Brexit was a break from Germany+Russia, not from the EU

I misjudged the true British reason behind Brexit. On the surface, the immediate motivation seemed to be stopping of the immigration, but from the perspective of those 8 years I realised that it was just the pretext. Looking back into the events of 2008 and 2014 I realized that the British were probably horrified by the Russian military aggression: an incursion against Georgia resulting in carving out about 1/3 of the Georgian territory. Absence of any major political resistance form the EU (except isolated protests of Poland and the Baltics). I think British probably knew that the real reason behind a non-reaction from the EU has been a deep Russian (from the Soviet days) infiltration by agents and capture of an entire German political leadership by Russia. We know from Snowden leaks about a massive surveillance program of the German elites by the CIA. A question nobody has been asking is the reason behind that surveilliance. Perhaps CIA had a good reason to tap their phones?

A lack of substantial retaliation by the EU for the annexation of Crimea and Donbass by Russia in 2014 should not not come as a surprise given a degree of German infiltration by Russia who was able to subtly squash all retaliatory attempts against itself. In addition, acceptance of 2M of refugees into Germany around the same time, followed by German government attempts ar dumping them to other countries, created a convenient political crisis and distraction. Distracting the EU away from a much more pressing issue - of stopping Russian millitary expansion and agentural infiltration of the EU.

An almost simultaneous preparations of the British to exit the EU become now totally understandable, the economic cost notwithstanding.

Last but not least, when one looks at the past, British interests were never aligned neither with Russia, nor with any German-Russian alliance or pipelines. Germany are Britain's biggest competitors, while Russia doesn't have anything that Britain can't get anywhere else for less money and with less risk. It is interesting to notice how the British investment in Russian oil and gas fields were confiscated by Russia around that time! They haven't forgotten haven't they?

It is not in the British interests to help or be part of neither German sphere, nor Russia's nor facillitate any alliance between those two! Also, it is not now (nor in the 1850-ties!) in the British interests to allow turning the Black Sea into a Russian controlled zone.

No wonder that come 2022 the UK was already prepared and must have pre-planned well in advance repel Russian military attack and help Ukraine from day 1. So were some other governments of the EU, most notably Polish government and the Baltics. Basically looks like many of the EU + UK governments must have been preparing for the Russian military atack for some time accumulating enough supplies as well as placing military orders, to be able to immediately send huge arms supplies to Ukraine. All except German government.

When the "fog of war" settles we are going to learn some amazing stories.

Reference:
http://bleszynskimainstream.blogspot.com/search/label/Brexit

Brexit - financed by Putin's gold!

Double-headed Eagle ate the Lion! Helped by treason.

From British press:

Revealed: Brexit backer Arron Banks’s golden Kremlin connection

Quote:

The hidden scale of Kremlin links to the biggest donor to the Brexit campaign are revealed today. Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who helped fund Brexit, was offered a business deal involving six Russian goldmines. He also had undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador to Britain — set up by a suspected Russian spy — and paid a previously unknown visit to Moscow at the height of the campaign. The revelations raise explosive questions about attempts by Moscow to influence the referendum result. Emails by Banks and his sidekick, Andy Wigmore, shown to The Sunday Times, reveal the men made repeated contact with Russian officials to discuss business opportunities and issues of mutual interest during the referendum campaign and its aftermath.

Brexit's secret Putin connection: Nigel Farage's bankroller met Russian envoy three times then hooked him up with Trump's team, as MI5 is urged to act

Quote:

Explosive new claims of Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum emerged last night as it was revealed that the millionaire who bankrolled the Leave campaign had a series of secret meetings with Vladimir Putin's UK envoy. Arron Banks had three meetings with Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko, fresh evidence shows, despite previously claiming to have had only a 'boozy lunch' with him. Leaked emails written by Banks and his Leave.EU right-hand-man Andy Wigmore – both close friends of ex-Ukip leader Nigel Farage – allegedly show they were in close contact with Russian officials throughout the referendum campaign and afterwards. Former Ukip donor Mr Banks is also said to have given Russian officials telephone numbers for members of Donald Trump's presidential transition team, just days after he and Mr Farage visited Trump Tower in the wake of the shock US election result. The cache of messages will be considered by the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which is investigating Russia's attempts to subvert democracy with 'fake news'. Mr Banks and Mr Wigmore last night set the stage for an electrifying hearing of the inquiry on Tuesday, vowing that they would give evidence to committee chairman Damian Collins about their emails being 'hacked'.

Comment:

That explains why was the UKIP leadership forced to resign shortly after the referendum. British intelligence services must have known it during the campaign but the public was never told. Had they media been told what was really going on, Brexit would probably have never passed the vote!

