b. traven
The Contrary Perspective was probably the only media to run a thoughtful article on the British vote. And that includes not just the MSM but the alternate media like RSN, Alternet, The Nation, Huff Post etc. The comments on the story, by our English contributor, Alex Dunn, and our foresightful editor, Stuart Lyle, now living in England, showed a wide range of American opinion.
In the run up to the Brexit vote there was virtually no American media that gave our citizens a ‘heads up’ on the possible repercussions to our country of a British exit from the EU. Only after the unprecedented 500 point drop in the New York Stock Exchange on Friday did it become a story. Our media has it’s head so far up its behind that the story just did not exist.
But let’s stop looking at our navel and examine the tremendous fallout that this momentous decision will have in the UK (all of which will be again virtually ignored by the MSM in favor of commenting on how it will effect Trump’s campaign).
Scotland may secede from the UK. That’s big news. Scotland voted about 65% to stay in the EU. With the UK leaving the EU, Scotland, whose vote to leave the UK less than two years ago failed based on promises from Cameron, the British Prime Minister, and the threat that leaving the UK would force them out of the EU, now have a clear-cut reason to change partners – from the UK back to the EU.
Another story not being told by the MSM is the reason that PM Cameron resigned so quickly after the vote. Cameron alone made the decision to hold the referendum in order to win a few votes in the recent election campaign from the far right wing UKIP party who were pushing “exit” to keep migrants out of England. He made that decision for his own personal ambitions, not for the welfare of England’s citizens.
Unfortunately we see this same selfish reasoning from both the Republican and Democratic Party leaders in our government. The vote for “exit” in the UK must be put alongside the vote in the Labor Party for Corbyn, the Bernie Sanders of England, as a vote against the smug party elites who have ruled Britain under Labor’s Tony Blair much like Hillary Clinton’s, as “elites” out of touch with “the people.” Trump represents the same backlash against the Bush family and the corporate Republicans.
Cameron exposed his country to the fallout from “exit” for his personal political gain not for the country, and we see both of our current Presidential candidates and their party backers following the same course: “me first, then the country.”
They will give away our crown jewels to get elected.
The Contrary Perspective 
Global Research did an article on Brexit which was pretty good. Am waiting to see what comes from RT or Al Jazeera or other media abroad.
I think the focus on the Right Wing in Britain was part of the ploy to convince people to stay in the EU. That tendency is not that strong, just getting loud and with more press. Another distraction; a marking ploy, propaganda. What needs to be discussed it the ultimate goal of the EU and its control by the US. The New World Order movement by the elites was defined decades ago, coming out of WW2 I believe. The push has been consistent, always anti-humanitarian, anti-the people. Tax the people to pay for the wars of the rich; tax the people while the wealthy pay none (or very little); Destroy supports for labor, destroy pubic education and other social safety net programs like Social Security, Welfare, etc. The US has been pushing this agenda via austerity programs as in Greece. They have been doing this for years in Africa via the IMF and World Bank. It is taking a lot longer than Hitler’s Nazi Putsch, but it is much easier to move 1 step at a time and talk about the moves as isolated little changes and the press is the mouthpiece of, by and for the 1%.. It is much more successful.
I am not saying I agree with this, but some people are saying the killing of the UK legislator was a False Flag operation. What I can say is the number of False Flags seems to be increasing and they do work to scare the public into accepting increasing destruction of our civil liberties and creating/maintaining great divisiveness among the people.
We have crown jewels after the great crash of 2008? We have a crown after Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Ukraine? “They” will certainly get elected. “They” always do in America. But they already emptied the cupboard — of national treasure and national reputation — long ago. Stand by for Gotterdammerung 2016: The Twilight of the Girls.
Or just:
Another Catastrophic Success
With their tails tucked proudly ‘tween their legs,
Advancing towards the exit march the dregs
Of empire, whose retreat this question begs:
“No promised omelet? Just the broken eggs?”
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2011
“traven”–I think perhaps the Bill of Rights in our Constitution was this country’s Crown Jewels. The UK has no equivalent document, as I understand it. And I think we all agree here on TCP that the Bill of Rights was flushed down the crapper in the post-9/11 hysteria.
Michael. We still have a tarnished and diminished Constitution that both Clinton and Trump are ready to further eviscerate in their appeal for votes from the hungry dogs of war..
