UK & Brexit News and Updates

[waz]

So everything is perfect and the divorce should be quick an easy because they won't be a lot of tears on the continent as well.

Good for you, I hope we're both better off.

 

[Vergennes]

Hmm I'd rather say "Dear Brits, you're now out of the EU. Bye and deal with it !"

"Par grâce de Dieu et du Roy,
Bouter l'anglois hors d'Europe nous devons. Pas d'quartier nous ferons !"

Kidding.

Good for you, I hope we're both better off.

What an amazing love story.

 

[Zibago]

Tony Blair says Brexit can be stopped

By Charles Riley November 24, 2016 09:05AM EST
Tony Blair says that Britain's departure from the European Union is not etched in stone.
In an interview with the New Statesman, the former British prime minister said the process could be halted.
"It can be stopped if the British people decide that, having seen what it means, the pain-gain cost-benefit analysis doesn't stack up," Blair told the magazine.
The former Labour Party boss believes that parliament -- or the British people -- will in the end be allowed to pass judgment on the specific exit deal negotiated with the EU.
That puts him at odds with Prime Minister Theresa May, who has rejected calls for a second referendum, while insisting that "Brexit means Brexit." She's also appealing a court ruling that parliament should have a vote before the formal exit negotiations begin.
May has committed to triggering the legal exit process by the end of March. That will set off two years of frantic negotiations over the terms of Britain's exit from the trading bloc.
Blair makes the case for a public evaluation of whatever deal is negotiated. Will Britain retain access to the EU's giant free trade area? Or will it be forced to go it alone and negotiate new trade deals with Europe and the rest of the world?
"Why wouldn't you keep your options open? Why wouldn't you say, 'We took this decision, we took it before we saw what its consequences are; now we see its consequences, we're not so sure?' " he asked.
Related: The cost and complexity of leaving the EU
The public got its first official look at the cost of Brexit on Wednesday. The U.K. will be forced to borrow an extra £58.7 billion ($72.6 billion) over the next five years because of an economic slowdown triggered by the exit, according to estimates published by the Office of Budget Responsibility.
The independent government agency said growth will slump to just 1.4% next year -- the weakest rate since 2009.
Blair, who has expressed a desire to reengage in policy debates in the U.K., cited the example of a deal offered to Nissan (NSANY) following the referendum. In exchange for continued investment in the U.K., May is believed to have offered the Japanese automaker certain commitments.
But the specifics of the deal remain a closely held government secret.
"I don't know what the terms of that deal are, but we should know," Blair said. "Because that will tell us a lot about what [the government is] prepared to concede in order to keep access to the [EU] single market."
Related: U.K. economy to grow at slowest pace since 2009
Blair won three consecutive general elections, the last in 2005. He was the Labour Party's longest serving prime minister but faced fierce criticism over his decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Now he is intent on returning to policy debates by leading a resurgence of the center-left.
"You've got to learn the right lessons of Brexit, Trump and these popular movements across the Western world," he said. "Otherwise you're going to end up in a situation where you seriously think that the populism of the left is going to defeat the populism of the right. It absolutely won't."
http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/24/new...-blair-brexit0231AMVODtopLink&linkId=31548123
@django @waz

 

[waz]

This traitor knows better than to show his face in public. The only thing that will be stopped is him. He is the most hated individual in the UK.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

I am still unsure that judge in court can cancel "vote" of public

 

[Banglar Bir]

As part of a major cleanup, merger and consolidation effort to make the Europe and Russia section more presentable, here's a thread for future discussions and news on the UK and its ongoing endeavors to leave the EU via Brexit.

Thank you - Technogaianist.
...

The Queen just approved the UK's mass surveillance bill

• Sam Shead
  http://www.businessinsider.com/parl...tm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-ti

• Nov. 29, 2016,
• Investigatory Powers Bill (or IP Bill), as the legislation is known, was passed by Parliament on November 19 "with barely a whimper," according to The Guardian.
• 
  After the legislation was approved by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, US whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted: "The UK has just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies."
  
  But the Bill wasn't home and dry. It also needed to gain the approval of the country's constitutional monarch — the Queen — in a formality known as the Royal Assent.
  
  To the disappointment of all those who signed a petition to repeal the IP Bill, also known as the Snopper's Charter, the Queen approved the bill on Tuesday, according to a Home Office press release.
  
