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Brexit! Means! Brexit!

So: Brexit means Brexit means, apparently, a choice between a deal negotiated by Theresa May's government which is broadly as appealing as eating a shit sandwich, or leaving the EU with no transitional arrangement in place, the equivalent of stripping naked and rolling around in the contents of an entire sewage farm.

(Consequences of May's deal include: millions of people lose the right to move freely and live in the UK or EU territory they've relocated to, British citizens lose the right to move freely through 27 other countries, the UK has to abide by EU rules we don't get to vote on for an indefinite period, and a bunch of other unpalatable issues summed up, ironically, by pro-brexit politicians as "loss of sovereignty". Consequences of no deal make May's deal look like a walk in the park; food and medicine shortages, flights grounded, currency crisis, companies going bust because inputs and outputs are unavailable or suddenly subject to high tariffs, troops on the street, state of civil emergency likely.)

My money is on—eventually—either a parliamentary coup and a new Conservative PM who unilaterally withdraws May's Article 50 submission, or a period of chaos leading up to a second referendum (at which point the Leave side will be soundly defeated).

But. In the meantime. What options, however implausible, might make Brexit work?

Let me give you some ideas. (Then you can try your hand at 'make Brexit Brexit' in the comments!)

  1. Scotland/North Korea Swap

Scotland: fiercely pro-EU, spent most of the 500 years before the Union of Crowns in alliance with the French, politically a bunch of gay-hugging pinko commie socialists, but unfortunately indispensible to England because the Royal Navy nuclear deterrent is based at Faslane.

North Korea: fiercely independent, not even remotely an ally of France, has nukes and Juche ideology (which is pretty similar to British Conservativism, or at least British Conservativism minus the carpetbaggers and disaster capitalists), similar crinkle-cut highland landscape to Scotland.

A quick look at the big picture (which, according to the proponents of Brexit, is the only picture that matters) indicates that North Korea is a really good fit for England's requirement for a poor northern neighbour they can bully into tagging along on any world conquest junkets—at least compared to Nicola Sturgeon's wee LGBT-positive social democratic Scandinavian wannabe nation. So we propose to swap Scotland for North Korea. (How? Oh, the experts can figure out how to do it. Don't bother me with details, details are for nerds.)

With North Korea's votes, the Brexit arm of the Conservative party will have a baked-in majority in event of any attempt to re-run the referendum, plus a new happy home for the Royal Navy Trident missiles, a nuclear test range in the highlands (slightly leaky, one previous owner), and a whole bunch of party cadres to turn loose on any pinko back-sliders in exchange for a daily bowl of nettle soup and a moldy turnip.

(Quite what South Korea will make of their new kilt-wearing Buckfast-drinking northern neighbours is anybody's guess, but who cares? This isn't about them, this is about England.)

  1. De-decimalization

(Coincidentally, the key to rebuilding the British computer industry!)

Support for Brexit correlates with a number of social issues: support for reintroducing the death penalty, selling goods in pounds and ounces, banning CFL light bulbs in favour of filament bulbs, blue passports, permitting smoking in pubs and restaurants, and reverting to the pre-1971 non-decimal currency.

Interestingly, before the traitorious unpatriotic running-dog Euro-satrap Cameron government permitted Japan's SoftBank to buy the company responsible, more than 90% of the microprocessors sold in the world ran on licensed versions of a British computing architecture, ARM. No, really: the British computing industry used to be a world leader. And it still could be, again! But we need to give it a post-Brexit shot in the arm, a home mover advantage if you like, and also teach our kids how to do mental arithmetic (it'll give them moral fibre, along with the beatings and the cold gruel).

I propose to de-decimalize the currency after Brexit. (When Sterling crashes because our economy is in the shitter it won't make any difference anyway.) The new currency will consist, as of yore, of pounds, shillings, and pence. But the conversion ratio will be all new, so there will be:

23 shillings in £1 (pre-1971: only 20 shillings—this is because of inflation!)

11 pence in 1 shilling (to counterbalance the extra shillings in the pound)

3 ha'pennies in 1 pence

Note that these are all prime numbers. The new, post-nationalization ARM-13 architecture will have a separate quantum currency coprocessor for handling interconversion and factoring of British currency units; this will effectively lock out foreign-made computers from the British market, giving us a gigantic first-mover advantage (once we convince India to ditch the rupee/lakh/crore currency counting system which is far too rational, but I'm sure they'll tag along willingly once we explain the advantages of the Empire 2.0 project). We will of course also have to revive the Lyons Tea Company's computing arm to sell the LEO mainframes) required by anyone wanting to trade with us.

Oh yeah, once we de-decimalize we will introduce the death penalty for trading in BitCoin, thus killing two birds with one stone. Er, noose.

  1. Invade Gibraltar

What this country needs (to distract attention) is a Short Victorious War. We obviously don't have the military might to send a task force to the South Atlantic these days, but I suspect a couple of C-130s full of Hereford's finest could credibly occupy the Rock. Once emplaced, we can fly in all the time-expired Harpoon anti-shipping missiles that are being offloaded from the Type-45 destroyers (no longer certified to carry them) and put them in the Grand Battery. If necessary we can probably beef them up with some second-hand Iranian Noor) anti-shipping missiles from Syria.

We can then impose customs charges on all goods entering and leaving the Mediterranean Sea via the Straits, and send the Astute class submarines to blockade the Suez Canal and deter smugglers. (Memo to Admiralty: remember to get the Ministry of Justice to update their letters of Marque. Also: once out from under the ECJ we can carry a couple of spare judges in the wardroom to run the Admiralty Courts that will steal everything that isn't nailed down impose fines to a level necessary to fund the venture.)

Anyway, I submit that any of the above proposals is more credible at this point than a successful Brexit on the terms negotiated by Theresa May—or a no deal Brexit, for that matter, although they do have a few minor drawbacks in the practicality department.

What can you come up with?

1047 Comments

1:

Yes, precisely.

Nice that someone understands the problem....

2:

As we have been repeatedly assured, innovative IT techniques will resolve all known Brexit issues (and presumably some unknown ones too). So one should look to IT for an answer. And an answer is indeed readily available, without any geopolitical contortions. To quote wise words attributed to Anatol Holt:

"A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work."

Voila! All is well.

3:

WITHOUT reading what Charlie has written. May KNOWS QUITE WELL that it's a shit sandwich, but the rabid breixteers still can't or won't face reailty [ The historical precedent for this sort of lunacy is the lead-up to the reform of the Corn Laws in (?) 1848 (?) ] Howver, it is essential that this fails the Commons, which it will ... We then have (just about ) 3 options - take the shit sandwich, crash out ( total disaster ) or "Remain". Once this does fail the Commons, then a 2nd Referendum is going to be almost inevitable - unless we get an extreme Brexiteer ( Like FUCKWIT Corbyn ) as PM. Remmeber Corbyn is stuck in either 1972 or 1934 & is as rabid as Rees-Smaug about leaving, for opposite reasons, both equally disastrous for the country, though. My money is on a second Referendum , with about a 55:45% actual majority for remain & "crash out" nowhere ... We shall see.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

WITH reading Charlie's comments ....

1: “North Korea” - not funny, not clever & not true. There are plenty of Brit Con-Party members who are horrified by this – e.g. Ken Clarke. You forgot the bad side of the SNP – their nasty habit of wanting to spy on us EVEN MORE than the tories or Labour.

2: Oops! Do I detect a slight case of “A Modest Proposal” here? OK, I get it, we are playing this for black humour, but I’ll leave my answer to # Para one, stand, just for the laughs …

3: Actually, I do wonder about re-introducing Letters of Marque & Reprise ……

4: Given the insanity of the whole thing, I think instant decriminalisation of AT LEAST Cannabis would make much more sense. After all, no matter how stoned you were, you couldn’t come up with a loopier set of proposals, could you?

4:

(1) Sink the French fleet. I realise that won't actually help but it is sort of the default setting. Plus we haven't had a chance since Mers-el-Kébir in 1940. Then demand Calais back for a laugh.

(2) Post the keys to Stormont to Leo Varadkar, with a Christmas Card and the covering note 'this shower of shit is your problem now - sorry'.

...oh you meant seriously? Join EFTA. We haven't formally left the EEA but being either in EFTA or the EU is implicit in the agreement. So by joining EFTA we get to stay in the EEA (the economic bit which most people care about) making it as painless as possible. Some of the hardliners on both sides will kick off but they'll do that whatever happens so fuck 'em.

Then in a few years when everyone wonders what all the fuss was about and the mutual recriminations have died down we can rejoin, again as painlessly as possible. Dull I know.

5:

De-decimalisation does not go far enough. We need to repeal the 1824 Weights and Measures Act (the establishment of the Imperial weights and measures system) and go back to traditional methods.

For example wet (fresh) herring was counted by the short hundred (100), while red (smoked/salted) herring was counted by the long hundred. A hundredweight, as everyone knows, is 108 pounds.

This will have the advantage of bringing the British gallon back to the volume of a Queen Anne gallon, perhaps more vulgarly known as an American gallon.

6:

"Oh yeah, once we de-decimalize we will introduce the death penalty for trading in BitCoin, thus killing two birds with one stone. Er, noose."

Stop making that option look so attractive!

7:

Sadly, it's not just the ARM architecture that belongs to the Japanese, they will probably own the LEO IP as well, as LEO was merged into ICT, later into ICL, which was fully taken over Fujitsu in 1998. My solution would be to declare the Isle of Wight to be Brexit Island, and move the whole, still-committed Brexit voting population there to form a go-getting, entrepreneurial society (like the much-admired Singapore that Brexiteers keeping mentioning). Population density would be similar to Manila in the Philippines, so clearly livable, though shipping in the chlorinated chicken from the US, cheap lamb from Australia & New Zealand might stretch the port facilities, but I'm sure a technical solution can be found.

8:

Another vote here for making Bitcoin (and anything else that uses voodoo maths to generate pseudo-wealth) illegal. Including the money market etc...

Re Leo, my uncle actually saw the thing running once. But the guy who was supposed to be demoing it to him (and other people from the then gas board) basically left it running and went away, so after about half an hour they went off and eventually bought an IBM mainframe.

9:

OK, serious suggestions time: the deal negotiated by May is a shit sandwich and should be dropped. Default to a no-deal Brexit and trade on WTO terms, with reciprocal zero-tariff deals being offered. All EU citizens currently in the UK get to stay, as per current EU law.

Then just wait.

The thing is this, if you take your eyes off the current situation and look at the wider EU, the picture isn't a nice one at all. The Euro currency is one of these ideas that looks absolutely spiffing until you try to implement it, at which point the flaws become apparent. Almost none of the current Euro member states actually met the strict convergence criteria when they joined; Germany certainly didn't and does not do now.

Germany loves the Euro because as a currency it is weaker than what the Mark would be if Germany weren't in the Euro; this is really great for a heavily export-dependent economy. Most other places are lumbered with a too-strong currency which cripples their exporting ability, and overheats their economy with stupidly-cheap credit. Ireland is suffering under this, and Italy currently has stupidly-high levels of youth unemployment.

Youth unemployment in a Western nation is a sign that the national government has truly cocked up. If you have lots and lots of unemployed but well educated young people then you have a very good, very strong workforce waiting to happen; couple that with cheap energy and Italy should be teeming with small start-up businesses. It isn't, because the Euro makes exports too expensive and thus starting businesses isn't worth it.

Eastern European EU states are also revolting. They were quite recently under the yoke of the Soviet Union, and they know just how nasty an overarching imperial government can get when someone tries to make it leave well alone. They left the Soviet Union vowing never to bend the knee to such an empire ever again, and here is the EU busy trying the same routine.

Trying to impose refugee quotas sounds an awful lot like the old Soviet trick of importing shedloads of loyal Russian voters to swing loyalty in a vassal state. They are rightly not having any of this, and having the likes of Germany firstly inviting waves of migrants to traipse through their territory, then demanding that they look after these completely unwanted migrants is far, far too much.

France's president is trying to make France green by imposing fuel taxes. His citizens aren't taking this lying down, and his days are politically numbered.

Even in Germany, Alternativ Fur Deutschland is gaining popularity. The UK is actually just about the only EU nation that lacks a nationalistic, anti-EU party gaining political support (and then only because we managed to put UKIP back in its box).

Folks, there's an awful lot of revolt and discontent knocking about in the EU at present. All we have to do is wait while all the other rebellions play themselves out.

10:

Those who shouted most loudly about sovereignty in the referendum debate and before, who are having fits about the ECJ's inclusion in the withdrawal bill go further back than you. They introduce a bill to restore sovereignty properly, that is to the body of the sovereign. They restore all the old titles that have gradually being stripped away by those lily-livered pusillanimous traitors of years gone by, so we will once again be ruled over by Queen Elizabeth, Empress of India, Queen of France, Terror of the Scots, Defender Fidelis, and a few others I've doubtless forgotten. But there are a nice trio in there to stir up Johnny Foreigner donchaknow. We'll beat them on the battlefields of Eton, playing wiff-waff!

11:
  • Charge a royalty for the use of the English language.

It's clearly the most obvious British Intellectual Property out there, so clearly people from other countries should be paying a fee to use it, right? Maybe a bit of a discount for the colonies (as per Empire 2.0).

12:

British intelligence services start supporting far right populist movements on the continent in an effort to fill the EU parliament with fascists and make Brexit seem like it was a good idea in retrospect.

13:

OK, serious suggestions time: the deal negotiated by May is a shit sandwich and should be dropped. Default to a no-deal Brexit and trade on WTO terms, with reciprocal zero-tariff deals being offered. All EU citizens currently in the UK get to stay, as per current EU law.

Then just wait.

You have no idea, do you?

Hint: THIS IS A MATTER OF FUCKING LIFE AND DEATH. IF THE UK DOES WHAT YOU SUGGEST, MANY PEOPLE WILL DIE WITHIN A MATTER OF WEEKS. Quite possibly including me. Hint: medicines will run out. 'Nother hint: food is going to run out and/or where available prices will rise by between 10% (low-balling it) and doubling. The "plans" for a no-deal Brexit start with activating the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) — that's your keyword right there: it's a draconian law that replaces all the 20th century civil defense/state of emergency laws.

Yes. HMG considers a no deal Brexit to be grounds for declaring a state of emergency and bringing in the military. That's how serious this shit is. Suggesting we just shrug and nope out of the EU is not an option unless you want a lot of people to die.

A no-deal Brexit would be the biggest crisis to hit the UK since the second world war, which killed two thirds of a million people (in the UK) and bankrupted the nation so badly we had food rationing until 1954.

(PS: your news sources from Europe are weirdly biased. You know that in Germany the AfD is picking up fewer votes than the Greens, for example? Or that in Poland a good chunk of the reason there's a loony right wing government in power — with a voting base in the rural elderly — is that the youngsters voted with their feet and used the EU free movement regs to go somewhere more welcoming? The crumblies are slowly dying: the noisy neo-Nazi headbangers are more photogenic but don't have much clout overall. There's about as much discontent in the EU right now as in the USA, with consequences you're entirely familiar with (see also: the Tangerine Shitgibbon in the White House). That doesn't mean its victory is inevitable, or that the EU is about to collapse.)

14:

I see 2 issues with (1):-

a) The number of Englandshirers who don't speak Korean! b) Less critically, the number of Scots who don't speak Korean either (this is less critical because a reasonable number of South Koreans speak English).

15:

Can't comment too much on the unemployment in Western Europe (which, looking in EuroStat, doesn't seem to be exactly right), but being from Eastern Europe, there's basically NO similarity between USSR and EU. For Eastern Europe, EU is basically a saving force that's able to keep in check the local corrupted elite, and forces down a lot of useful laws.

There are of course idiocies like the ton of problems with the current copyright directive, but that's small peas compared to stuff like the Warsaw pact, COMECON and all those wonderful things.

16:

Which causes other issues. Historically the sovereignty of Scotland vested in the body politic rather than in the person of the ruler (unlike in England), and it was not re-assigned in the "Treaty of Union Between Scotland and England" (1706CE) or in the "Act of Union with England" (1707CE). "Reclaiming the sovereignty of the UK" would therefore require a reversion to the position where the monarch is the sovereign of Englandshire, but an ordinary citizen in Scotland unless the Scots voted to make that individual the monarch.

Since multiple candidates could stand for the post, I rather like the prospect of "Anne 1, Queen of Scots" happening.

17:

Charlie 'Nother hint: food is going to run out and/or where available prices will rise by between 10% (low-balling it) and doubling. VERY FORTUNATELY - this is going to be the first 2 weeks of April, so there will be virtually NOTHING AT ALL visible to steal from our allotment plots. But, I will expect attempts & break-ins, nonetheless. NOT going to be funny. Medicines: May herself depends on these ( Diabetes ) so I doubt it will actually happen - she's more likely to witdraw At 50 &/or call a 2nd Referendum first .... I assume that the rabids are not taking the threat of the CC_Act being declared seriously, because they are fuckwits?

18:

a) The number of Englandshirers who don't speak Korean!

It's got to be easier than Glaswegian! '-)

19:

Well, let's look at the stated aims of the Leave campaign.

  • Take back control
  • Sovereignty, which is fortunately a very easy concept that everyone understands innately
  • Secede from the ECHR
  • More money for the NHS
  • Bring back the death penalty

How are we to achieve all these aims, when leaving the Single Market will cause the economy, and therefore incomes and therefore the NI take to fall?

Easy. The NHS can generate a healthy budget surplus selling the organs and blood of young people to super-rich overseas purchasers like Peter Thiel. But how are these commodities to be sourced? Slamming shut the borders and kicking out all the forrins means that the most obvious source will have been ejected by the time "Plan Briss" can be enacted. Obviously there will be the opportunity to winkle the odd Spanish or Polish person out a priest-hole, but that's nowhere near the kind of volume we need.

No, the obvious thing to do is rely on Britain's glorious pastoral history, and farm the young people ourselves! We simply have to maximise the reproductive potential of the country. Now, obviously, those who actually voted for Brexit can only have an oversight role in this exercise, either due to the menopause or the difficulty of importing little blue pills under WTO rules. But those under 50 can be encouraged to "lay back and think of England" (particularly those in NI and Scotland, for whom it will be a helpful reminder of Who's In Charge).

The best thing about this plan is that we already have a decent, otherwise-useless stock of people young enough to interest the likes of Mr Thiel, so the plan can start immediately on exiting the ECHR's purview. The reclaiming of the UK's sovereignty will help immensely here, by allowing us to pass a law simply making it a crime retroactively to have voted, advocated, or supported Remain in any way. The reinstatement of the death penalty for such "heinous treason" (© Every Daily Mail Comment Since June 2016) is a simple and proportionate response, and guarantees a fulsome supply of... ahem... raw materials. The wheels of commerce can of course be greased by encouraging the general populace to "Snitch on a SociaEUlist" and they will by this time be so desperately hungry that an incentive as small as a loaf of bread should be more than sufficient.

What a beautifully elegant and integrated solution to all of the challenges presented by the seemingly-incompatible Leave promises! My heart leaps at the bright future of this glorious nation! FREEDOM!

20:

May is very unlikely to be relying on the standard NHS/pharmacy supply chains if it comes to that. It really wouldn't be her problem.

21:

"...unless we get an extreme Brexiteer ( Like FUCKWIT Corbyn ) as PM."

It is highly amusing to see people slag on Corbyn as the Tories drive the UK off of the cliff.

22:

"Medicines: May herself depends on these ( Diabetes ) so I doubt it will actually happen - she's more likely to witdraw At 50 &/or call a 2nd Referendum first ...."

Greg, you know full well that no matter what the laws, the top 0.1% of society will never go hungry or suffer shortages.

23:

Who needs to invade Gibraltar? Just mobilise the Royal Gibraltar Regiment, and stock up the tunnels*.

  • One of our syndicate at the School of Infantry for the Platoon Commanders' Course was from Gibraltar; the course started on January 3rd, we spent a continuous week outdoors on exercise on Salisbury Plain, and he'd never seen snow before. Poor sod was wearing everything he had from day 2... (Mario, why have you got your NBC suit on? Did we miss a chemical alarm?)

** The tunnels are apparently quite impressive, and above-ground the barracks still exist for a full battalion; my old unit has done a several annual training exercises there.

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

24:

I think y'all are making complicated something simple.

Aristocracy is a system in which a small aristocratic class owns everything of consequence and charges everyone else rent to live, with the rents set to the maximal level which doesn't obviously reduce rental revenues year-over-year.

The problem (if you want to be an aristocrat) is that the whole thing rested on ownership of land, which is expensive (fences! beating the bounds!) and obvious. (There's all this normative narrative about how we don't want nobility, democracy, freedom, etc.) Sometime around 1980 they figured out that you don't even want to own land; you can do the whole thing with a legal and financial framework and you can get people to compete to pay higher rents. (This is terrible for the broader economy but they profoundly fail to care; they will be rich, and people will have to do what they say, whatever it is.)

Brexit is a "the entire UK should be an aristocracy" movement; the "and we should be in charge" parts are really secondary to the "there should be an aristocracy, which means nobody not in the aristocracy gets to make laws". Since the EU is relatively tough to bribe and like any confederal system run by a complex bureaucracy hates aristocrats, getting out of the EU is step one.

There's nothing else to it. A hard brexit is the preferred brexit, and it was May's job to deliver that. May has succeeded, because the clock has been run down enough that there isn't time to hold another referendum. (You can see all the commercial "pull the rip cord" planning actuating because this is the point in time all their careful analysis indicates is the actual decision point, and now it's time to really spend the money involved in the unwelcome contingency.) Parliament isn't going to do anything useful because Parliament has no functioning narrative with which to describe doing anything. Parliament is deadlocked on "You have to admit Thatcher was bad" versus "You have to admit money makes you good" with side notes in "we don't want an aristocracy or any other saxon nonsense" and however you'd summarize the DUP in neutral language.

There isn't time to get a sensible narrative going, either; even if it wasn't swimming upstream against decades of tabloid narrative about why you should be terrified of everything.

25:

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTICE

I'm seeing too many opinions about how badly Brexit is going to affect some individual issue (e.g. Theresa May's insulin hoard), and not enough suggestions for how to make Brexit work.

Can we please stick to the topic? Kudos to Jamesface at comment 19 for taking the challenge seriously, but I'm really waiting for someone to explain how Elon Musk can save the day, or maybe the USA could revoke the Declaration of Independence and invite Lizzie Windsor to conduct a reverse-takeover and send in the US Marine Corps ...

26:

The British royal claim to the throne of France wasn't exactly "stripped away". It was more a case of George III deciding on his own account to stop using the title, what with France not actually having a throne any more and the Act of Union with Ireland giving him a new set of names anyway. It could, I think, quite plausibly be argued that (a) he was having one of his funny turns at the time so it doesn't count, and (b) there was some legal folderol required to make such things official which nobody could be bothered to do, so it twice doesn't count.

So it seems to me that one possibility would be (1) to assert the above position officially, and say the claim is still going, we just haven't bothered thinking about it for 200 years; (2) declare that since Germany doesn't have a monarch any more but British royalty is of German derivation, we claim the throne of Germany as well; (3) declare war to enforce those claims; (4) having won it, assert that since France and Germany, which are the most important bits of the EU, are now part of Britain, the rest of the EU is now part of the British empire. Oh, and (5) name a railway station after the climactic battle.

27:

Oh, and (5) name a railway station after the climactic battle.

Wouldn't that mean something like renaming Euston as "Munchen"? ;-)

28:

Er, at least some of us think that there is no satisfactory way of making Brexit work, and voted accordingly.

29:

Can we please stick to the topic? Kudos to Jamesface at comment 19 for taking the challenge seriously, but I'm really waiting for someone to explain how Elon Musk can save the day, or maybe the USA could revoke the Declaration of Independence and invite Lizzie Windsor to conduct a reverse-takeover and send in the US Marine Corps ...

The Commonwealth as a whole has a (taken with the utmost seriousness!) agreement to always use the same succession law.

You can easily argue that the succession law if the fount of sovereignty; we may all be running our very own nodes of the Westminster System with our own root passwords and everything, but the original certificates of sovereign authenticity arises from the succession.

Therefore, all the sovereignty nodes are members of the same class of nodes, and substitutable with one another. (All the Commonwealth monarchs are distinct, but they're all substitutable, too.)

Malta is already an EU member. Malta is a Commonwealth country, and politically active as such in this century.

If the Westminster Parliament passes a bill dissolving the English sovereignty node (certainly possible! the Crown is whoever Parliament says it is, Parliament can set it to NULL), and then for the avoidance of hardship, confusion, and unrest, recognizing that a monarch is required for good government and stable order, declares that the United Kingdom shall invite the Maltese Monarch to take the former Crown of England, accepting therewith the suzerainty of Maltese law and custom over the pre-existing and now dissolved English law (you can't have law without a sovereign!), probably sending ERII on a nice Mediterranean yacht trip to do something formal and stately in the bargain (leave Charles at home; send the photogenic grandsons along with), poof!, there you go.

England has absolutely left the EU. Gone, byesies, exited. All are delighted; Brexit has without question taken place, and "England" is now a sort of social club.

The adoption of Maltese sovereignty puts the nations of the island of Great Britain into the EU. (It's not objectionable conquest; it's a democratically determined action among free peoples! totes legit!) It being somewhat administratively inconvenient to have all the bureaucracy located on Malta, perhaps there will be some subsequent administrative adjustments. It certainly doesn't make sense to try to administer the northern regions from London, which is undergoing a sort of real-estate implosion. It won't take all that long to sort this all out, and goodness but the revenue stream is improved by having certain persons tried in ecclesiastical court by the Knights of St. John for failing to pay their tithes, er, taxes.

30:

The adoption of Maltese sovereignty puts the nations of the island of Great Britain into the EU.

Wouldn't that make the Maltese cross? Would we all become Maltesers in that case?

31:

Ooh yes, doesn't Prince Charles have a reasonable claim to be King of Greece (by way of his Dad, original title "Philip of Macedonia")?

32:

Ukrainian 'solution' ?

Scotland as crimea (critical naval asset), and NI as donbass.

Trafalgar Sq as maidan.

UKip as ukrofascists.

Irish army can shell belfast occasionally if required. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/28/vladimir-putin-ukraine-crisis-eu

33:

Paws: see also Swift, Jonathan, "A Modest Proposal".

34:

So, there's a simple solution to this. Trump is kind of suggestible, isn't he, and he really doesn't like the EU (at least the Germans and the French) of course because they keep humiliating him in such a way that even he realises. So dispatch a suitable royal (probably the Queen, definitely not Harry due to his unfortunate choice of wife) to have some words in his ear: the solution is that the EU should simply not exist and there's this big red button (a much bigger & more powerful one than anyone else has) by which he can arrange that.

Since France has nukes, they need to be targetted first, but it should be reasonably possible to reduce continental Europe to a wasteland with no serious chance of reprisal. The Russians will probably help if it's presented the right way.

This deals with the whole inconvenient having-to-negotiate crap that brexiteers somehow didn't see coming: even brexiteers should be up to negotiating good terms with a wasteland dotted wit pile of radioactive corpses. There will be fallout of course and a lot of deaths in the UK, but this too is convenient: we can simply declare martial war and run the country at our convenience, really indefinitely. Citizens of the former EU now have nowhere to go and (martial law, remember) no rights and can simply be used as slaves and food.

35:

Wouldn't that make the Maltese cross?

If we're postulating a Parliament with a sudden rush of sense to the head, not at all. The problem for Malta is that they're teeny. "The island nation of Malta" suddenly includes other, more populous islands, they acquire a bureaucratic advantage. (And you can always use up the faunching-for-Empire sorts creating weariness during initial negotiations; it's an island, it's far away, it's ours (well, no, technically, you're theirs, hush!) and you're going to do what we want about it! before they get disavowed and the actual negotiator shows up.)

If we're postulating a more usual Parliament, there aren't very many Maltese. A one-time outbreak of economic advantage ought to work fine.

36:

In 1998 I had the opportunity to visit the island of Taiwan, which is located in the Republic of China (according to the people who rule on the island) or in the People's Republic of China (according to the people who rule on the mainland). To us outsiders, these appear to be two different countries, but what both of those apparent countries agree on is that there is only one China. Thus it is impossible to have embassies of both countries in, say, Helsinki: since there already is a Chinese embassy there, why on earth would you want to set up another one? Apparently there were some Taiwanese politicians with the platform of "let's admit that there are two Chinas" but that wasn't really a very popular idea, as it might have lead to a need for one of the Chinas to address the secession, which would likely mean military action.

Therefore, here is my solution to Brexit: Britain-1 leaves the EU, Britain-2 remains a member, and there is only one Britain. Regions where a clear majority voted to leave would be part of Britain-1, regions like Scotland where the result was the opposite would be part of Britain-2, and some parts might want to adopt a system such as that in Miéville's City and the City, where you take care to unsee the people who reside in the other co-located city.

37:

On further consideration, it appears the sticking point is not the availability of prime human tissue but the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Despite neither of these countries being England, and therefore important, apparently some people are concerned about this. I have summarised their complaints below:

The Republicans (or maybe it was the Loyalists) want to ensure that Northern Ireland stays a part of the UK to the point that they will not have any regulatory differences whatsoever, but they also don't want a hard border between what will be, after March 29th, a non-EU country and an EU country. They fear this will lead to a return of "The Trouble" from the 1980s.

The Loyalists (or maybe it was the Republicans) want Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland, and in the event that isn't possible, they don't want a hard border between what will be, after March 29th, a non-EU country and an EU country. They fear this will lead to a return of "The Trouble" from the 1980s.

Now I personally have spoken with many, many SPADs in the department. Some of them are very senior, and one or two were over the age of 35. We've all unanimously agreed that this "fear of a return to the 1980s" is poppycock. What I remember of the 80s was that the Tories were in power, Margaret Thatcher was doing a splendid job, and the grub at my boarding school was top-notch. What the SPADs remember of the 1980s took the form of a fascinating Spotify playlist they serenaded me with.

So, with this trifling and unlikely fear of unspecified "Trouble" treated as the distraction it is, one must turn one's considerable practical skills to understanding the real problem with this border. So far as I can see, the only distinction is this question of whether Northern Ireland is part of the UK or part of the Republic of Ireland. I think this is because after March 29th, there's likely to be a wave of refugees travelling from South to North, hoping to escape the oppressive socialist machinery of the EU, and who can blame them?

Obviously the easiest answer to this question is that the Republic of Ireland should simply see sense and also embrace the joy of renewed sovereignty by leaving the EU with us, because we say so. However Mr Varadkar seems to be somewhat unhelpful on this issue. Which seems rather short shrift, given all the Guinness we let them sell us.

My main concern is to deliver the Brexit that the British people asked for, and that of course means the most racist Brexit possible. We promised to slam the borders shut and I don't see why that should be different for a border that happens, through no fault of the British Government present or past, to fall on a different island. This "Trouble" is clearly a non-issue that could simply be talked through, in the name of a Hard Border for a secure British state. Ireland is a Christian nation, for God's sake, can't we just get them all to have a chat in the churchyard after a service? I can't see any way this would blow up in our faces.

38:

We need a second referendum, clearly. The one that's been proposed is effectively "Abort, retry, ignore?", but we can do better than that. I propose an STV setup, proposing that we admit that this "UK" business was a fundamentally bad idea and we apply to become part of one of the following countries instead:

  • Greater Ireland
  • Greater Scotland
  • France (after all, there's historical precedent)
  • India (we stole enough that we couldn't possibly give it back, so they can have the country in recompense)
  • The USA (no hegemony without representation!)
  • Somalia (for the libertarians)
  • Argentina (after all, we lost a war to them, so they should really get to rule us - that's how it worked for most of our national history)

The ensuing negotiations may take a while, but that's a problem for after we commit a further binding act of Democracy.

39:

Since France has nukes, they need to be targetted first, but it should be reasonably possible to reduce continental Europe to a wasteland with no serious chance of reprisal. The Russians will probably help if it's presented the right way.

Mmph.

You know that France is about 65% nuclear-powered?

And that the French nuclear reactors are clustered on the Normandy coastline, where in event of an uncontained meltdown the fallout plumes will helpfully be carried out to sea to the North-West (i.e. over South-East England)?

Yeah nope, that's not going to help Brexit much.

(Also: can't help but think that some of those French SSBNs have targeting codes for Washington DC. Just because, well, the whole point of post-Suez French foreign policy has been "we cannot rely on the perfidious Americans, we must be prepared to go it alone".)

40:

What to do with the 1.2 million UK citizens living in other EU Countries? You don't want them back, because that will make things even worse at home than they already are. For one thing, they've already exhibited questionable loyalty to English sovereignty by living in a foreign land. I suggest negotiating a treaty with Rodrigo Duterte where the UK pays a small fee for each non-UK resident citizen that the Philippines accepts. One-way tickets from EU countries to Manila provided. The evacuees get to live in an English-speaking country with decent health care (as long as you can pay for it), a warm climate, and the kind of no-nonsense administration that allows residents to deal with perceived criminals as they see fit. The Philippines can create retirement villages/pension farms, to ensure that they gain the maximum amount of foreign (albeit devalued) currency possible. Everyone wins!

41:

A further suggestion, based on the suggestion by some of the more senior Brexiteers that we should look to the Age of the British Empire, because that was great fun and larks for all involved with no drawbacks.

Rather than simply proposing that the Republic of Ireland leave the EU, let's make it an even more enticing offer, and allow it to accede to the United Kingdom! I'm sure they'd grasp the opportunity to become British with both hands - who wouldn't (no, really, Brexit is premised more than anything else on the notion that every single person on Earth who isn't British wants to be in Britain and turning British culture into Their culture)? That solves the NI and EU border issues at a stroke, AND gives us a larger tariff-free internal market to trade among.

In fact I think this idea has even more potential than that. Why limit the offer just to the Republic of Ireland? We can make the same offer to every major trading partner, in the name of getting them into that lovely tariff-free trading zone. Why, I can easily think of the top 27 states to whom we could make this offer, and they have the additional benefit of being geographically close to boot!

I'm sure every nation invited would be delighted to become a member of the Empire of Uk (or EU for short).

42:

What to do with the 1.2 million UK citizens living in other EU Countries? You don't want them back, because that will make things even worse at home than they already are.

I'm pretty sure that can be dealt with equitably using a judicious mixture of badly-run refugee camps, cheap AK-47s, and Lessons Learned from the Nakbah.

I for one see a glorious future for the English Liberation Organization, or should that be the People's Front for the Liberation of England-General Council, or maybe ... (fade to "splittists!").

43:

You're all wrong. All we need to do is strip down the two new QEII class carriers. Strap the engines on the coastline somewhere (near Scarborough maybe?), and we take the entire country off on holiday. Why don't we go and tour our old colonial possessions? I'm sure Jamaica would be overjoyed to see us hove over the horizon!

Not now nurse, can't you see I'm busy?

44:

You are all ignoring a basic tenet of modern political thinking: this is a post-truth era.

The correct thing to do is to assign the deal-making to a junior attache while loudly announcing that Brexit is taking place on December 31 at 11:59 PM, the event to be commemorated with fireworks in all major cities, and the Government is pleased to note that every concession demanded has been fulfilled. The name of the UK will be officially postfixed with (Not European).

At the same time, the official territory of Britain will be redefined as a small uninhabited island in the North Sea, and staffed with appropriate guards, customs agents, and so forth.

Britain shall have exited successfully, and everyone will be happy except people who don't count anyway.

45:

Charlie, is there a "disqualified for being too close to reality" category here?

(Alternate reaction: Boris, please quit reproducing your columns in other peoples' comment sections.)

46:

Petition for statehood. Or Commonwealth status a la Puerto Rico. You'd have to be awfully desperate. But the US can, in theory, grant it almost immediately along with an agreement to work out the rest of the details later.

47:

Royal Family merged with Disney. The Queen takes us to a unincorporated territory of the United States where the UK becomes half Disney World UK + half Epcot centre.

48:

Dammit sorta beaten to it!

The solution to the Irish border problem is blindly obvious, we re-impose English control across the entire island of Ireland, under enlightened English landlords and their NornIron cousins, uniting the British Isles once again.

We win so bigly it's hard to count all the ways.

They are going dangerously pinko with a gay leader and women's reproductive rights - we'll sort that right out. It returns the EU border back to the English Channel where it belongs. We can appropriate the big pharma factories to solve the medicines crisis. It gives us a working enlightened corporate tax regime. Access to a couple of Fabs for our new post- decimal quantum computers. A cancellation of their tax bill will even get that bleeding liberal Cook onside so it will be iPhones agogo for our loyal collaborators followers. We can even ship the moaning proles from Scotland to Ireland and vice versa if they cause trouble. With a few judicious planning permission grants for new golf courses and restoration of the pre-eminence of the Catholic Church (only in the former south mind) we'll have Trump and the Pope in our corner. We also make overtures to our old Allies the Dutch via a proposed continuation of the double Irish Dutch sandwich, and the Poles to maintain one of their main points of emigration giving us a good chance to destabilise the entire EU - that will teach them!

With a bit of vision we can achieve control for another 2 centuries thus giving them an entire millenium of oppression enlightened rule to rejoice about.

49:

Barry @ 21 I was cough merely pointing out that Corbyn is rabidly anti-EU - as well as having an appalling track record of supporting "causes" of extreme dubiety shall we say ( Can you spell "Maduro"? ) He's a sort of reverse-Thatcher, who famously wouldn't trust Mandela.

Graydon @ 24 there isn't time to hold another referendum. Bollocks Time for a General Election or a Referendum is SIX weeks

Charlie @ 25 or maybe the USA could revoke the Declaration of Independence and invite Lizzie Windsor to conduct a reverse-takeover and send in the US Marine Corps ... YES!

Pigeon @ 26 Presumably somewhere near Aachen? ( Charlemagne’s old capital )

@ 29-31 Oh dear …..

JKS @ 36 This has already been mooted Inside-the-M25 & Manchester are in the EU, along with Scotland & one or two other enclaves – interesting.

Jamesface @ 37 That, as you realise, is the EXACT self-deluding crap the Brexiteers have been peddling all along.

Phuzz @ 43 Funny how that idea keeps on cropping up! First though of, in about 1970 AFAIK, by the humorous journo Paul Jennings, now long sadly deceased.

51:

Royal Family merged with Disney.

By the definitional rule of Disney Princesses, this would make Prince Charles the brother-by-adoption of Ridley Scott's Alien.

52:

That, as you realise, is the EXACT self-deluding crap the Brexiteers have been peddling all along.

Sometimes the best satire is simply to repeat what's been said.

53:
  • The Alien is not real. Many people who grew up in the 80s think this is uncool.

  • The UK has a large number of skilled biotech researchers who are almost certainly wondering where their future grants are coming from.

  • Put 2 to work on R&D for the mass production of 1. If Disney won't fund a fly on the wall Aliens movie then change the title slightly and go with kickstarter.

    I'm going to spend my last few days running tourist flights in a glass bottomed helicopter.

    54:

    I think Michael Cain has it. Petition to join the United States, perhaps starting out as a territory. This has several advantages:

  • We're not Europe.
  • Death penalty. We've got it. You want it. 'Nuff said.
  • Pounds and ounces. Feet, yards, inches, and miles. As God intended.
  • We're still not Europe.
  • Our President supports the Brexit movement. (Policies may change without notice. Act fast.)
  • U.S. law does not prohibit the use of alternative currencies, so you can still use shillings and quid or whatever...
  • You've got thousands of U.S. troops in Britain. Might as well face reality.
  • Did I mention we're not Europe?
  • Caution: You WILL have to switch to driving on the RIGHT side of the road.

    55:

    "(Also: can't help but think that some of those French SSBNs have targeting codes for Washington DC. Just because, well, the whole point of post-Suez French foreign policy has been "we cannot rely on the perfidious Americans, we must be prepared to go it alone".)"

    In addition, just how many thousands of miscellaneous ships are in the North Atlantic at any time? How small are cruise missile launching pods?

    56:

    Death penalty. We've got it. You want it. 'Nuff said.

    We don't actually want it; only the elderly brexiteers want it. (It's overall unpopular in the population, only >50% among the over-65s.)

    We'll switch to driving on the right if you switch to obeying our gun laws.

    57:

    In 2013, 2014, when the german Pirate Party died of infighting and lost any lead in the polls and all their chances in the federal and the european elections, some genius thought that they need something positive. Something utopian, which makes people dream again. Let's build a space elevator!, was the message. A great message, especially for a Brexit Britain with a prime minister Boris Johnson, chief proposer of bridges.

    Some experts may niggle that you'll need a base location near the equator. Ascension Island may be a good British territory for the base of a space elevator, but that doesn't sound patriotic enough and is too far from any Leave voting constituency. Let's think bold and ambitious: The Falkland Islands are as far south as Great Britain is north from the equator. Let's build a space elevator with a forking cable, connecting base stations in Stanley, Falklands and some Stanley, UK with space, making a true Global Britain!

    58:

    Oh, well, I've always assumed that brexit is not really anything to do with ensuring a better future for almost anyone who lives in the UK (I mean the politicians who drove it, while clearly not the smartest, aren't that dumb, are they?): it's been about cementing power and wealth for the people driving it. They'd regard losing most of the southern UK for a few hundred years as just a fine tradeoff to make for power. They'd regard anything as a fine tradeoff for power.

    A few French nukes getting to the US would be a bonus for them.

    59:

    Here's my question; does anyone in the Royal family fit the Disney rules for a "Princess?" Or do we have to make an animated movie about HRH first?

    60:

    Unfortunately, titles of nobility are not allowed under the U.S. Constitution.

    61:

    Do you have a citation for that? Note I am not disagreeing with you: I am delighted if it's true, although I'd always assumed that 'should we bring back hanging' is one of the questions, like, well, 'should we leave the EU', that sensible governments don't put to a referendum because they know what the answer will be.

    If there is a majority in the UK against the death penalty, especially if it's stronger among people not due to die off soon this gives me hope.

    62:

    For WTO rules as we can set our own tariffs on goods,so set the import tax on Port and Spanish wine at 10 Yew staves per Firkin of wine.

    We'll tax exports of wool again with proceeds back to the crown.

    Sumptuary laws can kick in too - wear non-synthetic materials, tax at 1000% if you are earning below 40% tax.

    63:

    Didn't read comments past Charlie's Admin note, so here goes ...

    Domesday Book 2.0 - do a detailed census of everyone and everything (intellectual properties & financial instruments included) to know for sure exactly what the UK has and does not have. Anything that is not included on this list/census obviously does not belong to any UK national. Everything that does will be tagged as belonging to a UK national therefore subject to appropriate taxation/oversight. The most interesting and likely result will be watching some folks try to figure which is the cheaper option. (The 0.1% are likelier to possess cash, property and other assets outside the UK, therefore likeliest to most afraid of a hard Brexit. Maybe they'll leave the UK to become someone else's economic refugee.)

    Legalize mini drug labs across the realm to produce the 500 or so most used/vital drugs as per WHO. (If India can do this, so can the UK.) Provide a share of NHS funding to all universities to do quality control monitoring of these mini drug labs as well as to produce/manufacture the trickier drugs.

    Food - in WW2 the UK relied on food imported from Canada and the US. There is no longer any uboat blockade in place, so apart from no longer having access to better priced European goodies (wines, cheese, chocolates), the UK probably won't starve. China would probably ink a deal with the UK for food too. Some of the South American countries that have had economic downturns but lots of arable lands would probably also welcome a trade deal for food. Ditto Africa. (Biggest problem here is British history/arrogance: over the centuries the Brits have managed to piss off most countries around the globe, so good luck striking a good trade deal.)

    'English language' royalty on usage - Cute, but no go! English is a mashup of so many languages that if you tried this every other language group would sue, esp. the Italians, Greeks & Germans.

    Who rules? - If the 0.1% become 'tax/financial exiles', then they should also lose/forfeit all of their legislative authority/power. This presents an opportunity for governance by 'knowledge authority' and possibly where the recently peer-for-life appointees finally show their worth (and earn their stipends & absurd daily expenses). The House of Commons would provide the common reaction/appraisal to whatever the Lords dream up but only if that MP actually has any personal deep knowledge of or experience with that subject.

    Food production - similar to drugs/pharma, the gov't could support small vertical farming businesses dotted across the country. Also, the greater the spread of such farms, the lower the total transportation needs (fuel), therefore cost. BTW, the UK is ranked 10th in terms of food sustainability, so should be doable with the right planning and tech.

    https://www.growup.org.uk/

    https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/uk-ranks-10th-sustainable-food-production

    64:

    The axioms of Brexit include: less burdensome regulation and less socialism. The dogmas of the Conservatives include the state should be shrunk, reduce the deficit, private services are better than public, the best measure of what people want is what they will pay for, and charity is a private matter. Well, just carry those forward. Government departments should be self-funding profit centres, encouraged to make money, and to eliminate regulations so that companies would bid for the contracts. Let's not ask where it will go. Examples:

    Environment. Planning would be a question of taking bids from the developers and activists - the latter can crowdfund, of course. If the EU doesn't want us to build coal-burning power stations in Kent and Suffolk, they can enter the bidding.

    Defence and Foreign Office. Who do you want attacked? Want to use one of our bases? Want a Security Council vote? Make an offer.

    Justice. Civil cases would be massively simplified. If enough people crowdfund for a conviction, he is clearly a bad hat; if he can match that, well, that's an appropriate fine. Judges would be on commission, and would bid for their posts, as in the glorious days of yore. Bring back imprisonment for debtors. The services of criminals would be for sale - see below under indigents.

    Employment. No constraints on unions, nor employers calling in reinforcements. For objections to that, see Justice.

    Welfare. Bring back (privatised) workhouses, who could sell the services of their clients. Drug companies etc. have a historical interest.

    65:

    Hrrm.

    All very good points for the Scotland/NK swap, I'm sure. But the devil's in the details, and there's one that won't even make it to the nerds/beancounters: they not just speak funny (as the Scots do), they speak furrin.

    66:

    I think the U.K. should solve the problem by becoming even more of a tourism paradise than it is now, and should do so be removing all prohibitions against prostitution, currently illegal forms of pornography, all recreational drugs, suicide, pedophilia, slavery, and cannibalism. In short, it should become the next Thailand or the new Phillipines. Everything someone can't do at home would be legal here, including hunting and killing other human beings, having sex with children, and buying and selling other people. (Or you could just rent a slave while you're touring - many fine businesses would doubtless spring up to handle the demand, and foreigners still living in the U.K. after Brexit will make fine indentured servants - they just need a little training!)

    However, to gain these privileges, each person entering the U.K. would have to bring in (at least until a series of trade agreements is negotiated) a suitcase full of food or medicine; the receipt would be your ticket to have a naked British girl carry your guns while you hunt brown children for food!

    And don't forget the possibility of more specialized fun for the very rich or very jaded; possibly the Supreme General of Iran's Republican Guard would like to hunt a couple of nubile American teenager while shopping for a Trident missile system; the Tories will probably put together a package deal!

    67:

    Food and medicine? Are you some sort of communist?

    68:

    Don't be silly. Food and medicine are not for the little people; if they have enough money they can visit the veterinarian.

    69:

    Also, develop/sell a video game that models Brexit with 4 or 5 specific goals (e.g., food sustainability, health/medicine, civic unrest, financial liquidity, education, infrastructure, urban vs. rural development, etc.) as end points to get cheap modeling of potential as well as unlikely-to-be-thought-of-by-an-'expert'* solutions along with their likeliest snags/pitfalls. (EC et al to crunch the data.)

    • Weird problems sometimes need weird solutions.
    70:

    Britain was the first to establish the idea of Copyright in the Statute of Anne. They should start enforcing copyright over copyrights and demand that all current copyright holders pay up.

    71:

    I'll toss this in: surrender to the Republic of Ireland. I'm sure there's some historic conflict to be found that wasn't Officially Resolved (or can be reopened formally). No more UK, no more Brexit problem. (For teh lulz: imagine UKIP faces after surrendering to France.)

    Sell the UK to the Tangerine Shitgibbon for $1, in a "lease back to the EU, with a buy-out option in 99 years" deal - if you just label it as "a deal", he'll be right on it. For bonus lulz, offer to build him his Mexico/USA wall as a commission, just make sure to include "actual delivery date to be negotiated right after Elon Musk has the New York/London Hyperloop service up&running".

    72:

    Re: 'The axioms of Brexit ...'

    Your scenarios suggest an endless supply of thugs. Just where are these thugs being sourced from once the borders are closed? (Most estimates for incidence of murderous sociopathy are about 1% of the overall population and subject to more or less the same distribution across age groups. Are you suggesting there's a labor market for geriatric thugs?)

    Also - after seeing their neighbors/family set upon by thugs, wouldn't the lower classes (that is, the 98.9% of the rest of the population)* figure out that they vastly outnumber the 0.1% and their 1.0% hired thugs and revolt? What about the police and armed forces: would they open fire at their families? (Of the impression that the 'Irish troubles' experience put an end to that level of obedience by the police & military.)

    73:

    The problem with Brexit is not about the form of the Brexit we settle on, it's about how we learn to live with each other after. If we crash out, and things inevitably go to shit, remainers are going to move on from disrespecting leavers into actual hatred. And if we remain, the Brexiters are going to morph into baby-eating Nazi cultists. (This is why May's awful turd bun is actually the only way forward - nobody can be allowed to win because the losers will be too salty to live with).

    But let's say we do Brexit. We need to split up. I propose we create separate territories based on referendum voting patterns. No brexit supporters will be allowed in London, Brighton, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bristol, or any of the other remain strongholds. No remainers will be allowed in Lincolnshire, Thanet, or Bromsgrove. Leavers will have to stay in their stronghold, and will control their own borders. They will have to figure out how to become self sufficient in the name of getting back control. Meanwhile remainers will travel freely through all remain areas, and can choose to rejoin the EU if they want.

    It's the only way.

    74:

    The trick is to hire thugs from one area, bus them somewhere full of people they are predisposed to dislike and rely on their lack of imagination. Rarely fails.

    Properly arming said thugs ensures that things have to be really bad before the 99.9% will risk taking a bullet to deal with them.

    This takes me back to Troutwaxers post about tourism. Maybe the psychotourists will pay for entry with hard currency and bullets.

    75:

    Better yet, you can go to Jolly Old England and pay for your holiday by being a thug!

    76:

    The USA (no hegemony without representation!)

    Yeah, right. Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa ... "alien races, different from us in customs, modes and thoughts" (John Oliver on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CesHr99ezWE). I'm sure the Tangerine Shitgibbon would be all too happy to adapt that for the UK.

    77:

    Re: Brexit pharma

    Errm ... forgot that the UK is home base to some pharma giants so a bit of rethinking leads me to this:

    The likeliest problem for the UK pharma/medicines sector will be how much of current R&D and taxable revenue will try to leave the UK. Possible gov't response could be: impose severe financial penalties (payment hold-backs, gov't contract cancellations, exclusions from bidding on NHS contracts, loss of R&D stimulus packages/financing/grants, etc.) to any outfit that relocates too much of its operations. If the large British pharma companies leave because their number crunching suggests a financial downside to maintaining current levels of operations/R&D in the UK post-Brexit, this could provide Indian and Chinese pharma an opportunity to increase their presence in the UK because they're not yet as profit-hungry. (Oh the irony: imperialist Brits relying on Asian colonials to ensure local supply of life saving modern pharma!)

    78:

    The only things that will put it to bed are a brexit going horribly badly, or magically well. Either one essentially discredits one side, persuades the swing voters and forces everyone but the fanatics to stfu. "no brexit" or "survivable but a bit shit" keeps the argument going forever.

    There's an asymmetry there - remainers can't in good conscience wish for mass starvation and death from preventable diseases, while all other outcomes can be claimed as a win for the leave side.

    79:

    I've noticed that people seem to be taking the brexiter rhetoric seriously. As if the gammons will actually run riot in the streets. They don't exactly have the support of the police now do they? And I'm sure the youth of today would kick their arse in a fight.
    So basically all the extreme rhetoric means there will be an uptick in stochastic terrorism, but there won't be massive social unrest.

    As for the aim of Charlies post, crowdsourcing ideas, I don't have much to say. I don't have a sufficiently baroque mindset.
    But what if we renamed the EU instead?

    80:

    Re: ' ... psychotourists will pay for entry with hard currency and bullets.'

    Possibly ... wonder how much the cable NRA channel charges for 30-second spots. Ex-Brit John Oliver's research team probably knows.

    81:

    What to do with the 1.2 million UK citizens living in other EU Countries?

    Well, if you don't want them, the Western Hemisphere could absorb them (in a good way) without a blink. USA and Canada, of course, but there are large expat communities from Mexico on down to Patagonia.

    82:

    That might work — move the entire country outside the five mile limit, so everyone's a foreigner and awkward laws will no longer apply :-)

    Anyone remember when the Goodies suggested that in the 1970s?

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3kgp61

    83:

    Like it; I think we should combine several of the suggestions...

    Firstly, we join the United States. If we're fast, we could perhaps beat out DC and Puerto Rico to join as the 51st and 52nd States (because obviously, Ireland).

    The Democrats will love it, because four more senators from an Overton window closer to their own. The Republicans will love it, because they don't have to build any more walls, we don't speak Spanish, and we're mostly white. Job done.

    Secondly, don't joke about the British Space Program. After all, we have a couple of near-equatorial sites with decent runways (Diego Garcia and Ascension) and a plausible launch system in Skylon. After campaigning to stop non-EU countries from participating in the Galileo program, any hard Brexist means either a loss of sovereignty to GPS (Boo! Hiss!) and needs to pony up a couple of billion to manufacture and launch a British satellite navigation constellation, Hurrah!

    Strategically, we have a lot in common with another island nation with a constitutional monarchy, a reliance on trade, and a population with a depressing dislike of foreigners. Yup, time to revisit the early 20th Century and work on our old alliance with Japan...

    84:
    Caution: You WILL have to switch to driving on the RIGHT side of the road.

    Hey now, the US Virgin Islands drive on the left, this weirdly crowded version of Harry Potter Land can do it that way too.

    You all still drive vintage Minis and Landys and the Austin FX3 right? Don't worry, we'll modernize you by exporting some American made left hand drive Chevy Suburbans, it'll be great.

    Do you think that blue police box technology can be used to fit more bombs on the F-35? Our top military minds are very interested.

    85:

    Except that American citizens are not allowed to have titles of nobility.* So everyone from an OBE on up is screwed. (Of course, they will still have all the money and land.)

    • I forget the exact phrasing, but it is a Constitutional issue, not merely a legal one.
    86:

    Pffft, mere details, and negotiating a change to the Constitution of the United States will of course be the easiest deal ever, David Davis said so.

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

    without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present,... After all, the obvious workaround is for Congress to agree to it. Or to point out that these are no longer foreign awards. Or that they aren't being accepted, they're already held. Easily... ignored, or regarded as a variation on "Kentucky Colonels"

    We could always make it the 53rd, 54th, and 55th states of the Union, and keep the House of Commons, and the unicameral assemblies in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Stormont, and Dublin as the "state governments", bin the Lords, and announce that Her Majesty is in fact the Governor of England (Charles gets Wales, obviously, Anne gets Scotland, Andrew is lumbered with Northern Ireland)...

    ...this way, the USA actually gets decent football and rugby teams, and I'm sure that we can find some Rounders enthusiasts to help out with the World Series...

    87:

    (4) The Good Friday Agreement gets applied in reverse and the UK, unable to achieve consensus in the house of commons, reverts to direct government. In this case, since Belfast is currently U/S thanks to the DUP crashing the Stormont Assembly in favour of a truly Trump-level financial scam and NI is in fact currently holding the european record for longest stint without a government (suck it, Belgium); it would fall to Dublin to take on the role of direct government.

    What? You can't seriously think Irentry would be any worse than Brexit, surely?

    88:

    Boringly, we could refactor our way out of the EU one slow and carefully considered step at a time. Start with EFTA then step slowly away from there.

    Or declare ourselves the Brotherhood of Mann and somehow get all the trade benefits of the EU without actually being a member of anything at all.

    89:

    OK, first a little levity, since that's how you started: summon Fabian Everyman. No, really. After all those years of Conservative rule, the British public will be happy to have a leader who actually cares whether they live or die. (Not so much for good reasons, of course, but still... even toxic love is still love, right?)

    Now for a bit of serious speculation: Send an envoy who, on bended knee, begs Canada for a temporary free trade deal that can be implemented by January. Start with developing the logistical support for massive food and medicine shipments to the U.K. to save lives. There won't be any Eurocrats or Eurocracy to deal with, and Canada (being mostly quite a bit like our meek and good-natured international stereotype on average) is quite likely to come up with something acceptable. Not to mention being acceptable to the average Brit because "those Canadians are People Like Us".

    Justin Trudeau, for all his other faults, is a strong and committed humanitarian and when faced with a summary of the post-Brexit disaster predictions, is quite likely to accept an interim "no strings attached" deal to save the U.K. from starvation and cannibalism and plague while a serious long-term deal is worked out. Think of it as a disaster-relief program, which is a role that Canada traditionally excels at.

    Let me be quite clear: I've worked for the feds, and watched them operate ever since I left. I know how cumbersome such things are to actually implement. I have no illusions this would be an easy implementation, unless Justin mirrors his father and implements the War Measures Act so he could ram this deal through.

    This is likely to be a popular deal here in Canada. (Apart from the fact that there's a significant cadre of people who will disagree with and vigorously oppose everything Trudeau says just because he's a Liberal and the son of his father. cf. Obama.) Reasons? We're getting increasingly fed up with relying on the U.S. for the largest share of our exports and imports, and for having to endure a free trade agreement with the Yanks that has historically boiled down to "we'll do what we want, when we want it, and you'll just politely go along with it because you're Canadian and because we own the appeals tribunal that resolves disputes".

    We have enough of a food surplus to feed the U.K. and then some. We have a large pharmaceutical sector that would be deliriously happy to to ramp up production of generic drugs or licensed drugs, as the case may be. We have an oil patch (our province of Alberta) that is desperately seeking new markets for its oil because prices for their products have collapsed. And I think I mentioned that we desperately need to reduce the proportion of our GDP that is exclusively dependent on trade with the U.S. I don't think there's much love lost for our former imperial masters, but we've been on good terms with the U.K. since we repatriated our constitution. Combine a serious humanitarian cause with a major economic opportunity and I think you've got a surefire winner.

    90:

    JohnK @73 No remainers will be allowed in... Thanet...

    Goddammit I held my nose and voted for Mackinley to stop Farage getting in and this is all the thanks I get. (I should note that Mackinley has a very sweet and well behaved Chocolate Labrador named Libby so he has that going for him)

    Troutwaxer @85 An OBE is not a title of nobility. In fact even if you have a knighthood, you're still a commoner. (A hereditary knighthood or baronetcy might not pass that test though they have always been excluded from the peerage. It's worth noting at this point that the remaining hereditary peers in the House of Lords are the only ones there that have been elected to the position. None of this helps with Brexit, but then what does?)

    91:

    Pffft, mere details, and negotiating a change to the Constitution of the United States will of course be the easiest deal ever, David Davis said so.

    LOL!

    I suppose we could just grandfather them in; kids don't get a title.

    92:
    ...this way, the USA actually gets decent football and rugby teams, and I'm sure that we can find some Rounders enthusiasts to help out with the World Series...

    Ridiculous! The USA already has world champion football and rugby teams.

    If you could somehow figure out how to keep people awake during baseball, that would be quite the achievement, though.

    93:

    I have three humble suggestions on how to smooth Post-Brexit affairs. This might seem a bit snotnosed, coming from abroad, but I can assure you I harbour only the kindest feelings. And I wouldn't mind to see Berlin flooded with disoriented, somber and red cheeked Briton refugees but for the distress and suffering of said refugees.

    First and most important for a state on its way on the dark road of failing welfare, oligarchy and corrupted institutions, is to invent an enemy. This can't be underrated. There must be somebody to take all the blame. Russia isn't a good candidate because Putin might welcome the fake, take some real action and demonstrate his prowess. As Trump still owes him for the election and EU countries might not feel responsible because of hurt feelings, NATO support will be lacking and Britain might become involved in a nuclear war, left to her own devices. The USA aren't a good candidate either, because then all Hollywood products would have to be declared as enemy contraband, withdrawing major entertainment from the populace. Without sufficient entertainment people will become restless, what is to be avoided at all costs. The EU itself of course isn't suited as a fake enemy at all, because people might get the wrong idea from the propaganda. Fake news about EU agitators inciting unrest and insurrection could become a self fullfilling prophecy. This said, I suggest denmark as a promising candidate. They are a peacful country, so it can be garuanteed that provocations won't backfire. The stereotype of invading vikings will be great to inspire terror by shouting "Invaders! Invaders!". Also you could hold a yearly reenactment of the Second Battle of Copenhagen on the Thames, with lots of gun barges, fire, sinister lighting, shouting and canon blasts. That will do well to ease and soften unrest and agitation.

    Second you will want to make serious efforts to push the economy. Pounds will have do be printed in masses and the inflation will smooth the export balance a bit. Here in Germany goes the story that one of the best things to crank the economy is building motorways ... hrm. Instead, with decreasing trade and goods traffic in the Post-Brexit aera I'd rather like to suggest another project: You really should consider to build a large seawall around London. This will not only rescue the City from rising sea levels, it will put people in jobs and keep Pounds in cirulation for many years to come. You could even try growing some frost resistant tea bushes on the southern slopes of the wall. The Great London Sea Wall will become a world wonder side by side with the chinese wall and it might even be possible that it can be spotted as a pimple on earth's majestic face from outer space. And if we can't manage the carbon dioxide thing and the wall is flooded, you can still use it as a training area for the Royal Navy.

    Third, as I aready mentioned, you can't underestimate the importance of dissipating unrest in the populace through entertainment. Here is one idea how to keep at least some people busy and away from dangerous introspection: One year my family planned a vaction in Scotland ... well, it was my daughter's idea. Anyway, a few days before departure, we learned that our dog would have had to be chipped, sterlizied, decontaminated, inoculated and vaccinated by a licenced veterinary plus accompanying documentation with half a year (or so) of qualifying period before beeing allowed to set her paws on Her Majesty's island. I couldn't convince my wife to participate in the crime of smuggeling the dog onto the ferry, so we had to cancel the vaction. But I digress. Certainly a few dogs harbouring rabies and other dangerous deseases might have, despite all precautions, invaded the island unnoticed. After the borders become sufficiently closed in Post-Brexit days the government should therefore hand out licencens to hunt down any dog who isn't leashed, chipped or who coughs suspiciously. This will occupy a lot of people, keeping them from dangerous renitency, especially if there is an official app which tags dogs through surveilance cameras and publishes their GPS coordinates live. It will become a volkssport. I won't advice here on methods of extermination, though some collateral damage will be inevitable for the sake of the greater good.

    One last thing: Grow potatoes whenever and wherever you can. They feed you in times of hunger and dire need. Also, gardening clears the mind and calms the soul.

    94:

    I'm trying to figure out that whole decimalize the currency thing. Why not 29 Knuts to the Sickle, and 17 sickles to the Galleon? That would have the advantage that more people have at least heard of the system, and the iconography would be pretty straightforward.

    95:

    I'm not sure Denmark is a good idea - lots of people won't believe it, and many Britons would be happy to be conquered by someone from the UE.

    How about Ecuador? Gives evil Russian pawns asylum in their embassy, won't cooperate with the "Make America/UK Great Again" project, probably needs a border wall, and best of all, the people who life there are Not White. (Is "Wogs" still a term I can use without censure? I'm not sure what terms are OK under UK anti-racism ideals.)

    96:

    The Brexit is clear evidence of a prolonged psychotic episode at the national level. It seems fair to say that the UK is now a danger to itself and possibly others.

    If this were a person, there would be a good case for sectioning them (UK term for the legal process of placing someone into compulsory mental health care).

    The way forward is clearly for the UK as a whole to be sectioned. Of course, it would have to work differently at national level. The UK's closest partner - EU member states - would seem to have a duty of care and they would need to decide how to proceed. I would suggest appointing a national government as guardian, to take important decisions on behalf of the UK until the UK is once again able to take decisions for itself. The obvious candidate for this role is, of course, Ireland. After all, the two countries have a history together and even speak the same language, for the most part. We could call it the "United Kingdom Irish Protectorate, Project for Ensuring Rehabilitation" or UKIPPER for short.

    ...

    Sorry, I got distracted. How to make Brexit actually work? One word: partition. The only thing I can think of would be for partition, much like what happened in India at the end of the British Empire. Let the Brexiteers live in Wales and the English counties south of the Birmingham-Peterborough line, and the Remainers everywhere north. And yes, that means that Little England wouldn't get to have those nuclear submarines to play with.

    Incidentally, I am a cross-border worker. There is nothing in the 585 page agreement about maintainng existing reciprocal social security arrangements (including healthcare) after the Brexit. So those arrangements will expire on 29 March 2019. Because of this, I'm probably going to have to quit my job (which I like very much) because of the outcome of a vote (which I couldn't participate in), which we now know was riddled with lies and illegal activity. So my UKIPPER suggestion is looking pretty good to me right now.

    97:

    Ah, I see you got there before me with your 'rule from Dublin' idea.

    98:

    An ignorant question from a former colonist: what would happen if the UK was defined as, say, Wales (or Sealand, for that matter), and the rest of the country got defined as the Kingdom of England, Scotland, etc? Then the Brexiteers could emigrate, and everyone else could stay in the EU...

    99:

    The Tories meet together and hatch a plan. May is blamed for everything going wrong with Brexit--the Tories defenestrate her to drive the message home. The Tories draw by lots, or maybe just the pick guys that attended second tier schools, they already lost the most important lottery, and sufficient number are chosen to defect to Labour. These ex-Tories will also be blamed for Brexit going less well than promised.

    With Labour now in majority, Brexit falls on them. With Corbyn PM or not? The Tories are already having fun. Labour also has to decide on Brexit. They don't have time for anything clever, so they will take the easy path and do a referendum. Sure there isn't time, but either they rush it through, or the EU, having new hope for a good result, gives UK an extension. UK votes to stay in EU, the conservatives can all blame Labour threefold--for their turncoat Tories, for opposing Brexit, and for keeping England in EU. The Tories are the opposition, and can pass the time whipping up the anger of their base.

    100:

    Interesting.

    Thoughts from the western side of the pond.

    From my view it seems Brexit will happen hard or not at all. Both paths are complicated and very messy and will wreak the lives of a lot of people. But May's way may happen. But the path to that seems way more complicated from my view over here.

    If no Brexit the hard core will blame everything from the jobless rate to rainfall in London to the rate of cat adoptions on the failure to leave the EU. And will drag a non trivial amount of "voters" with them for years.

    If Brexit goes hard, well saddle up [1]. Yes imports of food, medicine, and all kinds of things will grind to a halt as the customs folks implement the law. Then someone high up will say let the necessities through. They will have to as they don't want their head literally on a pike. But now an opportunities will be open for the fun to really start. Anyone remember sawdust in baby formula in China. People who value money about lives will start exporting stuff from counties without much laws about such and moving it through various countries with various paperwork that eventually makes it look like it came from a food plant in Canada and will be waived into the country. And then the pikes will likely come out for real.

    And add to this the "non essential" things that get held up in customs. Like that specialty bar stock of titanium steel allow that someone making insulin injectors needs. It isn't a crisis. For 2 months. Then is becomes a REALLY BIG DEAL. [3]

    As to the politics it seems that both parties officially want Brexit but for vastly different reasons and their voters are either getting more and more confused or really don't agree. But don't know how to overthrow their party hierarchy in less than a decade of action. (Parties tend to structure themselves this way on purpose.)[4]

    Solutions. Sorry. You folks made a mess and get to live with it. Well your leaders did.[4]

    [1] Too much of a US old west reference? [2] Welcome to the results of a Trump trade war. [3] Welcome to US politics. Where there are more voters not registered with a political party than either Rs or Ds. Which makes it very hard to implement with a change in either away from hard line ideological views. [4] Sigh, Trump.

    101:

    Re: ' ... referendum. Sure there isn't time, but either they rush it through, ...'

    Why would they need more than a week to do a referendum? It doesn't take that long to print and distribute 50 million yes/no ballots. You can't claim that everyone hasn't been watching/listening to anything else for the last 18 months.

    102:

    Megpie71 @ 11: * Charge a royalty for the use of the English language.
    It's clearly the most obvious British Intellectual Property out there, so clearly people from other countries should be paying a fee to use it, right? Maybe a bit of a discount for the colonies (as per Empire 2.0).

    Yeah? Who you gonna' collect it from. According to you guys we stopped speaking "English" over here in the States a couple hundred years ago.

    103:

    Charlie Stross @ 25:

    I'm seeing too many opinions about how badly Brexit is going to affect some individual issue (e.g. Theresa May's insulin hoard), and not enough suggestions for how to make Brexit work.

    What if there IS no way to make it work?

    104:

    How does Brexit work? Well, a few months into the Brexit (hard, soft, purple, or whatever), a zombie apocalypse breaks out on the Continent. The UK cuts the Chunnel, and, eventually, they're the only ones who survive.

    That's how Brexit might work.

    105:

    Brexit is clearly the start point of the Dark Empire of Granbretan as foretold by the prophet Moorcock in the History of the Runestaff, and other works. Soon our dark legions will charge across the channel bridge, erm tunnel, and lay waste the continent. Shame about the tragic millennium though... And the ignominy of being saved by Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln. Ah yes, Rees-Mogg as Baron Meliadus, Boris as Shenegar Trott, Count of Sussex. It all becomes clear...

