Tag: EU

EU and US

~ archercrosley ~ Leave a comment

Does the US really really want the EU to succeed?

Or does it just say that it does?

Is the US really broken up over Brexit?

Brexit benefits the US.

Maybe the US wants to hem in Europe with Great Britain as it hems in Asia with Japan.

Why would the US want a competitor in a unified Europe?

As a regular American, I would want a unified strong Europe for many reasons, first being that a unified Europe would have prevented the US from monkeying around in the Middle East.

That would have saved me a lot of money. My leaders would not have been able to rip me off by printing up money at the Fed.

Instead of war which was does not benefit me, my country could’ve invested in infrastructure.

Alas, my American leaders do not think like me.

My American leaders are a greedy lot.

And so they play games with people.

I think they only want the EU to succeed to the point where they can make a lot of money.

They see a common market as an easy way to make a lot of bucks.

Unfortunately, the common market brings much strength to Europe. And this my American leaders do not want.

My American leaders want their cake and eat it too.

And so they will fuck around with Europe to keep it strong but not too strong.

This is a bad thing for me.

Copyright 2021 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved.

Brexit and Political Capital

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I’m coming here today to solve a problem for  Great Britain.  

Okay, you say, who does this jackass American think he is butting into our affairs, thinking he can solve a problem that he thinks we can’t solve?

And who asked him anyway? And why does he give a shit – excuse me, sheit –  what happens to us?

Well, I give a sheit because your battle is my battle. What happens to you happens to me.

And why do you care whether I am an American or not?  All you should care about is getting your problem solved.

Why do you care if it’s a man on the moon who solves it?

Oh, I get it – national pride.  Sure.

Look, I don’t get upset when Michael Caine or Gary Oldman make movies over here.

Gary Oldman?  My gosh, one of my staff didn’t even know he was British until he did a commercial here a few years ago. He makes so many movies speaking in an American accent, most people here think he’s an American.

For years, I thought Toni Collette and Naomi Watts were ours.  How can anyone know anymore if they refuse to make a movie in their native homeland except of course for the one movie they made when they were eight years old and nobody knew who they were?

At any rate, you’re stuck, and so am I, because a significant portion of your population feels that there is something fundamentally wrong with the European Union.

It’s not a matter of choosing remain or leave.

The body is in pain.

There’s no point in denying the pain. The pain exists.

That’s with this referendum was about – recognizing and alleviating pain.

That’s what the Yellow Vest movement is about. That’s what the Five Star movement is about. That’s what the Greek riots were all about.

That’s what the rebellions to be will be about.

Now, here’s the real deal if you’re a rebel which I happen to be.  

If you voted to leave, as I would have done had I been a Brit, you are going to lose if you decide to play hardball.

You don’t have the guns, and you don’t have the organization to beat the elites when they get upset.

The reason you beat the elites in 2016 is because they were sleeping. They are still the hare, and you are still the tortoise. In a race where they do not sleep, you will lose every single time.

It’s biology, baby. You can read a book on how to run by Usain Bolt, but you are still a tortoise.

What you need to do is use the political capital you have gained to modify the European Union.

That’s what will work.

There is political precedent.  The anti-federalists pushed for the Bill of Rights in the United States, and they got it.

The best course of action is for the Leavers to press for concessions from the EU for a fundamental restructuring of the constitution in how laws are passed and how debt is shared within the EU.

You will find  broad-based support for doing such. The Yellow Vests will be with you. The Five Star movement will be with you. The Greeks will be with you. 

And let’s face it:  Nobody really likes a German banker, right?

They don’t smile enough.

So austere.

Well, in America we have a little saying.  If you owe the bank $100,000 and you can’t pay, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $350 billion dollars and you can’t pay, the bank has a problem.  

Ergo, let the German bankers know this, then ask for sensible reforms. You know what reforms need to be done.  Costs have got to be shared, and people need more say.

A European union is a great idea. This European union was a bad idea. Now is the time to make those changes.

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Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved

The Nazi Menace

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So returns the conquered, a headless Theresa May, flat on her back, still and stiff upon her shield, a sheaf of papers in her curled, livid hand proclaiming slavery in our time.

Her executioner, Donald Tusk, dressed in grim Nazi gray, arms akimbo, legs spread wide across the channel, sniffs contemptuously.

