with some gives and takes on some borders (Spain?).
    The EU should be a federation of strong nations and not a supernational state. The second will never work.
    With the UK out (if allowed to leave by the powers that are) the U.S. influence on the EU will be reduced too. Very good, as U.S. interests have trumped genuine European interest way too much (see Ukraine which, from a European view, is not worth even one prolonged thought).
    Good luck to the Brits. Hope you’ll do well as 51st state of America
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es7BgsWq1_g

  3. Daniel Nicolas says:

    It seems as if Scotland has more desire to be a vassal state to the EU than the UK. The Scottish narrowly voted to stay in the UK because they wanted to stay in the EU, and leaving the UK would have meant leaving the EU. Now they are soon to be out of the EU without having left the UK.
    To continue their trail of comedic poor timing, perhaps they will vote again soon for Scottish Independence. and join the EU, only to have it crumble as core nations vote to leave as well ( France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, etc. )

  4. Outrage Beyond says:

    re: Why did Scotland vote so uniformly to “remain?”
    I believe this has a great deal to do with the Scotch whiskey industry. EU membership has greatly increased market access for Scotch producers; they fear greater barriers to entry without membership. Germany, Spain, and France are all within the top 10 markets for Scotch.
    Look for the Scotch Whiskey Association to pour large amounts of cash into the next independence referendum.
    Another possible explanation might be a Scottish feeling of being more a part of Europe than a part of the UK.

  5. Freudenschade says:

    This seems really more about economic self interest. Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted to remain. Scotland has a possibility to remain in the EU by revisiting independence. London and Northern Ireland don’t have this option. Depending on how quickly the government invokes article 50, London may abruptly cease to be a world financial center.
    One good thing about Brexit: the UK will have less of a voice in Brussels and less of an ability to encourage EU sanctions to provoke Russia.

  6. LondonBob says:

    Really couldn’t be more pleased, absolutely delighted. Very proud of everyone who ignored the threats and baseless forecasts of economic doom to vote leave. The big turnout from, in American terminology, blue collar whites, against the wishes of their Labour party masters, to vote leave was the difference.
    In the past 20 years Scottish politics has very much drifted off in its own direction, even whilst the politic culture in Wales has actually become more like England’s. A variety of theories for this that I shan’t go in to, I am not sure which are more valid, but the sustainability of the union is very much up in question, unfortunately. Perhaps in due course we will be the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
    I hope this will lead to reform of the EU and abandonment of the European project, although I don’t expect it will. Some form of European cooperation on certain matters are right and necessary, but the current format is outdated has clearly failed.

  7. kao_hsien_chih says:

    Col Lang,
    I doubt anything drastic will take place any time soon. With regards UK, even though the exit referendum won, it offers no guideline for immediate action by the UK politicians. The only practical way that UK can exit EU is via invoking Article 50, but someone has to do it and there is neither a deadline or even an instruction for anyone to actually do so under the referendum. No serious UK politician wants to be in position of actually pulling the trigger any time soon–not even pro-exit figures like Boris Johnson. They will dither and dodge for the foreseeable future, possibly even years, before they do anything–if they do anything.
    Everywhere else in Europe, I imagine much the same forces hold sway. There are many discontented people who want “out,” not so much because of the specific interests and goals but because of the general malaise they see in EU, both correctly and incorrectly. Many politicians will want to tap into those sentiments, but actually pulling the trigger, they will hesitate, even if they “win.” If they are clever, in fact, they will try to rig things up so that they don’t actually “win” or, at minimum, aren’t obliged by any specific guideline or timetable even if they wind up “winning.”
    In the long run, this could indeed bring about the end for EU: discontent will be piling up and politicians do nothing but play word games, but if so, they had been doing the same thing for decades and this will be nothing new. What is new is that the discontent has risen high enough that there is incentive for enough politicians to strike up a more “serious” pose, but even that is just continuation of the long term process that has been underway for some time.

  8. Willy B says:

    It’s already happened:
    http://tass.ru/en/world/884358

  9. turcopolier says:

    b
    “Hope you’ll do well as 51st state of America” This would require a constitutional change in the US since the constitution guarantees to each state a republican form of government. pl

  10. Matthew says:

    DN: Scottish nationalism has awoken English nationalism. Scotland is a beautiful country with many talented people. IMHO, England & Wales, more so. If the Scots want to go their own way, the door is open. The Cross of St. George is a prettier flag than the Union Jack.

  11. Valissa says:

    Not a fan of Larry Summers, but has a few interesting things to say here… possible a sign that some of the elites are starting to realize how angry many people are about the effects of globalization on their lives, and their resentment that the elites are the ones benefiting from globalization the most.
    Why Brexit is worse for Europe than Britain https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/24/whats-crucial-to-know-the-morning-after-brexit/
    Brexit will rightly be taken as a signal that the political support for global integration is at best waning and at worst collapsing. … After Brexit, Trump, Sanders and the misforecast British and Canadian general elections, it should be clear that the term political science is an oxymoron. Political events cannot be reliably predicted by pollsters, pundits or punters. All three groups should have humility going forward. In particular no one should be confident about the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The political challenge in many countries going forward is to develop a “responsible nationalism.” It is clear that there is a hunger on the part of electorates, if not the Davos set within countries, for approaches to policy that privilege local interests and local people over more cosmopolitan concerns. Channeling this hunger constructively rather than destructively is the challenge for the next decade. We now know that neither denying the hunger, nor explaining that it is based on fallacy, is a viable strategy.
    ———————
    Reiterating the key bit of the above excerpt for emphasis:
    “It is clear that there is a hunger on the part of electorates, if not the Davos set within countries, for approaches to policy that privilege local interests and local people over more cosmopolitan concerns.”

  12. Fred says:

    Ishmael,
    Our colleges and universities are infested with this type of people. They have self selected a life of work in an intellectually and economically segregated community that rigidly enforces this segregation by administrative fiat under the guise of a variety of SJW mandates such as “affirmative” action, Diversity and other “progressive” hiring policies. In these segregated communities the only (relatively) poor (or non-degreed) people are the grounds and maintenance, cafeteria and some administrative staff members. These latter folks are not the kind of people the professoriate are going to invite over to their home for wine and cheese on a weekend. They are just as ruthless in the enforcement of ideological standards of purity in the admissions office and the classroom.

  13. S.E. says:

    I am attending a big European conference in Oslo, Norway, on migrant health. Lots of things have become clear these two days from the conference and the media commentaries on brexit.
    1. Brexit is a huge shock to the system all the way down, not just for the politicians.
    2. Those voting for brexit vote for hatred, bitterness and division (according to one speaker). They are also old, stupid and poor, and voted to destroy the lives of young people (according to pundits, slightly exaggerated by me).
    3. Migration is good and benefits the economy, and we have a moral obligation to let people in and accomodate, provide health care etc. So, it´s win – win – win (we all win both economically and morally).
    4. The EU-system is allotting huge resources to providing for migrants, researching on migrants etc, and ought to do more.
    5. There is a big bureaucracy and research community with interests in keeping migration high.
    6. Lots of those working with migration are themselves migrants. This is seen an argument for the benefit of migration. Might they be biased?
    7. Dissenting voices seem nowhere to be heard. Only to be defined as wicked. This is surprising, as one should have expected a well developed ability to listen to “voices with a culturally different perspective”.
    8. Human right issues are central, and there is a slide in human rights thinking, regarded as positive, from citizen rights to human rights, which entails R2P. If this trend continues, we should see more R2P interventions in the future. Citizen rights is seen as “too weak” and Rwanda and Bosnia are main examples of why R2P is necessary.
    9. It is admirable to assist in destroying Syria in (vain) hope of gaining freedom. The speaker who gained most applause was a young Syrian refugee, now living in Norway, who told this story: he lived in Homs, went to school, played football, was happy. Then he saw on tv that the Tunisians had toppled a dictator. He told his father, “look what they´ve done!”. His father said “we are not interested”. Then he saw on tv that the Egyptians had toppled their dictator. He wanted freedom so much, he went to demonstrations in Homs. His father was against it and said: “we will pay a very high price for this”. But the boy wanted freedom, he did not care. After a couple of months of demonstrations, the government cracked down with “bombing and arrests”. His father told him, it´s to dangerous for you to stay, you must flee. So he did. Huge applause from the audience. Now, the boy worries about his old football friend, may be he is forced to join the military in Syria. Should the boy have listende to his father? The audience seemed to think obviously not, he surely did the right thing.

  14. Exordium_Antipodean says:

    “The American media have already begun to describe the menace of analogous revolt in November, once again implied to be a revolt of rural, ignorant buffoons.”
    Aristotle pointed out competence cannot be divorced from an ‘end’. In newspeak, that means technocrats work out the ‘how’ while the demos determines the ‘what’. You collapse that distinction and you have what the paleocons call the ‘managerial state’ and Chomsky ‘manufactured consent.’ Nothing exemplifies those tendencies more than the EU.

  15. visitor says:

    I agree that announcements of the UK leaving the EU are premature. After all, the EU elites (including the British ones) do not want a brexit, so they will do everything in their power to invalidate the vote.
    Just like they did to every single popular referendum going against EU wishes during the past decade:
    1) Dutch and French “no” to the “EU Constitution” in 2005; bypassed by adopting the Lisbon treaty instead.
    2) Irish “no” to the Lisbon treaty in 2008; forced the Irish to re-vote in 2009 to give the “correct” answer.
    3) Greek attempt to organize a referendum on a bailout deal in 2011; cancelled after the EU threatened to interpret any such referendum as a being one not on the bailout, but on membership of the Eurozone.
    4) Greek referendum on another bailout deal in 2015; result simply dismissed by the EU (with the active complicity of Greek politicians).
    5) Dutch “no” to the EU-Ukraine agreement in May 2016; result quietly ignored by the EU, the agreement is currently being applied anyway.
    I contend that the brexit vote will never be taken into account — whether by delaying a brexit forever as suggested by kao_hsien_chih, by overriding it in Parliament, which is not bound by the referendum anyway, or via some contrived legal manoeuvre by the EU and UK government.
    That’s European democracy in action. The one that is to be generously spread around the world.

  16. Fred says:

    b,
    The EU needs Turkey now more than ever. I’m sure the Sultan has a few million people available who can replace all those Britons who no longer want to be EU.

  17. Peter says:

    Cheers to the Brits! They will enjoy their new independence from 40 years of stultifying bureaucracy, political meddling and domination by an unelected foreign political oligarchy. And David Cameron resigned – icing on the cake!

  18. jsn says:

    The rights framed up in the EU charter protect the Scotts from the worst abuse they can expect from London in the event Brexit is actually allowed to happen. The Scotts have a fair degree of autonomy from London granted under those EU provisions, these they stand to lose.

  19. S.E. says:

    I give Cameron credit for calling for a referendum, and resigning when the result was in.

  20. jsn says:

    On your last point, if banking collapses in the UK as a result of a Brexit implementation (and I remain skeptical the elite feel bound by this plebiscite) and the UK experiences a debt implosion like Ireland or Spain, where in order to “save” their insolvent banks they nationalize the private debts, I expect the UK to get the Ukraine treatment from IMF etc. rather than the Puerto Rico or Argentina treatment. But if so, it will be another monumental and transparent double standard.

  21. ex-PFC Chuck says:

    Novelist Frederick Forsyth in an op ed a few months back on why he backed Brexit. The money quote:
    “The whole group was mesmerised by one fact. In 1933 the Germans, seized by rabid nationalism, voted Adolf Hitler into power. Their conclusion: the people, any people, were too obtuse, too gullible, too dim ever to be safely entrusted with the power to elect their government. . . People’s democracy was flawed and should never be permitted to decide government again if war was to be avoided. Real power would have to be confined to a non-elective body of enlightened minds like theirs. . . In the 70 years since, the theory has never changed. It remains exactly the same today.”
    http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/frederick-forsyth/651377/Brexit-referendum-EU-never-meant-to-be-democracy-says-Frederick-Forsyth

  22. Harry says:

    1. Summers needs a pitchfork where the sun don’t shine. He is late to notice the damage he did in government and rather than admit his mistake he turns to some arbitrary economic analysis from the 30s which only partially explains what we have experienced. Probably because this explanation doesn’t involve him admitting his financial deregulation was the culprit.
    2. Scotland historically always looked to France to offset English influence. Also Scotland had many poor areas which benefit greatly from European structural funds. The model for independence always leaned on the eu. If the UK leaves then the Scots might be trapped with the English outside the EU unable to achieve independence.

  23. Harry says:

    I am increasingly annoyed by the characterization of those who voted leave as xenophobic or worse. The areas which voted to leave have become poorer since EU Accession. Those who voted remain generally have become rich from it. The vote was based on perceived self interest. Indeed the remainders are more likely to have voted on the basis of faulty calculation than the leavers, because all the propaganda was in that direction.

  24. A. Pols says:

    ideas of the “ignorant, elderly and unsophisticated. These are characterizations heard today”
    Colonel;
    If that’s what it takes,then count me
    among those!
    Jim Kunstler, who is often strident, likes to refer to these times as an era where “Anything goes and nothing matters”
    The slurs directed at ordinary people in Scandinavia, Germany,and France who object to their world being invaded by hordes of young Muslim men, are disgraceful and of the “let them eat cake” genre…

  25. DC says:

    The wailing and predictions of Brexit-caused doom from the media and “public intellectuals” is at a high pitch, but hard for me to believe. The Maastricht treaty occurred not too long ago, merely 1992, and before that the UK enjoyed trade benefits with the EU that can be easily duplicated, IMO…when the “EU” is ready to get back to business. But I expect the EU and its bank clients will decide to inflict some unnecessary punishment on the Brits in order to scare off more exits. They should be more reasonable, but they will not be, as there is much money to be lost from similar democratic expression. THAT decision from the EU supporters is where the real existential risk lies, it is not with any proximate cause emanating from the Brexit itself.

  26. Haralambos says:

    Apologies for what is personal, anecdotal, and long in my thoughts on the Brexit vote in the UK. The referendum is non-binding, and Article 50 as kao_hsien_chih said… above will give two years for consideration and negotiation. This matter will be taken up in a meeting of the EU Working Group this week, I believe, in the presence of the UK and then later with the other 27 members of the EU. This meeting will largely displace other substantive discussion of very urgent matters such as the Greek situation, the migrant policies, and others. All that said, there are huge decisions to be taken over the next year or two at the EU level.
    I recall Greece’s entry into the EU in 1981 and Portugal’s entry in 1987 since I lived in each country at the time of their entry. Both made my life better half’s (I prefer this to SWMBO)life easier in bureaucratic terms in many ways. The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 for us in Portugal, if I recall, allowed the free movement of goods and services was beneficial to us since it meant we did not have to pay import duty on goods we brought from the UK and other counties. The Schengen Agreement allowed for further ease of travel among included countries: the UK not among them.
    The eurozone, where the euro is the common currency, is another matter. Greece is a member, as is Ireland. I believe the strong sentiment in Northern Ireland as well as Scotland based on the vote against staying in is based on the benefits they have received or believe they have received.
    I think there is a current movement in Northern Ireland to leave the UK and try to join the Republic: think Sinn Fein. I think some of the benefits apply in the case of Scotland without the Sinn Fein reference. Much of this matter is economic; some is complicated beyond my ken.
    These will be challenging times for us as we advise students on their studies abroad, especially in the UK.
    This might be of interest as well on the economics of failing empires: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/michael-hudson-socrates-on-debt.html

  27. charly says:

    What about all those Eastern Europeans that leave England for other EU countries? I don’t see a change

  28. LeaNder says:

    As far as the economy is concerned the UK may be closest to the US.
    But dream on, if you think that for US influences on the EU they need British membership. They definitively don’t.
    I consider Steinmeier one of the few SPD members I still respect, have you seen how swiftly he had to withdraw his recent statements? Modify or redirect attention, via his spokesman?, as if what people assumed, wasn’t really what he was referring too. The problem is, it doesn’t really matter if you allude to special NATO activities or the larger NATO Russia confrontation …

  29. LeaNder says:

    “A question – Why did Scotland vote so uniformly to “remain?” The regions of England just south of the border voted to “leave.”
    I would take a look at Wales and North Ireland too. The explanation may be that the EU has special regional programs, beyond pure state level ones.

  30. charly says:

    Is it worse to be a vassal of Brussels than of London?
    ps. Denmark and Sweden are not core nations of Europe.

  31. LeaNder says:

    A bit gross maybe, but considering the obvious resentments, justified from my perspective.

  32. r whitman says:

    US stock market DJI down over 600 points. The day after Trump elected it will probably go down 6000 points.

  33. charly says:

    Northern Ireland will do the same as Scotland, declare independence and join the Union.

  34. Fred says:

    charly,
    What about all those “IN” people who are going to leave London, etc, for the EU – which they have already expressed their allegiance too. Well, other than that language barrier and job prospects and can you get good bangers n mash in Krakow? Perhaps Riga.

  35. Fred says:

    LeaNder,
    why is that gross? Turkey, long before Erdogan, was trying to gain membership and the same elites were trying to figure out how to get them in.

  36. Fred says:

    jsn,
    Scotland has been part of the UK for how many centuries? Part of the EU for how many decades?

  37. LeaNder says:

    Fs, I made a cynical comment when I first heard about recent new sanctions against Russia. But not since I would like to blame it on the UK more than it deserves.
    Maybe since I wondered, if this could be a start of a more general break-up, in which case matters wouldn’t be so easy any more. Much more single consultations necessary to enforce common “Western marching orders”. Although, the larger EU structure did not prevent France and Germany to opt out of participating in the Iraq war. Remember: Bad old Europe, versus good New Europe?
    My take is, you are pleased way too early but quite in tune with your aka. Just wait a little, be patient.
    “Depending on how quickly the government invokes article 50, London may abruptly cease to be a world financial center.”
    There will be a two year interim phase, in which we will have business as usual. None of the present EU routines and or applied methods may fit the GB. Norway already warned the GB it wouldn’t recommend its own status. I could imagine that the EU leans over backward to offer GB a completely separate co-operation plan. Not that it wouldn’t have preferred it to stay.
    During this time, I doubt the banks will leave London, as they claimed they would.
    All this matters only, of course, if the Brexit does not cause a larger chain reaction. I already wondered if Greece could cause one, with some type of “South” versus “North” campaigns, but apparently it needed the refugee crisis. Will we have the New AfD way beyond 20% in the next election in Germany on a state level? They already made clear, they want to leave the EU.

