Brexit - Has It Failed!

Progressive17:   Very fond of the expression "Guardians of the Inexhaustible Treasuries", thank you.   And I think you are right about the facts of life. 

But serious queston -- explain what you mean by "buying bonds from the Guardians of the Inexhaustible Treasuries, thus taking away their sword-of-Damocles power".    I buy bonds because I'm pathologically risk adverse, but if I'm also sticking it to the Guardians, that's be great.  Tell me more?

josh wrote:

Syriza progressive?  You mean the party that lied and caved, and has introduced all sorts of neo-liberal legislation at the direction of the EU?  Why should anyone on the left take any advice from them.

Your second paragraph is apples and oranges. 

Comparing Brexiteers to 1980s western separatists is apples and oranges? I dunno. I'd say more like tangerines and oranges, but we might just have to disagree on that.

Makes sense.  Sign me up.   Takes more $ that I can invest to get a proxy though, so people like me will need to team up.

"If we are ruled by people that we didn't elect and cannot remove, then we are no longer living in a democracy.' George Galloway quotes Tony Benn on the day the UK leaves the EU." (and vid)

https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1223275465621884928

Why Boris Johnson's Brexit is Not the Full Brexit

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/not-the-full-brexit

"Today, Britain will finally leave the European Union - a staggering 1,316 days after the 2016 referendum. Finally exiting the EU is a tremendous achievement for democracy. Nonetheless, Boris Johnson's Brexit is clearly not the 'Full Brexit' for which we have been campaigning. Instead, it seeks to downplay or manage away its radical potential. Truly realizing that potential remains a task for the future..."

RT opined:

The obvious place to start is sovereignty. They’re demanding that the European Court of Justice will have a long-term role in overseeing the future partnership. That’s not how independent, neutral oversight is supposed to work – any more than Manchester United would be allowed to choose the referee for their next football match. They also want the UK to stick to the European Convention on Human Rights, potentially opening the way to forcing (for example) prisoners to be allowed to vote.

I thought the vote for prisoners was something progressives were supposed to support? Certainly, at least, if Harper had threatened to revoke it in Canada, it would've been held up as yet another example of how the man was transforming our country into a fascist hellhole.

Mathew D Rose - EU: The Acute Crisis No One Wants To Talk About

https://twitter.com/BRAVENEWEUROPE/status/1223513675975266305

"Due to Brexit no one is following the crisis unfolding in the EU. Time to connect the dots..."

"If you do not think the constitutional architecture of the EU and the political economy of the EU integration project do not place fundamental limits on any project of socialist transformation, then I'm afraid you don't fully grasp the nature of the EU or socialism."

https://twitter.com/pmpoc/status/1223915913264746496

Russia has a facade of democracy just like the US and its requisite quota of billionaires. Comparing either of them to socialism is ridiculous however if a country whose government is designed to serve the interests of the business elite to the determent of the masses is your definition of fascism then I think they both fit it as does Canada and the UK and China and Singapore and South Korea.

RT does the type of critical analysis of our system that the CBC should do but doesn't. Both are forms of state media that amplify the message of their oligarchs. But that goes for all media outlets. Media literacy means being able to read the same story from the Washington Post and RT and CBC and discern what the consistent facts are and being able to then form an opinion based on those not the biased filters all broadcasters use.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

RT does the type of critical analysis of our system that the CBC should do but doesn't. Both are forms of state media that amplify the message of their oligarchs. But that goes for all media outlets. Media literacy means being able to read the same story from the Washington Post and RT and CBC and discern what the consistent facts are and being able to then form an opinion based on those not the biased filters all broadcasters use.

That's absolutely correct. To that end, it is beneficial for RT to lift up marginalized voices in the US who do not receive much play in the American media.

Anyone with the resources to publish has interests. It is always good to understand the biases and read from multiple sources. At times you can take a combination of biased sources and understand something accurate. Any source bias is not just the slant of how they tell a story but what stories to tell.