The enemy bears down and glowers.

Jüncker, the dutiful Vichy puppet, heaves May’s head across the channel.

The wild, half-naked tribes of Brussels scream.

Hooooooooooooo!

Slavery in our time indeed.

There’s an ill wind blowing from the east, Watson.

The Nazi menace is real and has reared its ugly head again. 

These Nazis are clever.

These Nazis talk pretty.

These Nazis look respectable.

These Nazis wear suits.

These Nazis take no prisoners.

These Nazis are ravenous wild dogs.

Saliva flows copiously out over their razored, yellowed teeth.

Look quickly.

See those red eyes glowing in the blackness of the night.

Talk softly.

Be alert, Britain.

The Nazi menace is near.

 

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Brexit and Dignity

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So what we have today in Great Britain is a classic case of domestic violence.

For a long time now, the working class in Great Britain has suffered.

They have been punched in the face again and again.

The bruises are clearly in plain sight now.

Sunglasses won’t camouflage this beating anymore.

The political class, living in the deluded cerebral confines of London, has done its best to suppress this abuse beneath its consciousness.

Yet the abuse exists.

Nobody wants to admit that they are being abused. The pain and humiliation is too great.

There comes a time though when you’ve been struck too many times to ignore it.

The Brexit vote was a statement by the British politic that something is desperately wrong.

It was a cry for help.

It was the first cry of an abused spouse stuck in a codependent relationship that has gone sour.

Often we don’t want to admit that we desperately need a refuge.

We feel ashamed.

We rationalize away our pain. We try to see the best in the abuser who has punished us.

Yet we know in our guts that things must change.

At first, we make the attempt to move away from home.

We ask for a divorce – which Great Britain has done.

We go through the motions and secure an attorney.

But it’s a big step.

We’ve grown accustomed to that spouse who abuses us.

Plus it’s been a while since we’ve been out on our own.

We begin to take counsel of our fears.

We scare ourselves that we can’t make it on our own.

The abusive spouse, in the case the EU, who likewise needs us to beat up upon in order to feel good about himself, assures us that we will never make it on our own.

The bully diminishes our worth.

We begin to listen to him.

We think about moving back.

But to what?

The abusive spouse has not changed.

He is above all else a recalcitrant debaser and humiliator.

Theresa May scurries to Brussels to genuflect before the abusive spouse.

She pleads to no avail.

The abuser smiles.  He knows a weakened partner when he sees one.   He’s abused others before.

It’s my way or the highway, says the abuser.

It’s time for Great Britain to take the highway.

Leaving may be painful, but it is the only path to dignity.

 

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Brexit Exit

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What the British can do and must do is use this Brexit mess as an opportunity to reform Brussels.

That’s where the smart money lies.

There is a brilliant opening to do so.

It works as simple as this: 

Dear EU,

We the British would really prefer to stay, but we want a revised governmental structure more akin to the way laws are enacted in the our country.  We value British freedoms and liberty which is not the same as typical Continental autocracy.  We believe that law should emanate from those people who live closest to those whom the laws will affect.  Yes, we know this is messy, but we’ve developed messy habits which work for us.  We’re not accustomed to sitting back and “taking”  it.  It’s a bad British habit we have of voicing our opinion.

Consequently if you desire us in your union we must insist that all European law emanate from the people whose representatives are found in the European Parliament.  We would also prefer that no law come from the Council of the European Union, nor do we desire any good ideas from the European Council.

Only in this manner can we be  assured that our fishermen will be allowed to fish.  Fishing is another bad habit  we islanders on this rock called Great Britain acquired.  We like it and can’t quite give it up despite your best efforts to compel us to do so.  Not fishing would be like asking the French and Germans  to stop making wine and sausage respectively.  We’re sorry, but we grew up surrounded by water, and, well, fish live in the water.

There are a few other things we’d like as well.  We  British don’t like to delude ourselves, so if we are to be a union, let’s be one. We know a few things about unions having won and lost a few.

What will work best is a shared destiny which means shared responsibility as well.  So if we are to incur debt we must share it as a true union.  We’ll have none of this nonsense where some live well while others suffer under austerity. Either we all suffer or none of us suffer at all.