Post-brexit UK - authoritarianist descent

UK among worst in Western Europe for freedom of press after 'staggering decline', Reporters Without Borders index claims


Quote:

A host of recent developments in the UK had threatened the press' ability to hold powerful people and institutions to account, the report found, including what it called an “alarming” proposal by the Law Commission to replace the Official Secrets Act with an updated Espionage Act.

The move “could make it easy to jail journalists as 'spies’ for obtaining leaked information and see them jailed for up to 14 years”, the report found.

RFS also criticised the Government over the introduction of the Investigatory Powers Act, saying the new law contained insufficient protections for whistleblowers, journalists and their sources.

Britain isn’t even keeping pace with the EU "corpse" in spite of cheap pound

Interesting article:

As the UK economy sputters, it's all systems go in the eurozone,

Richard Partington

Quote:

"We’ve shackled ourselves to a corpse," said Douglas Carswell in the days before he abandoned the Tory whip to join Ukip. "We pay for the privilege of being members of this poverty-producing club."

Read more on Brexit here.

Brexit - more than the British bargained for

I favor the loosely tied confederate model of governance that the European Union has become.  It is modeled on past attempts at confederate states, examples of which are pre-Christian township of central Europe such as Lusitan, Prussian and Swiss Confederation (the only one surviving at present), Great Tartaria of Central Asia and Siberia, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and last but not least - the United States of America.    More often then not, adoption of the confederation model resulted in more civil rights because attempts by the local authorities to skew the system their way, could be challenged by the people using federal legislation. One interesting example was Ireland joining the EU which gradually washed away the autocratic rule of De Valera's theocrats resulting in more individual freedom.   Britain seems to be going the other way around, from a balance of power tied between the EU and the local government, towards giving all the power to the later.  That was probably the original intention behind the UKIP backers behind the scene as suggested by former prime minister Tony Blair in his recent "Open Britain" speech.     I am guessing, but that is the only reason that makes a sense  (actually there may be another non-exclusive reason that also makes a sense, see this post) .  Sure - British establishments wants more power and they will now be able to get it.  I guess they can hardly wait!.    The article I linked below describes some of the details of the process.  We can probably safely assume that it is just the beginning of the slippage towards authocracy in Britain, since once their elites taste the rule by decree it may be hard to revert to democracy.



The following article is the main reason I decided to post my today's rant:



What are Henry VIII powers? How Theresa May will use 'infamous' clauses to rewrite EU law

By Alice Foster (published Thu, Mar 30, 2017

Quote:

HENRY VIII powers will allow civil servants and ministers to change EU law without much parliamentary scrutiny before Brexit Day.


...

Prof Barnard, a senior fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe initiative, said it was a paradox because Brexit supporters voted to restore parliamentary sovereignty.

"People who voted to leave the EU thought they were taking back powers back to Parliament, to Westminster," she said during a briefing at King’s College London.

"What they didn’t think they would be doing is taking powers back to the executive - to the civil service, to the Government - over which there will be very little parliamentary scrutiny."

The huge volume of corrections needed to EU law mean that it would be impossible for each change to be done by Acts of Parliaments.

To solve the problem, the Great Repeal Bill White Paper published today said that the bill will "create powers to make secondary legislation".

It said: "The Great Repeal Bill will provide a power to correct the statute book, where necessary, to rectify problems occurring as a consequence of leaving the EU. "

Update 30-April-2017 - "May lives in parallel reality" article

Brexit negotiations began with a blazing row yesterday as Brussels flatly rejected Theresa May’s negotiating position and accused the British prime minister of living in a “parallel reality”.

The other 27 EU member states took just four minutes to agree a hardline stance on Brexit at a summit meeting in Brussels before Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, and Michel Barnier, the chief European Union Brexit negotiator, rounded on the British prime minister.

They told EU leaders that May had used a meeting with them on Wednesday night to demand that a “detailed outline” of a future free trade deal be in place before the UK agrees to pay any money to Brussels as part of the Brexit divorce deal. An EU diplomat said: “This was a rather incredible demand. It seemed as if it came from a parallel reality.”

Juncker warned yesterday that that approach would lead to an “early crash”, with Britain leaving the EU without a deal.

In an eight-page document outlining their position, the other 27 countries said the EU would “prepare itself to be able to handle the situation if the negotiations were to fail”. The guidelines also include offering Northern Ireland automatic EU membership should it join the Irish republic - a move seen as provocative in London - and giving Spain a veto over Gibraltar’s future relationship with the bloc.

Juncker and Barnier told leaders that the Wednesday dinner at May’s country retreat, known as Chequers, had also revealed huge differences over plans to recognise the rights of British citizens and EU nationals in each other’s countries.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said a “serious offer” was needed on migrant rights from the UK before trade talks could begin.