  The law, pushed through Parliament by Prime Minister Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, makes it legal for UK intelligence agencies to hack, read, and store any information from any citizen's computer or phone, even if that citizen is completely innocent.
  
  Home Secretary Amber Rudd said in a statement:
  
  "This Government is clear that, at a time of heightened security threat, it is essential our law enforcement, security and intelligence services have the powers they need to keep people safe.
  
  "The internet presents new opportunities for terrorists and we must ensure we have the capabilities to confront this challenge. But it is also right that these powers are subject to strict safeguards and rigorous oversight.
  
  "The Investigatory Powers Act is world-leading legislation that provides unprecedented transparency and substantial privacy protection.
  
  "I want to pay tribute to the independent reviewers, organisations, and Parliamentarians of all parties for their rigorous scrutiny of this important law which is vital for the safety and security of our families, communities and country."
  
  But Rafael Laguna, CEO at software firm Open-Xchange, said in a statement: "The Snoopers’ Charter is an excessive measure drawn-up by a government which has not consulted the tech community. Realistically, the only major effect the IP Bill will have is invading citizens’ privacy. Criminals and terrorists will only find other ways to communicate discretely."

 

[Hindustani78]

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/584215/romania-overtakes-india-uks-biggest.html
London, Dec 1, 2016 (PTI)

Immigration into the UK from within the European Union (EU) has officially overtaken the rest of the world, with Romania replacing India at the top of the table in official figures released today.

Romanians accounted for 10 per cent of all immigration in 2015 with 54,000 people coming to live in Britain – more than any other nationality, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

China contributed 44,000 immigrants, followed by Poland with 38,000 tally, and India was third with 36,000.

"Immigration levels are now among the highest estimates recorded – the inflow of EU citizens is also at historically high levels and similar to the inflow of non-EU citizens," said Nicola White, ONS head of international migration statistics.

"These long-term immigration figures run up to the end of June, so it is too early to say what effect, if any, the EU referendum has had on long-term international migration," she said.

Immigration was one of the key issues that is believed to have swung the vote in favour of an exit from the EU in the June 23rd referendum.

Annual net migration to Britain in the 12 months to June 2016, or before the Brexit referendum, continued at a record level of 335,000.

This remains far from the UK government's target to reduce net migration levels to the "tens of thousands".

However, Downing Street insisted Prime Minister Theresa May remains committed to that target.

"She remains absolutely committed to bringing net immigration down to sustainable levels, which means tens of thousands, but we have made clear it will take time," a spokesperson said.

UK Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill hinted at further tightening of immigration measures for non-EU nationals, which will include India, as their hands remain tied on internal European migration until the EU's freedom of movement rules can be addressed once official Brexit negotiations kick off.

"We continue to reform non-EU immigration routes to ensure we attract the best and brightest, who benefit and contribute to this country. But there is more to do as we build an immigration system that delivers the control we need," Goodwill said.

This year's migration was largely fuelled by the highest- ever influx of EU nationals in the 12 months before June's referendum.

Europeans came to Britain for work, from countries like Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Spain and Sweden.

The overall 650,000 level of immigration for the year until June 2016 was made up of 284,000 EU citizens coming to live and work in Britain, 289,000 coming from outside Europe and 77,000 Britons returning to live in the UK.

 

[waz]

I don't know why they are all rushing here. The government has clearly said there will be a cut-off point, which will go some years back to apply for residency. But that all depends on how our citizens are treated in the EU.

 

[Saho]

It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.

My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years. To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).

So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world.

But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.”

But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.

My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.

Then after the War to end all Wars, we went and had another one. Again, for a historian it was quite predictable. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred. Soon the masses start to move as one, without any logic driving their actions, and the whole becomes unstoppable.

That was Hitler, but it was also Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Mugabe, and so many more. Mugabe is a very good case in point. He whipped up national anger and hatred towards the land owning white minority (who happened to know how to run farms), and seized their land to redistribute to the people, in a great populist move which in the end unravelled the economy and farming industry and left the people in possession of land, but starving. See also the famines created by the Soviet Union, and the one caused by the Chinese Communists last century in which 20–40 million people died. It seems inconceivable that people could create a situation in which tens of millions of people die without reason, but we do it again and again.