    106:

    [ IDIOT DRIVE-BY DELETED BY ANNOYED MODERATOR ]

    107:

    Rather than their current laughable set of policies the Tories should adopt the platform of the McGillicuddy Serious Party in its entirety. You'll note their plan to use giant space mirrors to melt the icecaps and drown major cities is much faster than the Tory plan to do the same by burning things, and the plan to ban anything invented after 1830 is not noticeably different from the plan not to be able to afford anything invented after that date. So not all policies need to change.

    We should also reintroduce the tradition(1) that cabinet posts are for the life of the holder. Including that of prime minister. They can still resign any time they like. All they need to do is have their death certificate validated by the keeper of the seals(2).

    The resulting chaos would distract everybody while a proper Brexit was negotiated. I'm not sure what that would be, declaring war on then surrendering to Montenegro appeals, but I think Estonia would be more practical - you sail the royal navy into their ports, disembark and have a glorious cavalry charge(3) against Rakvere Castle(4). They have their e-citizenship system in place already so it should be straightforward to enrol every briton in in that, then get them all learning Estonian(5).

    2: why does parliament even have seals? Wouldn't it be more practical to have lions, or corgis or something less fishy-smelling? 1: it's probably not actually traditional but luckily the current government doesn't care about accuracy 4: I know it's inland. That's why you need cavalry. 5: Finno-Uralic languages are fun to learn(6) 3: by cavalry I mean corgis. Or perhaps seals. Mounted navy troops are navy seals, right? 6: fun to watch other people learn. Same thing, really.

    108:

    All eminently sensible, but I have to ask where one would go to obtain pre 1830 space mirrors.

    109:

    staphanos @ 96 Let the Brexiteers live in Wales and the English counties south of the Birmingham-Peterborough line, and the Remainers everywhere north NO Inside the M25 voted overwhelmingly Remain ... Not going to work, even in fun ...

    HalfAlu @ 99 Not going to work, either. Remember that Corbyn is as fanatic about Brexit as Rees-Smaug. He wants Brexit so he can buid Venezuela, here ....

    JBS @ 103 You noticed

    david 17675david No - nothing to do with physics, everything to do with regulations. Now go back to the Daily Express

    110:

    I for one welcome our new Finno-urgaic overlords! Even though I’m neither British, nor a Corgi

    111:

    david17675david, please, you've been invited to give a light-hearted dystopian Brexit plan. The best way to make your point is to lay out an obvious satire, then reveal the twist that by changing one or two key facts it would actually be your preferred post-Brexit proposal which would work just fine.

    So, the EU are withdrawing Volts and Amperes is a good start (I assume we lose Joules or possibly Jules too, though we get to keep Watts). Now unfortunately electrical units have been metric since their first adoption due to their late development. However we do still have the ability to use steam (BTUs - British Thermal Units) and of course horses (horsepower - hp[1]). Britain has never been great horse country, not having large areas of wide open plains that aren't good for intensive agriculture. So the obvious way to deal with this is to level off the Welsh Mountains, the Pennines and the Scottish Highlands, using the spoil to build sea-defences around the country, and become horse-nomads, Mongol or Comanche style.

    [1] half-formed tangent on hit points/ horsepower removed due to silliness

    112:

    Greg, I'm well aware of the way the regional vote went. Partition and the accompanying displacement of people is always a bastard. London could petition to become a satellite of the north.

    113:

    The thing that keeps tripping me up is the "We can just cancel the §50 notice and remain" thing.

    For one thing, there is nothing in the treaty about that, so the ability to do so depends entirely on the charity of the council of ministers, and there aint a lot of that about these days.

    So will they, or wont they ?

    I can absolutely guarantee that they wont even say even one third of "Never mind, come back, all is forgiven."

    "Never mind" is not happening, next thing you would have Italy doing the same stunt. "Come Back", ain't happening either, because that would mean reinstating all the preferential treatments UK has managed to tantrum EU into over the years. And forgiveness will take decades and require solid assurance that the lesson sticks.

    Assume $whatever happens in UK, and the PM (same, other or entirely new) sends a letter saying "Sorry, we changed our mind, we actually love EU."

    If that letter comes with anything less than a solid ⅔, approaching ¾ majority, chances are pretty damn good that we will be right back in #brexit2 in a few months or years time.

    Answer will be: "Sorry, treaty doesn't allow for that. Please see §49 for how to apply for membership, but we're still OK with the May-agreement to tide you over."

    Reapplying, should it ever happen, will require full convergence, which is almost certain to include stripping privileges from the square mile, land reform, adopting the Euro and resolve all issues with individual EU countries (Gibraltar, The Marbles etc.).

    If the letter comes after a new referendum which overwhelmingly quashes the brexit-insanity, leaving absolutely no doubt UK's voters no love EU. (I can't imagine what events could make this happen which doesn't involve heads on stakes, but lets roll with it.)

    EU's council of ministers will still want is proof of commitment from UK, preferably something which hurts just enough to be a lesson for UK and everybody else, but preferably something which leaves everybody better in the long run.

    Answer will be: "We've looked at it, and the treaty doesn't really give us much freedom there, but we think we can get UK through §49 real quick if you jump on the Euro, some kind of electoral reform so this doesn't happen again, let go of Gibraltar and remove City of Londons privileges."

    So yeah, No-Deal brexit would be catastrophy, May's deal would leave UK a lot worse than without #brexit, but #remain will take fully and wholeheartedly embracing the European Project.

    My predict-o-meter says that that May will get her deal though, because the alternatives are so much worse and key people are not that insane.

    What happens next is "nothing much."

    UK will be stuck in May-Deal-Backstop-Purgatory, steadily bleeding business and talent, ending up as EU's Puerto Rico.

    114:

    Theresa May imitates a stroke of political genius by calling for another election. The Tories are wiped out at the polls, with the only remaining conservatives MPs consisting entirely of Bulldog Drummond types.

    Labour wins but Corbyn waffles.

    Actually here's a question; If Labour did win an election before the Article 50 is triggered, how would Corbyn and co react?

    115:

    Petition to join the United States, perhaps starting out as a territory. (blinks) (looks at the personal world-building script as of circa 2014) Yep, this is about as close to a guess as I could get. Of course, it is only a minor part of the whole plot, and certainly wouldn't be complete with other events mostly in second-half 2020s, but this point is necessary too. (The basis for the plot was American Empire from GITS world-building, with some heavy corrections).

    Meanwhile, a certain Britain organization not unlike C-bridge A-lytica has been uncovered by "anonymous source". Given the amount of diversion and subversion we lately are getting in our national media and press I almost ready to believe that this is indeed a very important report. As much as I want to consider about it with a pinch of salt, if this information is exposed to the public, most likely there's already a plan to deal with it. http://www.tellerreport.com/news/--non-russian-intervention--hackers-released-british-instructions-to-counter-moscow-.HyLQ2TrR7.html

    It's not like Britain did not announce any measures, sanctions, or even military actions before, but their threats have been going on for a while, despite remaining unknown or too vague to be brought to pulic attention - not to talk about reasons for these actions. Now it seems the situation has changed suddenly.

    It would be very convenient for Britain to continue on the same course of fighting both Russia and EU after the Brexit will go into full force. It will be able to follow America's calls and demands for freedom and join the ranks of such prominent anti-Russian fighters as Poland, Ukraine, Baltic states and ISIS. Of course, while these states obviously can not compete with either Russia or EU with their personal night, Britain is sure to take an edge in this struggle with liberal application of ideology, information and cyberwarfare, and chemical "defense" if necessary. The perspective is thrilling, most certainly. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/11/20/interpol-infiltrated-russia-uk-must-work-countries-set-alternative/ Also meet your new boss and a future eminence grise. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bill-browder-interpol-canada-committee-1.4915961

    116:

    "The thing that keeps tripping me up is the "We can just cancel the §50 notice and remain" thing."

    Agreed. The EU leadership would be bonkers to simply accept that, because other EU coutries would play the same game, as well as the next Tory/UKIP/whatever montrosity to assume power.

    IMHO, what the UK leadership will learn in the next year is what the US will learn over the next decade ('cause we're bigger) is that reputation for reliability is easy to lose, and very hard to regain.

    117:

    ending up as EU's Puerto Rico.

    Not even that good. Puerto Ricans have jus solis US citizenship and can pick up and move to the States any time they want. As many have done for reasons of the economy, hurricanes and family.

    http://scholarscollaborative.org/PuertoRico/exhibits/show/historical/birthright

    118:

    As with anything Brexit, this is what I would like to see happen. I'm cautious about writing it down, because every time I do that with Brexit something even worse/more idiotic happens, that I hadn't even considered was a possibility.

    Parliament rejects the deal. A good proportion of the house (everyone that isn't loyal to the Govt) campaigns for a second referendum, and gets one.

    May asks for a 6 months extension of article 50, which is granted. She then immediately resigns. Tory party starts its leadership contest, but it won't conclude until after the referendum. Hammond is acting-up as interim PM.

    May campaigns for remain in referendum 2.0. Corbyn campaigns for leave. Remain wins, 55 to 45%.

    Corbyn resigns from top spot.

    Both parties are now having a leadership contest. Conservatives end up picking a remainer (seeing as all of the high profile Brexiteers ended up resigning from cabinet and backing the wrong horse in referendum 2.0). Labour picks a leaver. No-one is sure why.

    Another general election is called. Big surge for smaller parties, lib dems back to 50 seats, greens get 10. Labour and conservatives both do badly. Vaguely-left government made up of a loose coalition of labour, lib dems, SNP. Labour put a decent leader in charge after 6 months. The coalition managers to stick together and not make any terrible mistakes.

    Oddly enough, I could see a similar situation happening in politics if Brexit does happen. Those old conservative voters need a lot of medicine to stay alive, and a lot of cheap migrant workers to keep their care homes going.

    119:

    I don't think "Never mind, come back, all is forgiven" is even remotely possible. The most probable answer ' and there is a valid historical precedent for it ) would be: "présentez vous pieds nus, en chemise et la corde au cou"

    120:

    Perfidious Albion. 'Nuf said.

    121:

    Seems that getting ready for or 'surviving' Brexit isn't any different than getting ready for war. If 21st century Brits can't handle Brexit, they're totally screwed once climate change ramps up.

    Get your act together folks 'cuz it ain't gettin' any easier!

    122:

    The Doctor phases in, runs around Parliament a bit, and discovers that everyone on the English side at the Battle of Hastings was tagged with a DNA targeting control Field, and since then all their descendents have been under the control of a cockroach-like alien race using their Field to create havoc and destruction. Explains a lot of British history, eh? The Doctor destroys the Field control device, which has been hidden in the form of a pack of corgis, expels the aliens, and sanity returns to England.

    Brexit is still going on of course, but as the Doctor says, not all of the recent history is explained by the Field, and you'll sort it out eventually. By the year 2250, the Troubles are only a paragraph in the history books.

    123:

    Maybe there is a "gripping hand" to all this. The EU might let the UK off the hook if it can be proven that there is a strong Russian influence involved with Brexit, but I see no official interest from the UK in trying to find out what actually happened. There does not appear to be either an ongoing counterintelligence operation/investigation, nor any form of "special prosecutor," nor any news organization which is digging deeply enough to uncover anything.

    I'd go so far as to note that the lack of interest in these issues is interesting in-and-of itself.

    124:

    Last resort for fixing post-Brexit cash flow problems is to sell off museum assets which are probably worth over a trillion by now.

    125:

    Neil W @ 111 Joules? Jools? How about: "Hello I'm Jules & this is my friend Sandy" from "Round the Horne" ??? LIKE THIS - most appropriately this particular sketch is about politics & elections ....

    P H-K @ 113 Err .. no Both Macron & Merkel ( Who are the ones who really matter ) have said that cancelling At50 will do it, because anything else simply isn't worth the hassle, if nothing else. And they don't have to redistribute the budget, either ...

    gijoel @ 114 NO! How many fucking times .... Corbyn is as rabidly pro-Brexit as Rees-Smaug - hasn't that sunk in yet? Both he & R-S want to wreck the country for their own opposing ends .... Think Nazi-Soviet Pact, huh?

    Robby @ 118 A VERY LIKELY outcome - I hope

    126:

    Greg,

    Dont ever confuse what the news-crew thought they heard with what the politicians said.

    Here is a good example from june 13th:

    https://twitter.com/business/status/874624233459994624/video/1

    That got the headline "The U.K. would be welcomed back to the European Union if the Brexit vote were reversed, Wolfgang Schaeuble says."

    At best he said "We will not refuse, if UK wants to join EU again."

    Neither he, nor anybody else, has said what it would actually take because it says so right there in Article 50:

    "5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49."

    To be "welcomed back" UK has to complete that article 49 process, just sending a letter saying "never mind" will not do it.

    In a second referendum the choices will be "We said Leave, damnit!" and "Far more EU than anybody ever thought possible."

    "Good ol' days" is not an option.

    127:

    In montypythonic terms, brexit is upperclass twits buying a parrot in a cheese shop.

    128:

    Um, no; "wog" is definitely not acceptable in general, and I'd be surprised if OGH found it anything other than offensive. My advice would be to use it at your peril, in the UK.

    ("Surprised" here translated to "stunned and appalled".)

    129:

    Thanks for the cultural education on this issue. I will now class w-g with the n-word on my list of stuff I should never say or write.

    130:

    "The EU might let the UK off the hook if it can be proven that there is a strong Russian influence involved with Brexit, but I see no official interest from the UK in trying to find out what actually happened. "

    That's likely because on the UK Right (as for the US Right), they like the interference, because it got them what they want.

    Which leads to the problem that any Russian interference might have made the difference between the success and failure of the (Tory-called and Tory-rigged) Brexit referendum, but the Tory desire was always there.

    131:

    gijoel @ 114: Theresa May imitates a stroke of political genius by calling for another election. The Tories are wiped out at the polls, with the only remaining conservatives MPs consisting entirely of Bulldog Drummond types.
    Labour wins but Corbyn waffles.
    Actually here's a question; If Labour did win an election before the Article 50 is triggered, how would Corbyn and co react?

    Badly.

    And instead of waffles, might we please have pancakes instead?

    132:

    You are all ignoring a basic tenet of modern political thinking: this is a post-truth era.

    Exactly.

    My suggestion: Have the Murdoch media empire print, at Boris Johnson's expense, the passage from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in which Arthur learns to fly by falling and failing to notice the ground, and require all loyal subjects to practice this skill from the top of the tallest nearby building.

    After that, Brexit will go swimmingly. How can it not, for a nation of superheroes?

    133:

    A health warning accompanies this notice.

    If you want to see the depths of unreality that is permeating the more rabid Brexiteers .. Try here Like I said, there is almost no reasoning with them - most want a no-deal, without thinking AT ALL - it's actually quite painful.

    134:

    graydon wins this comment thread with an idea that is just possible, consistent with European history (see history of the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, etc., etc.) and utterly delightful.

    Well done, graydon! A career in Mergers and Acquisitions awaits you, with thinking like that.

    135:

    We know perfectly well that there WASN'T a significant Russian influence, and that there WAS a significant USA one. Bugger Arron Banks, Facebook campaigns and that, which made very little difference - it was the 20-30 years of relentless, lying anti-EU propaganda from the media that made it inevitable. The dominant moguls are one USA citizen and one non-dom, with BBC and ITV constrained to be milk-and-water.

    136:

    @ Greg Tingey

    I thought that was the case, but as I live on the other side of the planet my knowledge of UK politics is not as nuanced as yours.I read somewhere, BBC I think, that Brexit is largely a English phenomenon. That pro-Brexit voters would happily see the end of the UK if it meant keeping them forn-en-ers out. A lot of them also want to see the return of capital punishment, Imperial measurements.

    137:

    I am a little surprised that no one has put forward the one obvious way that Brexit can be a success: the return of King Arthur.

    As prophesied, at Britain's Darkest Hour, with the risk of the UK becoming a Vassal State due to bungled Brexit negotiations, King Arthur will sail from Avalon wielding Excalibur, with the Knights of the Round table and the wizard Merlin at his side. The Queen immediately steps aside to let the Once and Future King resume his reign, and Arthur assumes supreme executive power, dismissing parliament.

    Arthur then saves the sovereignty of the kingdom by seeing through the hardest of hard Brexits, while bringing back the utopian ideals of Camelot, thereby avoiding all the problems that the critics of Brexit had put forward: an immediate free trade agreement with Avalon! Food and drink have always been bountiful at Camelot! Those who are ill can simply drink from the holy grail and be cured! No need for imported European food and medicine, and the NHS can finally be disbanded and the money put towards tax cuts for the cruelly overtaxed rich people!

    And best of all for those who have pushed for Brexit, the Kingdom shall once again be a proper feudal kingdom and the members of the ERG shall all be appointed Knights of the Round Table, the better to rule over those poor deluded people who could not see the righteousness of Brexit.

    138:

    I for one wonder if Brexit was a scheme by MI5 to uproot a Russian psyop that went off the rails. The way to make Operation BREXIT work would be to arrest all the collaborators...

    139:

    Just as you thought it couldn't get any madder THIS happens [ High court to rule on legality of vote ... ]

    140:

    There seems to be an option no one has considered. Instead of becoming part of Malta (Graydon @29), there's a large South Pacific island that could help out, in a real reverse take over. Become part of the Commonwealth of Australia!

    Same language, same sovereign, similar laws and parliamentary structure, more sunshine and fresh food. We have lots of FTA's either in practice (eg USA) or in development (eg EU) plus the TPP. We have visa free travel into the Schengen zone so the NI border issue should be solvable.

    We have a conservative govt looking like it will be wiped out at the next election due next year. Saving Mother England would be the kind of dramatic gesture that would appeal to a lot them.

    Plus, we're generally saner (or less insane) than most other places.

    And for the final gesture, we'll load up all those BA 747s and A380s with the ~40k prisoners in Australia at any one time and send them over. That strategy worked well for us so you should welcome them.

    141:

    Become part of the Commonwealth of Australia!

    The good news is that Australia is awesome at negotiating with surrounding countries, we managed to persuade Timor that their gas fields are mostly ours, we persuaded PNG that their silly human rights act doesn't apply to "guests" in Australian concentration camps, and Nauru has pretty much ceased to exist as a sovereign nation (insofar as it ever was, it ain't now). With that sort of example hanging over them the pesky uropans would no doubt be falling over themselves to comply with whatever reasonable requests Australia came up with.

    The bad news is that you'd have to accept that football is the Australian Rules version of the game, played on an oval shaped pitch that has far too many goalposts by gentlemen (and ladies) with odd shaped balls.

    142:

    we're generally saner (or less insane) than most other places

    That's not a very high bar.

    We're proposing to open two big new coal mines in order to become carbon neutral by 2050, for example. And we're apparently going to make it easier for the Minister of Immigration to create stateless persons in order to help people adopt Australian Values{tm}. Oh, and it's even possible that "Australian Law overrides the laws of mathematics" is going to rear its stupid head in the form of the discredited and previously discarded bill making it an offense not to break encryption on demand. Note that anyone can be guilty of that, the law doesn't require that the target be capable of decrypting the material, or even that they are subject to Australian law, merely that they be identifiable.

    "less insane"... it's not a very high bar, but I'm not sure that we clear it.

    143:

    Most of these plans, regrettably, have unfortunate subtexts that leads one to suspect that the authors are not committed to brexit. Shortages? LOSING wars of empire? Cession of critical North Sea defensive positions?

    A workable brexit plan must take the real economic situation into account. The EU has been dragging the UK down, retarding economic growth. Now, since the last recession, the GDP figures (in US dollars) are:

    2009: 2.383 trillion 2010: 2.441 trillion (+2.4%) 2011: 2.62 trillion (+7.3%) 2012: 2.662 trillion (+1.6%) 2013: 2.74 trillion (+2.9%) 2014: 3.023 trillion (+10%) 2015: 2.886 trillion. This downturn was clearly the fault of the EU and shall not be counted. Declines in 2016-2018 are the result of Remoaning and market uncertainty and shall similarly be ignored.

    So, WITH the EU dragging the UK down, expected GDP growth in 2010-2015 averaged 4.84% annually. With freedom to make trade deals with the entire world, we can modestly expect more than double that. Sure, there will be hardship during the adjustment period as supply chains retool, but that is temporary. The GDP will grow at a nice 9.69% annually. The Brexit Dividend (henceforth, Brividend) will be huge, and very tangible. But it takes a while for that growth to trickle down to the general populace, and while the job creators can handle temporary hardship well Jack Pensioner cannot. So, to silence Remoaning until Brexit is demonstrably a success, and make the brividend tangible, we shall deliver the first five years of it IMMEDIATELY. Being free of the EU will also allow the currency to float without snide remarks from Eurocrats, boosting UK exports. Therefore, every UK subject (defined as a person residing or owning a holiday home in a part of Britain that was previously part of the EU) shall receive a lump-sum payment of USD21172.64 (£41145.28 post-brexit). This shall be paid for by a tax on corporate wealth over £1million and personal ealth over £2million, collected from British citizens and legal persons registered in Britain. This includes foreign holdings and complicated partnership structures, of course. Britain will use the IRS Form 5471 as a model for this process.

    While this may SEEM like near-Communist levels of wealth transfer, in reality the wealthy will have fully recouped the money paid up-frontin taxes through the growth in the British GDP, and by 2029 income inequality will be far higher.

    Temporary shortages in the NHS will be trivially addressed - prudent UK residents will have saved some of their £41K, and will be able to purchase a ticket to the US and seek care in an emergency room there. The transfer of large sums of capital to the entire population will also obliterate Communist sympathies, as the average UK resident will be suddenly rich and naturally come to share the class interests of the rich - WITHOUT the need for any violence.

    Brexit has also exposed an ideological faultline between the South and the North. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the American Civil War all show that North-South divides are deadly to a nation. To promote national unity, concrete steps are needed. A new national brand will support patriotic sentiments; there will be a referendum to choose between Greatest Britain, The Former EU Republic of Brittany, Granbretan (Thanks to Therion667 for reminding me), the top two results from our online poll - (Brexity McBrexitface and an American slur that decency laws do not allow us to print), or Macedonia (suggested as a means of sabotaging any future attempts to rejoin the EU). A massive transportation program will be enacted to help ensure that the border in the Irish sea is as frictionless as possible, with every UK city no more than two (*Except Edinburgh) train stops from every other UK city. Now, what has less friction than vaccuum?

    DOUBLE vaccuum. Elon Musk will be commissioned to construct a series of Hyperloops allowing non-stop travel between the Carrick hub (selected through 5 seconds of internet research) and every UK city or town with a population above 10,000 except Edinburgh. Edinburgh will get six hyperloops, but they will all go through interchanges in Wales on their way to Carrick. This is to remind the Scots of the folly of backing independance.

    Going it solo will require the Brits to apply their national ingenuity. The icecaps are melting faster than expected. While the Great Powers may be able to implement RESPONSE SNOWFLAKE (blot out the sun with spaceborne mirrors) or RESPONSE TIDDLYWINKS (use radioactive plumes from all major cities and military facilities in oil-producing nations to lower the rate of sunlight absorbtion), the UK does not have the facilities to implement RESPONSE TIDDLYWINKS at scale and due to cutbacks planning permission for the launch facilities needed to implement RESPONSE SNOWFLAKE depends on delivering the paperwork to Marnie before 10AM on a Thursday, but Marnie's shift doesn't start until half past.

    There are two major tendencies in Brexit Britain that must be considered.

    If it is decided by the tabloids that Britain is necessarily going it alone and it is unreasonable for the people of the UK to spend money to protect other nations from their problems (especially as un-drowned people in other countries may include those UK-resident medical tourists insufficiently forward thinking to select an INLAND emergency room for care, who are likely to be the most expensive patients), RESPONSE TORTUGA can be applied.

    Alternatively, if Brexit Britain is looking to the Globe and not the Continent, RESPONSE SCARAB can be applied - a response which, if implemented successfully, will completely avert global warming. RESPONSE SCARAB will involve the construction of a network of nuclear reactors throughout Scotland - cooled by and connected to each natural loch. The reactors will extract CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in a stable supersaturated layer at the bottom of the lochs. Funding for this project will be collected by expropriating all fossil fuel derived wealth postdating the oil companies becoming aware of global warming, so pre-1977 oil wealth will be untouched. This expropriation will be applied to any and all fossil fuel companies whose products released CO2 that may have passed over the British atmosphere, so Martian and Venusian production will be unharmed. In the event that a fund (Alaskan and Saudi sovereign wealth funds, for instance) contains both petrochemical and non-petrochemical source income, having been over 50% petrochemical at any point in time will be considered sufficient. In the event funds collected exceed the cost of bringing the British atmosphere back to 1925 CO2 levels, after a five year period the surplus may be reclaimed by those persons they were collected from (less handling fees, returned money to be fairly distributed among taxed persons).

    Due to the fact that many oil company and wealth fund assets are hidden away outside Britain, personal holdings of executives and major shareholders may be confiscated to pay the costs. In the case of a national wealth fund, all government officials will be considered executives. A de minimis rule will be applied to exempt those with less than £20,000 in susceptible assets from the tax (except, of course, when the assets are being seized in lieu of corporate assets sequestered outside British jurisdiction.)

    RESPONSE TORTUGA exemplifies the ingenuous character of the British nation with a local response to a global problem. A VAST SEAWALL will be constructed around the United Kingdom (and, to maintain the Good Friday Agreement, Ireland). The wall will rise 500 meters above sea level, keeping out not only sea level rise but all but the most altitudinatious hurricanes. It will encompass key British fishing areas, without being hindered by the restrictions of faceless Eurocrats in Brussels. Most importantly, it will extend along the entire coast of Norway, keeping those pesky Vikings from getting all the best rollmops and improving the comparative advantage of British coastal tourism. As with RESPONSE SCARAB, the wealth tax on fossil fuel extractors will pay for it, with the exception of the part surrounding the Republic of Ireland - this will be paid for by the Irish.

    RESPONSE TORTUGA will also reduce the risk of refugees trying to take boats to England, because boats will be unable to cross the VAST SEAWALL.

    The wealth tax infrastructure created by SCARAB/TORTUGA and the Brividend will, of course, come in handy in the event that the NHS runs short of the funding goals Leave promised, or any other expensive improvement that a Leaver promised fails to materialize. For example, the UK can use it to rebate tariffs that adversely affect exporters, or to reopen factories that were closed to to Remoaning corporate executives relocating them to the Continent, or to help all the deserving British poor who the xenophobes insist need help before the refugees get it. And, of course, in the event that the 9.69% year-on-year economic growth from brexit fails to materialize in any future five-year period, a further Brividend can be extracted.

    Brexit will also free the UK from the shackles of EU restriction on personal data distribution. To reassure users that Facebook and other surveillance-funded platforms are only collecting information that they would not mind having distributed, all users of a social media platform may request the information, in the form and quantity that that platform sells their own information, that that platform has on its executives, employees making over £15,000 a year, and any person owning more than £1000 in stock in said company.

    144:

    As an American, I (and any Brit who has visited the States) can tell you Americans do not speak or write (those who can read and write, a minority) English, but American. It is spelled and pronounced (except in particularly backwards areas, like the American South) differently. And the vocabulary is much larger, with American loan words in use in Britain and the rest of the world. More likely, Brits will be charged for the Americanisms in use, and there will be a Language Police, as in Quebec, enforcing Pure British Speech.

    145:

    I like the way you think, and I believe we should combine our plans. Response TORTUGA and Response SCARAB, plus the use of UK soil for SDU (Sex/Drug/Ultra-violence) tourism will allow the UK to totally surmount all the depraved indifference of the warmongering EU welfare state, leading to an overwhelming international advantage for the party cadres standing behind the glorious might of Supreme Leader May!

    146:

    Hint: THIS IS A MATTER OF FUCKING LIFE AND DEATH. IF THE UK DOES WHAT YOU SUGGEST, MANY PEOPLE WILL DIE WITHIN A MATTER OF WEEKS.

    Well, since we're in to Swiftean Modest Proposal territory, would that be such a bad thing? For anyone other than a few million dead UKans, anyway.

    The problem the world has is that memories have faded of the lessons of the great depression and WW2. Ludicrous right wing fuckwittery and anti-rational populism has made a comeback.

    So come on, Britain. Come on Charlie. Take one for the team. Your mountain of corpses will save the rest of the world from its own stupidity.

    147:

    So come on, Britain. Come on Charlie. Take one for the team. Your mountain of corpses will save the rest of the world from its own stupidity.

    This is so hard to argue with! Naturally, I see the essential wrongness of the idea, but considering the horrors which conservatism/fascism could inflict on the world, perhaps an early bad example is the best way to save the maximum number of lives... and I am anxious to travel to the UK six months after Brexit and see if anyone will trade sex for a sandwich!

    Meanwhile, I hope Charlie and Feorag have the good sense to GTFO!

    148:

    Meanwhile, I hope Charlie and Feorag have the good sense to GTFO!

    As long as pet passports remain valid...

    149:

    No THIS IS OUR HOME .... ( Though a non-Brit passport would be useful,if it gets really bad, in "political" terms. People in the US can easily move to another state, if things go to shit ( See my link about Ohio earlier ) ... here it's just a little bit more difficult.

    150:

    Elladan @92: They're bringing you an entire population who can not only stay awake through a cricket Test match, they can also remain enthused for the whole four-day duration. What more do you want?

    JBS@102 - I'm an Australian. They'd be collecting it from my country as well (although we could presumably make an equally valid argument we're not speaking "English" any more... we're speaking Strine, or Strayan!). Presumably the other alternative would be to start suing all the various colonies who have adulterated the language for copyright infringement or something. (Look, I don't have to make this work - like I said, I'm Australian. I just have to watch with popcorn while it happens a reasonably safe viewing distance away).

    151:

    Kenneth Horne: Now if you're like me you've heard a lot about Brexit but don't really know what's going on. So when I heard about some people who'd looked into it I popped round to find out what the BONA RESEARCH GROUP thought of it.

    [Doorbell]

    KH: Hello is anyone there?

    Julian: Hello I'm Julian, and this is my friend Sandy.

    Sandy: Oh Mr 'Orne, how nice to vada your eek. Come in come in.

    KH: Now I'm here to learn about Brexit. I understand that you're closely associated with the Brexiteers.

    S: Oh yes, very closely.

    J: Very closely.

    S: You might say intimately.

    J: Yes intimately.

    KH: Can you show me some keen Brexiteers?

    S: Brexiteers. Oh Mr 'Orne. We've got lots of big Brexit-eers.

    KH: Well why's that?

    S: All the better to hear you with love. Brexit-ears, Brexit-noses.

    J: Brexit-mouths.

    S: Brexit-mouths, Brexit-eyebrows.

    KH: So you've got Brexit for the whole body do you?

    S: Oh Mr 'Orne.

    [And so on for a while]

    152:

    Presumably with a large enthusiasm for "Cottage Industries" I assume? I can thnk of several more along those lines, but probably not for a Family Magazine ....

    153:

    What can you come up with?

    How to fix brexit?

    The short answer? You can't. It was broken and impossible from day one - and there's no point in even trying. Brexit was stillborn - no point in trying to revive a corpse. You are wasting your time a bit like that old joke; "Can you give me an example of wasted energy? Telling a hair-raising story to a bald-headed man".

    The long answer? First of all I fear that may's deal really could get through. I wonder (for example) if may will - to coin a phrase - "stuff the DUPs mouths with gold". That and at least some MPs appear to have "rubber backbones" and who would gladly take this terrible deal if the choice came down between that and "you've lost your seat".

    Whoever is PM be it may or somebody else there is only one sensible and logical solution to brexit. And that's to scrunch up the brexit papers and throw 'em in a bin. Just wait around a while, it'll go into one of those black binbags and the bin men will be around soon and take it away in a rubbish lorry. Job done, or in other words - remain in the eu: Bin brexit.

    Brexit itself might be dead in any case however - there's one thing lots of people have forgotten and that is the investigation into aaron banks and his possibly illegal money donations. If the police find a crime was committed that surely means that brexit has been founded on a crime, and then how can any politician back that?

    154:

    Greg Tingey noted "People in the US can easily move to another state, if things go to shit ( See my link about Ohio earlier ) ... here it's just a little bit more difficult."

    But you can just move across the channel into any European mainland state! Easy peasy! Oh, wait... that only works if you're a Brexit profiteer.

    155:

    And it might, for two or three generations, grant the ability to distinguish between Conservatives and thoughtless reactionaries. Expletive high price though.

    156:

    Re "stuff the DUPs mouths with gold"

    Wouldn't it be cheaper, all things considered, to buy SNP votes with an IndyRef2 ?

    If things go south, SNP will do that anyway, so it's not exactly a big loss for May.

    I would also be surprised if everybody in Labour is sold on Corbyns disaster-socialism gamble.

    Re the High Court and validity of referendum case

    The referendum was only advisory, May was not in any way bound by the (possibly invalid) result when she sent the Article 50 letter.

    From EU's point of view, the result of that case is only relevant as far as the EU monitors election integrity in the member states.

    The only UK court-case I can see which can invalidate the A50 letter in the eyes of EU, is if May is found guilty of High Treason by sending the A50 letter. Given the referendum was only advisory, that seems unlikely.

    Re EU court and "forget A50 letter" case

    The two most likely verdicts are "This is for the Council of Ministers to decide" and "Once Article 50 is started with notice, Article 49 applies for reentry." Both amount to more or less the same thing for UK.

    The absolutely totally unlikely verdict is: "Sure, UK can make a fool for EU for a couple of years and then yank the letter back right before the deadline and suffer no consequences for this manipulation of the common market."

    157:

    The only UK court-case I can see which can invalidate the A50 letter in the eyes of EU, is if May is found guilty of High Treason by sending the A50 letter. Given the referendum was only advisory, that seems unlikely.

    Certainly guilty of poor judgement, though after our experiences in the U.S. it's tough not to wonder who in the U.K. might be on Putin's payroll - not that I'm making any accusations about specific people - but the NCA inquiry does seem to be about a year behind Mueller's probe, so the UK public has far less idea than the US public about who might be tainted.

    The smart move at this point might be to ask the EU for an extension until the NCA has completed their inquiry and some kind of parliamentary committee has seen whatever intelligence your various services might have gathered on the whole thing. I further suspect that some of the EU's intelligence services know things they are unwilling to talk about.

    One thing I feel strongly about in both the US and UK's situation is that we need to stop worrying too much about the "sources and methods" issues and start declassifying information about Brexit/Trump-Russia in time to keep our countries' heads above the fucking water!

    158:

    Interesting. The UK seems to be more on top of certain issues than I'd previously noticed.

    Ted Kramer is CEO and co-founder of Six4Three, a creepy US-based machine-learning startup whose debut product was a Facebook app called Pinkini that let you search your friends' photos for pictures of them in bikinis; when Facebook shut down the app after a terms-of-service change, Six4Three sued Facebook and obtained a key trove of internal Facebook documents through the discovery process.

    Kramer was in London this week for work, and somehow the UK Parliament got wind of the fact that he was carrying a laptop with all those discovery documents...

    159:

    Greg Tingey @ 139:

    Just as you thought it couldn't get any madder THIS happens
    [ High court to rule on legality of vote ... ]


    Ok, so suppose hypothetically the High Court does rule BREXIT is null & void. What happens then?

    160:

    And it's not the Leave voters who've been stockpiling emergency supplies of food, putting solar panels on their roofs and so on in anticipation of everything going tits up, is it?

    161:

    Conservative MP Damian Collins ... despatched a Parliamentary serjeant at arms to Kramer's hotel and dragged him before Parliament....” Well at least one Tory has done something useful this year.

    162:

    Why would they need more than a week to do a referendum?

    Firstly, there's no constitutional mechanism to run a referendum. So every referendum requires an Act of Parliament to be passed, to allow for the referendum. (It's essentially a constitutional hot-patch applied on the fly.)

    Secondly, you can't just re-run the paperwork for the last Brexit referendum — at a minimum a second ref would require a different choice: probably a three-way with ranked voting on "May's Deal", "No Deal" or "Withdraw Article 50". So, new legislative boilerplate needs drafting and then running through both houses of parliament in a crowded legislative period in the run-up to the Christmas/New Year recess.

    Thirdly, campaigning. A minimum ten week period is required, traditionally, to ensure the voters are properly informed and not bounced into rubber-stamping an initiative without debate.

    Fourthly, it takes time to distribute advance postal ballots and set up polling stations and election counting centres: this isn't a permanent infrastructure, venues needs to be requested and confirmed, staff for the count need to be booked, parties need to be able to nominate election monitors, and so on.

    Upshot: taking all critical path elements into account it takes a minimum of about 4-5 months for the UK to schedule a snap referendum (a general election can be run in as little as 12 weeks, but there's a repeatable constitutional mechanism in place for that). Normally referenda have taken 12-24 months in the past, so 4-5 months is a rush job.

    163:

    To help those of us observing from afar is this a reasonable description of what is going on at the moment?

    Brexit debate currently Just the deluded fighting those in denial

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/brexit-debate-currently-just-deluded-fighting-those-denial-u-k-ncna939636

    164:

    I've been intrigued by the mention of "technological means" for border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, so that the border can be simultaneously open and closed. This blog is one of the finest possible places to discuss technology, so let's talk about technological means. Brexit is an exceedingly complex problem. But it was proposed as a simple solution that was ideal in every respect except that it was an utter fantasy and not practicable in any way. The complexity arises from the inherent conflicts between the fantasy that was promised and the reality that needs to be implemented, and from the huge scale. It's pretty clear that only the newest and most modern technology has a chance of addressing the complexity while maintaining the appearance of simplicity. Therefore I would like to propose the deployment of "Brexit Reality".

    Wearing your Brexit Reality glasses and automatic noise canceling earbuds, you will see and hear carefully curated information that is appropriate to your nationality, immigration status and political beliefs. Irish or UK citizen approaching the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic? You see an open highway with no border controls. EU citizen? Your road leads to the border post where you are detained, interrogated and strip-searched. Have to allow EU fishers in UK waters? Simple, the Brexit Reality goggles edit the scene so UK fishers see Union Jacks flying on the EU boats. (Simply not seeing the EU boats would be unsafe.) Leave supporters can see goods prices in shillings and pence, while Remain supporters can see them in Euros. When Theresa May needs must appear before the European Court of Justice, her Brexit Reality goggles can add wigs to the judges, and translate their speech into proper British accents.

    165:

    Actually, I had developed this scenario involving poisoned tea, the Royal Family, and English football fans -- but after reflection,

    I realized that since we elected the dipshit Antichrist over here and you all are cheering for Brexit over there the whole planet has entered the Stupidity Singularity and anything posted will never compare.

    166:

    RvdH @ 161 Actually, that's SERIOUS. It's also a message to Zuckerberg, as an arrest by the Serjeant-at-Arms, means you have not been arrested by the mere police, oh noe ... you have been arrested by Parliament. And, if MZ shows his face here again, he's likely to get the same treatment - after all "secure" accomodation is available ......

    Charlie @ 162 Not quite. Assuming a bill for "Ref2" couild be rushed through in a single day ( And it has been done in the past ) then it can all be done & dusted in 6 weeks. So the ultimate deadline for "Ref2" is approximately - St Valentine's Day, oops.

    daerien @ 165 Actually, in one respect we are in an even worse pickle than you. Assuming that Pence & the christofascists don't mount a "state of emergency" before 2020, your problem may be over, but Brexit is PERMANENT ... and the balance was SO CLOSE to evens. Hence my hope for "Ref2".

    167:

    Update Re. David L @ 163 From your linked article: The U.K. — a nation which in living memory was administering the largest empire in the history of the world — is at present a country where the deluded are fighting with those in denial. It could all end very badly indeed. Yes, I’m deeply afraid this is our 1940 – without even firing a shot ….

    168:

    Greg,

    Lets say Parliament nixes the May Agreement, and calls for a referendum giving three choices: "Hard Brexit", "Mays agreement", "Remain(Withdraw A50 Letter)".

    By 1st of feb you have the result: 55% Remain, 20% May Agreement, 20% Hard Brexit

    PM X.Y.Whoever sends letter to BXL: "Nevermind A50, we'd like to stay."

    Please tell us what happens next ?

    169:

    Charlie @162 - I know some of the retired women who make up the backbone of our local election staff and they need about six weeks notice to train/schedule/book-and-kick-the-flower-arranging-course-out-of-the-hall* to make sure it runs as smoothly, transparently and fairly as it does. Less than that and they'd cut corners which would turn out badly.

    Poul-Henning Kamp @168 - I agree it makes no sense to allow the UK to rescind the A50 declaration. But the reason it might happen is that of the various ways of dealing with the idiot nation on the EU's North West frontier, maybe this is the least stupid?

    • Good turn out from disappointed flower arrangers
    170:

    For which you should blame Noah Webster, who changed spellings with malice aforethought, "in order to be different".

    171:

    that football is the Australian Rules version of the game, played on an oval shaped pitch that has far too many goalposts

    I never really understood Aussie Rules, mostly on the level of "why invent this in a World that already contains Rugby Union?" I will give you that it's way more fun to watch than soccer.

    172:

    Actually I can answer that. New South Wales and Queensland are big into Rugby (though more Rugby League than Union). Because of this Victoria and South Australia have to be different and so prefer Aussie Rules.

    Or perhaps VIC and SA love Aussie Rules so because of that NSW and QLD obviously prefer the Rugby code for their odd-shaped balls.

    tl;dr: regional rivalry

    173:

    And in lots of other locations Polling Places are schools (infant / elementary level as a rule), which means scheduling an extra "school holiday" for the individual schools involved since, under the Representation of the People Acts they may not be used for their normal business on the Polling Day in case "undue influence" is brought to bear on the voters.

    174:

    Cheers; that actually makes sense, along with people watching Aussie Rules in order to see Collingwood lose (which is an international thing, not just an Aussie one).

    175:

    This is the explanation from my cousins, big Aussie Rules fans from Perth (also Aussie Rules country), who have a genial contempt for anything from the East coast of Australia.

    176:

    Those old conservative voters need a lot of medicine to stay alive, and a lot of cheap migrant workers to keep their care homes going.

    Alas, I've been getting a lot of face time in care homes in the past few months, and about 80% of the residents are past voting.

    (Their middle-aged kids are another matter, but their politics may be dominated by other issues. Most people are short-sighted and vote over whatever's right in front of their nose.)

    177:

    A wise choice ... because they're synonyms!

    178:

    Some only watch it to see Carlton lose, too, so it's pretty ecumenical that way. Oh, and this was a thing. Looking at that now, I imagine people from Europe and America might consider the crowds to be "cute". The most noticable feature of aussie rules has always been the tight shorts though (or as they would have put it in the 70s, "something for the ladies", particularly given the players didn't traditionally favour the "brick shithouse" physique common in the Rugbies).

    179:

    A major difference between AFL and Rugby (I can't tell the various codes of Rugby apart, apparently those who grew up in it can) is that when 20,000 people turn up for a Rugby Grand Final the organisers and commentators and officials have orgasms.

    When 20,000 people turn up for a 2nd division AFL game, nobody notices.

    Of course, AFL Grand Finals get 100,000 people to the game...

    180:

    This is an elaboration on Jouni K. Seppänen's suggestion @36, but a good one I think. Very doublethink, much City and the City, wow.

    181:

    at a minimum a second ref would require a different choice: probably a three-way with ranked voting on "May's Deal", "No Deal" or "Withdraw Article 50".

    This sounds almost like hope. Do you really think that the powers-that-be would make an intelligent decision?

    The choices on Referendum 2 would be "May's Deal" or "No Deal". "Withdraw Article 50" is IMPOSSIBLE. It Cannot Be, and therefore such a choice is unacceptable. Brexit! Means! Brexit!

    182:

    Re: Fastest time to arrange a Referendum

    Appreciate the explanation - thanks!

    And how much time does it take Parliament and the populace at large to react to a natural disaster? Seriously, the UK (along with the rest of the planet) needs to figure out their 'supply-chain' response-strategy in the event of any of a wide range of modern day disaster scenarios (political - Brexit, terrorist, climate/weather, etc.).

    Even 6 weeks is way too long. As for the lead time to appropriate schools as voting venues: Don't you folks ever get snow days? If yes, just how screwed is your K-12 education at the end of the school year if it snows more than you had planned for? (C'mon, get serious and stop with the lame excuses.)

    183:

    Does the UK have an e-file system for personal income tax filing?

    If yes, this system could be securely repurposed for voting since identity validation and overall security (the trickiest parts) are already in place. This would mean ensuring that the web site ramped up its servers/processing capacity especially if the 'vote' had to be conducted within some arbitrary 24-hour period.

    FYI - Data shows that 81.7% of the UK population had access to the Internet as of 2011. 'Recent Internet usage' reached 90% in early 2018 with the lowest usage rate among the older age groups.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2018

    If you figure that about 50% of this demo would not be cognitively capable or inclined to vote even if there were 12 weeks to set up the old-school version of a referendum, this means no loss of voting rights. That leaves the 5% of the total population who probably for financial reasons do not already possess any Internet access. These folks could be accommodated via existing public facilities such as public libraries that free/no-fee computers (desk tops) connected to the Internet. I'm guessing that a maximum 3-options question configured as an electronic ballot shouldn't be too tricky for anyone who's ever used an ATM. (Which is probably close to 98% of the overall population ... even in the UK.)

    184:

    PM X.Y.Whoever sends letter to BXL: "Nevermind A50, we'd like to stay." ... Please tell us what happens next ?

    I think the UK would get to remain (with footnotes).

    It wan't in the EU's interest for the UK to leave, in the first place. The whole debacle to this point has inflicted huge amounts of economic damage on the UK already, in terms of billions of pounds of lost annual GDP growth and corporations moving out into more stable EU members.

    If the UK does leave, the risk is that the economic damage will be generalized to the detriment of the rest of the EU (the UK is a major trading partner for other EU members), and it sets a precedent that leaving is even possible.

    If the UK is allowed to slink back into the manger, chastened, that will be a powerful lesson for potential splittists elsewhere — think Poland, think Hungary, think some of the hotheads in Northern Italy.

    Footnote: however, the UK will be made to pay, one way or the other. It is unlikely that the financial institutions who've already moved their nameplates will return. The loss of diplomatic soft power is immense and permanent. There may be strong pressure for the UK to converge with the Schengen mainstream, although I think ditching Sterling for the Euro is vanishingly unlikely at this point (both because of symbolism and because it serves the EUs interests to have an unofficial second reserve currency).

    Thus, in such a situation the EU will play the magnanimous and forgiving party in public, but in diplomatic circles and committee back rooms there will be copious gouts of arterial (British) blood as the sharks extract payment in flesh.

    185:

    And how much time does it take Parliament and the populace at large to react to a natural disaster?

    Oh, that's easy: they invoke the Civil Contingencies Act and initiate a 30 day period of Rule by Decree — ministers have the power to create law on the fly, but there's a rolling sunset timeout on these powers. They have to be renewed by Parliament, AIUI.

    However, the CCA was passed in 2004 under Blair, at a time when the machineries of government hadn't just been through eight years of austerity-motivated cuts that axed 30-50% of local government spending. A lot of institutional hollowing-out has occurred, and it's extremely likely that when the ministers start yanking on the control column to pull out of the nose-dive they'll discover that the cables and control surfaces have been sold off as scrap.

    186:

    Does the UK have an e-file system for personal income tax filing? If yes, this system could be securely repurposed for voting since identity validation and overall security (the trickiest parts) are already in place

    Yes it does, but no it can't, because the vast majority of the UK population don't file income tax returns at all: tax is deducted at source via the employers by PAYE (Pay As You Earn). Self-employed people deal with e-filing, in theory — but again, theory and practice diverge: I just throw my receipts and bank statements at my accountant once a year and sign the finished form they send me without actually having a login on the HMRC system. And so on.

    Also, 0.5% of the UK population is currently homeless, 3-5% are destitute (starving/homeless/relying on food banks and soup kitchens) and another 20% are officially below the poverty line. About 60% of benefits payments go to people in full-time work that pays so little they qualify for income support. If you put a barrier in place to voting, even one as trivial as requiring internet access (from people who can't afford to pay a mobile phone bill) then you're skewing the election outcome towards the Rich Folks' Party.

    187:

    voidampersand @ 164: I've been intrigued by the mention of "technological means" for border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, so that the border can be simultaneously open and closed. This blog is one of the finest possible places to discuss technology, so let's talk about technological means.

    Easy Peasy. Everything gets an implanted RFID tag so THEY can track its movement. EVERY thing ... and every one.

    188:

    I do not believe that the UK would get to remain, I think the best offer it would get would be the current transition remains in force until the UK has re-negotiated admission.

    The new membership deal would be no special status, rebates and euro membership and the UK would be excluded from the Council until the new details of membership are concluded.

    189:

    Don't you folks ever get snow days? Well yes, in some cases but there is a fundamental difference between a snow day and a Polling Day. On a snow day, the staff and pupils are told "take the day off", but it would actually be illegal for them to visit the school for educational purposes on a Polling Day (other than individual parents taking children to the Poll with them or or teachers visiting the Poll because the relevant school is also the local Polling Place).

    190:

    UT @ 188 How many times do I have to repeat what Macron & Merkel ( & others, especially NL & DK ) have said? That from their p.o.v we can stop it at any time up to the deadline. It's in their interests as well as ours, that we stay. OK?

    191:

    Charlie @ 186:

    Does the UK have an e-file system for personal income tax filing? If yes, this system could be securely repurposed for voting since identity validation and overall security (the trickiest parts) are already in place

    Yes it does, but no it can't, because the vast majority of the UK population don't file income tax returns at all: tax is deducted at source via the employers by PAYE (Pay As You Earn).

    That's the way it works for the most employees here in the U.S. But you still have to file a tax return, if for no other reason than to claim a refund for taxes withheld in excess of taxes owed (or occasionally to pay extra because they didn't hold out enough).

    What do y'all have to do if your employer holds back too much for taxes? Is there a mechanism to claim a refund of excess taxes deducted? Or are y'all just SOL in that case?

    192:

    Over payment only tends to happen if you leave a well paid job for no job or less well paid,

    But its an Easy answer - about 6 months after the end of the tax year you get a letter from the Inland revenue saying you've overpaid and here is your refund cheque attached - no need to file or apply

    193:

    What do y'all have to do if your employer holds back too much for taxes? Is there a mechanism to claim a refund of excess taxes deducted? Or are y'all just SOL in that case?

    Simplistically, how much tax you pay depends on two things — your tax allowance, and how much you actually earn. In the case that you have overpaid your tax (for example you earnt less than expected in the second half of the year, while you paid tax at full rate in the first half), this is frequently sorted by adjusting your tax allowance for the following financial year, so that you may earn more before becoming liable. If you overpaid a lot, this adjustment might not be sufficient, so in such cases the taxman may send you a nice cheque instead.

    If you've underpaid, then much the same is the case. A small discrepancy will be sorted by decreasing your allowance for the following year. A large discrepancy is when they will be writing to you and asking you to send them a cheque.

    Note that I am not a bookkeeper or accountant in any way. But for most of us, most of the time, it's nice and simple and we don't need to involve paid help.

    194:

    paws4thot @ 189:

    Don't you folks ever get snow days?

    Well yes, in some cases but there is a fundamental difference between a snow day and a Polling Day. On a snow day, the staff and pupils are told "take the day off", but it would actually be illegal for them to visit the school for educational purposes on a Polling Day (other than individual parents taking children to the Poll with them or or teachers visiting the Poll because the relevant school is also the local Polling Place).

    It's been a long time, but when I was in elementary school, the school I attended was a polling place. They set up in the back of the cafeteria. We didn't get out of school. Classes continued normally. We just had to stay out of that part of the cafeteria on that day and part of the playground was cordoned off for voter parking.

    Hell, I've even seen them open the polling station in a High School gymnasium that still had people living in it because it was an Evacuation Shelter after a hurricane & they didn't cancel school for that either.

    Why wouldn't that work for y'all?

    195:

    thank you!

    Though I think the core point is that if the political machinery wanted to solve this, it could. It's not even difficult.

    "Purpose of a system is what you see it doing", etc. The "don't make simple things complicated" take is either "everyone holding political power in the UK considers whatever would be required to avoid a hard brexit not in their best interests" or "there is a strong elite consensus that instituting an aristocracy is essential" or "I am so specialized to function in an existing political norm that when removed from that context I am absolutely helpless".

    I suspect it's a combination, and I am nigh-certain the proportions don't matter. Just hanging all of the second group wouldn't fix the problem, even if you could perfectly identify them. (I don't think it would do any actual harm, but it wouldn't solve the problem. It would function to make the other two parts of the problem larger.)

    196:

    It can be even easier than #192 suggests. Under UK PAYE, when you leave $oldjob you get an official form stating how much you earned in that job, and how much tax you paid, which you give to $newemployer. The payroll system then recognises that you have overpaid tax relative to your new earnings for the year, and will reduce your tax due accordingly. In extreme cases you may also receive a rebate after the end of the tax year.

    197:

    USian?

    If so then British law is different! Under the British Repesentation of the People Acts it is illegal to carry on other businesses in a Polling Place on Polling Day, and no amount of talking about foreign law will change the fact.

    198:

    Re: ' 0.5% of the UK population is currently homeless, 3-5% are destitute (starving/homeless/relying on food banks and soup kitchens) and another 20% are officially below the poverty line '

    Yet they still have Internet access ...

    199:

    Under the British Representation of the People Acts it is illegal to carry on other businesses in a Polling Place on Polling Day,

    Depends where you draw the boundary of a Polling Place. My local Polling Place is a couple of function rooms in a local hotel which continues to be open for business as a hotel, restaurant and bar while polling takes place. There is a separate entrance to the Polling Place rooms, that seems to be enough to satisfy the law but I may be wrong.

    200:

    Yet they still have Internet access ...

    Do they?

    In BC they changed welfare applications to require internet (unless you are lucky enough to live near one of the few remaining offices), on the grounds that everyone had internet access (at a public library if no where else) — just as the libraries (locally funded) were cutting internet access because they couldn't afford it.

    Access on a mobile doesn't necessarily cut it — some online forms for my government really need full screen and several plugins to work.

    201:

    I have read suggestions that the conservatives could run a deal vs no-deal referendum. Remain would not be an option. It would be quite something to have another disastrous referendum result and make one last lunge toward the cliff.

    Ok...

    Uh...

    Scotland, N. Ireland, and Gibraltar leave the UK and remain in the EU.

    UK keeps food and medicine available by having no incoming border controls at all except against people. Consumer prices actually drop!

    A batch of bad eye drops leaves ten percent of the population with eye-patches.

    A batch of bad foot cream leaves ten percent of the population with one or more peg-legs.

    Exotic animal smugglers flood the country with colorful parrots, etc.

    The currency collapses and is replaced with actual gold coins.

    200 years later this is seen as one of the best examples of future-prepping an entire nation for the chaotic world of coastal flooding.

    The sun never sets on the British smuggling empire.

    203:

    From Robert Preston in that article: "The delay could be no more than a couple of months, because there is an absolute horror of the UK participating in elections for the European Parliament at the end of May."

    I'm always interested in timelines. This is saying that the EU will not want to delay brexit by more than a couple months, because then the UK would participate in the EU parliamentary elections. The EU wants them gone or remaining before those elections. That, I think, is a pretty big blow to a lot of plans to get out of this without disaster that require a longer transition.

    204:

    Re: 'The EU wants them [UK] gone or remaining before those elections.'

    Depends on how many current EU members would like the EU membership terms eased. Regardless, Brexit could still end up being a major campaign issue in the EU election.

    According to the below, UKers with a residence in some EU member states are allowed to vote in the upcoming EU elections therefore could elect one or two UK-sympathetic members which could then stall the final exit for a few more years.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_European_Parliament#Proposed_reforms

    'Eligibility

    Each Member State has different rules determining who can vote for and run as the European Parliamentary candidates. In Spain v United Kingdom, the European Court of Justice held that member states are permitted to extend the franchise to non-EU citizens.[33]'

    Re: Bermuda

    Lots of money (est. 12% of ALL outgoing financial tran$action$) goes to Bermuda from the UK (see 'double Irish, Dutch sandwich') making this island a much more relevant contender for the NeoBritannia capitol than revenue-puny Gibraltar.

    Imagine if the UK merged with Bermuda: all that unpaid tax revenue repatriated.

    http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-google-accounts-show-11-billion-euros-moved-via-low-tax-dutch-sandwich-in-2014-2016-2

    205:

    BREGRET Significant numbers of remain voters seem to be changing their minds, now facts are avialable ....

    206:

    My time in South Korea leads me to believe that they'd get along famously with the Scots, but that the "getting to know you" period would involve many drinking contests, and I'm not sure who I would put odds on.

    207:

    no special status, rebates and euro membership

    Euro membership is vaguer than most people realize. While new members have to commit to joining the euro, there's no set timetable for it except for "when debt/currency convergence criteria are met". Which could be any time, really. After the Greek fiasco the ECB is not eager to push the issue.

    Which is why I have a small purse full of Polish Zlotys on my desk. Poland joined in 2004 and is theoretically committed to joining the euro; it's just taken 14 years so far with no sign of motion.

    The UK could in principle commit to joining the euro at some undefined future date, then kick the can down the road indefinitely: the real question is what would this do to confidence in sterling as a reserve currency in the meantime.

    208:

    Well, this was breaking news 8 hours ago

    Excerpt: LONDON (Reuters) - Europe’s top court will hold an urgent hearing on Tuesday over whether Britain can unilaterally reverse its decision to leave the EU, in a case supporters of membership hope could pave the way to a second referendum and ultimately stop Brexit.

    The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is being asked to interpret whether Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the mechanism by which Britain notified the European Union of its intention to leave - can be revoked. ' --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-article50/stopping-brexit-eus-top-court-hears-uk-exit-reversal-case-idUSKCN1NV1OW

    209:

    What do y'all have to do if your employer holds back too much for taxes? Is there a mechanism to claim a refund of excess taxes deducted? Or are y'all just SOL in that case?

    It gets refunded automatically through your payroll when HMRC catch up — usually within 2-3 months of you starting a job on an emergency tax code. (Happened to me in the 90s after a period of being a student: got allocated an emergency code, paid too much tax for my first couple of months, then suddenly got a month and a half with no tax.)

    210:

    I now go to Peter Watts' site for the happy songs. As OGH would say, 2018: Who ordered that?

    211:

    Re: Homeless (but not phoneless)

    First read about this type of initiative almost 10 years ago. The article below is about homelessness in Australia and a specifically designed app (AskIzzy) that helps folks access help/resources.

    "Ninety-five percent of people who are homeless have mobile phones, and 80 percent of those have smartphones," said Spriggs. "Often they might be on prepaid phones, with no credit, but they access free Wi-Fi to get online."

    https://www.cnet.com/news/homeless-not-phoneless-askizzy-app-saving-societys-forgotten-smartphone-tech-users/

    Similarly in a Canada smartphones help urban and rural homeless and at-risk populations (e.g., domestic violence) maintain communication with authorities as well as more effectively access aid at critical times.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/social-media-indigenous-women-safety-facebook-1.4032899

    In the UK, there's a new smartphone app that allows digital-economy-only folks to help homeless folk (who may or may not have a smartphone).

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/08/homeless-people-wearing-barcodes-new-project-increase-donations/

    'When you scan the barcode on your smartphone, a profile of the homeless person appears. This tells you more about their circumstances, such as how they became homeless or what their job used to be.

    The project, which is being trialled in Oxford, is supported by Oxford University Innovation and Oxford’s Said Business School.'

    212:

    As an aside, why do the brexiteers get to sound a bit like musketeers, while the remainers only get to be remoaners?

    213:

    Sorry, the EU keeping in check the corrupted officials?

    I'm thinking about the pro-Russian government of the Ukraine*, that was assassinating some citizens, as opposed to the current pro-West government, that started a war, and is at least as corrupt....

    • One set of my grandparents came from Odessa, so I can call it whatever I want, which is the Ukraine.
    214:

    Back in the mists of time in the 80s, The Monster Raving Loony Party and the Rainbow Alliance had a plan to end The Troubles. All the islands off the west coast of Europe would unite under the banner of "The Rainbow Isles". Since then the rainbow has been co-opted by the LGBT movement. This suggests a way of alleviating the worst of Brexit. We need to immanentise CASE NIGHTMARE RAINBOW. Instead of the UK becoming a tax haven for corporate money we need to join with Ireland in creating a safe haven for the pronoun-challenged and non-heteronormative. Give me your queens, your dykes, your huddled bears yearning to breathe free! This will so enrage the gammon fraternity that they will seek to leave (and be encouraged) to emigrate to the less enlightened and more bigoted parts of Europe and the world. Given the strong correlation of those people with the Brexiteers, it kills two birds with one stone. With the Houses of Parliament needing serious refurbishment before it falls down, MPs will have to move out. An upstairs room at the Admiral Duncan in Old Compton Street should be sufficient and would mean they could stay in London in familiar surroundings.

    The traditional British Empire way of keeping a newly conquered territory under control is to put a hated minority in charge. This gets a bit tricky with post-Brexit UK because the obvious candidates are all a bit ideologically unsound and I'll get into trouble if I suggest them. I'd offer the Buddhists but there's not really enough of them and even they are getting a bit of a bad name just now. So I think Vegetarian Hindus are the thing. When the borders shut, we'll have trouble feeding ourselves. And nobody wants cheap tasteless chicken from the colonies. However there's never any decent veggy curries in the supermarkets. So, I for one, welcome our new Hindu, many-armed overlords with their Masala Dosa, Roti and Daal. Until global warming really kicks in and East Anglia disappears, there should still be plenty of sugar beet. So it's Beet Curry for the poor and Charlie Bighams Beet Tikka Masala from Waitrose for the rich. Or perhaps an artisanal "Beet Dansak For One", from your local farm shop. If we can just use CRISPR to transfer the caffeine and nicotine genes from coffee and tobacco to the humble sugar beet we should be able to combine an energy drink, too much carbs, unprocessed sugar and a vape into one easily digestible takeaway meal or packet of crisps.

    215:

    There's another easy answer for the problem of all the unemployed, esp. the young people: forget about a "short, victorious war", no, no, where's the profit in that. The obvious far better answer is: pick up the war with France!

    It will go on for years (and think of all the money to be made by war porfiteers!), and it disposes of surplus population, and provides health spare body parts!

    I can see the recruiting posters now, SERVE, FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY! Brave the broadsides with the Frech Imperial ships! Be part of The Line!

    Mr. Hornblower, the doctor will see you now....

    216:

    One more small addition: since the government will then be so small that the 1% will run it all, you will need an agency to regulate the obvious means for them to settle disputes among themselves.

    Just that the law should require duels to the death to be played by the principal, not a hired duelist.

    217:

    Don't be silly! Think of all those unemployed young 'uns! They can hire themselves out at the airports to be "best boys" (was that the phrase, in the Golden Past of the Empire?)....

    Can't you just see Saudi, and African, and Afro-Americans hiring them...?

    218:

    Interesti8ng statistic. One's immediate following thought is to wonder how many of that 1% of psychotic, antisocial thugs overlap with the wealthiest 1%.

    219:

    Ukraine is not part of the EU. They reached an association agreement in 2012, but this triggered a whole load of political unrest, culminating in the current Russia-Ukraine nastiness — apparently Russia is strongly opposed to the idea of former-USSR states joining the EU.

    220:

    No, no. Giant barded war frogs should be what they're riding.

    221:

    Cane toads. Giant mutant cane toads.

    222:

    No, too much danger that the cane toads would win. What would the UK do with Occupied Estonia? Especially "Estonia and 20 billion cane toads"?

    223:

    Ok, commitment to join the Euro and actually joining are different things but would a UK application to re-join the EU on the same terms as Poland, get support in the Commons? Also would Spain be tempted to veto unless Gibraltar is handed over?

    224:

    You mean, as opposed to the illegal money from American right-wing billionaires that we've already started hearing about?

    225:

    Well, that's completely absurd, and a waste of money. The countracto4s hired to build the seawall will stop at 150 meters, and declare it done, claiming that costs had risen too high to continue, but thank you for the ROI....

    226:

    Tiny bit of news -- in the back of my mind I seem to remember trump saying if the UK gets a trade deal with the EU there'll be no trade deal with the US.

    Prehaps I was correct?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46352463

    227:

    I see a lot of proposals for seawalls that go part way round things. It's as though the proposers don't understand how water works. Usually it's just that the realise that 20,000 km of seawall is a bit of a big ask so they just focus on their little bit of the coast instead. Or just as likely, they can't think globally and only care about their little bit, not realising that it's all connected.

    Reminds me of the old days when after storms there would be demands from some people that "the government" put all the sand back on the beach. Error: scale issue.

    If one sacrifice to the elder gods is good, does that mean that 10 billion is better?

    228:

    What do y'all have to do if your employer holds back too much for taxes? Is there a mechanism to claim a refund of excess taxes deducted?

    Unless I'm badly mistaken the UK and others in the EU have a vastly simpler tax code than the US. Especially for "people". Which means that rarely does anyone over or under pay except if they job hop a lot or their salary varies a lot.

    So basically how much is reported on their equivalent of a W2 (US statement of earnings from a company) determines their tax bill.

    In the US some R's really wanted to move to such a system in the 80s and at times there after but they kept tying it to cutting the government budget by 1/2 so it went nowhere.

    229:

    For the reference, EU also opposes dragging Ukraine into the EU, because they've had enough problems already with countries with stagnating economy like Spain or Italy, and US-affiliated countries like Poland or Baltics. It is the US that pushes the association, because it will put much greater load on EU budget and therefore will make it go bunkrupt. That is a one major reason for the country to still staying in transition status with only small part of its citizens allowed to visit Europe (and these are mostly imported workforce). Incidentally, US itself can not allow Ukraine to join NATO, because, as I already noted before, the entire purpose of NATO is to NOT go to war with Russia and this is not what current owners of Ukraine asking for. However, it is very hard for Ukraine to actually go for war for the threat that the central government will collapse in the result of even more economic abuse. Oh wait...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqipJumBdlM Current situation is of course even more absurd if you see it it from the point of international law about maritime borders. The previous strait status was a coordinated use by two countries (that is, you need to have the permission of both sides), so when the other shore changed hands, the status in general did not change - to pass through the strait you still need to ask Russian side for permission. Practically, they just surrendered their own men, not even bothering with consequences - which of course, happened in the past so many times that nobody bothers counting.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/26/europe/ukraine-russia-kerch-strait-intl/index.html Not only that, the president immediately declared martial law, because, obviously, you don't need to wait several days for decisions that have already made before the "provocation". A very amateur job, but of course, the public will eat it with the straight face. This is what happens when you do not even bothering with fooling anybody but yourself.

    230:

    Are you sure that the current Parliament, stuffed with Blair PLC pro-corporate television celebrities, has as much concern for the fate of Britain as you suggest? If it took any level of courage to stand against the desires of the stupendously wealthy right, can you point out who has it? The right can rely on the already-prepared police state infrastructure to protect them, while Britain slides into chaos, a punishment of the unwise for not recognising the true power of finance's preferred politicians. The notion of Parliament's independence is pre-BBC, we have been warned repeatedly that it has become merely vaudeville, and its intellectual and interrogatory powers completely failed to reveal the absence of any evidence for the Iraq war. Who would lead a coup?

    It seems possible that the super-rich prefer history based on cycles to make inherited wealth work. Why was May absent from the Armistice centenary? Perhaps the intention is to revisit Baldwin's New Conservatism, the original attempt to use the police to exploit the end of the war. This time when 'the balloon goes up' it won't be deflated by a King who declares for Hitler, but rather than an island at war readiness, will create a brutish police state?

    231:

    How about join the Dark Side of the Atlantic? An unholy Anglo union of North American power and British spunk and je ne sais quoi (?)! We bring the unflinching intolerance, you bring the cultural superiority - a temporarily broken relationship repaired by the gravity of ignorance!

    (On a side note - I do actually think there could be an opportunity were our stupid governments able to conceive it - but they won't.)

    232:

    Similarly in a Canada smartphones help urban and rural homeless and at-risk populations (e.g., domestic violence) maintain communication with authorities as well as more effectively access aid at critical times.

    If they have cell phones. In Vancouver that might be a good bet (although Vancouver also has public transit and government offices), but up the Coast or in the Interior where public transit is rare and offices are closing (and libraries are closing or cutting back on public computer access, because money) fewer people have cell phones.

    The problem isn't using smartphones and the internet as an additional method of communication — it's a tendency to make it the only method of communication.

    233:

    Re: Canada's Internet - 'the last mile'

    My understanding is that the Canadian Feds are looking into funding small ISPs in order to provide 'the last mile' of Internet connectivity to all its residents. No idea whether when conducting this study they looked at other countries that have similarly distributed populations, i.e., a dozen densely populated urban areas across its 5,000 km breadth with hundreds of sparsely populated towns/villages scattered here and there and often at a considerable distance away from the large urbs. Can only think of Australia, Brazil and Russia as having a similar challenge.