  38. Fred says:

    jsn,
    “if banking collapses in the UK as a result of a Brexit implementation ” Of course the endemic corruption in the system has nothing to do with a banking collapse, it is all those people who said “leave”.

  39. Fred says:

    r whitman,
    That will be a fabulous buying opportunity.

  40. visitor says:

    This is not a novel argument. However, it is also incomplete.
    “The whole group was mesmerised by one fact.”
    Actually it was mesmerised by _two_ facts.
    One of them was the election of nazis to power, which resulted in a war that utterly devastated Europe (among other regions).
    The second, crucial fact, was the democratic election to power of the Popular Front — in Spain and France, but also in local elections in the UK, Switzerland, etc. This also took place during the 1930s.
    And what did those left-wing government do? Introduce paid vacations. Legislate shorter work days. Increase wages for workers. Set up unemployment insurance funds. Launch public work projects.
    In other words, those governments directly hurt the interests of the inter-war oligarchy — of which people like Jean Monnet were card-carrying members (the “father of Europe” was a very wealthy financier and scion of an industrialist family).
    So not only people could vote for Hitler — who went on to destroy Europe; they also voted for socialists — who went on to make scandalous experiments in income and wealth redistribution (called New Deal in the USA). This also had to be stopped.
    Hence, people’s democracy was flawed and should never be permitted to decide government again if a welfare state (at the cost of the rich oligarchy) was also to be avoided.

  41. James Loughton says:

    I disagree with this part, which I have heard from others as well:
    Depending on how quickly the government invokes article 50, London may abruptly cease to be a world financial center.
    The “City Of London” is made up of international banking, brokerage, and insurance cartels that is largely independent of the rest of Great Britain. They have been a world center of finance for 200 years. Many of its most important members are of a religious minority that was not treated well in Europe in the last 100 years. They aren’t about to depart for Europe.

  42. HankP says:

    All I know is that there were an awful lot of increasingly brutal wars in Europe until the NATO/EU project started in the 1950s. Not sure if Europe is at a point where these projects are no longer necessary.
    I predict a significantly diminished UK economy if this actually goes through although the biggest Brexit proponents are now saying that they don’t want to apply for exit any time soon –
    http://www.cityam.com/244088/former-london-mayor-boris-johnson-has-warned-against
    They sound like the dog that actually caught the car.

  43. LeaNder says:

    “Greek attempt to organize a referendum on a bailout deal in 2011”
    Sorry, but just as Ioannis Glinanvos, I considered that most insincere exercise in democracy I’ve ever seen.
    A real vote would have looked like this:
    NAI/yes: Should we perform a Grexit, leave the European union, declare our state bankrupt and return to the Drachme,
    or
    OXI/no: Should we stay and accept whatever offer we are given. But notice we just objected to a better one, then we had so far.
    Notice, there was no real chance to vote to retain the Euro, stay in the union and go bankrupt and/or default on/get rid of debts and borrow new money the day after. But this isn’t over, no way.
    Alexis Tsipras’ New 5-Year Plan
    http://klauskastner.blogspot.de/
    I wasn’t a fan of the constitution, it felt my rights were somewhat weakened in the process. But I at least retained my “dignity” and the right to live.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_of_the_European_Union#The_text

  44. Larry Kart says:

    A question – Why did Scotland vote so uniformly to “remain?” 
    One reason: Scots, it seems, are far more blasé about immigration than the English are, or even view immigrants and immigration in a positive light. For some reasons why this is or might be so, see this link:
    http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21596541-immigration-worries-scots-less-other-britons-could-change-wish-you-were-here
    Of course, the above, if true, assumes that anti-immgration sentiment played a key role in the Brexit vote.

  45. Haralambos says:

    Yes, there are regional programs, I believe, but I cannot name them. A bit more of my anecdotal might answer your question. I arrived in Greece in 1978, and bananas were were everywhere in the markets. A year or so later, they were nowhere to be found. There was a scam resulting in the ban of imported bananas. The US-Greek kids and Australia-Greek kids wondered where the bananas were. Folks went to Yugoslavia (the Macedonian Republic to buy them). That or of worked for a few months then they were confiscated at the border and burned to not allow the Greek border folks to eat or sell them.
    In the mid 80’s the EU introduced “fruita normalizada” in Portuguese of the day. Bananas could not be curved more than a certain degree. Now we buy buy bananas in Greece that are curved beyond this by far.
    Northern Ireland benefited as did the Republic of Ireland from a subsidy/benefit for shipping livestock across EU borders. Animals were shipped multiple times for the payments. Apologies for no link–still searching.

  46. doug says:

    You hit the nail on the head. There’s already a WaPo article saying the unwashed didn’t understand what they were voting for and many now would vote to stay. The globalists will pull out all the stops to keep the wheels on the EU wagon and do what they can to turn the polls around in the next 3 months so they can then claim that the voters didn’t fully understand what they were voting for.

  47. James Loughton says:

    The Brexit should have little or no effect on US corporations long term. The sell off is out of proportion to the real impact of the Brexit. I believe it is more related to the balance of fear and greed in the market. Today, fear won.

  48. Daniel Nicolas says:

    As my heritage goes back to Scotland from most bloodlines and having visited, I agree that Scotland has many good, talented people with a gorgeous countryside. It does not distract from the tragic comedy of errors that is their political decisions in recent times. If I were to lay claim to a UK/Scottish Citizenship successfully, I’d have voted for an Independent Scotland as well. I would vote against any joining of the EU.
    As kids we joked about staking a claim and taking back the family castle on Mull. When I visited, it turns out that the supposed rightful clan heir lives near the castle and it is operated as a tourist location. I have come to realized that I am too far deep into American culture to fit anywhere else except as a visitor. This is perfectly acceptable to me.

  49. Mark Logan says:

    Col,
    “A question – Why did Scotland vote so uniformly to “remain?” The regions of England just south of the border voted to “leave.””
    Have to give the economic determinists their due here. Scotland’s agriculture and whiskey industry benefited greatly from the union. Subsidized sheep herding and the EU membership blocked the southerners from putting tariffs on the whiskey. But only so much due, they are in the habit of viewing the southerners as a a far greater threat to their culture than Euros.

  50. charly says:

    Fred,
    you do realize that in banking above a certain (not so high) level you mostly work in English even if you are in the EU so yes, a part of those “IN” people will move to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin (and Edinburgh if they decide to hold a referendum) and that that is true for other kinds of jobs(IT, research, medicine) so yes i think there will be a big move out of London to the EU but not to Krakow or Riga but to old Europe, especially places where people with some talent can find jobs in English (Ireland/Scotland/Scandinavia/Benelux and somewhat less Germany)

  51. Bill Herschel says:

    Well, go short.

  52. Tidewater says:

    Tidewater to b and Turcopolier,
    It seems to me that Europe has a dirty little secret that noone wants to talk about. This is the twelve million people who are Roma Gypsy. That’s more than the Dutch, the Czechs, the Hungarians. They constitute a passive-aggressive minority that will never integrate with the larger population of any country they live in. Roma live natually in opposition to and in confrontation with the host populations. They don’t believe what the host country population believes. They find a lot of it ridiculous.They have little empathy for anyone not Roma. They have their own language. Their exchanges are intended to be secret and private. They bring a very sophisticated criminal organization with them wherever they go. They are like a chronic, debilitating illness to any country in which they establish a large presence. They feel only the most grudging obligation to any comity. Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia have large Roma minorities. The history of the relations of this strange and set-apart people with their neighbors has always skirted on disaster. Things are not good in Eastern Europe right now between the Roma and their neighbors.
    The bureaucrats in Brussels overlooked the Roma when they decided to enlarge the European Community. What did they think was going to happen? That Western Europe was large enough to absorb, integrate, and dilute them? It was never going to happen.
    In recent years in Britain people have become sceptical of official figures. Most of the places that voted for Brexit have been areas where there has been very large immigration in a very short period of time. This would include the farming regions of East Anglia. When immigration is described as being from “Eastern Europe” there is a kind of slight-of-hand involved. The question must be asked, how many of these immigrants are Roma? In 2009 a report prepared for the Department of Children, School and Families, estimated that there were some 49,204 Roma living in England. By 2013 the number had grown to 200,00 plus. (Haley Dixon, Telegraph, 30Oct2013 “UK’s Roma population much higher than previously thought.)
    In 2014 the EU lifted restrictions on the movement of workers from Romania and Bulgaria into Western Europe. Something seems to have happened in the last two years, but we don’t know what. Brexit voters seem to have had something bothering them in the back of their minds, I suspect, something they noticed about the number of swart, sometimes furtive, non-English-speaking foreigners who have arrived. Roma networks seem to have been being built. It has not been reported on much. But one can cite signs of trouble in France. Large numbers of Roma families have formed encampments around the country. The largest number of street crimes in Paris have been determined to have been carried out by “Romanian immigrants.” There have been several well publicised trials of Gypsy crime families. Children working for them were expected to bring in $4500 a month from street crime and burglary. After one of these trials, some prominent French leaders spoke out quite bluntly. In October 2013, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said that most Roma in France will never integrate. They should be sent back to their countries of origin. Agreeing with him, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius went so far as to suggest that Romanians and Bulgarians should be prevented from travelling around Europe freely.
    You can imagine the howls that went up. (As I can, too, from my remarks here.)
    The European Commission immediately threatened sanctions against France for its (presumably racist) policy towards the Roma community. The argument was: “We are all citizens of the EU.”
    I offer no solution to the Roma question. Do I even dare say that there is a question?
    In “Tender is the Night” Dick Diver, in a post-war visit to a battlefield, standing in a trench in front of Beaumont-Hamel–a name and place I do not recognize, though I know it had been very bad there — excitedly explains WWI to his friends: “They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and the Italians weren’t as good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancee, and little cafes in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.”
    “General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty-five.” [Was that his friend Abe North speaking, who would be beaten to death outside a speakeasy?]
    “No, he didn’t–he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carrol and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurttemberg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle–there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”
    Maybe Britain just saved what remains of that old Europe from a Zionist/necon America that was killing it softly with its love.
    Anyway, I am going to have a glass or two of wine, toast the British, and raise a glass for Europe, too. Also for F. Scott. And then for two great blogs.

  53. Bill Herschel says:

    This is the second time in recent history when British Democracy has put a spanner in the works of U.S. “Democracy”.
    The first time was when the British House of Commons voted against British military involvement in Syria after Obama’s red line had been crossed. Obama was ready to go into Syria with six guns blazing, but was forced to back off in the knowledge that he would have to submit the plan to Congress as per the U.K. You say that’s not the way it was? You’re wrong. Military involvement in Syria was very, very controversial and would not have passed Congress and would, what’s more, have led to a complete debate of America’s wars. No way.
    And now we have the financial and political elite’s key project, the European “Union”, upended by Britain. Brexit today, can Grexit be far behind. Oh, and NATO “involvement” in Afghanistan? How popular do you think that is in Europe?

  54. jerseycityjoan says:

    Thanks for your on-the-scene reporting.
    I can understand how it would be hard to express dissenting views here. There are many people here, I assume, who have government jobs and don’t want to veer from the official view on these issues. Disagreeing in public could also affect people’s future employment and promotion prospects.
    I cannot blame the kid from Syria for what he did. He himself ended up improving his life in many ways by his protests in that he ended up safe in a rich European country. Many others had a very different experience, of course. I suppose he will go through life being applauded in Norway for being very, very lucky because he did things that ruined the lives of many others left behind in Syria. I wouldn’t be so eager to tell my story, if I were him.

  55. LeaNder says:

    Not really, the German “elites,” that is. Not only the Bavarian ones either. From my perspective.
    Are you relying on Alex Jones infowar? The silly snippet was picked up over here too.
    http://www.infowars.com/german-president-the-elites-are-not-the-problem-the-populations-are-the-problem/
    That was a the most stupid statement in the larger context of an interview (Lutheran pastor, can’t help) Joachim Gauck gave concerning his decision to opt out of a second term as President of Germany.
    There were a series of other aloof matters besides this no doubt somewhat relevatory statement: “the people are the problem and not the elites”. Concerning the refugee crisis, strictly he already said better things. There are limits in what Germany can do, he said at one point. But in this context he was alluding to the rising discontent with Europe. The “elites” simply have to explain it better to “the people”. That’s the context. Hire a few more PR advisers that can help to fit matters into easy to digest talking points, maybe?
    I do not share his rosy view of Germany’s stable state and political center either. The stable center may be challenged soon. Tina Hassel did her best to lure him out of his complacency. Are more and more arsons are not a somewhat threatening scenario some type of warning sign? Well they are balanced out by the many helpful German souls. What about Nolte’s statement that we may live in pre-revolutionary times somewhat reminiscent of Weimar Germany. No way. That cannot be compared. Thus to a large extend she failed, he remained the slightly aloof state dignitary.
    He is a member of the Atlantic Bridge by the way. One of the institutions b seems to be completely unaware off.
    Cynicism alert: Why should he bother, he soon is gone, and will get 199.000 € till the end of his life. It seems that’s it at the moment. “Ehrensoll”, its called. Thus maybe he meant, look I am not the problem, the people are. The average person out there on his or her TV screen watching this.
    On Turkey by the way, he had this to say: He would prefer to tell it Tayyip personally, but it was apparently a shared feature in countries in transition from one state of affairs to the other. Sometimes these states found democracy and open societies too complex, it happened in the East too. They then reversed, opting for authoritarian rules to enforce something that seemed to work more rigidly. But more generally spoken Turkey needed a vision and this vision could be nothing but our Western model e.g. freedom of expression, independent courts and so on …
    In case you consider this as support for the elites view, be my guest. But strictly not only the elite, but even I know that Turky in its current political make-up and state of affairs, it simply couldn’t. It has to conform to the rules. And Hassel surely, but maybe he too referred to it, if so, much more vaguely then Hassel.
    Besides, maybe there soon will be no European Union Turkey can join. 😉

  56. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I do not think so; if this matter is not quickly taken up and exit process starts, it would mean that there is no Democracy is UK – or for that matter in EU.

  57. Tyler says:

    Hahaha facebook is amazing right now.
    I for one am enjoying watching proud self proclaimed Marxists tie themselves into pretzels explaining why we need an international capitalist rent seeking bureaucracy.
    Mind you I was bass fishing today out on Lake Saguaro and it looked amazing (my fb friends here can concur), AND we had Brexit AND Obama’s illegal amnesty got shot down AND Marilyn Mosby looked like an enormous fool (the head witch hunter prosecuting cops for her political career).
    All in all its been a great two days but wow what a ride.
    To answer this: “A question – Why did Scotland vote so uniformly to “remain?” The regions of England just south of the border voted to “leave.”
    A: Because Scotland is infested with insane cultural marxists who are seeking more welfare handouts and virtue signaling. Kid you not, one of the arguments for leaving the UK was so they could invite MORE 3rd world refuse.
    The new Braveheart: “You can rape our wives, you can rape our kids, just don’t call us racist!”

  58. Tyler says:

    “Statement Regarding British Referendum on E.U. Membership
    The people of the United Kingdom have exercised the sacred right of all free peoples. They have declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy. A Trump Administration pledges to strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense. The whole world is more peaceful and stable when our two countries – and our two peoples – are united together, as they will be under a Trump Administration.
    Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first. They will have the chance to reject today’s rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people. I hope America is watching, it will soon be time to believe in America again.”
    https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/10157213077740725
    Gosh damn when was the last time you heard ANYONE talk like that, let alone a presidential candidate.
    Look past the theatrics. This is what you need to see.

  59. Nana2007 says:

    Thanks Fred, you’re right about that. In addition, after all the cant, there are hardly any Hispanic or Black professors in the academy aside from the token representatives to provide the thinnest veneer of social justice in action.

  60. kao_hsien_chih says:

    Haralambos,
    The two year timetable kicks in once Uk formally invokes Article 50. There is no obligation placed on UK leaders to actually invoke Article 50, let alone place a deadline on when they need to start the proceedings. I fully expect that UK politicians will find one excuse or another to not invoke Article 50 for years, while hoping that they could find some excuse to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Maybe they can pull it off if the immigration issues are dealt with and prosperity returns.

  61. kao_hsien_chih says:

    Scotland is both a beneficiary of EU regional programs and an aspirant to a Gaelic Norway/Iceland–since much of the North Sea oil resources are Scottish by geography, I believe, and Scotland is home to a quite large and competent banking sector. Pro-independence types in Scotland talked often about how Scotland would be much more prosperous (and less involved in outside affairs) as a small country that is part of EU rather than part of a still sizable country with overseas commitments like UK.
    Northern Ireland and Gibraltar were anti-Brexit (to a very heavy degree in case of Gibraltar) to a sizable degree for economic reasons, I believe. Possibility of restrictions to border crossings between UK and the Irish Republic came up immediately after the vote along with worries about economic consequences thereof. In case of Gibraltar, I suppose the benefits of unfettered economic linkage to Spain are a no brainer.
    Wales, on the other hand, has very little economic connections outside England, and in many ways, suffered badly from economic globalization–somewhat like British Appalachia I suppose, complete with coal. Not surprisingly, as pro-Brexit as England.