“traven”!! Now things are really getting “misplaced” on this site! It was I, not Mike, who commented on the Bill of Rights!
traven.
“Unprecedented 500 point drop,” is that like 3%?
Walter–For the record, at closing bell the Dow Jones Industrials Average closed down 3.39% on Friday. Far from a record in terms of points move or percentage move. The Nikkei 225 Index in Japan, interestingly, fell more than twice as much in percentage terms.
I now break my tradition of not posting links to other sites with this link to an analysis on the Gold-Eagle site, penned before European or US trading got underway Friday:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/article/consequences-leaving-party
Walter.. I looked through some sample half million dollar portfolios today to answer your implied question. Sample 1. held 5 stocks. Two of the fine showed $140,000 gain yet even with that 3% drop in the Dow the portfolio showed a 10% loss for the day. Three percent or $500 is generally considered a BIG drop and a turning pointing to trouble ahead.. .
traven. My school board raised taxes 3% this year, as it does most years. Anyway back to Brexit, the following link – I don’t like doing links, but this one is so powerful – explains why it prevailed, and why EU is coming apart: https://player.vimeo.com/video/167607521.
If nothing else, listening to the Queen’s English for six minutes, is worth it.
Greg.
Read the report. “Short positions in gold,” now that is something. Back to traven’s 3%, our financial systems are houses of cards built by elites. Negative interest rates are proof of it, and far more telling than Brexit.
Good luck Boris, you’ll need it.
It’s interesting that older people (50+) voted to leave whereas younger people voted to stay. How much of this is driven, not by economic concerns per se, but by anti-immigrant bias and nostalgia? Is this about “making Britain great again” by rejecting the multiculturalism of British liberals?
Nationalism is on the rise, whether here or in the UK and elsewhere, driven by fear and resentments, and stoked by opportunist politicians who promise to turn back the clock to a better time.
One thing Brexit shows me: Trump can still win in November. Just think of his opponent, as clumsy and disliked in her own way as Cameron is in the UK.
Bill A.–Xenophobia, in the guise of nationalism, is indeed on the rise and has been for some time. This phenomenon accompanies prolonged financial crises. Hitler’s rise began as Germany reeled in the wake of its World War I defeat. The “geniuses” at central banks cobbled the world back together with spit and twine after the 2008-09 crisis. In the US we’ve been spoonfed the illusion of “Recovery” on Obama’s whole watch, while real wages have gone nowhere in, what, two decades?!? Throw in the ever-rising cost of healthcare and reality for the 99% doesn’t look very pretty. Literally trillions of new “dollars” have been thrown into the financial system, only to be hoarded by the banksters. There is so much of this “free money” (but not for us little people!) that it’s being invested in paper issued by various governmental entities at NEGATIVE interest rates! Is this not the ultimate financial insanity, literally paying to have your money held in instruments that used to PAY interest to the holders?? If banks can’t find new business start-ups to which they feel comfortable lending money, confident they will make money ultimately on the loans, what does THAT say about the health of the economy?!? Instead of expanding economic activity in a way that generates decent-paying jobs, the powers that be have pauperized the working class by converting full-time to part-time jobs with reduced or zero benefits. And naturally the demagogues arrive on the scene and point their fingers, shouting “It’s the fault of THOSE people!!” Right now a very loud demagogue has his sights set on the White House and has a very real chance of winning it. Unfortunately his opponent, our default “savior,” can offer only more Business As Usual. I am simply filled with revulsion at the whole situation.
Here is an article that poses a different perspective on Brexit besides the standard one of racism and nationalism:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44967.htm
This article focuses on racism & nationalism but also critiques the EU as undemocratic and impoverishing of people
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36582-who-should-we-blame-for-brexit
And from another perspective involving Julian Assange:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/brexit-julian-assange-free/?utm_source=getresponse&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=savoymatt&utm_content=The+Free+Thought+Project+Newsletter
So here are 3 articles that focus on bigger and more structural issues along with the Global Research article which I cannot find right now. The progressive left is speaking out and is very clear that the EU carries much blame for its antagonistic and undemocratic protocols which bring much harm to the general public in Europe as well as the core interest of controlling the world’s wealth.