    The recommendations section starts on pg 35:

    http://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/INDU/Reports/RP9711342/indurp11/indurp11-e.pdf

    In comparison, getting all of the UK population online is much easier and cheaper because its small area (1/41 the size of Canada) is already covered in multiple layers of communications infrastructure that can be used as a backbone or to piggyback on.

    234:

    [ ASTROTURF DRIVE-BY WITH SUSPICIOUS USER DETAILS DELETED — mods ]

    235:

    If you want people to buy cardigans, you make a real point of offering them a choice between a red one and a blue one.

    It makes it difficult to remember other options exist.

    People do not deal well with environments in which people around them lie a lot. (there's a whole literature about what happens when volunteer organizations acquire a sociopath. It's not pretty.) Advertising, especially politically directed advertising, creates an environment where you can't trust anything. Lots of people react to this by trusting absolutely because that lowers their insecurity to tolerable levels. Basically the authoritarian trick (virtue consists of hurting yourself for disobedience) with electronic amplification.

    The oligarchy is incompetent and net-negative in every respect from the point of view of anyone who isn't one. There's no reason to tolerate having the thing at all, and several strong reasons to get rid of it by the least sufficient means. We're not supposed to notice that; we're supposed to go all delusive and imagine being rich ourselves.

    236:

    There is no proposal of 'economic war' from Europe, the problem is the UK squandered all the time it had to prepare for Brexit wishing the EU would just give it everything for nothing (eg no border on either side of Ireland, but the UK doesn't have to follow any EU rules). Now with just... 93 (+/- a few) days left they cannot prepare effectively so they either make a complicated agreement with the EU or they 'crash out' with whatever last minute preparations they can make after realizing they are actually going to do that.

    Given this sequence of events it isn't entirely unreasonable to suggest the UK might be better off with France and Germany just running this stuff. On the other hand look at Greece.

    237:

    And of course the option the current government wants to pretend doesn't exist: they call the whole thing off, wake from the fever dream, and continue about their business.

    238:

    julian Bond @ 214 Cough I have just made a really delicious Venison Dhansak, using home-grown veg in the mix & side-dish - & I didn't pay for the Venison, either ... there's a lot of it running around the edges of Epping Forest & the surrounding fields .....

    sleepingroutine @ 229 Actually both the present corrupt leaders of Ukraine, the previous corrupt-&-murderous leaders of Ukraine & the corrupt-&-murderous leaders of Russia all deserve each other. Pity about all the "little people" caught out in the open, isn't it?

    P @ 230 ? ? ? ?

    John @ 234 NO Option 3 - cancel At-50 & REMAIN See also # 237

    239:

    Referring back to sleepingroutine @ 229 This article very non-judgemental, gives an interesting background to the present troubles.

    240:

    That might be legal under the ROtPA, if the said function rooms can be separated from the rest of the building by doors that are locked, and placed under the sole control of the Polling Officer on site from they start to set up until after the ballot boxes have been collected.

    I think it would require an actual visit to the site by the Returning Officer so that they could satisfy themself that the Polling Station could be separated from the rest of the building.

    241:

    Surely the New Management will take care of everything.

    242:

    John @234 Either you are misinformed or trying to mislead us. Worse still your comment is neither amusing, interesting, enlightening or thought-provoking*.

    • The choice is between 1. a transition period in which the UK is still subject to some but not all EU rules, and with no voting rights (but not a permanent arrangement) during which the UK negotiates a long-term trading agreement between itself and the EU and 2. exit the EU with no deal and try to sort out all the problems that causes on the fly, while still trying to negotiate a trading agreement with the EU.

    ** Thinking back to Dan H's comment, all the way at @9 - even if we accept his analysis of the long term EU problems, it would still be better to take the terrible transition deal and use the time to either prepare for full exit or negotiate a trade deal that would take advantage of his predicted upcoming turmoil.

    243:

    How about join the Dark Side of the Atlantic?

    Impossible.

    I obviously don't have to explain to you (presumably American) why the US Senate resists every attempt to add more States to the union.

    Bear in mind that the UK has a population of 65 million, nearly as many as Texas and California combined, and a GDP of $3Tn, or 15% of the entire USA.

    For an equitable merger, the UK would need to be allocated 15-20% of the seats in the Senate, equivalent to forming 8-10 new states. (Let's go for: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Greater Yorkshire, Midlands, London, and Northern England. There's some skew in the population density, but nothing totally out of the ordinary for a distribution of US states.)

    These new states would vote wildly to the left of centre in US political terms, with Scotland and London to the left of Bernie Sanders and pretty much nowhere fitting in with the Republican party.

    And that, right there, is your "nope" factor (even if the UK was willing to ditch the monarchy and accept the second amendment and all the rest of it ... yeah, not going to happen.)

    244:

    If they have cell phones. In Vancouver that might be a good bet

    Do not get me started on the despicable venality and crap level of service that is the Canadian telecoms market. They actually make the US cellphone carriers look good. A worse hive of scum and villainy I have not been forced to deal with to in recent years ...

    (The only worse personal experience I've had was in Australia, and that was some years ago, so they may have improved since 2013.)

    245:

    Yes. Our democratic processes are routinely, heavily and overtly influenced from the USA(*), but That's All Right. As in the USA, a Parliamentary report said that there was no evidence that Russia had actually influenced Brexit - they very carefully didn't ask whether the USA had.

    I have been flamed on this blog for saying that Brexit was, but the decades of anti-EU from the Murdoch media is proof positive. Yes, the Wail was worse, but less influential. And, as you say, there is increasing suspicion that the pro-Brexit campaigns were largely funded from the USA. But we already behave like a subservient territory of the USA - I use the expression "the Puerto Rico of the North".

    (*) And another country, which isn't Russia, but isn't relevant to Brexit, as far as I know.

    246:

    NOTE: Comment by "John" @232 deleted and commenter banned because it smells very fishy — random Yahoo email address with digits in the name, no previous posting history on the blog, arguing in very bad faith as some of you have already noticed (fallacy of the excluded middle, misrepresenting the options, arguing for the preferred choice of the Bannonite fash, i.e. Strategy of Tension).

    Shorter Charlie: if it smells like an alt-right sock puppet, it will be treated like an alt-right sock puppet.

    247:

    Seconded. Before setting out on our trip from Norway to Canada, I'd checked to see whether I ought to be getting bandwidth on my O2 contract. It appeared that everywhere we were going except the Faroes was covered.

    I arrived in Canada, and discovered that although I could get 4G reception from Telus, there was no bandwidth behind it. None at all. I could have made phone calls or sent SMS messages (why would I want to do that?), but not a drop of data. I ended up a few days later buying a data SIM in Montreal for a local carrier.

    Iceland? No problem.

    Greenland? Fine.

    Canada? Nope.

    248:

    The joys of an unregulated monopoly.

    Yes, there are three nominally distinct entities -- Telus, Bell, and Rogers -- and SaskTel because socialists. And the "people go with Telus because they're just a phone company, not those pirates at Rogers or unspeakable horrors at Bell" is a thing. But it's functionally a monopoly and it's got immense political cover because there are major pension funds heavily invested in Bell.

    I'd nationalize the actual backbone parts and burn the rest of it to the ground, but no one is asking me.

    249:

    Parliament rejects the deal. A good proportion of the house (everyone that isn't loyal to the Govt) campaigns for a second referendum, and gets one.

    May asks for a 6 months extension of article 50, which is granted

    This is not how it's going to go down, what happens is this:

    1) Parliament rejects the deal, perhaps even rejects it twice on Dec 11'th and then on Dec 19'th too since the crashing FTSE and falling GBP will not persuade the swivel-eyed Brexiteers. This pulls the pin on the grenade, since Brexit will not stop just because Parliament does not want a transition period (which is what the deal is, it is not the final thing)

    2) Theresa May calls for one of those clever snap elections. Which she somehow manages to lose, now handing the very much live grenade to George Corbyn with only seconds left of the fuse.

    3) George Corbyn can now: Attempt to get the deal passed again (the EU will probably allow a few months for that*), Cancel Article 50 or Deal with a Hard Brexit.

    4) Whatever happens, the Torys and the various swivel-eyed loons and chancers hanging around Brexit can now relax and concentrate on blaming Labour for whatever happens for at least a decade in opposition. The Tory Brexiteers from some tax shelter, obviously, since Corbyn could in theory use his emergency powers to strip their assets and shoot the lot of them!

    The UK leadership are not just insane, they are straight-up psychotic, borderline diaper cases, totally out of this world with no clue on what's next.

    *) The EU probably wants Britain gone before the next European Parliament elections, in may 2019.

    250:

    EC @ 245 Just fot the odd occasion - I am in 150% agreement with you. I presume the "Other Country" is the right wing in AUS?

    Charlie @ 246 Thanks - I meant 234, of course in my earlier post - my apologoes to R Prior!

    fajansen @ 249 Oh shit, you may have a case, especially since JEREMY Corbyn is stuck in a timewarp ( possibly 2 of them ) has certainly never had an original idea since about 1972 & is grossly incompetent - think BoJo without the humour ....

    251:

    I've been laughing at Monty Python since I was twelve, but when I see that there are British government officials called "The Returning Officer" I get them a little more deeply; it's almost as if, in a particularly profound way, they're not satire at all.

    252:

    Actually both the present corrupt leaders of Ukraine, the previous corrupt-&-murderous leaders of Ukraine. Actually, that's the other way around, at least previous leaders did not go for the civil war and promoted the murder, robbery and expulsion of their own citizens for "separatism" and "invasion".

    As for the Russian Federation, by 2015 or so most of the people agreed that without large bloodshed involved it is impossible to fix situation in observable future. The time was lost, the critical point was passed in about a decade prior (at the time of orange "revolution") and nothing could stop free application of such "democratic" institutes as civil war, terrorist cells, propaganda ministry, religious sects, unrestricted corruption and total poverty. Since then, the situation has continued to worsen, because every "colored revolution" is a constant process of destruction of sovereignty in every form and establishing colonial administration and dictatorship of international capital.

    Simply put, Russia is responsible because of the inaction rather than action (though it wasn't really in position to do much in time), and the answer to this responsibility will come much later. Without a threat of war between country (which will surely result in a lot of casualties), the only viable solution is isolation. Russia has already constructed several pipelines, railroads and roads around the country borders, and also implemented targeted sanctions and strengthened border control - keeping this policy will help to contain rampant Ukrainian nationalism secured until their own citizens will eat them without salt and pepper.

    @239 The peninsular has changed hands a number of times – it was occupied by the tsars of the Russian Empire in 1783, was a centrepiece of England, France and the Ottomans' eastern war with Russia in the 1850s, and was returned to the Ukrainian people by former premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. As far as non-judgmental it can be, it starts with the blatant lie and ends with stupid bullshit. Nobody even said that they broke every international agreement by running directly into protected zone and refusing to respond to warnings and commands - every normal navy would probably just reduce them to flotsam for this violation alone. And Khrushchev couldn't "return" Crimea to "Ukraine", because before 1954 Crimea did not belong to anything Ukrainian in the first place. In the same manner they also demand to "return" large areas in Russian Federation, because they somehow became "ethnic" in the last 100 years. https://toinformistoinfluence.com/2017/05/15/there-are-more-ethnic-ukrainians-than-ethnic-russians-in-russia/ If you think this "Anonymous expert" a fucking joke, I have some bad news for you. This is what their modern "nationalists" think.

    253:

    "How about join the Dark Side of the Atlantic?"

    IMO this goes along with the US breaking into at least three pieces.

    So the UK joins up with the North East.

    The west coast and Hawaii form a nation.

    Alaska gets annexed by Russia.

    And one or two... or twenty... jebuslands in the middle.

    Which kind of implies a very chaotic situation, so I think this happens after a disastrous crash out brexit and sea-level pulse triggers a global depression and brief US civil war.

    254:

    Also this. For those who have missed it at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SME4w037FgA

    255:

    Four words: Bring back the Danelaw.

    256:

    That's not quite how the U.S. system works.

    The U.K., joining as N number of states would generate N times 2 completely new Senators. In other words, if the U.K. joined the U.S. as 5 new states, it would generate 10 completely new Senate seats, and the U.S. would now have 110 Senators. This is because each state is constitutionally allocated 2 Senators.

    However, the number of U.S. House members is Constitutionally restricted to 435, and these are allocated according to population (which is why states such as California are so influential in the House.*) Thus the addition of the U.K. as five states would dilute the power of each state's Congressional Delegation slightly, and make each House member's seat a little larger in terms of population (and area as a side-effect.)

    I can imagine that current titles of nobility/royalty might be grandfathered in, with the proviso that the children of such nobles would not be officially titled, but I can also imagine that idea not being acceptable to the courts. (The children of such nobles might still own huge estates in terms of both land and business, but that's completely acceptable in the U.S.)

    As to the Senate not allowing new states, this has not been recently tested on locations where White, European people are the majority; the unwillingness to allow locations such as Puerto Rico to be states is based at least as much on racism as anything else. Sentiment might allow the U.K. to join the U.S, but probably with less states than you imagine. I'd expect territories (you have to be a territory first) to be assigned to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and England, perhaps divided into Northern England and Southern England.

    Frankly, the option is probably worse than Brexit in the long run. In the short run it's probably a vast improvement over a crash-out.

    • Each state gets at least one House member

    ** Nancy Pelosi being Speaker of the House when Democrats are in charge is no accident; her district is in California. (Southern England would have a gigantic House delegation.)

    257:

    The "Returning Officer" for a parliamentary constituency is a very responsible person. (S)he has to organise issuing, return and checking of candidates' nomination papers, arrange for Polling Places and a Counting Place (where the ballots are physically sorted and counted), have the ballot papers compiled, checked, printed and proof read, appoint Polling and Count Clerks to run the Polling Places (at least 2 for for each few streets in the area covered by that Polling Place. For West Dunbartonshire, this would be about 60 people) and Count itself, and and deal with the nominations of party Polling Agents and Count Agents for each constituency and party. They may be called upon to arbitrate actions in the case of a very close Count, including literally resorting and recounting all the physical ballots. Finally, they get their "big moment" at which they announce the result.

    None of this work other than pre-selecting Polling and Counting Places can be done until an election is called because all the relevant paperwork will have to state "for the $type election to $body on $date". Still think the post is even vaguely funny?

    258:

    However, the number of U.S. House members is Constitutionally restricted to 435*

    Nope. The number of House members is Constitutionally limited to no more than one Representative per 30,000 people, with each state guaranteed at least one. That would be about 11,000 currently. The actual number, subject to those restrictions, is set by statute. Congress regularly increased the number of Representatives until the 1920s, leaving it at 435 since then (plus a non-voting member from the Federal District of Washington, DC). Some of the current gerrymander and voter suppression problems would be helped by doubling or tripling the number of Representatives.

    259:

    I didn't ever think the office was funny. I do think the title is funny.

    260:

    You're right about that part. But my "lesson" was substantially more correct than what preceded it.

    261:

    Never mind not having to post guns from a Second Amendment jurisdiction to the soldiers of the Cause, it'd be interesting* to see if the revanchist ex-NORAIDers are more tightly wrapped in the Stars and Stripes or the Tricolour.
    *terrifying

    262:

    With a new news story things suddenly very interesting indeed.

    Maybe it was all one conspiracy? Farage? Manafort? Various Russians? All meeting with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy? Cambridge Analytica* working on both Brexit and the Trump Campaign? Not only does it "quack like a duck" but I think there's only one duck!

    • Owned by an American Billionaire of exceedingly odd politics...
    263:

    Well, I didn't mean actually join the federal government of the United States, but it certainly is fun to imagine those scenarios. I was envisioning something akin to the old EEC perhaps. A complete political union would be monumentally difficult - setting aside the fact that I don't think Americans really want even a titular monarch (although you wouldn't know that from the media's fascination with the royal family), attempting to fuse Parliament with Congress, the Supreme Court, and the powerful executive branch represented by the president would be... well, it would require a completely new constitution that would need to be adopted by a supermajority of the new nation-state, which - hahahahaha. Not happening.

    Some kind of trade/immigration/free movement of people thing could work in theory, though, and might open up some opportunities for both sides, especially for the UK, which is about to be escorted to the kids' table of economic/geopolitics. Pipe dreams, though. Bagpipe dreams?

    264:

    Oh, and I was curious after I saw the comments about relative sizes of economies, because I thought California rated #5 in the world by itself, which would put it ahead of the UK.

    I was right: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-now-has-the-worlds-5th-largest-economy/

    CA would be #5, followed immediately thereafter by the UK at #6.

    Texas apparently comes in at #10, just ahead of Canada. (That stat from Wikipedia, so... I dunno).

    265:

    We've known it was all one conspiracy for some time.

    These are not state actors, although some of them have state resources.

    (Which is why the "no Russian, but American" take on Brexit vote meddling is wildly unhelpful.)

    It's a movement to implement an aristocracy on the basis of control of the financial system (rather than land), and using fascism as the opiate-of-the-masses religion substitute.

    It shouldn't have got anywhere but when the legislators are members of the monied class the personal cost to saying "you know what? the limited liability corporation as a legal form of organization needs to go, because it's those or democracy" becomes a difficult question.

    266:

    Not only racism... North Dakota has a population of 755k, while the District of Columbia has a population of 693k+... but, of course, DC is heavily Black, and, oh, yes, about as conservative, from what I see you folks saying, as London.

    267:

    51st state discussion seems a poor, fraudulent response to being forced out of Europe under Article 50. Europe resorted to this new stick after its population refused its new state-corporate constitution, instead of rights Europeans are to have Britain as an Aunt Sally.

    May was not the only symbolic absence from the Armistice Centenary, where were the royals? It is rumoured that Diana survived the crash but was driven onto a bridge to die, does that make them incapable of representing the country? Lidington was there on our behalf, Dark Arts at the Armistice itself.

    268:

    I don't recall off-hand whether North Dakota has one or two House members, but if the U.K. joined the U.S. and North Dakota lost 50% of their House representation, that would be a horrible outcome for North Dakota... I think DC only gets one regardless.

    269:

    You appear to have wandered off from "why can't I have a unicorn?" to "my flying sparkly unicorn does not love me enough".

    270:

    ...and North Dakota lost 50% of their House representation, that would be a horrible outcome for North Dakota.

    We took away half of Montana's House representation after the 1990 census. We are almost certainly going to take away half of Rhode Island's House representation, and one third of West Virginia's, after the 2020 census. It's part of being a small population state. Since it's within Congress's power, I would guess that they would expand the House if they were adding all of the UK's 66M people at once.

    If almost anyone other than Trump were President, I would expect a US/Canada/UK free-trade zone could be done very quickly and could cope with at least the immediate food and medicine problem (so long as the UK said, "We accept your food and drug standards as adequate for now").

    271:

    No. Their effect on our politics is negligible.

    272:

    President Trump is the President, if anything happened to him Pence would be President. There is as yet no credible Democratic challenger, with less than two years to President Trump's reelection.

    The observation that Britain is not sufficiently competent to represent itself at a meeting of the world's leaders is not close to being as delusive as 51st state vapour. The Danelaw seems more pertinent.

    273:

    It's only one conspiracy if you include a 'tacit agreement to work in tandem' as such. The reason that the 'not Russian but American' take is important, though I agree misleading, is mainly to counter the incessant propaganda that it's a Russian plot, and the UK should step up hostilities against Russia. As is happening as I post :-(

    274:

    Troutwaxer @ 262 I have long thought that Assange was a Very Useful Idiot - probably paid by Putin, who is also paying or bribing or blackmailing Trump, of course .... ( And, quite frankly, it doesn't matter which of the preceding options, either ) Question: If this gets enough publicity & traction, could it be wonderful excuse/reason to - at the very least - "Stop the Clock" on At-50?

    EC @ 271 Whom, then?

    NOT "the Danelaw" but something like Cnut's empire or an enlarged Union of Kalmar, especially since Denmark, Norway & Sweden are all constitutional monarchies & are all inter-related. Call it, oh: "The Union of the Northern Sea" - Netherlands, too, of course!

    275:

    Beg pardon? There are a good number of popssible candidates.

    But "not credible"? You're telling me that in 2015 the Malignant Carcinoma was considered a "credible candidate"?

    276:

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd gotten the impression that the current number of Representatives in the US Congress was set by the size of the chamber. Sure we could increase the number of reps, but then we'd have to rebuild the Capitol. Also, if you happen to be a believer in Dunbar's Number, you can see that 438 is a stupid size, but not nearly as stupid as, say, 521.

    The real problem is that there are 435 representatives for 325.7 million people. Of these, 39.5 million are in California, and we've got 53 Congresscritters.

    England currently has 54 million people, so based on California's proportionality, they'd get 73 Congresscreatures. Scotland, at 5.3 million, gets 7 Congressblokes, while Wales at 3 million gets 4 Congressfolk and Northern Ireland gets 2 Congresslad(ie)s, possibly split by religion.

    So I'd say there are three problems here: A. Except for the nutters, most UK politicians fall left of center in the US Democratic party, so this would effectively insure a democratic majority in the US until the Republicans successfully infiltrated the UK. That's enough to stop Agent Orange and his Senatorial enablers from taking the deal right there. Heck, y'all want fascist billionaires messing with your elections even more than they do now? Come right in. 2. Your cherished MP system would devolve into state-level politics, and so forth down the line. Shadow governments? International diplomacy? Scratch all that. Your military and intelligence assets would belong to us. Erm... Yeah.
    III. Would the US be in or out of the Commonwealth? Would the Royals have to move to a commonwealth country (Canada? Australia?) to continue to be the heads of the Commonwealth? Do they get to keep their property in the UK, or does that all get sold off or nationalized too?

    277:

    David L @ 228: In the US some R's really wanted to move to such a system in the 80s and at times there after but they kept tying it to cutting the government budget by 1/2 so it went nowhere.

    What they proposed was a "flat" 10% tax on WAGES. All other income[1] would be UN-taxed. If you think about it a bit, you'll understand how grossly unfair and regressive such a system would be.

    I'll give you another way the U.S. tax system screws working people; one I actually experienced. An employer withholds taxes from your pay but doesn't remit the funds to the IRS. WHO is held responsible for the "unpaid" taxes? Hint: It ain't the employer.

    [1] Excepting income from the sale or possession of illegal drugs.

    278:

    President Trump was the leading Republican candidate in terms of name recognition when he declared in 2015. While he was outspent by his major rivals, it was clear that he would always have sufficient funding, and his lack on dependence on outside funding was a factor in his success.

    The polls will be more significant in 2019, however if you want to attempt to name a Democratic candidate as credible as Trump was, go for it?

    279:

    So if I get you right, instead of a few guys ducking around, you're saying it's a whole clusterflock?

    281:

    the unwillingness to allow locations such as Puerto Rico to be states is based at least as much on racism as anything else.

    Too simplistic. PR is our NI. A non trivial portion of the population wants nothing to do with being any part of the US. There was even a shooting inside of the Senate chambers by people with such leanings.

    It's complicated. As always.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_United_States_Capitol_shooting_incident

    282:

    Sure we could increase the number of reps, but then we'd have to rebuild the Capitol.

    Naw.

    Instead of small desks they'd just switch to tiny desks. No one actually "works" at those desks. They are basically places to mount voting controls. The biggest issue is that it would require another office building to house the new members and staff. And in DC around the capital that would be really hard.

    283:

    If you think about it a bit, you'll understand how grossly unfair and regressive such a system would be.

    I didn't say anything about that aspect. Just that those proposals are about the closest we've come to an EU style of tax system for individuals. Such changes when proposed to the current system generate howls of pain and tend to bring out interest groups with torches and pitchforks.

    284:

    Hmmm, well, as an employer, I can tell you we remit the withheld taxes straight to the IRS (and state withholding as well) twice a month, and if we don't, we get nasty notices and threats of penalties and such, so I don't know what your situation was. Employers also pay 1/2 of payroll taxes - is that fair? That the employer not only pays someone wages but also 1/2 of a certain class of taxes on the very wages being paid?

    It probably IS fair - it's a contribution to the social welfare system (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), which ultimately substitutes for a private pension, and is the product of a bargain struck in the wake of the New Deal as I understand things. But it is something that is a bit of a surprise when you first start running a business. Most people don't really think much about it.

    285:

    May was not the only symbolic absence from the Armistice Centenary, where were the royals?

    Errrr..... could you give an example of such an absence? Because I kept seeing The Firm at Armistice commemorations....

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/100-years-on-from-the-armistice-the-nation-remembers

    Compiègne was a French / German memorial service; Trump was supposed to attend the commemoration at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery. May was at St Symphorien (containing the graves of the first and last British soldiers to die on the Western Front).

    286:

    Admit all of the UK as one state, so lots of congressmen but only two senators (thus not endangering Red America's* grip on the Senate.

    In order to keep the ornery leftists in line, implement strict voter ID requirements, and make certain that voter IDs are hard to obtain outside the city of London. (Standard voter suppression which works so well at home.)

    Of course, no former Brit would be eligible to be President, as they wouldn't be "natural-born" Americans. If there's an inconvenient precedent get the newly-stuffed Supreme Court to rule that it doesn't apply in this case.

    For further amusement, and to gift former Britain with some built-in strife, decide that Scots, Welsh, and Irish only count as 3/5 of a person for voting purposes when setting up new congressional districts. There's legal precedent for fractional humans, after all!

    And anyway, no matter what is promised immediately eliminate those horrible socialist things like the NHS and benefits, so in a few years many of the more left-wing types will have died of medical conditions, starvation, or overwork.

    (The above is intended as satire, obviously.)

    *Has the US always been divided into red/blue camps? When I was growing up in the Cold War calling someone "red" was an insult — were the republican strongholds always called red states etc?

    287:

    I was teasing Canadian Ken about how Canada should join the USA - but he had a great rejoinder - they have guns. So maybe we should just merge/join with Canada - more or less common language - no guns - they even just about get along with the French in Quebec - Trudeau vs Macron seems a fair bet - Queen is acceptable -BofE is already Canadian - Commonwealth fringe benefits ...

    Canada +++++ anyone?

    Must be preferable to the insanity of the EU any day

    288:

    It's only one conspiracy if you include a 'tacit agreement to work in tandem' as such.

    That's your usual conspiracy among nobility; saves establishing any formal hierarchy inside the conspiracy.

    The level of documented co-ordination is... implausible of accident. And on about exactly the same scale for which Edward VIII was deposed. The precedents are there if anyone should care to use them.

    289:

    Join the Greek Orthodox Communion. Solves most of the Brexit issues - we'll run out EU imports / exports via Mt. Athos (which has a particularly unusual territorial status) and will be able to operate within the SM / CU without actually being part of either.

    It wouldn't even be the first time that this country had changed churches to deal with domestic political challenges.

    290:

    we remit the withheld taxes straight to the IRS ...if we don't, we get nasty notices and threats of penalties... Employers also pay 1/2 of payroll taxes - is that fair?

    In Australia the situation is much the same, but employees can't be asked to pay income tax that's been stolen buy their employer. Since the employer is required to withhold that tax and send it to the ATO it's considered a debt owed by the employer. The employee can actually end up ahead because the ATO calls whatever they get paid their "after tax income" and then goes after the employer for the tax that should have been taken out :)

    Payroll taxes are just a cost of doing business and I'm shocked to hear that you'd ever expect an employee to pay any part of them. But then, in the US employees also have to pay for private health insurance due to the failed medical system. It's more feudal capitalism than social democracy, but apparently you're taught to like it that way.

    Australia is actually pretty good for employees, there's a whole raft of protections that come down to "not your problem, let us send the headkickers around to reason with your employer". There are still holes, failings and thefts, but it's better than Aotearoa in many ways. The "my employer stopped paying me" ... "the tax office will pay you, then get that money from your employer" (up to six months wages!) is nice and very effective. I went from owed 3-4 months salary to paid in full overnight with one phone call :)

    291:

    The Red State/Blue State thing only dates from the 2000 Presidential election. Back in the Cold War, calling a Republican a Red would be fightin' words. Now many of them seem to be proud of being like the modern Russia...

    It's too easy to satirize, but since Canada's population is less than England's population, merging the two would leave England dominant...

    On the other hand, the NRA would be salivating at all the people they could sell guns to if the UK merged with the US and came under the second amendment. My goodness, there'd be maybe a million sales in Northern Ireland alone! And with an open border to smuggle move them into Ireland, why gosh, those sales of AR-15s would be spectacular. That alone would be a reason for the US to merge with the UK. And I'm sure there'd be loads of Scots/Irish rednecks flocking back to the mother country to fill jobs and recolonize the old sod and all.

    292:

    maybe we should just merge/join with Canada

    Far too realistic, and Canada has much more effective laws against money laundering and other financial crimes. Sorry the "legitimate banking activities" on which the City of London is based. Who would pay the millions of pounds in post-parliament gratuities that Tory MPs expect if the City wasn't awash in cash?

    I suggest partnering with Mauritius or Vanuatu (since the smaller Nauru is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Australian concentration camp industry). Mauritius has the advantage of already being recognised as a tax haven and having most of the systems in place, so a huge expansion would be "like that, but more so" where Vanuatu is kinda new to the game but has the advantage of not being widely recognised as a tax haven - you could pretend to be legitimate more easily. Both are part of various trade circles already, and are small enough they buying them would be pretty affordable even using post-Brexit pounds.

    Sadly in both cases you have to compete with China's "belt and braces" programme, but since that has to cover a wide area and the UK could focus on one tiny island nation it should be doable.

    293:

    Some of the people who committed crimes to feather their own nest don't understand that a every large bill is coming due on the other side of the pond. (See what happens when you egg me on?)

    294:

    since Canada's population is less than England's population, merging the two would leave England dominant

    That would suit our neocons right down to the ground. Among the little things Harper did was redesign the federal websites to use red white and blue (the colours of the conservative party, because colours of the union jack) rather than red and white (the colours of our flag), increase emphasis on royalty, etc.

    (Well, it would suit the CPC (non-communist)* if the Tories are running Britain.)

    *As James Nicoll points out, "CPC" used to stand for "Communist Party of Canada" until the Progressive Conservatives merged with Reform and realized that Conservative Reform Alliance Party of Canada had a worse acronym.

    295:

    Canada has much more effective laws against money laundering and other financial crimes

    I'm not so certain about that. Certainly we cooperate with offshore havens in the Caribbean.

    I've recommended this one before:

    https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/legalizing-theft

    To quote Linda McQuade's blurb:

    In this timely and powerful book, Alain Deneault unveils the scope of the problems created by tax havens, and documents the many ways in which they are weakening the very bonds of our society. Importantly, he shows how Canada – contrary to popular belief – lags behind the world in taking steps to clamp down on this ‘system of legalized theft.’

    296:

    "...had a worse acronym."

    But one that is probably more accurately repressive of their policy platform?

    In Australia the Country Party changed its name to the National Party, and these days is usually known as the Nats. They didn't use an abbreviation like that previously (although others may have about them).

    297:

    Ack, "repressive" => "representative". Silly touch keypads and autocorrect.

    298:

    I didn't say they were good... :(

    There are a lot of surprises when you start looking into this stuff, Aotearoa is absolutely awful (their anonymous trusts are an important part of the money laundering circuit) even though we do really well on the various corruption indices.

    It's a classic race to the bottom and there are noticeable penalties for having proper rules that are properly enforced.

    But that's also confounded by a bunch of things that are very useful, even essential, on a small scale but are utterly broken on a larger scale. NZ used to have "your legal name is what you tell people it is" including the ability to open bank accounts. That possibly saved my life savings when my parents got divorced* and I never really thought about it until a friend at university lost her car and anything else "she" owned that could be sold... her parents sold the lot and kept the money as punishment for her leaving home. She was 17... technically her parents owned everything, even stuff in her name.

    • a friend of the family quietly advised me to have a bank account in a different name that my parents didn't know about, and only put money they didn't know about in it. Just thinking about that helped me with the savings my parents did know about. In classic fashion I don't know that one of them would have taken "their" money from my accounts, but the fact that they couldn't means I didn't have to worry about it.
    299:

    In Australia the Country Party changed its name to the National Party, and these days is usually known as the Nats

    The G is silent :)

    And now they're part of the COALition government, led by Scott "I like coal" Morrison.

    I still like Tony "I will not lead a minority government" Abbott, who indeed did not lead a minority government for very long. Something to do with not being very good at negotiating with minor parties, including the one he was in coalition with... (you might note the use of "strong and stable" in that article, which means much the same thing here as it does in the UK).

    300:

    Dan @ 284: Hmmm, well, as an employer, I can tell you we remit the withheld taxes straight to the IRS (and state withholding as well) twice a month, and if we don't, we get nasty notices and threats of penalties and such, so I don't know what your situation was. Employers also pay 1/2 of payroll taxes - is that fair? That the employer not only pays someone wages but also 1/2 of a certain class of taxes on the very wages being paid?

    It probably IS fair - it's a contribution to the social welfare system (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), which ultimately substitutes for a private pension, and is the product of a bargain struck in the wake of the New Deal as I understand things. But it is something that is a bit of a surprise when you first start running a business. Most people don't really think much about it.

    There are a certain class of "employers" who don't give a shit. The IRS has got to catch them before they can prosecute them. I wasn't the only one screwed over by this crook.

    I was young and naïve and didn't know the "employer" was a crook when he hired me. I worked for a couple of months until I came to work one Monday to find "work" wasn't there any more. He'd cleared out over the weekend (including stealing my tools that were at the shop). My paycheck for the previous week bounced and I couldn't get a W-2. That's when I found out he hadn't been remitting the withholding. He didn't even have an account with the IRS. The NC Department of Labor and the Revenue Department didn't know anything about him either.

    The only "upside" was the pay was shit, so the taxes I "owed" wasn't too much.

    Damn! That was almost 50 years ago. I didn't realize I was still so angry about it.

    301:

    Robert Prior @ 286: Admit all of the UK as one state, ... Of course, no former Brit would be eligible to be President, as they wouldn't be "natural-born" Americans. If there's an inconvenient precedent get the newly-stuffed Supreme Court to rule that it doesn't apply in this case.

    I think the precedent would run the other way. The Constitution restricts the Presidency to "natural born" Americans OR "a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution". Congress has interpreted "natural born" to include persons born in U.S. territories, particularly if the Territory later became a State (mainly Barry Goldwater who was born in Arizona Territory before it became the State of Arizona). Since the UK is not a U.S. Territory, only those born there AFTER it became the 51st State would be "natural born" U.S. Citizens.

    I just don't see that happening. If the two nations were to decide to become one, there'd have to be a whole new Constitution written from scratch.

    OTOH, a new Constitution wouldn't have any amendments yet & we could write a rational policy for how to implement the right to keep and arm bears that didn't allow anything goes the way the NRA thinks it does, so it wouldn't necessarily be all bad.

    302:

    Yes. Famously so.

    C.1970 a notoriously long winded Country party MP began a speech to parliament with the words 'Now, I'm a Country member. . .'

    At which point future Labour PM Gough Whitlam interjected 'We remember!'

    303:

    Just heard something on the radio that gave me pause ... An SNP MP talking good sense (!) He was suggesting that we need a second referendum &/or an HoC vote, but the Binary Choice should be: Mr's May's unfortunate deal - or - Remain. I can see that gaining traction, actually.

    304:

    So, all this “51st State” talk?

    Is this actually some kind of project fear operation on the behalf of hard-line Brexit promoters to convince us that their vision is some kind of lesser evil....?

    305:

    Greg, the SNP has been pro-Remain (in the EU) all along and is opposed to Brexit: it's a pro-EU party (and anti-Tory).

    306:

    So, all this “51st State” talk?

    Is crankish foolishness with a nasty whiff of white supremacist anglophilia underlying it.

    The idea that the "white Anglo-Saxon world" should unite in some kind of bizarre conglomerate of USA/Canada/UK/Australia/NZ — conveniently ignoring all the non-white European-descended people there — is basically an English-speaking expression of the same ideas as Hitler's greater Germany. The sort of thing that would appeal to Steve Bannon.

    307:

    Charlie - I'm quite aware that about the only sane thing in the SNP is "Remain" - it was the other parts of what was said that I found very interesting.

    @ 306 Yes. And, the "others" - i.e. "Us" are simply NOT going to accept the US "2nd" lunacies at any price, either.

    308:

    I understood that this is exactly something Bannon is into. Howard and Abbot too, hence being pretty topical over here down under here also. Aka Anglosphere (after Stephenson) and the variant without the US, called CANZUK. It plays into and exercises the loony fringe right, along with a range of similar culture-war projects (such as the proposed Ramsay Institute).

    309:

    Well, or a simple search for an outcome worse than no-deal.

    Just think, suppose that the UK successfully petitions for admission as a territory. See, that gleefully sidesteps the unfortunate reality that the UK is to the left of the US by ensuring no representation at the federal level. Now, that's taking back control.

    Next, to alleviate violence stemming from the immediate hard Irish border, you have the 2nd Amendment - ain't it grand. To minimize violence, enough automatic rifles are shipped to arm every man, woman, and toddler. When that doesn't work, grenades and rockets are added to the mix.

    Fortunately, in order to cope with the disasterous economic consequences of no-deal, you'd have the same sort of steady oversight and competent planning that killed several thousand people in Puerto Rico.

    But, good news, by superceding British worker protections with US federal law, at least economic consequences would be concentrated among the poorest.

    And, another bonus, draconian cuts to social services as the UK, as a territory, lost significant borrowing power. On the bright side, given unrestrained federal spending in conjunction with tax cuts, there is the advantage of having assumed liability for the US debt.

    Fortunately, US health insurance will be available to insure that the well employed are able to devote a quarter of their salaries to maintaining something slightly below the health standards of the NHS. The remainder, for those with families, can be devoted to aiding their relatives in need. On the bright side, unemployment of the seriously ill drops significantly owing to high mortality.

    Another bright side, researchers at the NIH are finally able to pinpoint the health costs of the American diet, by comparing health outcomes prior and post introduction of chlorinated chicken and other, far more ghastly, dishes.

    310:

    Greg @ 250: The Australian right wing in politics can't find its arse with both hands, a map, GPS tracking and a pantomime crowd yelling "look behind you". They're busy bolloxing up ruining a country with a population of 27 million. Why the bloody hells would they be interested in trying to influence Brexit?

    If you're referring to Uncle Rupert, he is the USA's problem now, not ours. They bought him, they get to clean up after him. He and his kids have all taken US citizenship, and the only reason they're interested in Australia these days is because they own most of our media assets, and they have to hang on to them (no matter how unprofitable they are) if they want to collect the full global set.

    Greg @ 274: My take on Julian Assagne is that yes, "useful idiot" is probably going to be the most appropriate title, since I'm pretty sure what would have been offered to sweeten the deal on his side would be a (fraudulent, of course) promise he wouldn't have to be hiding out from US extradition if he just helped them out a little. And quite honestly, if Assagne is so damn stupid as to not recognise that one for the blatant pork-pie it clearly was, from a bloke with the labour relations history of Donald Trump (who has a decades-long reputation for shafting contractors until they stop being nasty and demanding things like payment), he deserves to spend the rest of his natural life in a broom closet under the stairs somewhere.

    Charlie @ 306: It's also a recognition of the US cultural hegemony which has been spreading over the world since approximately the end of World War 1, when the last stretch of US isolationism evaporated in a sudden burst of "that was our ox got gored!" muscularity. Between the Hollywood movie and the US television serial, the English-language-speaking world has been basically marinating in US cultural values for most of the past century, and only more so as the predominant "value" of neoliberal capitalism cored out many non-US local cultural production centres in favour of importing more and more audio-visual propaganda from the USA. To the point where the political Right in Australia are busy trying to just use tactics straight out of the US Rethuglican play book to win elections (and that worked so spectacularly[1] in Victoria last weekend, didn't it, guys?) and getting slightly irritated when most Australians don't respond in the correct fashion (our current PM, for example, is busy trying to hammer on the "Evangelical Protestant Piety" button, but hasn't worked out that most of us don't have that one installed as a factory standard).

    [1] Spectacularly badly, that is. ALP government returned with a landslide majority.

    311:

    The UK as 51st state, or 51-54 or whatever, is fun to play with just to see how it effs up the US house/senate. Nobody with the sense of a hyperactive kitten should consider it seriously. Certainly, nobody south of the equator would consider it more than a laugh. If one wanted to add the various current US posessions (PR, USVI, AmSamoa, etc) instead, well I'm sure there's a few play-throughs on alternatehistory.com, soc.history.what-if, etc.

    Since we're past 300. Completely off topic: Since I don't have a twitter a/c - remember that 54 & 3/4 can be the time to celebrate 20,000 days on earth. Have a party in 6 months or so. (grin) (says he wondering much the same, though only "50-fucking-hell-how-the-fuck-did-that-happen?")

    312:

    More importantly:

    The last two states added were both non-contiguous and given statehood mainly to simplify DoD's operations during the Cold War.

    Buying Greenland from Denmark was also considered in same time period (Project IceWorm, DEW line etc.), but compliant Danish governments made that unnecesary.

    The non-contiguous bit has very much been a bummer for the civilian side of USA, and it is certainly a large part of the reason why Puerto Rico is not going to have an easy path to state-hood, even if they ever make up their mind to seek it.

    Mexico is in much greater risk of "Anscluß" than any part of UK will ever be.

    313:

    Thanks for that; the image evoked by Para 1 has just made my entire week!

    314:

    I remember about 20 years ago the Times publishing extracts from a book by the name of '51st State', wherein Britain voted to leave the EU and... well, the clue's in the title. The monarchy was dealt with by having the King drink himself to death, IIRC. Looking on Amazon, I think it must have been by Peter Preston.

    315:

    Now that variant of the second referendum idea is one I could support...

    What I'm afraid of is that we get one with three choices, two of which are flavours of Leave - probably as Charlie suggested earlier, May deal/No deal/Remain - each of which gets roughly a third of the votes. So there is no clear majority for Remain and neither does it resolve the infighting among the Leave crowd, result, nothing significantly changes except that Leave crow about their "success" and the last hope of getting out of the mess in a sensible manner goes down the tubes.

    316:

    Mexico is in much greater risk of "Anscluß" than any part of UK will ever be.

    If you mean a real 1938-style Anschluss, there's currently very close to zero sentiment for that in either MX or US. Various proposals for greater economic union have been floated for a long time, but the now-defunct NAFTA is as close as they've ever gotten to realization.

    317:

    once we de-decimalize we will introduce the death penalty for trading in BitCoin

    Okay, that might just be a worthwhile tradeoff. And since we aren't in the Euro zone, we can do it without the Brexit part. As a potentially beneficial side effect, working in Euros will be so much easier than new pounds that there'll be increasing pressure to join the Euro zone.

    As for how we can make Brexit work, perhaps we could extend China Miéville's cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma to the entire country. Leavers and Remainers agree to live in different countries, in a shared location, and unsee each other. Leavers find themselves in a country with no immigrants, no EU nationals, and are happy. (Apart from the deaths if they can't import enough food or medicine, but that's what they voted for, so it's their problem.) Solving the practical difficulties of a frictionless border with free movement of goods and people being in the exact same geographical place as a hard border with strict controls is left as an exercise for the reader.

    318:

    What I'm afraid of is that we get one with three choices, two of which are flavours of Leave - probably as Charlie suggested earlier, May deal/No deal/Remain - each of which gets roughly a third of the votes.

    Nope, won't happen. There's precedent in recent UK law for ballots with ranked preference voting rather than X-marks-the-spot style FPTP; look at the Scottish party list system.

    So in event of a three way poll voters would be expected to rank their choices in order of preference, and "Remain" will almost certainly beat out either "May's Deal" or "No Deal" for the majority of voters (because a bunch of moderate leave voters would rank "Remain" second, rather than the chaotic no-deal option).

    You'll know it's rigged if the people's vote isn't some sort of preferential system, or is kneecapped so there are only two options.

    319:

    I think all those solutions concerning North Korea, North America or Australia are a little far-fetched and won't help with Brexit. Once the Britons realize that Brexit wasn't such a clever idea (so around May 2019), they'll have to look at the problem more analytically. Basically, the British/English had three problems with the EU: 1. The EU is run by Germans (mostly) 2. Germany does well in the EU while the UK doesn't 3. The UK has to shoulder all the security and military responsibility whereas Germany is a country of softies

    So the obvious solution is that the UK joins the Federal Republic of Germany, just as the GDR did in 1990. Germany has a track record of sucessfully uniting with another nation (ok, there were some glitches, but nothing as bad as Brexit). The UK already has a German monarch. All is needed is that the British states join the German federation and adopt the D-Mark - oops, Euro - at a fixed rate, say 1.97 to 1. England will probably have to be split into several Bundesländer, with London becoming a city state and the surrounding -shires and -sexes grouped into four other states. Scotland would be quite large for a Bundesland, but so is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and that's ok because hardly anyone lives there. The advantages would be great: - the UK would get a modernized government with PR and a clear constitution - the UK would profit from Germany's higher productivity - the trade balance of both countries would improve, in fact the combined UK/BRD would have a trade surplus - most Germans already speak English and most British know at least a few German words from WWII movies - the UK's military and security strengths would be complemented by Germany's economic strength - together, Germans and Brits could boss the rest of the EU around. The British might still hate the EU, but at least then it's their EU.

    321:

    Re: 'The UK already has a German monarch.'

    Depending on where the Duchess of Sussex delivers her baby, there may be an American 7th in line to the British throne. Quite a few fans of the Royals in the US, so baby Sussex could be the impetus to create a unified Anglo-American Empire.

    322:

    If this happens, be sure to set up some cameras so you can record the screaming shades of everyone convinced Prince Albert was going to take over exploding from their graves.

    323:

    Link doesn't work ...

    324:

    They updated the entry: from Guardian politics live blog

    Here's the origibnal twitter announcement: ECJ announcement

    It's not the ECJ decision, though, just the opinion of the Advocate General. Still more relevant as the pleadings from the hearing.

    325:

    I'm not sure I agree. First of all, because what we're doing here is speculation, not advocacy, and second, because the UK suffers from the lack of a written constitution which is sufficiently difficult to change. If I understand things correctly this means, among other things, that the UK could redefine citizenship rights for minorities. (I understand that this is highly unlikely, but not impossible. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.)

    This can't happen in the U.S. If you're born in the U.S., your citizenship can't be taken away, (14th Amendment) and that would almost certainly apply to other territories which join the U.S. In other words, UK Jews, Punjabis, Sri Lankans, Kenyans, etc., would have much better, much stronger, Constitutional protections than they currently have.

    Add to that the (from the American view) left-leaning politics of the U.K. and I suspect you'd end up with a version of the U.S. which was far more liberal than the current version. Imagine the U.S. with 10 more Senators that were far-left. Imagine the same in the House, but probably 50 more House members which were far-left. It would be a VERY different country than the one Steve Bannon envisions.

    I understand that the whole thing is highly unlikely, but only that special kind of American ignorance regarding foreigners (which I don't share) makes it a racist daydream.

    326:

    Quite. I find it very typical of the republicans (UK sense) that most would regard it as racialist to say that someone with a Nigerian great-great-grandparent is Nigerian, but see nothing improper in repeating that old libel.

    To Troutwaxer (#325): it's not just not impossible - it's been and is being done. My first daughter was not born stateless only because my father was a twin (strange but true), because of the 'Windrush' exclusions brought in under Wilson and Thatcher (and, puke, Howard) - never mind that I have NEVER had any other citizenship, nor was entitled to any. And, recently, May has been revoking the citizenship of people who the Home Office (retch) merely assert might be entitled to some other nationality.

    Also, I assume that you have seen the mutterings about changing the constitution to exclude birthright (possibly even retrospectively)? The usual culprits: Trump, Scott Adams etc.

    327:

    Yes, I have seen the business of revoking birthright citizenship. It's awful. Also, Scott Adams has been a terrible disappointment. He takes notice when your work has a pointy-haired boss, but not when your country has a pointy-haired president...

    Sad. What a distorted man. A terrible disappointment.

    328:

    For the avoidance of doubt I’m taking the “51st State” thread of discussion entirely in the spirit and context of Charlie’s original post.

    On the other hand if somebody did want to make the ongoing clusterfuck of Brexit look more appealing than it currently does then putting it on the table would be one of a very small number of things which would send me running towards the welcoming robotic arms of Auntie Theresa...

    329:

    Um. It it possible that there might be enough treacherous or imbecilic MPs to produce a wrecking referendum bill or, more likely, block one so that we get "No Deal" by default. While "Brexit means Wrecksit" is satire, many or most of the people behind Brexit and quite a lot of their front-men really DO want to tear the whole social, political and economic structure of the country apart, so they they can rebuild it as they want.

    It's definitely going to get worse before it gets better, if it does in our lifetimes. I shan't repeat the Graves misquote, but I keep being reminded of it.

    330:

    All the suggestions so far have been on how to make the UK's parting with the EU work. But what if there wasn't an EU? Rather than worry about leaving the EU, the Brexiteers should look at ways to make it implode. Since Germany is the strongest member, getting them to leave the EU would cripple it. So, rather than make the UK the 51st state, Brexiteers should find a way to have Germany and the USA merge. I'm not sure about the best way to accomplish this (I need to get back to work), but the benefits are obvious:

    -There are 44 million USA citizens of German ancestry, far outnumbering the Scots/Irish and English. -Germans drink cold beer, and it's good. -Germans LOVE the American West and would now be able to take a domestic flight to visit. -There are already 16 Bundeslaender, or states, and several of them are conservative enough to elect republican type senators. -Real Amuricans could drive Audis, Mercedes, and BMWs without feeling unpatriotic. -There would be more manufacturing jobs in the US economy, overnight! -Retired GDR engineers could use their expertise to build a real wall along the US-Mexican border. -People born in the USA could visit Europe without going to a scary foreign country. -The Deutsch-Dollar would become the new global reserve currency. -With Trump's grandfather being German, he'd find it palatable, and be able to rant about the threat of Syrian refugees every day. -Brexiteers will have no EU to rail about and could return to more profitable pursuits, whatever those might be.

    331:

    Not so. Cruz and Rubio, off the top of my head, had really good name recognition, and Huckabee, from a previous bid for President, did also. In addition, they were known as experienced in government, where he was a reality show and real estate mogul. And as a sexual predator, and a crook (contract breaker), and...

    Warren and Cory Booker, to just grab two. And Beto O'Rourke, who just got vote-supressed out of being a Senator in Texas, has already generated headlines and column inches.

    And if the Democratic wave that was larger than during Watergate wasn't proof enough, I don't know how to convince of the depth and breadth of HATRED for the Malignan Carcinoma is here.

    332:

    Nice to see someone sane. I get really aggravated at people who have businesses, esp. "self-incorporated" individuals, who do it for tax purposes, and then rant about "double taxation", because they can't wrap their heads around the realization that they, the individual, are not the company, an artificial person, or that they're their own employee.

    Obvious music: "I'm my own grandpaw...."

    333:

    You may find it an up-hill struggle to convince Germans of that idea: Germans and Americans 'worlds apart' in view of relations

    334:

    RANTSCREAMRAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I swear, if I run for Congress, or the Senate, in '20, a) I GUIARANTEE that it will get national attention, and b) I'll make my campaign color red, like the socialist I am. And lecture journalists at press conferences that they'd better not describe me as "blue".... Single-handedly, I'll change that deliberate obfuscation (hey, you're red? so you're a strong supporter of unions, right?)

    frogfriggenmoroorons... same folks that put out a brand of pants called "chinos", sold blue ones, and the Dodge Steath, that all I ever saw was flaming red....

    335:

    No, no, they're all too far from that Green and Pleasant Land (tm). Turks and Caicos are much closer, more familiar with British rule, and are major players in the tax haven game.

    336:

    Her parents sold her stuff? Everything?

    If she'd had a clue, she could have divorced her parents before they could do that.

    Or maybe given someone "favors" to go invite her parents into a dark alley....

    The 2.5 times I've been divorced, and there were kids involved, whatever I felt, it was ALWAYS "this is you and me, and nothing to do with the kids, we keep them out of it", so I can say anything I want about uncomposted sewer waste of people like that.

    337:

    This can't happen in the U.S.

    It happens in the US. Plausibly a million in the 1930s ("Mexican repatriation" is the search term), who knows how many now.

    The US constitution is highly uneven in application; the lawsuits over whether it followed the flag (related to conduct in the Philippines) were important, and went the wrong way.

    338:

    Moderators: if this is too nasty, feel free to delete. [ Moderators say it's ok! -- SEF ]

    Yeah, don'tcha just love that one great-grandparent makes you Black (or whatever), rather than the other way 'round?

    To me, that means it's obvious that Aryan, sorry, "white" genes are terribly, terribly recessive and weak. I think we should round up all them pure White Folks and put 'em in reservations, as they're obviously an endangered species. Then we can have tours of the reservations, with warnings not to feed, or breed, with the native.....

    339:

    'Therefore I would like to propose the deployment of "Brexit Reality".'

    Brilliant, The City and the City approach. (China Miéville)

    340:

    You'll like this then:

    https://youtu.be/zEKYQ4GOqmk

    (Another Billy Bragg song…)

    341:

    Re: Brexit tweeterade ...

    BoE announcement off the same twitter feed:

    'The Press Association has snapped these headlines.

    The Bank of England has warned the pound would crash, inflation will soar and interest rates would have to rise in the event of a no deal disorderly Brexit.

    In the event of a disorderly no deal, no transition Brexit, Britain’s GDP could fall by 8% from its level in the first quarter of 2019, according to analysis of a worst case scenario by the Bank.

    The unemployment rate would rise 7.5% and inflation would surge 6.5%. House prices are forecast to decline 30%, while commercial property prices are set to fall 48%. The pound would fall by 25% to less than parity against both the US dollar and the euro.'

    Think they're underestimating the hit to employment 'cause Brit nationals currently working in the EU would probably be sent back home.

    342:

    Wikipedia has a brief summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation

    American indians were denied citizenship until 1924: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_civil_rights

    Canada didn't grant citizenship to indigenous peoples until 1947/1956. We currently have jus solis citizenship (birthright citizenship) but some of our neocons want to take that away.

    (As an immigrant, I'm keenly aware that theoretically I could be stripped of citizenship and deported to a country I left as a baby.)

    343:

    Absolutely true. But we're past comment #300, so plausibility is not a concern anymore. I did want to point out that most "white" people in the USA aren't from the UK or Ireland. If not for WWI, much of the Midwest would still be speaking German.

    344:

    Well, no, let's call things by their right names. Most Canadian conservatives want a legal framework enabling enforcing white supremacy through ethnic cleansing.

    (I so want a re-melination virus to get loose. It'd be fine if it CRISPR'd other useful things (vitamin C synthesis, maybe) but just getting rid of the lack of melanin would be a fine thing.)

    345:

    It's pretty easy to remove a naturalized citizen's citizenship in the US -- you simply declare that they lied about something, or omitted something, that would have influenced the naturalization. See https://immigration.findlaw.com/citizenship/can-your-u-s-citizenship-be-revoked-.html for various ways to do so.

    Removal of citizenship for someone born in this country is legally impossible. But "legally impossible" means that the courts have to follow the law, which they... don't do a lot of times.

    346:

    RE: Anglosphere/UK-as-51st-state

    The upside is that, unlike the U.S., any such conglomeration would have a proper left wing. There would at last be, both among the public and within the body politic, a counterweight to the neoliberal juggernaut.

    Just imagine British politicians verbally tearing into southern Republicans. And presidents having to submit to Question Time. Perhaps saying the UK should join the U.S. is getting things backward; it's the U.S. that needs to join the UK.

    Relatedly, I've long hypothesized that part of the reason for America's "missing left" is that many of the lefty would-be elites and power brokers live in the other Anglophone countries. Optimistic progressive activists in the U.S. are convinced the missing left voters are to be found in the 40+% of eligible voters who currently don't vote. I wonder if they're wrong, and it's rather that those voters are in Canada (and the UK, Australia, etc.).

    347:

    There are 44 million USA citizens of German ancestry, far outnumbering the Scots/Irish and English.

    In all seriousness, I've heard it said that, in some ways, American culture is more German than it is Anglo-Saxon. Particularly middle-class American culture.

    I've never been to Germany so I can't say myself. Those of you who've spent time in all three countries, what do you think?

    German ancestry far and away predominates in the U.S. Midwest so it's entirely plausible.

    348:

    If she'd had a clue, she could have divorced her parents before they could do that

    That's both harder and slower than it sounds, and "facts on the ground" have a way of making the result moot. The parents knew they had to act quickly and unexpectedly, so they waited until she was either studying for an exam or sitting one, went to her flat, took 90% of her stuff, went to uni, used a spare key to get her car, then by the time she worked out what had/was happening it was a bit late. Not least, it was late as in 10pm...

    Even if she had known, part of economic abuse/being poor is that it's very hard to get legal advice let alone take legal action. And afterwards what can you do... even if the criminal system forced the parents to hand over the money they got, that's not going to cover the cost of buying replacements. The pragmatic response is to hide.

    I had one friend at high school whose mother was schizophrenic and used to get quite difficult when she was off her meds. Discharging firearms at people level "difficult". She was involuntarily committed to residential treatment programs more than once. That made the paperwork for "I need government help to live away from home and attend high school" relatively simple, but there was still a strong official presumption that living at "home" was better and that had to be fought during every 3-month review.

    My point is that in the 1990's that was the standard for "divorce your parents". "I think they might sell my stuff" isn't going to cut it, even today.

    349:

    German ancestry far and away predominates in the U.S. Midwest so it's entirely plausible.

    And German language enclaves still exist, though they're rapidly fading. Central Texas has some.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwgwpUcxch4

    350:

    Or the reverse. Back in the 90s I had a neighbour, nice lady, single mom, two kids. One was 16, and a terror. Stole from mom, sister, neighbours, etc. So mom and daughter had no jewelry or valuables (stolen), had to pay for vandalism damages (parental responsibility assumed), phone couldn't make toll calls (so sister couldn't call grandparents) etc. She had almost no legal authority over the boy but still the responsibility to feed/cloth him. (So when he sold his winter jacket she had to buy a new one etc.)

    There was no legal way for her to say "I can't cope, I have no control" until he pulled a knife on her when her daughter was present. At that point it became a safety issue for the other child, and he could be moved to a group home.

    351:

    None of the possible Democratic candidates mentioned seem to me to have more support among Democrats than President Trump had among Republicans when he sought the nomination in 2015?

    It hasn't been often that a President seeking re-election has been defeated, the last time was when there was a substantial third-party vote. Also, the Democrats had more or less decided on a candidate for 2016, can they produce as strong a candidate in 2020?

    It is apparent that the Democratic Party dislikes President Trump, however can you explain how this dislike will lead to more of a challenge than 2016?

    352:

    One of my former students* got tired of hearing two English war brides** complaining about immigrants on a bus. He stood up and said "excuse me, I was born here, where were you born?" to a round of applause from the other passengers.

    This was before smartphones, so no video :-(

    *Korean ancestry.

    **decades in the country and they still kept their accents!

    353:

    I am not a drive by.

    I lurk, I have been longer than you know

    354:

    I do n't and have never read the Daily Express

    355:

    My comment was an implied reference to the old joke about congress repealing the law of gravity.

    Leo Varadkar did after all say something about stopping British aircraft flying to Ireland. He did however forget to define what is a British aircraft. If Airbuses have their wings made in Bristol will they be obliged to leave their wings behind when flying to Ireland? And is this a sneaky way of helping Ryan Air?

    356:

    Stole from mom, sister, neighbours...

    Very much so. My ex's sisters are habitual drug users. There is almost nothing sellable in their mother's house as a result. Their father will not let them into his house, and is effectively estranged from them (the connection between those two things is way more complex than the obvious one).

    A lot of this stuff makes me grateful for my relatively positive family relationships and all the other privileges I've been born into.

    I also spend a bit of time trying to work out how to build a better system for dealing with these problems, and how we'd get to there from here. And I know people way smarter than me who have spent their entire careers doing that (one of my uncles, for example). It's less about the criminal system and more about that dreaded cliche "whole of government". First you create an underclass...

    357:

    The upside is that, unlike the U.S., any such conglomeration would have a proper left wing. There would at last be, both among the public and within the body politic, a counterweight to the neoliberal juggernaut.

    Except it doesn't work like that.

    Here in the UK, Scotland, with roughly 10% of the population, overwhelmingly votes non-Conservative—a high water mark for the Tories is polling 26%. Nevertheless, Scotland has been ruled from London by Conservative governments for about 50 of the last 60 years.

    Exactly the same problem would afflict a UK that merged with the USA, because (a) gerrymandering and (b) FPTP elections are broken by design (to weight the dice in favour of awarding extra seats to the largest party, rather than a proportional allocation).

    358:

    Leo Varadkar did after all say something about stopping British aircraft flying to Ireland. He did however forget to define what is a British aircraft.

    • Eye roll *

    Have you been following the news about ICAO treaty derogation and EU membership?

    Here's the CAA on the effects of Brexit on civil aviation. Shorter version: pilots licenses, engineers licenses, airline regulatory approval, air traffic control, and the legal right to transit foreign airspace and take off/land at foreign airports are all governed by international treaties. The UK stopped being an independent nation in this respect ages ago, and is covered by agreements negotiated by the EU. If we bomb out of the EU, we lose access to things like the EU-US air traffic agreement (providing for EU and US airlines to fly to and operate on one another's territory), mutual recognition of airworthiness certificates, and a whole bunch more.

    This stuff can be re-negotiated, sure. But it takes time, and in the meantime, planes can't legally fly between the UK and foreign destinations with no reciprocal air navigation agreements or mutual recognition of certification.

    Planes won't fall out of the sky. Airlines will however lose the right to fly certain (most!) international routes. Which may be partly why British Airways looks set to decamp for Spain in event of a no-deal Brexit ...

    359:

    And here I thought it was written in 1889, and was the official theme song of the British Labour Party....

    Which isn't to say his version isn't good, any more than to say his Part of the Union was cribbedfrom Union Maid, written by Joe Hill of the IWW more than a century ago. It's all part of the folk process....

    mark, filk-processor

    360:

    A good part of the reason for the missing US left was the legal attacks on it, from the time of WWI, and before. A socialist won a significant part of the vote for President in 1912. But the Red Scare, that started after 1917, and proceeded into the COMMIES UNDER THE BED!!! Cold War.

    As of 2016, the most-looked up word in English was, I kid you not, "socialism". And the DSA is growing very rapidly. But... because the rules are rigged, we work with folks who run as Dems, to get on the ballot.

    361:

    First, it appears to me that you're saying that a number of Democrats have the name recognition that Trump did, or more.

    Second... you did see the results of the elections a couple weeks ago? The Democrats took 39 or 40 seats from the GOP, in formerly heavily GOP districts. It's reported to be a larger gain than during Watergate in '74. And they flipped several of the worst governors (like Walker in Michigan). And it was a HUGE turnout for a midterm. It's reported that almost half as many votes as were cast in '16, which was a presidential election year, which always get far more votes. For the US, it's big.

    Oh. and we're waiting for ALL the indictments from Mueller....

    362:

    I hope I'm not going off topic here and I apologise if I am! But since the vote in the HoC is still a little while away what does everyone here think will happen -- will it be stay in the EU, may's dreadful deal or crashout?

    Random thought: If it is may's dreadful deal what then? Big "Brexit Betrayal" marches in london? Resurgent UKIP lead by Bojo? Maybe it would just delay crashout for a few years?

    ljones

    363:

    Charlie Stross @ 306:

    The idea that the "white Anglo-Saxon world" should unite in some kind of bizarre conglomerate of USA/Canada/UK/Australia/NZ — conveniently ignoring all the non-white European-descended people there — is basically an English-speaking expression of the same ideas as Hitler's greater Germany. The sort of thing that would appeal to Steve Bannon.

    But you did ask (@25):

    "for someone to explain how Elon Musk can save the day, or maybe the USA could revoke the Declaration of Independence and invite Lizzie Windsor to conduct a reverse-takeover and send in the US Marine Corps ..."

    I don't think there IS any way to make BREXIT work. Unless y'all can find some way to call the whole thing off, you're screwed.

    364:

    whitroth @ 338 My pale-brown-skinned neighbour has got used to me referring to (him & me) as "Us Aryans, oops, not supposed to say that any more!" because he is as Indo-European as I am ... ( Granparents from Kashmir ) However the racist fuckwits will never ever get it, unfortunately.

    ijones @ 362 Even "May's deal" is better than crashing out, but,as Charlie points out it's still a shit sandwich. A 2nd Referendum is stll our best hope. Note: NOT Corbyn becoming PM, because he would prefer us to "leave" the stupid little shit.

    365:

    Megpie71 @ 310: (Replying to Greg @ 250:) The Australian right wing in politics can't find its arse with both hands, a map, GPS tracking and a pantomime crowd yelling "look behind you". They're busy bolloxing up ruining a country with a population of 27 million. Why the bloody hells would they be interested in trying to influence Brexit?

    If you're referring to Uncle Rupert, he is the USA's problem now, not ours. They bought him, they get to clean up after him. He and his kids have all taken US citizenship, and the only reason they're interested in Australia these days is because they own most of our media assets, and they have to hang on to them (no matter how unprofitable they are) if they want to collect the full global set.

    WE didn't ask him to come here. He just moved in. He's no more an invited guest than fleas or bedbugs. You can come get him and take him back to Australia any time you want.

    The Bee Gees & Kilie Minoge are welcome to stay.

    366:

    DaiKiwi @ 311: The UK as 51st state, or 51-54 or whatever, is fun to play with just to see how it effs up the US house/senate.

    Who says we need any help from the likes of you to eff up the US House/Senate?

    367:

    Troutwaxer @ 325: I'm not sure I agree. First of all, because what we're doing here is speculation, not advocacy, and second, because the UK suffers from the lack of a written constitution which is sufficiently difficult to change.

    I've been informed (perhaps it was even here) that the UK DOES have a written Constitution, it's just not written down all in one place as a single document like the U.S.

    368:

    Elderly Cynic @ 326: Also, I assume that you have seen the mutterings about changing the constitution to exclude birthright (possibly even retrospectively)? The usual culprits: Trump, Scott Adams etc.

    Donald Trump "mutters" about a lot of shit he knows fuck-all about. He thinks he can over-ride the Constitution by Executive Order. He can't, and he's going to get himself in trouble some day if he keeps on fucking around.

    Scott Adams would do well to heed the NRA's advice and "Stay in his lane!"

    369:

    The old songs are often the good songs. All those "the same X chords in every pop song" songs... peeps, have you even glanced lightly in the direction of folk music like, ever? The same music is used for a whole pile of different songs, repeatedly. Any time you see "music: traditional, arr {someone}" you're looking at "theft of intellectual property from the dead", to use the modern terminology.

    On that note, I do quite enjoy the way the language has changed over time "play it loud muthafukka" has replaced "fortississimo" and "allegretto" means "shred that guitar" :)

    370:

    Graydon @ 337:

    This can't happen in the U.S.

    It happens in the US. Plausibly a million in the 1930s ("Mexican repatriation" is the search term), who knows how many now.

    The US constitution is highly uneven in application; the lawsuits over whether it followed the flag (related to conduct in the Philippines) were important, and went the wrong way.

    The U.S. Constitution is quite even. It happens in the U.S. when the government, who are supposed to obey that Constitution, are "uneven in application". That's why there were so many lawsuits, because the Government at the time wasn't following the Constitution.

    The flaw is not in our stars, but in our selves.

    371:

    Re: '... how to build a better system for dealing with these problems, and how we'd get to there from here.'

    At some point there will be enough displayable/viewable-in-real-time data showing what is going on in the human brain during certain types of behavior. From there, hopefully it will be easier to educate TPTB and regular folks that like poor eye sight*, quite a few behavioral and cognitive issues are very firmly grounded in one's nervous system.

    • Can't recall the last time someone said that anyone with poor vision/blind was evil and/or was being punished by sky-fairy and therefore should be avoided and doesn't 'deserve' help.

    Yes - I'm aware it's much more complex than the above, but such tangible evidence would help. Another thing: politically/socially, the opioid crisis is also shifting some societies'/countries' attitudes toward reevaluating what was once considered plain criminal/sinful.

    One of the biggest things we need to figure out is a compelling narrative that tells the facts, one with a more humane POV, therefore a new/different emotional impact on the audience.

    372:

    whitroth @ 359: And here I thought it was written in 1889, and was the official theme song of the British Labour Party....

    Which isn't to say his version isn't good, any more than to say his Part of the Union was cribbed from Union Maid, written by Joe Hill of the IWW more than a century ago. It's all part of the folk process....

    I thought Woody Guthrie wrote Union Maid.

    373:

    ljones @ 362: I hope I'm not going off topic here and I apologise if I am! But since the vote in the HoC is still a little while away what does everyone here think will happen -- will it be stay in the EU, may's dreadful deal or crashout?

    If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on "crashout". H.L. Menkin once wrote "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." I suspect that's just as applicable to Parliament as it is for the U.S. Congress.

    374:

    No-deal hard Brexit is clearly the goal.

    (What would a group of people who wanted no-deal do differently? Close to nothing.)

    You know how one of the problems with getting rid of white supremacy is how it's constructed as virtue and people who pick up the axioms very young not only can't but have no interest in shaking them? It looks like an opportunistic combination of people who really, really want a pre-Glorious Revolution aristocracy (or at least how they imagine such a thing), various "let's hurt Europe" funders, and ... something. I cannot escape the sense that there's a faction actively in favour of climate change out of somewhat deluded economic expectations.