  62. David Lentini says:

    These ideas go back to the 1930s at least, with the great popular thinkers of those times, like H.G. Wells, describing utopian global societies arising from the ashes of world war. In fact Woodrow Wilson and the progressives wanted to start a “new order” with the League of Nations to replace “medieval” Europe. The collapse of the world economy in 1929 was also taken to be the signal for a new order, and FDR pushed for it in the Atlantic Charter, which was the basis for the UN.
    These ideas resonated with the post-war intellectuals, industrialists, and communists who all formed a loosely associated humanist movement. Yes, they differed over the details about who would rule and the exact terms of that rule, but all envisioned a global society either without religion or under some sort of “humanized” religion. These ideas were funded by the likes of the major U.S. philanthropies, especially the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, George Soros, and were pushed by the so-called Bilderberg Group which has its tentacles into all the major banks, corporations, educational institutions, and the Council on Foreign Relations. This is why the collapse of the Soviet Union was more like a merging than a conquest, and China because a perfectly respectable communist state: It suited all the humanist, globalist parties.
    These folks won’t walk away from seeing their “utopia” voted out at the last minute. Look for a new round of “phony war” with Russia that may indeed get hot.

  63. ISL says:

    Dear Colonel,
    zerohedge links a plot of poll numbers, showing that Obama’s lecture to the British people correlated in time with a dramatic change in the leave popularity, 8% in fact.
    See:
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-24/was-deciding-factor-brits-vote-leave
    Shows a lack of understanding of perceptions outside the DC bubble and borg media.

  64. Cortes says:

    I live in Glasgow, Scotland.
    My take on the Brexit result is:
    Just as the previous Independence vote sponsored by the Nationalists was ultimately decided by “blow ins” – people not born in Scotland but eligible to vote – the same is likely to be observable if honest explanations of voting patterns are forthcoming.
    If not: hmmm. Discontent will simmer, possibly boil over,

  65. Nana2007 says:

    Yeah thanks Valisea. I look forward to a reformatted Larry Summers and Cass Sunstein rechanneling the hunger of the masses.

  66. LeaNder says:

    Haralambos, I have several serious objections to the narrative. Not the look at the historical context, but how Greece is woven into the narrative.
    Let me pick out the frequently heard, even the IMF says. Now, that sounds good on the surface, wasn’t there Argentina? Weren’t they once considered lions (vultures), well, how happy we should all be that now they have turned into lambs. We succeeded, the left will win!!! Venceremos. …
    Really? May I cite Klaus Kastner on the issue?
    IMF Departure – Solution to Greece’s Debt Sustainability?
    Two very interesting articles were published within the span of a few days recently.
    In “IMF go home!”, Daniel Gros sheds light on Greece’s interest cost and maturities profile. As I have argued on many occasions in this blog, from those two standpoints, the IMF is part of the problem and not part of the solution: the interest cost of IMF funding is almost 300 basis points higher than that of the Eurosystem funding (3,9% versus 1%); and the maturity profile of 5-7 years on IMF funding compares with up to 50 years on Eurosystem funding.
    The IMF has super senior status to begin with. By insisting on major debt relief on the part of the Eurosystem, the IMF is essentially improving the quality of its super senior loans to Greece. When the IMF makes debt sustainability analyses justifying major debt relief, that obviously constitutes a conflict of interest.

    commenting on this article:
    https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/imf-greek-debt-reduction-deal-by-daniel-gros-2016-06
    The citation from the article, I used my expert banker friend’s comment on:
    “This obligation of creditors to share in the risk of non-payment is precisely what the IMF staff and other critics of the European Central Bank’s pro-creditor line are now belatedly insisting. It is the principle that American bank reformers urged after the 2008 crash: Banks that made junk mortgage loans beyond the ability of debtors to pay should have their reckless and often fraudulent “liars’ loans” downsized to reflect reasonable rental values and real estate prices instead of being allowed to foreclose and push the U.S. economy into debt deflation.”
    So a banker lending money to a state, usually a quite solid matter, and not in the least speculative, at a time there are not the slightest risk alerts on the horizon–since among others highly well paid American insiders in the banking business offered expert advise in how to make them visually disappear for every more carefully looking eye–is exactly the same as the bankers that created the 2008 fiasco? He should suffer default based on risk sharing, when no one could foresee there would be a risk to start with? Interesting. Bankers are an evil crowd more collectively, since the loan money?
    Full discovery Klaus Kastner is a retired banker, worked all over the world, among others in the US. But I seem to recall he worked in South America to, I vaguely remember he once referred, maybe concerning Argentine, to the “Chicago boys”. He is Austrian, is married to a Greece wife, they spend some time there.
    Here he post some comments by Greek insiders on the latest Greek plan that caught his attention. “24 Progressive Reforms For a New Greek Productive Model”
    A New Greek Productive Model – Debunked!
    http://klauskastner.blogspot.de/2016/06/a-new-greek-productive-model-debunked.html

  67. Freudenschade says:

    LeaNder,
    I’m keeping economic and military maters separate here, as the decision making process (NATO vs EU) is different.
    It is uncertain whether the UK will invoke article 50 soon, never, or somewhere in between. Customers, businesses and investors hate uncertainty. Already some of my vendors are sending out emails assuring me they’ll open a “Niederlassung” in the EU before it’s too late. Also, my financial services friends are telling me that internal discussions are already underway on relocating headcount to the continent.
    Nothing may come of it, but only if what Brexit means comes into focus fairly soon.

  68. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Boulder, Colorado; Seattle, Washington

  69. Poul says:

    Interesting to observe Northern Ireland.
    http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0624/797805-brexit-ni/
    There is a correlation between a constituency voting Remain and being predominately catholic and Leave when predominately protestant.
    Maybe it’s the same effect we see in Scotland. Those who dislike London’s role in the local affairs are more positive towards the EU.

  70. MH says:

    Yeah, the rabidly Russophobic neocon, Anne Applebaum, said on Twitter today:
    “Russia has spent years pumping money, overtly and covertly, into euroskeptic parties and media all across Europe. Now it can reap the reward.”
    https://mobile.twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/746310873036296192

  71. Fred says:

    Babak,
    There are more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the US. So you mean that colleges and universities in those cities are not ethnically diverse or have an administrative direction to become so? If so I would have started with Hillsdale, Michigan.
    Oops, never mind: http://www.washington.edu/diversity/
    http://www.colorado.edu/odece/
    I wonder just how much time they will spend on non derogatory exploration of “white” colonial history of the US?

  72. Robert Colbert says:

    Irrevalant. For most of those centuries , England shat on Scotland. The EU helped.
    Robert

  73. kao_hsien_chih says:

    That’s the minimum timeline. Cameron says he’ll stay on for another 3 months, but the actual process, if it begins, would have to be initiated by his successor–assuming his successor, whoever it is, wants to. There could very well be another general election, but, whoever wins, there is no party that has a clear position on Brexit, except UKIP–and my reaction to Farage’s weird dance after the vote (first “conceding” even before the votes were in, then crowing about the “independence” after the count indicated he won) suggests that, more than anything, he saw it as a publicity stunt that he didn’t want to win. So, at minimum, nothing will happen over next 3 months. If the UK politicians can figure something out meantime, something may happen (could easily be another general election, or the second round of the referendum, in other words, except who’s on which side would not be obvious). If not, there is nothing that keeps them dithering for even years.

  74. Robert Colbert says:

    Fools gold.
    RC

  75. Fred says:

    charly,
    All the millions of IN voters don’t work in finance and banking is not “the” economy. The “work” is done in English? Have you ever worked in an international company? I’ve been in one a couple decades. The quality of “English”, especially written, among most of the employees in our European offices is debatable. The overwhelming majority of the work is not in English it is in the language of the host country where a particular office is located, not necessarily it’s HQ. So some smattering of Cosmopolitans will move. They had no allegiance to England and won’t have any to anywhere else either. They are consumers of civilization not necessarily contributors to it. Why should anyone give a damn about them?
    BTW when did Krakow and Riga stop being part of “old Europe” as you like to call it? For that matter when did the United Kingdom stop being in Europe?

  76. Amir says:

    According to a “descendent” of Andrew Murray, there will be second chances for the independences of the brave Scotsmen/women: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/calm-stroll-independence
    Historical memory lasts longer than Globalistan thinks it will. The Scotts want independence since the 13th century and came close with William Wallace (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Murray) and hopefully, they will get it.
    It has nothing to do with Whisky or Trump’s Golf courses.

  77. Freudenschade says:

    New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo. If you’re a major investment bank, you have major offices in those locations. Because of it position in the EU and previous advantages, London has emerged as the dominant financial center in Europe. I’m sure those important members will continue to live in and around London, but their employees are going to Frankfurt.

  78. Fred says:

    Tidewater,
    There you go again speaking those inconvenient truths……

  79. Tidewater says:

    Tidewater quoth poetic,
    IT WAS THE REFERENDUM
    THAT WAS GOING TO END’UM,
    VAS WOT THE MINISTUH SAID,
    NOT THE ONE WITH THE GOLDEN HEAD.
    SO WOT HAPPEN SINCE NEXT,
    VE BETTER NIX IT,
    ‘CAUSE NEXIT
    IT’S GREXIT.
    FROM BRETTON WOODS TO BRIXTON ROAD,
    WE MARCH ALONG THIS DAY,
    STILL IN OUR HEARTS IS JEAN MONNET!
    RIGHT ON DOWN TO CANARY WHARF
    AND DICK’S OLD CAT TO SEE US OFF,
    ORSTRYLIA!
    WE’RE BOUND AWAY,
    ORSTRYLIA! ORSTRYLIA!

  80. Poul says:

    I agree with a lot your say, but we do have European elites like Irishman Peter Sutherland who wishes to undermine the nation state. With an ageing population political power will shift by the end of the century or the beginning of the next century towards the newly arrived, so maybe he will get his wish. Africa looks like to biggest challenge. Rapidly growing population and few leaders who wish to work for the benefit of their citizens.
    From 2012:
    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18519395
    Quote:
    “The EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, the UN’s special representative for migration has said.”
    And all we have seen in Syria, Iraq, etc, have not changed that desire.
    From last year:
    http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=50851#.V25BIDXcCc0

  81. Bill Herschel says:

    From the New York Times:
    “…signaling a step away from the multiculturalism that they say has made Britain among Europe’s most vibrant societies.”
    That is utter nonsense. What had occurred in London is the complete de-Britishification of the British Capital. I don’t accept that London = Warsaw is vibrant. It is just real. If you like it, fine. If you don’t, fine. But it isn’t “vibrant” or any other publicists Bernaysian weasel word.
    The majority in England excluding London want to leave the European Union. London has already left England.

  82. BREXIT marks the real start of the 21st Century just as August 1914 marks the real start of the 20th Century.
    The most startling fact to emerge so far from the BREXIT turnout of voters and how they voted was the importance of the older or younger than age 50 demographic. Older voted out while younger voted in.
    IMO Article 50 will NEVER be triggered by the U.K.! The competition for the affections of the U.K. and policy dominance wars between E.U. oligarchs and U.S. oligarchs will grow more fierce. E.G. the world of accounting.

  83. Ulenspiegel says:

    ” I fully expect that UK politicians will find one excuse or another to not invoke Article 50 for years, while hoping that they could find some excuse to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Maybe they can pull it off if the immigration issues are dealt with and prosperity returns.”
    Yes. But the more interesting question is whether the EU-27 finds a way to encourage UK to invoke Article 50. Maybe not impossible, you only need a little bit creative interpretation of Article 7. 🙂

  84. eakens says:

    short term pain, long term gain.

  85. Fred says:

    Robert,
    Inheritance of guilt. That’s a common refrain over here too.

  86. charly says:

    Stopping Rumanians at the boarder is not presumable racist, it is racist but that is not a reason to not implement it and the howls were not against that it was racist but that it was against free movement of people which is one if not the core belief of the European Union. And you don’t give up a core belief for such a trivial, ineffective act.

  87. Nana2007 says:

    They are not ethnically diverse. They will not become so whatever their administrative directives might say.

  88. Philippe says:

    out of topic, but important IMHO : the SAA Taqba rout, Ivan Sidorenko’s version
    https://twitter.com/IvanSidorenko1/status/746022102977904641
    By the way, an analytic Sitrep on the volatil situation would be greatly appreciated. One can feel somewhat confused about the last developments. The overall strategy seems lost, even taking into account the undermaned SAA factor.
    Philippe

  89. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I mean those cities are exclusive…
    Almost all Euro-Americans, high IQ, and rich.
    Bellevue, Washington – is another one such city.
    People are separating themselves by wealth and IQ in the United States – I suspect in time they will also separate themselves by Morality as well.

  90. Babak Makkinejad says:

    If UK leaders do not trigger article 50, that means that there is no democracy in UK.
    That some other people have suggested that outcome on this forum is attesting to the extent that the belief in popular political sovereignty has degenerated among some.
    By all means, legalize two bulls defining a husband-and-husband, that is real, authentic true honest-to-God democracy, but not rejection of the sovereignty of Brussels over the English people.
    I do not think that is going to be acceptable.

  91. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I do not think the grievances are unreal or undeserving of attention.
    For example, since 1960s, armies of MBAs have been hired by US corporations to organize the sale of US jobs abroad. That process finally has met it denouement.
    You also have people who want illegal activities with clear and enduring damage to the United States to be legalized – say hallucinogenic drugs – while proposing to rescind part of the Constitution of the United States, namely the Second Amendment.

  92. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Yes, it was foolish to do so.
    I am not unsympathetic with European integration project but after the experience of Iran with the Afghan refugees over the last 40 tears, I have come to the conclusion that mass immigration of people who do not speak the same languages and share the same culture is an untenable proposition for many areas of the world.
    In regards to the gypsies, the beggars in Italy were a pest.
    And then there were the Eastern European prostitutes outside of motor-road ramps – hawking their wares during winter months as well. I wonder were the R2P crowds were in that case.

  93. Babak Makkinejad says:

    What is Scottish Culture? Do they have anything? Or is it again something like the presumed “Kurdish Culture” to which so many young lives have been sacrificed and will, indubitably, be sacrificed in the coming months and years?

  94. rjj says:

    Frivolous note: Cameron is supposed to quit sometime around Party Conference Season??
    This year it falls on 950th anniversary of another bit of heavy-handed continental bother:
    invasion Sept 28 and Hastings October 14, 1066 (assuming calendars have been corrected)

  95. Fred says:

    Babak,
    Thank you for the clarification. Yes they are exclusive and also big proponents of the R2P invade the world (to save it) approach along with the sanctimonious morality of “invite them all” (just as long as they don’t wind up in our shining city on the hill).

  96. Fred says:

    Babak,
    “I wonder were the R2P crowds were in that case.”
    I believe they enjoy a higher caliber of “talent”.

  97. Bill Herschel says:

    What is the most important fact?
    Democracy is good for Ukraine, Syria, Libya (note that in Syria and Ukraine there were a democratically elected governments), but when it crops up in Britain it is “populism” and to be despised. How contemptible. One surely can have more respect for Marie Antoinette dressed as a peasant frolicking at Versaille parties than for the creatures controlling Western society today.
    The Masters of the Universe have been dealt a very grave blow. Will they be able to recover and erase democracy in Britain? They will try every trick in the book to do it.

  98. Chris Chuba says:

    Interesting account Philippe, from reading the twitter account it looks like the Desert Falcons were able to retreat in good order which is good news.
    South Front had an analysis as well, they basically mention how suicide trucks are easy to armor and use at checkpoints at newly acquired positions.
    https://southfront.org/suicide-bombers-contest-the-road-to-raqqa/
    The lines of advance to Tabaqa military airport was stretched very thin, I also read that there was a sandstorm during at least part of the ISIS counter-attack. The ISIS counter-attack / Falcons withdrawal took place within 48 hrs wiping out gains that took weeks to materialize.
    Obviously, ISIS would not let the SAA take Tabaqa military airport without a fight because that would have effectively cut their territory in half, separating them from Turkey. The twitter post puts most of the blame on lack of Russian air support. The Col. has mentioned that R+6 doesn’t have enough troops to advance on both ISIS and the Unicorns at the same time, it is difficult to deny this now. At least the Falcons bailed out instead of trying to hold onto an impossible task but there was not enough support for this advance. Too bad, it would have been a beautiful thing, it’s too bad that the SAA has to fight two armies.

  99. LeaNder says:

    “Bananas could not be curved more than a certain degree”
    Haralambos, that’s a larger topic. I once read the EU regulation on cucumbers. It was helpful. I don’t think, I need to explain the possible lobbies behind it? Do I? It was an absurd reading adventure not least considering length. “Nature” forced into transportable line? Made me realize, why now apples seem to grow exactly the same size to fit into boxes that can then be used without further work in the shops for display. Thankfully we have some regional farmer dissidents using plastic bags, with apples that apparently still resist the one-size-fits-all orders.
    But ok, why not, alluding to the Forsyth article linked here above. In GB, just as in Greece more recently it has become fashionable to allude to the perceived German (Nazi) dominance of the EU via Hitler imagery. This may be partly the reason why I dived into the long autobiographical “babbling”.
    Well, if I, or my country is perceived as some type of post-Nazi force that never really shed off its authoritarian genes, why not simply admit it? That’s what I am: a fascist. There was also someone that discovered it early.
    *******
    More privately. The most interesting thing for me personally, and that is related to my old enemy vaguely via the tag/label “suspicion” was some type of German film portrait of Yanis Varoufakis. I think it was realized after he had left as minister of economy.
    *******
    Background: A German worked on a portrait of Schäuble, when he met Varoufakis in New York, was it? Washington? I forget.
    Anyway. He left the building to have a cigarette. Where he stumbled across Yanis, and they talked. Long term this led to an interview and a film somewhat parallel to the Schäuble portrait he was working on, a parallel Varoufakis* portrait, if you like, he then sold to German TV.
    There was a special passage in it that caught my attention. Varoufakis suggested at one point, that Schäuble wanted him out of the EU, since he really intended to create something like a European Ministry of Finances. Which would then also pay people without work in whatever state unemployment benefits and/or social security. That’s why Yanis assumed Schäuble offered him a complete debts relieve if Greek left the EU. Syriza’s demand.
    Now fact is. That every German employee pays a deductive rate of his income for such cases. This is the basis of his unemployment benefit. In other words there may indeed be something of an inner basic solidarity system. But pray tell me, how could it be expanded on a European level? How much would he expect German workers to pay for Greece, Italian, Spanish and so on?
    Interestingly enough, this passage wasn’t spread by his German network that sent an abbreviated subtitled version online, and which he then linked to.
    One basic thing. We had serious cuts in the social security context over here, but he thinks the German workers have much broader shoulders?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010
    * I would have liked to see all this material, he had to squeeze it into the 45 minutes Phoenix public channel frame, he told me in a private exchange. And yes, I can only respond to what I have seen. Not to the edition process or selection. On the other hand, he visually showed that passage, he cannot have invented it.

