British Parliament Continues Its Two-Year Brexit Tantrum

After years of pressure led by nationalistic Tories, the reactionary British tabloids, and the so-called United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the British government of then prime minister David Cameron, a Conservative (Tory) member, felt compelled to finally allow the public to vote in 2016 on a referendum on whether Britain should remain a member of the European Union (EU), or leave, so-called "Brexit," short for British Exit.

Much to the surprise and chagrin of much of the bourgeois establishment in Britain, Europe, and the U.S., Brexit won with 51.9% of the vote. [1]

I won't go into the whys and wherefors here as that's off the topic a bit.

Under EU law, Britain had two years to formally leave the EU. Now the deadline has arrived.

The British Parliament has in the past couple of weeks formally voted to reject remaining in the European Union, has voted to reject leaving the EU without an exit deal, AND has voted to reject the deal that took two years to negotiate and renegotiate.

In other words, the Members of Parliament (MPs) reject everything. They in effect reject BOTH leaving and remaining.

Why do I say the British MPs are having a tantrum over Brexit? Because, like two-year-olds, they are demanding something they obviously can't have, and won't stop demanding it. Namely, that Britain can have a better deal outside of the EU than as a member!

That is completely, totally unrealistic.

But they refuse to accept that.

The British Brexiteers want all the benefits of EU membership with none of the responsibilities or obligations or costs. It would be suicidal for the EU to agree to such a ridiculous demand, as it would create a cascade of other member states demanding the same treatment for themselves.

The Tantrumeers believe that, contrary to the old saw, that they CAN "have your cake and eat it too," as one of the main leaders of the Brexit movement, the Tory buffoon and dodgy former "journalist" Boris "Bojo The Clown" Johnson actually asserted.

Perhaps they imagine they are still a globally dominant power that can force others to accede to their unreasonable demands.

I have an idea. They've beaten the French and the Germans in past wars (with a LOT of help in the case of the Germans)- why not try THAT again?

Maybe that's what former Tory prime minister David Cameron meant when he threatened in the campaign leading up to the referendum on Brexit that voting to leave the EU would lead to "World War III."

Or maybe he was just being demagogic, like the pro-Brexit camp, which was even worse.

The EU leaders, whose exasperation has started to show, granted the British an extension to exit the Union, which by treaty was supposed to occur in two years, in March just ended, so the new deadline is in April. With the demand that since Britain is still in the Union, it must elect members to the toothless show legislature, the so-called "European Parliament." (In the past, the British members elected to that body were dominated by haters of that body, members of UKIP, led by the articulate and clever rascal Nigel Farage, the Trump-loving reactionary head of UKIP , who was their spokesman in the European Parliament in which role he delighted in making speeches on the floor insulting the body and the various EU poohbahs while they sat there taking it.

The current Tory prime minister, Theresa May, has proven to be a rigid and politically inept, indeed tone-deaf, politician. But the problem here isn't her incompetence. It is the total unrealism of Brexiteers, plus the fact that the Parliament is divided within itself in various ways, and both major parties, Labour and Conservative, are divided internally between pro-Brexiteers and Remainers, and within those subgroups in each party, those willing to take the deal on offer and those not, those wanting a "hard" exit with no deal and those who think that Britain can somehow extort a more favorable deal out of the EU at this late date,and among Remainers, those who favor a "do-over" of the referendum, and those who do not.

It's a mess, but those who will pay most of the cost are the British, as major corporations are already announcing plans to pick up and move to the continent. The imposition of border controls adds friction and costs to cross-border commerce, increasing prices.

Being able to keep out workers from the continent, and freedom from EU rules on health, safety, labor rights, pollution, product standards, etc., in the name of "independence," won't really help the main supporters of Brexit, workers left behind by neoliberalism. Interdependence isn't necessarily bad.

Ironically, if Britain had a social welfare state more like some of those in Europe rather than a Thatcherite model, the referendum vote may have come out differently. People who are kicked to the curb sometimes find a way to upset the apple cart, or at least knock some of the apples off.