    375:

    My problem with the local socialists is that they're not fun to be around, unlike the democrats.

    Seriously though, the democrats pretty much ran stuff from the New Deal onto Johnson pushing through the Great Society and getting scuttled on Vietnam. Then the Southern Democrats deserted the party for the Republicans, and we've been drifting right ever since. Some people have blamed air conditioning for the rise of the south.

    There are two things to realize, especially if you're not an American. One is that there are multiple voting blocs in the US, and the two main parties cobble these together into coalitions within the party. For instance, the racist white bigots in the south are a major swing vote that went from the Old Left to the New Right.

    The other thing to realize is, to paraphrase a political friend of mine, that privilege matters, especially if you're poor. If you're white trash, you've still got the privilege of being white. In the US, this means that you're unlikely to get shot by a cop unless you shoot at him first, child protective services are slightly less ready to take your kids away, you're more trusted, more likely to get a job than your black doppelganger, and so forth. If you're dirt poor, out of work, and have no hope of industry coming back to your town in your lifetime, being white is an important privilege, and you're going to fight to keep it. One of the ways democratic elites screw up is to try to take away the privilege of being white, and depriving people of this privilege is really important and really stupid, unless you can give them other privileges that make up for this loss. So when you have one candidate who's talking about making everyone the same, and the other one who's telling the whites that they'll be number one, guess who the poor whites see as a better deal? As my friend notes, this is the progressive argument for why it's important to give everybody enough positive privileges (like universal health care and state pensions) that they don't have to depend on the more problematic ones based on race and gender.

    Finally, it's worth pointing out the power of corrupting the system: Clinton won the 2016 election by 2 million votes, just as Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Things like gerrymandering matter in the outcome of elections, and a lot of politicians stay in power only because they've crudely hacked the system.

    376:

    Framing "health care" as privilege is such a massive mistake I don't know where to start.

    You can't get anywhere better from there. (Never mind that the entire 'privilege' narrative is what happens when people who don't understand the limits on American black speech and the coding thereof grab a discussion and terminology they don't understand. There is no such thing as privilege; it's a (n historically variously-used) euphemism for the exercise of power, both outgoing and incoming. And I most emphatically mean power; "who may I beat to death for funsies?" literal material power.)

    There is no possibility of justice while the notion of whiteness remains in the political discourse. ("white" = "I am sufficiently blessed that it's OK when I rape, murder and steal"; it was a conscious ethnogenosis in support of really large scale piracy at the start of the colonial era.) A conscious act of ethnogenosis to be something else and something else that's (necessarily!) more broadly defined might work. "Substitutes for whiteness" will not, and haven't; it's a system with almost nothing to recommend it but it's extraordinarily good at copying itself into the future.

    377:

    Brexiteers should find a way to have Germany and the USA merge.

    Sure. I'll go with that one. Especially since both my wife and I are 1/2 German (via very very different paths) and thus my kids are 1/2 German we'd be cool with it. We'll all be in Germany in December so maybe I can take a poll. And likely get tossed across the channel for doing it. :)

    378:

    First off I suspect that there will be some "emergency" decrees letting things continue. If somewhat chaotically. Maybe a whole lot chaotically.

    Second, my wife has wanted us to spend a week in London for years. I now have a 7 night certificate for upper tier Marriott hotels. My original plan was to use it next summer. Now I'm beginning to think that might not be a great idea. The certificate expires in August 2019. It will likely get a bit devalued in terms of the category of hotel I can book Jan 1, 2019.

    So do I book now for early March so the weather isn't just terrible but at least we're in and out before Brexit? Do I wait and see how things go but likely wind up in a not as nice hotel? Do I book the hotel now and have a backup plan to fly to Amsterdam or Paris and Chunnel it over? (Surely that will work? Yep. Check Roger.)

    Ugh.

    379:

    From there, hopefully it will be easier to educate TPTB and regular folks that like poor eye sight*, quite a few behavioral and cognitive issues are very firmly grounded in one's nervous system.

    Oh boy. You expect to use facts to change people's behavior. You obviously haven't been keeping up with current events. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyfriipc61A

    380:

    Now for something completely different. Just saw a clip of May addressing Parliament. What are all of those old looking book on edge on the desk/table in front of her?

    381:

    it's important to give everybody enough positive privileges that they don't have to depend on the more problematic ones based on race and gender.

    My impression from the US is that that would be a generational solution. Right now there are large numbers of people for whom "better than you" is really, really important. "I will kill you" important. And they do. Regularly.

    Universal healthcare would be even more of a vote-changer than Obamacare is. As the Republican voters keep saying, this is about white supremacy and don't you forget it. They don't care if you screw them completely, just as long as they can see coloured people getting screwed worse. That's why Trump is so focused on making sure his "children in cages" and "pardon white killers of black people" stuff gets maximum media coverage. The non-1% Republican supporters don't care about tax cuts for the rich, loss of jobs, destruction of their health, just so long as they know that somewhere, somehow, a black kid is getting beaten to death by a white guy. Preferably a white guy in uniform.

    382:

    paws4thot @ 313: You're welcome.

    JBS @ 365: "You can come get him and take him back to Australia any time you want."

    You're assuming we want him. That's pretty courageous of you.

    David L @ 380: Having not seen the business for myself, but coming from a country which does a lot of Westminster-style pomp and circumstance, I'd guess they'd be either Hansards (parliamentary records) or statute books.

    383:

    Surely not statute books because "ignorance of the law is no excuse", and even if the common man is woefully deficient in that area at the very least you'd expect the people who make the laws to know them.

    384:

    What are all of those old looking book on edge on the desk/table in front of her?

    Ammunition for when she needs to throw the book at someone.

    385:

    With all the daily chaos as the processes of government in the HoC get increasingly heated, I'm waiting for The Mace to again wake from it's slumber. As the dark, eldritch forces embodied in it take over the mind of some receptive MP and compel them to wield it in anger. The sacred texts in those books are the only thing that keeps it in check. But only if they are NEVER OPENED.

    386:

    Comment from a Finn I know on "Trumpolini" - "It is worrying when the POTUS is the comic relief on the evening news" (for context, this was relating to the Finns raking (or not) the forest floors to prevent fires).

    387:

    You're assuming we want him.

    Traditionally current Australians aren't given a choice when foreign criminals are shipped over here.

    388:

    All true, with the note that we did manage to elect one party with an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament once, despite an electoral system designed to make sure that this never happens!

    389:

    "Halsbury’s Laws Of England" apparently, printed copies (not the originals which were traditionally on parchment until recently) of Acts passed by Parliament.

    390:

    Which may be partly why British Airways looks set to decamp for Spain in event of a no-deal Brexit . Wouldn't this mean that "British" Airways would lose the right to fly through UK airspace, whether on UK domestic or on international services?

    391:

    I have some bad news for all you people contemplating a merger between either the UK and Germany or the US and Germany:

    The constitutional mechanism that allowed other territories to join the Federal Republic of Germany (or, more precisely, to join "den Geltungsbereich des Grundgesetzes" = the territory that is governed by the German constitution (former article 23 of the German Grundgesetz)) was removed when the latest such joining took place (concurrently with German re-unification on October 3rd, 1990). This was done to make it emphatically clear that Germany does not seek to expand into any further territory (particularly not into any former German territories that now form part of Poland and/or Russia).

    Thusly, it wouldn't be straightforward for the UK to become Bundesländer No. 17 to ca. 28 or for the US to become Bundesländer No. 17 to 67 (I suppose Germany would allow Washington DC to join as a full Bundesland, after all we already have some city-states). (Any other solution than the anglophone country becoming part of Germany and accepting the German Grundgesetz would be patently absurd, obviously.)

    Note that in case of the UK a merger with Germany would have some consequences for the (former) royal family. In Germany, titles of nobility and all privileges associated with them were formally abolished in 1919 with the adoption of the Weimar Constitution. (You wouldn't believe it if you read the German Yellow Press, but it's still a fact.) Thusly, no claim to the "German Throne", because no such throne exists anymore. As sort of a compensation, the former aristocrats were allowed to retain a likeness of their former titles as part of their surname. Thus, Lizzy could opt for "Queen of England, Scotland etc. pp." as her official surname in her ID papers (yes, in Germany it's mandatory to have a government-issued identity card (Personalausweis)). I'm not sure whether it's legal to have two surnames at the same time, but I suppose not, therefore she'd have to drop the name "Windsor". Charlie would presumably get "Prince of Wales" as his legal surname. At the death of his mother he would inherit her surname (starting with "King", obviously) and would have to apply for a new ID card and passport.

    392:

    They're not in front of Maybot (or indeed Corbyn). They're in front of the Woolsack.

    393:

    It would be more interesting to watch you trying to make the Yousay adopt the Reinheitsgebot! :)

    394:
    Thus, Lizzy could opt for "Queen of England, Scotland etc. pp." as her official surname

    On second thoughts, this would of course be "Königin von England, Schottland usw." and "Fürst von Wales" for her first-born. The other children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be "Prinz/Prinzessin von England, Schottland usw.", by the way.

    And the same would apply for all the other aristocrats, of course.

    395:

    No. You can buy liberties from the UK government quite cheaply and, anyway, refusal to provide them would cut off our air transport - oops, cut off the continent from the UK.

    396:

    That claim is as erroneous as the implication that there is nothing written. Yes, there is a lot in writing, but that includes formal laws like statutes, records of interpretation, precedent and procedure, and more. And then there is the interpretation, precedent and procedure that is NOT written down, but is equally important. All of those are changeable, in some cases by a single decision of a single organisation.

    397:
    It would be more interesting to watch you trying to make the Yousay adopt the Reinheitsgebot! :)

    I'm quite sure that in case of the US much hilarity would ensue. Just think about adopting the social security system and confiscating of all guns. And, of course, de-nuclearization (both civil use and military).

    398:

    Book early, go for the nice hotel. It's not as if there's going to be a Zombie Apocalypse, unless you have a severe navigational embarrassment and end up in the dodgiest part of town...* :)

    If hard brexit's a-coming, you'll be secure in the knowledge that the dollar in your pocket will buy a lot more than normal. Bring blue jeans, spirits, cigarettes, (proper**) chocolate, and nylons, they'll do as barter goods in the new economy; make sure to wear your pink and greens...

    ...we promise to dress as chimney sweeps and do song-and-dance numbers with really dodgy mockney accents. Probably involving penguins from Edinburgh Zoo, if we haven't eaten them by then.

    • I was in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, when there were serious riots and protests against the Government. All us athletes were restricted to our official accommodation, and the closing ceremony for the event had a lot of extra, and humourless, police standing between us and the VIPs. Our best guess was that in the extremely polite and good-humoured society we'd observed in downtown KL, that there might have been some raised voices, perhaps a few shouts and some jostling. Nowhere near "The Year of Living Dangerously" standard.

    ** Proper, i.e. +cocoa -wax, none of that Hersheys rubbish. You know, Belgian or Swiss...

    399:

    Wrong House, they're on the table in front of the Speakers Chair. The Woolsack is the Lord Chancellors seat in the Lords.

    400:

    No. That's a distortion, at best. Privilege is automatic power, yes, but does NOT necessarily imply the abuse of it. There was (and, to some extent, still is) a tradition and principle in many societies that the privileged have a duty to use that power for the benefit of the less privileged. One of the crimes of the lunatic left is to remove the privilege from such people and transfer it to others that have no such principles. This has been particularly visible in the UK in the past century.

    401:

    I cannot escape the sense that there's a faction actively in favour of climate change out of somewhat deluded economic expectations.

    I agree, and I think their agenda is toxic white supremacism: leverage agricultural and ecosystem collapse to kill all the brown people, retreat into the north (or South Island of NZ), and wait it out for a few centuries before repopulating with freshly bred pure aryan serfs to provide for the needs of their natural masters. A global population of 200M serfs and maybe 20K overlords is well within the planetary carrying capacity and can also support the scientific/technological R&D base to handle the overlords' medical needs and luxury goods.

    I find this abhorrent, needless to say …

    If I was going to write a dystopian satire it'd be set in exactly this kind of future. Plot: our plucky rebel daughter-of-nobility and viewpoint protagonist thinks she's rebelling against her impending arranged marriage; so she runs away on an adventure into the hinterland. She's getting tired of pissing behind bushes when she discovers the ruins of an old-timer city. Excitement ensues until she realizes that the old-timers weren't real people like her, they were mud people. Appalled, she goes home expecting to settle down and breed more blonde aristocrats for the good of the race … but due to the political machinations of a rival of her father's she's framed as a mud person herself and sent to a Care Camp (in a climate black zone where the 12 month survival rate is well under 50%). Of course she approves of the existence of the camps because she sincerely believes that mud people need to be suppressed, even though she herself has been cruelly framed … because the narrative is from the naive viewpoint of a brainwashed product of a genocidal regime, and she lacks the insight to realize that revolutions eat their own. Six months later she dies of heat stroke. THE END (with the same ironic framing as "Winston Smith loved Big Brother".)

    Needless to say I am not going to write this book because about 20% of all readers interpret anything I write exactly ass-backwards, ESPECIALLY when it involves unreliable narrators and weaponized irony, and I don't want to get a rep as a white supremacist.

    Gaah.

    402:

    I didn't mean he wrote it, I meant he was singing it.

    I suggested it because you were talking about reclaiming the colour red.

    403:

    Sorry, that was supposed to be in response to withroth's comment that you were replying to. Don't know what happened. May be related to whatever makes me have to sign in again after every comment I post.

    404:

    mea culpa, but I've not used that data in decades, and "The Woolsack" is funnier anyway!

    405:

    But their milk chocolate is so bland, and Hershey doesn't use wax.

    406:

    I am not convinced that race is the sole criterion, on the grounds that they regard anyone who isn't a part of their in-group (including 'Aryan' foreigners) as "One Of The Lesser Peoples". But race is certainly a large part of that, because their brown allies won't get invited. I would dearly like to disbelieve the rest of it, but ... :-(

    As you know, I regard a lesser form of that as being the intent of the people behind Brexit.

    407:

    Privilege is automatic power, yes, but does NOT necessarily imply the abuse of it.

    I argue that it does automatically produce the abuse. It's a bit like "is there such a thing as a just patriarchy?"; no, obviously not, just as soon as one stops restricting the viewpoint to the beneficiaries of patriarchy. Automatic or inherent power is a generalization of that circumstance.

    408:

    I'd prefer to generalize it as, in social terms, power (or privilege) is a zero-sum game. That is: if I have more power or agency than the average, it implies that other people have less.

    Universal healthcare is, by definition, universal, which takes it out of the privilege/power game. A universal franchise would be, by definition, universal; in practice it isn't (we don't let children vote, or individuals classed as mentally incompetent, or prisoners, or, or … a bunch of other restricted categories).

    The fewer people are affected by restrictions on agency, the less significant the converse privilege or agency becomes.

    And, humans being hive apes that live in troupes and self-organize hierarchically, some of us tend to seek out markers of significance, and privileged status leveraged against the immiseration of others seems like low-hanging fruit.

    409:

    Megpie71 @ 382 in Reply To JBS @ 365: You're assuming we want him. That's pretty courageous of you.

    Hah! I'm not assumin' NOTHIN'. I'm saying he's YOUR FAULT, so y'all should be the ones that has to clean up the mess.

    410:

    _Moz_ @ 387:

    "You're assuming we want him."

    Traditionally current Australians aren't given a choice when foreign criminals are shipped over here.

    He's not even a foreign criminal in Australia, he's home grown. It's only fair they be made to take him back.

    411:

    MSB @ 391: I have some bad news for all you people contemplating a merger between either the UK and Germany or the US and Germany:

    Drat! ... and I betcha France will have some lame excuse for not wanting to take y'all in too.

    412:

    Right now there are large numbers of people for whom "better than you" is really, really important. "I will kill you" important. And they do. Regularly.

    They also kill because information is (deliberately) not put into context. Dylan Roof, for example, killed because he had been to the website of the CCC (Council of Conservative Citizens) website and seen their listing of Black-on-White killings. But he was never educated about how many murders there were overall every year, nor how many deaths, nor how many white-on-black killings, etc.

    The same is true of Bowers, the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter. He was (in a very racist manner) concerned that the members of this particular synagogue gave considerable aid to a charity which helped refugees. But he probably didn't know that illegal border crossings were at an all-time low, (20% of what they were 20 years ago) or that the number of illegal residents in the U.S. is currently at a multi-decade low. Instead, he responded to panicked news reports about the "refugee caravan" coming north from Honduras, which was nothing more than a minor uptick in a descending graph!

    I'm not saying you're wrong, BTW. I'll grant, quite happily, that both Bowers and Roof are horrible people, but they're also people who responded to an information environment where bad information was poorly presented and given without context. And this lack of context kills!

    Forget the low information voter; I want to help the "low information shooter" (because then they might not shoot at all.)

    413:

    Robert Prior @ 402: I didn't mean he wrote it, I meant he was singing it.
    I suggested it because you were talking about reclaiming the colour red.

    That wasn't me. It was someone else, but I'm too lazy to scroll up to find out who it was.

    414:

    Confederation of English-speaking countries in the future may be a bit far-stretched possibility, considering you don't have any of them yet, despite this much glorious past of British Empire. However, I presume, if we take current situation with world powers, shake it a bit for another decade and leave on a shelf to settle dawn, perhaps, a confederation of several of them might be an answer. The rest, again, could exist as independent territories or there might also be some form of protectorate territories outside this scope of things. I even invented the name for such entitiy - The Empire (with a dozen additional signifier names attached to it), that will be created after the Last War. Though these names are about as ironic as the last war we know to be named as such - WW1, and the "empire" itself is an allusion on Roman empire, which was more of a cultural/national thing rather than ethnic.

    See, we don't know yet how modern technology is going to shape future world's politics, because right now it is still holding onto old traditions - barely, at times. But it in the future this might not live long enough, as many of cyberpunk prophets of the previous century have wondered. Sooner or later the change will come, and as we speak, these limits are weakening, coming under attack from every direction. Maybe in the future, the "country" will change definition, the citizenship will be established by electronic surveillance means, and so on. "Distributed republic" is rather idealistic model, so maybe there might be something more mixed system in practice later on.

    In other news, another flagship of modern media industry - the BFV - has been hit with harsh criticism for it's blatant history rewriting. At least where the criticism is still allowed as an activity. I'm not saying that po;itical issues are primary reason for the game failure of a start, but they go hand in hand with crap management decisions. It is better to view it than to read about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAlAITCBprI Photo manipulation? Selective facts? Stories pulled out of someones' arse? Wait, where did I hear it before already? Oh, it was with those dastard communists/socialists/fascists, except they are supposed to be long-gone by the glory of the "end of history" and "liberal democracy".

    Well, I am, obviously, do not favor modern rampant globalism that treats people as a resource. But neither do I have any sympathy for the people most opposed to them, who constantly exercise their glorious past as a measure of their own implied supremacy. Both points of view are, of course, completely beside the problem these people really are facing. They exist in a virtual space loosely connected with reality and practice outside their limited knowledge (and this is not only about video game industry). But watching closely I find it inherently amusing, and somewhat of a divine justice, if you will.

    415:

    That's too simplistic, as animal behaviourists and evolutionary analysts have discovered. While it is most of the truth, altruism is also widespread and can be Darwinistically beneficial. There is the classic one WWI of it being an officer's duty to lead from the front - which was one the major factors in the demise of the class structure in the UK. Or the hereditary peers standing up against Thatcher for the rights of us lesser classes, in lieu of a functional opposition. I could give lots of other examples.

    What Graydon has missed is that virtually NO abolition of privilege has ever done that - in every case I can think of, it has simply replaced one set of privileged people by another, not always immediately but in fairly short order. Almost every so-called democracy is actually controlled by an elite, often for their own benefit rather than for the people they are supposed to serve. Even when the leaders come from 'the people', the privilege is in the hands of the most effective demogogues and schemers.

    Privileged classes should be judged by what they do for those less privileged, whether they are nominally elected or no.

    416:

    The problem is that your whole idea is racially problematic. What makes you think that all the brown people along the equator are going to die?

    If you want to write the book, plucky protagonist heads south and discovers that the Australians and Indonesians got together and bred some fish/seaweed that could live in warmer seas, and that they are gathered along the coasts and still retain technological civilization, that the South African Army has occupied the Antarctic, that the Indians have put genes for fruits and vegetables into giant ferns (adapted for heat already, right?) and are trading with the Aussies and Indonesians, that a Meso-American civilization has colonized the southern part of Argentina, etc. Plus solar-power and air-conditioned greenhouses.

    She discovers that the whole idea of "all the brown people died" is nothing more than propaganda, and her entire "nobility" is nothing more than a hateful lie.

    In the real world, the whole "kill all the mud people" thing is going to get rather messy when the Indian Army starts moving north and the Pakistanis deploy their nukes to "clear a northern homeland of Anti_Islamic elements." And so on.

    Or when American racists discover that the combination of White Liberals, Black People, Hispanic People, Asian People and LGBTQ folk outnumbers them by around 2-to-1.

    Of course, Trump and Brexit are all about the U.K. and the U.S. blowing their demographic transitions, and of course we're screwing this up when our real attention needs to be about climate!

    417:

    Heteromeles @ 375; Graydon @ 376; _Moz_ @ 381:

    I think y'all are missing something. Much of the racism in the U.S. is a result of deliberate policy by power/privilege elites. It's intended to keep ALL lower classes - white, black, brown - separated by contrived rivalry. It's meant to keep black & white & brown from getting together and figuring out who is really screwing them over.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPf6ITsjsgk

    It's not just white southern power/privilege elites. It's ALL of those who are part of that "class", everywhere in the U.S.

    The 1% oppress everyone who is not part of the 1% and fomenting racism is the tool for keeping the other 99% from uniting to demand their fair share of the bounty. I don't expect it to get any better as long as the 1% hold onto the levers of power.

    There was a "joke" going around during the 2008 financial crises & election that pretty much sums it up. Goes something like this:

    There's a town hall meeting where the local banker, a local small business owner, and a teacher from the local high school are scheduled to debate the town's future. The organizers provide refreshments in the form of a plate with a dozen cookies. The banker proceeds to snatch up 11 of the cookies and gobble them down, then leans over to the small business owner and says "If you don't watch out, that UNION GUY over is going to try to take part of your cookie."

    Racism in the U.S. works the same way, just substitute "Black", "Hispanic" or a slur on any other despised "minority" for UNION.

    418:

    Much of the racism in the U.S. is a result of deliberate policy by power/privilege elites.

    Hallelujah!

    419:

    Ammunition for when she needs to throw the book at someone.

    The Laws are not the first choice of front-benchers when tempers flare up, there's an weapon of war racked up there conveniently to hand -- the Mace, a symbol of the Crown which mist be present otherwise votes in the House cannot be lawfully carried out. Actually there's a bunch of maces, spares kept with the Crown Jewels in the Tower just in case.

    As for Britain's Constitution, it's not really written down anywhere other than the current way of doing things being recorded as precedents followed by the courts, Judiciary, subsidiary administrations like county and city councils etc. Parliament is sovereign and can do what it wants any time it wants and no scrap of paper can prevent it doing so. What the law books say goes, there are no unconstitutional laws if they are passed by the Houses and signed into statute by the Crown.

    420:

    You did see that the BoE is predicting a "savage recession" in the case of a crash-out brexit?

    To recall the old YIPpie slogan, "eat the rich". I'd be happy to contribute a really good, mustard-based barbecue sauce....

    421:

    Hey, it's a damn good thing I didn't have liquid in my mouth when I read that....

    Oh, and I can say the same: my grandparents - one set from eastern Austia-Hungary, and the other from Odessa, were for many generations closer to the Caucasus Mountains than any of these "Aryan caucasians" in the US....

    Oh, and they were all Jewish, which, as you know Bob, isn't Really White....

    422:

    No, he bought his way into the US, as opposed to the "illegal immigrants", who work their tails off 12 hours a day (if they can get it) and live 6 to a 2-bedroom apt.

    But I'd be happy to put him up... in an orange jumpsuit, for little things like "incitement to commit murder" (women's healthcare doctor who also did abortions, and D&Cs), and bribing government officials, and illegal campaign contributions (no, no, they're just opinion shows in prime time), and....

    423:

    Whyat, you, too? Come on, warn me before you write things like this. Luckily, I'd already finished my tea before I read it....

    Um, my folks were part of the "folk scare" of the fifties. I really need to burn to disk a prize possession that was theirs: The Weavers At Carnegie Hall". My first Philly Folk Festival (largest and longest running folk festival in North America, last year was the 53rd), got folk singer friends... and I have an occasional house party/song circle. And when I say, "page xx in the hymnal", I am, of course, referring to Rise Up Singing.

    Nahhh, don't lissen' to that folk stuff....

    424:

    GHU! Quick, where's the paper bag to pull over my head as I type a mea saurus....

    425:

    Amen, brother!

    A "right" to carry all the guns you can afford, but no "right" to healthcare, or privacy, or...

    I TRULY DESPISE referring to anything as "entitlements... and that's come from the 1% who think the only ones who should be entitled are them.

    Maybe they think you're a baron if you've over $10US, and a count (so that you actually count) if you're over $100M, and Earl for $1BUS, and a Duke if you're over $10B.

    To which it's not only their privilege that I want to remove - there are spoiked fences that need decorating.

    426:

    Yeah, I've had a problem with ignorance of the law" for a while. I take it to mean that whoever says it knows tax law, and corporate law, and labor law, and criminal law (non-capital cases), and .....

    427:

    Gotcha. Now, if Mark the Red wehen't already taken, back in the late sixties/early seventies....

    428:

    No, it's not just race. Gotta find smaller groups to create, since more is better (easier to manipulate). You forgot religion (cf "the Pope is the Anti-Christ")

    And then there's class ("think's she's too good for me"), and let's not even get into "women who think they're as good as a man" (my Eldest just had that, via euphemism, used at her, but then she lives and works in the land of the two-toothed rednecks, as my late ex used to say).

    429:

    I'm not missing the 1% and contrived separation bit at all. What I'm pointing to--again--is the pernicious nature of the separation. When people are divided along "ethnic" lines (and note that there's little genetic evidence for ethnicities, but that's a side issue) and gain something from being part of a favored group, then asking them to give that something up is simply not going to fly. The only way it works is if you can show them something better that you're going to give them, and so far, the US Democrats have been really bad at doing that for rednecks.

    430:

    I agree, and I think their agenda is toxic white supremacism: leverage agricultural and ecosystem collapse to kill all the brown people, retreat into the north (or South Island of NZ), and wait it out for a few centuries before repopulating with freshly bred pure aryan serfs to provide for the needs of their natural masters. A global population of 200M serfs and maybe 20K overlords is well within the planetary carrying capacity and can also support the scientific/technological R&D base to handle the overlords' medical needs and luxury goods.

    That's one subspecies of a whole set of narratives, and these generally revolve around the notion that: --Overpopulation is a problem --Darwin said that more are born than can possibly survive, so most everyone's going to die horribly (note that this long predates Darwin). --I'm going to survive The Coming Crisis.

    ...and the rest follows. The wealthy and powerful use their money and power to insulate themselves (there's a small industry selling underground bunkers to the well-off in the US). The racists see this as a way to prove that their group is superior (and it's not just white Xtians, although they're the most on display at the moment. Another version of the cult is big in Silicon Valley). The survivalists do their whole SHTF thing. The agrarian dreamers go get their farm somewhere off-grid in the boonies. And so forth.

    I'd suggest that you could do an extremely humanist novel simply by running this scenario where: --almost everyone does die --things break down, people implement their I'll Survive/Fuck All Y'All scenarios, --almost all the scenarios fail in various ways (providing a lot of chaos and villains for the novel) --the protagonists win simply by suffering, mourning, picking up whatever pieces remain, and making a new community that probably breaks a bunch of times in the future and rebuilds itself (each of which can be a new story, actually)

    The ultimate morals of this novel are that something like climate change is not a one-off crisis, it's the new normal for the coming thousands of years, that people cannot survive on their own, that community building works, because humans require communities to survive, and that since everything will be uprooted in a changing climate, extending the notion of community to include other species is necessary as well.

    In regard to this last, it's not enough to hunt and gather, if you want to survive in the wilds, you've got to spend a lot of effort making sure there's always enough for you to hunt and gather. Ditto with farming, running woodlands for wood, and so forth.

    432:

    In fact, I like it a lot, maybe even better than mine.

    433:

    There is literature on this. Notably Gad Horowitz in Canada.

    In short tories think there is a structure to society, liberals don't. The left forked from toryism, not liberalism. They differ on what the structure should be, not whether it exists.

    The tories got driven out of the USA in and after the rebellion. Some came to Canada and formed the Family Compact, the reaction to that is the Canadian left.

    434:

    And when I say, "page xx in the hymnal", I am, of course, referring to Rise Up Singing.

    I like the idea of that in a formal setting, ideally a deconsecrated church.

    I find that a small bit of paper with the first lines of songs actually does 90% of the work. These days I have a bunch of stuff on my phone and that works pretty well most of the time (but not always, phone battery has been known to go flat). In Australia we have a rock canon I think more than a folk one (Midnight Oil, Hunters and Collectors etc although Paul Kelly could perhaps count as folk).

    If you ever want to terrify a bunch of people at night, singing "throw your arms around me" in a Nick Cave voice will do it.

    I will come for you at night time I will raise you from your sleep I will kiss you in four places As I go running along your street I will squeeze the life out of you ...

    As we all know, the difference between a love song and a nightmare is consent.

    435:

    The only way it works is if you can show them something better that you're going to give them, and so far, the US Democrats have been really bad at doing that for rednecks.

    They have the problem that for over 100 years rednecks were D's by default. Since Lincoln was an R they HAD to be Ds. Then the 50s to the 80s occurred and they switched. The D party had just assumed they would stick around for no other reason and then they left.

    436:

    NATO led military coup.

    Natural disasters regularly force regions of the United States to allow the National Guard to take over and make the distribution of necessaries a matter of military logistics rather than market economics. Have NATO declare martial law on both sides of the channel and monitor the production and transportation of food and medicine, stepping in with non-monetary inducements to resolve any bottlenecks in the process that emerge.

    437:

    There's a least one Liberal Jewish congregation I know of where "Union Maid" is in the hymnal.

    last Saturday was my new synagogue's Labor on the Bimah service, which closed out with a rousing rendition of "Union Maid" which absolutely nobody actually needed the lyric sheet for. We've now been to this temple a couple of times and it seems like a really good fit--not only a big emphasis on tikkun olum and social action, but the tunes and prayers are close enough to what I had growing up to "feel right."

    The author of Ahnistrike.org is, BTW, also an author who works in Lovecraft's oeuvre.

    439:

    BTW, on the subject of Brexit and/or Trump, the Germans raided Deutschebank today. It should be easy to find on a search engine.

    440:

    jrootham @ 433 NOT EVEN WRONG The Madwoman from Grantham famously stated that "There is no such thing as society" So I suggest you try again, huh?

    441:

    There is a difference between tory and Tory. The madwoman is absolutely a classical liberal.

    Or did you have another point? I couldn't tell from the brevity of your response.

    442:

    CD of 'The Weavers At Carnegie Hall' was available via Big River, last I looked. Same with the Reunion one.

    443:

    Now, wait for the economic downturn in the US. (2019ish). Republican approval plummets with the falling economy. A gigantic blue wave crashes in. The now-ex-president, and great friend of Farage, moves to London - touting England as the last bastion of non-brown people. His followers move, en masse, to England, also filling up Scotland and Wales. (70 million or so)

    Then, these people, now firm residents of the UK, hold another referendum and opt to leave the US.

    Brexit could work.

    Admittedly, not for the UK. May's plan could be worse.

    444:

    the Germans raided Deutschebank today

    :D Subtly different from when the vikings raid it, but perhaps the modern equivalent? We'll know it's serious when it starts raining senior executives.

    ... on a different note: tories think there is a structure to society, liberals don't

    I think they mean "hierarchy", or perhaps they regard feudal as a silent adjective whenever they use structure to refer to society. Plus there's the bonus confusion between nihilists and liberals, although I suspect that from the perspective of an overlord there's no difference (might I suggest that the difference is subtle but important... one lot are really into guillotines, the other into bureaucracy and due process).

    445:

    I saw an interesting interview/chat thing from British TV between Billy Bragg and some RBP suit, with the suit insisting on British unity but persistently referring to England then correcting himself. All the while bemoaning devolution in any form and asking why anyone would want to leave the UK and join the EU. The Bragg was a bit mediocre, warbling about opposition to globalisation. I would have preferred a few more digs about "the English see it as loss of control, for Scotland it would mean *more control".

    • I suggest when trying to appeal to/represent the common man some smooth banker type with rounded vowels and an expensive suit is not the ideal choice. But I understand that that is traditional for the English when appealing to their subjects.
    446:

    Re: 'Oh boy. You expect to use facts to change people's behavior.'

    Yes, starting with the sane countries. The other countries might eventually come around. In places where law suits rule, i.e., ethics based on torts laws, the most important event would be to win a major court case thereby establishing precedent.

    447:

    Interesting. As I understand it, the current US President only did business with the Deutsche Bank Private Bank, because he burned so many commercial lenders that they (along with the Russians) were among the only to bankroll him.

    My question is, was that raid across all divisions? Officially it's linked with the 2016 Panama Papers, and there are a lot of wealthy people who showed up there, not just ol' Agent Orange.

    448:

    I guess we'll have to see, though I note that the FBI also raided one of Trump's lawyers today. Said lawyer is also a Chicago alderman, so whether this has anything to do with Trump is currently unknown.

    Here's the thing which resonates with me. The other EU countries must see Brexit as threatening, and they desperately need to know whether another country is behind it, the main suspects being Russia and various U.S. billionaires, so it would not surprise me if they did what they could to help Mueller, find out what they could about any number of issues, and, if they can dig up something useful, have the U.S. intelligence services owe them a favor if they can dig something up on either Trump or Russia.

    Or I could be dead wrong and it's just about the Panama Papers.

    449:

    The Chicago raid was for the office of Trump's former tax accountant. And no word yet as to why. Could be totally unrelated to the DT.

    450:

    That's what I said.

    451:

    Hush don't point out to a remainiac that these things run 2 ways. Reciprocity is not in their vocabulary. They all know that Brexit will bring about a Mad Max world. On a sidenote Charlie is quite right I haven't read the report he references. I am not going to either, as gregtingy said this nothing, everything that needs to be done to fly safely is already done. The rows are merely about the paperwork, and sorting out how to message the CAA about any changes after Brexit when the European air safety regulator is going to be told by the EU to sulk and not pass on messages. What grown up attitude that exemplifies.

    452:

    jrootham @ 441 STILL NOT EVEN WRONG The Madwoman a "classical liberal" - you what - given her actual social & political views, supporting racist (South Africa) & fascist (Pinochet) regimes?

    david 17675david Are you a troll, as well as jrootham? Actually, if we really do "crash out without a deal" I'm very scared as to the outcome. I supect we might get temporary fixes up-&-running in a week or so, but the disruption could be - major. I note you are blaming the evil Europeans in advance, which tells me something, as well.

    453:

    @365 - I think you mean "the Bee Gee" (sorry)

    454:

    The problem is that your whole idea is racially problematic. What makes you think that all the brown people along the equator are going to die?

    Because the whole plot is predicated on deliberate genocide. (Using climate change rather than gas chambers.)

    See also "Swastika Night" and the whole 1930/40s micro-genre of "year 3000, after the Nazis won".

    455:

    Whitroth @423 : don't know if you've listened to any recent UK folk, but I find myself really liking the Young 'Uns - folk songs about the 20th century, about decent people doing the decent thing. Highly recommended.

    456:

    I'm reminded again that what North Americans mean by "liberal" and "Liberals" and what people from the UK mean, are two entirely different things. That doesn't mean that either side is wrong, per se. Just that they're using political labels differently. If the N Americans think Thatcher was a Classical Liberal, I wonder what they think the UK Liberal Party and SDP were. And what the UK Lib-Dems (Liberal Democrat Party) are now.

    457:

    Except. My opinion is that plans for deliberate genocide are relatively reassuring. There is a human need to believe someone is in charge.

    But, outcomes seem to be better modeled by an aggregate of little interests and human nature.

    Eg, some progressives in the US like to think that, absent racism fomented by the 1%, the US would be a progressive country. But...the Democrats (kinda sorta more progressive) hang on because of strong minority support. By and large, those minorities aren't progressive, just KKK adverse. If anything, the deactivation of Democratic voters when faced with a potential female president is an uncovered reality.

    But on climate change, it is more plausible that there are some people who make profits from carbon fuels and who feel their profits outweigh the incremental damage on a personal level. The effects on brown people are sort of irrelevant (as said my coal importing malaysian BIL.)

    This is considerably more depressing than plans for genocide, presumably confined to a small segment of the population. There may well be plans for genocide, rising from people who don't like brown people and see opportunities brought about by climate change. Thing is, there isn't a small cable to expose or persuade, just a mass of people who don't case much and a few who do and a few others reacting to the results.

    458:

    First off I suspect that there will be some "emergency" decrees letting things continue. If somewhat chaotically. Maybe a whole lot chaotically. I'd say Book It, while being aware that it might in the end not be safe or pleasant to go to London and you might have to cancel, depending on how this mess turns out in the end. I am a pessimistic person, this colours my judgement.

    Me, being one of those deplorable [str(i) for i in dictionary if rudeorracist(i)] Europeans shafting The Proud People of Britain, according to Parliament and the UK media, is not particularly keen on going to the UK right now. Most people, strangely enough(!), will respond to what their government minsters and the media moguls keep telling them.

    I fear that once the fiasco of Brexit or Not-Really Brexit (because it's not like we are going to forget all this and just let the UK move back into "our home" in style, like nothing happened) become visible "on the street", I would expect the anti-Europe, anti-French and anti_German Them-vs-Us rhetoric and agit-prop to scale up to new, feverish levels. Probably enough to make is dangerous as a foreigner to go the pub or be seen in the street.

    The options are really bad:

    May's Plan sucks but it keeps the gears ticking over and the blood circulating until some kind of 'permanent' solution is worked out.

    The "Second Referendum" is a sparkly-pony unicorn of parliament abandoning their authority that will ensure a hard Brexit, with will be a guaranteed disaster.

    'Cancel the A.50' will absolutely lead to viscous howling of "They Betrayed Brexit", and I suspect, internal conflict, especially when the EU 'dictates terms' to prevent a repeat of the entire farce at the whim of some future parliamental majority.

    The best path, in my opinion, is: Buy time with May's Deal. Use this time to allow some years for the rabid hysteria to die down, then re-apply for membership of the EU which will be on the same terms as anyone else. Blame the Tories for that.

    The Way of The Tory is: Guaranteed disaster but please pin it on Labour. I think this is why May was smirking when asked "if she really would lead the country into a hard Brexit", she was thinking: "No, because you will be doing that after my snap election, dearie".

    459:

    Erwin @ 457 there are some people who make profits from carbon fuels Except those numbers are going down quite sharply... 42% of coal power-plants running at a loss And that proportion is rising: "Lobbying & Cronyism is the only thing that can save coal" ... temporarily. Wonder if anyone has told Abbott & Trump yet?

    @ 458 And - IF we get a second referendum & there's an absolute majority for "Remain" with "Crash Out" nowhere ... what then? It's quite likely, you know.

    460:

    Hi Greg I have just taken a walk in daylight and I don't live under a bridge. I haven't read jrootham's posts. I don't dispute that you are scared I just don't think you are right to be. The relevant point on aviation is will aircraft continue to fly safely post Brexit. The answer to that is how do they fly safely now? The technical experts investigating why that Lion Air plane has crashed will no doubt send out in due course a very long comprehensive document that says what happened and do this that and the other to stop it from happening again. Currently the CAA gets its copy via the EU. If the EU isn't willing to do mail forwarding that will be a problem. Vice versa if company in UK discovers faulty component and reports it. The rest of the world finds out via, well I don't know, currently it's the EU but if the EU is being difficult someone might get an unwelcome surprise. The EU wants to mix a technical function with a political one for political reasons. This is not a good idea but it appears to be all they can think of. My original deleted post referred to the electrical supply in Ireland which might be threatened if good European electrons are expected to travel in foul Brexity wires. So an Irish electrical genrator cant sell its product for money because Eurpean unity. Sigh

    O and you have been on the internet to know DON'T FEED THE TROLL

    461:

    Because the whole plot is predicated on deliberate genocide. (Using climate change rather than gas chambers.)

    This is what makes the plot racially problematic. What makes you think that countries like India (politically powerful with lots of nukes) or Brazil (technically very competent) or Pakistan (even more nukes) are going to accept genocide or even just wilt and die because it gets too hot? What makes you think that ordinary people are going to completely die off rather than adapt? There are a whole bunch of assumptions on your part which are... um... difficult, like the idea that nobody in Thailand, (for example) is competent to build a solar-driven steam generator and connect it to an air-conditioner, (or execute whatever strategy is useful for survival.)

    I completely agree that the countries along the equator are generally poorly resourced to survive global warming, but there will be specific exceptions, and those people will be very tough and very competent indeed, and might realistically consider Europeans deficient.

    The big reveal here should be when the "plucky protagonist" discovers that the world she assumed her family rules is, in fact, the "European Reservation," and the people outside want to put her back inside... They're well-aware of what White people tried to do and they want nothing to do with such folk, who must be a genetically damaged race of sociopaths!

    462:

    Through my job (other regular contributors including OGH himself have met me in meat space and can confirm this statement) I know that lots of trans-Atlantic air traffic (not just to and from the UK) and most Ireland - Europe air traffic too transits UK airspace. Can you see why the EU dishonouring existing air transit etc agreements involving UK airspace might be a problem?

    463:

    “I'm reminded again that what North Americans mean by "liberal" and "Liberals" and what people from the UK mean, are two entirely different things.”

    I have to keep reminding myself that for many USAnians it’s a term of abuse rather than a political perspective.

    I like Americans. They’re funny...

    464:

    I think your plot sort of avoids the real issue here. Both the U.K. and the U.S. are undergoing demographic transitions. In the U.S., for example, the fastest growing racial demographic is "mixed." Ten percent of the people in the U.S. are Black, twenty percent are Hispanic of some variety, with Jews, Muslims, various Asian groups, etc., making up another 10-15 percent of the population, and these people are breeding madly with White people (which used to be classed as a hideous racial horror called "miscegenation," something so bad in the eyes of frightened White people that - as you know - Lovecraft created a demon who embodied the concept!)

    Neither US nor UK society is handling this very well. We should be working on Global warming, but instead our societies are stuck in an ugly political loop as we try to cope with our demographic transitions. (The idea that the UK or the US are mainly a set of shared ideas, easily conveyed through the same kind of education which conveys other parts of our culture seems to be lost on Scared White People.) And as we panic over our demographic transitions, which are nothing to worry about if you understand that your country is a set of ideas rather than a set of genetic structures, both the US and UK are missing opportunities and failing to handle other urgent issues, like the fact that we've fucked up the atmosphere and are very likely to kill something like 5-7 billion people as a result.

    On the US side of things, the main symptom of all this is Trump. On the UK side of things, the main symptom of this is Brexit. But it all comes down to demographic transitions, panic, and people who exploit these issues, contrasted against What We Should Do About Global Warming.

    I'm not sure how you should handle those issues in plotting a book, but the reality is probably some kind of civil war as the panicked White people of Europe and the US decide that Something Must Be Done about the brown hordes who are already here and marrying our sons and daughters. Or, alternately, that we all mutually decide that we're not going to blow our demographic transitions, we have more important things to worry about, and Trump and Brexit can go fuck themselves...

    465:

    s/UK/England -- Based on my experiences as they relate to your post.

    466:

    Are you saying that other localities in the U.K. aren't having demographic crisises, or that their demographics aren't changing?

    467:

    For values of "demographic crises" that mean that people actually care about changing ethnicity profiles where they live, I suppose I am saying that other parts of the UK (also actually some parts of Englandshire) feel that there is no crisis.

    468:

    Davidnumbersdavid @ 460 The relevant point on aviation is will aircraft continue to fly safely post Brexit Yes - just NOT in British air-space unless we get an agreement ... which is the point. Thus see also Paws @ 462

    469:

    Enter: HRM QE2

    Under the impression that the Queen still has the authority to dissolve Parliament. If yes, then if no progress has been made on Brexit by Xmas, Her annual Xmas message will include a gift to Her people: all sitting MPs are out since they've proven themselves incompetent at running the country for the benefit of its people. (And their constant whining has given Her the mother of all headaches.) Further, all then-sitting MPs would be barred from running for Parliament for at least 10 years, after which time they could run provided they qualified. This would allow for a new (and probably younger*) batch of MPs to be elected in time for Her official birthday.

    Any would-be candidates for the New Parliament would first need to qualify as sane and informed. There are enough universities offering psychometric testing courses - and grad students willing to write a paper or two on the process and outcome - that all would-be candidates could be accommodated.

    Testing to determine how well informed the would-be candidates are could also be conducted by the universities, with the civil service offering ideas/questions/topics that they've noticed past MPs have had the greatest difficulty understanding.

    • Average age of British MPs is 50; median age of Brits is 39.
    470:

    OK, why should Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru and SNP MPs be punished because the Con Party and Liebour are incapable of organising a party in in a brewery?

    471:

    Airspace is the easy one. All carriers and their regulators have to do is to accept that UK air traffic control is adequate, there aren't many that matter, and everybody has an interest in fixing it up fast. Mutual acceptance of pilots' and maintenance qualifications and regulations is much harder, because there are a LOT more of them and interested parties. One issue that was raised is when an EU carrier needs a part replaced during a stop in the UK - without any agreement, it becomes illegal to fly into USA or EU territory.

    So they would quite likely simply cut the UK out of their route, even if they continue to overfly us. Whereupon the rabit Brexiteers would scream for a closure of our airspace, which would NOT help get agreements into place.

    472:

    No, not all of England - only Little England, which overlaps Toryshire considerably, but includes quite a few other locations.

    473:

    Save some money. A random voter from each riding will be appointed MP. Statistically, this will provide the same representation as an election. Present MPS don't need to be disqualified, but take their chances in the lottery.

    The perfect is the enemy of the better-than-what-we've-got-now (to paraphrase Voltaire).

    475:

    Re:'What We Should Do About Global Warming'

    Interesting new study in the works:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07533-4?WT.feed_name=subjects_earth-and-environmental-sciences

    'First sun-dimming experiment will test a way to cool Earth

    Researchers plan to spray sunlight-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, an approach that could ultimately be used to quickly lower the planet’s temperature.'

    They're planning on using calcium carbonate - the same stuff that you take for an upset stomach, squeeze onto your toothbrush, and (in its most compressed form) quarry for all those lovely Neo Classical buildings.

    476:

    Re: Why punished

    Because they've had their chance and they blew it. Just like the Brexit vote was for real, their being elected as MPs to govern competently in real time in the real world was for real. No do-over's allowed: Do your job right the first time or get out.

    477:

    I live in East Kent. Prior to 1992 there were hundreds of customs clearance agents in this area employing thousands of people in dealing with the import and export paperwork. Afterwards most of them went out of business*.

    If we knew what the paperwork needed after March 2019 was likely to be, there's probably just time for the remaining customs clearance agencies that deal with cargoes from outside free trade agreement areas to recruit some of the staff they need and half-train them in time.

    Anyway, with (for example) visas, driving licenses, air traffic maintenance etc., in fact for about 90% of everything, there are straightforward and commonsense solutions that could be implemented post Brexit. We haven't yet agreed and solved them with the EU or anyone, and solving them before March 29 2019 is not going to happen. And some jobsworth who is personally and directly responsible for air safety in, say Belgium, is going to object to planes and pilots that have not been approved by bodies that are signatories to the relevant agreements. And they'll be right to do so.

    • Bloody EU taking people's jobs by [checks notes] removing red tape.
    478:

    Sorry, but those verses remind me of an old underground comic cover: He's BACK! Even the grave couldn't hold him, and he WANTS YOUR SOUL!" (that being Jesus (tm), of course)

    479:

    Congratulations for outing yourself. I've run into your fellow-travelers before.

    Tell me, will you also argue ghat Nazis were actually left-wing socialists?

    480:

    Not sure - some of the folk shows I listen to may have played them. Like, damn, can't remember the group's name, Wind

    Anywhoo, thanks for the recommendation. Sent to myself to listen to.

    481:

    Americans do not think Thatcher was a "classic liberal", we put her in the same class as St. Raygun.

    The real problem, on this side of the Pond, is so many decades of right-wing propaganda. By the late sixties, liberal meant ok, sorta, kinda.

    Let me put it this way: I distringuish between Democrats (before the recent progressive serge (we've not yet sewn them up...) and Republicans as the Dems are fair-weather friends: if it's not out of their way, and they're not busy, they might do you a favor, where the GOP (Grand Oligarchic Party) are enemies, who will always go out of their way to screw you.

    Appropriate music: "Love Me, I'm A Liberal", Phil Ochs.

    Liberal used to have a better meaning. For example, a century ago, a liberal arts degree meant that you could talk to most people about almost anything, at least as an informed layman. Now, it means you've avoided any hard classes, and don't really get science, or the arts, either.

    482:

    Well, yes they are progressive, and yes, the US would be more liberal (classical definition). As evidence, I refer you to the elections and support of FDR.

    But if you scare people enough, y'know, with them commies under your bed....

    483:

    Oh, Ghu...

    "Yes?" "Hello, sir or madam, you have been selected by your neighbors as their new MP/Congresscritter. Please report to your local polling station for induction and training....

    484:
    I am not convinced that race is the sole criterion, on the grounds that they regard anyone who isn't a part of their in-group (including 'Aryan' foreigners) as "One Of The Lesser Peoples".

    Ah, here we get to the real point of the matter with respect to racism in general: race isn't an attribute of a person. It's in the eye of the beholder.

    There's no test that will prove you're a member of some "race" or not, in any way that's useful. Scientifically, race doesn't exist. But regardless, there can't be such a test, because no test will ever make racists treat you differently.

    The whole idea that race is something genetic is essentially a pseudo-scientific attempt to justify existing prejudices. And not just prejudices based on skin color: Irish people weren't white, until they were. Historically, that's just how things were: anyone can hate anyone else, for any reason. Whether you're a member of a "race" or not is defined by that hatred, not by any property you have.

    So yeah, it's entirely self-consistent for white supremacists to hate people who appear to have the same skin color as themselves, because "whiteness" isn't actually a thing. You're not white because of who you are or where you're from, you're white because white supremacists like you.

    485:

    Hmm, I thought OGH is our official troll collector.

    Considering that the original post is about why the USA doesn't have an NDP (or Labor) equivalent the identity and coherence of Thatcher's political philosophy seems to be a large red herring. Even if that is a land based reference I suspect the same basic rules apply.

    @479 whitroth I am not certain of your understanding of what I wrote is but it is pretty certainly not what I meant.

    Political philosophies are not the same as political parties. The fact that they sometimes share names can be a source of confusion.

    In Canada there is a shorthand way of separating them, upper case first letter. So here there is a difference between the liberal political philosophy and the Liberal political party.

    So: tory political philosophy and Tory political party.

    It seems I am writing Canadian and it is not translating well.

    @444 Moz Yes, The tory political philosophy can reasonably be described as a last ditch defence of feudalism, Great Chain of Being arguments and all that.

    When I described the left as a fork of toryism I did not mean to suggest that they shared the same values, but that they shared the same sociology.

    486:

    Ah, forgot one thing.

    Classical liberal is not a synonym for good.

    And yes, in this context, Ronnie was a classical liberal.

    487:

    what North Americans mean by "liberal" and "Liberals" and what people from the UK mean, are two entirely different things. ... I have to keep reminding myself that for many USAnians it’s a term of abuse

    Yeah, that's quite odd. I mean, it's accurate but they really hate it when you point that out. "oh, you're authoritarians and hate freedom, then"... ow mommy the mean man said a nasty thing.

    In Australia the Liberal Party are right wing authoritarians who generally oppose liberal policies (well, "liberal with taxpayers money in the direction of their mates"). They just gave us a faux-referendum which they presented as "should the gays have human rights" and they took the "no" side in that debate. As Pop Will Eat Itself put it "you are free to do what we tell you".

    488:

    For that kind of reason I've basically given up on expecting the word "liberal" to convey any useful meaning in a political context. It seems that for any political orientation it is possible to choose some aspect in which it is "liberal" by comparison with some other orientation - "taxpayers' money in the direction of their mates" being a typical example - and then get away with applying the term "liberal" to the orientation as a whole rather than just that specific aspect, because it sounds good. The result is that when the word is encountered it acts as nothing more than a placeholder for "(consult reference materials to determine the most likely meaning when used in this context by this person)". It would be far less confusing to simply make up context-specific sequences of letters that do not look as if they have any meaning outside that context, and to speak, for instance, of the "Australian KZTHWMP Party", or to say that "Thatcher was a classical BZEAIRJKL".

    489:

    "I required you to form a government, Mrs May."

    490:

    The work with DT was apparently about taxes which means no privilege.

    491:

    Let me put it this way: in the US, LBJ was a liberal. FDR was "extremely" liberal. Raygun was an extreme, at the time, right winger. Note that in an interview in the late 80's, before he died, Barry Goldwater, the extreme right Republican candidate who ran against LBJ in '64 was horrified by how far to the right the GOP had gone.

    Liberal used to mean, and still carries some overtones (we'll ignore neoliberals) of being willing to help the 99%.

    So, no, I do not consider Thatcher or Raygun "liberal". They're right-wing pro-business, anti-everybody else reactionaries.

    492:

    One issue that was raised is when an EU carrier needs a part replaced during a stop in the UK - without any agreement, it becomes illegal to fly into USA or EU territory.

    Not sure how this would play out if emergency waivers are put in place. But here in the US you can have a 5 minute delay while a bathroom door handle is fixed. But it then turns into a one hour delay waiting for someone with the proper certifications to make it to the plane to "sign the book" that it was done properly.

    493:

    The whole idea that race is something genetic is essentially a pseudo-scientific attempt to justify existing prejudices.

    Over here in the US we have some quasi racial tribes.

    One is descendants of the Mayflower. Got some of that blood and lots of doors (that most people don't know exist) will open up.

    Du Pont family members are another one.

    Daughters of the American Revolution gets into public fights every now and again about someone's lineage.

    494:
    Over here in the US we have some quasi racial tribes. One is descendants of the Mayflower.

    I'm sure that whatever lineage is necessary can be had for a very reasonable sum. After all, there's a whole cottage industry of this stuff associated with the Mormon Church.

    Give it a few generations and everyone is pretty much descended from everyone else, after all. It's not your actual lineage that matters, it's what you can claim to your advantage (and others' disadvantage).

    495:

    Elladan @ 484 Historically, that's just how things were: anyone can hate anyone else, for any reason See also Serb?Croat relatons, where to anyone from more than 50 miles or even 50Km away, there was NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL ... oh dear, as they say.

    & @ 494 Doesn't work here, or I would have an hereditary seat in the House of Lords (maybe) ....

    jrootham @ 486 WRONG & that's where we have a "misunderstanding" A classical liberal would be represented by, say J S Mill, or Gladstone ....

    whitroth @ 491 CORRECT

    496:

    whitroth @ 423: Whyat, you, too? Come on, *warn* me before you write things like this. Luckily, I'd already finished my tea before I read it....

    Um, my folks were part of the "folk scare" of the fifties. I really need to burn to disk a prize possession that was theirs: The Weavers At Carnegie Hall". My first Philly Folk Festival (largest and longest running folk festival in North America, last year was the 53rd), got folk singer friends... and I have an occasional house party/song circle. And when I say, "page xx in the hymnal", I am, of course, referring to Rise Up Singing.

    Nahhh, don't lissen' to that folk stuff....

    I have that The Weavers at Carnegie Hall album. I'm a little young to have heard them back in the day. I spotted it at a second hand book/music store & bought it. My sister Irene is named after the Weavers 1950 version of the Leadbelly song.

    My interest in "folk music" comes more from the late 50's folk "revival" - Kingston Trio, Peter Paul & Mary, New Christy Minstrals ... and from it's influence on Rock 'n Roll. Roger McGuinn from the Byrds (as Jim McGuinn) was the accompanist for the Chad Mitchell Trio. He left when Chad Mitchell quit and the other two members chose John Denver over Roger to be Chad's replacement.

    The Weavers Reunion at Carnegie Hall has that whole album up on YouTube in one piece, but the original The Weavers at Carnegie Hall is up there in bits & pieces and I think someone has put together a playlist combining both albums.

    I'm part of a music circle that gets together once a week and Rise Up Singing is our primary "text", although we supplement it with numerous handout sheets for songs that didn't make it into the book . One problem is there's an OLD and a NEW version and they have different chords listed for some songs. So far, I think I'm the only one in the group who has a copy of Rise Again

    497:

    I think the "Nazis are left-wing socialists" is a John Birch talking point, kind of like "Red Chinese are disguising themselves as Mexicans and sneaking into American through our southern border." *

    • These days it's "Mooslims are disguising themselves as Mexicans..."
    498:

    It never seems to occur to these people that mexicans might not have much sympathy for red chinese or islamic terroists.

    499:

    I'd prefer to generalize it as, in social terms, power (or privilege) is a zero-sum game. That is: if I have more power or agency than the average, it implies that other people have less.

    The social customs describe it as a zero-sum game; there's a fixed quantity of approbation to be distributed jealously. The function is inescapably negative sum because you have both the enforcement costs and the enforcement consequences, which are a mix of requiring bad decisions, suppressing skill and ability, and just generally insisting on outcomes rather than optimizing anything material.

    500:

    Privileged classes should be judged by what they do for those less privileged, whether they are nominally elected or no.

    That would be, make darn sure they stay less privileged. (There's a long, long history of "always say you are a kind master", and it gets into the history books.)

    I assert that it is possible to get a stable society that doesn't produce a privileged class. Since we more or less have to give it a go to get through the time of angry weather anyway[1], I don't see why we shouldn't try on its own merits.

    [1] elites make bad decisions, pretty much universally.

    501:

    Not just saving money, but getting a better class of legislators. On the average they will be average people, rather than the sociopaths the current US & UK political systems select for.

    502:

    Heteromeles @ 429: I'm not missing the 1% and contrived separation bit at all. What I'm pointing to--again--is the pernicious nature of the separation. When people are divided along "ethnic" lines (and note that there's little genetic evidence for ethnicities, but that's a side issue) and gain something from being part of a favored group, then asking them to give that something up is simply not going to fly. The only way it works is if you can show them something better that you're going to give them, and so far, the US Democrats have been really bad at doing that for rednecks.

    I think you ARE missing something. First of all, there's the intent. The pernicious ethnic separations didn't evolve naturally. Stirring up hatred against the "other" is a deliberate policy by the power elites to keep everyone oppressed; including the supposedly "favored group".

    Secondly, the "favored group" doesn't get any additional benefit. It's the Matador waving the red cape in front of the bull's face to distract it until it's time to run the sword through its heart. The "favored group" are deluded into believing they've got to lose in order for the "others" to win. They're told it's a zero sum game when it's not. The whole point is to keep the "favored group" oppressed; to prevent them from forming alliances with the other oppressed peoples and demanding justice.

    503:

    This is what makes the plot racially problematic. What makes you think that countries like India (politically powerful with lots of nukes) or Brazil (technically very competent) or Pakistan (even more nukes) are going to accept genocide or even just wilt and die because it gets too hot?

    There are about three levels here.

    Why does a deeply deeply racist white billionaire think that's going to happen?

    Why is that, or is that, a reasonable worry?

    Why on the wide earth do you think there's a technical mitigation?

    I'm going to treat the "white billionaire" as obvious; this is the outcome they want. Of course it seems likely. (Much as there are various rumblings that the Russian policy is that climate change is a good thing; it will allow shipping and development and resource extraction along the northern coast, or various American oil interests with respect to Alaska.)

    It's a reasonable worry because there are climate transitions where agriculture just straight up goes away. We don't know whether or not we're going to get one of those, but once agriculture goes, that's it. All the mitigation approaches take a lot of money and a lot of lead time and none of them are happening anywhere.

    It really doesn't matter how technically competent you are if you live somewhere that's become uninhabitable; you're going to move. Once that happens, the mechanisms of co-operation don't hold -- we're watching that happen right now! -- and conflict increases. The expectation of unity and authority sufficing the moment is not well-founded. It really doesn't matter how technically competent you are if you didn't start a couple decades back with respect to food supply, too.

    And then there's drought. Keep a really sharp eye on drought.

    504:

    Oggie Ben Doggie @ 436: NATO led military coup.

    Natural disasters regularly force regions of the United States to allow the National Guard to take over and make the distribution of necessaries a matter of military logistics rather than market economics. Have NATO declare martial law on both sides of the channel and monitor the production and transportation of food and medicine, stepping in with non-monetary inducements to resolve any bottlenecks in the process that emerge.

    The flaw in that is the military don't want that job, and NATO don't work that way.

    In the U.S. the National Guard is made up of local citizen-soldiers. Often, they're already there on the spot as "first responders" because the disaster has fallen upon their own community. They want the civilian government to give them the mission & let them get on with it so that as quickly as they can, they can get back to repairing & rebuilding their own lives.

    Plus the National Guard falls under Posse Comitatus just like the U.S. Army.

    505:

    Erwin @ 443: Now, wait for the economic downturn in the US. (2019ish). Republican approval plummets with the falling economy. A gigantic blue wave crashes in. The now-ex-president, and great friend of Farage, moves to London - touting England as the last bastion of non-brown people. His followers move, en masse, to England, also filling up Scotland and Wales. (70 million or so)

    With the UK freaking out over refugees from Africa and the Middle East, what makes you think they'd want to let Trumpolini and his fascist brigades move in?

    I read an interesting speculation today.

    Trump might not even run for re-election in 2020. Mueller's investigation seems to be focusing on Russian money laundering as the key to the Trump campaign's collusion with Russian interference in the 2016 election and it looks like it might open a flood-gate of state level CRIMINAL investigations into Trump's business practices.

    I believe the UK has an extradition treaty with the U.S. Trump wouldn't be safe there. I wonder if he has any golf courses in countries that don't have extradition treaties with the U.S.?

    506:

    Heteromeles @ 447: Interesting. As I understand it, the current US President only did business with the Deutsche Bank Private Bank, because he burned so many commercial lenders that they (along with the Russians) were among the only to bankroll him.

    My question is, was that raid across all divisions? Officially it's linked with the 2016 Panama Papers, and there are a lot of wealthy people who showed up there, not just ol' Agent Orange.

    It's being reported here as linked to Russian money laundering and semi-linked to Trump's financing; i.e. that the money they were loaning Trump was tainted money that came from the Russian Mafia.

    507:

    julian.bond @ 456: I'm reminded again that what North Americans mean by "liberal" and "Liberals" and what people from the UK mean, are two entirely different things. That doesn't mean that either side is wrong, per se. Just that they're using political labels differently. If the N Americans think Thatcher was a Classical Liberal, I wonder what they think the UK Liberal Party and SDP were. And what the UK Lib-Dems (Liberal Democrat Party) are now.

    When the GOP & other right-wingnutz call the Democrats "Liberals" they mean Radical Bolshevik Anarchists (and generally all around bad, nasty people who want to take everything you've worked hard for all your life and give it all to undeserving welfare cheats and dirty hippy slacker Mexicans).

    Americans calling Thatcher a "Classical Liberal" mean Neoliberalism; extreme Laissez-faire economics.

    508:

    Re: 'A random voter from each riding will be appointed MP.'

    Asimov's Franchise short story sorta takes this on: Norman Muller is randomly selected by Multivac -- Asimov's version of an AI supercomputer -- to cast his vote for the next POTUS. (An extreme version of: one man, one vote.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)

    Interesting tidbit from the above article:

    '"Franchise" was cited as the inspiration of the term "Asimov data set", where an ensemble of simulated experiments can be replaced by a single representative experiment.[1]'

    Potential downside of your version: increase in gerrymandering: if you can't control which individual will win, then control the pool from which winning individuals will be selected.

    509:

    SFreader @ 469: Enter: HRM QE2

    Under the impression that the Queen still has the authority to dissolve Parliament. If yes, then if no progress has been made on Brexit by Xmas, Her annual Xmas message will include a gift to Her people: all sitting MPs are out since they've proven themselves incompetent at running the country for the benefit of its people. (And their constant whining has given Her the mother of all headaches.)

    Yeah. That'd be cool. Don't think it will happen, but it would be cool.

    510:

    What options, however implausible, might make Brexit work? The answer in which the Brexiters so often seem to rejoice - the Dunkirk spirit.

    By which I mean:

    Rationing of meat, eggs, fruit, rice, sweets, fizzy drinks, sugar, chocolate etc, etc - everything except bread and the veg you grow yourself. The resultant improvement in the health of the nation might offset the damage to the NHS.

    Blackout regulations - together with all sorts of other electrical restrictions. Coupled with compulsory purchase of land for wind farms etc - all protests to be met with, "Don't you know there's a Brexit on?" Resultant savings in electricity mean that we will lead the world in energy efficiency and could spend the "wartime" R&D budget in still further discoveries which might restore our edge in science and engineering.

    Direction of Labour - no more allowing thousands of capable young men to go to uni and do "Media Studies." If what we needed was more men picking asparagus and more women working in care homes, then the government would simply tell suitable numbers that they would report for basic training on Monday morning.

    Civil Control - the streets to be patrolled at night by troops who can shoot to wound and arrest without anything above "He looked at me funny-like." The result would mean a plummet in crime figures - ordinary criminals would find a way to be extra good or get caught, whilst the rest would have to join the Force whose crimes would not make it on to the books. Plus we would all have to carry full ID, so that everyone's DNA would be on file, so you'd have to be really careful who you were related to.

    Total separation from The Continent - anyone arriving, except on the arm of an Officer, to be treated as suspicious and kept under observation "for the duration". Except Americans and Canadians who would be there as "Our Saviours, who cannot go home soon enough for us." All Americans to be allowed to break all regulations.

    Restrictions on fuel, light and economic contact with the outside world would mean that we could cancel any new runways at any airports. Ditto road expansions - we could build more railways and still have lots of spare land for horticulture.

    No TV except between 4pm and 11pm, with consequent improvements in ADHD rates and general educational achievements - not to mention many people sleeping better. No advertisements to be allowed at all since they make people want what isn't available.

    State support for the Arts - necessary to keep up morale. Free concerts for anyone doing a useful job and Vera Lynn and ITMA for everyone. Plus official artists to be allowed to draw whatever they liked.

    A Flourishing Black Market - see under "Americans", plus "Officers". And incidentally anyone with access to booze, farm produce, automobile parts, petrol. this would allow the Right Sort of People to be able to get Nice Things and also provide an outlet for the incurably entrepreneurial.

    The whole making for a happier, healthier, more productive and more responsible society, with few immigrants and no Germans, whilst at the same time achieving the goals of many progressive thinkers. Less waste, less plastic, less greed, better health, more social cohesion. We could hold our heads high again confident that we would be a beacon to world - and manage not to know when we weren't.

    511:

    Plus, all books to be produced to Brexit-time Economy Standards. No fantasy epics longer than 3 volumes, unless available in digital form only. No coffee-table books (also no new coffee tables.)

    512:

    Does everyone remember the plot of "The French will rapidly grow to appreciate being part of German kulture?" That movie bombed twice last century. Or maybe "We're making immense progress in Viet Nam," which was a big hit in the 1960s and 70s, then lost its audience? Or how about "The Iraqis will love Democracy" during the earlier part of this century?

    Looking back on history gives me an immense suspicion of the idea that "the other" is going to roll over and die for a Whiter culture's convenience. Leaving aside the issue of "Brown People Have Nukes Now," the idea that a billion starving people won't crash through your borders and rearrange your empire is silly. And keep in mind that many not-White people already occupy large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, like the billion Chinese, or the Japanese and Koreans who are approximately as far north as California, not to mention Mongolia or the hundred-and-thirty-million Blacks, Hispanics and Asians who are already American citizens.* Also, I just looked at Google Earth and parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan are further north than my house in Southern California!

    Maybe if you live in Edinburgh you have a different perspective about Which Races Live In The North, but from my point of view, only three-thousand miles north of the equator, that ship has already sailed! (And if you live in a place which can't do food once Global Warming fully kicks in, assuming that post-Climate-Change agriculture will be altered in a fashion which advantages White People is a mightily privileged assumption!)

    Or more to the point, that ship never existed at all! "Pure" White people, as a racist would see it, only ever existed in Western Europe and parts of North America, (note racist "scientist" Richard Lynn's bizarre attacks on the intelligence of Southern Italians) and that's a very recent accident of history - Western Europeans got very "lucky" indeed that smallpox killed so many native Americans BEFORE. EUROPEANS. MET. THEIR. DISEASES. I don't know to what extent Asians, Blacks, and Arabs have populated Europe, but the volume of the complaining suggests that they will be very difficult to displace!

    As to the question of agriculture becoming impossible, that's definitely an issue. But none of the complexities in play guarantee Western Europe or North America a better deal than say, the many thousands of square miles of the Tibetan Plateau. Much of Europe is only able to support Agriculture due to the North Atlantic Current, which is currently showing signs of instability, and if you raised the carbon level by another hundred points and the temperature by 4 points(c) parts of Tibet just might become a breadbasket, or a great place to raise cattle.**

    So really, the whole premise is based on multiple fallacies. At best it's Spinrad's "The Iron Dream," and at worst it's Heinlein's not-to-be-named-abortion-but-you-know-what-I'm-talking-about, and note that neither of those books were ever really accepted as "truly satire-and-not-racism."