  100. rjj says:

    “Older voted out while younger voted in.”
    Startling? What would you expect from Rainbow Guards and Mammon Jugend fresh out of Useful Idiocracy Indoctrination Centers.

  101. Haralambos says:

    LeaNder, I am rather perplexed by your reply: “Not the look at the historical context, but how Greece is woven into the narrative.
    “Let me pick out the frequently heard, even the IMF says.” I do not believe I referred to what anyone said about the Greek economy in its current state of affairs. “Greece is woven into [my] narrative to anchor my thoughts on living here in Greece” over almost 40 years with 12 years in the middle of it in Portugal.
    Where do you find something I wrote that even hints at “the frequently heard” or the “IMF”?

  102. LeaNder says:

    Of course you like it.
    Could serve as evidence that while some of us want to take democracy everywhere, we, considered collectively, do not really have it at home. I have absolutely no doubt that we had a serious parallel reflection on that in “the West” at least from the Iraq war on.
    I paid attention to kao’s comments, maybe not quite the way you would have liked me to, but pay attention I did.
    The ideal scenario from my perspective would be if Boris Johnson got elected. That could void (can I use that) kao’s suspicion they may not act too fast, but remain in some type of interim state. Shouldn’t we expect him to remain faithful to his words after all?
    The EU started out as economic union, it evolved over the years without serious reflection beyond the ideal goals, or founding visions.
    It thus isn’t such a big revelation that it was equally ill prepared for the Greece crisis as for the British exit. Grexit and Brexit are not parallel constructions by accident. Greece feeded the sentiments on the British “left” to unite with the British “right”. That was as easy to see as nationalist vocabulary on the Greek left, national pride?
    “Rahul Goma Phulore @missingfaktor
    Brexit. Grexit. Departugal. Italeave. Fruckoff. Czechout. Oustria. Finish. Slovakout. Latervia. Byegium.”
    Besides, concerning vaguely Fred’s allusion to “elite” versus “the people”.
    What do you make of the friendship between Lord Lamont, I hope Lord is elite enough, and what of his friendship with Yanis Varoufakis?
    EU referendum: Former Tory chancellor Lord Lamont backs Brexit
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12179973/EU-referendum-Former-Tory-chancellor-Lord-Lamont-backs-Brexit.html
    a peculiar friendship:
    https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/08/17/varoufakis-and-lamont-interviewed-on-radio-4-on-their-peculiar-political-friendship/
    But don’t worry, after all Yanis Varoufakis is hired as economic adviser by Jeremy Corbin:
    He’s back!!!! let’s all celebrate, he’ll set us free in Europe:
    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/29/hes-back-yanis-varoufakis-to-advise-uk-politicians.html

  103. Haralambos says:

    LeaNder, I just read this. Now I seem to understand the animus of your earlier reply. That said, the curvature of bananas has nothing to do with Varoufakis and his tenure as Minister of Finance or on his interactions with Minister and Dr. Schäuble.
    As happenstance would have it, I have read much of what Varoufakis has written over many years. I strongly agree with his economic ideas: I suggest you look at this: https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2011/12/15/never-bailed-out-europes-ants-and-grasshoppers-revisited/
    I can only speculate that some of the animus behind your replies might be the assumption that I am Greek based on my handle (Haralambos). I am not. My name is Robert, and I am American. My nickname, Bob, has a similar form, Μπάμπης, in Greek. My Greek friends told me the full name was Haralambos, a Greek Orthodox saint; they have thenceforth called me by my Greek name.

  104. Ulenspiegel says:

    From discussions with people from UK: Scotsmen are to a certain extend like people from southern Italy, they do not believe that their own government is better than the EU, which offers some kind of protection for working class people.

  105. Valissa says:

    LOL… great snark! And quite unlikely too 🙂 However it’s good to see some of the elites starting to figure out how deeply they are hated and why. It will be interesting to see if the elites are willing to make any changes to appease the unruly peasants.
    Here’s WP’s Chris Cillizza connecting some dots… The remarkable parallels between the Brexit vote and the rise of Donald Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/24/the-remarkable-parallels-between-the-brexit-vote-and-the-rise-of-donald-trump/
    Political leaders and institutions are clueless and corrupt. Being governed by rules dictated by a nameless, faceless government entity in Brussels — the home of the E.U. — didn’t sit well with lots and lots of “leave” backers. Neither did the idea that British Prime Minister David Cameron was the chief proponent of the “remain” effort. (Cameron announced his intention to resign Friday morning in the wake of the Brexit results.) People — whether they are Britons or Americans — now carry a fundamental distrust for any large-scale institution or high profile politician who promises to “know what’s best” for them. In this country, trust in virtually every major societal institution is at or near historic lows.
    Trump has put that distrust and disdain for politicians and their institutions at the heart of his campaign. These people are dumb and don’t know what they’re doing, he tells his supporters. These institutions are either poorly run or fundamentally corrupt. The idea that anyone is looking out for you is a fallacy. They are doing what’s good for them — and it often comes at your expense. I will look out for you. I will Make America Great Again. …
    … British voters who were inundated with warnings about economic damage and other alarms a separation from the E.U. might set off. The idea of dire consequences for a “leave” vote paled in comparison to their view of the current state of affairs and why it needed to change.
    Make no mistake: This was a damn-the-torpedoes vote in Britain. And that’s the same sort of how-can-it-be-worse-than-what-we’ve-got thinking that has spurred Trump to the verge of formally claiming the Republican presidential nomination next month in Cleveland.
    We are in the midst of a worldwide sea change regarding how people view themselves, their government and their countries. The Brexit vote and the rise of Trump — while separated by thousands of miles and an ocean — are both manifestations of that change. There will be more.
    ——————
    NOTE: I am posting this excerpt as a point of interest, not because I agree fully with all the points and reasoning as presented by Cillizza. It’s another example (somewhat amusing IMO) of an elite trying to “get it.”

  106. All,
    With reference to comments from ‘LeaNder’, ‘b’ and others.
    I share her concern about how far disintegrative tendencies may go.
    It seems to me worth trying to take a step back from current events. It is a familiar problem that people trying to avoid a recurrence of old catastrophes produce solutions which are inappropriate to new problems.
    So, for example, Neville Chamberlain was trying to avoid the mistakes of August 1914; Arthur Harris was trying to avoid the need for an amphibious assault, the nightmare being a rerun of the Western Front.
    The determination of some people here to see Merkel’s Germany as a kind of softer version of Hitler’s is another case in point. It does not make it easier for Germans to cope with the complex problems of their role in Europe, if people are continually throwing the past in their face in ways which are not really very relevant.
    Actually, it seems to me that one of the central problems at the moment is common to Germany and to Britain. The determination to as it were put the legacy of National Socialism behind them means that people are, as it were, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
    So the fact that ‘tribal’ is a thing one is not supposed to be – and not exactly without reason – means that we have ended up with some another instance of ‘Enlightenment’ projects going crazy.
    Over the years, I have come to have progressively more sympathy for de Gaulle’s attitude on some matters – the notion of a ‘Europe des patries’, and also the suspicion that the United Kingdom would be a kind of American ‘Trojan Horse’. On the other hand, as ‘LeaNder’ notes, it is a moot point quite how far European subservience to ‘neocon’ agendas requires Britain.
    In making sense of these matters, debates among Jews in the Hapsburg Empire are of particular interest: in particular because of the sheer diversity of responses. So Vienna was a great centre of ‘liberal’ culture and thinking. But part of the tragedy of liberal thinking in Vienna was that mass politics was not commonly not liberal anywhere, and certainly not in multinational empires.
    It was either socialist or nationalist, or in the end ‘national socialist’: when push comes to shove, ‘national’ loyalties tended to be more powerful than ‘international’ ones.
    One strand among Jewish responses was ‘cosmopolitanism’. And the lesson drawn from the catastrophic failures of socialism and nationalism by Sir Karl Popper, the refugee from Vienna who had an immense influence on British intellectual life, was that ‘cosmopolitanism’ had been vindicated. So, one should turn one’s back on the temptations of ‘tribalism’, and embrace the ‘open society’.
    He is of particular interest today, because it is his philosophy which – in a degenerate form – underpins the disastrous activities of George Soros.
    A younger Jewish refugee than Popper, Ernest Gellner, came from Prague, but his family history was rooted in that of industrialising Bohemia, a seedbed both of Czech and German nationalism. Like very many Jews from that part of the world, his family identified strongly with the interwar Czechoslovak Republic.
    The description he gave in an interview in 1991 of his experiences in the Czech Armoured Brigade – ‘a very inefficient military unit’ – is hilariously funny. His account of how, as the child of Jewish refugees, he got to Balliol College Oxford tells you so much about what British society once was that I cannot resist reproducing it:
    ‘We came to England in 1939, after the German occupation of Prague. I was 13, and ended up in a marginal, at that time not-quite-a-grammar school, founded in the ‘30s in St. Albans, from which I got a scholarship to Oxford – partly because it was that kind of school. At that time Lindsay was in charge of Balliol, and Lindsay practised Portuguese colonial policy, that is keep the natives peaceful by getting able ones from below into Balliol. Balliol he wanted to be one-third upper-class, one-third grammar-school, and one-third Scotsmen and foreigners. In his view the upper-class were to teach the others manners, and he used the grammar-school to introduce some brains into the upper class. He put it as brutally as that.’
    (See http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/gellner/InterGellner.html .)
    So Gellner was fascinated by comparisons between how ‘modernisation’ worked in different contexts.
    In his reading of recent history, industrialisation and the coming of ‘mass society’ were inherently linked to the penetration of a literate ‘high culture’ throughout society. And ‘nationalism’ as a theory of political legitimacy was the natural concomitant: for authority to be regarded as legitimate, it has to be exercised by a state controlled by people of one’s own culture, over a state where the borders of culture and political authority are coterminous.
    What this means is that, in a country like France, one can turn peasants into Frenchmen with limited problems – because a long-standing ‘high culture’ has existed in a coherent territorial space. In the Hapsburg, and also Romanov and Ottoman, empires, the situations are quite different. Existing and aspirant such cultures are struggling for control, without determinant national boundaries.
    So while in some areas nationalism is a force for integration, in others it is a force for disintegration. As regards socialism, however, it is sometimes more peculiar than it looks.
    For, for example, while to speak of ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ can easily lead one to paranoid exaggeration, the leadership and ‘cadres’ of the movement that took power in Russia in 1917 did come, disproportionately, from members of ethnic minority groups who assimilated to Russian culture, rejected nationalism, but could not be assimilated into existing élites. So Stalin and Beria come from Georgia, Dzerzhinski is a Pole, etc etc.
    In Britain, for the reasons Gellner’s account of his own career illustrates, it was much easier to neutralise dissent by absorbing those who had the ability to lead it. So the great liberal Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter joked that, in the British system, Trotsky would have ended as the Earl of Prinkipo, KG.
    What relevance does this have to the European Union? The answer is that it can only work if indeed Popper is right and Gellner wrong.
    One reason for this was brought out in a commentary in the ‘London Review of Books’ by the British economist Wynne Godley back in October 1992, immediately following the Maastricht Treaty.
    (See http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that .)
    In this, Godley put with great trenchancy a common argument: that it is simply impossible to have an economic and monetary union, centred on a single currency, without a very substantial amount of political federalisation. One could suggest that it was possible, he argues, if and only if one believed that modern economies were essentially ‘self-adjusting systems that didn’t need any management at all.’
    As it happens, Godley was not taking any view on the merits or demerits of federalisation: he was simply arguing that one could consistently either oppose the single currency, or see it as a stage on the way to a much more general process of federalisation. As a status quo, it was a recipe for disaster.
    But at that point, the fundamental difference of view between Popper and Gellner becomes acutely relevant. If the former is right, it might be possible to establish a federal political authority in the European Union which is considered legitimate. If the latter is right, then essentially one would be committing oneself to reproducing the legitimacy crises of the old transnational empires.
    The same problem obvious recurs, in spades, when it comes to question of the free movement of labour. If Popper is right, then the idea that one can both widen and deepen the EU at the same time, incorporating much poorer Eastern European countries and granting their populations freedom of movement to richer countries with developed welfare systems, might (just) be sustainable.
    If Gellner is right, then it is little short of batshit crazy. The idea contains within the potentiality not simply for a crisis of legitimacy of EU institutions, but of crises of legitimacy within the countries belonging to the organisation.
    And if one then adds into the picture the ‘invade the world, invite the world’ approach in relation to Middle East and North Africa, the problems get immeasurably worse.
    It is, obviously, relevant that the ‘cosmopolitan’ approach ‘meshes’ with the economic self-interest of powerful institutions and groups.
    However, one should not overstate the importance of material considerations, because if one was dealing with a cynical pursuit of self-interest, pro-European British élites would not have shot themselves in the foot in the way they have done.
    But then, Gellner’s account points to another reason things have gone so badly wrong. In past times, the British élite was formed by a combination of aristocracy and meritocracy.
    Now it is, in some sense, a ‘meritocracy’. Doubtless, on IQ tests, most of its members would rate very highly. But their ignorance of their own society, and most other societies in the world, is beyond belief, as it their lack of most of the intellectual capacities required to rule any society effectively.
    And the same goes, quite patently, for the United States.

  107. Jack says:

    All
    First, I’d like to congratulate the English and Welsh on voting to affirm the sovereignty of their parliament. And giving a big finger to the Orwellian EUSSR.
    At this juncture looking at the history of referenda and electoral votes on EU affairs and reading the victory speech of Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London and a significant Leave campaigner, I feel the 17 million Leave voters will be made to look like chumps. Article 50 will be on a slow boat to invocation if at all.

  108. Ulenspiegel says:

    “The beginning of the end for the EU … ”
    With all respect, that is too pessimistic, Sir. However, you would have been on the save side with “..the end of the EU-28” or very likely with “..the end of the UK”.
    I simply do not see benefit of a referendum that was based (at least partially) on lies, considering the uncertainties for UK in the next few years. But I respect the will of the majority of the British people that bothered to vote.

  109. Jack says:

    Tyler
    Thanks for posting this. Fantastic statement by Trump. He gets the zeitgeist!
    Note by Pat Buchanan.
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-24/has-trump-found-formula

  110. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I think EU will need to encourage UK to leave as soon s possible to settle all the issues and restore the perception of stability.
    EU needs UK to leave quickly, without a doubt.

  111. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Yes, Greeks were/are corrupt – like their Middle Eastern neighbours to the East.
    She is not a Western Diocletian country and would not be so for many more decades and centuries.

  112. LeaNder says:

    Sorry, Haralambos, I may have spent too much time in the larger “Greek crisis” context, not only that. I had extensive with acquaintances on the issue with a Greek background. Spent many hours on it. And oddly enough met Greek people on during travels. Maybe I somehow attracted them.
    Yves Smith is not bad on the issue, by the way. She is aware of the larger reality, beyond the world as we imagine it should be.
    I would like to set her apart from what feels to me like mere merchants of slogans, not that I do not agree sometimes, but something I simply don’t. I have rightly or wrongly attached to the larger Yanis Varoufakis field and/or the economic tradition he draws on.
    And yes, I may respond slightly allergic to everything that feels even slightly close. Let’s be bold, let’s draw a straight line from slavery/or-not-quite, but rebellious context nevertheless, from the end of the Roman empire up to today. Let’s take Greece as example, if I may exaggerate while communicating, my reasons for the response: Greece being enslaved by German and French banks, the Greek people collectively.
    The prominent feature in this type of narrative is simplification. I am slightly sick of this. … The for me important feature is the reality check of this line of thought. Is, that they seem to be quite able to devise programs where money could be spent, but not really equivalently creative when it concerns how to finance this?
    Again: There are always, many, many ideas in what should be funded. But from the moment it concerns where the money should come from, you are stunned by the suggestions. Open mouthed staring in disbelieve? None of this was shared widely by media. Tax on online gambling, maybe? That was one of Varoufakis idea set. There was also, if you believe it or not: The idea of hiring people to spy on their citizen to find out people, who didn’t pay tax. Does that sound left to you? Well supposedly he is. Maybe I am indeed a fascist and don’t understand. It feels a little authoritarian to me.
    This topic makes me mad. No denial. If I stumble, as the Forsyth article linked above across any type of narrative that carefully hides the suggestion of an indirect domination of the EU by Germany via an allusion to the EU being Nazi Germany, I have to take my anger somewhere. Understand? Been there, saw it, tired of it. Tired beyond any way to express it. Why not escape into personal narratives?
    Problem is, it doesn’t go away. Look, I am fully aware we are an exporting nation and that we might need tools to deal with the imbalances it creates. But reduced to this? Really? Is that a way to approach the complex Gorbachev dominated time? Wasn’t there complex diplomacy behind the scenes, if or if not, one could allow Germany to reunite? Does not matter. Here comes an economic perspective:
    https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2010/12/07/varoufakis-brisbane-talk-crisis-us-europe/
    The euro, it must be remembered, was conceived at the height of the Grand Hoover’s reign. Germany thought that it could extend its growth model to the eurozone. Convinced that the Grand Hoover would continue to suck in its surpluses, Germany thought that its surpluses could expand further within Europe if deficit countries like Greece, Spain, Italy etc. were given a strong DM-linked currency. Germany’s condition for sharing its currency with the rest was that nothing else would be shared except for the common currency: Debt, taxes, government expenditure would be all nation-state-specific. Each euro of debt would belong to one country only and no surplus recycling mechanism would be set up.
    Beyond that. Apart from his strong support for his country of birth, which I deeply respect. I wrote about it somewhere on this site. #
    I somewhat doubt Schäuble has the idea of creating a European unemployment benefit, or for that matter, has it urgently. Our system was reformed slightly. What would be Varoufakis concrete suggestion how to finance it on a European level. Does his friendship with Lord Lamont suggest, that he simply has only the Greek context in mind. Were no such system exists. And the European-wide fund would help to invite Lord Lamont investment friends to Greece? Since, yes that’s indeed a problem there.
    I haven’t proofread, Haralambos, and I have to leave now.