I find multiple sources works well. One of them I would add is Al Jazeera as they also cover stories others are not interested in and while they may have a bias on some things you can usually find an opposite bias to see or read as well. I find them more balanced than most North American sources.

For the record, I'm not denying you can find useful and interesting stuff on RT. There's also useful and interesting stuff in the National Post. (Though I personally would not quote favourably an article from NP that trashed prisoners' rights.)

Yes, very well said.   It's curious now that with the polarization of the media here and in the US, we have outlets that amplify the message of their respective political parties, rather then the oligarchy as a whole, with increasingly unethical and clumsy propaganda. 

It's always been that way. I know on the left, there's some idea that media just promotes the interests of the oligarchy, and doesn't care who wins. But that's not really the case. Historically, newspapers, at least, have ALWAYS tended to favour one party over the others, even in cases where there was no huge ideological difference between the major parties.

Even setting aside cases where the bias was blatantly obvious(eg. the Tallahassee Democrat and the Kingstond Whig-Standard), you have rarely ever seen, for example, the Sun papers in Canada endorse anyone besides the Conservatives or one of their successor parties in a federal or provincial election. And I'm taken to understand that the Toronto Star almost always backs the Liberals, though has occassionally swung both left and right, depending on particular issues that emerge. Across the pond, I'm pretty sure the Manchester Guardian in the UK has never endorsed the Conservatives for Westminister, going back at least to the days of Thatcher, and quite likely earlier.

And yeah, a lot of the propaganda over the years has been unethical and clumsy.

Mobo2000 wrote:

Yeah, VOTD, point taken, but I think there is a difference in degree since the Trump era, as well as a corresponding decrease, by MSM, in the desire to be seen as objective.   Indeed, the whole concept of objectivity in news media feels hopelessly degraded to me (not that I ever had faith in it, but that seems to be more of  the default position).

You might be correct about the concept of degree. Across the broad section of the political specturm spanning from far right to about left-liberal(stopping at about, let's say, Counterpunch), Trump is basically a love 'im or hate 'im kinda guy. It's not like in the Reagan years, when you could tell that liberals and even centrists in the media didn't really like the guy, but they knew he was pretty popular, so seemed to be holding their fire somewhat. With Trump, the gloves really seem to have come off.

I have alwasy said there is value in reading biased news when you can figure out the bias and take something on the other side.

It is also true that you will get interesting stories from foreign media. Foreign media may have less interest -- or an interest in the human or even disruptive angle when a domestic media has both the local cultural bias as well as the pressure to not tick off local business and politics that could start to withdraw advertising or news media access.

Generally I find that people from out of a context provide really good perspectives becuase they ask questions that we are not asking becuase we take the asnwers for granted.

I once took a Canadian history class conducted by a professor from Pakistan. she was by far the best Canadian history professor or teacher I had ever had. Her depth of understanding of international colonialism was missing from every other Canadian history course I had taken. This is just one example. An international point of view on a local subject may be required in order to understand the local subject.

Fact is, we do not have to trust RT on Russian news any more than we trust anything in Canad aon Canadina news but on international subjects it is a source worth considering. This does not mean it does not have bias but you can understand that and read accordingly.

The mistake is the assumption that you can find an unbiased source anywhere. A bigger mistake is the assumption that you can always read the local biases that you have been brought up in. Some people can get in the habit of questioning local geographic bias but local is not always geographic. We can spot right wing bias fairly effectively. But what about the biases that come from our own political stances? Those are harder to see as anyone who has read about confirmation bias has heard of. Pairing up biased sources is valuable.

BTW: I still once in a while read texts of Trump speeches (I no longer want to subject myself to that man's voice where avoidable). I really dilike Trump but I do see instances where the left press take things he says in one way and twists them to a different meaning. Frmo my perspective I am mystified by this as there are enough outragious things he says that this tactic is not needed but I think that people cannot help themselves.

So sure -- read the RT. Do it with the same caution you should bring to every media source -- know who is speaking and understand as much as you can their interests. And read alternative points of view.