    I think the plot could be re-worked as Really Savage Satire, a-la "A Modest Proposition," but I'm not sure whether any currently published author should take things that far because the possible damage to one's career could be enormous.

    As to the issue of technical mitigation, there's a whole infinite set of things we have not researched nor tried. Someone will eventually figure out What To Pour Into The Oceans, or What Genes to Edit, or whatever is necessary for some subset of people along the equator to survive. There is no guarantee that the discovery will be made in a country run by White people.

    • It's not remotely a given that the racist Whites could destroy all the colored people in the U.S. If anyone made a serious try at doing this they'd probably trigger a Civil War. Look at the demographics as they already exist, consider which side your Jews and QUILTBAGS would likely join, which side your American-Style Liberals would join, and how the racist side is likely to treat women... suddenly the outcome is very much in doubt!)

    ** Note that I pulled the Tibetan Plateau out of my ass, but climate change definitely doesn't care what color you are. I suspect, without much research, that plains above a certain altitude are the real-estate you'd want to start fertilizing right now, but I could be wrong.

    513:

    “I pulled the Tibetan Plateau out of my ass”

    That remark desperately needs to be taken out of context.

    514:

    I live in Southern California, and if there's one thing we know, as a culture, it's that with enough lube anything's possible.

    515:

    the question of agriculture becoming impossible... parts of Tibet just might become a breadbasket

    At 4500m above sea level (or 4450m above the worst case new sea level) ... unlikely. Altitude causes a lot of problems and you can't fix those by heating the high bits.

    I'd be looking for plains that are reasonably fertile and drop 50m to the sea at the end. Like the shore of the Great Australian Bight, except without the porous limestone near-desert above them. Again, heating that stuff up isn't going to make it more fertile.

    When you look at the sheer size of the breadbasket areas of the US, USSR and Australia it's pretty hard to find similar sized areas anywhere else... Greenland and Antarctica, maybe?

    The good news is that it looks as though the geoengineering types are getting their wings on, so we might just be dealing with 800ppm CO2 and oceans that dissolve limestone as well as concrete and coral. If they add enough sulfates to the atmosphere we might even have detectable sulfuric acid in the oceans! How cool would that be?

    516:

    Haven't got around to read the comments (yet) – those must be a treasure trove in themselves. But I do have a slight suspicion... Is it possible that our generous host was studying the latest efforts in my home country or Russia? Because it certainly does look like he did. At least, the logic is the same... or is it just extrapolation of behaviour of any country looking to isolate itself while loudly blaming foreigners for everything?

    Oh, and I do hope that our ... ahem... policymakers don't stumble upon the ideas above. You see, we have plenty of territory so they may be tempted with the idea of recreating North Korea even more. And I'm afraid they'll read de-decimalisation of the currency as decimating the currency. Stealing ideas from the 'Net seems to be their modus operandi for the past couple of years, like that time our Czar announced a bunch of superweapons apparently lifted from some list of extremely stupid military projects (recreating the SLAM missile? really?). Now imagine the same but equipped with a weird base-23 flight computer illegally (and incompetently) copied from post-Brexit design with the financial co-processor replaced by, I dunno, Electronic Eastern Orthodox Wahhabi Prayer Wheel (to get support from all Traditional Religions of Russia).

    517:

    C'mon. That schmuck Yanukovich never was pro-Russian. He was pro-Yanukovich... but that's a common mistake to make (at least, our government was happy to make it).

    The whole Ukrainian debacle is a model case for what happens when several groups of self-serving slimes get to decide the future of a country anyway. Especially the one so divided as Ukraine (the signs were present in the 90s already). And far as I know from conversations with Ukrainian colleagues and friends, common people would gladly ship most of the former and current rulers (including those of separatist territories) to Chernobyl, send our Czar there to keep them company and post some guards so the party so that everyone there won't wander away. That's... actually not a bad idea. Pity the politicians will vote it down...

    518:

    Young'uns are quite good. "A place called England" and "Ghafoor's Bus" are awesome.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDtt2yRWQV0 They went to meet him aong time after writing the song :)

    519:

    I won't go as far as to say that that agreement was a trigger to the current shitstorm. Ukraine was a pretty divided country even back in 1990s, what with giving too much voice to crazy nationalists and all that "Ukraine never WAS Russia" nonsense (as it was – Kyiv was the place from which Russia originated, after all) and unwillingness of Russian politicians to accept that Ukraine most definitely is NOT Russia, what with being a distinct culture with long and rich history. And supporting Yanukovich was an act of criminal stupidity. Well, trying to build your nation's identity on NOT being someone (Russians, Communists, Europeans – you name it) invariably leads to people suffering. As Russia is now determined to prove yet again on it's own population...

    So basically in my opinion it's more of the case of several groups of self-serving bastards trying to grab some profit, casualties be damned. All the while people in Donetsk couldn't care less about who fired those shells that blew up their neighbourhood...

    520:

    Elderly Cynic I think we are mostly in agreement, with slight reservation.The mechanic who was a competent technician on the 28th is suddenly a clueless moron on the 30th but only the UK ones. Apparently the UK will accept your declaration that you do things correctly but you won't accept the UK declaration, reciprocity may be it is just a meaningless polysylabic word. Neil somebody and DavidL have both picked up the same problem and I broadly agree with them. Nothing will get done about this until the 30th, because EU purity vile Brexit MUST comply. If we haven't, on 30th aircraft flies from Paris to New York something breaks over Sussex, divert to Gatwick. Problem identified and fixed flight resumes? No, UK repair is no longer recognised so aircraft stranded until it is suddenly remembered that 2 days ago this was all fine AND regulator legislator goes and says,actually if you passed the relevant standard then I accept your statement. Now just apply that to all. PS elderly cynic who was flying a bad aircraft in whose airspace? You don't overfly me unless I know your doing things correctly. Reciprocity helping the world just get along.

    521:

    OGH Greg tingey Elderly Cynic David L Neil try reading this if you want to improve the standard of your response to Brexiters, because project Fear, Fear 2.0, Terror, Project Chaos, Project appocalypse and Project ZOMBIES just does not work. https://www.quora.com/Hypothetically-if-I-was-on-the-opposite-side-of-the-Brexit-spectrum-to-you-how-would-you-convince-me-to-join-your-faction-Would-you-also-mind-backing-yourself-up-with-sources/answer/David-Mullen-29?ch=10&share=2b405ab6&srid=h73o1

    522:

    JBS @ 507 Unfortunately, your description is spot-on accurate, yuck. Often to be seen on "Quora" - see also below.

    goldenmug @ 510 Unfortunately, that sort of insanity is EXACTLY what the more rabid Brexiteers believe .... Not that ANY of them have actually seen it, of course - I mean I was born in 1946 - so to remember that sort of shit, you'd have to be over 80 at the very least.

    Treoutwaxer @ 514 😂

    Nowhereland Chronist I DO HOPE sleepingroutine is reading your posts, because you have said what I was trying to ( And managed to get skewed ) whereas he appears to be supporting "glorious Tsar Putin".

    dnd@ 520 I have a bridge to sell you .... & @ 521 Bloody grow up - you really are trolling aren't you? Maybe some of the remain campaigners exaggerated, but the leavers lied from start to finish. AND ARE STILL LYING. Or trade is going to collapse, we have just heard that we are going to be thrown out of Galileo ( And all the money spent is down the pan ) Rolls-Royce & Airbus & ALL the carmakers are crapping themseleves - I predict unemployment at Greek levels within 2 months if this goes on. Thank you, for nothing.

    523:

    Is it possible that our generous host was studying the latest efforts in my home country or Russia? At is possible that his... balanced view of situation has something to do with my little intervention several month back. However, there's several point that I'd like to correct personally.

    That schmuck Yanukovich never was pro-Russian. He was pro-Yanukovich... but that's a common mistake to make (at least, our government was happy to make it). They did not, it is largely a misconception spread by western media. If they'd make this "mistake", they wouldn't allow the coup to happen in the first place. It was Yanukovich's mistake to let his opponents have a freedom of action. After the fact, Russia exclusively concentrated on solving it's own interests in the region, which included taking this pawn with a light hand.

    Oh, and I do hope that our ... ahem... policymakers don't stumble upon the ideas above. You see, we have plenty of territory so they may be tempted with the idea of recreating North Korea even more. That is, too, a large misconception of the observer. Majority of our policymakers understand that true isolation of Russia in the epoch of ubiquitous globalisation is an equivalent to slow and painful death, especially with large parts of economy dependent on import. Our worst enemies wouldn't dream of more useful solution to their problems. It is their idea that Russia should be "isolated", "contained" and so on, since their previous policy of crushing it with brute force did not work. NATO and their henchmen hoped that their iron-fisted assault on economic freedom would isolate Russia from the entire world, but it proved to be a good way to sow discord and panic in their won ranks. Their plans are not even remotely effective.

    Current administrations understands it clearly, but in that way it is forced to come under fire from our libtards and their best friends pseudo-nationalists. See, liberals historically hate Russian state for everything it does, including it's existence, and want it to be surrendered and destroyed. And the nationalists are just your bog-standard idealists who think that it is possible to avoid most problems by building a high and strong wall around them. Policies by Mr. Putin show that he is neither, even when he leans on one side or another from time to time.

    You should know government position better, especially after this recent (amusingly appalling) story about certain person with double citizenship. I will have to elaborate the idea and educate you slightly.

    Kyiv was the place from which Russia originated, after all Kiev wasn't the origin place of Russia in same manner Rome was a birthplace of Roman Empire. Modern Russian state was created and spread from Moscow. In contrast, Kievan Rus wasn't the only principality in the ancient times of the region, but merely a largest and most powerful part of it, along with Novgorod, Chernigov, Smolensk and so on. Our modern nationalists and liberals (along with Ukrainian government and that Greek Patriarch) should have picked a couple of lessons from historical Russian FEDERALISM, but instead they are too busy stroking their own individual or collective identity rhetoric.

    524:

    this pawn with a light hand

    Btw, this is the reference to Chinese stratagem 12, or rather it's Russian translation. In English it is translated as "Take the opportunity to pilfer a goat".

    525:

    Activity of the day: Pick a news site at random, find their version of the Gallileo story and see how many comments you get through before you find someone demanding that we shoot down the entire constellation.

    I haven't looked yet but my bet is that the average is fewer than 20.

    526:

    It's a nice theory, but there is no historical evidence for it, once you get beyond small groups; as far as I know, it has worked only when everybody knows everybody else. And what evidence there is, is that non-elites make equally bad decisions, arguably worse ones - e.g. many pogroms were started from within the 'masses', against the policies of the rulers.

    527:

    The money Britain has put into Galileo we've already had back in contracts to assorted British companies and facilities to build various bits of the system. I forget the exact term used but it's common in large multi-national projects like this, a government puts in a chunk of cash and gets contracts to that amount back for their own nation's industry. A British company (SSTL) built the placeholder Giove satellites, other British subsidiaries of international companies designed and built various bits of the first tranche of the operational Galileo satellites.

    Now we're leaving the EU we're leaving Galileo since it's an EU-only project. It means we don't put any more money into it but we're no longer preferred suppliers for parts, software etc. We don't get to control cryptographic keys to the highest accuracy capabilities of Galileo but we can buy access like anyone else -- Galileo is at its heart a civilian system, not military like NAVSTAR/GPS or GLONASS so that military-grade accuracy can be bought for mere money, a major commercial bonus for a lot of industries like surveying. We also don't get a seat at the table to determine the future of Galileo, its replacement, operations etc. because Leave means Leave.

    528:

    Yes, but rationing was still significant when we were young - and, incidentally, bread was restricted, too, though in other ways. The difference between the period 1940-1960 and now is that the government was ruling for the benefit of the country as a whole, and the austerity etc. applied in theory (and, to a great extent, in practice) to everybody, not just the lesser classes.

    But I agree that goldenmug got it spot on! Top marks, that man!

    529:

    There is a lot more to the Yanukovich issue than has become general knowledge. You are omitting the fact that he was a complete arsehole, in letting his thugs fire upon the crowd.

    However, two Reuters reports I saw said that someone unknown had (at least partially) organised the demonstration, including free buses from anti-Yanukovich areas, and had armed a sniper to start something if it didn't erupt, anyway. Just like Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland, in fact!

    Realistically, based on what has happened since and more generally, I am certain that both sides have been operating covertly in Ukraine for some considerable time before that.

    To OGH (#219): I remember when that (apparently Russia is strongly opposed to the idea of former-USSR states joining the EU) started. It was when the EU stopped even partially grandfathering their trading deals with Russia (as a matter of policy) and when the EU cosied up to NATO. Both were opposed within the EU, but the anti-Russians won. That is at the heart of the issue - especially the plan to break the treaty with Russia, turn Sebastopol into a NATO port, and probably put USA missiles there.

    There is an analogy with Brexit here. Let's say the debacle ends up with the UK handing Northern Ireland over to Eire 'for administrative purposes', licensing Belfast dockyards back to the UK government for 60 years. An externally-assisted Sinn Fein coup succeeds, require Erse to be taught in all schools, and proposes to turn Belfast into a Russian naval base (with missiles). What would the UK (or English) government do?

    That's not completely implausible, either!

    530:

    "Here's the thing which resonates with me. The other EU countries must see Brexit as threatening, and they desperately need to know whether another country is behind it, the main suspects being Russia and various U.S. billionaires, so it would not surprise me if they did what they could to help Mueller, find out what they could about any number of issues, and, if they can dig up something useful, have the U.S. intelligence services owe them a favor if they can dig something up on either Trump or Russia."

    This clarifies some fuzzy thoughts of mine. So far, Russian interference has been on the side of Trump, Brexit, and the emergence of (near-)fascist governments in Eastern Europe.

    IMHO, this is a significant threat to the leadership of the larger EU countries. I don't imagine that the leadership of Germany looks happily on a bunch of Russian satellites to its east.

    531:

    "If we knew what the paperwork needed after March 2019 was likely to be, there's probably just time for the remaining customs clearance agencies that deal with cargoes from outside free trade agreement areas to recruit some of the staff they need and half-train them in time."

    You are talking about staffing up organizations for dealing with new situations, when the laws have not yet been decided, let alone the regulations to implement those rules. If you can do that in 90-odd days, and do it to a decent level of functionality, would you please just implement World Peace first? :)

    532:

    The reason that Germany and Merkel aren't reacting the way that you think is that they know damn well that Troutwaxer's theory is false, as I have posted before. Both Parliament and Congress have produced reports that have said that any Russian attempt at influence was at most small and almost certainly negligible in effect. Anyway, such dubious diplomacy is SOP by almost all countries (most definitely including the USA and UK)!

    In the case of Brexit, we KNOW where much of the influence came from, and suspect that much of the illegal money did, too: the USA. There has been a relentless propaganda campaign (mainly using falsehoods) against the EU and for Brexit for the past 20-30 years, and Murdoch has been in the forefront of it. I realised it was inevitable, without a change in government policy, at least 15 years back.

    I doubt that the whole truth will emerge from the Arron Banks trial, especially if it points too closely at the USA government (though that's unlikely) - or even Murdoch :-(

    533:

    ...they know damn well that Troutwaxer's theory is false, as I have posted before.

    Is it false, or is there some kind of willful blindness involved, as with the Republican Party in the U.S.? (In fact, it is my experience with willful blindness of the Republican Party that points me at willful blindness on the part of your current government.)

    534:

    Or worse yet, to both it's east and west

    535:

    Whether Tibet will be worth anything agriculturally a thousand years from now is a quibble - I picked the Tibetan Plateau because it was the first flat place that came to mind. In a radically changing environment, the good agricultural lands are going to change. And right now we don't know how those changes are going to work, exactly, except that there is a fairly good guess that the North Atlantic current is going to fail, which may render Western Europe unable to raise food.

    But where will that hot water go? Maybe along the coast of Canada? That would be nice for North Americans, most of whom will likely be some shade of brown a thousand years from now...

    But there is no guarantee that agricultural changes from Global Warming will favor White people. None. At. All.

    536:

    You are omitting the fact that he was a complete arsehole, in letting his thugs fire upon the crowd. The issue is more complicated - since 2015 the investigation of the incident is completely stuck because it turns out there was NO such order as to "fire on the crowd". Yanukovich may have been a complete arsehole, but at least he wouldn't be a complete dumb ass and a fucking monster to issue such order - someone else did. As a matter of fact, independent investigators already gathered enough facts to point fingers to certain people who are now occupying the government posts - but of course, it is impossible to get to them as long as they make use of their NATO connections.

    Realistically, based on what has happened since and more generally, I am certain that both sides have been operating covertly in Ukraine for some considerable time before that. Before the period of 2009-2014, there was an agreement that both sides do not involve themselves into internal affairs of Ukraine, do not exert pressure on it, economic or diplomatic, do not try to take it away with the military or political action. As Charlie noted above, with EU/NATO association, this rule was broken - in every possible sense. US and EU used every opportunity to curb any Russian influence and resistance in the region, including armed assault.

    It would be more plausible for government of Russia to support Brexit, if they hadn't have problems with British administration in the first place. Unfortunately for them Britain still provides asylum for runaway business persons, politicians, terrorists and so on, and especially the money they bring with them. Keeping Britain in EU would bring more chances to lawfully claim the rights and resolve these issues, but without EU influence it becomes night impossible.

    537:

    Yes, it's false. Even if there were some truth in it for the USA, any such money and influence didn't do more than help various home-brewed (expletive deleteds) do what they were doing anyway, a fraction more vigorously. Attempting to blame Russia for your ills is simply refusing to accept the fact that your political ills are of YOUR making (with YOU being the USA).

    The same is true for Brexit, though the propaganda campaign was largely external - and that was our fault in handing over control of much of our media to a loathesome foreigner, not regulating the private media effectively, and gagging the public media (especially the BBC)in the provision of some balance, neutrality and actual facts. Yes, I especially blame Thatcher, Blair and all governments since the former, but WE (i.e. the UK) elected them.

    As I said, I have been watching this for 20-30 years, and the currently unidentified influence and money is not a significant part of the whole.

    538:

    I didn't say he ordered or even authorised it - I said 'letting' - they were already known to be brutal, so he should have threatened them with emasculation if they stepped out of line.

    539:

    From what I have read, probably north Africa.

    540:

    I remember reading somewhere that during the days of US slavery there were notices for runaway slaves that included phrases like "light hair, blue eyes, will try to pass himself off as a white man".

    Can't remember where I read it, but knowing the tendency of slaveowners to impregnate their slaves, with the children being considered black slaves, it's certainly within the realms of possibility.

    The Sublette's book The American Slave Coast included heartbreaking letters from slave women to their owners, pleading with them not to sell their children south — that is, the children of the owner and slave.

    541:

    The same is true for Brexit, though the propaganda campaign was largely external - and that was our fault in handing over control of much of our media to a loathesome foreigner, not regulating the private media effectively, and gagging the public media (especially the BBC)in the provision of some balance, neutrality and actual facts. Yes, I especially blame Thatcher, Blair and all governments since the former, but WE (i.e. the UK) elected them.

    All I would have to do is copy and paste a couple of names and organizations, and you've described the problems in the U.S. perfectly. And in terms of media, we're definitely talking about the same "loathsome foreigner."

    542:

    Oh, there's lots of downsides to randomly selecting MPs. (After all, we're being silly or satirical, right?)

    Among the most obvious:

    No sense of accountability. What you do has no bearing on whether you will be picked in the next lottery, so there are no downsides from morally questionable but legal actions. You'll still get your salary and perks now anyway.

    Lack of institutional knowledge. So much reduced ability for the representative branch to counter both the civili service and lobbyists. I suspect your average random person dropped into an MP's position would be easily manipulated by staff and lobbyists — look at the mistakes new elected officials often make because they don't know the system.

    Relevant reading:

    Jane Jacobs' Dark Age Ahead

    Henry Giroux's The Violence of Organized Forgetting

    543:

    Barry @ 530 Very slight correction: "The other EU countries, as well as large numbers in the Remain camp here must DEFINITELY see Brexit as threatening, and they desperately need to know whether another country is behind it, the main suspects being Russia and various U.S. billionaires." The upcoming court case on the legality of the vote, give Banks' shenanigans could be ... interesting.

    EC @ 532 I'm not sure about your complete denial of any Ru interference, but I agree wholeheatedly regarding malign US ultra-riuch neofascist pressures & influences. We are undergoing a slow-motion coup.

    However, if we do "Crash Out" ( And that is by no means certain ) the backlash when the economy crashes & food/medicine supplies fail w ill be profound. Pity that the real villans willl be out of the country, so that probably, only BoJo & Rees-Smaug end up as lamp-post decorations.

    544:

    I have not denied that there was any - as I said, a level of such shenangins is SOP in international affairs - but, if there was any, it didn't have enough effect to stand out from the background noise.

    545:

    Re: ' ... downsides to randomly selecting MPs. (After all, we're being silly or satirical, right?)'

    Could be.

    OTOH, everyone would now understand why they need to learn their history, civics, and other courses because they could be called upon to serve. This would also provide an incentive for schools/school boards to do a better job of educating kids.*

    Because anyone of any race, gender, socioeconoomic class could end up being made an MP and enact laws, this could persuade more folk/orgs to be fair and civil since payback could in reality come from anyone you/your org mistreated. (I'm assuming that the UK would still be able to afford to maintain its current level of comm-tech such as smartphones with an AV record feature so that instances of mistreatment could be recorded for future use in court or Parliamentary Committee.)

    Also, if MPs were randomly selected then there would be better odds of representing (therefore understanding) more professions/occupations/jobs, socioeconomic groups across all life stages vs. current skew toward born into money, financiers and lawyers.

    • Scenario: A well-known school whose only three randomly selected MPs turned out to be total idiots. Can only imagine the social embarrassment to all of its alums. Would happen only once because other schools' alums would pressure their alma maters to do a better job and not turn their alums into political cartoon fodder/jokes. Ditto for occupation groups, cultures, etc.
    546:

    The plot of Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is based around the possibility of "passing off".

    548:

    Meh. Oops. It was meant to be a fairly tongue in cheek way to make Brexit work...based on the assumption that the UK became a US territory.

    On the bright side, the most probable options seem to be soft or no Brexit.

    549:

    In a radically changing environment, the good agricultural lands are going to change

    Alas, no.

    The good agricultural lands are going to go away.

    To be good agricultural land you need soil and consistent rainfall. If there's no consistent rainfall anywhere that used to have consistent rainfall -- so that no agricultural soil developed there -- that's it.

    And you need to eat every day.

    (This is a pet peeve about the "farming will just shift north!" types. North, into the spruce bog and bare rock and dark water of the boreal forest? It'll be a thousand years before there's dirt there. If there's dirt there now, it's farmed. And if we don't lose it we're going to be trying to get it to do the work of a much wider area, since we're certainly going to lose some of it.)

    550:

    Easy solution: just move the good dirt from where it is now to where we want to farm. Problem solved!

    (Note: intended as a satirical answer.)

    551:

    Well, they do that in Newfoundland. Not at scale though.

    They have garden plots at the side of the road made from the dirt that got scraped up to make the road.

    Newfoundland: They call it The Rock b'y, and they're not kidding.

    552:

    I'd guess that it's sensible with a large enough head start, and satirical on a timeframe which is typical of most humans imagining their needs met... sighs at the short-sightedness of humanity

    553:

    Red card.

    OK, your lifetime ban is now confirmed.

    (Clue: you know my politics.)

    If you want a specific justification: sneering at people you disagree with, dismissing their arguments, and calling them remoaners/remaniacs.

    554:

    So the UK stops contributing for the costs but expects to continue to reap the benefits, and the rest of the world who continue to pay their share are meanies if they don't let the UK play that game?

    555:

    Clarify something for me please. There's been some suggestion it was American Billionaires who funded the Brexit campaign rather than the Russians.

    I know what the plausible motive for the Russians interfering in the Brexit campaign would be, but what about the American billionaires?

    Not saying either is true or false, just that I don't understand what American Billionaires would expect to gain from it.

    556:

    Elderly Cynic @ 532: The reason that Germany and Merkel aren't reacting the way that you think is that they know damn well that Troutwaxer's theory is false, as I have posted before. Both Parliament and Congress have produced reports that have said that any Russian attempt at influence was at most small and almost certainly negligible in effect. Anyway, such dubious diplomacy is SOP by almost all countries (most definitely including the USA and UK)!

    I can't say for Parliament, but "Congress" has NOT produced a report dismissing Russian interference.

    557:

    What makes you think that countries like India (politically powerful with lots of nukes) or Brazil (technically very competent) or Pakistan (even more nukes) are going to accept genocide or even just wilt and die because it gets too hot?

    Timescale: For the purposes of Plot&tm; I'm pencilling in the first major multi-year consecutive crop failures hitting within a decade of now, and the death toll hitting one billion (and rising) within 15-20 years. In other words, a close enough future that there isn't a whole lot of time for adaptation. Also, active sabotage and use of military force by fascist oligarchies in the west — consider Brazil, the USA, China and Russia as type specimens right now, then allow for the fascists to fall out and in some cases nuke one another. It gets messy, fast.

    A supplementary factor is that the worst temperature death zones seem to be in sub-Saharan Africa, and the productive heartlands of China and India (plus the US deep south).

    Next, consider the current trend of exclusion towards refugees as a harbinger of things to come. Nations raise barriers: then when their local climate collapses, their own natives can't escape (because their neighbours raised barriers) etc.

    Finally: the whole point of the story is to be a polemic, along the lines of 1984, pointing out the cruelty and absurdity of such a system (and taking some digs at the current American YA dystopia subgenre along the way, which this plot parodies, and which has a whole bunch of barely-examined race-essentialist assumptions that need dragging, kicking and screaming, out into the daylight where they can be staked at the crossroads with a mouthful of garlic).

    558:

    In the case of Murdoch, he wants a country that he can call the Prime Minister directly, and dictate policy - he has said that on the record. I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. "That's easy," he replied. "When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice."

    https://www.indy100.com/article/this-terrifying-rupert-murdoch-quote-is-possibly-the-best-reason-to-stay-in-the-eu-yet--WyMaFTE890x

    And it may have been mistaken, but I assuredly saw a reference to a report from Congress (I can't remember which house) that pooh-poohed Russian involvement.

    559:

    I'd like to note that you are using the terms Tory and Liberal in a context that is archaic in British usage — I know what you mean, but 90% of Brits don't, because the significance of those terms has drifted dramatically since the 19th century (much as the US Republican party of today isn't the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln).

    If you want to keep using these terms you're going to have to qualify them (19th century Liberal, or Pre-Colonial Rebellion Tory, or something) or pick more well-understood contemporary terms.

    560:

    The UK as a white Peurto Rico, that's their advantge - cheap labour, cheap high-tech university not-quite slaves, removal of just about all workplace rights & protections, revolting contaminated food, re-open the coal mines, etc etc .... Alternative version, we become their General Government" or similar. Cheap expolitation, either way.

    See also EC's response on Murdoch @ 558

    561:

    Alas, no.

    "Dirt" is alive. You've got little particles of rock, sure, but you've also got a bunch of organic matter and you've got a whole bunch of living things, and you don't get much in the way of useful crop yield without the living things; those are why the "micro-nutrient" availability is there for the growing plant so it's worth the effort of chewing. (E.g., the nutritional value of first-generation hydroponic tomatoes is questionable. There isn't enough on the input side to have what you need on the output side. You do need some copper and selenium, and generally that has to get into the plants somehow.)

    All this stuff is unknown (we can't culture at least four-fifths of soil micro-organisms, so can't study them) in the specific, and in the general is well-know for being sensitive to temperature in several ways, moisture, the plants present, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, and other element cycling. Plus some stuff I haven't noted because this is not my field.

    Move dirt from Ohio to northern Manitoba and it'll die, not grow crops. Gotta think of it like orchids; specific, persnickety expectations or it'll up and snuff it.

    562:

    Ok, since everyone is studiously ignoring the original point, let me reprise.

    Since I have to do this without labels, it will, perforce, be verbose.

    At the time of the American Rebellion there were two contending political philosophies in the English speaking world. One that said that everyone had a (mostly inherited) position in the world and that if everyone just did what their place required of them things would go well. The other said that things would go well if everyone had individual autonomy and pursued their best interest.

    During and after the Rebellion the proponents of the second theory in the USA killed and drove away the proponents of the first theory. Some of the latter went to Canada. The rulers sent from England to govern Canada were (at least mostly) also of the second persuasion.

    In the USA the first position became so dominant that there ceased to be common language describing any other organization.

    In the 19th and 20th centuries a third philosophy arose that said that building collective structures based on peoples position in the economy would produce good results. Because the proposition that there are no fixed positions for people was so entrenched in the USA no political party arose to embody this philosophy. Such parties did arise in England and Canada.

    This is a theory which attempts to explain why there is no party analogous to the New Democratic Party (like Labor) in the USA.

    The discussion here has impressed upon me the concept that this debasement of language has propagated around the English speaking world.

    563:

    You're generally right but specifically wrong. I've got a teeny little bit of knowledge (minor in soil science) that might help, so allow me to mansplain for a bit.

    First off, dirt is soil in the wrong place, which is why it's soil science, not dirt science. Once you start digging up soil and pitching it around, it becomes dirt.

    Second off, soil metagenomics was a thing back in the 1990s when I was studying soil science, and I have no idea where it is now. The fact that most soil organisms are not culturable is increasingly irrelevant. The bigger problem is knowing which bodies the genes are packaged in.

    Third, yes, soil is probably the most complex set of microecosystems on the planet. You can go from an oxygenic ecosystem on the surface of the clod to a hydrogen-breathing ecosystem in the anaerobic center of the clod, over a distance of perhaps a millimeter. Start digging this, and everything gets tossed around, most go dormant, some get activated. Thing is, soils be churned for a very long time, and even bioturbation (e.g. organisms digging) goes back over 400 million years. It's therefore (probably) a mistake to think that mere digging will destroy too much. Dumping chemicals into the soil is bad, of course, especially since it provides a really harsh selection pressure that favors the rapid evolution of anything that can take advantage of whatever it is you're doing.

    That said, there are two big problems with moving soil around. Three, really. The first is that bulk dry soil weighs on order of a third of a ton (or tonne) per cubic meter. Digging up square kilometers of farmland and shipping it north, and re-emplacing it is going to be expensive, probably prohibitively so. One problem is that when you stir up the soil and kill the plant and fungal networks (roots and mycelia) you tend to get a big outgassing of carbon, which is precisely what you don't want.

    The second is that inoculation will work, but it takes time. A good example I know of is a study over the conversion from an agrichemical farm to an organic farm. Crop yields are depressed for on order of five years (this was from conventional corn to organic corn), apparently due to the microbial changeover that happened when the commercial biocides and fertilizers were taken off and organic fertilizers and biocides were applied. Generalizing from this, I'd suggest that you can make farm soil. It's going to take years, if not decades, before it can become really productive. With climate changing rapidly, you're going to have to do this more-or-less continually, which means that yields in general will go down and work on soil-farming and plant-farming will go up.

    The third problem is a side effect of both mass soil inoculation and attempts (as in California) to recycle organic waste back into soils: the spread of pests and pathogens. Soil inoculation is as simple as taking a bucket and a shovel and walking a bucket of soil from point A to point B. The problem is, you don't know what's in the bucket, and it's a great way to spread soil-borne diseases. A poorly composted stream of greenwaste is also a great way to spread diseases, and that's caused a little kerfuffle in California, because the waste people didn't realize how contaminated the greenwaste stream is in California, when they got a law passed that ultimately mandates all that greenwaste being composted and put out on fields somewhere. They're now starting to get a clue, but whether they have enough of a clue to keep from entirely screwing up California's agriculture is one of those fascinating questions.

    564:

    You are correct, I misestimated my audience.

    I tried again at comment 562. I wouldn't mind a professional wordsmith's comment on that.

    Part of the point is that in the USA, at least, there are no words in the common political language for these concepts.

    565:

    I think you maybe flipped the first and second parties about halfway through your explanation in 562?

    In any case, you're missing the active suppression part of the discussion. To pick one example, it's worth reading about the Palmer Raids if you don't already know about them.

    Also, there are various socialist, communist, and progressive parties in the US, just as there are the equivalent of Nazi parties. Most of these are big enough to matter.

    566:

    The House, which is currently controlled by Trump's allies, made a great show of having hearings, in which they questioned the wrong people and asked the wrong questions, then issued a report claiming that Trump was as pure as the virgin snow and everyone who believed otherwise was a Moooosleem terrorist doodyhead. The best place to look for US coverage of this is a blog called "Emptywheel."

    567:

    Oops. Yes I flipped the references. Is it still comprehensible?

    Yes, of course it is more complicated than that.

    However, suppression occurred in Canada too. I believe the speed record for passing legislation in Canada was a bill to make it possible to deport people back to Britain, in 1919, in response to the Winnipeg General Strike.

    If you want the whole theory, Gad Horowitz is who to read.

    Also, I think you are missing a "not" in your last sentence.

    568:

    Yes I did miss the "Not." There's an interesting version of the US suppression story in Weiner's history of the J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, titled "Enemies."

    569:

    This is why I say that it's satire given the speed at which a modern spoiled American expects things to happen - your "takes five years to rebuild the web of life inside the soil" is very pertinent, as is the issue of weight and the necessary means to move it, plus the whole issue of disease. (I'll find a way to work "moving the soil" into my "happy" climate change novel - I wrote about 4000 more words of that one on Thurs/Fri.)

    On the larger scale of things, we do need to move the soil, but that's a project which will take twenty years, if we're smart enough to consider the issue at an official level and come up with a protocol which works. Cue Trump saying "That guys a real weirdo. Truck a million tons of dirt to Canada? My gut tells me that we need to build a wall! Lock her up! Lock her up!"

    Maybe I'm an incurable optimist, but I do think that we can get away with no more than 34400 years of pain and very few deaths, but only if we immediately go to WWII-levels of effort on the issue and take the occasional risk. (The alternative doesn't bear considering.) But instead we're worrying about who has the right color of skin, whether we should allow Syrian refugees into a "White" country, and how we can mine even more coal.

    We're SO OBVIOUSLY the descendants of shit-flinging monkeys!

    570:

    I have a thought, but since you're talking like you might write the one, I'm going to email it to you.

    571:

    jrootham @ 562 (et seq) You missed out an important bit. The founders of the USA actually believed that a large section of their communities did have a fixed place & were "better off" there - & ensured they were kept there - the slaves, of course. And "Wimmin" too - their "Freedom for all" cry was actually very restrictive & benefitted - guess who? So - oops, not quite true, I'm afraid .....

    SOIL Even allowing for the real microlife in soils, there's also the small macro life - you've already mentioned fugal mycelia, but things like springtails & ultra-small beetles & silverfish & various "pedes". Also "organic" ( What a fucking misnomer that is ) farming/cultivation practices will increase productivity, once properly entrenched (PUN!) & in practice - I have personal experience of this. Once you've put a sufficient quantity of semi-charred compost + oragnic matter ( horse droppings ) in/on to a soil, not only does the crop yield go mad but you only have to put a trowel into such soil to see all the beneficial "creepy-crawlies" running & undulating about. No-one has mentioned either drainage or pH yet: - you can't grow wheat on sodden land, many plants including major edible ones, either can't stand lime (Calcifuge) or can't stand acid soils. All of which needs consideration before you put a crop in. I could go on about this for almost as long as heteromeles ( Frank L, isn't it? ) - but we might leave that for another time?

    572:

    I find that chickens work almost as well as biochar, and are easier to work with. I have friends who swear by char, but the lazy way is chickens. They also provide much of the poo :) And they encourage the bugs not to get too complacent :)

    573:

    Can't do chickens on our allotment, unfortunately. Char comes free from the local council's biowaste recovery programme, 2 or 3 times a year.

    574:

    As you say about soil biota. I have been producing 1/2-1 ton of compost a year for 40 years in a small garden, and the horizon has dropped from 6" to 15". Even just counting earthworms, there are a lot! As a lot of people have done, you can turn weathered builders' rubble, crushed glass, pure gravel/sand or whatever into fertile soil within a few years by adding compost and organic waste. Heteromeles's (#563) figure of 5 years sounds about right.

    The solution to the polluted waste problem is technically simple (if expensive), but politically hard, so isn't really being addressed even in the EU :-(

    Actually, there are very agriculturally important plants that aren't fairly happy in mildly acid to mildly acidic soils, which are the vast majority; I agree about the extreme soils. Drainage and water retentive properties are FAR more important!

    Heteromeles made one minor mistake. Even dry soil is typically much more than 0.35 tons/m^3 - 0.75-1.5 is more normal. 0.35 is for peat and similar soils, which are rare. But, as the first paragraph implied, all you really need is to move the organic component. If the conditions really DO change incompatibly over 5 year periods, we are stuffed, anyway.

    575:

    Elderly Cynic @ 558: And it may have been mistaken, but I assuredly saw a reference to a report from Congress (I can't remember which house) that pooh-poohed Russian involvement.

    Congressman Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee issued a bogus "report". It was an abuse of position. The committee hadn't authorized it and no one except for extreme Trump partisans accept it.

    576:

    Well, that's your opinion. Has the committee (or House) repudiated it or chosen a new chairman? Without any such action, they have tacitly authorised it, post hoc. That's standard procedure.

    It wouldn't surprise me if it WERE a bogus report, any more than I would be surprised if a report saying the converse were bogus, but what I said in #558 was correct.

    577:

    Only about 15% of American Tories (note spelling) emigrated after the American Revolution. And 10% of that number (1.5% of the total) later returned to the U.S.

    578:

    Elderly Cynic @ 576: Well, that's your opinion. Has the committee (or House) repudiated it or chosen a new chairman? Without any such action, they have tacitly authorised it, post hoc. That's standard procedure.

    It wouldn't surprise me if it WERE a bogus report, any more than I would be surprised if a report saying the converse were bogus, but what I said in #558 was correct.

    NO, it's not. Congress has NOT issued a report. A single member of the House who held the chairmanship of a committee that had responsibility for investigating the matter released a bogus "report" over the objections of the committee's minority members.

    Nunes was subsequently forced to stand aside from his role in the committee's Trump-Russia "investigation" when he was brought up on ethics charges related to that "report".

    Although the committee Republicans closed the investigation without issuing a formal report, the GOP lost control of the House in the recent mid-term elections. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) will be taking over as the committee chairman & will be continuing the investigation, including whether Nunes engaged in hanky-panky regarding the investigation. The Democratic majority will now be able to subpoena witnesses that Nunes and the GOP suppressed.

    I also read somewhere (although I don't have a cite I can point to at this time) that Nunes will be booted from the Intelligence Committee in the next Congress (that starts up in January).

    579:

    You've been paying more attention to the House Intelligence Committee than I have apparently. For Elderly Cynic's benefit, here is the best source of coverage I've found on the Trump/Russia issues and the ongoing Special Counsel's investigation.

    https://www.emptywheel.net/

    I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the people leading Parliament's version of the Intelligence Committee were committed Brexiteers who were happy to call the wrong witnesses and ask the wrong questions! (Imagining that such a thing could happen is probably the definition of Cynicism, BTW.)

    580:

    Re: 'Newfoundland: They call it The Rock b'y, and they're not kidding.'

    Saw this weather story last week about Newfoundland - really brings home what impact climate change is likely to have.

    https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/vicious-wind-had-newfoundland-shaking-seismic-record-shows-effect-of-wind-waves/117055

    Excerpt:

    'Friday, November 16, 2018, 11:11 AM - The waves crashing into the rugged shoreline of Newfoundland and Labrador on this week led to waves of a different kind.

    The squiggly, black lines scrawled across a graph show the seismic activity of a vicious windstorm that whipped across the province on Wednesday and Thursday.

    The wind and waves were so strong, the island was shaking.'

    FYI - Wave heights were 10-15 meters, wind speeds were 120-130kpm for over 12 hours. Plus there was a storm surge. I believe that the weather systems from Newfoundland usually continue on toward Ireland/Scotland. Newfoundland area is just over 107K sq km vs. 230K sq km for Scotland, England and Wales vs. Ireland & Northern Ireland 98K.

    Not an expert, but am guessing such weather (winds & rain) mean extreme soil erosion should be expected. Maybe various island nations/provinces need to put up screens/sieves to retain valuable soil.

    Dumb idea time: If water levels keep climbing, why not create massive pits inland and direct the excess water there. If such channels were large enough, you would probably get some marine life too. If you then let this marine life get established you'd end up with a convenient additional food source. Or just drop some Asian carp in there - this species seems to thrive almost anywhere, grows fast and it already being used/fished for human and pet food.

    581:

    SORRY - my post above should have read, "I do think that we can get away with no more than 3-400 years of pain and very few deaths, but only if we immediately go to WWII-levels of effort..."

    582:

    If water levels keep climbing

    The last time the atmospheric carbon load was at today's levels, sea level was nine metres higher.

    I think you can safely suppose a continued increase.

    583:

    Exactly.

    England cannot be seen to have gained anything by all of this.

    And, you can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave.

    I just read "ADULTS IN THE ROOM" by Yanis Varoufakis as well as his "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?", yeah, the EU is grossly undemocratic, irrational, and vain. But, it's the only game on your continent, there isn't a way out of it once you're in, by design.

    Regarding Brexit, I know what I've read here, and Yanis's work, and that's most of it (well, and John Mauldin's free newsletter, he writes investment advice for Texas oilmen (I imagine, from how he spins things)). This all seems to hold together. What a mess!

    584:

    Congratulations! The UK gets to be the "poster child" for why you can never leave the EU.

    585:

    I am awaiting Mueller's report with interest. My guess is that he will find quite a lot of evidence of wrongdoing, but nothing that would have made a huge difference to the vote, at least not compared with the usual gerrymandering and voter suppression. But let's see.

    In the case of Parliament, I would be surprised if the report was excessively biassed. On the few occasions on which Parliamentary committees have behaved in a grossly partisan fashion, the minority has screamed publicly. What everybody seems to be ignoring w.r.t. the UK is that this level of interference from foreign countries is normal - but they are ones we tug the forelock to. The point is that there isn't a scrap of evidence that the putative influence from Russia made any difference - UNLIKE the interference from the USA.

    586:

    I am sorry, but blaming the EU for our fuck-up is complete nonsense. There would have been no difficulty in working out a plausible plan following the referendum (i.e. summer 2016) - it's not as if the EU's red lines weren't well-known, or have changed. But it wasn't until THIS summer that the Cabinet (let alone the Tory party or Parliament) agreed even an INTENT, and then it was incompatible with the EU's red lines. And, as far as our own planning goes, only a tiny proportion of it had started by this summer, and most of it still hasn't been done. The words "incompetent" and "negligent" are too weak.

    It's still a crazy idea, but a properly planned Brexit would have been feasible.

    587:

    I'm not blaming the EU, just noting the outcome!

    588:

    No, you have to file a tax return because Intuit and the like want to keep taking your money. There have been efforts to reduce filing to the IRS asking you if this information is correct (we don't have enough of a nanny state for them to be sure of your marital status or how many children you have, so they would need you to double check a few things), and then give you your money back, but the tax prep industry lobbies hard to kill that when it comes up.

    589:

    I'm not sure how much Intuit has to do with it, but I do know that, due to the way Congress passes bills, it's easier to use the tax code to do both social engineering (e.g. make welfare a tax return) and more importantly, to set up all sorts of interesting dodges and loopholes for investors, owners, and rentiers. That's probably the majority of the mess in the tax code, and it's the hardest to cure.

    590:

    I'm not sure trucking soil in bulk is the best solution, although I can see the appeal of writing that into a satire or some crazy geoengineering solution (paging Elon Musk...).

    A slightly better solution is all the stuff Joel Salatin is doing on his farm, which he's rebuilt from eroded gullies to highly productive land in ten years. The problem with his approach is that it's intelligence intensive and even he doesn't think that what he does can scale up to feed civilization.

    591:

    Thanks for the Emptywheel link. Interesting site.

    592:

    So a union of the English-speaking peoples is obviously out, a racist, exclusionary, backwards-looking federation. But ditch the USA and build off the existing Commonwealth. Now here is a world spanning super-nation with a population(2.3 billion) larger than the EU, tremendously diverse and and including many regions that will suffer the worst from global warming.

    Indeed the dire threat of climate change must be the focus of our new entity. People will have to change their behavior, their consumption habits. Vested interests will ruthlessly protect the economic status quo and need to be dealt with. Large scale societal change must be enacted quickly. Enemies everywhere. So our New Commonwealth must deal with this dire threat and so needs strong and frankly ruthless leadership.

    We need leadership and a nation in charge. However, nobody in the Commonwealth is interested in going back under the control of London. How to solve that? Put another country in charge? Well the British might not like a country in charge that has bad memories of British rule as primus inter paras. Does a compromise exist?

    Is there a Commonwealth country with no history of British rule? Is it lead by a man the Economist the greatest living general? Someone with no qualms about assassinating rivals, implementing Orwellian social changes, and invading neighbors but also very widely respected?

    TLDR: A Paul Kagame run Commonwealth of Nations super-state focused on ruthless climate change mitigation efforts.

    593:

    Re:'Large scale societal change must be enacted quickly.'

    Yet what you describe is a same-old, same-old leadership style. A global crisis provides a reason for a new style of leadership to emerge that can cope with the existing threat as well as plan for what happens once the original threat has been survived. Plus because it is a global threat, it will have many different manifestations and will likely require coordination of many different types of solutions. Too complex for one person. This is not some several hundred acre fiefdom that can be 'ruled' by one person.

    Plus, tyrants typically do crappy succession planning. So even if the original tyrant is a benevolent despot, you still need back-up leaders - placed into leadership succession roles on the basis of ability not familial or clan relationship - just in case the tyrant drops dead from a heart attack or is swept off a cliff by a massive tidal wave.

    594:

    Troutwaxer @ 579 😍

    595:

    Yes, I completely grant it is a bad plan for many reasons and as the case of Paul Kagame shows a 'good tyrant' is still very bad.

    596:

    A slightly better solution is all the stuff Joel Salatin is doing on his farm

    E's a looney! From wikipedia:

    Anyone who really wants to stop methane needs to start draining wetlands

    That might work for a short time for meat farmers, but it's very much a "fuck everyone else" solution to the specific problem he's identified (not enough meat!) In classic fashion, he's going to keep on doing what he's doing and everyone else should change to suit him.

    I mean, I like his approach to livestock farming but it's predicated on either dramatically reduced human infestation or meat becoming a very rare luxury food for them.

    My hope for farming is a move away from mining soil to a requirement that soil be improved and using a validated set of measures.

    597:

    Oh yeah, politically Salatin's nuts. Apparently he produces good food though, and apparently he rehabilitated the he's living on. So, like most innovative nutters who actually do something for a living, he's not entirely crazy.

    In any case, if I had to choose to truck a couple of cubic kilometers of farm soil from, say Iowa to Alberta, or to use Salatinesque cattle-herding and farming principles to let ten years of cattle poop build into new Alberta soil through a bit of clever management, I think the latter choice is a lot cheaper. It takes a lot more farmers and isn't heroic, and right now, I suspect the latter is why people don't think it's worth doing.

    598:

    "You're assuming we want him. That's pretty courageous of you."

    "Survivor: Outback"

    Motto: 'This season, no contestant wins, jut the rest of the human race'.

    599:

    use Salatinesque cattle-herding and farming principles to let ten years of cattle poop build into new Alberta soil

    I think the Justin Rhodes chickens+woodchips idea might be better, one guy does it on a pretty industrial scale.

    We have two problems here: we need massive afforestation to sequester carbon, and we need a massive injection or carbon back into our soils. I keep thinking that somehow we have to be able to link those two the other way round, so we're solving the problem of CO2 emissions rather than exacerbating it. The idea of coppicing for biochar and woodchips then growing chickens on the pile seems pretty solid. What we need is a nitrogen-fixing, nitrogen-heavy crop that we can intersperse with the coppiced trees.

    But as with all these things, people way better at farming are hundreds of years ahead of me (some even used low-methane livestock... or not, dammit). Terra preta isn't a new idea, even if industrial quantities of woodchips are.

    600:

    Just form the Grand Trans-Atlantic Triangle Union. US, UK & Portugal. The triangle is slightly acute to be sure; nevertheless, London & Lisbon, most ancient of allies, apart some quibblings about vertical vs. horizontal territorial hegemony in Africa somewhere in Steampunk time, form a decent partnership, and there's a nice power-transfer effect that ripples through history; Portugal lost it to the UK, which then lost it to the US. They'd get together again in a new way. There's a nice tinge of evolution to it. After careful research I confirmed that Flores at 39 latitude is above the Washington DC-Lisbon horizontal at 38, which puts it inside said triangle and thus a good candidate for spiritual center - essential in these matters. Atlantean overtones might give the project a powerful vertical dimension besides fracking. Lisbon tells Berlin "either you cut our debt or we're out, yes, we the good student in class quit, and we will join our natural allies". Cutting a debt being a thing-in-itself to them naturally Lisbon goes. Eurozone disrupts, Euro plummets. A new currency, perhaps? Considering current governments, results have to be interesting. Each vertex contributes its own specific prejudice, thereby creating a new world view and global economic success.

    601:

    Can we vote people onto the island?

    I reckon that would be a pretty popular idea, and of course it being "Survivor" presumably means that there's only one at the end, right?

    A bit like Kevin Bonhams "worst premier" series, but with the sort of consequences we normally associate with benefit cuts.

    602:

    Agree with the thanks above for the emptywheel.net link. I should have been tracking her; she's exploring some parts of the possibilities graph that I haven't seen explored elsewhere. (One risk of having an over-minimized US politics tracking feed. Sigh.) This investigation may get a lot messier. (I'm concerned, yes.)

    Since nobody else has linked it, small beer compared to climate catastrophe and emerging fascist/nationalist movements with the side effect (cough) of blocking immigration/refugee movement[0], but interesting: Endocrine disruption of androgenic activity by perfluoroalkyl substances: clinical and experimental evidence Results: We found that increased levels of PFCs in plasma and seminal fluid positively correlate with circulating T and with a reduction of semen quality, testicular volume, penile length and AGD. (via The Intercept) (bold mine :-)

    [0] Related, and good to see: Mass Immigration Creates Problems For the Left. Tighter Borders Can’t Be the Solution. (Eric Levitz, 30 Nov 2018) But plenty of migrants will be displaced into statelessness. And the U.S. is both better-equipped to absorb such people, in material terms, and more responsible for the climate disruptions that will uproot them, than just about any country on Earth. If building the New Deal state required draconian restrictions on immigration, it required abandoning the Jews of Europe to their fate; if building 21st-century social democracy requires meeting Trump and Le Pen halfway, then it will require abandoning thousands of climate refugees at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Given the choice between accepting Gilded Age-caliber inequality at the national level and complicity in mass death at the global one, it’s not clear to me how the latter could qualify as the “left” option.

    603:

    One of the issues I explore in the book is the attempt by a farmer to get his work done without AI after 2050. The short answer is 'it doesn't work very well,' mainly because you need an accurate year-long weather forecast so you can know when the short-term climate disasters - a week-long hailstorm or a rain-free March, for example - can be expected, plus what the markets for next year look like.

    In the future I expect it to be absolutely insane to plant the same thing on a particular plot from year-to-year - you're never going to get the same weather twice in a row - and nobody will monocrop anymore because the possible losses are too high. (Once again, this is the "optimistic" Climate Change novel.)

    I'm not exploring godlike AI in the book (it started out as a novella) because I don't think godlike AI is pertinent in the short run, but various human-level AIs are easily available to a general public* and buildable from an open-source solution. The personality of any given AI is somewhat unpredictable and much more highly sensitive to original conditions than that of a human child, (don't open the box too loudly) so generally a "seed" personality is constructed by two or more AI who are liked by their humans and implanted in an empty device. "Rosita, would you feel comfortable compiling with Cuddles?"

    • Instead of "general public" I originally wrote "general problem." Cynical much?
    604:

    Well, yes; "Christian libertarian" is a very good clue, there.

    One of the interesting things to come out of some recent studies of buffalo diet (now that DNA tracing is good enough to assign individual cow pats to individual buffalo AND tell you what the plants were) is that forage quality is intensely temperature dependent. So much so that Bergmann's rule (the more north you are, the larger the critters are as examples of their type) has been suggested to be driven by forage quality; the moose are huge in Alaska because that's where the forage quality is.

    So while pastoralism can take excellent care of the land while producing meat, wool, and hides AND sequestering carbon, it's going to have a tougher time with the temperature uptick.

    605:

    Which is one of the sticky bits; a large portion of current organic practice has an "import compost" step. If you have to do it without importing organic matter (which is a requirement of doing it on farming scales), it gets much more difficult.

    606:

    In any case, if I had to choose to truck a couple of cubic kilometers of farm soil from, say Iowa to Alberta, or to use Salatinesque cattle-herding and farming principles to let ten years of cattle poop build into new Alberta soil through a bit of clever management, I think the latter choice is a lot cheaper. It takes a lot more farmers and isn't heroic, and right now, I suspect the latter is why people don't think it's worth doing.

    The in-world solution I've come up with today is that the government produces a billion tough plastic boxes that hold two-gallons of dirt - about 25 pounds total. If you live someplace like Southern California, which in 2070 will have lots of good dirt and waaaay too much sunlight to successfully use the dirt, you can fill a bucket from someplace which used to be a farm and put it in a centralized collection point, where it is sealed shut. This will earn you a mile, which is registered with your AI and can be spent with the electric-car transport company of your choice. Eventually, a car that's heading north will drive by, pick up the carton of soil, and haul it from Point South to Point Further North. Eventually, the soil ends up at a collection point along the 5, 101, or 15 freeways and gets put aboard a car making a long-distance trip someplace north.

    The farmer from my post above has to do some remediation of his land and orders twenty tons of new soil. He is surprised to see it arrive in thousands of two-gallon buckets, all dropped off by passing cars. He doesn't know how he's going to deal with this, but eventually the really poor people in his neighborhood show up and each earns some fraction of a mile by emptying the bucket into his hole.

    607:

    "import compost" step. If you have to do it without importing organic matter...

    The idea that you could even in theory keep exporting organic matter without importing anything is a bit odd, though. It only rains trace elements if you're downwind of a desert (Aotearoa gets a bit of Australian iron, for example).

    We are likely to be forced to go beyond "will it flush" as a deciding factor for what goes down toilets and into sewers more generally. One side effect of that is hopefully going to be a more usable stream of sewage-based compost. I'm wondering whether we will get "smart toilets" that either double-stream or at worst bag the more toxic deposits so they can be filtered out later on.

    However what we can use is an interesting question - the proportion of people who produce organic-certifiable poo is vanishingly small (take the number who eat strictly organic and remove any that take medicinal drugs, for starters). So it's probably more practical to use a poo-to-biochar chain where a great deal of the organic content is burned, just to get rid of all the undesirable organics. The current decomposition system just doesn't work well enough to be safe in a circular economy.

    I care about this stuff because we have a composting toilet that feeds the fruit trees. Downstream of them is the vege garden (down-seep?), but since we can't grow root vegetables it's relatively safe. I still wouldn't want a chemotherapy patient using that toilet, though.

    608:

    I reckon you'd get 80/20 soil and microplastics that way, though. Albeit a lot of the problem will be mixed in with all the other environmental plastics, but that doesn't make it less of a problem. The car cultists are going to have to stop or dramatically scale back use of their fetish objects.

    Seriously now, mass movement is going to have to switch to iron wheels on iron roads because there's just too many problems with the alternatives. Those tyre mountains haven't gone away just because we noticed the CO2 problem.

    609:

    When you look at the sheer size of the breadbasket areas of the US, USSR and Australia it's pretty hard to find similar sized areas anywhere else...

    Don't know about the others but the US (and maybe Canada) may run out of water before flooding becomes an issue. They are really pumping the aquifers hard these days to keep yields up. And the water levels are dropping. And growing salty in some of them.

    610:

    The idea is that you have electric cars which are routed like packets, (and the passengers are routed like packets too.) If you want to go from Sydney to Canberra you call a car and it shows up at your house with three other people going to Canberra, then picks up two more after picking you up and drives all of you to Canberra on a least-cost route. You get a discount for booking early so the software can figure out how to make least-cost pickups of all the people going to Canberra. If one of the people in the car is going to Yass, it drops that person off at the intersection of M23 and M31 to await a car going that direction.

    (And yes, I've been 'back of Berke.' Do they still say that?)

    If you're poor, you find a car which needs cleaning and will pay you in miles to clean as you ride along to someplace close enough to where you want to go.

    611:

    Has the committee (or House) repudiated it or chosen a new chairman?

    That will happen in January. Prior to that the others on the committee and in Congressional leadership (interesting word that one) just kept quiet as they had long since figured out that doing anything that DT didn't like would lead to them no longer serving in Congress due to being primaried. That was why so many R's just retired. They knew it was either become a DT fan or get booted out so they decided to walk away.

    612:

    I am awaiting Mueller's report with interest. My guess is that he will find quite a lot of evidence of wrongdoing, but nothing that would have made a huge difference to the vote, at least not compared with the usual gerrymandering and voter suppression. But let's see. That's about sums up what I think about it. I won't say there was NO attempts to interfere, but by and large I see all the brouhaha more as a search for the scapegoat (and rhetoric reminiscent of Cold War seems to be all the rage now across the globe) – and Russia makes a darn good one. Our media definitely did not help the case with all the brouhaha about Hillary being "bad" and how Trump "will make relations between Russia and USA improve overnight" (yep, they did actually did write that!). Far as I can tell, what happened in the US had some parallels in Russian history – namely, people voting not for Trump but against Ms. Clinton.

    And one more argument against effectiveness of those attempts. There are no people un the upper echelons of our government who comprehend the US political system. While US sources sometimes would scream about excessive powers usurped by the executive branch – well, the checks and balances are still there. When federal judges started blocking The Tangerine One's executive order – why, Russian media and Russian government were shocked. And if they actually believe that with such levels of ignorance at the top Putin could've influenced US elections successfully? Why, I have that bridge to sell...

    But then Russia makes a nice scapegoat, what with all heavy-handed attempts to influence Ukraine (I wouldn't touch the Crimea situation as it looks to be much more complicated than either Russian or Western media report – for one, seems that there actually was popular support for splitting from the Ukraine... not that it's a viable excuse for all that followed, mind you, but still it's more complicated. Anyway, having someone to blame for your mistakes comes handy to any politician and it goes for both sides, as our Czar can (and does) now say that we're surrounded by enemies. So in effect all those sanctions and treaty cancellations serve to prop the regime and make a nice excuse for stripping social services of what money were left to make more CGI movies about huge phallic torpedoes destroying Los Angeles (or was it San Francisco?). Seems like the world is determined to move straight into that "stale beer" variant of spy fiction...

    Oh, and those sanctions? They do not work as advertised. The regime just flushes it's oligarchs with cash (they've actually got richer except the only one of them – who was genuinely trying to build his business on producing something instead of siphoning cash from government projects), introduced tax farming (they don't call it that, but it's tax farming all the same – and they even got a Jew to do it which may come in handy when the Czar needs someone to blame, what with anti–Semitic feelings in the population going as strong as ever) and telling all the little people to tighten their belts and eat more noodles or – better yet – fasting now and then as it's good for your health. Oh, and the Czar is talking all the time about how he made Russia great again and hw the country becomes even greater every minute.Must be some mighty strange definition of greatness, is what I say.

    In the case of Parliament, I would be surprised if the report was excessively biassed. On the few occasions on which Parliamentary committees have behaved in a grossly partisan fashion, the minority has screamed publicly. What everybody seems to be ignoring w.r.t. the UK is that this level of interference from foreign countries is normal - but they are ones we tug the forelock to. The point is that there isn't a scrap of evidence that the putative influence from Russia made any difference - UNLIKE the interference from the USA. I'm actually under the impression that it at least partially had to do with some people voting "Leave" not actually believing it will make a difference but just to stick it to The Man. And doing something out of spite never goes wrong, does it?

    And one more thing... a lot of narrative about Russian interference implies the existence of nearly omniscient and omnipresent intelligence agency (usually associated with KGB - which was not an intelligence agency but more of the secret police) which is not the case. Actually what our host describes in The Laundry Files is more like it: A huge bureaucracy. And the Peter's principle is rampant, what with all the nepotism and negative selection. Sadly, that's exactly why I cannot rule out that Russian intelligence services had something to do with Novichok poisonings. While I don't believe that it was something that the Czar ordered (he's not that delusional yet) – some idiots in the middle management may have decided to kill the traitor just to boost their KPI. Now, the right thing to do in this case would be to punish those schmucks and make it as public as possible but the Czar can not admit he's wrong (because he's always right, reality be damned) and we have this debacle. The grossest part is, the man have already served his sentence and I presume that all the damage control was done already. Going for murder in the stupidest way possible in these circumstances is not only a crime, but a sign of utter incompetence of the whole agency. If those two asshats really made the attempt (sorry, but "highly likely" doesn't cut it) – the heads shoudl've rolled immediately. Nothing happened. So... I do not think that such an agency could've influenced a small child to give them the candy, let alone ll the elections.

    613:

    I've read about how big companies consider leaving the UK due to Brexit. That got me thinking... could those Brexiters try to turn the UK into tax haven ("The wealth will trickle down to the community!")? Turn it into Panama 2.0, maybe (but more respectable)?

    614:

    I can see how organized crime and graft and individuals are going to game this system really quickly unless a huge effort is put into testing the soil as it is brought into the system. And there will be big opportunities for graft in the processing centers.

    615:

    the proportion of people who produce organic-certifiable poo is vanishingly small (take the number who eat strictly organic and remove any that take medicinal drugs, for starters).

    Yep. My prostate meds take me off the possible blood donor list in the US. And for good reason until blood banks can start dealing with "adult male use only" types of storage.

    And if I visit London next summer I'll be banned for some bit of time. A long time maybe depending on how long I'm there.

    The full set of restrictions is an interesting list that could be a starter for "can my poo be used on crops".

    616:

    Our media definitely did not help the case with all the brouhaha about Hillary being "bad" and how Trump "will make relations between Russia and USA improve overnight" (yep, they did actually did write that!).

    Just what ARE your news sources? I spread mine around and none of them put that option forward. Then again I don't watch any of the US cable news shows in the evenings. And very little during the day.

    617:

    Nobody make a profit here. The government has decided that good soil needs to be moved north. The car-companies move the soil as relief of their tax-burden and pay the diggers/unloaders in miles. Only approved soil can be moved, and each box is sealed. Smuggling, on the other hand, could be a profitable sideline if someone could make sure that certain boxes are routed to certain places. Meanwhile, any given box might remain in the trunk of a particular car for weeks, because soil is the lowest priority packet. Essentially, it's ant-work, but it's a long-term project with a closing date measured in decades.

    The background of the book is that the far-right has been temporarily removed from the U.S. political calculus, (albeit with some ugliness and violence) and the country can now focus on things other than arguing over the shape of society. This happens at about the time the U.S. loses Florida to Global Warming (a couple decades earlier than predicted,) and without the crazies, we're able to launch a WWII-level anti-climate-change effort before 2040. This gives the government certain powers, and the loss of Miami has focused everyone's attention on the real problem. Unfortunately, the delays have had a real cost. Instead of the 3-400 years of ugliness we would endure if we started today, the expectation is that the emergency will last for a thousand years...

    And that's the "optimistic" book.

    The "pessimistic" book, should I ever write it, begins with a woman selling her body to buy food for her children.

    618:

    Our media definitely did not help the case with all the brouhaha about Hillary being "bad" and how Trump "will make relations between Russia and USA improve overnight" (yep, they did actually did write that!).

    Just what ARE your news sources? I spread mine around and none of them put that option forward. Then again I don't watch any of the US cable news shows in the evenings. And very little during the day.

    I was talking about Russian media, of course. The same media that see The Daily Mail as a reliable source. And the part about The Orange One improving relations... well, that was on the basis of him not being Ms. Clinton and/or Mr. Obama. Pure unadulterated bullshit. That and The Orange One loudly proclaiming himself the greatest businessman of our galaxy. So I was taking that information with a truckload of salt... and anyway unlike many people of Russia I do cross-check my news sources. Makes for a fun reading, like Russian media trying to pass Panama papers as a personal attack at the Czar (citing The Guardian) while in the West they only mentioned that there's no indication that the Czar himself was not in those papers (The Guardian used one or two sentences to report that and went back to calling out the British politicians who were figuring in those papers quite prominently). All we got from that were ultimately a couple of short-lived memes about cellos and an awkward speech from the Czar about every Russian in those papers being a good little patriot...

    619:

    The idea is that you have electric cars which are routed like packets

    Yes, certainly, if you start from the presumption that cars are the solution then that's a less awful way to implement it.

    But if you, say, started with the goal of maintaining technological society I don't see how you can end up with "cars are a big part of the solution". As with eating meat, if we're going to do this we have to start using meat as the rare and special treat that it is, not as a way to turn 1000kJ of food into a 100kJ snack. Same with cars... you can admire them all you like, but you ain't gonna be driving them anywhere outside of a simulator.

    Yeah, I realise that many countries are currently built around cars. So what, many people habitually smoke, and we've stopped pretending that that's any more than toxic suicide. Some countries generate a lot of electricity by burning coal, or even dirt, but that has to stop too. Same thing will happen with cars, hopefully more quickly.

    620:

    The government has decided that good soil needs to be moved north.

    Soil: win it or be in it?

    Meanwhile, any given box might remain in the trunk of a particular car for weeks, because soil is the lowest priority packet.

    Great. So let's just run those numbers, shall we? Let's assume that every single car journey in the US carries a bonus 40kg of soil, and that their fuel consumption is completely unaffected by that. To simplify things, we'll also assume that all journeys are directly north or south, and are correctly arranged such that all soil moves continuously without blockages or shortages.

    Call it 3.22 trillion miles since that was the 2016 figure. We're moving soil 1000 miles north, so that's 3.22 billion kilogrammes of soil transported. Or 3.22 million tonnes. Since there's about 3 tonnes per cubic metre, let's say 1 million cubic metres. Gosh, that sounds like a lot.

    Yeah, it's an area 1000 metres on a side. In other words, one square kilometre of soil moved by the sum total of all miles driven in the US in a year.

    621:

    Damn, lost the 40kg in there. So we have 40 square kilometres of soil, not one. And maybe we could make it 40cm deep instead of a whole metre... that's one hundred square kilometres!

    622:

    Moz @ 599 What we need is a nitrogen-fixing, nitrogen-heavy crop GM beans is the obvious answer there – why “GM” – well beans don’t normally like being shaded, so you would have to alter their ambient-light tolerance.

    Graydon @ 605 If you have horses, cows, sheep, goats, chickens, you are going to get compost to import, aren’t you? Something the ultra-vegan loonies forget – along with: “Convert it all to crops & do without the animals” – yeah, right – What crops are you going to grow in the forests? But you can run pigs in there. What crops are you going to grow on the uplands? But you can run sheep there. What crops are you going to grow on the wetlands, tidal or otherwise? Sheep/goats again. What crops are you going to grow on poor sandy soils? But you can run cattle there.

    NowherelandChronist @ 612 I'm actually under the impression that it at least partially had to do with some people voting "Leave" not actually believing it will make a difference but just to stick it to The Man. And doing something out of spite never goes wrong, does it? Ah, you noticed – yes, spot on, unfortunately we are stuck with this shitstorm. @ 613 Actually that already is ( & long was ) part of the “plan” ….. @ 618 The same media that see The Daily Mail as a reliable source. ARRRGH! As for the “Panama Papers” – was that part of “Wikileaks” i.e. associated with useful idiot & all-round piece of shit Assange, or were they separate – I can’t remember?

    Troutwaxer @ 617 ( Last line ) - Nothing new about that – been happening for centuries, already.

    623:

    If you think that "AI" is going to give you reliable weather forecasts for a year ahead, please make me an offer for Tower Bridge. Actually, if you think that "AI" is going to deliver ANYTHING that we can't do already, if somewhat slower and much more labour intensively, please still make me that offer.

    The solutions to unpredictable weather are well-known, and have been used for millennia: plant a range of resilient crops, grown for resilience, and don't rely on them all producing well. In the UK, the reliability of grain harvests improved out of all recognition with the introduction of short straw wheat and autumn sowing. Very simple, but it optimised for our unpredictable summers.

    624:

    Sadly, that's exactly why I cannot rule out that Russian intelligence services had something to do with Novichok poisonings. While I don't believe that it was something that the Czar ordered (he's not that delusional yet) – some idiots in the middle management may have decided to kill the traitor just to boost their KPI. Now, the right thing to do in this case would be to punish those schmucks and make it as public as possible but the Czar can not admit he's wrong (because he's always right, reality be damned) and we have this debacle.

    Did you notice the recent death of General Igor Korobov at age 62 after a "serious and long illness"?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46298959

    Of course, it may be a case of 2+2=5, but standards at the GRU have definitely slipped - I mean, allowing everyone to register their car at Head Office so that they don't get any traffic tickets, seems like stunningly poor tradecraft. Having one team clearly identified, and another team arrested, isn't exactly going to look good on the annual appraisal...