Before I peruse any of the articles linked to here I just want to note that CNN (for what THAT’S worth!) has an online headline (early afternoon, 6/25 Eastern US Time) indicating EU leadership is taking the attitude (paraphrasing) “You voted to leave, UK; we want you to accelerate your departure!” We’ll see how quickly the tangled webs of trade agreements and the like can be undone. If other nations want to vote to leave the EU, I say more power to them. The benefits of EU membership, it seems to me, constituted a trickle-down situation. The primary benefits, as always under Capitalism (I hope this statement won’t shock anyone!), go to the elites. Freedom to cross all borders without a cop saying “Papers, please! Let me see your papers!”? That benefit for travelers is on thin ice due to terrorist attacks and the flood of refugees from the mess the US created in Syria/Iraq. As for peace on the Continent, where is the EU Army? There is no such thing. NATO is the dominant military power in the region, under the control of the US. The EU arrangements NEVER guaranteed peace. Tearing up treaties becomes a very easy matter when a nation’s leadership (as distinguished from the citizenry) is hell-bent on committing aggression. The world’s been spinning on its axis a long time. It did so before the EU was founded and will continue to do so for a long time should the whole EU structure dissolve like a morning mist under assault from the sun.
As an aside, Trump’s response was priceless. The fall of the British pound, Trump noted, will help his golf course in Scotland! Plus Britain is taking its country back! Except that Scotland voted to remain in the EU by 62% and may now vote again to leave the UK.
Trump — Is everything about him?
Bill A.–Um, well, uh…is YOUR name or MY name in big letters on those shiny, towering luxury residential skyscrapers? Of course it’s all about The Donald! He’s “the man on the white horse,” you see, come to solve all our problems. Gosh darn it, that’s downright magnanimous of him, isn’t it?!? This would-be Emperor thinks he’s decked out in the finest new clothes and it’s awfully rude of us to point out to him that his glaring flaws are on full display!
Good point. But in consistently trumpeting his own selfish agendas, Trump truly does trump himself. There, I said it, bad pun and all.
Trump as a public servant? He will be the public and we will be the servants.
Written ten years ago in 2006, but just as relevant today: the unfolding saga of America reducing itself to passive intellectual incarceration, mesmerized by the moving colored images emanating from a glowing television screen; like the island aboriginal Boobies cut off from the world’s cultural mainland; like Plato’s prisoners kept underground who can only see shadows dancing on the walls of their cave and not the marionettes and puppeteers on the elevated stage behind them who produce and cast the shadows that they mistake for reality. In the accelerating economic insecurity enveloping so many Americans today, we can see the usual and historic:
Boobie Top-Down Class Warfare
(from Fernando Po, U.S.A., America’s post-literate retreat to Plato’s Cave)
It happened back in Vietnam
Some two score years ago
When those within the upper class
Declined to serve, and so
They coined Selective Service to
Select who wouldn’t go
They called themselves the brightest and
They called themselves the best
And then they sent their countrymen
Into a hornet’s nest
But not themselves, of course, because
They’d passed the privilege test
These parents of a George and Dick
Thought Communism bad
But worried that some other lands
Would find it not as sad
As slaving for the rich ones whose
Rank greed had made them mad
So sympathizing with the rich
No matter what they did
The parents of a George and Dick
Sent someone else’s kid
To fight the dreaded communists
No matter where they hid
But not their George and Dick, of course,
They couldn’t spare the time
And Vietnam seemed far away
Immersed in war and grime
An atmosphere too turbulent
For orchids in their prime
These studly hot-house orchid types
Worked hard to dodge the light
Their parents helped them jump the line
To keep them out of sight
Arranging for deferments that
Would keep them from the fight
And so the years of war went by
And communism won
Which had exactly no effect
On those who had the fun
Of skipping out and turning tail
To take off on the run
Soon Vietnam recovered from
The blasting it had got
And communists turned businessmen
To hatch a common plot
With those who liked cheap labor
And cared less why some had fought
Still some remained embittered by
The waste made of their lives
And swore they’d never live again
Like worker bees in hives
Content to feed the rich who dined
With sharpened forks and knives
But Boobie schools taught only fraud
And fiction to the young
With fantasy and fables coined
To see the truth unstrung
Till history became a fog
That never bit or stung
On schedule, Boobie Dick and George
Found Politician Town
And learned that pandering for votes
Could win some safe renown
Affirmatively actioned up
They never could fall down
The millions seemed to flow their way
And stuck to them like paste
They spent what others raised for them
With no thought for the waste
Since someone else’s money had
The sweetest sort of taste
They made a deal between themselves
To do a pantomime
With Dick to do the thinking while
George mouthed a lisping rhyme
And so with the Supine Court’s help
They grabbed for our last dime
The Boobie George then tripped and crashed
Into this truth sublime:
That Boobies hated freedom and
Considered it a crime
Dick told him then what he should do:
Just work them overtime!