Theresa May, architect of the Grenfell Tower fire massacre.

Bojo The Clown

Nigel Farage. (Rhymes with "garage.") Happy now, huh asshole?

1] A detailed breakdown of the referendum vote is at the BBC here.

Trump Opens Door to Revived Iranian Nuclear Program, Europe Confirms It's America's Bitch, and Israel and Saudi Arabia are Kvelling

Kvelling is Yiddish. It means "to be extraordinarily pleased; especially, to be bursting with pride." Certainly the Israelis and Saudis have reason to be. Both nations are eager for the U.S. to go to war with Iran, and have been pushing the U.S. in that direction for years.

Trump finally carried out his threat to kill the hard-won nuclear agreement with Iran. Two years of negotiations by the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, China, and Russia, all arrayed against Iran, with U.S.-imposed sanctions choking the Iranian economy, produced the best deal that could be squeezed from the theocrats ruling that nation. Iran surrendered ALL its enriched uranium, agreed to permanently shut down a reactor capable of producing plutonium, mothballed its centrifuges, and accepted extremely stringent oversight by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).  All this to last for 15 years.

If Trump wanted a better deal, he had plenty of time to negotiate one. But he has demagogically insisted for several years that the agreement was the "worst deal ever." A preposterous assertion.

The European "partners" (in reality, they're nothing more than junior lackeys to U.S. Imperialism) pleaded with and cajoled Trump to try to make him see reason, to no avail. French President Emmanuel Macron came all the way to Washington and endured demeaning treatment by Trump (Trump ostentatiously pretending to pick something off Macron's suit in front of the world press and announcing it was "dandruff," forcing Macron to submit to the insult) for absolutely nothing. Britain dispatched their foreign minister, the buffoon Boris Johnson, to Washington to pointlessly lobby various Trump regime apparatchiks on the matter.

Macron addressed the U.S. Congress, delivering a relatively honest speech which no doubt annoyed most of that body.

The Europeans are already caving in, reaffirming their status as the U.S.' bitch. This proves that the European Union is a bust. It was supposed to allow Europe to swing its proper weight. Instead it is a bad joke. The European bourgeoisie just cannot or will not free themselves from their position of slavish subordination to the U.S.

Trump has made clear that, as usual, foreign corporations must abide by U.S. "law" and conform to U.S. foreign policy. Just a day after Trump wrecked the agreement with Iran, which the U.S. got Russia, China, Germany, Britain, France, and the EU to sign on to against Iran, his Ambassador to Germany is already ordering German companies to shut down their Iranian business operations "immediately." Well, when you're the Boss of the World, you can issue such orders.

Unless companies want to quit the U.S. market, which is many times the size of the Iranian one, AND subject themselves to ruinous U.S. "fines," AND risk criminal indictments of the company and its executives, effectively confining those executives to their home countries or risk arrest and extradition to the U.S. to "face American justice" (decades in prison) for refusing to be agents of U.S. Imperialist foreign policy, these non-U.S. businesses have to knuckle under to U.S. diktat.

Some U.S. media "commentators" are fatuously saying canceling the agreement of the U.S. government was Trump "making good on a campaign pledge." As if Trump feels an obligation to keep his word on anything. And he made numerous pledges to snooker people into voting for him- all the good ones he has reneged on, only keeping the venal ones. (As I expected.)

Here are some choice excerpts that the bombastic  blustering bullyboy Trump spewed in making his announcement on May 8th:

Trump- "this deal is catastrophic for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East."

He sneered at "the decaying and rotten structure of the current deal." (Reminds me of Adolf Hitler "freeing" Germany from the "shackles" of the rotten Versailles Treaty.)

Trump says the new deal he pretends he'll force on Iran "will benefit all of Iran and the Iranian people." (I'm sure he cares so much about the Iranian people! This is a guy who's trying to ban all Muslims from the U.S.) He wants to throw in "terrorism" and Iranian "meddling" in Syria and Yemen as part of new demands on Iran.

Trump threatens "any nation" that aids "Iran in its [non-existent] quest for a nuclear weapon" will also get slammed with U.S. sanctions.