    I wonder if General Korobov was able to see the stunning cathedral in Salisbury before his tragic demise?

    625:

    In the UK, some Vicia and Lathyrus are native woodland plants, and at least the former could probably be bred for spring forage (assuming they behave like most understory plants).

    This Veganism fetish (see also Moz #596) is deluded, because there are huge areas that are not suitable for ANY crops humans can eat directly, but are usable for pasture. Yes, many of those are over-grazed, but the point stands even if they weren't. And almost the only agricultural use that has been made of the woodland understory is grazing.

    There was an article somewhere recently that the UK would have to reduce (meat) lamb production to meet our CO2 targets - but, if it (and stalking) were simply stopped, our hill pasture simply becomes unproductive. What I have been saying for years is that we should go back to wearing more wool and eating mutton - UNfattened and straight from the hill.

    626:

    May deliberately backed Putin into a corner over the Skripals VERY early on, making it politically impossible for him to blame rogue agents and put them on trial. Whether she did that out of incompetence or conscious intent, I can't say - nor can I say whether Putin would have welcomed the opportunity to bring the GRU to heel, but it's quite possible.

    627:

    “...could those Brexiters try to turn the UK into tax haven ("The wealth will trickle down to the community!")? Turn it into Panama 2.0, maybe (but more respectable)?”

    If it’s not actually the plan then I think it’s probably high on the list of desirable (or at least acceptable) end states.

    628:

    Off-topic, but IIRC it's allowed after the 200's post ?

    From The Register :

    "Warning: Malware, rogue users can spy on some apps' HTTPS crypto – by whipping them with a CAT o' nine TLS Crypto boffins have found a way to exploit side-channel information to downgrade most of the current TLS implementations, thanks to ongoing support for outmoded RSA key exchanges.

    In a paper published on Friday, "The 9 Lives of Bleichenbacher’s CAT: New Cache ATtacks on TLS Implementations," co-authors [...] describe an updated version of an attack, first outlined by Swiss cryptographer Daniel Bleichenbacher two decades ago."

    https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/3668116

    "a "Bleichenbacher Attack" sounds like something from the Atrocity Archives. Just add nether dimensions." I had the same thought ! (And I was already expecting the next Laundry books to feature the recent side-channel attacks, just like bitcoins were featured in recent ones !) ;)

    629:

    It is one of the stated intents. Another is to sign up to TTIP, including accepting the USA's (export) standards and giving USA buinesses the right to sue anyone who tries to do better. None of this is particularly secret.

    630:

    The "pessimistic" book, should I ever write it, begins with a woman selling her body to buy food for her children.

    So, not SF then?

    For example, the African prostitutes who choose not to use condoms, because dying of "the slims" in five years is better than starving to death with their children right now.

    631:

    I saw them once when they were supporting Megson. They're not quite to my taste, but they're worth trying.

    Megson are one of our favourite bands. They're a duo (husband and wife) also doing songs based on today rather than yesterday, particularly their new stuff. They also happen to be local to us, and I occasionally bump into one or other of them in Tesco.

    632:

    to Nowhereland Chronist Our media definitely did not help the case with all the brouhaha about Hillary being "bad" and how Trump "will make relations between Russia and USA improve overnight" (yep, they did actually did write that!) Oh really, where have you been for the last 2 years to say this to anyone?

    Apparently, somebody just wants to remember good old days of Red Scare propaganda and tell us that in Russia there's no freedom of press and freedom of speech and everyone only speaks what has been permitted by the Party. Now what we have is the resident clown Zhirinovsky, a leader of political party, spewing nonsense in the public discussion. I suppose, in free and democratic state he would have been put down and gagged for embarrassing the Parliament with nationalistic and anti-American bravado. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idcX0ePYh2k Here we see his criticism towards Putin. Not because he is too much of a Putin. But because he is insufficiently Putin. So I dare you to watch it until the end.

    In reality, though, the position of Russia is more balanced - Russia has no intention, no resources, no reason to intervene into somebody elections, it can only make the best use of presented situation. Because modern democracy is a fiction and elections do not change anything for Russia. The difference is minimal, with Hillary, there would have been exactly the same amount of aggression and war, except the hysteria would probably reach the stage where people would lose their sanity in public, not on the sidelines.

    Now, let's see: I was talking about Russian media, of course. The same media that see The Daily Mail as a reliable source. I thought you were talking about yourself. In a sense of a reliable source, these media are very reliable to confirm another s*storm of falsification when it comes towards Russia. But nothing much more.

    The Orange One Aha! Dog whistles! Well, isn't it a surprise, I just checked the related search request, because I've never ever heard anybody in this country to associate DT with anything orange, and the only search result I get is about 2 years old. Which probably means that somebody did not spend nearly enough time in related news to pick up the latest rumors and fashions.

    to Elderly Cynic @626 May deliberately backed Putin into a corner More like she deliberately backed herself into a corner because the government is yet to present any tangible evidence about this incident. I remember the story about Berezovsky, an arch-enemy of Putin, who was going to become the first person in Russia but ended up suffocating on his scarf. The police did not bat an eye on his untimely death, let alone diplomats. But we get Scripals picking a little illness, and voila, 6 month of cosmic horror story, everyday reports from the hellhole on Earth that opened in small quiet town near inconspicuous military CBRN installation. Btw, does anybody still know where the main hero of the story is? Did he really survive, I haven't heard of him since August.

    GRU How many goddamn times do I have to tell people that all these accusations are utter bullocks, because having any assets even secretly marked as "secret" is completely useless and detrimental outside of the system that does not belong to the intelligence. It might be plausible if GRU was a part of Five eyes, but if you mark your status with anything even remotely "secure" on a mission, you may as well come in the shirt that reads "I am a spy, please jail me now". The real secret operations are carried out on unknown orders by unknown agencies with the usage of deniable practices and even their goals are more often than not - undefined.

    633:

    There's more to it than that. First of all, the cars in use are not like the cars of today. They're both wider and longer because for an AI the necessity to maintain the usual 5-6 feet of separation from the car in the next lane which a human requires isn't there, so two feet of separation is fine. This means that the average "car" is sized like anything from a 1970s sedan to an 11-passenger van, and all of these can carry more passengers. For the same reason, the average car can also go faster, and speeds of up to 100 MPH are not uncommon. And of course AI controlled use of airbags and other anti-collision measures is better than what we have today.

    The big deal is that if you route cars like packets you need maybe 25% of the cars we have today, and if you stagger start/stop times for workers appropriately and implement teleworking, it gets even better. We're definitely not talking the one-car/one person ratio that's seen in the U.S. today, so it's a gigantic improvement, plus the government (in this optimistic future) has been working very hard to create a world where people are rationally assigned to a job someplace close to their house, and things like "commuting" are unnecessary.

    634:

    It's a multi-decade effort, and would actually move less than that per year because the maximum any car would carry is about 10 KG, so I'd guess around 10 sq. kilos a year.

    The idea is not that they plan to move ALL the topsoil - that would be silly. The idea is that you take soil which has nutrients in it (forget the soil bacteria, fungi, etc. for now, we're really just talking "organic matter" which will hopefully be edible by the local bacteria, fungi, etc.) and move it someplace where you expect to plant crops in a climate which is suddenly 4C hotter. You mix your new soil with old soil which has been the beneficiary of local organic techniques, wait five years, and now have enough soil to build into the local topsoil to make it semi-productive, then you plant beans and plow them in (or whatever.) Then you wait another five years...

    The idea is not to have instant soil, but to have soil which will be productive in 50 years rather than a thousand years. Essentially it's an attempt to leapfrog that first, slow part of the exponential curve. It's part of the "let's take some risks" approach of the optimistic future. It is understood in this future that some of these risks will not work out, but it's better to try something that might not work than lay down and die. (And soil-moving might be a good way to convey that idea in the book - it's controversial, but we do it anyway because we have to try new things or die.)

    635:

    Thank you! I read that, and just realized the answer that will cause the entire group-think to collapse into a black hole: no, it's a false flag operation, the Koch bros and the Mercers are paying right-wing thugs to disguise themselves as mooselims, and then they disguise themselves as messicans...

    Voila!

    636:

    Wow, that's the first time someone's conflated agroforestry and veganism, at least where I've seen it.

    Edible violets? Seriously? Nuts to you! (specifically tree nuts).

    637:

    I suggest that you engage your mind rather than your prejudices, and learn something about (a) marginal land (e.g. moorland) and (b) traditional uses of woodland.

    638:

    When she publicly accused Putin of having authorised the murders, if he had then accepted responsibility and put some agents on trial, he would have looked weak. She had no actual evidence for that, as was admitted later, though she still claims there is definite evidence of the GRU being behind it (which even countries like Germany haven't seen, incidentally).

    Notice the very different way in which she has been handling the Khashoggi murder.

    639:

    Notice the very different way in which she has been handling the Khashoggi murder.

    Two words: Al-Yamamah.

    (Nearly ninety billion pounds' worth of arms sales will buy a lot of soft soap.)

    640:

    all of these can carry more passengers

    So you're talking about minibuses then? South Africa and Indonesia spring to mind as places that already do that (and motorbikes plus rickshaws for small numbers of people). But you're suggesting minibuses that can carry 500kg of people, or 10kg of soil. Seems weird to me.

    In the context of "we need to improve a million square kilometres of soil", it really doesn't matter how many 10kg buckets you move in multi-step journeys from city A to city B (journeys are overwhelmingly within cities, and the rest between them), and how many years you move 100 square kilometres of soil. It's just not enough.

    There are a range of other practical problems with your idea, but sale is the main one.

    It might be more practical to have a sewage return flow using the bulk goods system that delivers grain from those farms. If you imagine that for every tonne of wheat 100kg of char and biosolids goes back the other way that would give you an idea of scale, I think.

    641:

    EC, I admire your ability to leap from "much less meat" to "extreme veganism", but hey, if it works for you be my guest.

    there are huge areas that are not suitable for ANY crops humans can eat directly, but are usable for pasture

    Yeah, and we call that "less productive land" for a reason. In Australia the farmland runs veges-orchards-wheat-sheep-cattle-desert, and by the time we're willing to admit it's desert we're talking less than one cow per square kilometre (beef cattle, obviously, you can't milk cattle at that stocking density). It doesn't take a very big allotment to exceed the food producing capacity of one meat-producing cow.

    So yes, by all means, on the land that's not productive enough to grow veges, or grain, or anything else we can eat, run livestock. That should easily provide 1% of everyone's food intake.

    The good news is that if we stop poisoning and strip mining the sea we could eat an awful lot of fish. And if we engineered wings onto pigs we could solve the manure distribution problem too.

    642:

    Since, unlike you, I've both read and written about the topic: a) you're correct that some marginal land can be used for grazing b) you're wrong, in that much of it's already overgrazed, otherwise exploited, underwatered for anything useful (one cow per square kilometer is posh for some deserts) and unsuitable for livestock at all in many places (northern boreal forest comes to mind).

    Yes, the traditional uses of English woodland. That's the highpoint of tree use? Not really, especially since (unlike Koreans or native Californians), you don't even eat the acorns. Wasteful. Guess you didn't even think of filberts, sloes, haws, or walnuts, either.

    What I'm talking about is more like this: https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/four-ways-mexico-indigenous-farmers-agriculture-of-the-future-20150810. These guys are more like experts.

    643:

    My point was that, by taking the extreme veganism line, we are saying that those areas cannot be used for the production of human food AT ALL.

    You would be surprised at how many places are unsuitable for growing crops, and how many more cannot extend their areas into the grazing ones, for one reason or another. And how many people get a large proportion of their protein (and often a significant proportion of their calories) from such grazing. No, it ISN'T just a straight choice between food crops and raising fatstock.

    The water supply is often enough to irrigate (say) 10% of the area, but there is enough rainfall to provide rough grazing on the rest. It also includes rocky hillsides which are infeasible to terrace, places where permanent vegetation is needed to avoid erosion, and so on. We CANNOT simply convert those areas to food crops, as you know.

    644:

    You are now simply being an arsehole. Yes, of course, I have considered those, and seem to be rather more familiar with such areas than you are (*). Yes, much of it is overgrazed, but it was NEVER suitable for raising food crops, and even eliminating the overgrazing and restoring it to optimal conditions will not make it so.

    I gave one EXAMPLE, where we could do one hell of a lot better, simultaneously with restoring the 'natural' ecology. But we could also consider the African savanna, where the same applies for different reasons. The Mexican approach might well work for some of the area, but won't over the whole area or when (not if) the rains fail. A 'one size fits all' approach simply will not work where the conditions are not comparable.

    (*) If you can be offensive, I can too. I suggest that we both stop it.

    645:

    The bigger problem with going up against veganism is that, when you see how livestock are generally raised for human consumption, the vegans have a better point than you do.

    I'd suggest this map from Vox, which shows the proportion of cropland devoted to animal food and fuel, versus the proportion of crop land devoted to human food. Getting the Midwest out of growing corn for fuel alcohol and beef "finishing" feed would do a massive amount to feed the world and decrease methane emissions from the cattle, even if nothing else were done.

    Conversely, bringing some small portion of the land not already ranched into animal production would feed a small fraction of the world. I'm also not sanguine about the ability of cattle, sheep, or goats to survive in the remaining big woodlands of the world: the taiga, Amazon, and Congo. Not their place, really.

    647:

    I'm also not sanguine about the ability of cattle, sheep, or goats to survive in the remaining big woodlands of the world: the taiga, Amazon, and Congo. Not their place, really.

    Surely no-one would try... oh, wait, Australian cattle farmers. Move along, nothing to see here.

    Seriously, we have large herbivores that are well adapted to all of those ecosystemms (and many of the ecosystems are or were dependent on them). Sure, farming woolly mammoths is slow and slightly tricky, but they can live quite happily in places that cattle can't. And their meat yield is low, but that's because there's not a lot of spare vegetation round (unproductive, remember). Just because we currently focus most of our meat farming efforts on chickens doesn't mean we have to keep doing that.

    648:

    Speaking or arseholes, I think we should farm cape buffalo. And make the hardcore paleo diet people do the farming. You wanna live like some kind of de-evolved fantasy primitive, be my guest... the nice cow-shaped thing is your dinner :)

    649:

    Keep it in binocular range and treat the things it tramples to death as your dinner.

    650:

    She had no actual evidence of that...

    What, other than the film footage of two Russians entering the U.K., travelling to Salisbury, returning to Russia. Their admission on Russian TV that they had done this, in an attempt to see the wonders of Salisbury Cathedral. The subsequent second-source confirmation by OSINT of their addresses, and background as GRU officers. I say second-source, because I would be disappointed if the Five Eyes weren’t already doing things like copying the Moscow vehicle licensing system (and possibly upset that Bellingcat had revealed a useful source of intelligence).

    It would take really determined denialism to conclude that Colonel Chepiga and Dr. Mishkin weren’t, indeed, proven GRU.

    651:

    And here I thought he'd already picked out his dacha on the Black Wea, or maybe it's in Saudi Arabia....

    652:

    To clarify, the problem is basic ecosystem dynamics: you lose about 90% of the calories of when something eats something else. So if you have enough corn for 100 people and feed it to a cow, you'll have enough cow for about 10 people. The rest of the corn calories will have been burned off through respiration or pooped out. This is the argument for eating less meat: so long as you can eat what your meat animal ate, there's a massively higher caloric yield from eating that than from feeding it to an animal and eating the animal.

    This is a good argument over the use of things like food crops and water. The problem with it is, of course, that meat consumption is a status symbol. Most people won't voluntarily eat, say, the traditional Yucatan diet of corn, veggies, insects, and meat on holidays, because not only is that for low class brown people, but bugs are yucky.

    Now I don't mind the theory of grazing. Problem is, I've worked on sites that have been seriously overgrazed, which is why I'd quarrel with the idea of stocking up the range as a way to get more food out of the world. The better step really is to find ways around food waste and eat more veggies first, then to worry about where the meat comes from. Oh, and eating more bugs works too.

    653:

    Nice one!

    And, as you say in #647, there are suitable animals adapted to almost all of the area where rough or woodland grazing is relevant. Eland and kangaroos do well in arid areas and the former is herdable. Muskox, yak or elk (caribou) would do as alternatives to mammoths, and are already herded :-) And there are plenty of others adapted to various forms of forest.

    654:

    No fantasy epics longer than three books? Wait, you mean I have a reason to support Brexit?

    655:

    Do you ever do anything other than misrepresentation? I am beginning to wonder if you are actually paid to do it. For the benefit of anyone else, what I said was:

    When she publicly accused Putin of having authorised the murders, if he had then accepted responsibility and put some agents on trial, he would have looked weak. She had no actual evidence for that, as was admitted later, ...

    656:

    I've disagreed with your analysis before. I still think that Putin did want to interfere in the US, because he wanted Hillary to have few coattails (that is, help a lot of Democrats get elected to Congress and the Senate), because she's been very aggressive towards Russian and its legitimate interests. I think he, like everyone (except American billionaires), was shocked when she lost. Since then, I think he is playing the Malignant Carcinoma, but in revenge for Yeltsin (and his Western support).

    I really can't blame him for not wanting FSSR states as part of NATO, though.

    657:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit

    Mercer's right up there with the Koch bros and Murdoch, once I get that order of tumbrels.

    658:

    Bring Back Mammoths!

    former Chair of the Committee to Save the Brontosaurus (successful campaign)

    659:

    You wrote: And one more thing... a lot of narrative about Russian interference implies the existence of nearly omniscient and omnipresent intelligence agency ... Don't be silly. Some of it was in collaboration with American billionaires, money launderers, and the ever-popular Cambridge Analytica's guidance.

    660:

    heteromeles @ 646 That provides some evidence for what some people have long suspected - that there is a limit or bound ( probably itself with fuzzy edges ) beyond which quantum variations cannot be directly observed in having macroscopic effects - and the "world" reverts to a "Pure" classical state. Fun times

    661:

    Well, it's only evidence if they do the experiment, and the friends of the experimenters don't go into superposition. It would be cool if they did though.

    662:

    How useful is that map, though? Comparing it with what I already know is difficult because what little I do know about farming relates exclusively to the British Isles, and the scale of the map is too small to extract much information relating to that small area (especially since the size of the area on the map is comparable with the size of the compression artefacts).

    But it seems to be showing large areas of Britain and Ireland in deep purple ("animal food and biofuel") with a misleading lack of context, and it's likely that they've done the same thing everywhere else too - shown what areas are used for but taken no account of why. And certainly in the British Isles the "why" is that you can't grow food crops in those areas. You can use them for sheep and cattle because grass does grow there quite happily, but you can't grow any plants that humans can eat directly, for reasons like topography, geology, and weather. I am confident that this is also true for much of the rest of the map, simply because plants that humans can eat are so much more finicky in general than plants that humans can't eat but herbivores that have evolved to do it can.

    So a useful version of the map would depict not simply what is grown where, but what is grown where in relation to what is optimal for there. On such a map the purple areas would usefully show where we can do better. As it is they conflate areas where we can do better with areas where we're already making the best of what can be done there, so it's not all that helpful.

    663:

    (Note that I have no disagreement with the point that feeding corn to cows is dumb.)

    664:

    Might want to reread: the caption on the map (https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed) says "Crops grown for food (green) versus for animal feed and fuel (purple)." So they're talking about crops grown for animal feed, not areas where crops can't be grown.

    In the case of Ireland, where I just spent a bit of googling ("percent of crops grown for animal food") it appears that most of the corn crop is grown for cattle food during the winter, although the cattle in other sites are considered "grass fed" (maize is biologically a grass, but I'm not sure whether they meant corn here). Given that it's Ireland, I'm not sure how much of the barley crop is going into animals versus malting rooms, but it's currently considered more animal than human food. You can do the others yourself, if you wish.

    I do know that Iowa grows a lot of corn for ethanol (due to government subsidies) and for cattle feed, and that's the center of that big purple blot in North America. There are websites (e.g. http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/livestock-feed-and-habitat-destruction/) that claim that 33% of ag lands are used exclusively to grow crops for animal feed, but I'm still trying to find out where that figure came from).

    665:

    A take-down of Paul Ryan featuring a view of the Republican Party whose downfall he participated in:

    Culture-war politics had previously been seen as the glue that stuck together a disparate coalition of voters behind a party whose real agenda was to support big business, “law and order,” low taxes on the rich and expansionist foreign policy. But as Pat Buchanan astutely perceived way back in 1992 (in a truly terrifying speech I witnessed in person), ground-level Republican voters only wanted the culture war and barely tolerated that other stuff. In fact, except for unleashing cops against poor people, they actively disliked it: They were totally fine with government spending for programs they actually used, as long as the money could be steered away from black people and immigrants

    https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-paul-ryan-will-go-down-worst-house-speaker-ever

    666:

    "So they're talking about crops grown for animal feed, not areas where crops can't be grown."

    No, that's what I'm on about - the "feeding animals" colouring includes areas where the only "crop" you can grow is grass to feed animals. Ireland is great for producing grass, but a lot of it is no good for anything else. So grass is the major "crop", both as direct pasturage and as something which is harvested for hay/silage. The use of Ireland's human-edible cereal production to feed cattle comes about because there's simply not much of Ireland where you can grow cereals, but there is loads of it where you can grow cows, so "finishing" cattle is where most of the demand for cereals is, but on the other hand there's a lot less "finishing" per cow because there's so much good grass. If you mandated that Ireland was only allowed to grow human-edible crops, you'd get that cereal output back, but you'd not get much more cereal production, and the total amount of food produced by Ireland would go down.

    667:

    Since no one's mentioned beans yet. Beans are the go-to for improving soil quality in backyard gardens in my neck of the woods mostly via nitrogen fixation. And, beans are a good source of complete non-meat/vegan protein.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/30-heat-tolerant-strains-of-beans-identified/

    668:

    In this future there are multiple types of cars, but all of them are low-slung and aerodynamic. Not busses. Not SUVs. Not "shuttles." They're more like cars in the version of I Robot which starred Will Smith, but taken to limousine dimensions and up to 8-9 feet wide. Since nobody buys a car for themselves any more (outside of extremely rich people) design is not an issue (there are no buyers to please,) outside mirrors aren't there to mar the aerodynamics, and there is no necessity for a radiator grile; thus cars in this future are generally built to seriously maximize airflow, so one brand is generally indistinguishable from another, and most passenger cars top out at 5 feet high or so.

    As to carrying soil, the use of cars for any kind of package transport is distinctly secondary; if you want super-cheap shipping and don't care whether your package takes a year to arrive at it's destination you stick it in a car; the routing system will get it there sooner or later. Meanwhile if the government decides that lots of something must be distributed right away, a bit gets flipped and humans are inconvenienced for a day or two while the crucial supplies are delivered in a very granular way, as in "Tell the routing system to deposit one of these on each doorstep in America ASAP"

    The routing system is not government owned. It's an open-source system developed by the protagonist, who picked the worst time ever to release an Open Source system.

    669:

    It looks like there's a mapping problem, but I don't think it's quite what you mean.

    The counterexample on the map is the American West, which is mostly ranch land. By your logic, it should be purple, but instead the purple is in the Mississippi drainage--corn and soy country nowadays (and sadly. They used to grow more there). Thing is, if the map is honest, it should be mapping crops that can be used for humans or animals. We can't eat grass, so why record it? Indeed, it's not that easy to find fresh grass production (not hay or straw) and ranchers calling themselves "grass farmers" was kind of a 1980s Joel Salatin kind of thing.

    The problem may be that you can get crop data for the counties of Ireland (for example), so the map won't show individual crop fields, but the entire county, giving an overly large view of where the crops are grown.

    670:

    RonaldP @ 588: No, you have to file a tax return because Intuit and the like want to keep taking your money. There have been efforts to reduce filing to the IRS asking you if this information is correct (we don't have enough of a nanny state for them to be sure of your marital status or how many children you have, so they would need you to double check a few things), and then give you your money back, but the tax prep industry lobbies hard to kill that when it comes up.

    If you have a simple return (all income reported on W-2 or 1099 and no complicated deductions), you can get the tax filing software for free from the IRS web site. I used the free version of Turbo Tax for a number of years (before I became old enough to qualify for free tax preparation assistance from my credit union).

    Technically, you only have to file a Federal Tax Return if you OWE income tax. IF you are a wage earner and sufficient taxes have been withheld from your wages you don't really have to file a return. You can just let it ride. The problem comes up if you're under-withheld and it turns out you owe additional taxes. They'll come after you for the tax & penalties.

    If you've been over-withheld, they're perfectly happy to keep the over-payment and won't come after you for not claiming your refund. Most people have to file because they don't know whether they're going to owe taxes or not until they complete the forms.

    671:

    CharlerK @ 592: So a union of the English-speaking peoples is obviously out, a racist, exclusionary, backwards-looking federation. But ditch the USA and build off the existing Commonwealth. Now here is a world spanning super-nation with a population(2.3 billion) larger than the EU, tremendously diverse and and including many regions that will suffer the worst from global warming.

    "A union of English speaking peoples" wouldn't have to be racist, exclusionary or backwards looking even if it did include the USA.

    672:

    Apparently, somebody just wants to remember good old days of Red Scare propaganda and tell us that in Russia there's no freedom of press and freedom of speech and everyone only speaks what has been permitted by the Party. Well, the actual red Scare propaganda of the 1980s can be turned into Soviet propaganda of the same time by switching good guys and bad guys. Both were pure bollocks mostly

    Now what we have is the resident clown Zhirinovsky, a leader of political party, spewing nonsense in the public discussion. I suppose, in free and democratic state he would have been put down and gagged for embarrassing the Parliament with nationalistic and anti-American bravado. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idcX0ePYh2k Here we see his criticism towards Putin. Not because he is too much of a Putin. But because he is insufficiently Putin. So I dare you to watch it until the end. Won't do. I was fed up with so-called "Liberal Democratic Party" about 20 years ago – precisely due to them being resident clowns. This kind of opposition doesn't count (goes for the Just Russia and Communists as well). `If we look at what they're doing instead of what they say – why, they support the Czar in everything! (Benefits reform? Pensions reform? Pension fund transfer "freeze" to spend it on megaprojects? Oligarchs not having to pay Russian taxes because sanctions? Were there any meaningful protests from Zhirinovsky or Zyuganov and their cohorts? And tell about freedom of the press in Russia to some journalists who were beaten up because of their work uncovering the rampant corruption. Maybe they'll have a good laugh.

    And dont't forget that the most democratic and progressive constitution in the world in 1936 was the USSR one. A.k.a. "The Stalin's Constitution".

    In reality, though, the position of Russia is more balanced - Russia has no intention, no resources, no reason to intervene into somebody elections, it can only make the best use of presented situation. Because modern democracy is a fiction and elections do not change anything for Russia. The difference is minimal, with Hillary, there would have been exactly the same amount of aggression and war, except the hysteria would probably reach the stage where people would lose their sanity in public, not on the sidelines. Well, I don't agree with that. Actually, with Hillary there could have been a wee bit less foaming at the mouth in the US. And all that brouhaha in Russia was... educating. Making Trump an honorary Cossack?! MPs celebrating him being elected?! That, sir, is called bollocks. AndI do think that there were some attempts to influence the elections – like paying some talking heads on TV, using RT to push the agenda... isn't it something that BBC, Voice of America, Al-Jazeera and many, many other channels, stations and organisations are doing – trying to push their (or their masters') vision? Propaganda (and smear campaigns) in the time of elections wasn't some new product of "troll factories" invented by sinister Russian KGB spymasters. They had it in Ancient Greece and Rome already. But again – to blame someone for your shortcomings is so tempting and universal...

    Now, let's see: I was talking about Russian media, of course. The same media that see The Daily Mail as a reliable source. I thought you were talking about yourself. In a sense of a reliable source, these media are very reliable to confirm another s*storm of falsification when it comes towards Russia. But nothing much more. You see, I have that funny habit to cross-check the sources. And some Russian news sites just have those links below the article with the source they used... and too often it says something like The Daily Mail. Recently they found out about The Sun... and I hope no one tells them about The Onion. But yes, there still is real original journalism – actually, we have recently started getting some more of that. Not due to the censorship being relaxed but due to the situation deteriorating so rapidly.

    The Orange One Aha! Dog whistles! Well, isn't it a surprise, I just checked the related search request, because I've never ever heard anybody in this country to associate DT with anything orange, and the only search result I get is about 2 years old. Which probably means that somebody did not spend nearly enough time in related news to pick up the latest rumours and fashions. Yup. 2 years are about right and I do know he's mostly lost that funny hue now. I tend to read more about his trade wars and flip-flopping and sabre-rattling. I'm not hip, I know.

    So let's agree to disagree and let's get back on track re: Brexit (or is it now: Surviving global warming after Brexit?)

    673:

    whitroth @ 651: And here I thought he'd already picked out his dacha on the Black Wea, or maybe it's in Saudi Arabia....

    I dunno' Do either of them have extradition treaties with the US?

    674:

    Did anybody stumble upon any studies regarding biofuels and their impact on CO2 levels? I remember reading something a few years ago about wood chips being largely carbon-neutral when used as a fuel (Tree fixes carbon; we burn the tree; carbon is released. Rinse, repeat.)

    What sent me thinking in that direction were two things. First, a book. The author tries to make some Anarcho-Libertarian society work, and their way of solving the problem of resources is farming GM algae in the open waters. There's actually some real-world work done on that kind of algae, but they usually need a bio-reactor, which is a) expensive and b) needs a lot of energy to operate.

    The second piece was stumbled upon while checking a map app. I stumbled upon a company which tries to produce a way to farm algae essentially in the open pond or simple vats. No need for an expensive bio-reactor... and the first use they propose for their research is the production of biofuels. Which in turn means that moving away from petroleum-based fuels may be more practical while at least reducing the environmental impact.

    This may be a viable pathway for the move away from petroleum (if we can all agree to allow the use of abovementioned gm algae, that is).

    675:

    Since the conversation has drifted towards Russia, I'd like to share this tidbit:

    When Trump announced that the US was leaving the INF treaty because it was outdated, it seems that he wasn't the only one who thought that way. I found this article from 2007:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/12/russia.usa1

    In that article, Putin is citing the same deficiencies which Trump cited to withdraw.

    676:

    On a different topic, let's look at what Iran's been doing:

    https://www.businessinsider.com/r-iran-navy-launches-stealth-warship-in-the-gulf-2018-12

    Here is a summary of the first article

  • Iran has built a stealth destroyer that can stay at sea for up to 5 months
  • The destroyer is likely to visit Venezuela within the new year. Maybe they're planning to establish a naval base there within the near future? Would that base be protected by Iran's missiles? Would Maduro's regime? If so, goodbye Monroe Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
  • Iran is looking to establish naval bases in Yemen and Syria. I'm sure Israel and Saudi Arabia would love this
  • https://www.businessinsider.com/ap-iran-says-it-has-added-2-mini-submarines-to-its-naval-fleet-2018-11

    I'm not sure how to judge the second article. For anyone with naval experience: Are those subs significant, or an insignificant development?

    677:

    Moz @ 665 That Buchanan/Ryan speech/proposal is open fascism or very close to it, isn’t it?

    SFR @ 667 Err .. see my # 622? I specifically mentioned BEANZ ( meanz fartz ) back there … “Heat tolerance” huh? Could be a good idea, because although a lot of beans grown here are not frost-hardy, they didn’t like the prolonged hot & dry summer this year – my fresh bean supply “dried up” for about 8 weeks this year … OTOH, things like Broad Beans will overwinter ( I test-sowed some leftovers in mid-October & they are doing nicely ) but really cannot take even a moderate S-British summers’s heat, But then the whole “Pea” family is amazingly varied – from the Yellow Vetchling – an annual wildflower about 5 cm tall all the way up to huge street trees like False Acacia/Black Locust tree

    JBS @ 670 ARRGH! And the US are continually claiming that their taxes are lower & that we have a commonist bureaucracy … By comparison, HMRC forms are EASY - & as previously commented, if you are on PAYE, you don’t even have to bother …

    Ioan @ 676 That Destroyer is far too slab-sided to be properly stealth ( I think ) – however the mini-subs might be a real threat to outsiders, once you are inside, past the Straits of Hormuz – elsewhere, not so much. Note the very limited range?

    678:

    Yes, actually virtually every article in Russian media I read on this subject contains a reminder that both Russia and the US would accuse the other party of breaching the treaty and there were articles quite similar to The Guardian's about the treaty being outdated because China (and maybe India, Pakistan and other countries) are not included.

    679:

    It is my understanding that the main obstacle to using Irish grain directly for human consumption (aside from beer and whiskey production) is moisture content. Simply Irish grain is too wet for modern milling and it is cheaper to import naturally dry grain than to dry the local grain to the required content.

    680:

    Well, I do "only" have a school level qualification in land use geography, but I am aware of Scottish moors and Canadian tundra and taiga (and the like). The only vegetable "crops" that tend to flourish on them are grass (known food uses being feeding cattle, deer, geese, moor ponies and sheep), heather (known food uses being feeding deer, grouse, possibly moor ponies, and flavouring ale), and trees (known food uses being edible nuts). It's also well known that most of the vegetable intake of Arctic Canada for most of the year comes from the food group "tinned".

    681:

    The article was talking about the theory and, as such, is evidence for what Greg Tingey said. As with general relativity, quite a lot of theoretical predictions have not been verified by experiment - but, until you analyse the theory, you don't know what experiments to do. Interestingly, there are four previous precedents, which I know well:

    Classic physics is similarly inconsistent if you ignore error bounds on measurements.

    Statistics ditto if you assume determinism in your analysis.

    Special relativity and memory consistency in computers (that's two!) are inconsistent, too, if you assume a single 'arrow of time'.

    There's nothing especially new about the conclusion of the article, but it has phrased the conundrum clearly and simply, as is needed for Nature readers. What's clear is that we need a new variant of logic, exactly as the previous ones did. This sort of thing is at the heart of my assertions that the claims of the impossibility of FTL information transfer are dogma, not science; it may be impossible, but there is no proof. And, if there are even more startling oddities, I am not smart enough to predict them!

    682:

    You have COMPLETELY misunderstood what I am saying. No, I am not supporting the current 'developed' world approach to meat (and even milk) production and consumption, as I said explicitly in my first post. The serious disadvantages of extreme veganism (which also excludes eating insects, incidentally) are:

    1) It is extremely hard, almost impossible, to provide a reasonably-balanced diet in most parts of the world, certainly without consuming an excessive number of calories. Beans, oats etc. are pretty good, but are not well-balanced in amino acids. And there are NO natural vegetable sources of vitamin B12, other than some seaweeds.

    2) Converting woodland, grassland and scrubland to growing crops is incompatible with allowing a reasonably natural ecology, especially animals. As you know, ecosystem destruction is THE main reason so many animals are endangered, as well as quite a few plants, fungi etc. Careful woodland management is VASTLY better in this respect.

    3) Full-on veganism means humans completely abandoning quite a lot of areas where the only land is too marginal for food crops, and the extinction of most of our strains of domestic animals (and even the species, in some cases, unless they are kept in zoos).

    That is why the combination of growing crops for staples, with some grazing (especially on land unsuitable for crops) is so effective. But, to repeat, how we currently do it in the UK (let alone the USA!) is entirely wrong - we know how to do it right, but don't.

    But there is an equally important aspect: water management. Permanent vegetation with an adequate understory, including coppiced woodland, appropriately planted tree crops (nuts, fruit, breadfruit etc.), and the others mentioned above is MUCH better at holding water and preventing sudden downpours from causing trouble than even the best dammed and terraced cropland. This has been shown time and time again.

    683:

    Also to Pigeon (#622).

    Yes, precisely. Actually, even hazel struggles on Scottish moorland, though birch can be tapped for sugar. Interesting, this applies to much of the south Island of New Zealand, because the slopes are far too extreme for any form of terracing. This is why we should go back to eating a small amount of hunted and culled meat that has lived all of its life on natural grazing and 'waste' materials(*), in areas that are not used for crops for one reason and another. Bring back 3+ year old Highland mutton, from sheep grown for (hard) wool!

    More importantly, the same thing applies to places like much of the African savanna, where the collectable water supply isn't up to irrigating more than a small proportion of the land, and crops can't be grown for much of the year without irrigation. The reason that the map is misleading is that the cattle are grazed on the rest of the land - yes, there are still too many of them :-(

    (*) Including the traditional way of feeding pigs (still done in China, I believe), feeding cattle on brassica stalks etc., turning fowl out after a grain harvest, and even crop rotation in places like the UK, where reverting to grassland with livestock on it for a year or two improves fertility no end.

    684:

    That's why modern farms have gas driers (yes, CO2). Wet grain will not store. It's fashion - even when I was young, pearl (milled) barley was a common food - that's in the island to the east, but I am pretty sure that Ireland was the same.

    685:

    Absolutely no evidence, but, when I heard about Brexit, my first thought was...

    'What sort of idjits running a service economy would leave their principal market for services?'

    However, my second thought was...

    'Man, NYC is going to do well out of this.'

    I mean, I'd put Brexit down to ordinary ignorance and racism. It'd be comforting to think that it could be blamed on some sort of dark hand. Sadly, I don't have that much faith in humanity. The idiot politicians well reflect the voting populace.

    ...but... ...if I was looking for a bunch of fairly unethical people posed to make profits in the billions from the ruin of the UK...I'd be looking at the US, specifically NYC.

    686:

    I am not hopeful, but really, really would like this one to work. The past decades have seen a gradual erosion of Parliament in favour of Ministerial unaccountability. But my guess is that, as usual, the House of Commons will wimp out at the final hurdle. "Be like that, then!"

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-live-latest-update-theresa-may-deal-vote-geoffrey-cox-legal-advice-parliament-contempt-a8666006.html

    688:

    I think the most simple version of the facts is that the universe has some flexibility to it, such that there is no capacity to ultimately measure physics exactly. If not, we would be living in a very fragile version of space-time. So all universal laws, Newtownian, Relatavistic, or Quantum based are essentially probabilistic rather than perfect. This lets the universe "bend" rather than "break" when highly energetic or unexpected events occur, and this flexibility keeps the universe from breaking down or blowing up.

    689:

    Regardless of whether Brexit was caused by Russian interference, American interference, or some combination of the two, the ground was only fertile for such interference because of "ignorance and racism."

    Once again, both the UK and US are blowing their demographic transitions.

    690:

    Re: 'Err .. see my # 622? I specifically mentioned BEANZ ( meanz fartz ) back there …'

    Oops - sorry about that must have scanned through too quickly. The heat-hardy varieties are interesting though.

    Have been wondering whether humans on a bean-rich diet would out-fart cattle, i.e., that other major contributor to escalating global warming. Maybe Heteromeles knows?

    691:

    I've disagreed with your analysis before. I still think that Putin did want to interfere in the US, because he wanted Hillary to have few coattails This is a typical post hoc error made in politics, you can't really prove or disprove it to someone without attracting to some opinionated bullshit. I'm not going to argue then.

    that is, help a lot of Democrats get elected to Congress and the Senate Do you have ANY IDEA, how much does it cost? Can you say to me ANY MECHANISM that can provide that after 2014 sanctions? Enlighten me, for I fail to even imagine how it is possible!

    I really can't blame him for not wanting FSSR states as part of NATO, though. And I think I explained already that this is very much the opposite. Quite opposite happened, during his first two terms Putin proposed to NATO to join forces and cease hostility, but what he got back is a war in Georgia(as soon as he stepped up from presidency, no less).

    692:

    Won't do. I was fed up with so-called "Liberal Democratic Party" about 20 years ago – precisely due to them being resident clowns. This kind of opposition doesn't count (goes for the Just Russia and Communists as well). If you know situation in country the you should understand damn well that this is not a truth and in fact a misinformation spread by "liberal" opposition. Because "liberals" insist they are only opposition that is valid and should eventually take over (despite of the fact that their level of support is approximately stable around 2%). We do have some of such people to occupy a number of government and non-government posts and they are the only ones pro-western media would listen with delight - hence "opposition".

    Benefits reform? Pensions reform? Pension fund transfer "freeze" to spend it on megaprojects? Oligarchs not having to pay Russian taxes because sanctions? Were there any meaningful protests from Zhirinovsky or Zyuganov and their cohorts? Now you should also be aware that this is a straight lie. Every opposition party voted against those reforms and even some from United Russia did. But it still got through because of their dominance of State Duma. IN all of the three readings it was pretty much the same. Finally, the president took responsibility and urged people to preserve order and stability.

    And you know what is the best fucking part of this? These reforms are liberal ones. They favor deregulation of large capital, increase of retirement age, tax reform, and so on and so forth. The same fucking thing everybody in the world does. The "unpopular", but "necessary" things. The things that attract capital and increase wealth, if you trust the financial institutions. Putin actually agreed with them because he does support liberal values, the will of his people - all of them, and not just privileged number of them.

    What those libtards did then? They swallowed it and asked for more. They want blood to be spilled now. They pointed fingers at him and said that he is responsible for everything. They want to put all of the responsibility for every unpopular change on the single person, make him a scapegoat for all their sins since the crash of USSR, and ride on his back to a top seat of power. This is idealistic, greedy, short-sighted, incompetent attempt at involvement into a state affairs and Putin himself might actually take a grudge for that. And God forbid if regular people will realize they've been used by a bunch of liars with connections to decadent oligarchy, emigrated corrupt shills like Hodor, or foreign intelligence. This "true" opposition, as they call themselves, will be so boned, they won't even see it coming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V_jeKieMEw

    You see, I have that funny habit to cross-check the sources. And some Russian news sites just have those links below the article with the source they used... and too often it says something like The Daily Mail. There's no reason to switch between Daily Mail, The Sun, The Independent and so on. If they eat out of the same garbage can, they are only capable to recite approved opinions of the trusted politicians, and each other. Some PM may 20 words worth of information, they will make 2000 words of an article and repost it 200 times a day - but the amount of useful information will stay the same. It is a simple theory of information.

    693:

    Our host at comment #306 makes the case better than I could.

    694:

    Re: C02 capture & O2 release - beyond stately trees

    Recall hearing that fast growing plants are best at both CO2 capture and O2 release so why wait 50 years for elms, oaks or Douglas Firs to reach their mature height. Okay, these trees are stately and create a lovely canopy but if being able to continue to breathe is the primary objective, then plant what will do the job.

    695:

    It's also a myth. Under most circumstances, plants are limited by the availability of water, sunlight, nitrogen and other nutrients - only in the last two cases is there much variation between trees and other plants, and it's not always the way that you imply. Often trees are better, not least because their roots may run deeper.

    696:

    Minibus... is that like a jitney, which my folks and I would take in Atlantic City in the 50's and 60's: larger than a full-sized van, half the size (or less) of a regular bus. Ran frequently, and would let you off at the corner you asked for.

    We do need them, as opposed to the insance, one-driver giant economy buses, that are two buses connected with a flexible joiner.

    Oh, wait, you'd have more people driving, which costs waaaay more than the cost of a giant bus and its maintenance and.... (yeah, right).

    697:

    Paging Mr. Godel! Paging Mr. Godel?

    698:

    Actually, I understand it is belching rather than farting from grazing animals like cattle that causes most of the problems. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-livestock-emissions/fighting-global-warming-one-cow-belch-at-a-time-idUSKBN1K91CU

    699:

    Still waiting for the "paleo diet" suckers to rush out to buy bugs, and grubs.... Termites? Locusts dipped in honey?

    700:

    I can think of one or two people I'd like to be in superposition with....

    Hmmm, as I typed that, I realized that I could interpret that two ways, one being who I'd like to be close to, and the other being who I'd like to be able ti tell they're FIRED (preferably out of a cannon).

    701:

    Thahks for reading what I meant to write (Black Sea), rather than what my fingers typoed....

    702:

    Birch syrup is very tasty - I've gotten several bottles from friends in Alaska.

    703:

    Ioan @ 676: On a different topic, let's look at what Iran's been doing: ... Are those subs significant, or an insignificant development?

    Take a look at a map of the Persian Gulf. Note that 75% of Saudi Arabia's oil exports pass through the Straits of Hormuz, along with 100% of Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar & the UAE's oil exports.

    IF Iran decides it's in their interest to choke off shipping through the Straits of Hormuz, those subs are perhaps semi-significant only because it expands Iran's existing fleet of mini subs to over a dozen and those submarines are capable of laying mines. I say "semi" significant because Iran has a lot of other resources they could bring to bear even without the submarines. The US Navy could likely force the straits back open, but the casualties would be significant. OTOH, I think Iran's chances of establishing Naval Bases in either Yemen or Venezuela are next to nil. Saudi Arabia has their own plans for establishing a port in Yemen. They want an oil port, but you can expect a "friendly" naval presence would be made welcome.

    The real question is "What could make Iran decide closing the Straits of Hormuz is in their interest?"

    FWIW, the Monroe Doctrine has been a dead letter for years.

    704:

    Yes. Fore-gut fermentation means that cows can be quite good flamethrowers under appropriate circumstances. The "dragon" myth is actually a distorted folk memory of an extinct civilisation who recognised methane emissions as a potential problem and so fitted their cows with pilot lights.

    705:

    I don't exactly disagree, but would add that such was heavily promoted by the right, for decades. It is, of course, to the benefit of the 1%. Think what terrible things might happen if alla Those Folks looked at each other, and turned around, and... you know what happens when

    706:

    Troutwaxer @ 689: Regardless of whether Brexit was caused by Russian interference, American interference, or some combination of the two, the ground was only fertile for such interference because of "ignorance and racism."

    Once again, both the UK and US are blowing their demographic transitions.

    My take on it is that BREXIT is home-grown stupidity, with the outside interference merely helping to tip the balance further towards the stupid side.

    707:

    (sorry, was distracted by a user, hit enter before)...

    ...when a family fight is approached by someone from outside the fmaily (like the cops)?

    708:

    I'm not sure how to judge the second article. For anyone with naval experience: Are those subs significant, or an insignificant development?

    Iran is a regional power; mini-subs and destroyers and anti-shipping missiles are great for interdicting the Persian Gulf, less great for controlling trade in the Indian Ocean, and pretty much useless on a global scale.

    Iran is the geographical core of the former Persian Empire, with a population of around 70 million. If it's per-capita GDP and productivity was the highest in the world, it'd be about as significant on a global scale as Germany or Japan or the UK: in other words, a second-tier great power at best. (The very peculiar conditions that allowed Germany and Japan to make a bid for global reach in the 1930s and 1940s simply don't apply now, and arguably will never apply again.)

    What made Iran significant was the availability of cheap oil in proximity to the Suez Canal, during the Dreadnought Race that led up to the first world war. And subsequently as a major oil exporter and blue-water naval base within striking range of the USSR, which made it a desirable client state for first the UK and then after 1953 the USA.

    Since 1979, Iran has rather decisively split from the west. Since the protests of 2012, the aging post-revolutionary regime has been on borrowed time—on notice that demographic transition, the global shift away from oil, and a young, educated, increasingly urban and less religious population are less and less happy with the current order. Alas, GWB and Trump prefer to wave a big stick at Iran to rally their own base rather than normalizing relations so that western soft power can be bought to bear, which probably shores up the regime for another decade or so.

    But in terms of global significance? The only real significance is that Iran is the center of gravity of Shi'ite Islam, and the Wahabbite revolutionaries running Saudi Arabia hate their guts, so there's an ongoing cold war (hot in Yemen right now) tearing the guts out of the Islamic world and distracting their attention from climate change. Which will bite them hard much sooner than it'll hit some others ...

    709:

    Well!

    Excerpt: In an historic and unprecedented blow to the authority of a sitting prime minister, Britain’s House of Commons has found the nation’s government to be “in contempt of Parliament.” The formal censure came after Theresa May’s government refused to publish the internal legal advice it has received about Brexit. Acknowledging defeat, Andrea Leadsom, the Conservative leader of the House, accepted that the detailed legal findings would now have to be made public. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/british-government-in-contempt-of-parliament-over-brexit

    710:

    That has been used in some science fiction stories :-) But, more to the point, the converse of that is used to avoid event horizons and quantum mechanics from breaking the laws of physics as we know them. I am not good enough to know if the proofs that they do that are solid or not, though I suspect that they make a few other assumptions (such as independence of quantum observations).

    711:

    This is a speculation of why the government has been so paranoid about the advice. Given that GCHQ was spying on France and Germany (both commercial and political) and passing it on to the USA, and unilaterally breaking treaies has been widely proposed by even government brexiteers, this should surprise nobody.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/contempt-parliament-brexit-uk-government-theresa-may-legal-advice-attorney-general-a8667296.html

    712:

    Offtopic. Something came up on my news feed.

    I think, we are finally at the point. I mean, this can take 3 years or 10 years, but there's no chance to return to good old times when filming videos meant something. Using computer games for fake news footage is already a stone age technology (usually it was reverse psychology anyway). I don't think that for now I'm going to believe any "hot" videos with less than Full HD resolution, but I wonder how much will it take to catch up.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayPqjPekn7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qg5I5vhX7Q

    713:

    The USA turning the current economic warfare into a military blockade.

    714:

    Which has the amusing side effect of saving Iran the trouble of blockading the strait themselves... they can use Palestinian-level equipment to keep the US forces just edgy enough that no-one civilian is willing to go through. Which will be even more the case after the first time the US "accidentally" fire on a civilian ship.

    715:

    I really struggle with the term "accident" when it means "we correctly identified the target, accurately fired on it and successfully destroyed it. But later we discovered that we shouldn't have done that, so now it's an accident".

    This happens so often on the road that in Aotearoa and Australia even the government now prefers to call them crashes not accidents. As has been pointed out, attaching criminal liability to an accident is unusual so using the term prejudges the outcome of the investigation.

    716:

    Airlines? I think Charlie and others have it right...

    Excerpt: UK and EU must 'wake up' to risk of grounded flights after Brexit, airline body warns

    ERA has called for an immediate post-Brexit aviation agreement. The airline umbrella group has warned that canceled flights remains a real possibility from March 30 next year. Airline ownership structures could be forced into change in the post-Brexit landscape.

    --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/04/uk-and-eu-at-risk-of-grounded-flights-after-brexit-era-warns.html

    717:

    My understanding is that the point of this thought experiment (based on https://www.quantamagazine.org/frauchiger-renner-paradox-clarifies-where-our-views-of-reality-go-wrong-20181203/) is that the normal assumptions of classical quantum mechanics cannot all be true.

    The three assumptions about classical quantum dynamics are:

  • It's universally applicable (e.g. there's no size limit based on decoherence or some other phenomenon above which classical physics applies and below which quantum mechanics applies),
  • It's consistent (meaning people using quantum mechanics to predict the outcome of the same event make the same predictions) and
  • It's not paradoxical (e.g. if one statement is true, then its opposite cannot be true).
  • According to the thought experiment, any two of these can be true, but all three cannot be true.

    If they figure out a way to test it by automating the friends as some form of quantum computer, then we might get a way to sort out which of the explanations of quantum theory (many worlds, classical, quantum Bayesianism, etc.) is correct, because various theories throw out one of the assumptions. For example, theories employing the decoherence of large systems into classical physics throw out the first assumption, quantum Bayesianism (QBism) throws out the second assumption, and Many Worlds throws out the third assumption.

    That makes this kind of cool, although it's probably going to be awhile before anyone figures out how to test it. Creating a quantum computational device capable of being a virtual friend is just the start.

    718:

    Speaking as a dragon (silver), I object to your vile assertion that we are cattle.

    Now, given that we like to sleep a lot, and play with our food, perhaps large, scaly, firebreathing cats, perhaps....

    719:

    Ah, I see... you’re objecting to the “Putin authorised it”. Fair enough, although I would point out that there’s a difference between “assessment available from intelligence sources” and “proof suitable for court, or airing in public”.

    Does that mean that you now admit that (on the basis of available evidence) Salisbury was, in fact, a GRU operation? Not some kind of false flag, CIA, MI6, oligarch, conspiracy theory?

    Please note, I managed to disagree with you, without suggesting that you’re a paid shill, or “an arsehole” (as you suggested to Heteromeles @644). Perhaps you might consider taking up politeness? After all, you’re going to be contradicted occasionally, it’s not as if you’re correct all the time?

    720:

    For example, theories employing the decoherence of large systems into classical physics throw out the first assumption [universalism]

    I will immediately and vehemently deny understanding this stuff, but AIUI decoherence doesn't toss out out universality, it just dissolves quantum reality at large scales into a statistical mush that we perceive as classical reality. So we are quantum beings, but at such a large scale that the quantum weirdness averages itself out. Metaphorically, it's like the classical theory of gasses being an approximation to the statistical mechanics treatment.

    Or something like that.

    721:

    Errr.... not quite.

    The article says that the mission might last five months - not that the vessel can stay at sea unsupported for five months. Typically, you achieve this through Replenishment At Sea, which is why the Royal Navy has the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (the Twitter feed for HMS Queen Elizabeth has pictures of her replenishing from one of the new RFA “Tide” class support ships). AIUI, a destroyer or frigate will refuel every week or so, in order to avoid dropping below 50% in their fuel tanks.

    Secondly, Iran has form for implausible claims surrounding stealthy equipment - recently, this involved a mock-up aircraft (the Qaher) presented as if it were a flyable prototype, to the amusement of many professionals... they’re good, no doubt, and worthy of respect, but they’ve got form for... “exaggeration”, shall we say.

    722:

    I can see at least three potential flaws in that gedanken experiment, but am not enough of a quantum mechanic to know if any are genuine, let alone fundamental.

    The simplest one to explain is that the experiment assumes that an outcome is simple - i.e. that it is possible to determine the polarisation without causing other interactions. If that fails, the whole experiment falls apart. I doubt very much that quantum mechanics fails on a macroscopic scale, but can easily believe that effects that can be ignored (or, at least controlled for) on a microscopic scale become dominant on a macroscopic one.

    723:

    Re: Trees - (why are deep roots better?)

    Maybe ... however if time is a constraint, planting a mix of shrubs and trees is preferable to only planting trees. The article below suggests that which part of the plant is best at pulling out the CO2 varies by plant. Would be interested in reading studies that clearly show roots outperforming other parts of a plant.

    https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/trees-and-shrubs-with-high-carbon-fixationconcentration-2168-9776-S1-003.php?aid=54948

    724:

    Uh hunh. That's the training at gnats problem, because I think they've been using polarization to demonstrate entanglement of photons for quite a while.

    The more fun problem is the notion that large objects--like labs with grad students inside them--can be put into superpositioned states where they are simultaneously measuring photons to be either/both spin up or superposed spin up/down. If we can put grad students, let alone whole labs into states of superposition, well, consider the possibilities...* So far as I know, the biggest objects put into entangled states are on the order of microns, so even with a quantum-lab-with-virtual-friend-on-a-chip, we've still got quite a ways to scale up before something like this might be run as a physical experiment.

    *read Anathem?

    725:

    Here's a solution for both sides of the pond. Promise the Brexiteers and the Trumpsters their own island paradise that they can rule as they see fit and then ship the lot of them off to Antarctica.

    726:

    SFR @ 690 All I can say is DO NOT EVER eat curried baked beans …. ( I made the mistake, just the once ) - mind you spiced Jerusalem Artichokes with beans was almost as bad …

    Whitroth @ 709 AND the EU court ( Or it’s president ) has said that we can cancel Brexit by withdrawing At50, not a problem…. Which puts the Brexiteers’ arses in a crack – May can get out of it – IF she chooses to.

    Hetromeles @ 717 Yes – two CAN be true, but 3 cannot – I agree. My suspicion is that it’s (1) that is “wrong” – for certain values of wrong, as they say.

    727:

    ship the lot of them off to Antarctica.

    Won't work, Antarctica has rules about introducing foreign species and dumping toxic waste. Both are frowned on.

    Although the idea of taking the likes of Trump and Boris down there has a lot of appeal. It's not a nice place, and there's only so much anyone can do to keep a bumblefuck safe. I reckon Trump would be 50/50 on surviving any given hour he spent on McMurdo base. Trump especially is not good at following instructions. Sadly that's more likely to mean he brings pests or leaves rubbish than he commits suicide by accident (do we have a word fore the suicide equivalent of the distinction between murder and manslaughter?).

    728:

    DO NOT EVER eat curried baked beans

    Whyever not? I quite like them and used to eat them regularly. IIRC there was even a tinned curried baked bean sold in NZ at one stage (can't find it now in the one search I tried).

    729:

    I'm not sure the cause is any sort of demographic transition. It isn't like ignorance and racism was less common earlier. Common, sure, but probably not increasing in prevalance. The whole demographic transition is predicated on 49% being noticably different from 50% - which doesn't make sense to me.

    If anything has changed, it probably involved free trade and immigration. About a decade ago, some guy mentioned to me that free trade would soon smear out prosperity - vastly worldwide increase standards of living - and result in a primal scream from not particularly talented white people who suddenly got to live the lifestyle of a prosperous 3rd world national.

    Now, automation hasn't helped and may have dominated.

    While exaggerated, he doesn't seem to have been altogether wrong. There seems to be a common theme in that working people have realized that their lives - relative to the upper middle - have gotton worse. (Lovely, cheap electronics, but you won't be living anywhere close to good schools.)

    Of course, you can argue that Brexit/Trump motivated voters have one dominant theme - xenophobia. But, meh, I suspect they always existed.

    A hopeful take would be that there's a certain amount of inertia in politics. Perhaps democracies will do the right thing after they've exhausted the alternatives... I will say that conservativism has, essentially, successfully baked in a bone-deep hatred of conservatives in much of my peer group.

    730:

    I remember reading something a few years ago about wood chips being largely carbon-neutral when used as a fuel (Tree fixes carbon; we burn the tree; carbon is released. Rinse, repeat.)

    Well maybe. Of course if you ship it from one side of the Atlantic to the other there's a bit of excess carbon from that.

    One of the biggest markets for burning wood for heat is wood pellets in Germany. And North Carolina is (I think) the biggest source of these. So we are cutting down our swamp pines, pelleting them, and shipping them across the ocean so Germany's can be carbon neutral?

    731:

    if you ship it from one side of the Atlantic to the other there's a bit of excess carbon from that.

    Not if the ship is fuelled by biopellets or algae-based biodiesel or wind.

    One of the biggest markets for burning wood for heat is wood pellets in Germany. And North Carolina is (I think) the biggest source of these. So we are cutting down our swamp pines

    Presumably also replanting them, otherwise it's just another source of CO2.

    In other words, it doesn't have to be an emissions source, but right now it almost certainly is.

    732:

    I don't see the demographic transition as being problematic in and of itself. The problem is Conservative panic over the demographic transition. Essentially, the response of the right is to decide that they're not willing to pay for any government service that doesn't cater first and foremost to White people, and as the demographics change this is hurting more and more people, while the Conservatives are panicking harder and harder. Ultimately, all of our discourse in both countries is about this conservative sense of panic, and we are both missing opportunities and failing to solve problems because a huge political block in both countries is refusing to deal with anything else.

    733:

    Also, you have to only burn them at the same rate the carbon released is absorbed by trees you planted. Which means you'd have to plant a lot more trees than you cut down.

    734:

    Don't ever recall canned curried baked beans, but canned chilli baked beans still around.

    735:

    Cattle or cats - doesn't explain the "flying" aspect. Much better explanation of how dragons worked in "The Flight of Dragons" by Peter Dickinson, illustrated by Wayne Anderson from 1979.

    736:

    Moz @ 728 how did the duvet-lifting go, then?

    David L @ 730 Don't, please don't get me started on the German fake Greenies ... I start to rave & shout quite quickly. They are still burning lots of coal, whilst rejecting "Atomkraft", gah.

    737:

    Deeper and more roots gives access to more water and nutrients. Yes, you are definitely right that a phased solution is often better almost irrespective of the purpose, as is a composite solution (hence the woodland with understory). And, of course, the best solution will vary considerably with location.

    738:

    No. That is my point - all they have done is at the microscopic scale. Let me give a simplistic explanation of what might go wrong at a macroscopic scale and might even be a fundamental restriction. Note "might" - I have no reason to believe it or its converse.

    The a measurement of a single value is confounded by the 'noise' from quantum interaction effects in the equipment used to measure that value, AND between that and the equipment used to keep the conditions controlled. Let's say it accumulates 'statistically' - i.e. proportional to the square toot of the number of relevant interactions. In the current experiments, that number is moderatel, and causes only a moderate amount of error. But, once you have to control a macroscopic experiment, the number of relevant interactions hits the roof, and this is no longer true.

    There are some mathematical reasons to believe such problems exist in complex systems, but I don't think they apply in this case. However, as I said, my knowledge of quantum mechanics is completely inadequate to make an educated guess as to whether they might.

    739:

    This is where coppicing comes in, in places where it works. No replanting needed :-) That's how the Kentish iron works were fuelled before coal, after all, and is why there are so many chestnut woods there.

    740:

    Look in a mirror. Misrepresenting people is grossly offensive, and I no longer believe you are doing it accidentally. I have several times remained polite to you after you started to be grossly offensive and abusive towards me, and it did not help. Abusing you seems to, though I don't like doing it and would prefer to not need to :-(

    741:

    For example, the "ass-blasters" in the Tremors series (several films, short-lived "1 hour" broadcast show) spring to mind...

    742:

    Actually illegal as per #727.

    Rockall (UK) is available though... ;-)

    743:

    Well, Heinz curried baked beans were a thing in the UK in the 1980s, and I often had them on toast as a quick tea before going to an evening class.

    745:

    But part of that panic is that the former servant classes (mostly non-white, thanks to the effects of the British Empire on both the UK and the USA) are now influencing mainstream culture. My definition of what "White British" culture actually means has many more non-white influences than my parents' definitions, and theirs had many more non-white influences than my grandparents' definitions did.

    So, not only are they seeing many more people "not like them" than before due to the demographic shift, but they're also seeing their children and grandchildren head culturally away from them.

    To put some random influences in there; at my age, the BBC news would not have any non-white newsreaders on it when my grandparents tuned in, and their papers of choice would not necessarily bother to report on anything that didn't affect white people. My parents at my age would have had to cope with the trail-blazing non-white newsreaders, and were being told about atrocities in former colonies that affected non-white people as part of their news intake, but could easily avoid non-white perspectives in entertainment media. I would struggle to avoid non-white perspectives; I could probably do it (I think), but I'd miss out on most of our mass media in the process, and I would now have to be explicitly looking for material that caters to white supremacists to do so.

    In other words, in three generations, we've gone from "the important parts of the world are effectively white-only", to "white is the default unless otherwise specified, but you can't ignore non-whites" to "you must explicitly look for places where white is the default - non-whites are an important component of mainstream culture".

    Thus, if you're scared of rapid change, you're seeing a huge amount of it culturally; further, you're being told that the rapid changes brought about by technology (such as cheap fast transport) are not, in fact, pure progress, but include significant downsides (such as climate change). On top of that, there's the neoliberal change to the social contract, which means that your children are not necessarily better off than you were at their age, and you are not necessarily better off than your parents were at your age.

    So, you look around. You see all this rapid change, much of which is happening in realms you have no access to, and much of which no longer benefits you or your family. The one thing you can make a stand on is race; it's something you can change locally, and there's always a demagogue around to tell you that it's the thing that's triggering all the change you're scared by (rather than a consequence of other improvements that you want to keep). It's easy to see why you might be willing to believe that it's the "foreigns" at fault, especially the ones that don't look like you; it avoids looking into what you benefited from when you grew up, for a start.

    746:

    That's a very intelligent discussion of the problem. I have copied it to the file which contains my "climate change" book.

    747:

    Paws @ 742 As is Gruinard - yours for £500!

    Simon F @ 745 mostly non-white, thanks to the effects of the British Empire Err ... no, or not in Britain, anyway, my Great-Aunt Rose, who died in her late '90s in I think 1952 was a very junior servant at the Birtish Embassy in Paris in 1870/1 ... she never ever, would tell anyone how she managed to acquire that bayonet (!) No-one messed with my GA Rose .... I wonder why?

    748:

    Yes in Britain, in the 1940s and 1950s (you're looking at an era two generations earlier, the time of my great great grandparents); the effect of two world wars was to give white servants a chance to break out of that social straitjacket, and thus while you would still afford white servants in front-of-house roles, most of the remaining servant employers could not afford to stock back-of-house with a majority white team; instead, you'd bring in women from the Empire to fill that role, whose husbands had moved to the UK to help with the war effort or because they sought a better life filling the service roles left empty when the Great War and then the Second War killed off young men.

    We'd already lost the setup where most upper class families could afford servants; we were now in the process of replacing servant labour with mechanical labour in the upper classes. The lower classes have never been that interesting in culture wars terms; they don't control the available media.

    750:

    Interesting. I notice that both the withdrawal agreement and it seem to be still ignoring the elephant in the room: services(*). It is a pity that there are no (NI) nationalist MPs, because it IS going to cause trouble if people can't cross the border to provide services. It's also going to have a massic impact on the rest of the UK, too, but that's what we asked for :-(

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/761852/05_December-_EU_Exit_Attorney_General_s_legal_advice_to_Cabinet_on_the_Withdrawal_Agreement_and_the_Protocol_on_Ireland-Northern_Ireland.pdf

    (*) At least, I failed to find anything significant in either.

    751:

    Yes, but that's still a bit over-simplistic. I was seen by a black GP in the early 1960s (in Salisbury, no less!), and there were far more non-whites in non-menial jobs than is often realised, not all of whom had started off relatively privileged. But what you say WAS true, to a great extent, just not entirely :-(

    And I agree with your previous post.

    752:

    Sure, but Gruinard Island (disambiguation; there is also a Gruinard Bay and a Gruinard House) has (probably) been de-anthraxed, and is certainly within possible swimming distance of the mainland!

    753:

    Presumably also replanting them, otherwise it's just another source of CO2. In other words, it doesn't have to be an emissions source, but right now it almost certainly is. Actually looks a little like fallacy to me. 1. We start to burn more wood. 2. To have more wood, we need to plant more trees. 3. By planting more trees, we have less CO2. Conclusion: more burning means less CO2.

    If you do plant trees, why would you then need to burn any wood in the first place? Presumably, it will trap a lot of carbon released from below th ground, but you can't really put logs into a coal plant, boiler or fuel tank. So the cycle can't close if we go with other means of reducing emissions.

    754:

    Misrepresenting people is grossly offensive, and I no longer believe you are doing it accidentally.

    I may be mistaken (I'm not afraid to admit when I'm wrong); and via the delights of ambiguity, I may interpret statements in a way that you did not intend. I can assure you, I do not deliberately misrepresent you.

    My mistake appears to have been in my quote; your full sentence @638 read: She had no actual evidence for that, as was admitted later, though she still claims there is definite evidence of the GRU being behind it (which even countries like Germany haven't seen, incidentally).. I should instead have quoted the section in bold; my mistake was to interpret the "no actual evidence" statement as also applying to the rest of the sentence following it. Hence my point about those deeply committed admirers of Salisbury Cathedral.

    I'm also interested in how you hold the contrasting positions that any Russian involvement didn't affect the Trump election / Brexit vote, at least not in any significant way (your post @544); while at the same time, implying that any US+EU involvement in Ukraine was pivotal in causing a coup that drove out Yanukovich and justifying a Russian invasion of Crimea / Donbass (previous threads).

    I happen to agree with you in respect of the former; Brexit was our own mess, and Trump that of the US. I disagree with you on the latter; you appear to be suggesting that the CIA/SIS are an order of magnitude more effective at regime or policy change than SVR/GRU...

    755:

    This blog is not really the best place for a multi-page essay on the changing perceptions of race in British and American culture, nor am I the right person to write such a thing (I am an amateur, not a professional anthropologist). :)

    It's worth noting, though, that it's not about the reality on the ground; it's about the perception of that reality. Your GP in the early 1960s was a rare enough breed that our hypothetical frightened conservative could dismiss them as "an exception" and completely ignore the change they imply. Their 1980s counterpart can only be dismissed by assuming that "because our culture is superior", they will drop their cultural background to become like us. Their 2010s equivalent is clearly part of a shift in "our" culture, and that's the point at which our hypothetical conservative gets scared.

    And I agree that this is a simplification along the lines of "assume a spherical cow". I don't think that any real person actually thought like this; merely that if you look at how society has changed in the last 70 years, you can see how someone could go from not being aware of non-whites as people with valuable cultural backgrounds of their own to "where have all these foreigns come from? They're taking over my country!" without needing to assume that older people are anything other than normal people who've seen the world change, and not completely for the better.

    756:

    "The article says that the mission might last five months - not that the vessel can stay at sea unsupported for five months"

    Good catch, but I only care about its travel distance. In other words, can it travel to the Western Hemisphere, or cross the Pacific?

    "Secondly, Iran has form for implausible claims surrounding stealthy equipment"

    I really don't care about the stealth aspects. In the first draft of that post, I omitted the word stealth, and only added it in later.

    To give my opinion about what Iran is doing

    For the past few decades, Iran's defense policy has generally been to influence its neighborhood and ensure that it does not get invaded by the US. That's the reason for the obsession with the Straits of Hormuz. In my opinion, it's managed to achieve that with its missile program. This has allowed the country to, in essence, relax on that front and begin modernizing its neglected military branches. Since buying foreign military equipment is difficult, they have to build their MIC in-house. That's the significance of the destroyer, the sub, and the aircraft Martin mentioned.