  113. Babak Makkinejad says:

    As long as Democracy concerns itself with matters sexual; i.e. sexual proclivities, reproductive control – it is fine. But if concerns itself with matters of power, peace & war, and wealth – by God – that is just populist bluster and abuse.

  114. Babak Makkinejad says:

    In regards to Europe; once again, I think it more productive to think in terms of the Diocletian line as a cultural/civilizational marker.
    My colleague told me that in Germany, during meetings, they screamed at one another – unheard of in US.
    And they were prickly about starting their meetings at the exact time: 8:03 – another excuse to fight.

  115. Tyler says:

    RC,
    If Trump’s mean words trigger you, just say so.

  116. Tyler says:

    Bill,
    “Vibrant” – lots of Third Worlders doing Third World things

  117. Fred says:

    rjj,
    “We must plan for the future” vs. “I live, I deserve – your money”.

  118. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Italy was a better country for her inhabitants before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the removal of Iron Curtain flooded that country with all sorts of undesirable elements from Eastern Europe.
    I assure you that there are many in Iranian that fear the dilution of their culture due to immigration from the East; and mind you, many of these would-be immigrants would have been Iranians had the Qajars not failed so collosally in the fields of battle and diplomacy.
    And as Iran goes so do others – like Korea. Heard in Korea from a US educated professor: “What are all these foreigners doing in Korea?”
    Write me when you have succeeded in making Pristina a city just like Bologna.

  119. Jack says:

    All
    To add to the EU fun, Spain votes tomorrow for a new parliament since the previous one couldn’t form a government.
    http://qz.com/716692/spains-elections-this-weekend-let-more-disgruntled-europeans-vote-against-the-status-quo/

  120. LeaNder says:

    Haralambos,
    I seem to vaguely recall you have tried to pull me into a Greek discourse. Was that you? Yes, I do love Greek. My best friend, may well be my best friend since he grew up with Greek and Latin versus my English and French and Latin among other details. I respond somewhat irritated, if I see the word oxymoron used other then it feels it should be used. In other words I don’t like superficial displays.
    Since you are a fan of Yanis Varoufakis, can you link to the last time one or the other applauding comment by yours was allowed on his blog?
    What was your response by the way, to deal with the tax problem in Greece. I leave out the idea to tax online gambling. But how did you like his idea to hire citizen-snitches to deal with possible tax evaders?
    *****
    That said, I can easily see the layers where he may be inspiring on a more aloof layer, the moment it’s about details his mind seems to revert to gambling theory. Let’s play the game, if we play it well: venceremos.

  121. kao_hsien_chih says:

    Warnings against so-called Vox Populi risk has been out there for years now. To the politico-economics elites in much of the West, the voice of the people (especially the “ignorant rubes”) is a source of risk, a threat that must be mitigated, managed, and minimized, perhaps even suppressed by hook or crook, not something that must be listened to. That’s what passes as “democracy” these days: rule by the self-claimed “best people,” governing by the grace of godless god over the masses.

  122. kao_hsien_chih says:

    “Democracy” is good for Ukraine, Syria, and Libya, as long as they are run by the “best” people as recognized by the West–i.e. copies of the Western elites. They were surprised out of their shoes when well organized religious hardliners took power in Egypt, not whom they imagine to be the “best” people, after all.

  123. kao_hsien_chih says:

    There is something very weird about the modern Western idea of “multiculturalism.” It’s the same everywhere: it’s the same Disneyworld blend mixing harmless and trivialized cartoon stereotypes of all the cultures around the world that the Western elites like, devoid of soul and meaning and reduced to mere trinkets. Why the heck would anyone want to go to Warsaw or Shanghai if they all look like New York City? Yet, this is what we are getting under this singularly monocultural “multiculturalism” meme…

  124. kao_hsien_chih says:

    I would imagine an invocation of Art 7, especially in a too obviously “forced” and “creative” sense, will be the equivalent of Austro-Hungarian ultimatum on Serbia, circa 1914. It will break the old Europe for sure, again, maybe as badly as its predcessor 100 plus years ago.

  125. Oddlots says:

    Ha. First rule of info war: accuse your enemy of the crimes you intend to commit BEFORE committing them. Poor woman’s got the order wrong. There’s that little problem of Nuland crowing about the 5 billion spent to help Ukraine attain it’s “European aspirations.”

  126. charly says:

    I think Louis Van Gaal speaks good English (for a Dutchman). I also think my English is fantastic an way above average. I have also read my own writing. It sucks while taking so much more effort than writing something in my native language so you don’t have to say to me that their “Ënglish” can be “interesting”. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is can an English speaker get the job and for that the answer is definitely yes
    ps Old Europe as in not ex-communist state as it was used in the beginning of the Iraqi occupation. Could make a joke that the British only recently found out that they are in Europe but i find this whole discussion a bit semantic. It is like complaining that the US is only part of America and not the whole so you shouldn’t call it America

  127. Babak Makkinejad says:

    All:
    From Grauniad of the UK: Taffy don’t want the money
    ————————————————-
    The bizarre and warped logic of the Leave supporters in the UK is illustrated by this article about a godforsaken Welsh town that has had millions of euros of EU money poured into its highly visible infrastructure, and yet the locals, who have the physical evidence before their very noses, voted >60% in favour of Brexit.
    Clearly, with such citizenry, the EU was a lost cause from the word ‘go’. Maybe it’s to do with the quality of the water. Or some sort of dark, atavistic Celtic death wish.
    ___________________________________________
    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/view-wales-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-vale

  128. Mark Logan says:

    Babak,
    I view a comparative study in the two cultures you’ve mentioned irrelevant, and am ill-prepared to conduct it to begin with, sad to say. I limit it to submitting that any group which willfully self-describes as distinct is highly likely to cling, and Scots and Kurds both have impressive roots.

  129. charly says:

    It is startling because older people more often vote for the status quo while young people vote for change. In this case it is the reverse

  130. The Beaver says:

    To all
    From the Guardian’s comments section:
    If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.
    Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.
    With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.
    How?
    Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.
    And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legistlation to be torn up and rewritten … the list grew and grew.
    The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.
    The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?
    Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?
    Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.
    If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over – Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession … broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.
    The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.
    When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was “never”. When Michael Gove went on and on about “informal negotiations” … why? why not the formal ones straight away? … he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.
    All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.

  131. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    Babak, I expect better stats from you.
    Where on earth did you come up with such insinuating codswoddle?!
    google ‘bellevue wa’ + ‘real estate’ (you will find properties currently listed in English & Mandarin)
    google ‘bellevue wa’ + ‘chinese ownership’ and/or ‘chinese businesses’
    google ‘bellevue wa’ + ‘chinese school’
    Bellevue is no longer ‘white’, unless you now define ‘white’ as ‘having at least one parent (or grandparent) of Northern European origin’. I can only assume you’ve not visited lately. And since some of those kiddos are children of friends of mine, I tend to think of them rather kindly, irrespective of their genetic heritages.
    They are high-IQ.
    They also have phenomenal work ethics, and those that I know are well traveled and value exposure to other cultures.
    Education is next to godliness.
    Bellevue’s Crossroads Mall – quite an interesting place – tends to accommodate about 50 languages, and I’m sure that many languages are spoken in Bellevue schools, due to the fact that many families come from other places for work in the area. (All sorts of work, from health care, to elder care, to software).
    I know people in high rises in Bellevue who have never seen their neighbors; the units are purchased by non-US ‘corporations’ (shell companies) for tax dodges, or ‘safety’ if things go sidewise in some other place on the globe. For all anyone knows, the current human owners are working in Africa, or in Beijing, or simply so damn wealthy they just sail around in their yachts. If the unit number has a good ‘feng shui’, it is snapped up by non-US owners.
    I was just in Bellevue last week, and made a mental note to brush up on my Mandarin before my next lunch out. I can’t compete with tax haven money out of Hong Kong willing to pay cash for properties, so won’t be buying there any time soon.
    I have no idea where you get such ideas, but for heaven’s sake at least use The Google before making such blanket statements, please.

  132. steve says:

    At least in the 70s when I visited, there were no border controls between England or Wales and the Irish Republic. Citizens of Ireland were free to immigrate to the UK if they wished and, I assume, vice versa.
    There were security checks on the border with Northern Ireland and the Republic but, again, no immigration controls. And the security controls were independent of anything to do with EU membership: At that time, Ireland had just joined the EU while the UK had not.

  133. Amir says:

    It is called North Sea oil.

  134. Amir says:

    Afghan population that was hosted as refugees in Iran, spoke Dari (a dialect of Farsi, that happens to be closer to Classical Persian than the modern day Farsi that is spoken in Iran). The problem in Iran was not cultural but rather an economical problem: a country devestated by revolution, in a war of attrition and being boycotted by West, was required to host the equivalent of 5% of it’s population as refugees (not migrants).

  135. robt willmann says:

    The issue of Article 50 about the European Union and Britain has popped up, and so here it is. It turns out that there are at least two current treaties about the EU: “Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union” and “Consolidated Version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”, plus protocols, annexes, and declarations–
    http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:C:2016:202:TOC
    http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.C_.2016.202.01.0001.01.ENG&toc=OJ:C:2016:202:FULL
    Article 50 is in Title 6, Final Provisions, in the Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union–
    “1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
    2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
    3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
    4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it. A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
    5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.”
    The EU is structured in an undemocratic way. Furthermore, as ‘visitor’ commented above, it does not want to take “no” for an answer, and by hook and crook, tries to reverse adverse decisions by other countries and pushes to maintain and advance its existence and authority.

  136. LeaNder says:

    or the second round of the referendum,
    A second round would be a very, very dangerous signal for the rest of Europe politically, kao.
    I just listened to a debate were someone put it as I see it. It would deliver a top argument on a silver plate to similar parties as UKIP: Look, that’s what happens. If “we the people” vote, the elites simply ignore them.
    Let me add a couple of other things. What we have witnessed is a EU supporter, that really was quite actively against it for most of his time, Cameron. Murdoch media fighting for an exit longer now. I fought our leading yellow press paper as a juvenile, young adult but compared to the British tabloid press they are nuns. Or isn’t The Sun a Murdoch paper?
    More recently in Bruxelles Cameron got again some new exceptions like diminished social security and laws protecting employees. I would imagine that his shift to a pro European line could well smelled a little like hypocrisy.
    Something else I am wondering about. I didn’t vote in the recent election for the Cologne major. A friend I visited in hospital asked me, and my answer was: It feels, I can trust the Cologne people, after the attack on the independent candidate. Mind you she survived compared to Cox. But when the results came in, I wondered how many took it for granted that this event ensured they could trust a majority of their co-citizen to do “the right thing”…
    Maybe from the social perspective mentioned above, we should be pleased in Europe that the English exception gets law in Europe, meaning rigidly diminished social security and employee rights. That’s surely something “the economical elite” would like to have elsewhere too.

  137. LeaNder says:

    I think you understand now, don’t you? Ok, shortly and without confronting you with some of my “favorite” polemical Varoufakis quotes.
    I was responding like Pavlov’s dogs to the Michael Hudson’s article via Yves Smith you linked to.
    By the way, I fully respected Yves Smith positions during the “Greek crisis”. But I was and am very, very sensitive concerning some issues, when it feels they contain political dynamite. There are times, when I don’t decide based on what I consider the ideal scenario I would prefer, but based on what I sense might be the political consequences in Europe.
    No idea, how to put it best, let me try in layman’s terms:
    There are other issues I would like to understand better, could some kind of exemption to the EU framework/rules–meaning allowing Greece to declare bankruptcy while remaining inside the Euro union–be used as some type of leverage economical warfare loop against the currency, the Euro. If we leave out for a while that no doubt other states may want to get rid of their debts too. How can one state be allowed to go bankrupt thus getting rid of its debts, while others cannot?
    More from my German perspective: We may well considered collectively, consider deflation less of a threat scenario then inflation. Or the scenario you may need whole bags of money to buy a bread. In other words I have a skeptical inner response to suggestions like: let’s just print money to our “straight heart’s delight”, it will make everyone happy. You encounter them in the American academy. No doubt not as crude, as I put it.

  138. LeaNder says:

    ” the animus behind your replies might be the assumption that I am Greek based on my handle”
    Haralambos, you may or may not have stumbled across a passage, where I referred to a possibly too rapid assumption that run through my head somewhere while reading the comment of someone with a Russian background.
    Yes, without doubt, I tag/semi-label people and sometimes I realize and acknowledge that this may have limited my interpretation. In the special case I had also not read the article the SST member responded to.
    I do read IZ as someone that can give me a Turkish perspective, wrongly or rightly, that I may not get somewhere else. Indeed.
    Maybe we had an exchange once concerning my interest in Greece and yes Greek. I seem to often love words with a Greek origin a lot more then Latin ones. E.g. the suffix -on versus -um. Can’t help. 😉
    But I never assumed you are Greek. There are so many Greeks by spiritual/cultural/mental choice by now, I wouldn’t assume it of anyone. In your case, I know you aren’t.

  139. LeaNder says:

    One step back: Italy was left alone by the EU. Due to the complacency of the states that weren’t border states?
    I don’t think Pristina needs to become a city like Bologna. It has a very different history. Thus why should it want to become Bologna? But it seems to be a contradiction in your larger argument. Not in the context of your Diocletian thesis maybe.
    Kosovo/Kosova is the only country in times of larger war scene, in which I went to great length to understand it’s history, by the way. I also met a Yugoslavian women over here that confronted me with a century old prejudice context, as she experienced it.
    Kosovo or Operation Horseshoe was also the first time, I consciously heard and reflected on verbal War Drums.

  140. LeaNder says:

    sorry, correction:
    “we should be pleased in Europe that the English exception gets law in Europe,”
    we should be pleased that in Europe the British exception cannot long time develop into a general European law.
    And strictly I think, this may be behind b’s response. Among other things.

  141. LeaNder says:

    Another correction:
    “perform a Grexit, leave the European union”
    not necessarily the European Union, but an exit from the Eurozone, maybe?
    But I would need to understand the framework a lot better then I do. Still maybe this could have been an option.

  142. Fred says:

    Babak,
    “What are all these foreigners doing in Korea”
    Defending the Korean’s from those other Korean’s and showing Korean’s how to create a first world industrial economy which allowed such wealth creation that Korean professors could afford to get a US education. None of which would be PC to point out to the professor.

  143. Fred says:

    Babak,
    “http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dd5cc190b42b4375830a97d163dbb5fd/tiny-nebraska-town-says-no-1100-jobs-citing-way-life”
    How dare these people in flyover country say no to 1,100 good paying jobs.
    -in a chicken processing plant. – This is a great all win no lose proposition. There would be no environmental impact, no need for new schools for new students from new residents paid for by new local taxes. None at all.
    At least the small town in Wales mentioned in your linked article got a – building and a road. Left out was who got the contract to build it (and the profit). Also left unsaid in the article was the success of the educational initiative that created this school which is graduating good EU graduates. Just how many Welsh school graduates got those good paying jobs – say in Germany or wherever else in the EU they are? If you have qualified EU residents you surely don’t need any immigration now do you? Did they leave those questions on the editorial room floor or just not think about them since they wouldn’t fit the narrative?

  144. Fred says:

    The Beaver,
    “All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable”
    It’s not like the millions who voted to leave should actually be listened too. Where is the EU’s Lincoln to call for volunteers to force the UK to stay because someone with guts is needed and what the heck, it’s not like a disarmed populace is going to force some politicians to do what they are told; don’t those people know whose really in charge here?

  145. Babak Makkinejad says:

    From the mouth-piece of the Middle England – Middle Earth; where Samwise and Ron reside:
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-peasant-revolt-upends-britains-ruling-elite-1466806496

  146. kao_hsien_chih says:

    Martin McGuinnis brought up instituting border controls as soon as Brexit won. Granted, the Sinn Fein aren’t exactly a credible source of proposals for future policy, but these are crazy times. The possibility of border controls, among many other things, will have to be dealt with if and when Article 50 is invoked and, in absence of an agreement and an extension granted by unanimity after the two years are up–again, IF article 50 is invoked–border controls WILL have to be in place like it or not.

  147. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I used to know Bellevue, evidently the demographics has changed – so it is now Euo-American + Honorary-Whites (Indian, Chinese).
    I admit my mistake and apologise for that.
    But I believe the gist of the point I was making still holds – certainly in places like Boulder, Colorado or Simi Valley, California – people are separating themselves by wealth, race and IQ.
    The great metropolitan cities have the virtue of bringing people of different classes and IQs (and potentially races) together in such a manner to cause them to learn to get along.
    That process is reversing, I think, in US and also in England. That was my main point.

  148. kao_hsien_chih says:

    There is something interesting to tease out about the way “popular” ideas about economics and society evolved (that is, the ideas subscribed to by various “important” people who are not at the cutting edge of academic research) in the assumption “modern economies were essentially ‘self-adjusting systems that didn’t need any management at all.”
    This is the economic equivalent of the “people are ‘rational'” (whatever “rational” means) assumption. In every middling level economics courses, this assumption is taught as the basic assumption because to incorporate how economies “really” adjust, how people “manage” (and “mismanage”) economic systems and subsystems, etc. are not only tremendously complicated, we don’t really understand them really well, quite frankly. People who are at the cutting edge of economic research are aware of the monkey wrenches dealing with these questions can throw into neat theories that we have about how the economy works, but no one mentions them outside the ivory towers partly because there is no consensus or certainty over the answers among the scholars and nobody who is not a scholar wants to know.
    So the economy is run on a premise that is fundamentally flawed, in that it is grounded on a set of assumptions that are known to be untrue–i.e. economy is inherent self adjusting, in need of no management, for example–by people who are educated only up to the middling level in economics coursework, so to speak. These theories are “good enough” that they are workable in absence of major crises (i.e. most of the time) and the overconfidence of these semi-educated elites in their theories is reinforced by people who “should” know better, members of the academia, who are themselves too invested in “the real world” acting dishonestly (to be fair, if they were acting honestly and said “we don’t really know what the real answers are, although we have educated guesses and ideas,” who’d listen to them?). I suspect that this is at the core of the economic and political malaise brought about by the so-called “educated elites.” They “know” theories and ideas that are fundamentally flawed and are far too overconfident in their truths, without willingness or interest to think over how wrong those theories are when.