But at the time people don’t realise they’re embarking on a route that will lead to a destruction period. They think they’re right, they’re cheered on by jeering angry mobs, their critics are mocked. This cycle, the one we saw for example from the Treaty of Versaille, to the rise of Hitler, to the Second World War, appears to be happening again. But as with before, most people cannot see it because:

1. They are only looking at the present, not the past or future

2. They are only looking immediately around them, not at how events connect globally

3. Most people don’t read, think, challenge, or hear opposing views

Trump is doing this in America. Those of us with some oversight from history can see it happening. Read this brilliant, long essay in the New York magazine to understand how Plato described all this, and it is happening just as he predicted. Trump says he will Make America Great Again, when in fact America is currently great, according to pretty well any statistics. He is using passion, anger, and rhetoric in the same way all his predecessors did — a charismatic narcissist who feeds on the crowd to become ever stronger, creating a cult around himself. You can blame society, politicians, the media, for America getting to the point that it’s ready for Trump, but the bigger historical picture is that history generally plays out the same way each time someone like him becomes the boss.

On a wider stage, zoom out some more, Russia is a dictatorship with a charismatic leader using fear and passion to establish a cult around himself. Turkey is now there too. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia are heading that way, and across Europe more Trumps and Putins are waiting in the wings, in fact funded by Putin, waiting for the popular tide to turn their way.

We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction. We see Brexit, Trump, Putin in isolation. The world does not work that way — all things are connected and affecting each other. I have pro-Brexit friends who say ‘oh, you’re going to blame that on Brexit too??’ But they don’t realise that actually, yes, historians will trace neat lines from apparently unrelated events back to major political and social shifts like Brexit.

Brexit — a group of angry people winning a fight — easily inspires other groups of angry people to start a similar fight, empowered with the idea that they may win. That alone can trigger chain reactions. A nuclear explosion is not caused by one atom splitting, but by the impact of the first atom that splits causing multiple other atoms near it to split, and they in turn causing multiple atoms to split. The exponential increase in atoms splitting, and their combined energy is the bomb. That is how World War One started and, ironically how World War Two ended.

An example of how Brexit could lead to a nuclear war could be this:

Brexit in the UK causes Italy or France to have a similar referendum. Le Pen wins an election in France. Europe now has a fractured EU. The EU, for all its many awful faults, has prevented a war in Europe for longer than ever before. The EU is also a major force in suppressing Putin’s military ambitions. European sanctions on Russia really hit the economy, and helped temper Russia’s attacks on Ukraine (there is a reason bad guys always want a weaker European Union). Trump wins in the US. Trump becomes isolationist, which weakens NATO. He has already said he would not automatically honour NATO commitments in the face of a Russian attack on the Baltics.

With a fractured EU, and weakened NATO, Putin, facing an ongoing economic and social crisis in Russia, needs another foreign distraction around which to rally his people. He funds far right anti-EU activists in Latvia, who then create a reason for an uprising of the Russian Latvians in the East of the country (the EU border with Russia). Russia sends ‘peace keeping forces’ and ‘aid lorries’ into Latvia, as it did in Georgia, and in Ukraine. He annexes Eastern Latvia as he did Eastern Ukraine (Crimea has the same population as Latvia, by the way).

A divided Europe, with the leaders of France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and others now pro-Russia, anti-EU, and funded by Putin, overrule calls for sanctions or a military response. NATO is slow to respond: Trump does not want America to be involved, and a large part of Europe is indifferent or blocking any action. Russia, seeing no real resistance to their actions, move further into Latvia, and then into Eastern Estonia and Lithuania. The Baltic States declare war on Russia and start to retaliate, as they have now been invaded so have no choice. Half of Europe sides with them, a few countries remain neutral, and a few side with Russia. Where does Turkey stand on this? How does ISIS respond to a new war in Europe? Who uses a nuclear weapon first?

This is just one Arch Duke Ferdinand scenario. The number of possible scenarios are infinite due to the massive complexity of the many moving parts. And of course many of them lead to nothing happening. But based on history we are due another period of destruction, and based on history all the indicators are that we are entering one.