With not a moment left to think
The Boobies wouldn’t know
Where all their beads and shells had gone
Or why they couldn’t show
A single thing as evidence
That they had labored so
Once George and Dick gained access to
The treasury’s largesse
It hardly seems surprising that
It soon contained much less
A fact which few observers seemed
To think of with distress
But “stupid is as stupid does,”
The stupid do and say
Confronted by a wealthy thief
They genuflect, then pay;
With eyes and minds shut fast like that
They make such tempting prey
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2006
Ready for some long-overdue bottom-up class warfare, class? “If not now, when? If not us, then whom?”
The efforts in USA to see minimum wage raised to $15/hr.* has all the markings of a COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY!! Call the House Un-American Activities Committee to session! Ahh, the nostalgia! :-)
* Of course, by the time this could (hypothetically) be achieved, the rising cost of living will still leave folks at that level in poverty.
TO THE RAMPARTS CITIZENS.! Mike.. a fantastic call to action in poetry. You do have a way with words.
Thank you so much for that heartfelt poem.
traven — thanks for the kind words. I’ve written much more in that general vein, but if you want a truly revolutionary, working-class anthem in verse, I don’t think anyone can surpass Percy Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy, especially the following stanza, which occurs twice in the poem:
“Rise like lions after thunder
In unvanquishable number.
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you.
You are many, they are few.”
Of course, the police in Philadelphia and Cleveland have already had someone read Shelley’s poem to them. Consequently, they’ve lost no time in “visiting” the homes of those persons suspected of planning or attending demonstrations at the Democratic and Republican party conventions. The few have no sympathy with, nor any desire ever to permit, the gathering of the many. Assembled numbers terrify and infuriate them. So we shall see how many American citizens wind up in chains — i.e., handcuffs — later this summer for expressing their anger and dismay at the unpalatable “choices” offered them.
For my own part, I wrote another episode of Fernando Po that I meant to accompany “Boobie Top-Down Class Warfare.” I got the idea, obviously, from reading The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen’s classic sarcastic sociologicaI treatise. I called my take on it:
Boobie Theory of the Seizure Class
(from Fernando Po, U.S.A., America’s post-literate retreat to Plato’s Cave)
The teenage clotheshorse maiden weeps
Enduring further slights
The boys won’t line up on the porch
Or call on Thursday nights
(The cool-kid-of-the-moment swears:
“This mother really bites!”)
The poor don’t fork out princely sums
Or lay out table fare
Esteemed by connoisseurs who make
Of each meal an affair
So who would dine with those of us
Who find the cupboard bare?
As Veblen said, the scholars yearn
To do their master’s will
Accustomed to a style of life
Their incomes can’t fulfill
And so they gravitate to wealth
For which they gladly shill
To motivate the lower class
To do the filthy deed
The Pet Press pundit scribes will pen
A solipsistic screed
A yellow plaque upon the fangs
Which makes the gums recede
The Boobie Seizure Class, it seems,
On three crude strands depends:
On emulation, dominance,
And animism’s blends:
Assorted spook religions that
“Explain” why freedom ends
No toxic cocktail ever brewed
Can slake the bloody thirst
Of those who wish to take their bad
And have us do its worst
To kill some hapless foreigners
So that they’ll hate us “first”
The Pet Press nanny sycophants
Transcribe the boss’s views
And put them into their own mouths
Reporting them like news
As “sacred” as the hymnals found
In precinct churches’ pews
Embedded for a byline they
Write for the Army’s ease
A splendid little war they think
Needs just the proper tease
“Support the troops” they now intone
Just do it overseas
The fanboy tough guys need a shield
Behind which they can hide
While jeering at the ones who choose
Their time awhile to bide
Refusing to approve a war
For just the “winning” side
Yet never has the Yellow Press
Refused to praise the Lord
If any chance they saw to add
To their paymaster’s hoard
And something for themselves as well
If they just climb on board
So tales of daring courage brave
Must fill the printed page
Until a mass hysteria
Is all the roar and rage
And symbol rulers ascertain
That brains no thoughts engage
The Sacred Symbol Soldier thus
Appears to cloak the greed
In made-up propaganda tales
For those who on him feed
He always wins the battles but
No one his tale will heed
The users of this symbol have
No patriotic creed
They love him for his usefulness
But can’t abide his need
The Symbol Soldier only serves
When none can see him bleed
One day his status changes to
The veteran who knows
Who won’t tell lies to cover up
The crime of war that grows
With each exalted croaking by
A Seizure Class that crows
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2006
One note, Mike: the expression here is “Support OUR Troops,” the idea being that they and us are one and the same, and that their actions are our actions.