Of course, Iran wasn't developing nuclear weapons, it was developing the capability to develop such weapons. And right now, iran isn't even doing THAT!

But the lying jackass demagogue who is president of the U.S. Empire could care less about facts, as he has shown throughout his entire adult life. Nor did the U.S. media bother informing the millions who are forced to rely on it for information that what Trump said was false. For all their bleatings about his "lies," they reinforce some of his lies.

Iran now has to decide whether to accept being completely ripped off, having surrendered its nuclear program (mainly consisting of uranium enrichment) for nothing, or restart it. Trump is making gangster threats implying violence. Many imperialists in the U.S. and Israel, and the evil, medieval rulers of Saudi Arabia, have long been urging the U.S. to bomb Iran. (Dying U.S. Senator John McCain would love to see that.)

Iran's major commodity is, of course, oil. And since oil is traded on the international market in U.S. dollars, and the U.S. Treasury Department controls dollar transactions, that makes it extremely difficult for Iran to sell its oil without U.S. permission. So the U.S. has Iran over a barrel, so to speak. (One of Saddam Hussein's fatal mistakes was floating the idea of using a medium of exchange other than the U.S. dollar for oil transactions. The U.S. tends to react violently to impingements on its power.)

The Israelis and Saudis are eager for the U.S. to wage war on Iran, especially a bombing campaign. Terrorism ("covert action") would also be part of the war. The U.S. under Obama infiltrated Special Forces teams into Iran to plant surveillance devices, including radiation monitors disguised as bricks in walls, and spy gadgets to monitor truck traffic disguised as rocks. The Israelis of course were busily assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, creating terror to discourage Iranian scientists from participating in nuclear research. And Obama infiltrated the Stuxnet malware into Iran's nuclear program computer system, destroying centrifuges.

Understand that it is official U.S. policy to overthrow the Iranian government. (This would be the second time they did that, the first being in 1953, which destroyed Iranian democracy.)  The U.S. is still bitter that the client dictator it installed in 1953, the Shah, was overthrown in 1979. And while the quarter million Iranians who died under the brutal reign of the Shah are never, ever mentioned in U.S. media, they still reference the so-called "hostage crisis," when the apparatchiks in the U.S. embassy in Tehran were  seized and held for 444 days, and the U.S. media engaged in a daily drumbeat of hysterical propaganda about it. ABC "News" even started an entire evening program devoted to the "crisis," which became "Nightline," hosted by Kissinger maven Ted Koppel. What's never said, what has been consigned to the memory hole, is why Iran seized the U.S. apparatchiks. Obviously a key part of the story. But not in the U.S. propaganda version of it.

Iran warned the Jimmy Carter regime not to give sanctuary to the fleeing. Shah. Then Henry Kissinger called the president of the U.S. and transmitted an order from David Rockefeller, a man at the apex of the U.S. ruling class, that Carter must allow the Shah in. Carter protested that there would be bad consequences, but obeyed his master. (Carter was chosen to be president in 1976 by the Rockefeller-created Trilateral Commission, which assigned Zbigniew Brzezinski as Carter's "national security advisor." Brzezinski went on the engineer the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, something he has boasted about. Time magazine, an organ run by Trilateral Commission members, presented Carter to the American public as the second coming of JFK.)

Well, the "hostage-taking" duly followed the Shah's entry into the U.S., the resulting media-generated "crisis" ultimately cost Carter re-election. And the racist neo-fascist Ronald Reagan, running against Carter in the 1980 election, made a sub rosa deal with the Khomeini regime to only free the U.S. personnel minutes after Carter was no longer president.