It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. How could I sit in a nice café in London, writing this, without wanting to run away. How could people read it and make sarcastic and dismissive comments about how pro-Remain people should stop whining, and how we shouldn’t blame everything on Brexit. Others will read this and sneer at me for saying America is in great shape, that Trump is a possible future Hitler (and yes, Godwin’s Law. But my comparison is to another narcissistic, charismatic leader fanning flames of hatred until things spiral out of control). It’s easy to jump to conclusions that oppose pessimistic predictions based on the weight of history and learning. Trump won against the other Republicans in debates by countering their claims by calling them names and dismissing them. It’s an easy route but the wrong one.

Ignoring and mocking the experts , as people are doing around Brexit and Trump’s campaign, is no different to ignoring a doctor who tells you to stop smoking, and then finding later you’ve developed incurable cancer. A little thing leads to an unstoppable destruction that could have been prevented if you’d listened and thought a bit. But people smoke, and people die from it. That is the way of the human.

So I feel it’s all inevitable. I don’t know what it will be, but we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover, and move on. The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end — for the thousands of Turkish teachers who just got fired, for the Turkish journalists and lawyers in prison, for the Russian dissidents in gulags, for people lying wounded in French hospitals after terrorist attacks, for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.

What can we do? Well, again, looking back, probably not much. The liberal intellectuals are always in the minority. See Clay Shirky’s Twitter Storm on this point. The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights. They don’t fight dirty. They are terrible at appealing to the populace. They are less violent, so end up in prisons, camps, and graves. We need to beware not to become divided (see: Labour party), we need to avoid getting lost in arguing through facts and logic, and counter the populist messages of passion and anger with our own similar messages. We need to understand and use social media. We need to harness a different fear. Fear of another World War nearly stopped World War 2, but didn’t. We need to avoid our own echo chambers. Trump and Putin supporters don’t read the Guardian, so writing there is just reassuring our friends. We need to find a way to bridge from our closed groups to other closed groups, try to cross the ever widening social divides.

(Perhaps I’m just writing this so I can be remembered by history as one of the people who saw it coming.)

https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/his...ext-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.mqjr8eii9

 

[T-72]

Norbert Hofer, Marine Le Pen and Gert Wilders ?

 

[Saho]

Europe, next 12 months:

- Italy referendum
- Austria election
- Netherlands election
- France election
- Germany election
- UK: Article 50

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Nice write up really awesome read , I wish I could articulate as clearly as you did.

Well in term of imminent destruction , we will certainly see another wave of Virus outbreak , it is bound to happen as our medicines are starting to loose ammunity on year by year basis. The vaccines and medicines which were so prominent 100 year ago are no longer that effective and now require combination of 2-3 pills to get job done here is why

VIRUS life form in our bodies are evolving , may it be intelligent design or will of higher power VIRUS /Becteria in our bodies are there to control Human population , it seems after a defined amoungt of time we reach a point when the VIRUS wins vs our Antibodies.

So no matter how technically evolved we will become with Technology , we will eventually find a strain of VIRUS so powerful that we will not be able to contain it , Big pharmaceutical companies have already stated this clearly

That is what happened to Dinasors post meteor hit on earth , the remaining ones perished due to outbreak of VIRUS


As for your theory of recurrance of War in Human History , it is 100% accurate. We have fought tirelessly beyond 10,000 year history we tout about so often yet our minds are not designed to go beyond 70-100 year periods. We can't even remember the key people from Past 100 years. Yes it is true we fall , we fight and we die , and we forget that is the cycle we have followed as humans for god knows since when.

We do yeild a power , and that power now is called Books and Internet , and knowledge which allows us to deeply study the past and learn lessons to avoid confrontations. However , such ideas are not always shared by many. I mean just the other day I stumbled upon some destructive videos on war in Syria and people dying yet when I changed channels I saw people just enjoying life , watching soccer games and enjoying life. I flipped the channel I saw people crying on dead bodies , I flipped the channel then I saw folks enjoying music and life eating happily. Somehow that moment relates to the little story your included in your article about Plague and how it changed society. In the link that talks about Plague and how people and family bounds were broken due to fear. Moden day plague is "War".

Will there be WW3 sure why not it happened before just was called something else , but it has always happened before in past.

What event will trigger is no one knows but it always starts with some of the most minior events in history or the most obvious there is no defined way how things start.