As we British are fond of saying:  What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  

Ah, yes, immigration.  Well, we shouldn’t leave that out, should we, since you have gone to the trouble of labeling so many of us as uncultured, jingoistic racists.  Well, maybe we are, and maybe we are not, but one thing we British hold dear is tradition.  We’re not in the habit of slaughtering our royals or renaming our month of November to Brumaire at the whim of a crazed Jacobin.  We are accustomed to order, discipline and civility.  We believe that when in Rome one must do as the Romans.  Permitting hordes of people from foreign cultures to swamp the boat does not loan itself to assimilation. As such we must insist on strong borders.  Europe without borders is no Europe at all.

Well, there, I think that hits the main points.  Can you live with that?  If not, well, as Larry Grayson, one of our own, would say:  Shut that door.

Thank you and good luck.   You know where to find us.  We’re that noisy little nation of shopkeepers sitting to your west.

Sincerely,

GB

Brexit Requires Courage

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It is clear that this Brexit deal was badly managed.  But what else could you expect from a duplicitous leader, a puppet of corporate interests, not to mention the Rothschilds, who never wanted the UK to leave anyway?

The prime minister slow-walked Brexit and then came up with a deal that is of course worse than leaving.

Let’s assume, though, for the sake of argument that Theresa May has a good heart and negotiated in earnest.  What would be clear is that she has never had a real job in her entire life, because if she’d had a real job, she would’ve understood that when a job becomes too unbearable the only solution is to take your chances by walking away. You just do it.

The fact that she didn’t have the guts to do that indicates that she’s a wimp.  And what the UK doesn’t need is a wimp in charge. What the  UK needs is someone with steel and nerve.

Was Churchill a wimp? Was Lord Nelson a wimp?

As many Brexiters (I reject the term Brexiteers; there is nothing Mickey Mouse about leaving a bad union) have already stated quite clearly: Leave means leave. You take your lumps. You pull out your big checkbook and start paying down on your obligations. You don’t stand there, with your hands outstretched, asking Mr. Bumble, “Please, Sir, may I have some more?”

“Whaaat,” screams, Mr. Tusk, er Bumble. “Moooooore!”

Well, you know the ditty that follows from the popular play.  It goes on out about canisters down banisters which is where the UK will be relegated for daring to question the established order of things.

But, of course, stories can have happy endings.  Oliver does break free of the workhouse, as can the UK break out of its indentured servitude.

But you don’t break out by breaking in or by getting a worse deal for yourself.

You have to leave first.

You have to roll the dice. 

It requires courage, a commodity that is in short supply on Downing Street.

 

Pain, Brexit, Reality

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I hate pain because it tells me that something is wrong.

I’d much rather live in pain than do something about it.

Inertia is a powerful force.

Pain ruins my day.

Pain means I have to take time off and fix it.  I don’t want to take time off.  I want my life to be the same.  I’ve got my routines down.

And so it is with Brexit and the elites who chose to remain.

They’d rather the referendum go away.

They’ve got their routines down, and, well, this jolt of pain is getting in the way.

After all they’re doing well.

And so the leaders do what we all when confronted by pain – denial.  

It’s not there. The  pain is not there.  

In short order, denial specialists are sent out to the body politic to do what they do best – deny.

Brexit was a fluke.  People don’t want it. The people who voted for it shouldn’t have voted – they were too old.  They were racist; this is not who we are.

Yet the pain was there – is there.  

It takes time for the mind, the political class,  to accept this.  

It’s easier to deny its existence until reality sets in that the pain is there and is not going away.

The pain is not going away because the pain is not the problem.  

Analgesics are not the answer.

The pain is a symptom of a more nefarious process, and the nefarious process that has gone on in England for some time now is the neglect of the working class.

Talking about the neglect won’t make it go away.  This is another mechanism of denial that we humans engage in. 

We move past the stage of denial and come to recognize that the pain is there but then fool ourselves that talking about it is a solution. 

Leaders then send out emissaries to working class areas to “discuss” the problem.

Help is on the way.

Yet this promise is false because the leadership fails to comprehend the faulty assumptions that produced the problem in the first place.

The neglect of the working class came about because there are people in your society who do not have the desire or the ability to work in the services industry.  These people need manufacturing jobs, of which fishing and farming is a part, today and tomorrow.

