EU reaction:

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styxhexenhammer666 weighs in - Brexit Begins! Article 50 Triggered

And, now that Britain has formally "gone and dun it," you can be assured that one by one the most important members of the EU will follow.

Although we do need international trade, we do not need "world government." European countries should expedite trade with one another, but without giving up national sovereignty. "All of Europe" is not going to take orders from Brussels. And so, Brussels' role going forward cannot be that of an international Parliament with laws and courts and supremacy and so-forth. All of that has got to go.

If the EU can embrace that idea, they will avoid the "race to the bottom" in which all of them are now – whether they realize it or not – engaged. All nations must be sovereign, and "Me first."

There is a place for a European Union, but it will be only a trade organization ... not an international hyper-government as it tried so hard to become.

All very correct, however as the gentleman indicated in the video I linked to - the UK seems to have the upper-hand in negotiations. The EU is being closely watched and how it will treat the UK - and what kind of deal will be hammered out.

'I am over the moon, this is what we were campaigning for' – UKIP leader on Brexit

I am waiting on The Britisher and his take - but this is actually really good too:

Computing Forever - #Brexit Day Let the Salt Mines Flow

Well, I also hope that the EU people will take a step back and re-consider what they are collectively doing. This started as a trade agreement, but it was apparently malignant: it just kept growing, and growing, and growing ...

EU needs a new mission statement. Probably, it needs to amend its treaty. Get rid of its "supreme courts." Get rid of the notion that "EU laws" exist and that every member country's government must subsume itself beneath Brussel's collective rule. There is no trade-based need for a "hyper-government."

And, maybe, reconsider whether every European country properly belongs there. (Right now, it is "oxen unequally yoked together.") The notion of being "one big happy family," in which anyone can go anywhere and no government can say "no," is not going to fly. EU's policies, in effect, dilute the strength and autonomy of every member, hence the "race to the bottom" issue. Everybody loses. Nobody wins.

And, in the United States, we are seeing much the same thing with the similarly-worded "international trade" agreements that we became a part of – NAFTA – and the one that China rejected before we did – TPP. Exactly the same sort of "business above all other laws" principles also appeared there. And, because of them (and because of non-immigrant policies), millions of American citizens are out of work and remain out of work for so long that they begin to "drop off" the official unemployment counts.

(And do their replacements get treated "like humans?" Hell, no...)

These are intrinsically flawed ideas. Britain's decision to distance itself from them will perhaps be the bitter medicine that EU needs. We need "The European Union, Version 2.0." One that incorporates all of our "lessons learned the hard way," and emerges stronger (and sustainable) for having done so.

"EU, learn from this!"

I am sure the people of the EU don't like where things are going, but that doesn't matter because if the people vote the 'wrong way', they will have referendum after referendum until the peasants vote the right way.

A good idea, which will likely be ignored - after all the elites WANT a USE (United States of Europe) - therefore the next logical step was a 'European' Armed Forces, which would make it even harder for a state to pull out of the Union - read between the lines, if economic coercion don't work............

Now that the UK has broken free of that Yoke, it is logical that others will attempt the same - Frexit is a very real possibility - and so far I have not seen any concessions and any real meaningful arguments by the Pro-EU elites to stay. So all they have now is fear mongering and thinly veiled threats.

Well here on this side of the pond, we have seen the 'Fruits' of NAFTA - and yea it tastes like shit - TPP would have been another poison berry.

Got to love that predatory capitalism with that globalism.

Sorry, but this is a win for the Euro-skeptics and quite frankly I do not see how a EU v2.0 will be any better, and the UK left for pretty much 2 reasons - sovereignty and an ACTUAL fair deal in trade - which the EU was not offering. I would say 40 years was enough time to give the EU a good chance do you not think?

https://www.rt.com/uk/382670-brexit-...-may-reaction/


And I really do feel the Mr. Bean animated gif is VERY apt

http://gif-finder.com/wp-content/upl...dle-Finger.gif

To my way of thinking, EU was completely different from the trade-agreements from which it sprang. It was an attempt to create a "hyper-government" which would reduce the countries of Europe to being "merely states," subject to the sovereignty of Brussels (which it was already abusing).

Things like "trade" were beginning to suffer, as was the quality of life in the various States Countries. There is far more to a country than the balance-sheet of any corporation.

These are sovereign countries ... many of them with ruling sovereigns ... and they are never ... nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernevernevernevernever nevernever nevernevernevernevernever
...
... going to trust ...
... G-e-r-m-a-n-y.

So you cannot applaud the British on their choice - seems Juncker is rather injured in the posterior about Brexit.

And what t'hell does a European official know about Texas, USA, anyway?

(OMG, he is "clueless." He picked ... Texas?!?!)

In this American's opinion: The EU officials in Brussels are now faced with the first undeniable (and now, official) "Vote of 'No Confidence'™" in their obvious visions of a "United States of Europe, with a capitol in Brussels, DC" business-model.

