Brexit: Just say no WA

In all the Brexit shenanigans, the fact remains that if the people want to leave the EU, then eventually that is what will happen.

All this talk of May's deal or no Brexit is nonsense. May's deal is no Brexit, because it is the only scenario in which Brexit is guaranteed to fail.

Look at the alternatives and you will see that there is not a thing called 'no Brexit'.

There are only two ways to thwart Brexit:-

• Extend Article 50 to allow for another Referendum, or a General Election.

Or

• Revoke Article 50

And neither path forces us the remain in EU if the people really want to leave.

The popular thinking, that a second referendum will easily overturn the previous result, is grossly mistaken.

When/if it is called, the media must return to fair and balanced coverage of the debate, and the British public are far more aware of the issues and deceptions than they ever were before the last vote.

Both sides will have their cases scrutinized in depth, and previous lies will be exposed remorselessly.

What effect will that have?

Well, the Brexit bus will need to remove it's £350 million per week, and replace that with £20 million per day or whatever, perhaps less dramatic, but hardly a deal breaker, and undeniably accurate. True the remainers will also point to the difficulty of negotiations, but an electorate that has watched events over the last two plus years, will know that uncommitted and weak negotiators were to blame, and they will demand a tougher, more determined team; in effect, they will want more Brexit, not less.

And what of the Remainers case? 

The true face of EU has been revealed over the last while, and Brexit exaggerations will pale against the downright lies of Remainer rhetoric:-

• No EU army. Lie 
• ECJ does not supersede UK Courts. Lie
• EU is for Internet freedom. Lie
• No plans to make UN migration pact EU law. Lie
• EU is honest broker and will not seek to punish UK. Lie

An early General Election would probably result from either of these attempts to halt Brexit, and the results of this would be carnage for the main parties, resulting in a solid Leaver Parliament, with a firm mandate to get us out of EU forthwith. It's ironic, that the only person who might scupper this outcome, is the very one who did most to deliver the first referendum: Nigel Farage.

If Nigel allows his ego to trump Brexit, and splits the Leave vote, then history will judge him very severely. Should he choose to work with the other Leavers, the Brexit parties can concentrate their efforts and resources in constituencies with remainer MPs, by also agreeing not to stand against MPs who have a consistent voting record in favour of Leave.

The only people who should have anything to fear from a GE or 2nd Referendum, are those who have deceived and delayed during the past nearly three years; and the voting public know who they are, in a way that they have never known before.

What happens after the WA is finally voted down may not be entirely predictable, but if the people still want to leave, then it most certainly does not mean no Brexit. But, regardless of what the people want, voting for Teresa May's deal means that negotiating a beneficial Brexit would be virtually impossible, because the threat of backstop and remaining tied to the EU during negotiations, is the actual catastrophe that No Deal is supposed to be.

The EU have already demonstrated their lack of respect for Britain, and that was before they held the upper hand, and May's Wretched Agreement gives them that whip hand, while tying ours firmly behind our backs.

Just say NO way, WA.

US: Donald where's your deal, then?

When the winds of change brought Donald Trump to the White House, only fools thought that everything he did would be good, and only bigger fools believed that everything he was to do would be bad. And so it has proven.

Perhaps his greatest achievement was in preventing Hilary C. from becoming POTUS, and for that, we should be forever grateful and this certainly colours my opinion of his actions; but his latest pronouncement, that America now recognizes the Golan Heights as part of Israel, is for me, the wrong decision, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons.

After his apparent success in bringing North and South Korea closer together, it would also be foolish to dismiss this latest gambit as irredeemable, but whatever the outcome, there were surely much better options available to the US President.

If peace between Israel and it's neighbours really is an aim, then the Golan has both political and strategic importance.

The most obvious solution, if Israel really wanted good relations, would be some form of joint sovereignty and a permanent demilitarized zone, all dependent on Syria's recognition of the State of Israel, the removal of Hezbollah and all Iranian forces from Syria etc.

Of all the Holy Lands, the Golan Heights have possibly the weakest historic claim to inclusion in Israel, unlike Judea and Samaria, which are well understood to be part of the Jewish heritage, Golan seems to have been fought over and occupied/reoccupied over many centuries, going back into antiquity and possibly the strongest claimants to the land today, are the Druze.