I wish I has the answer to say no we learned our lesson or things have changed , unfortunately the war I have seen in last 16 years or the ones before even have made me firmly believe we don't learn as humans

So pick your choice

a) VIRUS
b) WW3 event
c) Commet or Metor (You can also add UFO suprise)
d) 'AI' Army out of control, sure it would seem like nice idea at first Super computer AI commanding forces


If it makes people sleep well in night, certain nations (You know who) have copies of plague in their hidden facilities , just incase you ever wondered it may not resurface


As for EU or no EU , well globalization in its current form will be rejected by many countries whose local eocnomies have suffered due to mass globalization never really understood point of EU to be honest seems like a BIG wall between EU and world restricting trade other benefits

British / French / German the more dominant group from Europe tend to change alliances and watch for their own interest and that is completely fine. Ideas like EU don't work for very long due to various social and linguistic difficulties and of course cultural differences

US in general is different from Europe they think differently

When you view the problem really from a simplistic point of view we only have so much food!!! in planet , while our Population is going thru the roof !!!!!

Can't have corporations and globalization take food away from table

Russia ...hmmm they are just Russia they chill in their own place like bear. Anyone throws a bananna at Russia they will get angry like a bear and it will be war

All Corporations are busying making the Next Artificial Intelligence Genius Commander
How many are busy to care for refugee or war victims ?

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

The world order as we know it is coming to an end. And, a new one will rise up. Countries are folding into their known spheres...

 

[-SINAN-]

It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.

My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years. To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).

So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world.

But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.”

But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.

My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.

Then after the War to end all Wars, we went and had another one. Again, for a historian it was quite predictable. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred. Soon the masses start to move as one, without any logic driving their actions, and the whole becomes unstoppable.

That was Hitler, but it was also Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Mugabe, and so many more. Mugabe is a very good case in point. He whipped up national anger and hatred towards the land owning white minority (who happened to know how to run farms), and seized their land to redistribute to the people, in a great populist move which in the end unravelled the economy and farming industry and left the people in possession of land, but starving. See also the famines created by the Soviet Union, and the one caused by the Chinese Communists last century in which 20–40 million people died. It seems inconceivable that people could create a situation in which tens of millions of people die without reason, but we do it again and again.

But at the time people don’t realise they’re embarking on a route that will lead to a destruction period. They think they’re right, they’re cheered on by jeering angry mobs, their critics are mocked. This cycle, the one we saw for example from the Treaty of Versaille, to the rise of Hitler, to the Second World War, appears to be happening again. But as with before, most people cannot see it because:

1. They are only looking at the present, not the past or future

2. They are only looking immediately around them, not at how events connect globally

3. Most people don’t read, think, challenge, or hear opposing views

Trump is doing this in America. Those of us with some oversight from history can see it happening. Read this brilliant, long essay in the New York magazine to understand how Plato described all this, and it is happening just as he predicted. Trump says he will Make America Great Again, when in fact America is currently great, according to pretty well any statistics. He is using passion, anger, and rhetoric in the same way all his predecessors did — a charismatic narcissist who feeds on the crowd to become ever stronger, creating a cult around himself. You can blame society, politicians, the media, for America getting to the point that it’s ready for Trump, but the bigger historical picture is that history generally plays out the same way each time someone like him becomes the boss.

On a wider stage, zoom out some more, Russia is a dictatorship with a charismatic leader using fear and passion to establish a cult around himself. Turkey is now there too. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia are heading that way, and across Europe more Trumps and Putins are waiting in the wings, in fact funded by Putin, waiting for the popular tide to turn their way.

We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction. We see Brexit, Trump, Putin in isolation. The world does not work that way — all things are connected and affecting each other. I have pro-Brexit friends who say ‘oh, you’re going to blame that on Brexit too??’ But they don’t realise that actually, yes, historians will trace neat lines from apparently unrelated events back to major political and social shifts like Brexit.

Brexit — a group of angry people winning a fight — easily inspires other groups of angry people to start a similar fight, empowered with the idea that they may win. That alone can trigger chain reactions. A nuclear explosion is not caused by one atom splitting, but by the impact of the first atom that splits causing multiple other atoms near it to split, and they in turn causing multiple atoms to split. The exponential increase in atoms splitting, and their combined energy is the bomb. That is how World War One started and, ironically how World War Two ended.