An EU diplomat told The Sunday Times: “The UK’s position is miles apart, both on their financial obligations and on the EU citizens’ rights. The UK government simply wants to create a new category of ‘former EU citizens’ in their migration law, but our position is that we must go much further than that.”

The British prime minister’s stance that trade must come first was met with incredulity by EU officials, who said her chief EU sherpa, Oliver Robbins, had already agreed that the methodology for agreeing the Brexit bill would be ironed out first - along with the rights of EU citizens in Britain and the issue of the Irish border.

“She took a firm position against something we thought we had agreed,” a diplomatic source said. “It was completely unreal.” The source said the prime minister’s views on the financial settlement “border on the delusional”.

Over dinner, Juncker slapped down May by pulling out a copy of the EU-Canada trade deal, a 2,000-page document that took nearly a decade to negotiate, and recommended that the prime minister study its complexity.

Juncker’s aides said he then called Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, and complained that May appeared unaware of issues communicated to her staff. According to one of Juncker’s aides, he told Merkel: “It went very badly. She is in a different galaxy. Based on the meeting, no deal is much more likely than finding agreement.”

--------

Update 3/06/2017

(watch all or from 13:30)

Brexit - UK for Ukraine - Russian connection?

In my personal opinion, the only political force vitally interested in weakening the European Union by possibly openly financing many if not all of the European nationalistic splinter movements - is Russia, in a tit-for-tat action against Europe's support for the anti-Russia splinter movements in the post-Soviet block. Especially in the Ukraine.

Interestingly, a country that has become the most vocally anti-Russian - Poland, has become the most recent target of unprecedented attacks by Nigel Farage's UKIP supporters in Britain (see the links below). For example the Polish Institute in London (POSK) has been vandalised by grafitti for the first time in its over 60 years history and many Polish residents in Britain has been, for the first time in recent history, targeted by neatly printed plastic-framed leaflets with insulting contents totally inconsistent with the generally tolerant British tradition.
Somebody has spent real money on all that.

Who?

Why was the former London Mayor Boris Johnson unexpectedly "discouraged" (by British intelligence services?) from becoming the new prime minister, and [updated 04/07/2016] why did UKIP leader Nigel Farage suddenly have to resign today?   A Russian connection perhaps?

References:

The rise in hate crime reports is a dark sign of post-Brexit Britain
Polish boy, 11, finds 'leave EU' card
Graffiti at a Polish center in London sends a clear message: Some 'Brexit' supporters want immigrants out
Nigel Farage's relationship with Russian media comes under scrutiny
Marine Le Pen's Party Asks Russia for €27 Million Loan
A comparison of Germany's AfD and France's National Front
EU referendum: Boris Johnson labelled a 'Putin apologist' after Russia remarks

 ----------------------
Update on the the UKIP financing:

  http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-38650596

Arron Banks, the former UKIP donor who bankrolled the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, is making a move into the media sector by backing an anti-establishment news website that launches tomorrow.

and

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arron_Banks

Occupation Businessman Net worth £100 million[1] Spouse(s) Ekaterina Paderina

the following is also interesting:

According to Companies House records, Banks has set up 37 different companies using slight variations of his name. The names used by Banks are Aron Fraser Andrew Banks, Arron Andrew Fraser Banks, Arron Fraser Andrew Banks and Arron Banks. The profiles for the first three names all use the same date of birth but register different lists of companies. When asked by The Guardian about this, he declined to answer questions on the topic.[19] In 2016, the leaked Panama Papers indicated Banks was the shareholder of British Virgin Islands company PRI Holdings Limited, which was the sole shareholder of African Strategic Resources Limited.[20] However, a spokesperson for Banks has denied any links to the lawyer named and denies that Banks was involved with the Papers.[21]

Brexit

Brexit, a discussion with friend

Dav0:    

While I feel it's important to say what's on your mind (and we both do!).

There is a grey area when it comes to racism, xenophobia etc. It's come to

light in the UK in the last few days for instance.

S: 

Re: xenophopia

Absolutely!   I didn't really explain a while back why I was (and am) always pro EU when you were questioning it and voted against Lisbon Treaty.  The reason is my experience in Germany in 1983-86.  I was talking then with a Russian professor of physics at University of Tel Aviv, Yuri M. a former Russian dissident from Leningrad, he was on a scholarship in Germany at that time in the same institute. He had a huge impact on my philosophy and made me rethink many of my beliefs. 

I was saying at that time to him that I don't see anything wrong with a moderate dose of nationalism, in the Eastern European context, that would counterbalance that dreadful Soviet monostate and counteract the communist ideology. It was just exactly the same reaction as the Brits rejecting the EU centralism right now. 