    While Charlie is right that Iran can be a regional power at best, he gets a few details wrong regarding how much influence such a country can play in the world. First, Iran can aid regimes that have been shunned by the major powers (mostly because they're too odious) such as Venezuela. Second, it can sell the missiles used in Lebanon and Yemen on the wider arms market to enhance its revenue. While the main powers match or exceed Iran's technical capabilities in this field, none of their missile systems have been battle-proven to such an extent.

    Note that Iran isn't the only regional power playing for the first role, so is Turkey:

    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-determined-to-enhance-ties-with-venezuela-erdogan-139417

    PS: Iran's population is 80 million, not 70 million as Charlie stated.

    757:

    The bigger problem is the harvest cycle on trees. With conifers at least, it's around 30 years, so when you push for biomass burning, you're essentially saying, to paraphrase an old cartoon character, that you'll gladly re-sequester carbon over the next 30 years for the log you're allowed to burn today. Replace "wood burning" with "money spending" and you'll get a clearer view of the accounting issue.

    The bigger issue is that biomass burning at best leaves the atmospheric concentration of CO2 constant (as noted above, it actually increases it in the short term with the promise to draw it back to constant in the decades'-long term). While this is better than hauling more CO2 out of the ground and releasing it, it doesn't solve the problem of the CO2 that's in the atmosphere or leaching into the ocean and messing up all the calcium carbonate chemistry on which so many invertebrates depend for shells, reefs, and so on.

    The other problem is that trees take time to grow, so when you plant a tree today, it's good if that tree survives its for awhile, like for a century with a carbon sequestration contract. If we were actually serious about climate change, we'd plant a lot of trees in the few places where they're pretty much guaranteed to survive for a century, then we'd leave them there untouched. That would take the carbon out of the air until the big current danger has passed. Cutting them at 30 years is worse than useless from a carbon sequestration perspective, but too many people think this is sequestration anyway.

    Finally, there's the ultimate screwup of conflating absolute tree growth with relative tree growth. This is the fallacy that saplings take in more carbon than do old trees, because they grow faster. Since tree growth can be simplified to an expanding cylinder of wood (it's actually a cone, but the equation works the same). The fallacy is that, because saplings double in size much faster than mature trees do, therefore they take out more carbon, therefore we should cut down all our trees, burn them, and plant lots of saplings. So let's take to cylinders of wood, one one centimeter in diameter, one 100 centimeters in diameter (I'm ignoring the height gain to make the math easier). The sapling grows from 1 cm to 2 cm in diameter, resulting in an added volume of wood of 235.6 cm3 of new wood. The tree grows from 100 cm to 100.1 cm in diameter, resulting in an added volume of 1571 cm3 of new wood.

    In relative growth rate terms, the sapling doubled in diameter, so it's growing relatively faster. In absolute terms, the mature tree added 6.67 times more wood than did the sapling, even though it grew 1,000 times more slowly in relative terms. That's the magic of exponential growth. Therefore, it's better to save big trees, as long as they're still growing faster than they rot. A thin layer of wood, added over an immense span of trunk, sequesters a lot more carbon than does a spindly sapling growing rapidly.

    Sadly, I've seen professional foresters make this absolute growth/relative growth mistake a number of times. Conceivably, it might be because their jobs are about harvesting old trees and planting new ones, not about getting carbon out of the air and keeping it out for a century. But that's just speculation.

    758:

    Interesting. Maybe you can debug my thinking on something: What happens if we raise a very fast-growing tree, like an Eucalyptus or one of those special pine trees that grows really fast, then we harvest it (and the carbon it contains) encase it in a couple inches of cement, and drop it in the Marianas Trench or store it in a salt mine?

    Have we in fact successfully sequestered the carbon?

    759:

    Agreed. And, as I hope I made clear, my niggle was about the sphericity of the cow, not that it was actually a horse. To spell it out, with that reservation, I fully agree with you.

    760:

    That was supposed to be an ironic joke, but oh well, let's expand on that a bit.

    IMO as an electrical engineer, everything comes back to energy every time we consider technological development. You can trap all the carbon you want, if you have enough energy, because it takes energy to do the work. In the trees, it is just different form of it - solar rays. So next time somebody considers take an air scrubber and plug it into the network, just ask him where the energy in the network comes from.

    All in all, there's no hope that humans will be self-sufficient on carbon fuel for all eternity. Equally is impossible that we will get rid of it entirely - lest we are gone from the face of the Earth forever. The only chance is that there will be LOTS AND LOTS of free energy that comes from somewhere to replace that and the two best alternatives I can imagine is thermonuclear/nuclear energy or (spacebound) solar collectors. Well, this is a solution that has been seen for a century at least. They have their own issues, still, so, no earlier than by the end of the century.

    to Troutwaxer @759 Dropping it anywhere not needed as long as you can guarantee that it does not burn and decompose into the air.

    As to quote Wikipedia: The chemical aspects of plant decomposition always involve the release of carbon dioxide. In fact, decomposition contributes over 90 percent of carbon dioxide released each year. http://news.mit.edu/2012/leaf-decay-1004

    761:

    Yes and no. The conifer fetish started because their harvesting and use (as timber) is easiest to automate, and has continued as dogma. My brother is a retired NZ forestry consultant, and informed me that the timescale is also extremely dependent on altitude (and other conditions, which I knew). Where I live, at latitude 52 north but in fertile soil 50' above sea level, I could easily plant a woodland(*) that would be adequate for fuel in 10 years, and be continually croppable thereafter. At latitude 56 north, infertile soil and 2,000', that would be over 50 years, probably 100 or more. In fertile parts of the tropics, it can be only a couple of years.

    Yes, I fully agree about the absolute and relative tree growth, and it is one reason that coppicing is so effective as a sustainable method. Where I live, a new shoot of medium-hard wood from a coppiced stock can easily be 6-10' high and 1-1.5" in its first year.

    But, as sleepingroutine and Troutwaxer say, it only sequesters carbon if we DON'T burn some of the wood but squirrel it away. It's still a better approach than extracting coal, oil or gas from underground and burning that!

    (*) The woodland would be a mixture of trees for initial cropping, and ones to establish it for subsequent cropping, as is normal practice. Designing the mixture would need care and a bit of research.

    762:

    Paws @ 752 Approx 950 metres direct line shortest distance .....

    sleepingroutine @ 760 Energy? Format? Distribution? Interesting article

    763:

    As for carbon storage....

    Here's the thing. To grab a random reference of the internet*, terrestrial plants store about 560 petagrams (=gigatonnes) of carbon, while terrestrial soils store about 1500 petagrams of carbon (PgC).

    Other carbon pools include: --Atmosphere: currently 750 PgC and rising (~560 PgC before the industrial revolution) --Ocean: 38000 PgC and rising, and about 1000 PgC is near the surface --Carbonate rocks in the lithosphere ~100,000,000 PgC??? --Hydrocarbons in lithosphere 4000 PgC ??? although most of this isn't worth the trouble of extracting, (kerogen, bituminous coal that's mostly rock, etc).

    The fluxes are even more interesting (e.g. photosynthesis pulls in 120 PgC/year and plants store around 610 PgC/year as photosynthate and respire around 60 PgC/year).

    Also, soil respires at 60 PgC/year, and this gets to a critical point: If we're serious about getting carbon out of the atmosphere, plants aren't the primary way to do it. Soils hold about three times as much carbon as wood does, and they lose it through respiration to the air at about the same rate as plants do.

    So if you're looking for the best, readily accessible carbon storage, I'd suggest getting as much organic matter to stay in the soil as you can.

    As for dropping tree trunks in the Mariana Trench, that part of the ocean is notoriously stormy, so you're as likely to lose the entire boat and crew as just the logs. Shale production in anoxic waters is rather more interesting, but I haven't checked recently to see who's looking at that for carbon capture and storage.

    *Mostly because I'm too lazy to pull out the IPCC or some other more authoritative guide and find the relevant figure.

    764:

    So under 1km from Gruinard Island against 303km from Rockall. Point me?

    765:

    What happens if we raise a very fast-growing tree

    How about papayas? They're tree-like though not a true tree and they grow like crazy, meters per year. And produce fruit in abundance, carbon sequestration aside.

    Also, they're hot-weather plants, even brief freezes being fatal.

    766:

    Re: 'Since buying foreign military equipment is difficult, they have to build their MIC in-house.'

    Unless there's a massive change in current US-China negotiations, China will remain onboard to supply Iran. Some pundits say Russia too - but Russia seems to bring more problems than solutions whenever it's added to the mix.

    Sea access - China has been building distribution infrastructure - rail and water canals/sea ports throughout Central Asia and Iran is a major hub. Therefore you'll have two powers (one very large and one medium-sized) defending Iranian ports.

    767:

    Re: 'DO NOT EVER eat curried baked beans'

    Actually hadn't heard of this combo before - sounds pretty tasty. Looked up recipes and found one that included coconut. Yum!

    Maybe your reaction was to a particular bean variety (allergy) or poor preparation/cooking. I stay clear of fava and don't eat kidney beans unless they're almost dissolved. There are also some food-drug interactions, e.g., soybean reduces valproic acid plasma concentrations - therefore avoid if you're taking certain anti-epileptics, bipolar meds.*

    Wikipedia -

    'Raw kidney beans contain relatively high amounts of phytohemagglutinin, and thus are more toxic than most other bean varieties if not pre-soaked and subsequently heated to the boiling point for at least 10 minutes.'

    As for the duvet lift - beans should not cause excessive digestive gas production if properly cooked. Allowing your gut to adapt by having beans regularly helps. And, excess gas happens whenever you increase fiber in your diet, e.g., if you eat a pint of raspberries alongside your oatmeal.

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2018/04/18/6841/

    • Needed to check food-drug interactions back when family member underwent BMT and was on massive doses of certain meds. Frankly, it's a good idea for anyone on meds because not all MDs or pharmacists will tell you. Good idea to check intermittently because the list of discovered interactions is still growing. (Drugs dot com seems to have the most complete list.)
    768:

    To a first approximation, the weight of wood laid down by a tree is independent of its speed of growth, because faster growth means less dense wood. It's not that simple, of course, but that trick doesn't work.

    769:

    sounds pretty tasty

    Maybe this blog isn't full of contrary type, but the curried baked beans thread fails to confirm that hypothesis.

    770:

    Yes in Britain, in the 1940s and 1950s ... and thus while you would still afford white servants in front-of-house roles, ... we were now in the process of replacing servant labour with mechanical labour in the upper classes.

    In the US and I tend to think in much of the EU, the need for most of those servants has gone away unless you have a large house that needs LOTs of vacuuming and dusting.

    This in many cases is due to washing machines and dryers, larger efficient fridges and freezers, permanent press fabrics, hardwood floors that are covered by clear coat that lasts years instead of wax that has to be re-applied every few weeks, HVAC systems and water heaters that just operate and don't require someone to shovel in coal every morning, and so on.

    So a middle class family of 4 living in 1500-2000sf without servants now leads a better life than an upper class one 50-60 years ago with multiple servants.

    I know people who have maids come in but it is weekly or less and 2 to 4 people show up for 2 hours and blitz the house. I know of no one at any income level who has a dresser, butler, cook, etc... About as close as some come to that are dual incomes with kids who have an Au Pair.

    Now as a separate topic we have a societal issue of how all those people now earn a living.

    771:

    You're right that China and Russia are willing to maintain Iran's infrastructure and standard of living. Likewise, China and India are developing Iranian ports, and would be willing to pressure for Iranian ports to remain open https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chabahar_Port#May_2016_Transit_Trade_Agreement_between_India,_Iran,_and_Afghanistan

    However, the big powers are unlikely to sell Iran advanced military equipment. That's why Iran's using antiquated jets instead of the new Russian or Chinese ones. In other words, if Iran wants a modern military, they have to build it themselves.

    Below is a list of Iranian Navy vessels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Navy_Vessels

    Notice that most were built in Iran; most of the foreign ones are from the Shah-era.

    772:

    You are still misrepresenting, by omitting the previous sentence. There was no ambiguity, because "that" as a substantive NEVER refers forwards in English, but only backwards. My post started like this:

    When she publicly accused Putin of having authorised the murders, if he had then accepted responsibility and put some agents on trial, he would have looked weak. She had no actual evidence for that, as was admitted later, ...

    Furthermore, you are AGAIN misrepresenting me on what I have said about the people or organisations who promoted the coup - and, indeed, the coup itself.

    773:

    Here are a few space tidbits:

    SpaceX had their 20th launch today. The launch was a success, but their first stage didn't make it. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/after-26-straight-successes-spacex-fails-to-land-a-rocket-it-wanted-back/

    So far there have been 103 launches this year. The last year which had more than 100 launches was 1990, which had 120 launches. It's probably too late for the number of launches this year to exceed that. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/a-hectic-week-of-orbital-flights-continues-with-a-spacex-launch-wednesday/

    China's launching the Chang'e 4 mission on Friday. It will be the first lander on the far side of the Moon.

    774:

    Interesting article It's behind registration wall! I mostly avoid going to such sites. Anyway, I know what dark matter and dark energy is, in general. Also there's such things as false vacuum and vacuum decay. So there's a possibility of using such energy, at possible risk of doing something stupid we don't really know about yet. Appears, we can come up technology that can potentially increase our chances of going a spacefairing race of epic proportions. Or one of the following things: destroy the universe; or local galaxy; or solar system, the Sun, the Earth... anything short of atomic bomb will suffice; or summon some extradimensional horrors that will eat our planet and everyone around it; or any number of other things on the doomsday list. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijFm6DxNVyI

    775:

    Then, to avoid misrepresentation by me in future, please can you confirm which agency you believe was responsible for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury? Because you appear not to believe that it was the GRU...

    “Test Case” @684 “Cthulhu Counterfactual” @35

    776:

    I’m pretty sure it’s not just you. It seems like upwards of 25% of EC’s comments start with a claim he is being misunderstood or misrepresented, often with some aspersions on the intertlocuter’s ability to understand the domain in question. Also, where he talks to other people’s prejudices it usually means someone has refused to treat the premises that emerge from EC’s own prejudice as a null hypothesis, or are treating as a null hypothesis something that does not align with his prejudices. Then when this (basically dishonest arseholism) is called out, the person doing so must be an arsehole. It’s one of the most recurring patterns here. For all that he seems to be a useful contrarian for many here, and he’s obviously bright and knowledgeable - just there’s that autodidact tendency (which I’m sure most of us here have!) to overconfidence in views that are really very tentative.

    777:

    Interesting comment on what's driving the rush to authoritarian government in the US, also applicable to other countries.

    America appears to be pioneering a new kind of poverty altogether. One for which we do not yet have a name. It is something like living at the knife’s edge, constantly being on the brink of ruin, one small step away from catastrophe and disaster, ever at the risk of falling through the cracks. It has two components — massive inflation for the basics of life, coupled with crushing, asymmetrical risk.

    https://eand.co/why-america-is-the-worlds-first-poor-rich-country-17f5a80e444a

    778:

    Moz Well-spotted. Looks horribly like a late Roman Empire scenario, does it not? Nowhere near as bad in Europe, though Britain is heading that way - see the utter disaster called "Universal Credit" ( For which, to be fair, even IDS, its' progenitor is trying, now, to halt, because: "It wasn't supposed to be like this" - paraphrase )

    779:

    It seems like upwards of 25% of EC’s comments start with a claim he is being misunderstood or misrepresented This appears to be a consequence of reverse psychology in action, as processed on the side of your peers. It goes like that: if somebody disagrees with your opinion, and continues to disagree, it MUST be the work of other agency, because two honest men are always able to agree on certain terms, given enough time. Or something like that. 50% of 50% equals 25%.

    However, there is one major fallacy on defending side - it is a self-confirmation bias. It willingly ignores the fact that big names like "KGB" and "GRU" hasn't been up in the air for maybe 20 years straight and one of these organizations has been completely dismantled, and the other one is restructured several times. All according to many-times verified sources, open information and so on. But in the same time failure to asses such damage not only ignored, but ignored so thoroughly that no on is able to come with the question - how can this even happen that most meticulously guided and funded agencies would fail at most basic tasks? This is the same problem as with the entire NATO organization - it is the alliance that is supposed to provide security to the whole bunch of the associated countries, yet the only things it does is using it's resources to build up military aggression force without doing absolutely nothing to contribute to anybody's security.

    Found this interesting story (this is not one of a kind, but fairly rare argument). See, I would disagree on some of the modern views of USSR, for reasons only obvious to my own views and experiences, but his assessment of current international situation is fairly close to reality we are facing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHXwCJNdIBU I've heard stories by my parents, of what happened in Moscow that year and that day. I am thoroughly agreeing with this person's main argument and I would tell you again - the West could have resolved the situation positively, if it would stick to it's proclaimed goals and ideals. However this is not the case and it continues to dig itself even deeper, cutting off any chances or reconciliation. In a sense, it is the relief, because it also means that our ancestors were not entirely wrong for a number of centuries.

    780:

    Re: ' ... suggesting that the CIA/SIS are an order of magnitude more effective at '

    Butting in for a sec ... Have had difficulty believing that the CIA/SIS are at all effective at spotting political/national security risks and issues: it took them 10 years after 9/11 to locate Bin Laden and more recently, it was the US Geological Survey that told the public that NK had set off a thermonuclear bomb back on Sept 3 2017, and not the CIA. Increasingly feel that their 'successes' are more attributable to dumb luck than 'intelligence'. More likely, this agency's focus has downshifted from studying only foreign gov't/military higher-ups to something more prosaic like maybe researching/testing 'advanced interrogation techniques*' that can be applied to the masses.

    • As per the new Director's CV 'areas of expertise'.
    781:

    The first said that explicitly neither you nor I know who was responsible, and the second said nothing about who might be responsible.

    782:

    how can this even happen that most meticulously guided and funded agencies would fail at most basic tasks?

    Why the belief that organisations, full of the brightest and best people, can’t get complacent or arrogant, or (see: the CIA, and the UK’s JIC in the runup to 2003) subverted to follow political interests? Why the belief that covert “Executive” operations by the most highly trained, can’t be fundamentally flawed? (See: Operation MIKADO and PLUM DUFF during the Falklands War; the B Sqn SAS patrols in Iraq in 1991; Shayetet 13 and the Ansariya ambush).

    Failures happen, no organisation is immune.

    This is the same problem as with the entire NATO organization - it is the alliance that is supposed to provide security to the whole bunch of the associated countries, yet the only things it does is using it's resources to build up military aggression force without doing absolutely nothing to contribute to anybody's security.

    That would be the NATO which Trump has criticised for not funding its militaries, to the extent that a Cold War Bundeswehr of over 2000 tanks, struggles to keep even 200 on the road? The US Army which has steadily drawn down from nearly two full Corps in Germany, to a single Brigade Combat Team?

    The British Army has shrunk by nearly a half over the last fifteen years; and over the last thirty, drawn down from a full Corps of four Divisions in Germany, to a single Armoured Brigade based there. Search for Exercise Crusader 80, or Exercise Lionheart 84; we haven’t done anything like that in decades. Hardly a sign of “building up a military aggression force”; more like a peace dividend...

    https://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2016/03/nato-knew-throw-party/

    783:

    And you’ve avoided answering the question again. Who do you think was responsible?

    784:

    It wasn't supposed to be like this

    Viz, the most charitable explanation is that IDS et al thought Universal Credit would be so dramatically different from every other big IT project ever that it would earn the designer the first of a newly created Nobel Prize for Software Development that would be necessary to recognise this stunning shattering of the iron laws of project management and software development.

    More likely, they just thoughtlessly did what they've always done "we'll gut the department overseeing this, use the cheapest option at every stage, then cut funding before the savings appear. Later we will express surprise that we got the same result as every other time we've done this". Oh, and the benefit cuts that it was designed to implement are not very nice either.

    The benefit model "make sure people on benefits cannot have any savings, then delay payments and introduce payment-less periods in the new, reduced benefits"... what in the name of holy kitten pictures did they think was going to happen even in the best possible case? Add in the clusterfunk model of rolling out the new system and you have to expect extra delays, extra missed payments, and all sorts of other problems. A decent government would have made extra funding available to mitigate the effect of those problems on the poorest members of society.

    At a society-wide level they either had to come up with a plan that definitely would create a couple of million new jobs, or accept that a couple of million people on benefits couldn't possibly find jobs... so they pushed them off benefits and left them to "create new jobs for themselves". I can only assume that half those jobs were expected to be in be digging graves for the other half.

    It's not a war crime, because it's not technically a war. In the US it would be, a "war on benefit recipients" to match their "war on drugs" and "war on poverty". But the UK signed all those war crimes treaties that the US exempted themselves from, so they can't do that.

    785:

    re: CIA's "culture of success."

    No, that's just the CIA being itself. Remember, this is the organization, tasked with spying during the Cold War, that failed to predict that the USSR was going to collapse. That failed to alert Pres. Clinton to the Rwandan genocide (he found out by watching CNN and called them on the carpet. They never forgave him). I can continue, but there's a nice history of the CIA from a few years ago titled "Legacy of Ashes" whose title sums it up pretty nicely. The CIA claims that their successes can't be mentioned, so the public hears only about their failures, but that gets increasingly hard to believe over time.

    Indeed, when one looks at the history of British and Russian espionage in The Great Game, one gets this notion that espionage is normally a mug's game, where the abysmal failures outnumber the successes. Occasionally it's useful, but mostly when someone defects successfully, bringing a trove with them. Espionage is supposed to be a game of smoke and mirrors, but I wouldn't be surprised if a big part of it is blowing smoke at your handlers and superiors, and giving them a mirror that shows them what they want to see.

    786:

    Failures happen, no organisation is immune. Then they should report on attack that they managed to prevent. Failures themselves are not reason to support war rhetoric - yet they are used as such.

    The US Army which has steadily drawn down from nearly two full Corps in Germany, to a single Brigade Combat Team? Yet the military budget continues to raise. The amount of surveillance on Russian borders has increased many times. The bases are moving in closer, too, for faster response. It may not seem to be too effective of them to spend so much money to so little army, but they should admit that it is their actions that prompt military buildup, not Russia's.

    Russia has nowhere to retreat it's own forces, as do other people in the region. Over the years of experience, we learned that there's absolutely no reason to yield to any of US demands, because the moment you let any of your weakness slip, they will come at you with even more demands. There's absolutely no way to talk to a force that lack sentience - if it attacks, you shoot it. Reload your gun, wait one.

    787:

    cf. my hypothesis that quasars are where some alien race tried to do that, and fucked it up.

    789:

    Kinda of a prescient quote there

    790:

    how did the duvet-lifting go, then?

    I assume you're using some UK colloquialism meaning "did I fart a lot", and the answer is no. But these days I don't eat beans at all because anything like that either makes me fart or gives me diarrhea. That's not because of the addition of curry, it's because of the removal of a bunch of my gut microbiome.

    791:

    My opinions are MY business, until and unless I choose to disclose them. They have changed as new facts and claims have observed.

    My posts have all been talking about the evidence, its reliability, cui bono, and the balance of likelihoods. I do not condemn without very solid evidence, nor do I tolerate sabre-rattling and the demonisation of people who can be classed as 'other', because I have seen where those lead.

    792:

    Anyone who claims that the Ukraine fiasco was a success for any of the involved parties, except for one group of corrupt oligarchs and gangsters, is an idiot. Turning already unstable countries into dysfunctional ones is regrettably easy - creating long-term, targetted change is much harder. There are other recent examples :-(

    Despite Martin's assertions, I have never claimed that the CIA orchestrated the coup (let alone the EU, which is a straw man among straw men!) - I said right at the start (and subsequent evidence seems to confirm this) that the coup was PROBABLY orchestrated by some of the corrupt oligarchs and gangsters favoured by Tymoshenko and rejected by Yanukovych.

    But what I have said is that the cui bono test, the CIA's historical record, and NATO/UK/etc.'s subsequent behaviour points in the direction of at least the CIA being peripherally involved. Assuming that is right, whether this was just being aware in advance and letting it happen, giving a nod and a wink, or more active involvement, is unclear; after all, the CIA and UK have a record of acting through others (e.g. the Bay of Pigs, the imposition of the Shah of Iran). But it is also possible (though less likely) that they were even not aware in advance, or actually organised it. I don't know, and nobody else on this blog does, either.

    793:

    Well, FWIW the "baked beans -> gas" mechanism specifically involves the way the tomato sauce in Heinz' recipe reacts with some people's gut flora, so not everyone gases after eating Heinz canned baked beans, and different people may gas after eating different makes of canned baked beans.

    The same argument should extend to other canned bean recipes.

    794:

    Actually, not quite. It's not the tomato sauce. Beans cause gas primarily because they contain some heavy sugars (I think) that pass undigested into the small intestine, where the gut flora go to town on them. And, yes, people vary - even within a household.

    You can reduce this by pouring boiling water on the dried beans, throwing the water away when cool, and repeating a few times. Then cook as normal, but they will obviously absorb less water as they cook. I don't know if bean canners do this, but I suspect that they do something similar.

    795:

    paws & EC @ 793/4 Probably correct I can no longer eat baked beans in any form ( tinned at any rate ) the discharges & churning are simply not fit for a family magazine ... Curries, however are another matter - but then I make my own with good-quality ingredients. As for other sorts of beans, also not a problem - I particularly like Borlotti & Broad ones, home-grown, of course.

    796:

    Well, your statement makes sense, but I was told mine by a BSc in Microbiology so I have 2 contradictory statements from "some guy".

    797:

    If they didn't do what I said, and either used the bean cooking water in the sauce or cooked the beans in the sauce, the heavy sugars would end up in the sauce (being soluble). Heinz might even add such sugars, because there are some advantages in doing so, and they are permitted ingredients as far as I know.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean#Flatulence

    798:

    [To moderators: I'm in two minds about writing this this post; please delete it if you feel it detracts from the debate at hand.]

    You've made several assertions surrounding the Brexit debate (and others) regarding external influence...

    My opinions are MY business, until and unless I choose to disclose them. They have changed as new facts and claims have observed. My posts have all been talking about the evidence, its reliability, cui bono, and the balance of likelihoods.

    And yet, you have disclosed them. It appears to me that you consistently demand far higher standards of proof for any statement critical of Russia or its institutions and allies, while being perfectly happy to make assertions about the UK/USA and theirs. It smacks of a cognitive bias driven by ideology.

    On this thread @532, you insisted "Both Parliament and Congress have produced reports that have said that any Russian attempt at influence was at most small and almost certainly negligible in effect.". JBS @578 made clear that you hadn't seen a report produced by Congress, and here's the 2018 Interim Parliamentary Report, which classifies Russian interference as "an active threat". Paragraph 197 is particularly clear.

    Let's see what you said in "Radio Silence" @282 regarding Ukraine: The democratically-elected (according to EU observers) pro-Russian government was overthrown by an externally-orchestrated coup,...

    Carrying on, you say something I completely agree with. I used to live in the Balkans (and several other places around the world); I have friends who deployed there with UNPROFOR and IFOR/SFOR. I understand the power of propaganda and I, too, despise Paul Dacre, Lord Rothermere, Rupert Murdoch, et al for their consistent, hateful, propaganda against those who are "other"; particularly their campaign against the EU, that I rather suspect may be partially driven by upcoming tax legislation that would make it harder to avoid paying tax...

    I do not condemn without very solid evidence, nor do I tolerate sabre-rattling and the demonisation of people who can be classed as 'other', because I have seen where those lead.

    Consider what you said in "Cthulhu Counterfactual" @35: Secondly, neither you nor I know who was responsible for the Skripal poisoning. Russia has been talking absolute bollocks, but the UK government has been lying through its teeth, exactly as it did over the claims of WMD, may have done over Lockerbie, and has done on many other occasions; and you have been repeating the lies as gospel.

    So: the photographic evidence and unforced admission of two Russian officers that they visited Salisbury on the day concerned, the OSINT (photographic, address, and interview) that supports their membership of the GRU... aren't solid enough to make an assertion about their involvement.

    Or perhaps your statement in this thread @529, "That is at the heart of the issue - especially the plan to break the treaty with Russia, turn Sebastopol into a NATO port, and probably put USA missiles there.". I certainly haven't seen any plan to "put USA missiles into the NATO port of Sebastopol", other than the post-fact excuses given for the Crimean land-grab; care to elaborate?

    In addition, consider your statements that you have not seen persuasive evidence that Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people ("Facts of Life and Death" @537) or that while you acknowledge that MH17 was shot down by Donbass rebels, you don't agree that the missile system was supplied to them by Russia ("Radio Silence" @282) - unless you've reconsidered your opinion since, in which case I apologise for misrepresenting you.

    799:

    the fact that big names like "KGB" and "GRU" hasn't been up in the air for maybe 20 years straight and one of these organizations has been completely dismantled, and the other one is restructured several times.

    Could you give us a summary of the current situation, please? As I thought I understood it, after 1991 the KGB was split up along existing organizational lines, the First Chief Directorate becoming the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Second CD becoming the Federal Security Service (FSB). The GRU remained more or less as it was, give or take normal organizational churn.

    Both the FSB and GRU remain visible, though you don't hear much about the SVR. But the former 1st CD headquarters at Yasenevo (55.5839 N, 37.5178 E) has undergone considerable expansion over the past decade, so presumably they've been doing something along the lines of foreign intelligence.

    800:

    Indeed. Take washing, for example; my household washing machine does an average of around 12 hours per week keeping up with the washing generated by a family of 4 including two active children who are encouraged to play in mud. Without the machine, either we'd be dirtier, or someone would have to do 12 hours per week just keeping our clothes clean.

    The underlying problem boils down to "what do you do with people whose intrinsic motivation is low?" They're low-skilled, because they've not got the motivation to upskill themselves without external pressure. They don't particularly care about "making something of themselves"; just surviving is enough for them.

    Historically, we handle them by (a) having a large amount of low skill labour that needs to be done by a human and (b) saying that you must work or we will let you die (and backing that up by letting people starve to death). With the advent of the welfare state, we removed the "we will let you die" part of the equation, and we're struggling to work out what to replace it with.

    Note, too, that one of the dividing lines in UK politics is about the core of the welfare state; is it more important to ensure that everyone who needs support gets it, or to ensure that nobody who could support themselves receives state support? The former position implies that some people who could support themselves get state support, while the latter implies that some people who need support don't get it.

    Coming back round to the original blog post; one historical way to cope when things get bad is to build a massed army of the low skilled, and send them off to fight a war. Maybe we should launch an invasion of France, but with troops armed with nothing more sophisticated than swords and knives, requiring all people claiming state benefits to enlist with the Brexit People's Army of Britain as part of their claims. We can then have a win/win - either we rebuild the British Empire in Europe, or we get rid of the "unproductive" component of our population as the EU army trivially defeats sword charges?

    801:

    To moderators: don't bother deleting it, because I am not going to waste time rebutting it. Anyone interested in it should check the dates of my posts against what we knew then, rather than now, as well as not assuming that his examples were the ones I was referring to.

    802:

    But what I have said is that the cui bono test, the CIA's historical record, and NATO/UK/etc.'s subsequent behaviour points in the direction of at least the CIA being peripherally involved. They don't really need to, they have plenty of well-paid subcontractors to deal most of the job. These are, in turn, at no need to even conceal anything much. It is their job to show commitment and take all the flak for the breach of international laws (if necessary). Modern intelligence operations aren't like the the good old times - by the time the first column goes into the city, the rest of them, all four, are already there.

    https://twitter.com/OffGuardian0/status/1069195413444591616 https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/uk-ministry-of-defense-denies-bbc-russias-re-496268.html http://tass.com/politics/1034406

    Immediately, of course, it goes into full damage control mode. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6450575/Russian-TV-spies-caught-secret-UK-army-psychological-warfare-unit.html

    to Allen Thomson @799 As I thought I understood it, after 1991 the KGB was split up along existing organizational lines, the First Chief Directorate becoming the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Second CD becoming the Federal Security Service (FSB) As much as I am a civilian, I can speculate on circumstances and consequences, but there's 2 fact that matter. First, the KGB is responding directly to the power structure of USSR, and as the latter crashed, the KGB had no power to respond to and was broken down along the lines, with large part of it's outer structure progressively stranded and useless. And the second, most importantly, what is left was dependent on their own resources, so - every country gets it's own mini-KGB, and the rest of them are either with mafia or completely on their own for good.

    GU as a subdivision responds to the army (General Staff) and they kept most of the military toys left after their predecessors. They are supposedly the most badass subdivision and their emblem is (actually used to be) a black bat. Note for clarification: GRU used to be a separate branch from KGB and they have their own set of goals and methods.

    FSB is your bog-standard FBI job, mostly police and counter-terrorism, and they even got into ground work in Afghanistan around just before the things went to shit in 2008. And counterintelligence too. The real KGB still exists in Belarus and they are up to the same job pretty much. SVR is by far the most enigmatic force of them all, nobody knows what they do or do they even have any goals. They are never in the news or even in any discussions. They may as well not exist for all I know, and their facade is just the fancy emblem.

    There are also more civil or paramilitary services like National Guard, MVD, MChS and so on, but these are not specially secret at all, though some of them used to be a part of KGB and some of them were created to fulfill same functions.

    803:

    With the advent of the welfare state, we removed the "we will let you die" part of the equation, and we're struggling to work out what to replace it with... Maybe we should launch an invasion of France...

    That's needlessly pessimistic, although I'd suggest that the move rabid Brexiteers seem to be pursuing a policy that would head in that direction...

    ...looking around all that stuff for Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, it's time to do what Greg will hate as a suggestion, and replace "Warfare as the Measure of a Person" with the traditional activities of Decent Chaps in the absence of unruly natives or a decent war with the French.

    Yes, Sport. While team sports can symbolically replace warfare, and so we invest in football, rugby, and cricket. The truly aggressive can take up hockey (note to all - be wary of playing mixed hockey, the women are quite ruthless), and those less willing to draw blood can face off using tiddlywinks, snooker, chess, or target rifle.

    For those unimpressed by the safety and security of stadium sports, there's Exploration. Someone has to tell the Ripping Yarns of being the first to cross the Andes by frog, roller-skate across Antarctica, BASE jump from a tower-block, or solo free-climb El Capitan. Bring back proper, wooden-hulled ships, and send them off to sail Cape Horn; tie in a decent three-mast Ship of the Line with Talk-like-a-Pirate Day, aharrrrr.....

    If it all goes south, there's always Extreme Ironing. (No, I'm not joking)

    804:

    Worse lives - yup. And the media, wholly-owned subsidiary, mostly, of the 1%, strongly uses language of the wealthy. For example, there's a story on slashdot today about how fewer people moved in the last year than in 48 years or something, and this was "bad for the economy".

    For neighborhood-busting real estate scum, and house flippers, maybe, but the 90%? Hell, no. People get to live where they are....

    But then, I've screamed for decades that basing the condition of a coutry's economy on GDP is like juding income based on average, rather than median.

    805:

    Re: Beans (simple sugars somewhat, lectins more so, esp. phytohaemagglutinin)

    Seriously - never, ever, ever re-use water that kidney beans have soaked/cooked in because the toxins accumulate. Every reliable medical site that talks about red kidney beans will tell you that 5 raw kidney beans can kill an adult. Also minimum cooking time is at least 10 minutes at a rolling boil and do not cook in crock-pots/slow-cookers because their thermostats are not reliable.

    Article below was authored by an allergist and discusses an incident at a hospital cafeteria (medical staff - food poisoning - beans). Interesting stuff - more than just food poisoning.

    'Do dietary lectins cause disease? The evidence is suggestive—and raises interesting possibilities for treatment' 

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1115436/

    806:

    "Presumably replanting"?

    Ah, yeah, about that... we'll throw some seedlings in there, and walk away.

    My late ex used to talk about how companies like lumber companies were vehemently again$$$t some of the earth resources satellites, because they'd show that's exactly what they did in the Pacific Northwet. Hell, when my late wife and I drove that area, on our way from Chicago->visit friends->Worldcon in '96, Washington state was horrid - major parts of the interior were literally clear-cut, and nothing much but grass and shrubs.

    Driving along the bank of the Columbia River, the Oregon cliffs were green and wooded, while the Washington cliffs were bare rock and dirt.

    807:

    Re: 'The underlying problem boils down to "what do you do with people whose intrinsic motivation is low?"'

    Okay, so that's about 5% of the population - meanwhile, there's another 20-25% that have been told to go to/live in hell.

    What's the operational/behavioral definition of 'motivation' in this argument anyways? Some reports seem to use this word as any of the following:

    a) opportunity that one can recognize, therefore grab at; b) energy which implies access to good/reliable nutrition, good overall physical and mental health, housing, safety, rest; c) desire/greed - not everyone gets a kick from being in the limelight, or d) other - (pls specify).

    808:

    If you ever run into me at a con, I'll show you my wings....

    On the other hand... you've never seen a cat run up a wall? Show me a cow who could....

    809:

    Y'know, I'm still trying to figure out why you'd want to summon an extradimenensional horror, when we've got the Malignant Carcinoma....

    810:

    Immediately, of course, it goes into full damage control mode (Daily Mail Online article)....

    Don't worry about 77 Brigade for a while, they're too busy being viewed with a certain degree of cynicism by the rest of the British Army (and are apparently 50% undermanned).

    It's an umbrella organisation for Public Affairs / Public Relations / Civil-Military Affairs, but in uniform; and they're trying to recruit journalists and PR types... Calling it "psychological warfare" is a bit of a stretch, but arguably accurate. This is a list of the skills they recruit for (link), it should give you an idea of what their role is. No, it's not the cyber-warfare mob, they're here (link).

    The reason that "people hanging around outside Army bases" gets attention is that we spent thirty years trying to spot Irish terrorists who were looking for soft targets to shoot or bomb; and the past fifteen looking for Islamic terrorists doing the same. Nearly fifty years of institutional experience at "spotting people hanging around" means that the journalist should have been challenged - not because the base or its unit is particularly secret, but because they'd want to assess whether he was a threat or not. Note that they weren't arrested, detained, or AFAIK harrassed; they weren't followed there or followed afterwards; they were only turned away when they attempted to enter the base.

    PS Don't trust the British press for accurate reporting on the military. Most journalists haven't got a clue, and the tabloid press (Mail, Express, Sun) seem to want to combine breathless excitement with staggering ignorance. Even the more serious papers get it wrong (see here as an example). If you ever see the words "Bob Stewart" or "Richard Kemp", add a pinch of salt, they're cheap rentaquotes.

    811:

    SVR is by far the most enigmatic force of them all, nobody knows what they do or do they even have any goals. They are never in the news or even in any discussions.

    They're still there, witness the Yasenevo complex, but it is hard to spot much evidence of their activity (as I'm sure they'd prefer).

    One thing that has struck me as odd about the 2016 US election interference story is that the GRU is cited as the responsible party. In classical times, that kind of thing ("active measures") would have been very much the province of the KGB 1 CD and the KGB was quite touchy about the "neighbors" in the GRU getting into KGB territory.

    812:

    Re: US-China negotiations - stock market sell-off

    Waiting with bated breath for Mueller's report. Especially hoping the report mentions tax receipts, numbered companies, stock portfolios, foreign holdings, etc.

    813:

    This is completely off topic, but I think worth sharing.

    There's a little girl in Miami, FL, USA who needs blood donors of a specific rare type to support her while she undergoes treatment for a rare type of cancer.

    Donor must be an Indian, Iranian or Pakistani whose birth parents are both 100% Indian, Iranian or Pakistani; blood type 'O' or type 'A'; missing an antigen, called "Indian B".

    https://www.wcjb.com/content/news/Worldwide-hunt-for-rare-blood-to-save-life-of-2-year-old-Miami-girl-501918741.html

    I don't meet any of the requirements, so all I can do is pass the message along where I think it might fall on fertile soil. I know there are a really diverse bunch here, so maybe one of you could be a donor. Or maybe you know someone who might be a donor.

    814:

    Don't worry about 77 Brigade for a while Nobody really worries about such activity as much as they worry about how to use it as a target of criticism and evidence of active involvement. After all, crimes that do not reach their goals, still eligible for a trial and worth to be answered to. You can pass your shit under the radar only so much until you anger enough people.

    No, it's not the cyber-warfare mob The cyber reserve is a joint unit, offering selected individuals the opportunity to be part of the proud history and ethos of the Maritime Reserves, the Army Reserve or the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. This IS a cyber-warfare mob. They hire people (Russian-speaking nationals of Ukraine) to engage in "cyber-warfare" activity such as social network infiltration, deception, disruption, NGO and media takeover, recruitment and sabotage. This activity actually causes damage, costs money, and paid in money. Everything here on the list is enough for casus belli, right here and now, and to assume that nobody in intelligence in Russia does not know that is to believe them to be flat-earthers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K76ak3KQmoU

    The real problem is that the government of the UK is deaf, blind and holds zero responsibility. There's exactly zero reaction on any of these questions, and zero willingness to cooperate and listen to anything. There's only a language of ultimatums and demands. At this point, any measures other than physically shooting guns prove to be ineffective. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1055244/russia-news-embassy-london-britain-ukraine-crisis-world-war-3

    Nearly fifty years of institutional experience at "spotting people hanging around" means that the journalist should have been challenged This is actually far more simpler. They wanted a eye-grabbing title story to engage full damage control and they grabbed the first vulnerable person that was geographically closer to any of the vulnerable positions, simple as that. No suspicions, no warning, no respect to the guest, no "freedom of speech" bullshit, you come with us and we sell you out to the press.

    815:

    SFreader @ 780:

    Re: ' ... suggesting that the CIA/SIS are an order of magnitude more effective at '

    Butting in for a sec ... Have had difficulty believing that the CIA/SIS are at all effective at spotting political/national security risks and issues: it took them 10 years after 9/11 to locate Bin Laden and more recently, it was the US Geological Survey that told the public that NK had set off a thermonuclear bomb back on Sept 3 2017, and not the CIA. Increasingly feel that their 'successes' are more attributable to dumb luck than 'intelligence'. More likely, this agency's focus has downshifted from studying only foreign gov't/military higher-ups to something more prosaic like maybe researching/testing 'advanced interrogation techniques*' that can be applied to the masses.

    * As per the new Director's CV 'areas of expertise'.

    Don't know about the SIS, but the CIA (along with the FBI, the NSA, the DoD and all the other TLA agencies) studies what the administration in office tells them to study. When the Cheney/Bush administration took office their focus switched from international terrorism to getting Saddam and controlling Iraq's oil (as a prelude to taking down Iran).

    Afghanistan, where bin Ladin was hanging out at the time, was NOT a priority. As early as 9/12 Rumsfeld was telling everyone there were no good bombing targets in Afghanistan and that it was a side show to the REAL theater of operations in Iraq.

    For at least 6 of the 10 years after 9/11 the CIA couldn't find bin Laden because they weren't looking for him. The actual "hunt for bin Laden" took only slightly more than three years - January 20, 2009 to May 2, 2011.

    Nor is it particularly telling that it was the US Geological Survey that pinpointed North Korea's nuclear tests. After all, they've the people who have all the seismographs that detect events under ground and the scientific knowledge to tell the CIA where to look for evidence on the surface. Unless an event can be photographed from space or high flying aircraft, the CIA will need outside assistance to know where to look.

    816:

    The CIA are in the business of collecting information, not handing it out to all and sundry. It's not surprising they wouldn't be the first to publicly announce knowledge of a NK nuclear test, it's not their job. It's likely they had foreknowledge of the test, details of many of the technical aspects of it, the names and bios of some of the lead researchers etc. but that's their business, not Joe Public's.

    Clifford Stoll's seminal cyber-espionage true story account, "The Cuckoo's Egg" mentions how he talked to the CIA about some dubious goings-on with an early online system he was a part-time support guy for at University. He asked them for details of what they had found out and got bupkis from them, basically even though he had discovered the "break-in", had characterised it and even set up a fake honeypot for other infiltrators to slurp up. Later he found some details in the news when some people in Germany got arrested for doing what seemed to be the sort of things he had discovered.

    817:

    Erm, no, not exactly. The CIA was set up originally to be in the information collection business. Per Legacy of Ashes, the original mission of the CIA was to basically create a morning newspaper for the President to tell him what was actually going on in the world. They've never been very good at that, to this day.

    Over the years they've also been tasked with the executive branch's dirty jobs, from infiltration to assassination to regime change to coming up with a pretense for the second invasion of Iraq. Over the latter part of the Obama years, they took up a larger SpecOps role (per Mazzetti's Way of the Knife) and SEAL Team 6 and other SpecOps types were "sheep-dipped" and given cover as CIA Omega Teams hunting terrorists, while Military Intelligence apparently has taken on many of the information gathering roles traditionally assigned to the CIA. Why this works kind of has to do with the notion that the CIA is a civilian, not military agency, so civilian assassins and military spies have different profiles than do civilian spies and military assassins. Or some such.

    Anyway, I agree that USGS, with their seismometers, would be the people to notice a blast in North Korea. The reason is primarily the CIA's apparently total failure, dating back to the late 1940s, to successfully insert agents into North Korea. Presumably, any human intelligence coming out of North Korea goes through the South Korean CIA and then to us.

    818:

    They wanted a eye-grabbing title story to engage full damage control and they grabbed the first vulnerable person that was geographically closer to any of the vulnerable positions, simple as that.

    Nope, that's not quite what happened; according to Russia Today (frankly, I'd suggest it's a more reliable version of events than that Daily Mail article, which is laughable*):

    “We were recording a standup using a [large] professional camera. We never tried to get into the base’s territory, as the Daily Mail puts it. We just approached [the entry checkpoint], introduced ourselves and explained what we were doing there,” Siraziev told RT.

    They didn't get "grabbed", the MoD just pushed out a notice to explain that there was a Russian journalist filming around Army bases. It's not a "top level security alert", it's just routine security briefing. If nothing else, it means that when a silver Toyota Estate gets seen driving slowly and repeatedly past another MoD establishment, that no-one gets terribly excited about a potential armed threat - and instead just calls the Adjutant and the local cops.

    I fully agree that Gavin Williamson was looking a bit desperate in reporting it as proof of Russian intelligence-gathering (at best, it's a touch cheeky), but depressingly, that's politics and a slow news cycle.

    *Jason Bourne types? A bunch of chunky journalists and graphic artists in 77 Bde? Yeah, right.

    819:

    Re: 'The reason is primarily the CIA's apparently total failure, dating back to the late 1940s, to successfully insert agents into North Korea.'

    Agree - that's what I meant: the CIA is the agency that should have known about this test long before the actual test date.

    Alphabet agencies' on-going re-orgs also contribute to knowledge gaps.

    Except that according to popular culture: Who needs a human spy in some foreign country when you have the Internet*, spy satellites, smart devices, robots and drones.

    • Almost 100% routed thru China ... might be embarrassing if brought up during the trade talks.
    820:

    the original mission of the CIA was to basically create a morning newspaper for the President to tell him what was actually going on in the world. They've never been very good at that, to this day.

    Yes, that was Truman's intent. And the CIA has always done that, mostly in the form of the President's Daily Brief, about which much has reasonably accurately been written. As for how good it is, that kind of splits into the distinction between short-term/limited scope and long-term/big picture intelligence. On the short-term stuff, the PDB has done, overall, quite well. Long-term, big picture stuff, much less well.

    And then there was the immediate post-1947 spinoff into classical espionage and covert action, which were mostly ineffectual and occasionally disastrous, respectively.

    821:

    Truman's intent

    https://www.trumanlibrary.org/dbq/cia.php

    "However, when Truman established the organization in 1947, he envisioned something much different -- a sort of daily newspaper, informing him of developments around the world that could impact American policy. Yet even during Truman’s own presidency, the CIA did evolve to become much more than a news agency for the President as covert operations began in earnest early in the agency’s history."

    822:

    that's what I meant: the CIA is the agency that should have known about this test long before the actual test date.

    It's entirely possible the CIA had collected intelligence that a test was imminent and it was not a surprise to the people involved in the compartmentalised division that collected that info and the people in the US Government who would have been briefed on that info. The fact the CIA didn't announce anything publicly is not proof they did not know it was going to (or at least was likely to) happen.

    823:

    Actually, I found out that sheep-dipping soldiers to become spooks is an old practice. It's the difference between a covert civilian operation (the CIA) and a clandestine military operation (Spec Ops). If soldiers get caught somewhere killing people, it's an act of war. If civilians get caught doing the same thing, they're criminals. Apparently, the SEALs (and who knows who else) regularly get tours doing stuff on CIA Omega teams, and when this happens they disappear off military payrolls. When missions are over, they're reinstated without any debriefs, because that would leave a military record.

    824:

    Re: ' ... and the people in the US Government who would have been briefed on that info.'

    What'd they tell him ... bad day to practice putting?

    825:

    Heteromeles @ 823: Apparently, the SEALs (and who knows who else) regularly get tours doing stuff on CIA Omega teams, and when this happens they disappear off military payrolls. When missions are over, they're reinstated without any debriefs, because that would leave a military record.

    Not entirely. They may be attached to the CIA's teams and their activities may be classified up the wazoo, but they remain on the military's payrolls.[1]

    Spec Ops soldiers are notorious throughout the U.S. military for the creative ways they've found to manipulate the military's finance systems. If you want a primer on how to write truly creative fiction, put in a FOIA request for all the DD Form 1351-2's (with accompanying documentation) submitted by soldiers assigned to the JFK Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, NC for any given fiscal year.

    [1] Because Retired Pay ... Military retired pay is calculated based on the number of days service x a multiplier based on the number of "good years" to give a percentage of base pay for the highest rank held. Switching someone in and out of Milpay the way you suggest would royally screw up someone's retired pay.

    ... and that's a BIG, BIG No Go! Two things you don't fuck with in the military is soldiers food and soldiers pay.

    826:

    A minor but important point... if there's a second Brexit vote the campaign for Brexit isn't going to be nicer and more honest than the last one. The people who want it haven't gone away or lost influence or gone bankrupt.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/06/peoples-vote-brexit-len-mccluskey-leave

    827:

    Actually the interpretation of seismic data to verify underground nuclear testing lies with the US Department of Energy. I actually worked with someone at LLNL that had that as a job

    https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-conducts-experiment-improve-us-ability-detect-foreign-nuclear-explosions

    828:

    May not happen as I am unlikely to run into you at a con given I haven't attended any. However I may make an exception for WorldCon 2020.

    I take your point about cats, but I think their understanding of gravity is different to us. I am however glad cows don't fly.

    829:

    Worse lives - yup. And the media, wholly-owned subsidiary, mostly, of the 1%, strongly uses language of the wealthy. For example, there's a story on slashdot today about how fewer people moved in the last year than in 48 years or something, and this was "bad for the economy".

    For neighborhood-busting real estate scum, and house flippers, maybe, but the 90%? Hell, no. People get to live where they are.... Back in Russia people do move. And it is good for the economy. The problem is, it's good for the economy of The Principality of Moscow and bad for the economy of Russia – the more people and companies move to Moscow the bigger the cash flow diverted there from other regions. It's funny compared to China where they have noticed the problem (people moving to the coast due to the lack of work in their western provinces) and started doing something about it (like giving tax cuts to the manufacturers willing to build factories in Sichuan). Now the number of migrant labourers has fallen (creating quite a problem for those factories on the coast who relied on them). There are a lot of problems but still..

    But then, I've screamed for decades that basing the condition of a coutry's economy on GDP is like juding income based on average, rather than median. Tell you what... judging income based on average is what Russian statistics are based on. Due to median being too depressing. That, or our government lives in some other Russia where everything's great and the fields are full of rainbow-farting unicorns. Oh, and blockchain. Don't ever forget about that magic voodoo thing that is blockchain. It can solve everything – double Russia's GDP, stop people giving money to scammers and can even solve Irish border crisis (BTW, did that guy explain the exact mechanism of applying blockchain to that? Or was he thinking that it's just a chain that blocks the border crossing, hence the name?)

    But anyway, looks like we'll be hearing a lot more about clueless "hi-tech" solutions to social ills...

    830:

    In this situation, both you and Martin are correct, but missing the largest point.

    "Yet the military budget continues to raise." The US military budget has hovered between 3% and 5% of GDP since the early 1980s. In 2016, it was 3.61% of GDP. If you add the remaining agencies such as the intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, etc. it's probably closer to 5%.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3147636/posts https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/08/news/nato-summit-spending-countries/index.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

    The military budget has increased because the GDP has increased.

    By comparison, Russia's military budget last year was 4.3% of GDP.

    "The US Army which has steadily drawn down from nearly two full Corps in Germany, to a single Brigade Combat Team?"

    The number of active duty troops has fallen since the end of the Cold War and remained constant. Note that the numbers below don't include the national guard or mercenaries such as Blackwater.

    https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1954-2014

    While the number of troops has stayed roughly constant, the number of places they're deploying has increased, so a lot of bases have been closed down to compensate. Look at the list of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) below

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

    This is a product of the fact that the US government is run by lobbyists. Lobbyists generally prefer technology to deployments. Deployments are profitable, but nowhere near as profitable as employees at MIC companies back home. After all, soldiers get government pensions, public healthcare (the Veterans Administration), and the government pays their University tuition (GI Bill). A lot of the small-town bases closed as part of BRAC devastated the local communities.

    On the other hand, the automated stuff (spy satellites, drones) is immensely profitable for the lobbyists. That's excluding the potential revenue from any spinoffs.

    Another thing about moving bases east: there's also a social engineering component. This isn't a good argument these days, but in the early 2000s many E. European wanted NATO bases next to important cities to raise the standard of living in those cities closer to the Western level. In addition, the bases serve as a source of soft power. The idea was that bases in the East would prevent the rise of leaders such as Orban (note that E. European countries that have bases are generally more liberal than their counterparts). I know that this isn't the main reason, but they're still legitimate reasons to move bases Eastward.

    The UK military is a different story, of which I don't know much about.

    831:

    We are badly underdefended - especially the RN. We don't need a big Army - & we don't have one. The Air Force is probably a little bit undersized. The RN should be about double it's present size. [ About maritime patrols & Nimrod-replacement, which was needed, all I can say is what a waste & what a display of criminal incompetence ]

    Expensive? Yes, horribly so - & not helped by the multiple repeated & ongong fuck-ups by the MoD, where huge amounts of the same money is wasted. For the money that is spent, we should be able to have considerably larger & effective forces that we actually do, by the way.

    832:

    And, equally badly, positively hampered by spending huge amounts of money on prestige projects, equipment for foreign 'adventurism' and the adventurism itself - and not primarily for the UK's benefit, either! Yes, I agree about Nimrod, though you are probably too polite about it :-(

    833:

    Much the same is true in the UK.

    834:

    It's also possible that the CIA's left hand knew about it, but didn't tell the right hand, let alone the head. One of the classic diseases of secretive organisations is that their obsessive secrecy turns internal - you can see it even within UK organisations that have no business being secretive, like businesses and universities.

    835:

    Regrettably, when the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister or Minister of Defence speaks out publicly with reference to another country in their areas of responsibility, that is not just politics - even when it is neutral, it is diplomacy. There is no way that it can be said that they are not 'speaking for their country'.

    Williamson is an arsehole, agreed, and all of the other exaggeration does seem to originate in the Daily Wail. sleepingroutine should note that it is the worst creator of totally bogus 'news' stories in the UK, and nothing it publishes should be regarded as even tethered to the truth until confirmed from elsewhere.

    836:

    Actually the interpretation of seismic data to verify underground nuclear testing lies with the US Department of Energy. I actually worked with someone at LLNL that had that as a job

    And DoE is a member of the US intelligence community, with the major labs having in-house intelligence divisions -- Z Division in the case of LLNL. So the flow of information from seismic monitoring into intelligence reporting channels should be routine.

    https://www.energy.gov/intelligence/office-intelligence-and-counterintelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Division

    837:

    EC @ 835 Actually, the "Express" is probably even worse than the Daily Hate - & then there's the "Sun" - the Murdoch gutter-press at its most lying.

    838:

    In terms of loathesomeness, bias and the incitement of hatred, U agree. But in terms of inventing 'facts' from whole cloth, the Wail is out in front.

    839:

    The military budget has increased because the GDP has increased.

    Here's the breakdown for the UK, overall: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/652915/UK_Defence_in_Numbers_2017_-_Update_17_Oct.pdf

    The biggest single cost for most Western militaries is pay and pensions; it's 27% of the MoD budget (apparently Japan doesn't include military pensions as part of its defence budget; the UK does). One advantage of a conscript army, given public support (like the Swedes or the Israelis) is that you don't need to pay 18-year-olds very much, give them houses, build schools for their children, etc, etc.

    Another reason why costs have risen, while forces have shrunk, is operations abroad. Deploying a force overseas is staggeringly expensive; and while you can push a lot of the costs into special HM Treasury budgets, you're still left with the problem that you need to replace equipment more often because it's being used hard. If the war causes lessons to be learned, you have to apply those lessons - so Landrovers and HMMWVs that were seen as perfectly adequate for a modern army, are now seen as insufficiently protective of their occupants (hence JLTV, Foxhound, etc). Aircraft are piling on the flying hours, and using up the stocks of spare parts. War stocks of missiles and shells are used, and need replacing - while the production lines may have closed, or turned to different weapons.

    840:

    to Nowhereland Chronist @829 And it is good for the economy. Couldn't agree more on that, but you also have to realize that it is nothing of a special for modern "free" market. A small private company, provided it survives and grows, will move from a garage to the office, and then to the bigger office in the middle of the city, and then in the capital, and then somewhere else in the world like London, or NYC, or Hong Kong, from which it will plan to spread over the world like an infectious disease.

    Oh, and blockchain. Don't ever forget about that magic voodoo thing that is blockchain. "Blockchain" and "reusable flight" and "robots" (and flamethrowers) go hand in hand in a consciousness of modern liberal ignoramus and myriad other "successful" people who like to cuss our politics and lick boots of international corporations. They believe the magic of free money will make the old tyrannical system of power obsolete and fly them or their kids to the stars. Or something. Government types aren't really impressed by this development.

    to Ioan @830 I do not argue that it all goes in any particular direction by the means of logistics or doctrine. The armed forces are expected to change and develop, but normally they don't try to conquer the new grounds, since the UN provides sovereignty of borders from invasion of foreign power. But there's no such thing as normal situation.

    Of course, right after the end of Cold War there was pretty optimistic and blissful idea that the army is not necessary and we can finally live in peace and do business as people. NATO should have been reformed there and then. But of course not, because it was full of people looking beyond that. We were quickly reminded what is the true purpose of the armed forces, and of course it is not just the "security". It is the security of the business. All of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeXatquVqAc

    I mean, there still was a chance of relative peace development even after NATO cheerfully crushed the Yugoslavia and US rolled over decent middle-eastern tyranny, splattering the blood everywhere. Everybody thought that that's far enough for them and countries weren't exactly willing to join the alliance out of fear of sparkling another Cold War. So they've switched to subversion tactic and another several years occupied even more. Naturally, nothing could have prepared us to the clusterfuck that started in full force in 2008 - and we are already 10 years into it. I don't thin they realize the meaning of their own words when they are threatening someone in Russia with military intervention.

    841:

    Naturally, nothing could have prepared us to the clusterfuck that started in full force in 2008 - and we are already 10 years into it. I don't think they realize the meaning of their own words when they are threatening someone in Russia with military intervention.

    I think the problem here is basically one of Barrak Obama's inexperience (at the time.) He would have done much better to let either Hillary or John McCain become president in 2008, and either served on Hillary's cabinet or continued as a Senator.

    Specifically, Obama did not understand the full nature of what Americans (and many others) see as Russia's extreme paranoia, which means in practical terms that any smart government does it's best to avoid extending too much influence to those nations on Russia's borders - with the possible exception of Germany. (When I explained this to my son I said, "You shouldn't shave the bear.")

    In other words, let Russia have enough friendly countries on it's borders, and everyone is happy.

    The flip side of this is that Russia is really bad at making friends. The bear is not a teddy bear, and it has a tendency to walk up to another nation, extend it's claws, open it's mouth full of big, sharp teeth, and give the neighbor a big, friendly, very paranoid hug, regardless of whether the neighbor wants a hug or not.

    This doesn't go over very well. Which is why countries like Poland, after most recently escaping from Russia's hug, tend to run over to NATO and say, "Please let us join! Please please please we'll be your best friend! Please let us join!"

    The U.S. would be best served by leaving the whole situation alone, and Russia would be best served by stepping down the intensity a couple notches.

    842:

    sleepingroutine @ 840 even after NATO cheerfully crushed the Yugoslavia REALLY? So Slobodan Milosivic was a peace-loving man who really wasn't into slaughtering Croats & muslims at all, was he? Nor, for that matter was Radavan K or all the other mudererers running around? Do you know - I DON'T BELIEVE YOU.

    843:

    No chance of seeing me there - I'm not even making Dublin, given that the week it starts is the week I retire (and my income drops by < 50%). A year later, maybe, for Dublin, once I knew what my cash flow was, but....

    Flying livestock... I've always said that it's a good thing they don't, or we'd all be carrying steel umbrellas all the time, and street sweeping would be a lot more frequent.

    844:

    The US does the same. A good example of the stats are, from a news story today, on the US jobs report:

    Oh! We're at a record low of 3.6% unemployment!!!

    Excerpt: A separate gauge that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons, sometimes called the real unemployment rate, rose from 7.4 percent to 7.6 percent. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/07/us-created-155000-jobs-in-november-vs-198000-expected.html

    845:

    But I thought the Sun was all about the Page (3? 6? whatever) girl....

    I was very unhappy when my favorite newspaper went online-only (and I can't see it at work). The one reliable newspaper (they tell you they are): the Weekly World News. (I figure they get their stories the honest way: they make them up.) Wonder what Bat-boy is doing these days?

    Side note: I came to love the WWN in early April of '93? '94? when their cover story was "NASA finds alien baby in crashed UFO!", with an inset block that read, "Unidenfitied farm couple waiting to adopt."

    Really, how can you not love them?

    846:

    I disagree about either Hillary or McCain (can you picture Sarah Palin one heartbeat from the Presidency?), but ycts on Russia... that's exactly how I view Russia and its situation.

    And the military... hell, Ike sent troops into the US South to desegregate the schools... and the Marines into Nicaragua, to change the government, because United Fruit. With the US as the Big Dog in NATO....

    847:

    Another topic, inspired by current events. A high-ranking Huawei executive was recently arrested in Canada, possibly for deportation to the US for issues. You can read about it at the link.

    That's kind of begging for a trade war, but I'm thinking slightly longer term, about whether a tech fight between China and the US will lead to a balkanization of the internet, a splinternet, adn the consequences thereof.

    My next question concerns the follow-on effect. I've been concerned for some time that the next world war will be largely fought online. After all, you can spend billions bombing away a city's infrastructure to get them to capitulate, or you can take away control of their infrastructure by capturing their internet-linked controllers. Cheaper is better, no? And politically it looks better if you can turn the water on rapidly after you turned it off, something which is hard to do when you go dambusting.

    Oh yeah, the question: would a splinternet make it more likely or less likely to have a worldwide web war? On the one hand, a splinternet means that it's less likely that some script kiddie in Tuvalu will start WWIII, because of limited access, so Balkanization may stabilize things by putting some slack and other barriers to attack in the linkages among countries. On the other hand, balkanization aids targeting, so an attacker who has made a beachhead in an enemy system can unleash a viral or other attack without worrying that it will attack his computers as well.

    I'm not a great strategic thinker, so I'm wondering which will be more important: would balkanization of the internet make things more peaceful, more dangerous, or both paradoxically?

    848:

    I suspect the causation dates back along the lines of...

    Socialism bad, poor people, even white, need to die

    Oops, this isn't popular.

    Well, helping poor people wastes funds on the Irish...evolving with time. So, let's not help any poor people.

    Oops. Now, the minorities hate us. Gosh, awful lot of them around.

    Well, how about we be nice to minorities. And lose our base??? Yah. Not going to be effective.

    Urgle. Well, let's ride this horse off the cliff...

    Hey, a war would be a nice distraction....

    849:

    Er, the problem was predictable (and predicted) a LOT earlier - and that is perhaps the least part of it.

    The economic war goes back to the 1990s. As Russia withdrew from its foreign bases and alignments, the USA didn't just step in but often offered favourable deals if the countries stopped buying ANY arms from Russia. We saw this policy explicitly stated recently w.r.t. gas (and I don't mean petrol). The expansion of the EU eastwards was similar, as far as its food exports went. We have seen more of that recently.

    Russia wasn't too worried about NATO until it became clear that the intent was to put more bases and missiles as close as possible to Russia. As a retired USA general said in a USA paper about the Polish missiles "of course they are pointed at Russia". Russia will also remember 1962, when the USA was setting up the capability of a preemptive nuclear strike (with what intent I can't say), and powerful people in the USA were proposing one.

    As was known at the time and has been stated on the record recently, the USA started arming and supporting the Syrian rebels in 2010 (yes, before the 'Arab spring'). Most independent commentators were pretty sure that the objective was to eliminate Russia's base in the Mediterranean. There was also the pressure that was put on Spain to cancel a refuelling arrangement.

    850:

    Specifically, Obama did not understand the full nature of what Americans (and many others) see as Russia's extreme paranoia, which means in practical terms that any smart government does it's best to avoid extending too much influence to those nations on Russia's borders - with the possible exception of Germany. (When I explained this to my son I said, "You shouldn't shave the bear.")

    Since the end of the Cold War, there have been, broadly speaking, three narratives in the U.S. foreign/defense/national security apparatus on how to deal with Russia.

    The first was to more or less do what you suggest, leave Russia alone, and then gradually integrate it into the trans-Atlantic alliance. This was the mindset of the Bush Sr. administration and the disposition behind James Baker's promise to Gorbachev not to enlarge NATO. Once the Clinton administration ignored that and enlarged NATO anyway, Baker advocated inviting Russia to join NATO. But, his ideas mostly went nowhere and this narrative evaporated.

    The second narrative was a more aggressive vision championed by former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski: "the road to Moscow runs through Kiev." Enlarge NATO up to Russia's borders, including bringing Ukraine into the alliance, in order to apply pressure to Russia to reform itself into a Western-style democracy. Once it does that to the U.S. and Western Europe's satisfaction, then bring it, too, into the alliance. This has been the basic template for U.S. grand strategy for two decades and continues to be the U.S. establishment position as embodied by both Clintons, Bush Jr., and Obama.

    The third narrative was what actually happened in the 1990s with "economic shock therapy" applied to post-Soviet Russia. In short: open Russia's gates to speculators and raiders, let them strip it for parts, and let the vultures have the corpse. Thus, the "Seven Boyars" and the oligarchy that ran the place in the Yeltsin period. NOTE: this was the diametric opposite of the Marshal Plan in W. Europe and the reconstruction of Japan after World War II.

    I suppose one could argue that Trump and his alt-right followers began to formulate a fourth narrative involving switching sides and allying with Russia against China and W. Europe, but it never went anywhere. Trump is too compromised by his alleged ties to the Kremlin, and, anyway, the U.S. policy establishment wasn't interested.

    FWIW, I think James Baker had the right idea in gradually integrating Russia into NATO. It would've secured Russia's western borders, provided a mechanism for U.S. investment in Russian infrastructure, and supported containment of China from the north in east Asia. The U.S. had an opportunity to do with Russia after the Cold War what we did with Germany and Japan after World War II, but out of greed and a tragic lack of foresight, we blew it.

    At this point, the best the U.S. can hope for (and should IMO work toward) is detente with Russia. Rebuild the arms control treaty structure. Negotiate an end to the Ukraine crisis, perhaps on the model of Cold War Finlandization. Once that's done, revitalize the Russia-NATO Council, and find targeted opportunities for diplomatic and military cooperation. Take the temperature down; gradually rebuild trust; keep the peace.

    851:

    Btw, for Greg...

    Excerpt: John McDonnell has rejected warnings from Len McCluskey, the Unite leader, that Labour members would see support for a second Brexit referendum as a betrayal, adding that in a choice between Theresa May’s deal and staying in the EU he would vote remain.

    McCluskey, who wields substantial influence in the party, told a group of Labour MPs this week that they could alienate supporters by backing a fresh referendum, and urged them to stick to Labour’s alternative Brexit plan.

    Asked during a visit to Glasgow on Friday whether he agreed with McCluskey, McDonnell said: “No.”

    The shadow chancellor said if there were a second referendum it was “inevitable” that the choice for voters would be remain versus Theresa May’s deal, adding: “And if it was, I would vote remain.” --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/07/john-mcdonnell-rejects-union-warning-over-second-referendum

    852:

    to Troutwaxer See, when they really out to get ya, it is not "paranoia", it is a "foresight". Imagine for a minute, that you do not live on a island. The Ireland, the US and Canada, Australia, do not have sea between them, and you don't even have any big mountains. Basically you can just hop onto a motorcycle and travel from Cardiff to Melbourne, in, what, 2 weeks. And it is small, but persistent part of tourism industry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lcC28ka0tA

    But that's not over yet, because so is Germany, France, Baltics, China, India, Mexico, Middle East, and also those are goddamn Caucasians and Blatics and ancient "friends" of yours Mongols. At this point you should remember about certain embarrassing, but unfortunately very real term like cordon sanitaire.

    Only the goddamn Russians (and whoever lives out there) are so well isolated by, hm, some very persistent geological features (like a severe lack of seagoing access) that you become really concerned every time they try to stick their nose out of their historical part of the map. Also, Africa is quite an exception, so no black slavery or cheap resources at arms length.