  149. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Last Majlis, prior to the current one, considered a bill that was supposed to sail through. The bill was going to change the Iranian Civil Codes and extend Iranian citizenship to children born to Iranian women from foreign Husbands. It was meant as a humanitarian action to address those children’s well-being; they have not known any other country than Iran and without alteration to their citizenship status they would be facing difficulties – at times insurmountable – in accessing employment opportunities as well as such welfare services as the Iranian state supplies to her citizens.
    That bill failed and one of the MPs who voted against it couched his objection in the language of preservation of domestic culture against that of Afghan’s.
    I am relating this story to point out that objection to large numbers of foreign people – however historically close, as is the case of Afghanistan and Iran – is not confined to benighted, prejudiced, short-sighted, bigoted, uncouth Europeans.
    I think this is a universal phenomena and people are entitled to exercise their self-government rights to decide on the right – judicious – amount of immigration.
    Perth and Sydney are suffering from shortage of affordable housing due to the influx of large numbers of Chinese multi-millionaires. Does a native-born citizen of Sydney have a right to be able to reside in the city of his birth?
    My sense is that in an analogous situation, no government in Iran would permit Chinese to buy property and drive locals out of the real-estate market.

  150. Haralambos says:

    I agree completely. This seems applicable: http://www.theglobalist.com/another-type-of-european-democracy-the-emergence-of-modern-greece/
    In the late 1970s a Greek friend said to me, “Greece is in Europe on the maps, but it is Anatolian in its mentality and heart.” I have often found your reference to the Diocletian useful in thinking about some of the countries in this part of the modern world; thank you for alerting me to it once again.

  151. Haralambos says:

    I have never read Varoufakis on game theory other than his comment to the effect that it is a good mental exercise but not an aid in negotiations. I have been influenced by several of his books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weak-Suffer-What-They-Must/dp/1847924034/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466956457&sr=1-1&keywords=Varoufakis is his latest. I expect my copy to be delivered this week. The title is a reference to Thucydides’ “Melian Dialogue.” I will be interested to read the book, since think the lesson delivered in his title is one he did not take to hear in his “negotiations.”
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Global-Minotaur-America-Economic-Controversies/dp/178360610X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466956457&sr=1-2&keywords=Varoufakis
    and
    https://varoufakis.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/a-modest-proposal-for-resolving-the-eurozone-crisis-version-4-0-final1.pdf

  152. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I agree, governments and wars come and go and “The City” endures.

  153. Babak Makkinejad says:

    My point is that people being afraid of the others not belonging to their tribe is a common human affliction – like envy.

  154. Babak Makkinejad says:

    If you have no conceivable and credible program of bringing Pristina to the level of Bologna, then I submit to you that you and EU have no business being there.
    You should just leave.
    It is not part of your culture and civilization and at best you will recapitulate the experience of Russia in Chechnya over a 200-year period.

  155. Jack says:

    KHC, Leander, Babak,…
    I tend to believe that Brexit will not happen. The political and financial elite are going to rely on the poor memory of voters. They will use the classic techniques of obfuscation, misdirection, empty rhetoric and sheer bureaucratic inertia to thwart the will of the 17 million English. Exactly as happened in other instances in the continent when people expressed their preference on the EU supranational entity. This will be another nail in the coffin of democracy in the West. It is particularly tragic that it is happening in England. This all part and parcel of a slow slide where the Borg strangle peaceful expression of large sections of the population, inevitably leading to more extreme demagogues who will harness the deeply building resentment in more violent expression. Blowback is always a bitch and history is replete with examples.

  156. Jack says:

    KHC,
    The fundamental flaw with the study of contemporary economics is the conceit that non-linear and many times emotional and irrational human behavior can be captured in precise mathematics. Academic economists for several decades have suffered physics envy and use mathematics to sustain their biases. Rather than study economics as philosophy and history the academics have developed certitude in their groupthink with continuing deleterious effects. Ever since the Fed for example began to be staffed by academics the reliance on mathematical models have increased. Despite the continuous failure of these academics and their models to accurately forecast anything from GDP growth rates to employment or any other macroeconomic variable, they deem with great certitude the outcome of their experimental policies. Even worse they claim clairvoyance to know the precise cost of money and the levels of liquidity in dynamic economies with billions of actors each acting emotionally most of the time. What we have seen is ever since academics replaced actual practioners guided by common sense and philosophy the Fed has intervened more and more in financial markets and taken on more and more mandates leading to boom and bust financial markets where amplitudes rise in each cycle.

  157. Jack says:

    David
    IMO, disintegrative tendencies will continue to grow. Today’s elites have no sensitivity to the plight and actual circumstance of the working and middle classes. They are so smug in their smartness. They are convinced they can play one group against another, lie, cheat, obfuscate and use their control of media to manufacture consent.
    Brexit is going to be another example where British democracy will be sacrificed and the 17 million voters made more cynical. The EU as originally conceived as sovereign states freely trading with reduced barriers was a perfectly sound idea. When it morphed into a superstate without the consent of those giving up sovereignty and then created a common currency and monetary policy among disparate cultures with historically different labor productivity it was bound to fail. Milton Friedman noted at the time of the creation of the Euro that the experiment would fail as it was inherently flawed. The elites with a huge vested interest will get more draconian but the centrifugal forces are in motion and will only build more momentum as more extreme demagogues channel the frustrations of those falling behind, who are having their peaceful expressions of dissent thwarted.

  158. The Beaver says:

    Fred
    You did a selective reading when the whole sentence encompasses the following:
    without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne
    Yep the farmers from Yorkshire still want to get the subsidies as if they would still/are in the EU. Every action has consequences and NO , life won’t be the same for a long while.
    Easy said than done: the 350 M pounds would be going to NHS – no way said Farage – one hour after claiming victory.
    From that weekly 350M , 195 M were sent back to the UK for the payt of agricultural subsidies etc but the chaps from Yorkshire didn’t know that or was not told.

  159. charly says:

    The “newly” arrived. If i look at Europe than i can’t see many immigrant groups from the late 19th century who still exist so no i don’t think that the newly arrived will form a majority.

  160. charly says:

    They are in Korea to work. Especially if the Koreans don’t get kids.

  161. charly says:

    Kosovo will be a country people move out of for a very, very long time and Pristina will not a city like Bologna but a village.

  162. charly says:

    Fred,
    those foreigners are not Americans but the million plus Mongolians plus the Iranians, South East Asians, etc.

  163. JiuJitsuMMA says:

    This explains the economic reasons why the majority of British voted to leave the EU (it’s not just immigration) -it’s that being in EU, Britain loses most of it’s monetary sovereignty & becomes subservient to EU rules
    On the importance of country issuing it’s own currency & owning it’s own central bank from bank CEO Warren Mosler & verfied correct by the Federal Reserve officials
    http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/innocent-frauds/
    From MBA/CEO Mitchell on dispelling economic myths that were based on a gold-standard but no longer apply to fiat currencies
    mythfighter.com/2009/09/07/introduction/
    Britain still uses it’s pound & owns it’s own central bank but being in the EU means it’s subject to EU’s Maastrict Treaty that gives fines & penalties to any gov that has gov ‘deficit spending’ greater than 3% & any gov that has ‘savings accounts at the central bank’ (aka as ‘national savings accounts’ or national gov debt) greater than 60% of GDP
    1) Countries that use the EURO lose their monetary sovereignty –instead of each country controlling & issuing their own currency, they gave up the power to issue their own currency
    &
    put it all in the hands of truly independent EURO Central Bank who are NOT democratically elected but appointed by oligarchs –
    -those
    countries using the EURO become as powerless as cities & states have no power to issue currency & with no indvidua lpower over the Federal Reserve either
    2) being on a common currency,-the EURO,means it’s only good for exporters: Germany exports more than they import
    so their domestic economy gets more money flowing into Germany booming it
    while
    the other nations that import more than they export result with money flowing out of their economy, starving their domestic economy of money
    &
    their gov can’t make up for the loss in money with gov money creation (‘gov deficit spending’) like the US does —that’s why Greece, Italy, Spain, etc gets worse & worse
    England uses the pound but they are subject to fines & penalties by the EU for their deficit spending greater than 3% of GDP
    3) In the US, the federal gov shifts gov spending to fund the states that import more than they export as well as ‘deficit spends’ aka as money creation
    to
    make up for the money flowing out of the nation from importing from foreign countries ..
    but the EURO Central Bank & countries aren’t doing that & refuse to do that by their mandated policy
    4) the EU can be bad or good.. it’s bad right now because EU leadershihp are all pro-austerity, balanced budget, deficit-hawk, privatize gov assets rightwing Friedman neoliberals akin to Thatcher,
    resulting in higher unemployment (25% to 50% for those under 25, 9% to 14% average overall for general population) except for Germany
    because
    On the other hand, Switzerland & Norway who both rejected EU membership since 1992, they both are doing great & better than the EU & are fine negotiating their own trade deals
    UK imports more than it exports to the EU anyways

  164. JiuJitsuMMA says:

    Note that the young voted for ‘Remain’ because they are young & mobile so they value the EU’s visa-free travel & every EU citizen’s right live/work anywhere in the EU because better job opportunities & higher salaries in Germany, south of France, etc
    Conversely, older & blue-collar workers tied down to homes in England who can’t or don’t want to leave Britain do not like the increased competition from millions of immigrants from EU’s Eastern European who are competing with them for blue-collar jobs —
    Because Eastern Europe used to be on a gold-standard until the 1990s, EU Eastern European wages are 3x to 4x lower than Western Europe..
    EU Eastern Europe’s Poland, Estonia, & Latvia have mininum wages of about $3 per hour & salaries of about $500 per month
    –thus,
    millions of Eastern Europeans have flooded into Western Europe in search of higher paying jobs where mininum wages are $11-$12+ per hour & salaries are $2000-$3000 per month),
    just
    like the situation between Mexico (which has 50 cent to $1 per hr mininum wages) & the USA (which has $7.50 /hr+ mininum wages)
    Eastern Eurpoean nations have thus lost 10% to 25%+ of their entire population immigrated into the higher paying countries of Western Europe, causing friction as more workers compete for scarcer job during their years of rightwing austerity policiess
    –this
    is actually how Poland, Estonia & Latvia decreased their 20% to 10% unemployments rate during their years of rightwing austerity policies –25% of their population in Estonia & Latvia (and 10% in Poland) just immigrated out of Eastern Europe into Western Europe in search of the much higher paying jobs in Western Europe

  165. Fred says:

    The Beaver,
    Selective edit rather than reading – just as the author of that sentence was being selective. The UK existed before the EU came into being. Subsidies are not eternal and neither are governments.

  166. charly says:

    Ireland and the UK joined at the same time in 1973.

  167. charly says:

    Multiculturalism as used in the West is more akin to religious tolerance than the mixing of culture. It is also used to not having to define something very nebulous and vast changing as culture

  168. charly says:

    Sexual matters are decided by cultural super majorities and has nothing to do with 50% +1 democracy

  169. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Right, and I think that where Greece, as a country failed; they lost their nerves and instead of leaving Euro-zone and printing drachmas again, they opted for giving up their sovereignty to Germany.
    I wonder where Greece will end up; a servant country for Northern tourists; the way the Irish supplied the English?

  170. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Very informative, thanks.

  171. Babak Makkinejad says:

    On your number 3, I believe that is how US Federal Government drained the industrial Midwest of investment capital and helped the creation of the Rust Belt – if I am not mistaken.

  172. JMH says:

    Imagine if the independence vote succeeded, the remaining UK “leave” vote would have had an even greater victory, percentage wise.

  173. charly says:

    You are wrong with respect to England, the pound and deficits. They can have as much deficit as they want

  174. JMH says:

    I guess they weren’t for sale.

  175. TV says:

    Why did Scotland vote to remain?
    Because the English voted to leave.
    If the English voted to make Scotch the national drink and oatmeal the national food, Scotland would vote against it.

  176. kao_hsien_chih says:

    That’s not really true, at at least two levels.
    Until some time ago, economists used to be much more honest about the nuances, assumptions, and such going into economic analyses, even in their public announcements. This drove people who wanted to know simple straightforward answers crazy–thus the talk about Harry Truman supposedly wanting advice from a one-armed economist. At least in the public discourse, economists began to lose their other arm: they dropped all the nuances, uncertainties, and assumptions in their models and began to speak with far greater confidence (and precision) than they should. If pressed, they can and will lay down all these nuances. But nobody presses on the economists on these points. This is a problem more than just the economists, although, I suppose, this would demand a much more critical understanding of economics on the part of the audiences.
    More important, a lot of research in economics have gone into better understanding uncertainty, ambivalence, ambiguity, and nuances. There is far more fodder than back in 1950s with which economists are able to explore what it is that we don’t know and why people behave seemingly so “irrationally.” Granted, this too is a bit of theft from physics–from the Quantum Mechanics. But we can talk a lot more about what we don’t know–but nobody wants to know what it is that we don’t know, though (after all, people consult experts for “the answers,” not a list of reasons why experts’ expertise isn’t so good.) This is a bit of pathology that crops particularly in social sciences, where what we don’t know is, in a some sense, more important than what we do.

  177. Jack says:

    KHC
    I don’t buy your “no one wants nuance” argument regarding academic economists.
    As a practioner, let me use the example of the academics that run our Fed. Greenspan used the argument of technology and sophisticated risk management to enable and cheerlead more layers of leverage on credit instruments. We know how that movie ended when confidence evaporated. Bernanke then came along to pitch unlimited balance sheet expansion to promote the wealth effect to escape velocity for the economy. What we have is an incredibly weak recovery despite trillions in federal government stimulus as reflected in a near doubling of the federal government debt under Obama as well as a several trillion rise in the Feds balance sheet monetizing treasury and MBS securities. So, how did one of the Ph.Ds at the helm characterize the credit implosion:
    “For my own part,” Ms. Yellen said, “I did not see and did not appreciate what the risks were with securitization, the credit ratings agencies, the shadow banking system, the S.I.V.’s — I didn’t see any of that coming until it happened.”
    At least she was honest. But, it was part of the excuse that no one could see this coming. There were many practioners who did not have Ph.Ds, who used common sense to know that layering leverage on leverage to kite asset prices can only go so far as the next greater fool ends at some point. When that train ends, the ponzi will be shown for what it is. There was no nuance required. The Ph.Ds models were exactly correct as Bernanke said on a national basis real estate never declined. But, those who saw the craziness didn’t need a GIGO model, or a Ph.D from Princeton. They saw the arguments for untrameled leverage for what it was.
    Similarly, there are some who theorize that sovereign credit can be infinitely expanded as its in a currency that the sovereign can print and there are no costs. It’s the perfect free lunch. We’ve seen how that’s played out in the past and we’ll see soon enough how that plays out in the 21st century. Again, no nuance is required.

  178. jld says:

    However, as per your comment on 26 June 2016 at 12:19 PM:
    people being afraid of the others not belonging to their tribe is a common human affliction
    So, when is this an affliction and when are people entitled to exercise their self-government rights?
    When Iranians?

  179. Fred says:

    Babak,
    “The great metropolitan cities have the virtue of bringing people of different classes and IQs (and potentially races) together in such a manner to cause them to learn to get along.”
    That explains the vibrancy of urban Detroit and Chicago which is born out in the crime statistics.

  180. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Not sure what you mean.

  181. Fred says:

    Charly,
    Good for Louis Van Gaal. However neither he nor yourself are the “employees” we were discussing.

  182. Fred says:

    charly,
    “the million plus Mongolians plus the Iranians, South East Asians, etc.”
    Yes the Koreans hate the Chinese with a passion and have for how many centuries?