After moving the US embassy to Jerusalem - a long overdue step, and one which all right-minded people should support - it would be a great shame if righting ancient wrongs were to descend into nothing more than an opportunistic land grab.

The first principle of the art of the deal, must surely to be to keep your options open, and always hold the end-game in mind.

But it appears that keeping Bibi in power at the upcoming elections, and making life difficult for President Assad, are more important short term goals than bringing a workable peace agreement to at least one part of the Middle East.

UK: Brexit lies and statistics

As the anti-Brexit forces gather on the streets of London, estimates of their number will be growing exponentially on the various pro-EU news channels, it might be a good time to see what 'facts' are flying around today.

Yesterday, in conversations on Going-Postal, about the petition to revoke Article 50, the origin of those voting and the number of votes they were casting,  was guided how to capture the source metadata and this is what I found:-

{"name":"United Kingdom","code":"GB","signature_count":1261367}

At that time, the total was a little over 3 million votes.

Today, hearing that the vote miraculously approaches 4.5 million (did nobody sleep last night?), I decided to check the numbers again [bold type is mine], and, hey presto:-

{"name":"United Kingdom","code":"GB","signature_count":4171187}

Miraculous indeed.

Whoever said Lies, damned lies and statistics, they were undoubtedly highlighting the way that figures can be manipulated to serve a specific purpose, but what what see here is the manufacture of numbers that clearly cannot exist, because either the first or the second is false, or perhaps neither is true.

Either way, the data is contained on Parliament's own website, which takes the deception/stupidity to another level of deceit.

NZ: When ideologies collide

So the New Zealanders have accepted their opportunity to show the world just how virtuous they are, from the Prime Minister to the local biker gangs, all are united in their displays of piety and compassion.

Wonderful news, but when one crazy goes on a killing spree, why does nobody ask why, anymore?

Tragedies like the Christchurch massacre are thankfully rare, yet the media immediately jump onto the 'white supremacist' bandwagon, as though there is some well thought out and defined movement driving the perpetrators, yet their actual reasoning is never examined nor their fears addressed.

Interestingly, while the 'white supremacist' tag is used for attention grabbing headlines, but the articles tend to more accurately write about 'white nationalist', as these people are usually not the spreaders of supremacist ideologies, but reacting to fears in an increasingly hostile environment, where all the world's ills are the fault of white privilege, and every free thinking person is a racist ideologue, little wonder that they resort to violence as the only voice that will be 'listened' to.

The terrible irony is that these attacks receive so much attention because they are so rare, yet islamist attacks against civilians and particularly Christians, have become so common, that they barely make the footnotes in our daily news reports.

Coming only weeks after the murder of 20 worshipers in a catholic cathedral in the Philippines, it is difficult not to contrast the different coverage, and if those numbers aren't enough, the more recent 120 killed in Nigeria were also notable by their seeming irrelevance to our 4th Estate.

When Turkey's Erdogan showed video footage to encourage support for his islamist ideologies, did the Western media bother itself? Apart from a little tut tutting, not much.

Ignoring the Global Jihad ensures that these incidents continue in frequency and intensity, and gives all the motivation and justification that some will use to plan and carry out equally violent acts in response.

Hiding bad news does not make it go away, and pretending that only white people do bad things is a sure way to ensure that increasing numbers of white people will continue to do bad things.

Brexit: 13th March, a day of infamy?

With the second defeat for Teresa May's Wretched Agreement, our esteemed Members of Parliament now have the chance to finally support the referendum result of July 2016.

Today they can vote for a clean, uncluttered, un-fudged exit from the European Union, but that is the least likely of today's possible outcomes, and we will almost certainly move on to a debate tomorrow, on whether to extend or repeal Article 50 (which allows us to leave the EU on 29th. March, about 16 days from now).

The greatest tragedy of this obstructionist and undemocratic rejection of the Will of the People, is that it will leave our future negotiators desperate to sign any and all trade deals that are dangled before them, probably resulting in the abandonment of all of those promises of worker's rights, food safety and environmental/pollution protections, that we have been assured would be paramount.

This display of disunity, and our abject inability to negotiate Brexit with the EU, has also left the UK weakened as a viable trading partner and potential ally for those in the rest of world at large.