They have absolutely no time to waste by lambasting other heads-of-state who basically said that their Emperor is presently naked. (Because he is. Has been, for a long time. These fundamental errors began to be made a very long time ago, and none of you would listen to anyone else's warnings at the time.)

- - -

Today (IMHO...) EU's organizers must "circle the wagons" and have a serious pow-wow with all of the other members of this Union. They need to have a very ... long ... heart-to-heart ... human-beings-to-human-beings ... stakeholders-to-stakeholders ... ... talk.

(A talk in which they mostly "suck-up, for once(!), and truly listen!")

Britain has now officially and decisively dealt the EU with proof of the fact that they must now ... "if necessary, totally" ... re-think their business plan. If EU fails to change its ways, the whole damned thing will just fall apart, because the organizers will have demonstrated that, in the end, they failed all of the Union's ... stakeholders.

(And by "stakeholder," I don't mean governments or corporations. I mean: Europeans.)

- - - - -

"Nevermind anymore 'what's best for Brussels.'" We're in damage-control mode now, because we can now see that we've been screwing-up. What's best way forward, under present circumstances, for our actual stakeholders? In short: What parts of "EU Version 1.0" should we keep, what parts should we re-engineer, and what parts should we be willing to suck-up and throw away?

These are all gravely serious questions, and this will be the test of their statesmanship.

Be warned! "Pride goeth before the fall." . . . Many individual human beings before you have erred in the direction of their own personal ambitions and, in so doing, have lost their country – or, in this case, countries. So, what stuff are y-o-u made of?

Styxhexenhammer666 - Le Pen and Macron Neck and Neck on First Ballot as EU Fears for Survival

Styxhexenhammer666 - Zealot Truck Attack in Stockholm, Sweden

I don't think Jeebizz knows what populism is so here is an example of a populist
http://jimhightower.com/
the democrats lost about 1000 seats in the last election AFAIK not one populist was elected in the last election the joke in the white house is about as far as one can get
from being a populist look at the slime he surrounded him self with as soon as he could
as far as I can tell BRexit was a misdirection by the far right
"the super rich using the government to suck all the wealth out the 99% isn't the problem it's the outsiders are the problem"it's the same BS the card road in to the white house on
sorry JeeBizz but I have to ask did you get your world views from fox news
GOD I wish we had some populists in power with enough of them in power the people would get a fair deal from capitalism instead of being skinned alive by the .1% and the government
don't forget you pay taxes so the .1% don't have to here is where your taxes are going
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Na...are_Nader.html
even some of the most extreme right wingers are bitching about it
http://www.northjersey.com/story/new...-say/95554638/

My thread is more of an observation of what is leading up to populism. I do not get any info from fox. What is leading to populism? Why do you think the British voted to leave? It wasn't a 'right-wing' conspiracy. There was a reason why they voted leave. What will happen in Sweden? Did you check out the last video I linked? Right now the Swedish Democrats are gaining - why is that? And in France - Le Pen has a chance of winning.

I think that this is a fairly natural reversal of things that started being introduced in the early 1990's. These included:

1. 'Trade' agreements that actually sought to usurp the sovereignty of a nation, and the supremacy of its courts.
2. 'Trade' agreements (such as NAFTA) which encouraged businesses to move manufacturing facilities out of the home nation.
3. Elimination of fundamental banking safeguards such as the US Glass-Steagall Act – which quickly resulted in bank failures and, now, "a title-pawn shop on every corner, freely charging 2,000% (two thousand ...) interest, or more.
4. The return of indentured servitude and outright slavery, under the auspices of 'immigration.'
5. The push for "for profit" health care in the USA, which has bankrupted the companies involved. (A hidden barb in Ryan's recently-tabled "repeal Obamacare bill" – which was actually anything but – would have started paying Federal money directly to health insurers in the name of "premium stabilization," but without any Federal regulation as to how the monies might be spent.)
6. Corporations with swanky "headquarters" buildings in New York City which are actually – we are told – headquartered in Barbados, and so on.

Perhaps it is a re-recognition of the importance of "nations," and of the notion of "sovereignty."

Perhaps it is recognition that the profits of corporations are not the #1 concern of (inter-)national policy.

Perhaps it is the realization that "<My_Country> First!" is a damned-good international trade maxim.

sundialsvcs
the ground work of of all of this was laid by RayGun
but had it not been for the AFL-CIO supporting Nixon the trade unions would not have lost the democrats support who started sitting on there hands when the republicans
started passing union busting laws from then on it was a slow slide down hill till 1980
then RayGun kicked them off the cliff and the favorite pass time in Washington became giving money to the rich instead of union busting with the unions weakened the democrats turned to the same source of money the republicans had been turning to
it was this that lead to the U.S. having effectively one political party

at the same time the 0.01% started buying up the media so there would be nobody telling the public who and how badly there being screwed the true start of the neoliberal biased media was RayGun blowing up the fairness doctrine

so sundialsvcs it goes back to the 70s