  183. LeaNder says:

    Ok, first.
    How to avoid Brexit in a few uneasy steps
    https://iglinavos.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/how-to-avoid-brexit-in-a-few-uneasy-steps/
    This is obligatory.
    *****
    And then concerning economic rock star Yanis.
    Thanks, Bob is easier, if you don’t mind.
    Sorry, for the comment explosion, but I cannot remember anyone that made me similarly angry for a long, long time. Almost with the intensity I thought, I had left behind decades ago. But I guess, you got the message: I am not a “Varoufitsa” (hat tip Ioannis Glinavos). Glad I met him online. He helped me to recover from my shock, once I took a closer look. Although, maybe there are other reasons I prefer him, his books on the Economy and/the Market, and his book on Russia are much more complex. And apparently, he reflects on something that escapes Yanis: responsibility in politics.
    I have a clear picture of Yanis’ writing style, and I am not interested in the least of increasing his income via buying a book based on that reading (and listening) experience. I have to admit that even Paul Krugman, while he never came out, like other high profile American economic wizards* who presented Yanis as economical star on the horizon, made me wonder occasionally too. But he only seemed to shared Yanis anger on the national level. Only Yanis personified it: Schäuble. The high profile US economic wizards were also his “war cabinett”, not shadow mind you, during his reign as minister of finance.
    Why should I buy the present, is it number one, Amazon bestseller in international economics?
    Is his blog host helpful in this? cogecopeer1.com/en/partners
    Admittedly I was stunned to what extend such a publicity aware campaign, with his high profile “war cabinett” having his back, could result in such enormously un-professional output. In other words, there was the self-enamored public face and his work product.
    Maybe he was too much in a “Minotaur and media maze” already then. There were times, I wondered if he didn’t only join the government for a chance in the limelight. And no, Schäuble as evil antagonist, no matter how much he repeated it, even more after he resigned, is not quite enough for me. I studied his self-congratulatory-look back, the misunderstood genius, the failure was always somewhere else. And mainly it was the Germans.
    The irony in all this is, that his suggestions, not only for German/French banks but also for less well off countries, wasn’t so easy to accept. After all they kept within Euro rules. Now recall their response to the Merkel invitation, which Yanis by the way highly praised.
    Schäuble: and I would have never in the least expected to find one of his arguments convincing, but in a documentary on the whole European bank bail out fiasco he had this to say about Spanish debts and German banks. Well we didn’t force them at gun point to loan money from German banks. Did we?
    Thus slightly naively asked: Maybe you can, since you are at least on the way to become more of an expert then me. How could the money vaporize? Didn’t it create assets. Wasn’t it invested? Were did it go? There are wealthy Greek, they, like all the rest, like to put their money somewhere else. How comes? More secure, taxes? But the leftists main concern is to hunt little shopkeepers with citizen snitches?
    The weak that must suffer on one side and quite a bit of aloofness concerning international financial matters in the grand no-keynisan design. And the 30s, who should understand that better then us? How comes we cannot communicate. Could it have been, that Yanis was busy to out their undemocratic rules since they did not simply lean over and collectively adopt his ideas?
    I was shocked, shocked, shocked, when here in Germany at one point he suggested that the ECB could of course sent a direct 1.000 € check to a not so well of Eastern German family. That sounds like a charity handout, that’s disgusting, if you ask me. And this guy wants to tell me something about the “weak that suffer”? Seriously?
    One look back, from grand theory to hard work and details on the ground, via Ioannis, the recovering lefty:
    https://iglinavos.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/another-week-another-eurogroup/
    “Lets start with the less serious stuff. … Also, starting with (and I quote) “Dear President of the Eurogroup, dear Jeroen” looks like an email written late, after the third glass of wine.
    The content of the document though is worse than its presentation (the serious stuff). The proposed Revenue Administration Reform is entitled “Onlookers-Vat evasion fighting scheme”, and nutty as it sounds proposes wiring up random people (tourists included) to send them to spy on shops and businesses.”
    Take a look at the chronology of events. Iannos lived and suffered through it, just like me. It was good to not be alone.
    https://iglinavos.wordpress.com/tag/varoufakis/page/4/
    I know the Modest Proposal, and his high profile advisers both here, and behind the scenes at his time in office, his “war cabinet”. I am aware of the European New Deal demand. I know I should be impressed. I watched a couple of US video’s where he was presented as the new rock star in economics. Am I repeating myself? Dr. Brenner was quite impressed too, apparently. Strictly he made me take a closer look.
    Why didn’t he support Corbyn in campaigning for the remain-side with his grand idea? The last time I saw him in a British circle there was not a whisper about it. The subject was the refugee crisis, maybe already the Brexit. He told the British audience how beautifully Merkel has managed matters. Besides, he was kept on a pretty short leash.
    Murdoch’s polite American organ, the Wall Street Journal, seems not to agree with his Merkel assessment. GB wanted to teach us a lesson in democracy but we failed to our British friends, and forced them out as a result. We are also not quite helpful, sometimes, less then the US anyway, we blocked more decisive actions in the Ukraine:
    Brexit: A Very British Revolution. The vote to leave the EU began as a cry for liberty and ended as a rebuke to the establishment
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/brexit-a-very-british-revolution-1466800383
    Why didn’t he support Corbyn on the pro-Europe issue, presenting his New Deal over there. He could have switched to the negative German, his arch-enemy and the Britons would sure have understood.
    How comes Corbyn is so heavily under assault now inside his party. In spite of the fact that Corbyn has such a brilliant adviser?
    Instead he reverts to his Kassandra tunes, of the ultimate evil force that will in the end destroy Europe almost singlehandedly. Once again we are back in the thirties. Why does this sound familar?
    Brexit won’t shield Britain from the horror of a disintegrating EU. Yanis Varoufakis
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/24/brexit-britain-disintegrating-eu-yanis-varoufakis
    sorry, no time to proofread this either

  184. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I am not sure; Koreans are still leaving Korea because life there is so competitive and failure so unforgiving.

  185. Croesus says:

    “So not only people could vote for Hitler — who went on to destroy Europe . . .”
    Hitler destroyed Stalingrad & Warsaw, but the Allies destroyed Germany, and as Eliot Engel commented on C Span a few months ago, Allies killed 70,000 French civilians in bombing campaigns, and Allies destroyed Monte Cassino and firebombed and killed thousands of villages and villagers in Italy.

  186. Fred says:

    JiuJitsuMMA,
    Note the young, who’ve had everything including the civilization they live in given to them as a birthright, are outraged that other people who spent a lifetime building that civilization held a different opinion. You do remember when the EU said allowing Poland, Estonia and Latvia to join up would result in ~25% of their population marching West to take jobs in the UK, France, etc? No? Neither does anyone else and boy are they pissed about that. Nice they used ballots rather than bullets to express their displeasure.

  187. Poul says:

    It is a continues process. I suggest you take a peak at the UN demography projection for Europa and Africa. You forget that Europeans low birthrates today means that we don’t replace ourselves. That is a major difference from the late 19th century. There is a large cumulative impact.
    https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/
    Also I can only speak for my own country, Denmark. But of the late 19th century immigrants we got from Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway and Russia we can still see the Poles today as the Catholics. The rest were small groups and similar in culture.
    The numbers of migrants today are quite massive and culturally not European. Denmark now has ca. 10% migrants (60% non-Western) and add their descendants and we are looking at over 20% of the population. Keep this process up for seven decades more and add to it the decrease of the local Danes due to low birth rates and what do you think the situation will look like? The older generations who have stopped having children are not relevant for the composition of the future population.
    From Statistics Denmark (Danmarks Statistik) – see the graph: (figur 1.3)on page 15.
    http://www.dst.dk/Site/Dst/Udgivelser/GetPubFile.aspx?id=20703&sid=indv2015
    So we have two factors a young African population with poor leaders and most likely with economic incentives to seek a better life in Europe. And an ageing European population which will be in a continues decline in numbers. I can see the problem so unless you have some brilliant way to remove migrants old cultural values and replace them with the values of whatever European country they are in, you will see negative political consequences.

  188. Ulenspiegel says:

    Kao,
    at the moment the childish behaviour is promoted by some Brits, who BTW were responsible for the Brexit. Big mouth, no balls and no character.
    To vote leave and then delay the process means that they either are stupid or think that UK is more important than the EU-27. Do you really support such nonsense? They had three fu**ing years for preparations and only to consider two possible outcomes. The current show is a shame.
    Of course I do not want an invoked Article 50 this week, however, a clear statement when this will happen – like October.
    BTW: In 1914 the Austrian Archduke was killed by a man that had the support of members of the Serbian government. What the Austrians knew was less ugly than the reality. What would you have done?
    Or do you disagree with the description in “The Sleepwalkers”?

  189. kao_hsien_chih says:

    “Academics” don’t run the Fed. While they may have academic degrees and credentials, they are ultimately politicians. Ditto the commentators on public affairs with academic credentials–who may have been “academics” before, but not any more. Back in 1990s, Paul Krugman bemoaned the fact that people with very little formal economic training make grand pronouncements on economics that are ignorant of even basic premises. A couple of decades later, he routinely makes grand pronouncements on things that he has no serious background on, or, occasionally, makes overtly politicized and rather obtuse comments even on economic matters where he knows the nuances–and in some cases, pioneered theorizing about them himself. Perhaps the description that “the public does not want nuances” is not the most accurate description, but, I stand by the bottom line, that once academia touches politics, it is corrupted and politicized in service of advocacy and nuances don’t mix well with advocacy.

  190. Ulenspiegel says:

    But you understand the irony that is was a UK project to expand the EU eastward (in order to screw the French and Germans)?
    That they now claim that millions of Polish workers in UK are the fault of the EU is stupid propaganda, the fact that this worked, only tell me that people only need ten years to forget their own history, and that even countries with a quite long democratic tradition like UK have enough scumbags who use this for personal advantage.

  191. charly says:

    Shrinking cities, like shrinking villages, are bad places to be young.

  192. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Nope; Detroit was destroyed by a mutual suicide pact between African-Americans and European-Americans.
    In Chicago, there is Life of the Mind – and you come across people from all races, walks of life etc.
    Crime is confined to where African-Americans live but interactions among races and IQs and different classes takes places all the time within Chicago proper.
    Not so in Detroit; African-Americans ride the buses from Detroit to the satellite cities that are largely segregated.

  193. JiuJitsuMMA
    You write:
    ‘This explains the economic reasons why the majority of British voted to leave the EU (it’s not just immigration) – it’s that being in EU, Britain loses most of it’s monetary sovereignty & becomes subservient to EU rules.’
    With respect:
    You are reproducing the delusions which underline so much of the ‘Remain’ campaign – as much as a good deal of the ‘Leave’ campaign.
    Most voters in a democracy have relatively little grasp of the kind of issues to which you are referring.
    Among the problems with the ‘Remain’ campaign – and I have to say that I actually voted for ‘Remain’ – two are fundamental.
    One is the complete inability to its adherents to grasp that very many of those who did not swallow their arguments had a conception of their own national identity which they felt threatened. At issue have been not simply ‘economic reasons’, but a feeling that their ‘household gods’ are being sneered at. And they have very good reason to feel that.
    Another is an almost equally complete inability among so many involved on the ‘Remain’ side to understand that, among those who do have some grasp of the intellectual issues involved, there are radically different views.
    The issues involved are not simple, and are ones on which people of intelligence and integrity can quite quite reasonably have different opinions.

  194. Babak Makkinejad says:

    And Northern Italians think that the Southerners are an inferior lot….

  195. A1 says:

    The funny thing about Scotland separating is that people are talking about it like there is no problems to implementing it. The fact that of the EU 27 countries ones like Spain and Belgium would go ballistic at the idea for one. So the EU might not even accept Scotland.
    A second issue with Scotland leaving the UK is that this assumes existing relationships are grandfathered. This means that Scotland will still have access to England as well as access to the EU. The thought that French Brandy producers might want to subject Scottish whiskey producers to new rules some how gets ignored.
    Third, Scotland is used to being part of the big 3 EU economies and getting a seat at the table. An independent Scotland will be between Slovakia and Slovenia, at best a fringe participant.

  196. Fred says:

    Babak,
    I don’t think what Coleman Young or Kwame Kilpatrick did as Mayors was by mutual consent of the races.

  197. kao_hsien_chih says:

    Not an advocacy, but a description. There is no disputing that the UK is currently run by madmen and idiots–perhaps those who are simultaneously mad and idiotic. All the more reason that they do not know what to do. But, at the same time, it does make taking a hard line potentially even more troublesome.
    Personally, I think b of MoonofAlabama has the right idea about the future of EU: it is too big and too divided without the wherewithal to coordinate what takes place within. EU is probably better off doing without UK, Greece, and the like, and pulling back around its core, France and Germany, plus their immediate neighbors, in a more tightly defined and organized union. There is little reason that EU “should” put up with the nonsense on the part of UK politicians, but we shall see if EU leadership will prove to be so decisive.

  198. charly says:

    Detroit got sick when the car industry was (and still is) shrinking and few cities prosper when their main industry goes through a really bad phase.That seems to me the very obvious reason why Detroit is doing so badly but i haven’t studied Detroit so i can say if that is the reason.

  199. Peter in Toronto says:

    Fantastic posting Col. Lang.
    You put into words my thoughts so eloquently that I’m compelled to commit some of your phrases to memory.

  200. charly says:

    France has had a low birthrate since the beginning of the 20th century if not before and they still assimilated their immigrants and you assume that Danish culture has a low birth rate. It has more of a high low birth rate so it probably outbreeds any immigrant population group that makes the switch to a 2 kid family (I think every immigrant group has done that until now)
    You remove old cultural values by death. Their kids will have different values

  201. Tyler says:

    A1,
    Yes, I’m sure the Spanish and French and Italians and all the rest want their own little regions getting ideas of breaking off and joining the EU.
    Scotland is cucked so hard, I wonder what the hell happened there. “Let’s leave the UK so we can import MORE turd worlders!”

  202. Tyler says:

    charly,
    multiculturalism in the West is a cult that has no basis in reality.

  203. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Euro-Americans left the city and the African-Americans presided over its demise.
    Looking at it from my perspective – one who did not have a dog in that fight – I could not see a single gain that either group obtained from the destruction of Detroit.
    Both sides are at fault, in my opinion – or perhaps it is more accurate to say that their political and religious leaders have been at fault over 50 years.
    And then people in US pay good money to visit a foreign city – say Madrid – for the privilege of walking and seeing a real city functioning city.

  204. Babak Makkinejad says:

    You are, I think, perhaps thinking of Flint.
    The UAW and GM fighting it out is what destroyed that city, in my opinion. Ultimately, of course, because of the strategic preponderance of GM vs UAW, GM bears more of that responsibility.

  205. All,
    It is very difficult to work out what is going on at the moment. However, an article published in the ‘Telegraph’ yesterday by Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, may be a straw in the wind.
    What Hunt suggested was that there could be a second referendum, if it was possible to negotiated a ‘Norway plus’ option, ensuring that Britain would remain part of the European Economic Area, effectively the EU inner market, while recovering control over its borders and other issues that come with leaving the EU.
    Of course, whether this would ‘fly’ does not depend on us. However, if one ignores the characteristic self-congratulatory British waffle, Hunt’s article does raise the question of whether, on immigration in particular, the referendum may have served to drag political leaders not simply here, but on the continent of Europe, out of the cocoon in which they have been living.
    A key paragraph, dealing with immigration, outlines why Hunt thinks the kind of deal he outlines might be possible:
    ‘The solution is to recognise that this is as much of a problem for other EU countries as us. The EU faces collapse unless they reform free movement rules. You simply cannot justify why the Danes or the Dutch should have to provide unlimited welfare rights to Syrians who were given passports not by their own government but by the Germans. That is why many European countries have serious problems with extreme Right parties – and why reforming the rules around free movement is as much in their interests as ours. So our plan must be to encourage them to reform those rules, thereby opening up a space for a “Norway plus” option for us – full access to the single market with a sensible compromise on free movement rules. As their biggest non-EU trading partner, it is in the European interest to do this deal with them as much as it is in our interests to secure it.’
    (See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/27/after-brexit-we-can-no-longer-ignore-fears-about-immigration/ .)
    On a sidenote. In the early hours of Sunday morning, offensive graffiti were sprayed on the entrance to the Polish Social and Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, just down the road from me. Among other things, this was the place where the veterans of Polish army, navy and air force units used to hold their reunions.
    (See http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/racially-motivated-graffiti-polish-club-8288038 .)
    It is quite fair to say, as the former Conservative chairwoman Baroness Warsi did, that race hate crime organisations have reported some ‘disturbing early results’. And it is not entirely unfair to blame ‘divisive and xenophobic’ campaigning in support of ‘Leave’.
    But that is only one side of the coin. The other side is much too much ‘goodthinking’ on the part of people like Baroness Warsi.
    A basic point that has been missed, in relation to Britain and I suspect the whole of Europe, is that a precondition for preventing a breakdown in relations between ethnic groups is confidence among the indigenous inhabitants that immigration is being brought under control.

  206. tunde says:

    Amongst all the “congrats” for Brexit here on SST, The Brexit leaders are now demanding to stay in the single market, meaning full migration and free movement of labour, and full payments into the EU. But minus any political say at all in those affairs. No more money for the NHS, no limit to immigration.
    The Brexit faithful have been had.
    What an utter disaster this Brexit fiasco is. The “scaremongering” is proving to be the truth.
    I’d opine that a Brexit policy for a country that has seen successive governments undermine their manufacturing capacity to zero is a very risky and uncertain decision for a country that depends entirely on services.

  207. Babak Makkinejad says:

    “Yes the Koreans hate the Chinese..”
    That is not a true statement. If you replace “Chinese” with “Japanese” you will get a more accurate picture.

  208. Babak Makkinejad says:

    What distinguished treatment of the Afghan refugees and, later, migrants, in Iran with that of EU’s treatment of analogous populations has been the very dearth of any substantial and long-term handouts to Afghans.
    In Iran, after the initial period of aide and resettlement, they were issued IDs and told to go find work. I have never read any complaints in the Iranian press on Afghans’ government handouts; the complains really had had to do with crime and delinquency.
    EU could do likewise, issue IDs and work permits and nothing else. That ought to address much of the locals’ concerns.
    I recall reading – sometime in 1980 – that there had been altercations between Iranian refugees in Denmark and the Danes in Copenhagen. Turned out that the young men who had fled the Iran-Iraq War and the Iranian draft had been granted political asylum as well as welfare assistance – pocket money, apartment, etc.
    Well, some among the young Danish men did not like it one bit; they had to work while these foreigners had money, apartment, and ample time to pursue the universally desirable blonde Danish girls.
    And mind you, the Iranians there were not from humble origins, they were mostly from the more Europeanized strata of the Iranian society.

  209. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I think manufacturing in France actually has decayed more than it has in UK.

  210. LeaNder says:

    Without further ado, I would like to introduce a friend I met web-wise in times of confused troubles. I am grateful to him not only for that, but I have to admit I love his term: “recovering leftist”
    https://iglinavos.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/how-to-avoid-brexit-in-a-few-uneasy-steps/
    Beyond that, never mind that “political science” was recently proudly declared an oxymoron around here as link, I am somewhat hesitant concerning the effect of his suggestion to Europe. Will people grasp it wasn’t a final decision? Never mind to what extend the European Union is deficient as a result of its evolutionary nature, not only the EU more generally, but also the Eurozone?

