Actually, I suspect that "the wholesale migration of IT jobs," which now happens throughout the world ... ("either bring in cheaper labor indentured servants to do the work, or hire people in the poorest countries that you can") ... will reverse, and the issue of Internet privacy will become a whole lot more important.

I don't think that today's brand of "internationalization" is sustainable. Somewhere along the way, "in the name of Holy Commerce," we were told that we had to throw-away our national identities, and our national laws, customs, and so-forth. Our countries were even to pay millions of currency-units in fines, imposed by an "international court" consisting of businessmen(!), if we didn't do exactly what we were told in order to maximize their Father Profit. (While they located their businesses on tiny islands to avoid taxes.) Europeans tied themselves into an economic union that suddenly consisted of everybody everywhere, and were told to start taking orders from Brussels. "Your own laws are 'superseded.' They are 'pre-empted.'"

"All in the name of commerce?!"

Americans, in response, are about to elect (ick ...) Donald Trump. The British people were the first to say they'd had enough. These won't be the last flies that are tossed into the businessmen's ointment.

When you actually try to do the things that these businessmen are advocating, you expose your own country and its citizens to risks that they'd never known before. The actions of people far, far away from you (whether you "brought them close by" or not ...), affect you. Maybe significantly endanger you. The businessmen ordered the governments to do nothing about it. Told them that they were not allowed to do so. Told them, basically, that they had to stop being Governments and to stop standing in the way of Profit For The Very Few.

But, finally, the people of those countries are saying otherwise. "We live in a country, and we want to strengthen and well-manage that country first." Which is, really, the only sustainable way to do it. You don't make unity by reducing the strong to weakness. You don't make it by trying to sponge away differences. Unity comes when individually strong and autonomous groups of people choose to cooperate for their mutual benefit. They become strong, and remain strong, by tending to their own fences first.

This also builds redundancy into the system. The present "world trade utopia" is, shall we say, "not fault-tolerant."

The current American President is a puppet for Big Business ... always basically has been ... and the man that I expect to be (like it or not ...) the next American President is a Big Business tycoon. The days are long since over when the USA could or should be looked upon by the rest of the world community as "a leader." Its own Union of "States" is beginning to fracture as wholesale bribery, lead by corporate puppetmasters, renders the national decisions that come from Washington, DC more and more irrelevant to the common people of the land. President after President after President have shown that they know nothing about being "Chief Executive Officer." The only thing that preserves "this little contretemps" is the world's willingness to accept the US Dollar "on par" with their own currency, even as the US Government "borrows (sic) from itself," now, several million Dollars a minute, 24/7.

"It's not going to last, people." It can't.

ugjka,

Maybe you are unaware, but there are racists in all countries.

If you really believe that all those UK people who voted Leave in the referendum are racists then you are totally mistaken.

The UK has a long-established tradition of welcoming immigrants. I suggest you do some research into the Kindertransport and Sir Nicholas Winton for starters:

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

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

It is the sheer scale of current unlimited immigration which annoys many UK people.

Showing a link to a racist photo does NOT condemn all the UK people as racists.

The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc etc all have clear, well laid-down rules for immigration. Does that make the citizens of those countries racists?

I would like to emigrate to Australia, but at the very least I would need to show that my skills were sufficiently high in any given category that the Australian government deemed to be in short supply and that I could prove that I had a job to go to.

At the moment any "Tom, Dick or Harry" can enter the UK under EU rules.

To top it all, our UK legal system has to bow down to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which has the final say in such matters and makes it extremely difficult for the UK to expel those who have been convicted in UK courts.

In 2006, a British court found Abu Hamza al-Masri guilty of inciting violence, and sentenced him to seven years' imprisonment. On 5 October 2012, after an eight-year legal battle, he was extradited from the UK to the United States to face terrorism charges.

PS I don't suppose you consider that Abu Hamza al-Masri is in any way racist against UK citizens?

"Welcoming immigrants" is one thing ... can be a very good thing ... i-f those immigrants are treated like actual people.

But the "world trade utopians" throughout the Earth are not bringing those people "in" for any such purpose. They're basically looking for slaves ... indentured servants ... people who can't possibly say, "no."

In the USA, for example, we created the "non-immigrant visa." (And by the way, millions of I.T. jobs here are being filled by them.) From day one, it's a wretchedly raw deal, purposely circumventing the terms of the 13th Amendment. These people can never be citizens, can't work for the company of their choice, risk deportation at any time, or risk getting locked-up in a prison(!) run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Then, after two, four, or six years, they're simply sent back where they came from.

So much for "shining lamps beside golden doors."

When you talk about "immigrants," the world over, these days, that sort of thing is mostly what you're talking about! Citizens lose their jobs to non-citizens who are, to put it quite bluntly, "getting screwed over." Under this version of international commercial utopia, everybody loses, except the tiny few who have found a way to circumnavigate laws to reap great profit. As a card-player would say, they are "ruffing the deck." Playing all ends against the middle, driving the whole system down.

And yet, the utopians self-confidently tell us: "It must be this way. You no longer have any say in the matter. In the name of Holy Commerce, your values, prerogatives, and laws are 'superseded' by the terms of our 'trade' (sic) agreements. And, if you don't do what we say, we'll fine you money ... and, of course, keep that money for ourselves."

The immigrants themselves dare not speak up. Public officials who have been bought-off by the corporations won't say a peep, either. But, ordinary people can. And they are finally beginning to do so.

sundialsvcs,

The US and the UK appear to have totally different immigration systems.