An example of how Brexit could lead to a nuclear war could be this:

Brexit in the UK causes Italy or France to have a similar referendum. Le Pen wins an election in France. Europe now has a fractured EU. The EU, for all its many awful faults, has prevented a war in Europe for longer than ever before. The EU is also a major force in suppressing Putin’s military ambitions. European sanctions on Russia really hit the economy, and helped temper Russia’s attacks on Ukraine (there is a reason bad guys always want a weaker European Union). Trump wins in the US. Trump becomes isolationist, which weakens NATO. He has already said he would not automatically honour NATO commitments in the face of a Russian attack on the Baltics.

With a fractured EU, and weakened NATO, Putin, facing an ongoing economic and social crisis in Russia, needs another foreign distraction around which to rally his people. He funds far right anti-EU activists in Latvia, who then create a reason for an uprising of the Russian Latvians in the East of the country (the EU border with Russia). Russia sends ‘peace keeping forces’ and ‘aid lorries’ into Latvia, as it did in Georgia, and in Ukraine. He annexes Eastern Latvia as he did Eastern Ukraine (Crimea has the same population as Latvia, by the way).

A divided Europe, with the leaders of France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and others now pro-Russia, anti-EU, and funded by Putin, overrule calls for sanctions or a military response. NATO is slow to respond: Trump does not want America to be involved, and a large part of Europe is indifferent or blocking any action. Russia, seeing no real resistance to their actions, move further into Latvia, and then into Eastern Estonia and Lithuania. The Baltic States declare war on Russia and start to retaliate, as they have now been invaded so have no choice. Half of Europe sides with them, a few countries remain neutral, and a few side with Russia. Where does Turkey stand on this? How does ISIS respond to a new war in Europe? Who uses a nuclear weapon first?

This is just one Arch Duke Ferdinand scenario. The number of possible scenarios are infinite due to the massive complexity of the many moving parts. And of course many of them lead to nothing happening. But based on history we are due another period of destruction, and based on history all the indicators are that we are entering one.

It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. How could I sit in a nice café in London, writing this, without wanting to run away. How could people read it and make sarcastic and dismissive comments about how pro-Remain people should stop whining, and how we shouldn’t blame everything on Brexit. Others will read this and sneer at me for saying America is in great shape, that Trump is a possible future Hitler (and yes, Godwin’s Law. But my comparison is to another narcissistic, charismatic leader fanning flames of hatred until things spiral out of control). It’s easy to jump to conclusions that oppose pessimistic predictions based on the weight of history and learning. Trump won against the other Republicans in debates by countering their claims by calling them names and dismissing them. It’s an easy route but the wrong one.

Ignoring and mocking the experts , as people are doing around Brexit and Trump’s campaign, is no different to ignoring a doctor who tells you to stop smoking, and then finding later you’ve developed incurable cancer. A little thing leads to an unstoppable destruction that could have been prevented if you’d listened and thought a bit. But people smoke, and people die from it. That is the way of the human.

So I feel it’s all inevitable. I don’t know what it will be, but we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover, and move on. The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end — for the thousands of Turkish teachers who just got fired, for the Turkish journalists and lawyers in prison, for the Russian dissidents in gulags, for people lying wounded in French hospitals after terrorist attacks, for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.

What can we do? Well, again, looking back, probably not much. The liberal intellectuals are always in the minority. See Clay Shirky’s Twitter Storm on this point. The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights. They don’t fight dirty. They are terrible at appealing to the populace. They are less violent, so end up in prisons, camps, and graves. We need to beware not to become divided (see: Labour party), we need to avoid getting lost in arguing through facts and logic, and counter the populist messages of passion and anger with our own similar messages. We need to understand and use social media. We need to harness a different fear. Fear of another World War nearly stopped World War 2, but didn’t. We need to avoid our own echo chambers. Trump and Putin supporters don’t read the Guardian, so writing there is just reassuring our friends. We need to find a way to bridge from our closed groups to other closed groups, try to cross the ever widening social divides.

(Perhaps I’m just writing this so I can be remembered by history as one of the people who saw it coming.)

https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/his...ext-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.mqjr8eii9

Summary please.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Well to be honest looking at older maps , of Europe so many countries that existed no long exist anymore
or world wide , maps always change borders always change. Kings come and kings go