Now back to the present. What of the non-U.S. lackey nations that are a party to the nuclear agreement with Iran, China and Russia? They too operate under the oppressive umbrella of the U.S.-controlled global financial system. [1]

And the U.S. has a veritable galaxy of laws, rules, and regulations that give it infinite power over the financial transactions of others. No bank that wishes to do transactions outside its home country's boundaries can defy the U.S. People and companies that have never set foot in the U.S. or done any action inside the U.S. are routinely indicted by the U.S. and either extradited or kidnapped to "face justice" inside the U.S. and ultimately be subjected to often draconian sentences imprisoned in the vast U.S. gulag. (The U.S., with about 4.7% of the world's population, holds 25% of the entire planet's prisoners. The U.S. imprisoners a higher percentage of its adult population- close to 1%- than any nation on earth. China, a country with four times the population of the U.S., has slightly fewer prisoners.)

The U.S. considers its laws binding on everyone on earth- and indeed enforces them. The railroading of the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was set up in Thailand by U.S. DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agents pretending to be arms buyers for  the Colombian rebel group FARC, and who now sits in a U.S. prison, is one of many examples. (What the hell is an alleged drug agency doing setting up fake arms deals to entrap foreign citizens? Good questions.) Britain has shipped hapless citizens to the U.S. to face bogus charges, to the outrage of its own media and public.

So what does Europe do when its arms are twisted by the U.S.? It says "Uncle!" Europe is paying the economic price for U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia to punish Russia for "meddling" in Ukraine. The U.S. has fined Europe's banks billions of dollars in a shakedown racket for violating sanctions on countries the U.S. doesn't like. (Other nation's banks have been hit too. See chart.)

But the cowardly bourgeois rulers of Europe are good at one thing: punching down. They sure know how to oppress their own people, as the corrupt Spanish government of the Francoist Mariano Rajoy is doing in Catalonia, or as the remorseless British Prime Minister Theresa May is doing, deporting tens of thousands of Commonwealth citizens who came to Britain legally decades ago and are now being reclassified as "illegal" because the British government failed to issue them documents when they arrived. Theresa May, the architect of the Grenfell Towers Fire massacre who slashed funding for fire and police protection starting in her previous job as Interior Secretary. (A job in which she began the targeting of immigrants.)

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the coming war between Iran and the U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia. Iran is not completely alone. It is fighting side by side with Russia in Syria to prop up the murderous Assad regime. It also has the loyal support of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and militia. (The Israelis have been busily bombing Iranian weapons shipments in Syria they claim are destined for Hezbollah.) Every time Iran counterattacks, except the propagandists and governments of the U.S. side to shriek "IRANIAN TERRORISM!"

Israel has wasted no time lighting the fuse. Today they bombed fifty Iranian targets inside Syria, using as justification an alleged Iranian missile fired into the Golan Heights (former Syrian territory that Israel conquered in the 1967 war). No mention in U.S. (and other "Western") media that this follows months of Israeli bombing raids on Iranian targets inside Syria, with no response from Iran at all until now, with the alleged missile. (Or 20 missiles, as CBS later asserted. CBS is virtually a propaganda arm of the Israeli government in the U.S.) Israel threatened more to come if the Iranians don't take it lying down. Russia has expressed alarm over the Israeli pummeling.

This war, if it comes, will go on for years. Like some other wars the U.S. started in the region, eh?


1]  The U.S. isn't even satisfied with controlling the world's financial system. It even has to spy on everybody and hack into bank computers. Even SWIFT, the system for international bank transactions, was hacked by the NSA. (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication- SWIFT. SWIFT has cut off Iran's banks from the rest of the world, on U.S. orders.)

Same People Who Lecture Us That "Change Is Good" Suddenly Don't Like Change With Brexit

I notice an irony that those creating it are sure to be unconscious of. The same ruling elites that patronizingly purr at the masses under their feet that "change is good," to pacify those masses and disarm them psychologically when the majority, who increasingly have to struggle to keep their heads above water economically, are under attack economically, those elites suddenly don't like change at all when it's a change they don't want. If "change is goaod," why isn't a change in the European Union good? Why isn't political change in Britain good?

"Change is good" is the narcotic propaganda fed to Americans when "free trade" treaties directly assaulted their economic interests. Told they had to compete against dirt cheap third world labor, "change is good" was one of the propaganda lines spewed by establishment media. Whenever the government of the rich launch a new salvo in the unending class warfare against the rest of us, we are instructed to take it lying down because "change is good."