  211. Babak Makkinejad says:

    All:
    Professor Mark Blyth on the Brexit vote:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwK0jeJ8wxg

  212. Babak Makkinejad says:

    BREAKING NEWS: DAVID CAMERON MEETS OTHER EU LEADERS
    “Bonjour! Monsieur Cameron, how are you today? Are things Ok at home? All good, in Londres, Angleterre?” says François Hollande, with a broad smile on his fat face.
    “Morning, morning. Any coffee?”
    “Do you have anything to say to us, David? We need to hear you speak to us? We want names, dates, commitments, details, facts, you know!” insists Angela Merkel, looking tense and slightly annoyed.
    “Right. To tell you the truth, I don’t have a lot to say. Could be better, I suppose. Could be worse. Mustn’t grumble. We’re working on things. I’m sure something will come up. Watch this space. The weather has been good in London over the past few days. Interesting, I say.”
    _______________________________________________
    MEANWHILE AT UKIP HQ
    “Nigel, I will be honoured to be your Special Adviser on Foreign Policy when you’re appointed Foreign Secretary in the next government,” says Alan Fuckwit, currently head of PR at Nappies International Ltd of Basingstoke. “What a challenge!”
    “Right, we’ve left the EU. We’ve also left the Euro, the football, I mean,” points out Nigel Farage.
    “Absolutely: a model to emulate, Iceland.”
    “What else can we leave, Alan?”
    “Don’t know. What’s left?”
    “NATO: no. We need the Yanks ’cause of the Russians. But I think we should leave the United Nations.”
    “The UN?”
    “Yes, another time-wasting, bureaucratic organisation that doesn’t deliver. We can save money and spend it on the NHS: that’ll be a good slogan. Even if we have no intention of doing it.”
    “Brilliant, Nigel. You’re a star.”
    “Also, all foreigners who haven’t lived here for 100 years should be deported to wherever they come from, be it Mexico or Bongo Bongo Land.”
    “What about your wife, Nigel?”
    “My wife?”
    “Isn’t she German?”
    “Right. Hadn’t thought about this one. Prince Philip might have to go too. We’ll look into it. Too many Krauts in this country. They’re everywhere, as you’ve just pointed out, in fact.”
    “I agree totally, Nigel.”
    “And I think we should relocate.”
    “Relocate? Who?”
    “England, of course! We should move.”
    “Move to where, Nigel? I am not sure…”
    “Mars.”
    “Planet Mars?!”
    “That’s right. There won’t be any foreigners there.”
    “I see what you’re saying. It does make sense.”
    “One thing you need to check: one is never too careful. There aren’t any Scots on Mars, are there?”

  213. Fred says:

    Charly,
    The endemic corruption in Detroit’s political structure was not caused by a decline in the automotive industry.

  214. Fred says:

    Babak,
    I think both statements are true.

  215. Fred says:

    charly,
    “cultural super majorities”
    The LGBT community is a cultural super majority? When did that small subset of the population become a super majority, other than by wielding inordinate political influence to have the state coerce obedience?

  216. Babak Makkinejad,
    Thanks for the link to the comments by Mark Blyth. I would strongly recommend them to anyone interested in the links between what is happening in Britain and what is happening in Europe – and also the U.S.
    The description of ‘global Trumpism’ is largely to the point, and the suggestion that the Hamptons are an ‘indefensible position’ is at least worth serious thought.
    Following on from my earlier comment, I see that Merkel is saying that any Norway-type status for the U.K. depends upon acceptance of freedom of movement.
    If they stick with this – and it is early days – it is a gamble that the anti-immigrant backlash throughout Europe won’t result in fresh referenda, and possible exits, blowing up the Eurozone.
    But then, as Blyth brings out, the calculation that some of the intelligent advocates of ‘Brexit’ have taken is precisely that it may provoke the blowing up of the Eurozone.
    It may be that Merkel is taking a calculated gamble, based on the hope that the economic consequences of Brexit for the UK are sufficiently bad to frighten others off. (So, OK, you may feel this is a prison, but you do realise that those who try to escape get shot?)
    Alternatively, it may simply be that she still does not grasp the intensity of the resentments underlying the populist backlash.
    Again following on from my earlier comment, among the things at issue here is the difficulty that contemporary Western élites have in understanding the concept of ‘rational’ action.
    So they will simply take it for granted that untoward occurrences like the gaffiti on the Polish Social and Cultural Centre, are simply expression of the boorish ‘irrationality’ of the ‘underclass’.
    That may be the case. But there is an obvious possible alternative explanation – and the two explanations are not incompatible.
    What effect do you think it would have on the desire of Poles to immigrate to the U.K., if there were repeated headlines in their country’s press about their fellow countrymen being beaten up here?
    So, if you want to stop or at least cut down Polish immigration, may it spraying graffiti on the Polish centre be a perfectly ‘rational’ way to start?
    Another neglected point which Blyth makes relates to the problems of the Scottish nationalist position.
    Of course, from the point of view of a mildly anti-Scottish Londoner, this is hilarious.
    If they really want to leave the U.K., apply to join the Euro, which has been such a roaring success for, for example, Greece and Italy, and at the same time replace Osborne by Schauble as the custodian of their – very lavish – welfare state, why should we want to stop them?

  217. kao_hsien_chih says:

    Even then, that’s still not quite accurate: Koreans hate “Japan,” an abstract entity. They absolutely love “Japanese,” especially those who spend money.
    There is somewhat of an ethnic conflict brewing in parts of South Korea these days, not yet out in the open, but simmering, and that is actually between people who are ethnically Koreans on both sides: Koreans from Korea vs. Korean citizens of China, and the reason behind that conflict is same as that elsewhere, because there are several hundred thousand ethnic Koreans from China who have shown up to take jobs away from “real” Koreans yet are not acting like “real Koreans.” The uncanny valley aspect, that the Korean-Chinese look and act so much like the Koreans but think and act so unexpectedly, seems to be adding to the tension. But, at the same time, it is different in some important dimensions from immigration conflicts elsewhere, since the cultural commonality is too great.
    I am curious how ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe fared in West Germany after World War II. In retrospect, I’m realizing that I ran into rather a lot of ethnic German immigrants from places like Transylvania or Croatia to United States.

  218. charly says:

    Local government is endemic corrupt everywhere and often the specific reason why a city is booming. It simply has nothing to do with the health of a city. What does matter if its main industry loses 75% of its workers, especially if it are workers that are highly compensation because the work sucks.

  219. charly says:

    Flint was “destroyed” because there were too many car factories so you need to close some so some compagnie towns get destroyed. Has nothing to do with the UAW or GM. It is like claiming that West Virginia is being destroyed by the unions and the coal companies which is untrue. It is the much lesser demand for coal that is destroying WV.

  220. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Nope.
    GM invested huge sums in Flint – in The Buick City – but UAW made its best effort to scuttle those efforts.
    GM was 43 % of US car market in 1988; they just did not care to give consumers what they wanted.
    Oh, yes, Unions were the Snow White in all of this; like the pernicious UAW strike in 1999 against GM for “Unfair Labor Practices”; causing a production halt across North America.
    Now GM ins barely 17% of the US car market and the UAW guys make $ 13 an hour.

  221. Babak Makkinejad says:

    “Because the work sucks” – beats being a dirt farmer in the South.
    But I do not think you have ever been inside a manufacturing plant.

  222. Poul says:

    1) France is not Europe. And giving the terror attacks in France from local French Muslims I can’t see that my reasoning is flawed. Cultural clashes are part of large scale migrants. Feel free to disagree.
    2) We have not seen the real cumulative impacts of the decline European population. It will happen late this century and the first half of the next.
    3) Take Africa. There are major problems due to migration in Africa.
    South Africa is one of the best run countries in Africa and a huge magnet for migration. Bloodshed has followed due to the pressure. What will happen if South Africa says no and use extreme violence to drive off migrants. They will go north to Europe. Again look at the population growth in Africa. Young Africans migrate. Both to improve their own lives but also to help those back in their village by sending money back.
    https://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2016/04/22/go-south-young-man-migration-developing-world
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-25148596
    Black South Africans react to the pressures of migration. Why assume Europeans will not. The pressures are the same economically and culturally.
    We can take a peak at the US, too.
    With an age composition like this. What will the US look like in 70 years with migration on current levels? And will those shifts not result in different values?
    https://twitter.com/JedKolko/status/747206726844243969

  223. Poul says:

    “you assume that Danish culture has a low birth rate”
    This is factually correct. The fertility rate is 1,74 child per women. You need a rate of 2,1 for an unchanged population.
    Western migrants which are 40 % of the group have a lower birth rate than Danes, 1.461 vs. 1.769, but non-Western migrants have a higher rate of 1.856, (see graph Tabel 1.6 on page 21). Descendants of migrants as one group also have a higher birth rate than Danes. The Western migrants pull down the total migrant birth rate, but are Poles, Romanians and Germans the future source of migrants to Denmark. Giving their national birth rates?
    DST, Indvandrere i Danmark 2015 (page 20)
    http://www.dst.dk/Site/Dst/Udgivelser/GetPubFile.aspx?id=20703&sid=indv2015
    “Indvandrere har en lavere samlet fertilitet end kvinder med dansk oprindelse. For indvandrere er den samlede fertilitet 1.659, mens den for efterkommere er 1.819.
    Den samlede fertilitet for kvinder med dansk oprindelse er 1.769. Fertiliteten for indvandrere trækker altså den samlede fertilitet ned. Det er dog kun indvandrere med vestlig oprindelse, som har en lavere samlet fertilitet end kvinder med dansk oprindelse, idet ikke-vestlige indvandreres samlede fertilitet er 1.856, mens den for vestlige indvandrere kun er 1.461.”

  224. Fred says:

    charly,
    The work “sucks” so folks just decided an income of zero was preferable? You sound like you don’t work for a living. GM and the UAW are both very instrumental in the economy of Flint and in GM’s decision to open factories elsewhere. Both your comment and Babak’s above about Detroit leaves out all the race riots of the late 1960’s. That was a major factor in what is colloquially called “white flight” and in the physical destruction of a great deal of infrastructure. The State and Federal governments have spent billions on repeated urban renewal programs and additional billions on race specific contracting and business purchasing requirements.

  225. Fred says:

    charly,
    “They can have as much deficit as they want”
    Right up until they run out of other peoples money.

  226. LeaNder says:

    kao, I could tell you a lot about that. But I am afraid it’ll get verbose. In a nutshell, at least I’ll try:
    As a kid I had classmates, daughters of refugees, and yes, I recall prejudices. … Much later I realized legal loopholes and the occasional strategies taken to use it to own’s own advantage based on what was called: Lastenausgleich / burden sharing and ad hoc rules based on not available docs in the post WWII chaos. You have to imagine the general population after the currency reform in 48 started out with something like 50 marks per head, the year my brother was born. I was born slightly later.
    There were legal loopholes for the father of a close girl friend from Russia. He only needed one witness to confirm how much land he lost. Compared to the Dr. Phil Greek and Latin grandfather of another close friend. Already during the war he moved steadily futher West from Farther Pomerania, where his roots and that of his family were. He got a job immediately but apparently didn’t have the fitting profile to profit from the burden sharing laws. Thus it’s complex, on a closer look. You were better off as peasant then as academic. If you were clever you exploited loopholes. One witness? … The prejudice obviously was focused on the refugees who were able to build a house quite early, like the parents of my classmates. Took the average non-refugee longer to get there.
    There was a later wave of Russian-Germans that Kohl “brought back home”. I admittedly, never looked closely into the context. Remember Kohl is the chancellor of re-unification. We made jokes about that, but hardly took a closer look. Why not bring back our ancestors from the US and Australia too. I have family in both countries, and keep in mind all this happened after Gorbachev. But yes, the young, did cause problems initially. Or they made news somewhat. They usually hardly spoke German. And now the group is rightly or wrongly suspected to be used by Putin as propaganda tools.

  227. charly says:

    The wage beats being a dirt farmer in the South. Not the work itself.

  228. Babak Makkinejad says:

    True.
    I noticed that Koreans like many products of Japanese cultures; anime, music, certain books & novels.

  229. Tyler says:

    charly,
    lmbo yes as if the current secular hedonism in the west isn’t being shoved down our throats by unelected mandarins and the Masters of the Universe.

  230. Tyler says:

    Babak,
    Ruh roh. You’re going to give him a stroke.

  231. Tyler says:

    Mr. Habakkuk,
    Personally I think the “graffiti” is more false flag hoaxing by Remainers.

  232. charly says:

    I didn’t say that people preferred no income. What i say is that people preferred “fun” work above work that “sucks” so to get people to do the “sucks” work you have to pay them more (much more to my surprise).
    If i look at Charleroi or Maastricht i see the same as Detroit and there were no race riots or white flight and those places still suck (high crime, corruption, unemployment etc,) What they do have in common is that the lost their big industry with jobs that suck

  233. charly says:

    “France is not Europe”
    Are you talking about the Jovian moon?
    Africa is the only place (besides Afghanistan) that still has a high birth rate but my prediction is that that is over before 2030 and they wont be moving to Europe but to China. Especially the not so populated Southern Africa region that now moves to South Africa

  234. charly says:

    According to current trends 150 million Mexicans will be born in the next 70 years and 200 million will move to America. Somehow that does not completely make sense.

  235. charly says:

    1.74% is a very high low birth rate. 1.856% is the homeland bride effect plus some last remains of the big families. That will disappear and if they wont become cultural Danish they will have the birth rate of their motherland (all something like Italy, 1.2% or so)

  236. charly says:

    I’m not going to have a deficit discussion but what i wanted to make clear is that they are not bound by the 3% of the Euro

  237. charly says:

    Non-residents only buy specific type of houses so that doesn’t really explain why the whole market goes up

  238. Poul says:

    France is an outlier and not representative for the overall European trend. Hence France is not Europe. Look at the UN projections.
    Well, I look at the UN projections and see a different picture. Check also the age of the population in Europe and Africa.
    As for African migration going to China…. What data do you have to corroborate such an assumption?
    UN World Population Prospects, 2015.
    https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/files/key_findings_wpp_2015.pdf
    Quote: page 9
    “A rapid population increase in Africa is anticipated even if there is a substantial reduction of fertility levels in the near future. The medium variant projection assumes that fertility will fall from 4.7 children per women in 2010-2015 to 3.1 in 2045-2050, reaching 2.2 by 2095-2100. After 2050, Africa is expected to be the only major area still experiencing substantial population growth. As a result, Africa’s share of global population is projected to grow to 25 per cent in 2050 and 39 per cent by 2100, while the share residing in Asia will fall to 54 per cent in 2050 and 44 per cent in 2100. Regardless of the uncertainty surrounding future trends in fertility in Africa, the large number of young people currently on the continent who will reach adulthood in the coming years and have children of their own, ensures that the
    region will play a central role in shaping the size and distribution of the world’s population over the coming decades.”

  239. Poul says:

    There are other Hispanics than Mexicans. You know as in Latin America.

  240. Poul says:

    But here you once again forget migration. If all we were talking about was a one-off event then yes they could be assimilated. But we are talking about a constant and most likely increasing number of migrants as we will see more and more young Africans migrate.
    Also you also overlook that the descendant’s birth rate include both Western and Non-Western migrants. But now the Western descendants are not 40% as with the original migrants but less due to their parents lower birth rate. So the Non-Western birth rate is higher than the 1.856.

  241. charly says:

    In what way is France an outlier. I would argue it is exactly the same as the other countries except some years in front
    A shrinking population of workers beside the fact that Europe and East Asia behaved exactly the same. And the only place China can get enough cheap workers is Africa.
    According to the population projections of 1950’s Holland should have had a population of 20 million in 2000. It still doesn’t even with 2 million immigrants so to be honest i take population projections not to serious. Especially not the TFR projections of the UN. They have been shown to be colossally wrong. But if you look at what happens in the world over the last few decades than you will see that it takes about 10 years for a cultural region to go from a high to a low TFR so predicting so far into the future is in my opinion foolish. Besides Africa is (or will be very soon) a region with a urbanization rate above 50% and cellphone ownership and literacy above 80%. That is not a region were you expect a high TFR to persist.

  242. charly says:

    You overlooked that the birthrate was already split between Western and non-Western migrants.
    1.856 is the TFR of non Western migrants. For Western migrants it is only 1.461. A TFR is a sign that non-Western migrants get 2 kids per family but because the motherland bride effect a higher percentage become mother.

  243. charly says:

    I know that there other Hispanics but they are not Mexicans.

  244. Poul says:

    Sorry, wrong number but analysis still correct. The combined Western and Non-Western descendant birth rate is 1.819 which is higher than the original Western and Non-Western parent generation of 1.659.
    As you can see the descendants have a higher combined birth rate than the first generation migrants.
    One of the reasons is that some Non Western migrants have the tradition of arranged marriage. Here they marry off a son or daughter and their new son/daughter-in-law moves to Denmark. This gives you a higher birth rate among non-western migrants than the first generation migrants.

  245. Poul says:

    Then what relevance does you comment then have? It make not sense. The twitter comment was on Hispanics.

  246. Poul says:

    Apparently you don’t like looking at the UN demographic data. Try it and then come back. France is an outlier.

  247. Poul says:

    Feel free to make up your own believes about the UN data but that is just that.. belief.
    No much to convince me that you have sound analysis behind your comments.
    That you believe that the African population will stop growing in 2030 while the UN estimates it at 2100 is something you need more than belief to give credence. So what data do you based your comments on? Is there any data?

  248. charly says:

    I don’t follow you. Why use the Western & Non western combined when you have the numbers separately.
    Descendants have obviously a different mix and first generation migrants may not want to stay and have kids in their new country.
    It is not arranged marriages but the fact that they are loaded in the eyes of the people back home that creates the higher level of motherhood

  249. Poul says:

    You’ll have to read DST explanation how they compile their numbers. But as they write you will have some people who do not fit in the categories. You will have Danes who are not Danes and so forth with migrants.
    Why basis do you have for claiming that a Non-Western man or woman married to a Non-Western descendant would not get more children than a marriage between two Non-Western descendants? Your own claim of migrants adjusting to the local birth rate levels should point at such an effect.

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