The idea that Britain and all its citizens will be executives to the world and that the people in China and Southeast Asia will be content to make your plastic cups forever is errant.

The current EU does not address this reality.  Nor does the political class.

Chequers and Chess

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There is an alternative to the Chequers plan, you know.

Britain can negotiate a new European Union.

The problem was never that a EU was not a great idea but that this EU was a terrible idea.

Of course, it was. It was devised by greedy elites for greedy elites.

Given that, Britain can exit and develop its own EU and ask the current EU to join it.

There is precedent for doing so.

Plenty of smaller companies have bought out larger, more dysfunctional concerns.

Some simple changes that Britain must insist upon are the following:

  1. All EU law must emanate from the EU Parliament.  No law may emanate from the Council of the EU, or worse, the European Commission.  This is to ensure that law is reality-based not utopia-based.
  2. No member state may be restricted from engaging in any type of commerce.  A true competitive marketplace must exist within the EU.
  3. Federal debt must be shared by all member states.   Nothing binds people together greater than a leaky boat.
  4. A federal force must exist to protect the borders of the EU.
  5. The EU must act in the best interest of the EU in promoting stability in regions contiguous to the EU.  A functional EU based in reality, not utopia, would not have permitted the destabilization of Syria and Libya.  In other words the EU is going to have to kick a few people in the nuts.

It’s never too late to do the right thing.

Brexit and You

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Maybe if you live in the United States, Brexit is not a big deal for you. Is it a big deal, however, for what it reveals about our “leaders.”

Almost two years ago, the people of Great Britain voted to leave the European Union. By all accounts it was a fair referendum. Generally speaking, people are expected to abide by the results of a referendum; if they don’t, then why have the referendum in the first place?

What happened in Great Britain was the unexpected. The people who voted to leave won the referendum; the “remainers” lost. In a nutshell, the elites lost; they got caught napping with their pants down. It’s the old story of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoises worked; the hares slept.

But you see, old chap, elections only count when the elites win; they don’t count when the people win. When the people win, why something must be wrong.

Thus the push by the elites for a new referendum on Brexit.

People clearly didn’t know what they were voting for, right?

Au contraire; they knew exactly what they were voting for which invites an important question for leaders all over the globe.

Which is this: Why are you elites different? Why must we, the regular people, abide by the results of a referendum when we lose, yet you are not obligated to do so when you lose? Why must we eat the pain and suffer silently when we lose, but you must not? Why are you different?

Why We Lose

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Have you ever wondered why we the regular people usually lose?

We lose because a) so many of us don’t care, b) we aren’t organized, c) we underestimate our opponents, but mainly d) we are always reacting to what the elites are doing.

Let’s take Brexit as an example.

The LEAVE camp won the referendum almost two years ago and then promptly sat on their asses, basking in glory, assuming that the elites would take this sitting down.

Rule number one: the elites never take anything sitting down. They never accept a defeat. They are ruthless and uncompromising. They fight to the death.

And so they did not and do not. Slowly, slowly they are conditioning the people of the United Kingdom to hold another referendum. The trickster Theresa May, the prime minister, states that she is against holding another referendum; but if she was truly against holding another referendum, she would simply say nothing. By denouncing another referendum, she legitimizes it.

The UKIP and other proponents of Brexit helplessly sit back and stew about the lack of energy pursued in exiting the EU. They are being slow-walked to the abattoir. What UKIP and the other Brexiters should be doing is taking the battle to the Remainers by offering a superior option to the EU.

There is nothing wrong with a EU, but there is something wrong this EU. This EU, they should point out, is bad because it is a top-down, antidemocratic, biz-ocracy run for the benefit of the rich. What UKIP should be offering the people of England and Europe is a dynamic alternative to the current governmental structure of the EU.

Five hundred years ago there was another battle on the European continent between the regular people and the rich. It was called the German Peasant’s War. The peasants, tired of being pushed around rose up to fight for their rights. On the other side stood the worthless nobility backed by the immoral Jacob Fugger. The peasants were too kind; they might have won, but they didn’t. Over 100,000 peasants lost their lives.

The peasants underestimated just how greedy these financial cancer cells were – and still are today.

Cancer must be fought and defeated, wiped out dead. There can be no compromise, no rest, no reconciliation.

The cancerous rich take no prisoners.