Well okay then! If "change is good," then stop your WHINING about BREXIT, bourgeoisie! Shut up and suck it up!

EU Masters Won't Be Able To Rid Themselves of Britain As Fast As They Want To

Looks like Britain may have the European Union bosses over bit of a barrel. They can't actually eject Britain from membership in their dysfunctional club. Britain has to invoke Article 50 of one of the EU treaties to begin the process of withdrawal. British Prime Minister David Cameron announced in the British Parliament that he would leave it to his successor to initiate that process. (Assuming his successor chooses to do so, which he is under no obligation to do. The just-completed referendum does not legally compel the British government to actually withdraw from the EU.)

Cameron announced he is stepping down in October. So that's already 3 months before anything can happen. He also referred to negotiating before Britain invoked Article 50. That gives Britain a good deal of leverage in extracting relatively favorable terms from the EU regarding trade, immigration, and social benefits for immigrants.

Meanwhile, there's been an odd disconnect between the political events and the behavior of stock markets. Every day, the political chatter from and about Britain is that it is "leaderless," since a clear successor of the Tories to replace Cameron hasn't been selected, and the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has a rebellion on his hands in his own party. Labor MPs are overwhelmingly calling for his resignation, and his shadow cabinet has resigned. We're being told that months, or even years, of uncertainty lies ahead.

Stock markets are supposed to hate uncertainty. And yet, after declining for the first two trading days after the Brexit referendum on Thursday June 23, stocks fell on Friday and Monday, in the U.S. about a total of 6% in the broad averages. Then they went up strongly the next 3 days in a row, recouping all the losses. This morning U.S. stocks are up again, for the fourth day in a row, although anything could happen by closing. As so often, the stock market confounds by defying its own putative "logic."

One excuse (aka "reason" or pseudo-explanation) for the rally is that traders expect central bank easing as a result of the Brexit vote. In other words, they assume that central banks (the Fed in the U.S.) exist to facilitate ever-rising stock markets by providing financial sugar for the professional speculator class. Perhaps some thought a measly 6% decline created a "bargain" situation. Given the extremely short-term perspective of "the market" in recent years, that probably is at least part of it.

How to square the continuing hand-wringing and bitter condemnations by financial and political commentators over the Brexit referendum outcome, along with their doom-and-gloom predictions for the economic future of not just Britain but even the entire world, with the giddy reversal of direction by stocks globally? Could it be that the elite chatterers and "economic experts" are dead wrong? Since they fetishize markets, surely they must defer to the "judgment" of those markets.

Following Moody's another "rating" agency, S & P, has downgraded the credit rating of the British government. As I stated in my previous essay, these credit "rating"agencies have shown themselves to be criminal enterprises by their complicity in the packaged mortgage securities fraud, rating junk mortgaged Triple-A. They deserve no credibility whatsoever.

Even the British pound rallied back to $1.35, from $1.32, although right now it's back to just under $1.33. But the gloomsters ignore the positive of that. It means British exports are cheaper, just boosting British exports. That in turn benefits at least some British workers, and certainly the export businesses. It also will boost tourism to Britain, since it means vacationing in Britain becomes cheaper for Americans and Europeans using the Euro. The downside is more expensive imports, and it makes foreign travel more expensive for Britons, who will get less foreign currency in exchange for their pounds when abroad. Net, Britain gains economically from a cheaper currency. And I doubt it will fall anywhere near the low of 1987, when it dropped to $1.04 U.S.

A looming political question is what Scotland will do. Scotland voted strongly for Brexit, and doesn't want to lose the alleged advantages of EU membership. There has been talk of another vote on Scotland independence, (Which requires the permission of the British Parliament, unless Scotland wants to fight a war of succession.) Well, the British empire has been shedding pieces of itself for a century, perhaps it's high time for another piece to molt off.