His view was the opposite - he cautioned me against embracing any form of nationalism even a moderate one and even for a noble purpose such as fighting some centralized bureaucracy for the benefit of the people.

He said to me (around 1984) that if the Soviet Union ever collapsed, many of the individual post soviet republics, would very likely degenerate into nationalistic intolerant fiefdoms run by ruthless dictators, and people will end up worse off.  A few years later I realized that he was 100% right! 

Nationalism is not an antidote against centralized bureaucracy or against any other totalitarian political, religious, pseudo-scientific or other belief system, because nationalism is also a form of collectivism just like bureaucracy and statism.  Just like Christianity, Islam, scientific atheism, socialism, communism, fascism etc. 

By promoting nationalism, British people have replaced one form of collectivism with another, a more toxic one, in my opinion!  

What Britain and other countries need more is not replacing one collectivism with another but replacing collectivism with individualism and self-empowerement.  

Fighting collectivism can be effectively done by:

1)  embracing individualism and popularizing it by personal examples (see Ayn Rand) 

2) renouncing people (*) who believe in and strongly identify with the collectivistic belief systems

Take care,

S.

*) Only renouncing the believers, not beliefs,  works!  Very important and counter-intuitive!   Renouncing beliefs alone, debating beliefs, debunking or disproving beliefs is not  only ineffective but often makes the beliefs stronger in the minds of people by giving them our attention and publicity.  I had an insight about it in my dream earlier this year.  Renunciation of believers can be mentally reinforced (in one's mind)  by a ritual: stand at front of a group of people, raise both hands up at an angle and at front of you and then lower them down rapidly as if you were pushing something down and away, while saying in your mind or aloud "I renounce you!".  (Don't do it at work or you may get fired.)

Dav0: 

I am pro European!

I voted [in Ireland] against the version of the Lisbon treaty at that time _purely_ because in the form it was presented, they had proposed a tiered membership that I totally disagreed with.

IIRC it was somewhat rehashed and presented again, I don't think I was in Ireland second time around.

My main beef was that Poland (and the Baltics etc. IIRC) would be given membership at a lower level than say Ireland or France. I believed it was all or nothing, not some half baked version that benefited the hacks that were already in, with their snouts already well entrenched in the trough.

I was very saddened by what happened in the UK last week. I have been more saddened to see that the Brexit has given further license to those jingoist thugs who for instance have been seen hurling verbal abuse at Poles over the weekend (not sure if you heard about that). I have a great deal of time for the Poles (present company excepted ;-)    and everyone else for that matter. We are all one living, breathing, experiencing and discovering giant unified consciousness - separation is artificial.  (can't remember the exact quote, it was from a brilliant comedian - Bill Hicks - who died very young from pancreatic cancer).

One particularly derisive argument that I heard for the 'Leave' campaign was that surrendering British sovereignty to the EU was an affront to the memory of those who died in the wars fighting for Britain. The opposite is true. The whole raison d'être for European integration was to prevent any such atrocities like those wars from happening again.

It seems now that Scotland may have a legal argument to veto the Brexit. We'll see how it all pans out.

Have you thought about buying Sterling?

Dav0.

P.S. Re believers and beliefs - De gustibus non est disputandum. 

S:

Re: buying sterling

No, I think it is very likely to fall further (with ups and downs).  Since the banks have very little reason to remain in the UK,  it will put a huge pressure on the British establishment [causing them] to protect their personal assets (=mostly property!) by inflating the  money supply to stimulate demand (for property) and to maintain the prices.  Without a strong banking system that used to inflate the monetary mass in a non-inflationary way (by offsetting it with the equivalent debt), the next British government (Labour!) will have very little choice in that matter.  They will be printing money!   The real decline of the sterling is ahead of us.   What you have seen to date is the beginning. 

 Britain will most likely become one of the poorest countries in Europe since they have no industry that would take up the slack after the bexit (banking exit).  In my crude estimate, banking used to provide about 50% of the British GDP (official figures are lower, about 30% but I am adding the indirect contributions).   I would not be surprised if 90% of that would leave, that will leave Britain with 40% drop of the GDP.  This would have to be reflected  by a commensurate or higher drop in the sterling exchange rate - if they refrain from inflationary policy otherwise it will drop much further than that, which is IMHO much more likely.   I read George Soros' warning - he gave similar estimates.   Then, this would create some favorable condition to rebuild the manufacturing back (as long as they will not generate hyper-inflationary hickups like in Brazil or Argentina which would negate the positive effect of the drop in sterling)  - but that will probably take about 30 years, 1 generation.  Incidentally this is a very good news for Ireland because it will make reunification with the Republic attractive to N.Irish Prots, and secondly it will make some of the banks move to Dublin, lifting the property market and creating some jobs.

S.