There is nothing to stop most immigrants to the UK from applying to be British citizens subject to certain basic requirements:

https://www.gov.uk/becoming-a-britis...-you-can-apply

The US system has with its non-immigrant visas effectively created an underclass who are are not able to apply for US citizenship.

This does seem to be at odds with the popular worldwide view of the US attitude towards immigration:

You also appear to have little legal difficulty in deporting those you do not require any longer, unlike the UK.

I put my thoughts into a blog post.

- - - - -

Separately, "immigration" has become a form of abuse throughout the world, with the US non-immigrant visa policy merely being "an egregious example." It isn't fair. It isn't meant to be fair. Anyone who chooses to immigrate from one country to another is of course taking enormous risks, but much of the impetus for immigration and the handling of the same right now comes directly (IMHO) from that "dystopian view of 'world commerce'" that I just blogged about. It's high time for a great many of those attitudes and policies to be stared-down by the common man, and replaced with something that actually will work.

We've had more than thirty years, in various ways and in various forms, to deal with this twisted "brave new world," and it's time to publicly say that it's just not working, and that it never will. In centuries past, our ancestors did have something that worked. Lately, we seem to have forgotten it, in our zeal to accept promises that never came true. That never will.

One point that many people forget is the size of England's population, compared to its area. Excluding micro-states, I think you'll find that England is the most densely populated country in Europe. That's why our housing is unaffordable for many. During WW2, we barely fed ourselves, even with strict rationing. Nowadays, we could not exist without imported food. Can those who advocate immigration guarantee that surplus food will always be available for import? Hardly. Population reduction is is important for us as for China, but the politicians haven't woken up to it yet.

PS I wrote "England" advisedly, for that's where people come.

Tell us something about the issues of british politics you personally had a say in.

In your complete lifetime?

Fact is that you vote for polititians who you think will represent your interests to "some" degree. That goes for 99,9 % of all the infinite number of matters, that you definitely never have any direct say in

Your argumentation is weak. It's mere hollow agitation in my view.

Likewise of course there is many international laws that you are bound to, also in your country. It has been the sovereign decision of your polititians to be bound by such international law, otherwise you wouldn't have signed treaties. And by the way, you expect and are happy, that other countries will bind themselves also to supranational law.

alberich,

Your comments clearly exhibit that you have little or no knowledge about British politics, so I am not going to waste my time debating the finer points online with you.

Good luck to whichever German political party you happen to support in the German federal elections in 2017.
The same goes to all other European countries who will be holding general elections in the near future.

This quote in 1960 from Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister, in Cape Town, South Africa would seem to be most apposite in the current political climate in Europe:

Why the hell nobody want's to answer any of the common-sense questions?

@beachboy2: If you do understand british polictics, please, one example in which you had a say? When was your last referendum about anything else? When we're you asked what and how the/a law should be like?

And great thinking on quoting a guy from an era and a country in which the apartheid happened.. Yes, that's the kind of freedom or nationalism you probably had in mind when you voted, right?..

You also have that.... The EU simply forced EU citizens on you and forced you to not create any differences between them and british citizens (exception in this 40 years beeing the current refugee crisis -- which btw, good luck with that)

This worked well even if you might had to suffer short burst of Eastern European imigrants because it strenghten both you and helped strenghten the new members... You also have 2 milion British people that are in the EU that other states are forced to take care of them as their own. In the long run it was a win-win-win situation..

Great.. After going thru the beaurocracy and when you're passing constant fear of deportation, maybe then you'll understand why the EU was a good ideea (albeit, it wouldn't have helped you with Australia)

No, just EU citizens.


Of course it does and it should... But the ECJ only cares about european legislation and human rights.. I don't get why Abu Hamza al-Masri is a study-case here.. The EU just prohibited his deportation until there we're assurances that no inhuman treatment was applied (death-penalty, prison for life)... And the fact that he was eventually extredited shows the system works... I'm sorry but you can't bring up an exceptional case for a law made to protect all citizens living in the EU...

Great point.. Because you currently import 40% of your food... Now you pretty much know you don't have 40% of foreigners on your country and even so you would have to kick them all out to get by with your own resources... Guess where that guarantee that you would never have to completely starve came from? Exactly... The question is what will you do now if EU refuses to let you import basic products from us without paying VAT + customs?

The answer: It doesn't matter if you're a rich bastard that got even richer in the last few days while betting on the results... But if you're a normal guy, with a normal family, then I'm afraid the 350 million pounds bus wasn't the only lie you we're served...

Smokey_justme,

Your knowledge of history just leaves me flabbergasted:

You have not understood a single solitary word of my comparison between Harold Macmillan's 1960 forecast of changes in South Africa and the likely changes in Europe in the present day.

I considered retiring in Ireland. Not sure I want to fork over $250,000 to be a legal.

I am 100% sure I'd never live in South Africa or Detroit. I would pay $250,000 get out of either.

However, the British (English & Welsh) people have voted to support a campaign spearheaded (no pun intended) by Nigel Farage and the UKIP. Every racist thug & bully boy will take that as a green light to mete out whatever justice they deem correct on people who look the wrong way. Good luck, things could get pretty ugly - but at least you had the choice

Since I'm not from UK our views on some of your previous PMs might be very, very different.. I'll give you that I never actually knew that Macmillan was opposed the apartheid (while letting it happen, but at least opposed) and was to be "blamed" for decolonization (quite frankly I knew the conservatives of the time had much problems with that)... But you learn as long as you leave and I can admit when I'm wrong (and as you can see, I can pay atention and actually fact-check when I'm contradicted *hint*hint*... anyone?) .. So, touche.. your quote at least has another light in my eyes (thow, you're not really comparing the enghish-collonies to the EU, are you?)