One worry going forward: now that the Tory former London Mayor Boris Johnson has dropped out of competition to succeed Cameron, the egregious Home Secretary Theresa May very much wants the PM job. She's a repressive authoritarian who has consistently pushed for more powers for the British secret police agencies, including the NSA's little brother, GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters, an electronic spy agency that works hand in glove with the NSA as one of the "Five Eyes," the electronic secret police organizations of the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). She also lobbies hard for more repressive laws. And if Britain leaves the EU, the privacy laws of the EU and the European Court of Justice will no longer exert a restraining influence on the British ruling class' thirst for more repression. At this time she has but a single rival to take Cameron's place, and that is Justice Secretary Michael Gove, an erstwhile ally of Boris Johnson in the pro-Brexit camp.

The Nightmare Scenario: The Remorseless Theresa May as Prime Minister of Britain.

"Hit The Road, (Union) Jack!" Sneer EU Big Shots

In the immediate wake of the vote by the majority of the British electorate June 23rd to withdraw Britain from membership in the European Union superstate, the foreign ministers of the 6 founding members of the EU have publicly demanded that negotiations on Britain's exit must be concluded swiftly.

This sort of pulls the rug out from under what the British expected. They were operating on the assumption of a 2 year window during which the status quo would continue and negotiations could be conducted, as per EU treaty.

To be sure, there is some logic to the EU giving Britain the bum's rush. For one thing, it will greatly shorten the period of uncertainty if Britain's exit is expeditiously. effected. For another thing, the EU bosses are worried about their entire project falling to pieces. The sooner to get Britain out, they figure, the better in terms of shoring up the cohesion of the EU with the remaining 27 member nations.

Meanwhile, the "ratings agency" Moody's wasted no time downgrading Britain's sovereign credit rating to "negative outlook." That will result in the British government having to pay higher interest rates to borrow money from the private market. That in turn will create a ripple effect of higher interest rates throughout the British economy, which will slow economic activity. Thus the "experts" predictions of economic damage from Brexit will be effectuated by the same financial elites that made the prediction!

Moody's is treated as a credible, respectable organization, when in fact it is a criminal organization. It is one of the "rating" agencies that made possible the massive mortgage securities fraud that helped precipitate the global financial crisis beginning in 2008. Banks and a crime gang called Countrywide Financial headed by Angelo Mozilo gave mortgages to people they knew wouldn't be able to repay them, packaged the loans into things called Collateralized Debt Obligations, paid "rating" agencies like Moody's to rate them AAA (i.e. the safest investment grade) when in fact they were high-risk, and billions of dollars of this fraudulent garbage was then sold off to suckers. Moody's and its ilk are not just utterly lacking in ethics and integrity, they are racketeering organizations under U.S. criminal law, the RICO law (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations). They should have no credibility whatsoever, but instead the establishment power structure, including "the" media, feign amnesia and report their "ratings" today as if they are coming from trustworthy, neutral, objective outfits. (The U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR, for example, has been informing its listeners hourly of Moody's downgrade of Britain, without mentioning any of this.)

The corrupt financial oligarchy that arrogantly rules the planet is now setting out to punish the British for voting "wrong" on Brexit. What is absent is a political party to oppose the coming assault. The Conservatives obviously are the party of the rich. Meanwhile Labour is no longer interested in actually fighting for the interests of the "lower" classes. A third party, the "Liberal Democrats," is completely opportunistic and unprincipled. Finally there is the United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP, headed by former commodities trader Nigel Farage. Farage has stated his aims- double the prison population, increase military spending, cut social spending, and of course reduce immigration.

Given that London is an important base of global finance capital, there is no chance of a real defense against the punishment to be meted out for the "wrong" result in the referendum.

U.S. Emperor Obama had to pipe up again, repeating his threat that Britain will be at the "back of the line" for cutting a trade deal with the U.S, while also saying how much he values Britain. He's very skillful at talking out of both sides of his mouth simultaneously. And he reassuringly purred that the oh-so-special relationship with Britain is intact. (Translation: the U.S. will still be using Britain as its Bitch, much as Israel uses the U.S. as its.)

Are you enjoying the interesting times we're living in?