Of course, the elites have well and truly excluded themselves from any form of service with THE troops. Too busy making money and enjoying life.
Bill–Yes, today’s elites are sipping the finest champagnes and gobbling the most expensive caviar…ON THE DECK OF THE TITANIC!! Meanwhile, far below in Steerage, the underclass grows increasingly restless, their real wages stagnant for 20 or more years now. Tragically, the prime outlet they’re being offered right now to let off steam is to support It’s All About Him. Meanwhile, You Know Her declares “She’s Fighting For Us”! (Though I think she just changed her chief slogan to something else.) All the while, hobnobbing with the elites up there on the top deck. Can anyone concoct a work of fiction painting a sadder state of affairs for Americans in 2016? Hello, Stephen King?
One of my favorite anecdotes from Hillary’s campaign was her brief use of the term “everyday people” to refer to people like you and me. It seems the campaign came to realize how condescending that sounded. If we’re “everyday people,” what are people like Hillary? I’m sure they think of themselves as “exceptional,” but I have a few other choice adjectives in mind …
Speaking of our self-styled “elites” (or “betters”) — on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (if not the English Channel, as well) — I have not failed to address them and their Seizure Class antics in verse. Especially in regard to You-Know-Her: the once and future Goldwater Girl and president of the Young Republicans at Wellesley College, otherwise known as the Madam Chiang Kai-Shek finishing school for privileged debutantes. Anyway, just one of my several one-finger salutes to You-Know-Her and her inbred ilk:
Hothouse Orchids
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley (lines 239-294)
So too with all the others of this kind
Concerned with just themselves and their careers
Who play at war with only this in mind:
To entertain the mob and hear its cheers.
For when they could have served and fought and learned
They hit the gas instead and shifted gears
Bypassing lessons better men had earned
Prolonging thus their adolescent years.
Yet never having all for which they yearned,
The corners of their mouths connect their ears,
So broad their grins in hopes of votes to buy
Just like the Cheshire cat that disappears
Behind a smile substantial as a sigh.
Their empty words live on while soldiers die.
Like crocodiles they practice crying tears
Till they can shed them from a single eye:
An ersatz empathy to mask the fears
That glassy, shining, saucer eyes belie:
Their plan to rush ahead and celebrate
A victory they’ll win when pigs can fly
Has only turned to mourning now that fate
Has served us broken eggshells for a meal
And eaten all the lunch upon our plate
While leaving them to consummate a deal
For omelets promised off a menu fake.
Our soldiers suffer agonies too real
While those in charge continue on the take
And “leaders” off the top the profits rake.
So as our blood and money drain away
In torrents sinking into desert sands
She ponders which new pose to strike today
And urges war on hapless foreign lands
To demonstrate how chicken hawks can cluck
While grabbing cash and limply shaking hands
Oblivious to soldiers vainly stuck
In quagmires authorized by this vain hack
Who daily finds new ways to pass the buck.
With heels worn round from lying on her back
And lips chapped raw from lying when upright
She hides from each imagined new attack
Too weak to wage the peace in her own right
But always strong for someone else’s fight.
An image of irresolute intrigue
She offers up herself somewhere in line.
No mighty branch but just a slender twig,
She dithers while our monarch’s friends consign
Our freedoms to more hot air overblown.
Obsessed with sewer sailors who malign
Her party’s past no matter how it shone
She promises to settle in advance
For any scrap of meat from off the bone,
And then proceeds read her true romance:
A plan for how to satisfy her greed
While those who perish get no second chance.
Our frantic warnings she chose not to heed.
If only we’d decide then she would “lead.”
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2006-2010