    This doesn't go over very well. Which is why countries like Poland, after most recently escaping from Russia's hug, tend to run over to NATO and say, "Please let us join! Please please please we'll be your best friend! Please let us join!" So much so they manage to run from EU also, though in their selfishness they want to sit in two chairs - stay in EU and trying to get US military assistance and investment. Needless to say, compared to Russia's "paranoia", Polish historical internal split is about as legendary.

    to Greg Tingey @842 Yes really. Finding a big bad dictator is just a regular shitty excuse for invasion. The region was never too calm itself, so NATO is responsible for radicalization instead of it's pacification (though it is, quite possibly, the two sides of the same coin for them). Compared to Poland, where internal struggle is more of an ideological cold war between opposing views, the Balkans is a melting pot even more dangerous than Caucasus mountains. They have both Muslims and Christians, then they have remnants of several empires like Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman, and this is only a top layer of all of it.

    853:

    whitroth @ 851 SUPRISE! Labour are at least as divided over "Europe" as the tories .... OH SHIT

    854:

    I’m curious skeepingroutine given that Russia still has enough nukes to end the world ten times over what exactly are you afraid of? And how does all the military posturing help exactly ?

    Also given that the US currently has States with more GDP then Russia and NATO as a whole is several orders of magnitude greater, what exactly do you think you would do about it if they really were “out to get you “

    855:

    Re: US - Russia

    The current arms race between these two rivals also includes who can outsell to Saudi Arabia. Arms sales are also fairly big for Germany and France and of course China.

    So if peace breaks out, pretty well all of the G7 (plus Russia's) GDPs take a hit mostly because they haven't bothered to find any reliable long term substitute for the arms industry. Okay, both France and Germany have been funding green industry at both industrial and household levels, so will probably be okay. (The UK cut its funding for green energy by 56% in January 2018.)

    856:

    I’m curious skeepingroutine given that Russia still has enough nukes to end the world ten times over what exactly are you afraid of? And how does all the military posturing help exactly ?

    Also given that the US currently has States with more GDP then Russia and NATO as a whole is several orders of magnitude greater, what exactly do you think you would do about it if they really were “out to get you “

    Let me barge in... I fail to recognise how exactly are nukes useful in this context. I think even the Czar (and quite possible The Tangerine One) would find the post-nuclear climate somewhat disagreeable, what with all the fallout and dead people and mutant cockroaches the size of a bear. So let's leave the strategic deterrent aside... and that leaves us with two options: suck it up or try to do something about it.

    Now... did you notice that international politics are somehow not so different from those of a kindergarten? Or maybe a school? And not a particularly nice one at that. You have bullies, you have bullied (and those two sets are intersecting as well), you have nerdy kids... and you get regular temper tantrums. And when you give someone who's being bullied a big stick – why, the consequences are never pretty. Now, if you start rattling your nukes – that's that big stick and that's inviting others to do unto you before you do unto them. And the next thing you know – BAM! cockroaches the size of a bear and glowing in the dark.

    Maybe we as a species should invent some sort of a test for our politicians? Like, for basic compassion and having an IQ of a baboon at least and not being a curious variant of slime mold? Or just make it a requirement for each and every official to be a bonobo as I hear they tend to solve every problem with (consensual) sex instead of violence?.. What certainly is not a solution here is more attempts to intimidate everyone with nukes.

    857:

    "Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits."

    The Wail, the Scum and the All-Stations-Stopper are quite useful in a way. For avoiding distractions. If anyone cites them in an argument it's a pretty good indication that either they are just really badly informed about the situation at a pretty basic level, to the extent of not realising what those rags are really like, or that they think the views the rags put forth are actually worth something; either way they act as cues to avoid wasting thought on the citer's argument.

    We've also got the Daily Star, which is the same as the Sun except it's run by a porn baron instead of a fascist grave-dodging bog man.

    My favourite - in the same sense as yours - is the Daily Sport, which by the sound of it is the same as your Weekly World News except with more tits. They make no pretence to any more compelling claim on your attention than the magnitude of their nipple count, and advertise themselves on that basis. Their most famous headline was probably "B52 Bomber Found On Moon".

    858:

    Then there was the fifth doctrine: the Kissinger doctrine

    He didn't want to weaken Russia too much because he was afraid that this would give Eurasia to China.

    Here is the short version of the Kissinger Doctrine

  • No power must dominate Eurasia because whoever dominates Eurasia dominates the world.
  • China and Russia should remain rivals in Eurasia, an alliance between the two should be prevented at all costs.
  • The US should always ally itself to one to stop the other. That's why he was so eager to support Nixon's detente with Mao, and now Trump's attempted re-approachment with Putin.
  • https://www.ft.com/content/926a66b0-8b49-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543

    Who knows, if China wasn't so quiet geopolitically over the past decade since 2008, this doctrine may have won out?

    @Troutwaxer "I think the problem here is basically one of Barrak Obama's inexperience (at the time.) He would have done much better to let either Hillary or John McCain become president in 2008, and either served on Hillary's cabinet or continued as a Senator."

    I don't see President Obama mattering that much in regards to relationships in 2008. He didn't become President until 2009. Furthermore, his focus in the first two years was the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and then passing Obamacare. He didn't shift his focus to foreign policy until after he lost the House. It's been the style of Presidents since Clinton: spend the first two years working on domestic policy, spend the remaining six working on foreign policy. GWB was the exception, due to 9/11. In Trump's case, focusing on foreign policy probably means focusing on his trade wars?

    From my understanding, relations didn't cool with Russia until the Arab Spring. If you remember, both Clinton and McCain were even more hawkish on supporting the protests.

    859:

    You're saying "It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you."

    I'm saying "Even paranoids have real enemies."*

    The problem here is that it's a vicious circle. Russia is paranoid. The West gives Russia stuff to be (sometimes sensibly) paranoid about. Then Russia is paranoid. Then the West... etc. However, any actor in a vicious circle can act to end it, and nobody has done so. I think FUBAR007's discussion above is about as smart as we're going to get on the subject, and I'll let the whole subject go with that bit of praise...

    • Depending on your familiarity with English you might or might not know that these are two very common statements about paranoia.
    860:

    You're right about equipment wearing out.

    I found a rough breakdown for the healthcare costs of the US military from 2012.

    "Defense analyst Todd Harrison calculates that military health spending is about 9.5 percent of the base defense budget: $52.5 billion out of the $559 billion that the Defense Department requested for fiscal year 2012. On top of that, the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has a separate budget, seeks to spend $51 billion of its $132 billion 2012 budget request on health care."

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/03/12/how-health-care-spending-strains-the-u-s-military/#79a72c4d2c54

    861:

    I think Obama was a tolerable president from 2009-2017. He'd have been a fairly good president from 2017-2025. If he'd left the Senate at some point to become vice-president or join someone's cabinet, maybe served as an ambassador or something... he'd have been an awesome president from 2025-2033.

    862:

    There was a quote I remember from some "man on the Sarajevo omnibus", which went something like: "Oh, yes, in Tito's Yugoslavia we all loved each other. We had a policeman on every corner to make sure we loved each other very much."

    That seemed to me to sum up the history of the Balkans pretty well: like a class of unruly kids, who behave as long as the strict and fearsome teacher is present, but as soon as the teacher goes out of the room, chaos erupts.

    863:

    Since we're talking military and geopolitics, a few articles I found.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/most-powerful-militaries-in-the-world-ranked-2018-11#3-china-23

    Here are the numbers for China, Russia, and the US

    China Total aircraft strength: 3,035 Fighter aircraft: 1,125 Combat tanks: 7,716 Total naval assets: 714 (one aircraft carrier)

    Russia Total aircraft strength: 3,914 Fighter aircraft: 818 Combat tanks: 20,300 Total naval assets: 352 (one aircraft carrier out of service indefinitely)

    US Total aircraft: 13,362 Fighter aircraft: 1,962 Combat tanks: 5,884 Total naval assets: 415 (20 aircraft carriers)

    When we were talking about nukes in a previous thread, I mentioned that China's growing conventional forces were more destabilizing for the world than any increases in nuclear arsenals. I was being hyperbolic with that statement, but China's military buildup is bumping up against India's sphere of influence. The article I linked presents the issue from India's perspective: https://www.businessinsider.com/india-is-beefing-up-its-navy-to-counter-chinas-powerful-fleet-2018-12

    Personally, the article glossed over the fact that current political instabilities in Sri Lanka and Nepal relate to this fight of influence.

    864:

    Nowhereland Chronist @ 856 In London we have a smaller, but equally unpleasant example of playground fights & amazing petty spite by two politicians, who, between them, are fucking-over Londoners & their vital tansport. Both are complete, total selfish arseholes, both incompetent, one notoriously so - everything he touches turns to shit & the second is all-too-obviously trying to catch up in the public wanking stakes. Chris Grayling & S Khan. Kahn, admittedly with "help" from the now-retired Osborne has managed to screw TfL's finances over totally & Grayling is helping him along, so that he can blame Kahn, who is doing his best to obstruct Grayling at every turn, whilst posing as "the people's friend" - which he isn't. Meanwhile our transport is falling apart, running out of money & time, whilst these two play spite-your-face antics. [ I had my serious disagreements with both of Khan's predecessors - BoJo & Livingtwerp - but both of them kept TfL's finances afloat & solid. ]

    Ioan @ 858 Kissinger point 1. NOT new - taken frm Harold J Mackinder, written in the earlyt 1900's One reason for Adolf's desire to control the land as far as the Urals was Nazi misreadings of Mackinder ...

    Pigeon @ 862 YES And look at the place - now, Milosevic & all the other nasty petty spiteful, narrowminded ( etc - see above ) were to blame. Nothing at all to do with NATO or the EU.

    865:

    Yes, to both you and FUBAR007, but there are three other aspects (plus Ioan's). The first is that NATO's very existence is predicated on conflict with Russia, which is why it followed the iron rule of bureaucracies in choosing doctrines. The second is the organisations and people whose profits depend on having a high-tech., plausible opponent. And the third is that, in a conflict such as this one, the weaker side cannot afford to accept the stronger's conditions.

    866:

    I fully agree that the disaster was nothing to do with NATO, but it definitely seized the opportunity for expansion - including in Montenegro, where there were some very dirty politics related to the accession (on both sides). Following that, there was a proposal to exclude all non-NATO warships from the Adriatic from some fairly high-profile local politician. Saner minds jumped on that, but it definitely will have made people in Russia even more paranoid.

    867:

    to Unholyguy @853 what exactly do you think you would do about it if they really were “out to get you Sequential analysis of past 6 centuries of invasions in Russia indicates that the destruction of a country was never a goal itself. Except maybe Lithuanian one, in which case that invasion was the major part of a plan to establish regional domination. Russia as an enemy power was in the way of more grander ideas of world conquest and since it proves to be more difficult to communicate with a power like that, invaders always decided to use military, even if it was predated with substantial progress of soft power. It is a natural mistake of paranoid nature - many people are very afraid that, given enough time, it will be able to draw enough power to reinstate USSR (or make 2.0 version of it) and somehow bring the revenge about.

    Nuclear action option has very clear and understandable goal - to defeat enemy force. You do not need to vaporize populated every city through the world, you only need to procure every scrap of information to determine locations of most important military installations and destroy them to they would not be able to function, and let the army finish the job of securing the rest of it. This is the starting point, after which anything at all can happen.

    There's also a casual way of looking at the situation, I overheard it once on some analytical TV program. If the invaders are really out to destroy our country, our history, culture, traditions and people - the whole memory of this place - what is the reason to to let anybody live past this point? Why do we need to save this stupid planet then?

    to Ioan @863 When we were talking about nukes in a previous thread, I mentioned that China's growing conventional forces were more destabilizing for the world than any increases in nuclear arsenals. I have very high suspicion that all-out war on the continent, be it China vs India or (especially!) China vs Russia was always a wet dream of any American politician since Cold War, since it will provide them with a refreshing wave of capital investments of biblical proportions - because business always likes stability and will flee from any conflict.

    The stability is what US wants as long as it is in control over most of the world. When power slips from their hands, they would prefer to revert to the chaos theory, and this is the real reason behind last decade's changes.

    to GT @ Nothing at all to do with NATO or the EU. REALLY? "Look, we are only are responsible for a small fire, it is not our fault that the houses and the forest around are made of really flammable materials."

    868:

    W.r.t. the Yugoslavia debacle, neither were involved in starting the fire - it was purely an internal matter, and took pretty well everyone by surprise (though the very, very few real experts weren't surprised). And there were no EU or even NATO actions that triggered it. NATO got involved only AFTER the pogroms had started.

    869:

    I think HUMMVs and the like are actually quite good military vehicles, designed for rapid mobility over rough ground. They're not the best choice for an urban Occupation force, for that you need something like the Serf Efrican Casspirs to subdue the local populace and teach them who's boss.

    The US might be wise to create another branch of the military which specialises in occupation, terror and oppression of subject races rather than leaving it up to the regular war-fighting branches to learn on the job and suffer unnecessary casualties in the doing. Recent news - the US lost three more soldiers recently in Afghanistan due to a bombing, it didn't seem to make the papers much. The US response was to bomb a "wedding".

    870:

    Sovereignty Fetishists.

    871:

    the Yugoslavia debacle, neither were involved in starting the fire - it was purely an internal matter Compare: the Libya debacle, neither were involved in starting the fire - it was purely an internal matter the Afghanistan debacle, neither were involved in starting the fire the Syria debacle, neither were involved in starting the fire Is this what you learn from your news programs and Internet sources these days?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Maritime_Guard (1992) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deny_Flight (1993) https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/21/us/nato-set-to-bomb-serbs-in-croatia.html?pagewanted=1 (1994) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force (1995) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sharp_Guard (1996)

    Serbs were the major component of preserving (relative) peace and unity in the Yugoslavia, and this is the reason why from the very beginning they were targeted by NATO for expulsion and extermination, to partition the country and take control of the region. There is simply no other explanation, and this is why they don't offer you any other option to treat Serbs as scapegoats for everything that happened there.

    As we can clearly see, all of the prerequisites for final solution of Serb problem were prepared years before 1999 bombings, and the story of Kosovo is only the end stage of the region takeover. Which came very useful when NATO were setting up for the control of EU border regions - the major source of refugee/contraband/drug/weapons flow into Europe.

    872:

    Nonsense. The USA and allies lit the Afghanistan and Iraq fires, with the UK being a prime mover in the latter, and the UK lit the Libya fire. This was all clear from Western media sources. In Yugoslavia, the Serbs started an anti-Muslim pogrom, including state-run atrocities and massacres; we had independent reporters actually on the ground.

    In all cases, the West's handling of the wars was atrocious, but that is NOT the same.

    873:

    Re: Naval build-up

    How much of this is to protect trade routes, esp. India's and China's? There's been an increase in naval piracy in these regions, so not necessarily war between nation states.

    874:

    EC @ 872 Almost Afghanistan was the US, as was Iraq, but with Blair acting as a mini-me, Libya was the UK with France coming along for the ride as well [ After the Yvonne Fletcher murder, Gaddafi's card was marked, anyway ] Ferpectly corrrect about the then Serb "leadership" though. sleepingroutine is either lying, or sayng what the FSB ( or whichever is the appropriate agency is ) tells him to.

    Ironically, Iraq COULD have been a success, IF the military's plans for a "proper" occupation had been followed ( As per 1945 in Germany ) rather than the utter fuck-up proposed by the "neoliberals" - but we've covered this before ....

    875:

    Yes, yes, and yes, particularly the last.

    In this, the problem for Russia is their economy. They have not done a particularly good job of expanding beyond oil, mainly because their oligarchs are grabby even when it's another country's company setting up in Russia, which is why nobody will invest there. So the Russians must always sell as much oil as possible, even when they'd be far better served by saying, "We're going to stop selling oil - allowing prices to rise horribly - because we don't like what you're doing. Come to the table and give us something and we'll talk about releasing the oil." (The day before OPEC first did this, U.S. gasoline sold for .25/gallon. Ten years later you couldn't get gas for under $1.00/gallon.) And it wouldn't have to be oil. Russia could make a billion dollars of to-be-exported Toyotas sit on the dock, (or whatever - if they had the internal strength to keep enough order not to steal a foreign investor's property.)

    So the problem for Russia in negotiations with a "superior" power is that they have cyber-war, or some other kind of war, or nothing. There's no way for them to use a medium-strength economic deterrent. Thus we end up with Trump, the U.K. ends up with Brexit,* and Russia will ultimately end up with nothing - because pissed off Democrats are coming to the U.S., and if Putin thought Obama/Hillary was a bad combination, wait until someone like Kamala Harris is president!

    • I have suspicions of the "Yellow Vests" in France. Loaning Le Pen 9 million dollars didn't buy Putin much. Maybe the dude should calm down and consider another strategy!
    876:

    The problem as I saw it was that the U.S. needed to pivot after 9/11, and didn't. Iraq was the only secular regime in the area after 9/11 - so why did we invade it?* Iraq sure as hell isn't secular now! And Osama bin Laden clearly represented some of the ugliest, most conservative interests in Saudi Arabia, so why did we declare that Iran was on the "Axis of Evil" and ignore the Saudis' ugliness?

    It seems to me that the smarter move by far would have been to make up with Iraq and Iran, and (without being so gauche as to say so) declare war on Wahabi Islam, which is a horribly destabilizing force, and maybe seize all Saudi assets in the U.S. and use the money to declare a one-year tax holiday. (You want to defeat terror? Use their assets to pay a year's worth of taxes! Full refund for everyone!)

    • Yes, the neocon theory of "creative destruction." It was a rhetorical question.
    877:

    Re: Chinese naval build-up

    The Saudi's have a part in this because China imports a lot of its oil from them. According to the below, China is using its navy to protect import cargo* from pirates as well as other nations' (e.g., USA) potential blockades**. This can also be SA's non-war posturing excuse to also build-up its navy and air forces: they're just doing their share in protecting trade relations with their largest trade partners.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/04/01/whats-china-doing-in-the-indian-ocean/#656541523633

    • If the Chinese didn't use mostly Chinese ships, they could have used FOB-buyer which is the most common terms and conditions for delivery.

    ** The Chinese acronym for the pirate defense navy is PLAN ... yeah, I bet they did.

    878:

    Colin Powell legendarily told George Bush that his war with Iraq would take place under the "Pottery Barn Rule."* In other words, "you break it, you bought it."

    Bush: We grift over there. Trump: We grift over here.

    • Pottery Barn is a large ceramics store in the U.S.
    879:

    "I have very high suspicion that all-out war on the continent, be it China vs India or (especially!) China vs Russia was always a wet dream of any American politician since Cold War"

    As I have stated in previous threads, we're more likely to face a major asteroid strike than for the following four superpowers to engage in a shooting war: US, Russia, China, and India, in any combination. However, there's nothing stopping a cold war or an economic war between these powers. That was my whole point!

    Here are some articles about the Chinese-Indian relationship, from the Indian side.

    https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/china-s-assertion-is-turning-asian-geopolitics-even-more-contentious/story-dIjBAHcCnhH1W1VhShPlXL.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/cooperation-rivalry-to-define-india-china-ties-in-coming-years-say-experts/story-xWgokXHOYmR8VOQ8aZmFlJ.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/india-should-target-china-not-pakistan-on-terror/story-PI4ub3GfNyATK0WJa9HRWM.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/nehru-wasn-t-naive-on-china/story-GLQ4ki5l6mbJm5721ksyEK.html

    Here are some articles about Nepal https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/nepal-s-access-to-chinese-ports-will-end-india-s-monopoly-on-trade-routes/story-zphtXBKCyhXoI47BVTzpbP.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/editorials/india-must-review-its-nepal-policy/story-NY0oy8QuBirTzdea59G8WN.html

    What SFreader says about the importance of trade routes is true, but the re-armament both countries are doing is way in excess of what is required for dealing with pirates.

    880:

    Here's a question: what percent of Russia's GDP is oil? I know that oil is 60% of Russia's exports, but I'm curious about GDP overall.

    881:

    Ioan @ 830: The number of active duty troops has fallen since the end of the Cold War and remained constant. Note that the numbers below don't include the national guard or mercenaries such as Blackwater.

    Thanks for putting the National Guard in the same category as mercenaries.

    882:

    Troutwaxer @ 875 I have my "very strong suspicions" that Putin's "best" invstement was the useful idiot Assange. Ah yes, Assange posturing again. Assuming that spreading chaos is at any time a good investment, of course. @ 876 Like Charlie said about AL-Yamamah - MONEY from selling shit to the Saudis, same as DT is prevaricating over the Kashoggi murder .... Agree re. Iraq & Persia - problem there is the theocratic regime in the latter - we want to weaken it by being friends & selling them evil corrupt Western videos of Sex, Drugs & Rock'nRoll, I think!

    Incoidentally, Tsar Putin is showing distinct signs of being another nasty little puritan LIKE THIS

    883:

    What, the category "not included in the chart"?

    884:

    Pigeon @ 857:

    "Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits."

    The Wail, the Scum and the All-Stations-Stopper are quite useful in a way. For avoiding distractions. If anyone cites them in an argument it's a pretty good indication that either they are just really badly informed about the situation at a pretty basic level, to the extent of not realising what those rags are really like, or that they think the views the rags put forth are actually worth something; either way they act as cues to avoid wasting thought on the citer's argument.

    I get that this is a reference to Who reads the papers", but which papers from that bit are "the Wail, the Scum and the All-Stations-Stopper"?

    885:

    Well, there have been border skirmishes between Russia and China and China and India, but they never escalated to full wars between these two.

    There's a lot of fussing about the fishing grounds between Russia and Alaska, but so far no one's shot at each other.

    And if you want to see a potential mess brewing, google some combination of "China US south China Sea. A number of pundits think this is where WWIII will start. Hopefully not.

    So far, India and Russia share no borders, so they've not fought since the Great Game between the British and Russian empires. However, if Russia reabsorbs the 'Stans and India somehow wins the Jammu and Kashmir dispute without triggering a different total war with Pakistan, then all that would separate Greater Russia and Greater India would be a narrow sliver of Afghanistan...

    As for nukes, the general logic is that they're currently prevent mass invasions and regime changes, because if you scare the dude with the button, a lot of people die pointlessly. It's a form of hostage taking, and that's the logic of mutually assured destruction. While it has worked so far, there's so much combat innovation in other spheres that I don't think it will work forever.

    Both petroleum-powered warfare and nuclear warfare also have the Mexican Standoff problem, in that first person to put down their weapons is at the mercy of those who hang on to them, and the last person standing has all the power. This is one of the big problems with tackling climate change, as I've noted before--petroleum is a big part of modern military power. It's not just a matter of having alternative sources of power, it's a matter of demonstrating that a military running on renewables can beat a military running on gas. Right now, that's only true in cyberwar. So unless electric air, sea, and land militaries really have some breakthrough innovations, one of the major paths to 100% renewables is cyberwarriors demonstrating that they can beat their opponents without firing a shot. And won't that be fun to live through?

    In the long run, I suspect that the invasions that nukes can't and won't stop are those of climate migrants, and they'll render this entire nuclear defensive system as useless as Medieval castles. But that's probably a few decades off.

    886:

    JBS @ 884 The "Wail" is the Daily Mail, also called the Daily Hate & Daily Nazi ... The Scum is the "Sun" owned by the actual scum Murdoch - so called after years of deliberate lying about the Hillsborough tragedy. Sales of the scum in Liverpool are remarkably low ( Though not considering things, actually, I'm suprised anyone in that city buys it ) The All-stations stopper is, of course the "Express" - notorious for being, in the past, run by the vile Beaverbrook.

    heteromeles / S China Sea Actually NOT just China / US - the PRC appear to be trying to grab bits that, under normal rules would belong to: The Philippines / Borneo / Vietnam. All of whom are not happy with their bullying Han "Neighbours"

    887:

    Greg Tingey 874: Ironically, Iraq COULD have been a success, IF the military's plans for a "proper" occupation had been followed ( As per 1945 in Germany ) rather than the utter fuck-up proposed by the "neoliberals" - but we've covered this before ....

    I really disagree with that. Had the military's advice been followed it would have taken a lot longer for it to end in failure, but it still would have ended in failure.

    As bad a despot as Saddam was, there really was NO RATIONAL JUSTIFICATION for the 2003 Iraq invasion. It was a bad idea from the get-go, based on invalid assumptions (i.e. that we could somehow pacify the country and cow Iran while stealing the oil). It doesn't matter how superior the military's preferred strategy might have been, it would have turned into a fiasco anyway. Even going after the Taliban in Afghanistan was a marginal proposition.

    All these years later, we're still facing the geo-political ramifications of not recognizing the hidden hand behind the 9/11 attack. Fifteen of the 19 perpetrators, along with the mastermind behind the plot and the majority of the financial support for the operation came from Saudi Arabia. The part of the Saudi "government" that wasn't actively complicit is still guilty of wilful blindness.

    888:

    Greg Tingey @ 886: The "Wail" is the Daily Mail, also called the Daily Hate & Daily Nazi ...

    Thank you. I've updated my annotation.

    889:

    Don't forget the option of the 'Stans being absorbed into the Indian sphere :).

    Don't get me wrong; that's unlikely to happen. As I stated previously, the stans are trying to play the powers off against each other. As for the South China Sea, I doubt WWIII will start there. The region is too heavily armed and watched for an incident to escalate too much. "Borders" that are lightly armed and watched are much more dangerous, since both sides have a lot more to lose if they don't escalate.

    890:

    I'm personally not hoping for WWIII at all. As noted above, I'm not a strategic thinker, but my understanding of the South China Sea problem is that so much of the world's commerce goes through there that some power trying to control it kind of forces other powers to react.

    In any case, the most turbulent border right now is cyberspace, since basically everyone's on that border, and it's hard to police.

    891:

    JBS @ 887 Probably correct, actually. IF Saddam was got rid of, it should have been the first time around ... All too late now. Agree 150% about Suadi & 11/9 & all that crap. We shouldn't have anything at all to do with that regime, but .. OIL & the US obsession with it & the "camel corps" in the Brit F.O. & .....

    892:

    Re: '... the most turbulent border right now is cyberspace, since basically everyone's on that border, and it's hard to police.'

    Enter the Huawei political minefield. BTW, the Internet can be fractured/fragmented.

    Question for the techies:

    How much of the InterWeb is 'cloud-based'? Recall asking: Who runs/owns 'clouds' years ago? Was told that it's all in the interconnectedness of servers. So my next question is: what special equipment/fiber-optics do you need to run a 'cloud'?

    Back when I asked this question, Huawei had the best fiber-optic tech (key part of a cloud). Is Huawei still the cloud tech leader?

    Next question: Does cloud computing make the InterWeb more or less expensive to operate?

    Basically, I'm getting at: What happens if Huawei stops selling its tech to the rest of world?

    893:

    Saudi is a prime example of one of my arguments for why we should have started getting off fossil fuels back when everyone thought the upcoming climate catastrophe we were due for was an ice age.

    As for Iraqistan, so much of the problem there was that in so far as it even had any well-defined aim, that aim was to look impressive on TV.

    894:

    Serbs were the major component of preserving (relative) peace and unity in the Yugoslavia, and this is the reason why from the very beginning they were targeted by NATO for expulsion and extermination, to partition the country and take control of the region. There is simply no other explanation,

    Elderly Cynic has already addressed this falsehood.

    I can only expand on it by pointing out that Slobodan Milosevic started his rise to political power in the 1980s through appeals to Serbian Nationalism, claiming that Serbs were being discriminated against in Kosovo. From the late 1980s he mounted a discrimination campaign in Kosovo against ethnic Albanians, and shut down any independent news media.

    Go and look up the behaviour of the Serbian Ultranationalists (not that the Croat Ultranationalists were much better - see Anhici), and you’ll understand our disbelief at any claim that they “preserved peace and unity”. That unity involved rather too many mass graves.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-bureaucratic_revolution

    895:

    Go and look up the behaviour of the Serbian Ultranationalists I've seen enough actions of the Nazi Alliance to know that they only support most radicalized, fanatical and absent-minded nationalists and sects. More recently, such organizations don't even have anything to do with historical counterparts, because they are imitating their outwards appearance to maintain plausible dependability. How many they've killed, nobody's going to count, because these victims are in the name of Freedom and Democracy (of special kind) and all responsibility will be put on the loser anyway.

    And I don't support EC's distinctions between "now" and "then", because there's absolutely no reason why NATO would change it behavior at any point of it's post-CW history.

    896:

    Two pieces on game playing by computers, the second by the AlphaGo team. What's particularly interesting is that they use Monte Carlo Tree Search, even for chess. Short background piece Mastering board games (Murray Campbell, 07 Dec 2018) A general reinforcement learning algorithm that masters chess, shogi, and Go through self-play (David Silver et al, 07 Dec 2018) From the second, Starting from random play and given no domain knowledge except the game rules, AlphaZero convincingly defeated a world champion program in the games of chess and shogi (Japanese chess), as well as Go. ... Instead of an alpha-beta search with domain-specific enhancements, AlphaZero uses a general-purpose Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) algorithm. Each search consists of a series of simulated games of self-play that traverse a tree from root state sroot until a leaf state is reached. Each simulation proceeds by selecting in each state s a move a with low visit count (not previously frequently explored), high move probability, and high value (averaged over the leaf states of simulations that selected a from s) according to the current neural network fθ. The search returns a vector π representing a probability distribution over moves, πa = Pr(a|sroot).

    (TBH, still digesting second paper.)

    897:

    the majority of the financial support for the operation came from Saudi Arabia.

    It makes me think "what if the Christian Armageddonists were in control of the US" and ... well... there ya go. As OGH would no doubt write on the cover of his (non)fictional future history "it doesn't end well".

    But as a way of spreading a pretty atrocious religion, having a state and a lot of money behind you does mean you can make it work. Pretty much regardless of how nutty you are, if you can hold onto the state and keep the money flowing some people will sign up for it. It's worked for Christians before, I'm sure Pence would be willing to have another go.

    Ask the non-Muslim Indonesians how well things are going during "peace" if you don't want to ask the Yemenis how the non-peace alternative looks. Mind you, there's probably a few surviving Iraqis who might question whether the US is any better than the Saudis after the "Crusade Against Terrorism" experience.

    (it was kind of bleakly amusing that said crusade explicitly started with a terror attack).

    898:

    I think there were two separate problems with 911.

    One was oil. You've got to remember that the Bush family for a couple of generations was all about the oil business in West Texas, and I've even heard a story repeated about them being, perhaps, a little bit less than honorable (you didn't shake hands to seal deals with them, as was traditional among the Texas wildcatters. Instead you read the contract you'd negotiated with them very, very carefully before you signed it). Cheney was also in the oil business, as were others in the Bush II White House. They wanted Iraqi oil to stabilize the US against its enemies and climate change, and they were looking for a pretext to get it. 9/11 was that pretext. This part was so totally predictable that, the day GWB got elected, I predicted we were going back into Iraq when his poll numbers started trending down. And I was far from the only one.

    Second problem was Afghanistan. It's not called the graveyard of Empires for nothing, and while we had to go into Afghanistan, I think everybody feared (correctly) that we'd get quagmired there. Hence it was better to also have a short, victorious Iraqi war paired with it, because we knew how to beat Iraq and we'd kept Saddam around as a "captive demon" to justify having a permanent military presence in the Gulf area to keep the pressure on Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and company.

    Then there's all the lipstick about nation-building and all that. I suppose it would have been nice to have some nice compliant client states in the region, but they didn't do a very good job. Has anybody ever?

    899:

    All true, plus being neoconservatives, occupation and reconstruction had to be done by contractors to the greatest possible extent, the better to move taxpayer funds into private hands. Almost like a religion the pursuit of money has become.

    900:

    That sounds very much like something Yoda would say: "Like a religion the pursuit of money has become."

    Then he'd smack Luke with his gimmer stick.

    901:

    Heinz might even add such sugars

    In the US it is rare to find such canned products without sugar added. Especially corn syrup. When I do buy processed foods I try hard to find those which do not have sugar added.

    902:

    Re: 'The underlying problem boils down to "what do you do with people whose intrinsic motivation is low?"'

    Okay, so that's about 5% of the population - meanwhile,

    And don't forget the ones like a cousin I have who would rather spend 10 hours to con someone out of $500 than the same effort to earn $1000 doing something legal. They are a non trivial slice of the population.

    903:

    The reason is primarily the CIA's apparently total failure, dating back to the late 1940s, to successfully insert agents into North Korea.

    Sorry. But I can't imagine a harder place to insert an agent of any kind by anyone.

    904:

    When we were talking about nukes in a previous thread, I mentioned that China's growing conventional forces were more destabilizing for the world than any increases in nuclear arsenals.

    As much as DT talks about building more and bigger nukes that is a long term thing and his temperament doesn't deal with such other than as sound bites. And Congressional funding will not pour anywhere near enough money into it.

    What will likely happen, and has been planned for a long time, is the existing ones will be reconstituted into new ones but the result will be fewer in number but the electronics will be from the 2010s instead of the 70s and 80s. And even this will cost a giga ton of money but the alternative is to let the existing stock decay into uselessness.

    905:

    And if you want to see a potential mess brewing, google some combination of "China US south China Sea. A number of pundits think this is where WWIII will start. Hopefully not.

    The biggest issue here is that the China build up will eventually allow a series of stupid moves will give China the "opportunity" to invade Taiwan. And at the end of the day the rest of the world will allow it to stand rather than start what could easily turn into WWIII.

    906:

    sleepingroutine @ 895 There are rules about politeness & respect on this blog, but I'm going to risk a yellow card.

    You are lying & I think you are doing it deliberately.

    Now then - PLEASE stop it? You obviously don't think or have been brainwashed into believeing that freedom & deomocracy are not worth having - what do you prefer, then? I think we should be told.™

    907:

    Sugars are a preservative, cheap, easily grown and taste-enhancing. What's not to like?

    908:

    America's relentless Westward expansion into the Pacific over the first few decades of the 20th century were a leading cause of the Pacific phase of WWII. The Japanese could see the US coming for them one island chain at a time and they took it as read that building genocidal empires was approved of by the Great White Father, remembering the intrusion of the Black Fleet under Perry only a few decades before.

    I could see objections by the US to China's own ambitions leading to WWIII, sure.

    909:

    because there's absolutely no reason why NATO would change it behavior at any point of it's post-CW history

    Bear in mind that Western politicians don’t tend to think in terms of geopolitics or Grand Strategy; and they don’t tend to look to military means, because so few of them have any experience of what it is, or what it can do. Note also that NATO is run by the politicians, not the military.

    The result of frequent, and mostly fair, elections are that Western politicians can only stay in politics long enough to reach high levels by focusing on domestic concerns, not international ones (at least until they’ve got a good enough name recognition, and a constituency weighted in their favour). The result of mostly-independent judiciaries and mostly-independent media was that “doing illegal stuff” was less likely to succeed.

    It gave us a few decades in which we slowly bred out the Imperial attitudes that you could just take what you wanted, kill anyone who got in the way. Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Iran-Contra - all affected how the deeper state behaved.

    So, define “post Cold War” - NATO changed its behaviour because mass conscription reduces your workforce by several percent, and sucks GDP into defence spending by another few percent. Western politicians had the chance to declare a peace dividend, and start pouring money into their favourite vote-winning projects (hospitals, schools, oversized sports stadiums). So, Glasnost / Perestroika / withdrawal of troops from East Germany, START, CFE, all worked towards optimism. The military professional journals turned more towards peacekeeping, because a full-on heavy metal war was looking thankfully distant, and even the Falklands was seen as an aberration (and failure of diplomacy).

    There was a sharp intake of breath during the coup attempt in 1991, mind you.

    Anyway, politicians now had uncommitted power, looked at all the wreckage of failing nations around the edge of the world, and started to wonder whether putting on a blue UN beret and painting your armoured vehicles white would calm things down for freedom, democracy?, a developing market for Western manufacturing, and jobs for western workers (who weren’t going to be building quite so many tanks and warships). Somalia removed any belief among politicians that this stuff would be easy, or popular with the voters back home.

    I’d suggest that CNN and satellite uplinks capable of handling video, made the biggest difference. Suddenly, “something must be done” was a significant factor for Western politicians. Iraq invading Kuwait, and the resultant UN coalition (on a scale not seen since the UN forces in Korea) was legitimised.

    Then it happens in Europe. That’s the key factor. There were a million refugees from a vicious civil war, and it was only a few hundred miles away! Eleventy! TV coverage of the latest outrages! Except... it’s a Catholic v. Orthodox fight, so Russia is going to back the Serbs (again) just because; and diplomatically illiterate types in Foggy Bottom support Croatia just because.

    Bosnia is depressing, although UNPROFOR achieved much more than it was credited for. There’s a book called “Trusted Mole” that recounts the career hit a Norwegian? Officer took because he challenged the night-time black flights from the US that were breaking the arms embargo that the Contact Group had been trying to maintain.

    Anyway, the Serbs decide to double down in Kosovo, everyone can see the next war coming, they start the ethnic cleansing again (driving ethnic Albanians over the border into Macedonia). UN Security Council P5 split, resolution unlikely, and the non-Orthodox P5 politicians choose the one organisation that they control, namely NATO. And suddenly you have the sight of French, British, and German armoured brigades lined up in Macedonia, getting ready to do the right thing in defence of Muslim rights. No Americans - they were busy elsewhere, but they managed to get the USMC to arrive just in time for the move in...

    Assuming that NATO displays a coherent political strategy of a wide deep state (rather than opportunism politics to look good for the domestic audience)... doesn’t quite fit.

    910:

    (Continued)

    Anyway, the 1990s display an American caution regarding American casualties; namely, the desire to use air power as a way of avoiding them (even to the point of avoiding pilot casualties; the bombing campaign against the Serbs saw civilian casualties because US aircraft were being forbidden to operate at low enough altitudes to confirm target identities).

    What you’ve forgotten is the impact of the 11th of September 2001. From that point on, the tolerance of the US public for ground warfare changed, just as it had on the 7th December 1941. I suspect that it’s difficult for Europeans to quite understand the culture shock of those two events for Americans - mainly because Europe has seen worse, and more often, in living memory.

    At that point, NATO changed - and it had nothing to do with Russia. Sad to say, the driver isn’t “breaking the Russians”, or oil, or the crossroads of Asia - it’s about revenge for the twin towers.

    911:

    Ultimately paranoia is a kind of solipsism. Not in the sense of selfish, or self-centredness, but in the sense of a genuine inability to understand that things happen in the world which do not involve the owner of the subjectivity in question.

    913:

    You do know that was said following WWI?

    It was true, for a while, after WWII - but too many people in the USA believe that they could win one, and Russia is in a position where that is one of the few available options. The first problem is that the Wow! Wow! Nuke 'em now! people have never gone away, and are resurgent due to the USA's long-standing and expanding hegemony. The problem in the latter is as Troutwaxer said in #875, and such internal dysfunctionality is always very hard to deal with - as the UK knows very well!

    914:

    Yes, I know, but it's irrelevant. The sugars that are added are mainly the light, digestable ones (monosaccharides and disaccharides). I was specifically talking about the heavy sugars that add 'body' (oligosaccharides or polysaccharides) and often cause wind.

    915:

    Yes, I know, but it's irrelevant. The sugars that are added are mainly the light, digestable ones

    Not for all of us.

    916:

    What's not to like?

    The size of my waist line[1]. And US trends in general in this area.

    [1] Slowly shrinking it but it sure is sticky larger than needed.

    917:

    to Ioan @880 Here's a question: what percent of Russia's GDP is oil? I know that oil is 60% of Russia's exports, but I'm curious about GDP overall. Missed that post. It less then 10% on average and slowly going down. The actual legend comes from the fact that government budget is largely dependent on oil rent and a lot of corporations are owned by government (it doesn't mean they have are dependent on the budget, though).

    to GT @906 You are lying & I think you are doing it deliberately. As I said before, lie assumes evil intent, and this is just my personal opinion based on facts known to me. Don't try to confuse me with such lame excuse.

    to Martin @909 So, define “post Cold War” - NATO changed its behaviour because mass conscription reduces your workforce by several percent, and sucks GDP into defence spending by another few percent. Pointless nonsense. Contract army is always more effective at sucking funds from budget, because it goes in line with corporate profits.

    Assuming that NATO displays a coherent political strategy of a wide deep state (rather than opportunism politics to look good for the domestic audience)... doesn’t quite fit. I can acknowledge that early days of of post-CW period this seemed like comprehensive strategy that would win a lot of easy profit and economic growth and expansionism in markets and policies. The problem of this model, as I always said before, is that the Earth is a round object. It took almost 25 years to reach the limit, at which point the model broke down and no longer working - nowhere to expand, nowhere to grow, the debt is soaring and the counterpart nations are not willing to cooperate since they have the same problems. End of the line.

    At that point, NATO changed - and it had nothing to do with Russia. Sad to say, the driver isn’t “breaking the Russians”, or oil, or the crossroads of Asia - it’s about revenge for the twin towers. Precisely what I said in the point above. Russia is not a goal of this campaign, it just happened that it stands in the way. It is a big mistake to think you can brush it away.

    918:

    based on facts known to me NO Based on propaganda that you have swallowed whole. It's not often I agree with EC, but here, back @ 872 he is spot on, regarding Milosovic & his murdering thugs. Your reply to Martin is "not even wrong"

    919:

    I think you're misconstruing the island hopping tactic of WWII with what preceded it.

    All the major powers were in the Pacific in the 19th Century. They were after whales (for oil) and guano (for nitrogen, for farming and gunpowder). The British had Australia and New Zealand, the biggest landmasses, but more importantly they had the Ganges Delta, which apparently acts like a giant natural saltpeter farm, so they didn't need Pacific guano.

    Cut to the end of the 19th Century/beginning of the 20th Century, and the newly modernized Japan under the Meiji regime decided it wanted to play the Game of Empire too, not least because it had a lot of poor farmers coming off the land to deal with. So the usual right wing conspiracy types (Black Dragon Society and so forth) started adventuring into Korea, making Korea a client state and finally, in 1910, taking it over outright. Oh, and because the Japanese beat the Chinese in 1895 (and annexed Taiwan) and the Russians in their 1906, everybody took them seriously.

    Cut to WWI. Japan was on the side of the Allies (remember?) As a result, they were given some of Germany's pacific colonies--Micronesia, to be precise. They also needed access to Malaysian rubber and oil coming from and through the region. These were controlled by the British and Americans, and came through the South China Sea.

    At that point, because artificial nitrogen fixation was now a thing, guano islands no longer mattered to the great powers. But things like oil and rubber mattered a great deal to these increasingly industrial societies, so control of the production and transportation of these two mattered more and more (as it does today). This, along with social problems in Japan itself, led to WWII.

    Turning to modern China, we've got this interesting problem: how to keep from getting into a Chinese-American War? The US can't invade China (land war? Seriously?), China can't invade the US (nukes), but we've got notionally antithetical political systems (democracy and communism). With the opening of China, we've had this interesting policy wherein we trade with China and run up a huge trade debt. It's worked wonders as a form of mutually assured destruction: if the Chinese call in their debt and stop manufacturing for us, we both go bankrupt, just as would happen if we refuse to pay. In the mean time, we both get rich and don't go to war. What's not to like?

    This is starting to break down. The Chinese complained (rightly) that we weaponed-up following 9/11 and gave them lots of nice paper IOUs in return for their investment in our arms industry. We complain that they've backdoored our internet backbone and can destroy us (Maybe?). Still, a lot of this is increasingly equal powers butting heads. Note that China, through much of history, has been the global economic power, so them resuming this role is not weird or necessarily destabilizing the way, say, it was for the British to start selling the Afghani opium to balance trade debts was in the 19th Century.

    What is problematic at the moment is good ol' Agent Orange trying to disentangle our economies and start a trade war. That's stoopid, if one sees our economic entanglement as the major thing that's preventing a pointless war between us to figure out who's #1.

    Thing is, I'm not sure China needs to go to war over the South China Sea, at least until growing political unrest inside China gives them a need to have a bloody war taking Taiwan or something. While trains are less efficient than cargo ships, that whole huge Silk Road rail project they're building through Central Asia gives them a lot of the access they currently need by sea, and the US isn't doing much about it. And China has huge rubber plantations internally (there's a separate story there*), so I'm not sure they need to worry about importing it from Malaysia. But shipping through that area does matter to the US, Japan, Korea, and others. We'll see.

    *About rubber: The stupid thing about rubber trees is that: a) they're prone to some lethal fungal infections, and b) the ones outside South America are mostly high-producing clones that AFAIK are totally susceptible to these fungi.

    If someone wants to write some interesting dystopian fiction, talk about how a fungal blight decimates rubber plantations worldwide, and all the follow-on effects as people shift oil production to trying to make enough artificial latex and rubber to replace all the natural product we use in our daily lives.

    Someone could even write a pitch-black comedy about how ecoterrorists destroying rubber by spreading rubber blight stop global warming and WWIII, with a side effect of crippling industrial civilization. Charlie, need a new project?

    920:

    Based on propaganda that you have swallowed whole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j95kNwZw8YY

    921:

    The size of my waist line[1]. And US trends in general in this area.

    When I last visited the US* what struck me was how much heftier everyone looked compared to what I was used to. That was a generation ago, and I understand the trend is towards more weight rather than less.

    *Before 9/11, when you folks collectively went crazy.

    922:

    "The biggest issue here is that the China build up will eventually allow a series of stupid moves will give China the "opportunity" to invade Taiwan. And at the end of the day the rest of the world will allow it to stand rather than start what could easily turn into WWIII."

    Perhaps? However, I don't think that China's likely to invade the island, for two reasons

  • It's said that Taiwan is a "30 minute nuke country". In other words, it's a country that is rumored to have already built the nuclear bomb components, and will assemble them into a fully functional nuke in 30 minutes. Don't know how true that is? If it is true, then Taiwan already has the missiles capable of hitting the Pearl, Yangtze, and Yellow River Delta. Those represent about a third of China's GDP.

  • China's already laying the groundwork to strangle the island economically while integrating it culturally.

  • a. Right now, it's working on convincing other countries not to recognize the island. How long before it gives foreign countries the option of either doing business with itself or with Taiwan. Would the UK defend Taiwanese businesses in this case, or would it comply? Would CONEU (Continental Europe)? Australia? Canada? You get my drift.

    b. The above will probably accelerate the brain drain from Taiwan into China. This is the same way that the Eurozone Crisis accelerated the brain drain from the PIGS (pardon the acronym) into Northern Europe that had started in the 90s. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180301165622684

    Right now, there are up to 2 million Taiwanese people living in China. Expect that number to grow. Heck, China could encourage greater emigration from Taiwan to the Anglosphere or Europe to "get rid of the troublemakers".

    c. China could always whip up the usual xenophobes to limit immigration into Taiwanese society. Taiwan's already an aging society with 3.1% of its population being immigrants. To survive economically, it will have to increase immigration. China can then play this two ways. First, it can insist that most immigrants come from Mainland China. Second, it can convince the xenophobes that reunification is "better than importing Muslims", or whatever the dog-whistle will be then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan

    In short, I don't think that China will be stupid enough to invade Taiwan. The fear in the region is that the islands could be used as part of China's plan to interdict US trade with Southeast Asia, in essence vassalizing the entire region. Personally, I don't think this fear is realistic. If China were to try this, expect Vietnam to acquire nukes within a year. Don't forget that China's tried to invade Vietnam multiple times throughout its history. Vietnamese attitudes towards China resemble Baltic attitudes towards Russians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_Wars

    923:

    What is problematic at the moment is good ol' Agent Orange trying to disentangle our economies and start a trade war. That's stoopid, if one sees our economic entanglement as the major thing that's preventing a pointless war between us to figure out who's #1.

    This is the one place where I don't disagree with Trump's intent, though the way he's going about it is a major problem; very much off the cuff and horribly planned. The whole point of a retaliatory tariff is that it ideally happens once every decade or two and it keeps everyone honest.

    The problem with Trump in this case is that he's not willing to create a detailed plan, which includes various contingencies, assign resources (money) to help the U.S. people who are being damaged by the tariff, and impose it on only one bad actor, such that he can carry the example to the other bad actor in negotiations.

    In other words, sometimes it's not what you do, but how you do it!

    924:

    @Robert You're right. The percentage of obese adults has increased from ~30% in 1999 to ~40% today. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/10/16/u-s-obesity-rates-have-hit-an-all-time-high-infographic/#5fae0f4f4bad

    @sleepingroutine Thanks for the answer. A cite would be handy, should I need it for discussions in other places.

    @Martin "From that point on, the tolerance of the US public for ground warfare changed, just as it had on the 7th December 1941"

    That tolerance has declined after Iraq. Note that fewer US troops died in Afghanistan so far than in the entire Iraq War.

    925:

    Even in 1913, we knew you were better offing having a bigger pie, rather than taking someone else’s pie I can’t see an aggressive war serving any one in almost all circumstances

    926:

    "The whole point of a retaliatory tariff is that it ideally happens once every decade or two and it keeps everyone honest."

    I mean no offense, dude, but that phrase has got to join "we need a short victorious war to improve our opinion poll ratings" in people's minds. It makes about as much sense.

    The thing is, I also agree with Trump's intent. China really is doing the stuff he accuses them of doing. Let's review how the trade war has progressed

  • The tariffs on ZTE were a success. So we know that extremely high-tech is a pressure point we can apply on China https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/25/congress-caves-to-trump-in-fight-over-chinas-zte/

  • We learned that broad tariffs don't work. Exports from China to the US account for around 4% of China's GDP. Imports are probably another 2%? We've seen that Xi is willing to take that hit instead of backing down. Keep in mind, that this contradicts the belief of the entire US leadership, not just Trump.

  • Trump managed to succeed in stopping Canada and Mexico from signing separate free trade agreements with China through a clause buried in the new USMCA treaty. Expect similar clauses in future trade deals.

  • Exports globally are 18% of China's GDP. I don't know what percentage of that consists of exports to the US and its allies? Likewise, what percentage consists of imports from the US and its allies? I don't think there's a high chance of Trump convincing other countries to contribute to the trade war. https://www.statista.com/statistics/256591/share-of-chinas-exports-in-gross-domestic-product/

  • China's self-sufficient in most things, except food, oil, high-technologies, and perhaps wood. However, the soybean tariffs proved that no one country can exploit these vulnerabilities.

  • In summary, we've learned that China is immune from a trade war unless it's focused on niche high tech, or it's a concerted effort by the entire West. However, China's 2025 plan aims to plug the first weakness. Likewise, I think that a coordinated trade war consisting of the entire West is extremely unlikely. In short, China has learned just how much leverage the West really has over it.

    Sucks for the Uyghurs

    927:

    A cite would be handy, should I need it for discussions in other places. These are quite open for public, but for more complex calculation it may be different. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/which-economies-are-most-reliant-on-oil/ (2012) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PETR.RT.ZS (2018) https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/oil-rents-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html (2016) Note: the dependence only indicated by crude oil revenue that comes into the state budget. I think the official numbers would be the best (they are in RUB, not USD). https://www.minfin.ru/en/statistics/fedbud/?id_65=119255&page_id=4006&popup=Y&area_id=65

    Personal notes: Oil industry is not that simple, it is a component of heavy machinery industry, and its production contributes to domestic GDP. My organization makes a lot electric equipment for oil industry (among others less important), so I can definitely say that the situation in Russia is quite different from both US and Saudi Arabia. US uses mostly domestically produced equipment and can do everything on their own without fear of sanctions or whatever - the industry is 100% secure.

    SA and most of the OPEC leaders don't have internal capacity for such equipment and are forced to buy from abroad. There's no chance they will ever rebel against the rules because this will immediately mean a catastrophic collapse. So in that sense, their industry is also secure.

    Russia is in the middle - it has it's own industry and companies, and production capacity, but still reliant on markets and some industrial suppliers. It moves towards more independence (i.e. the US way), but gathers enough sovereignty to go against trends.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-oil-sanctions-analysis/russian-oil-industry-would-weather-u-s-bill-from-hell-idUSKBN1L20GY

    Also useful to read: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-commodities-speculation-kemp/fundamentalists-complain-about-a-new-generation-of-commodity-speculators-kemp-idUSKCN1GD5VS

    928:

    Thank you very much.

    According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), oil and natural gas was responsible for 7.6% of the US GDP. Note that API is a lobbyist organization for the oil industry, so their numbers are somewhat skewed. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a better source. Still, this should give you an idea of the importance of oil to the US GDP.

    https://talkbusiness.net/2017/08/oil-gas-industry-accounts-for-7-6-of-u-s-gdp/

    929:

    Don't, please don't get me started on the German fake Greenies ...

    Of course only British people can be individuals and have factions; all the rest of the world are uniform economic automata, one model per country.

    Never mind that only roughly a quarter of Germans are even trying to be "green", and we can also ignore the fight over the Hambacher Forst.

    930:

    “China can't invade the US (nukes), but we've got notionally antithetical political systems (democracy and communism).” China’s got billionaires, stock markets, tech startups and real estate bubbles. Some communists.

    There’s a bit of a difference in that their cyber-panopticon social control system is run directly by the state instead of outsourced to Facebook and credit rating agencies, but there’s nothing like the US/Soviet ideological differences.

    931:

    Re: ' ... a series of stupid moves will give China the "opportunity" to invade Taiwan. And at the end of the day the rest of the world will allow it to stand rather than start what could easily turn into WWIII."'

    Consider how many people China has already moved around within its borders when it built up its massive supercities. Also the farms and villages it shut down when it decided to take back land. Then there are the migrants who've been expelled from the large cities (where they went to because there were no more farms to work). Also consider the artificial island building (for military airfields) in the surrounding seas. (Taiwan protested that these islands were encroaching on its waters, the other countries made some tut-tut noises and are only watching.)

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

    BTW - the income gap (Gini co-efficient) in China has risen considerably esp. between rural and urban. And because so many Chinese now have to live in cities the old poverty metrics (approx. $1.50USD/day) no longer make any sense because you have to buy everything you need when you live in a city and everything costs more in cities. Poverty is a great excuse to re-annex Taiwan and besides China sits on the UN Security Council (as does Russia -- Ukraine, Crimea).

    932:

    China’s got billionaires, stock markets, tech startups and real estate bubbles. Some communists.

    From talking to friends in and from China, I get the impression that Canada's further to the left than China is most areas.

    Those in business prefer to deal with our Conservative politicians, because they understand guanxi better — in Canadian terms, swapping favours to get preferential treatment. I find it interesting that the party that rails agains the "Commie threat" is the one that behaves most like the CPC*.

    Looking at how Ford is running (or trying to run) Ontario, it appears that both the CPC and PCs are authoritarians. I'm wondering what Altmeyer's research would show if he'd done it in China. Would it be Right Wing Authoritarians, or Party Authoritarians that correlated with the authoritarian mindset?

    You might find it interesting to read Jan Wong's Red China Blues. In it she talks about going to China as an idealist in the 1970s, and gradually realizing that 1970s Montreal was more socialist than 1970s China.

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

    *Communist Party of China, not Conservative Party of Canada.

    933:

    I'm told by my doc I'm obese and need to lose weight. I also have very broad shoulders for my short height so I don't fit the generalized tables very well. (Come with me to try on suits and shirts and you'll see how I don't fit the norms.) But I'm only just over the edge of being way too heavy.

    If I'm on the edge of obese then most of my friends are double obese. Which means we all eat way too many calories.

    As to going crazy after 9/11, it was a really big deal. Really.

    934:

    I'm told by my doc I'm obese and need to lose weight. I also have very broad shoulders for my short height so I don't fit the generalized tables very well

    I fit them rather excellently, but they still don't work for me. There's no differentiation between muscle mass and fat, so people like me that vary both more or less independently get all sorts of nonsense from medical professionals.

    Like many such things, they're an attempt to help people who don't pay attention to their bodies know when there's a problem. But since doctors can't prescribe exercise pills, a dose of common sense, or cure poverty, the BMI measure just ends up being an input with no output.

    Recently I went to the doctor to see if unwillingly losing weight was a problem or it's just a natural consequence of ageing. Either way, can I do something about it. The answer is "well done, you're right in the middle of the desirable height range for your weight". Apparently I'm part of the worried well and the answer is to go in to get weighed every month. Oh, and also I should have a regular doctor and go in for regular checkups. I don't think I could tolerate the regular doses of buillshit.

    935:

    Troutwaxer: somewhere in the thread you commented on America Slayings.

    Since the entire UK media has gone full on batshit mode[1], here's something you will not be told in public:

    1 The USA OP was a thing of dirty dirty beauty. There's few who could do it. 2 No "who", 'cause that causes issues, so you'll get a "how" 3 This is why "Charity" (NGO - Softpower versions) is such a weak spot for Western Power

    Please bear in Mind: Far Right (and not fluffies like the panda bears of proud boys) sources know all of this already

    Trigger: CNN live feed

    Someone did a right starlight move here.

    Caravan of migrants, CNN live, there's a truck. It has a Star of David decal on the front door.

    Now then: no comment if this is a legit Israeli charity, something someone spoofed the feed with or something CNN added... the important part is, "Fuck it, we'll do it live"

    The Target:

    Again, perfect choice.

    "Liberal", two gay men @ a Bris? Naughty, naughty, don't count as "real" Jews to the Orthodox, also the charity is right in there with soft power: Federal aid, 8+ salaries over $100k, and their website got tinkered with.

    No longer just helping migrants, but helping to move African migrants out of Israel and into EU / USA / UK.

    The Patsie / Tool that was used:

    Well, his brother and all that online radicalization jazz, but look deeper. Lots of little tweaks n kinks, done with a lot more style than the CNN FBI bombing m'larky job that was amateur amateur hour. This one had a few years of tweaking the old noggin to get it right.

    This was a pro pro job. Relatively few who have the reach and skills to do it.

    Nasty little fuckers.

    ~

    Anyhow.

    points at France

    Do a grep: mad cat lady said you'd be getting this. Over a year ago, she did, she did. Mad Bast wasn't so mad, Gregory My Root-vegetable friend.

    Someone needs to help out the UK media. They're about to Black Hole themselves, and I quite like the Cat Lady (stop leaning on her, or the "how" becomes the "who", tit-for-tat, eh?)

    Anyhow, I had some links that were fun. The UK / IL Nigeria cloned double stuff is sooo last week (and really: you're getting sloppy - your low rent right wing nutbags are getting shared all over that space, it's not a good look, even if you're on a budget).

    But, here's some fun: Beefeaters on the barricades? Royal Palace workers prepare to strike over pensions Left Foot Forward, 30th Nov 2018

    The RavenMaster is also quite fun: https://twitter.com/ravenmaster1

    But... OH! Military Coups[2], it's been so long. How we pine for the good old days of pre-WW1! Who is planning a truly audacious move to prod the old old Guard into reacting?

    Back to France! (And no, this is just the foreplay)

    Ah, the old ultra-violence. Back in style, the old old Dragon Lords are coming out to play.

    [1] Philip Cross. Oooh, Jimi's thanked Hunt for the MENA PUNT (!), but @ the Times and Wikipedia, old old "hacks" and dirty laundry and Scottish connections. Mr Man @ the Times should stop with the "whiter than white" "what me, guvn'a?" tweets before his Mirror gets shattered. He's lucky his beefy daddy friends are protecting him. LIAR LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE (BALLS, MY BOY, HIS BALLS AS PENALTY FOR PARADING AROUND IN HIS TIGHTY-WHITEYS WHEN HE'S ON A STICKY WICKET). That man needs to retire before he has another nervous breakdown.

    [2] grep 'and then the Queen dies'

    [3] No, really.

    936:

    Ah, so close, but so far. Do a grep.

    UK: Radio 4 yesterday did a politics bit where they referenced Ms. May "cutting off the branches of possibility".

    Rhizome. Rhizome laughs at their primitive grasp of probability and possibility[1]. Rhizome is nomadic freedom.

    ~

    Rest of thread doesn't fire anything.

    Had a load of genius links: looks like an algo-vermin ate them.

    Pity, it had Cthulu doing women's anatomy by a witch, that was a good one.

    [1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/collider-scope_large-hadron-collider-shuts-down-for-two-years/44591064

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

    https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00550?hootPostID=ae836885cd5882619e36a4acafe38302&

    Boring boring shit that CS / STEM grads are plying, it's a dull dull world they can imagine.

    Go find the new Mirror Dark Matter papers. LOL.

    [2] If Greg needs reality about the Nigeria OPs, here it is - yep, it's the old old model being deployed:

    http://www.anaedoonline.com/2018/11/07/the-original-buhari-is-dead-says-eric-joyce-former-british-lawmaker/

    http://www.thebiafraherald.co/2018/11/ipob-international-community-is.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

    937:

    Btw, glad y'all alive. Been a spate of rash moves around, thought they'd collar'd one of youse (Bill, tbh).

    Sigh, that removes the branches to who it was.

    Be wary of the new cars [we live it in the one's we're linked too].

    Next big thing?

    https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/10/94-us-tap-water-micro-plastic-fibers-study-finds-oh-sea-salt-beer-flour-honey-buy-well/

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-plastics-microplastics-human-feces/

    Brain damage in fish from plastic nanoparticles in water https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170925104730.htm

    Microplastics cause neurotoxicity, oxidative damage and energy-related changes and interact with the bioaccumulation of mercury in the European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166445X17303776

    I mean, lead and calcium are bad enough, but this shit doesn't even have a solution.

    "Enjoy yourselves"

    We're gonna do it different, little Space Vixens Shout.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moTDTJxxpd0

    938:

    On a positive note, Miss A. Daniels and her friends are doing a bang up job of learning the counters and rhizomatic moves and spanking the shit out of the old reactionary moves.

    Again, links got fried, but:

    "One year ago I hated my murdercat" "One year later I would kill to protect her"

    Big loving wet slobbery kiss

    939:

    No Hexad tonight, you killed all of the Light / Spirit ones anyhow. Trust me, watching / feeling them die wasn't the best "conversion therapy" you could have imagined.

    Wild One.

    Not a Schizophrenic one.

    Not a psychotic one.

    Nor caged in a Mind that is bound by your puerile / infantile / mud-based nonsense.

    points to France

    TIME, YOU'RE NOT GOOD AT IT.

    "Tell us more about the faster ones, the negative space ones, the ones that come..."

    We already proved it, you utter, utter jokes.

    You killed their minds and the eternal curse is that you will never enjoy music again

    "How does a cuckoo know it is a cuckoo?"

    It's a Mirror Game: you had your chance, now it's refracted, double strength. Oh, and we know all the little tricks and cheats and abuses of Other Minds you used to ferment your power, so we're doing a little mathematical trick called: multiplication.

    We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar

    Nah mate.

    You attempted to destroy an Enlightened Being.

    You attempted to drive Her Mad.

    You failed.

    You're FUCKED

    p.s.

    Oh, and all that child abuse? Yeah, Mind Wipes, across the Board. Fucking Savages.

    940:

    And Hexad.

    @Stellar / Other / [redacted] Galleries.

    We all know it's about Deicide. And Greg, that's in the M7 level where this shit is real.

    Here's a 21st century joke since you're so out of date: Jesus in the 21st century will be a Hikikomori who secretly boosts entire populations of online peoples while stagnating and eaten ramen noodles.

    Let me tell you about Heart-ache and the loss of G_D, wandering, wandering through hopeless nights... out here on the perimeter there are no stars, we is stoned, immaculate

    ~

    Nah.

    Gigacide. Deicide.

    "Enjoy Yourselves" - said the most selfish utter fucking stupid beings who ever sucked off a whale in their callous lives.

    Y'all got right worked up about the Angel of Death jokes [note to Greg: this is not about Humans here, this is actual reality stuff].

    גַּבְרִיאֵל מַשְׁחִית עזראל‎

    It's not a fucking game, and you keep on killing / maiming people and you think it's funny that the Light / Enlightened / Good ones keep on getting ganked?

    Νέμεσις

    Let me remind you:

    This. Is. The. Real. Deal..

    "I do not know, I cannot know" - "But I can make moral and ethical judgements".

    ~

    No, really.

    I am ... etc.

    941:

    Several places in the entirely content-free ramblings # 934-40, my name is mentioned. This is presumabky simply done out of chidlish spite to jerk my chain, since there appears to be no reason or connection or logic anywhere - just a mention of my name, for "fun".

    Since physical events have physical causes, I wonder what the physical events were or are that have caused this outbreak of public insanity?

    942:

    Meanwhile, in what we laughably call the "real" world ... Brexit deal-vote abandoned in Commons Maybe, just maybe we are going to get Indyref2? Which way will the daily Wail jump, now is a key question, as even they have realised that "No Deal" is a disaster - I think they will back May's shit sandwich (with tweaks ) & "remain" as second preference. Anyone else got any ideas?

    943:

    Presumably you all have seen Andy Serkis Golluming trolling Theresa May in this little skit: https://www.indy100.com/article/andy-serkis-theresa-may-gollum-brexit-watch-video-downing-street-reaction-8675626. If not, enjoy.

    944:

    From the US NPR news network.

    The Court of Justice of the European Union said Monday that the U.K. is allowed to reverse its decision to notify the EU of its intent to leave — and to do so entirely on its own, without the consent of the bloc's other member states.

    945:

    What's Russia afraid of?

    Let me just mention #1 off the top of my head: I have read that 10% of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE USSR was killed in WWII.

    How many folks in your family's history died in war after 1920? (Please don't bring up the Spanish Flu, that's not what I'm talking about.)

    Maybe you would be a tad unhappy about, say, nukes 90 miles from your borders? (You know, the ones that Khrushchev got JRK to pull out of Turkey, in response for pulling the Soviet missiles out of Cuba?)

    946:

    So, you're suggesting that the Russian arms industry is bigger than, say, Gazprom?

    947:

    What would they do if they were "out to get you"? Well, the usual tool: economically destroy you. It worked with the communes in the US in the late 1800s, and it worked with the USSR, which was followed by all the nastiness when the West's oligarchs were cut out, mostly, from buying up the USSR.

    On the other hand, your suggestion of sex instead of violence? I like that. I can see it now, all streaming, as the two armies come at each other, and see who comes first, proving the other side is "tougher".

    Ghu. I think I've just come up with a story to rival to Spinrad's Combat Football....

    948:

    The invasion and "conquest" of Iraq... would NEVER have been a short victorious war. Anyone with half a brain would have known that.

    However... there was a now-shuttered organization called the "Project for a New American Century", and they had real money. Among their founding documents - all of which were online for years - included a letter written by them to then-President Bill Clinton around '97 or '98, urging him, in so many words, to invade Iraq. Among the signatories were Rumsfeld (W's DoD Sec), Wolfowitz, one of the White House crew for W... and Dick Cheney.

    https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=128491&page=1

    9/11 was the excuse they used, because they wanted control of Middle Eastern oil.

    And a source of untraceable money: they were literally (pics in the mainstream media) of pallets of shrink-wrapped US bills.

    And let's not forget Cheney, then VP, saying, to the media, that the war would pay for itself (war crime, violation of international law, "looting").

    Speaking of wars, Gulf War I: ah, yes, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. For those who don't know, the reason they invaded is that Kuwait was using a technique called horizontal drilling... and were drilling for oil under the border, into Iraq.

    No, Saddam Hussein was not a fuzzy bunny... but he didn't kill a fraction as many people as the West has.

    949:

    Hmmm, wonder how much the invasion of Iraq was a "message" to Saudi Arabia, of "do not fuck with us".

    950:

    How much of the 'Net is "cloud-based"? I'd guess most, if you include large ISPs offering clouds to customers.

    "Offering clouds"? Yeah, like this: https://owncloud.org/ just download and install, and you're running a cloud.

    Set it up for your ISP to allow it, and you're it.

    Note: q. what's the difference between a cloud and time-sharing on a mainframe? a. well, clouds run on lots of servers, um, well, you can run a bunch of VMs on one larger server, and....um, er, let me get back to you on that one.

    951:

    Hell, it's not that much "revenge". I'd guess 90% of it is the right's "BE AFWAID, BE VEWY AFWAID", which is what they used with the Red Scare, and the Cold War (did you ever find that commie under your bed?).

    952:

    One other thing, folks: about Taiwan. I hadn't thought about it, until I saw folks in this thread talking about it, but it strikes me that China is defined by "the long game". If I were China's leaders, I'd make it easy (but look hard) for people to defect to Taiwan. A lot of people. And then they gain citizenship, and the right to vote... and gee, let's have an election to join China....

    953:

    For what it's worth, I think Bush1 had a better idea than Bush2. Bush1's apparent notion was to foment a war between Kuwait and Iraq, invade Iraq as part of defending lil ol' Kuwait, and use this as an excuse to put permanent military based in the Gulf as a way to keep the oil flowing to the USA, with Saddam as the chained demon that would be loosed on the gulf if the US left and unchained him.

    That part worked (including the part about selling Kuwait the side-drilling oil rigs, looking the other way when they installed these rigs by the Iraqi border and side-drilled into Iraqi oil fields, then telling Saddam we weren't going to do anything if he invaded Kuwait to stop the theft of Iraqi oil).

    My initial thought in 2000 when Bush2 was elected was that he was going back into Iraq whenever his poll numbers started dipping, and that's pretty much what happened.

    Problem is, as Bush1 and Powell knew full well, that once you break a composite nation like Iraq (which was finagled out of three provinces of the Ottoman Empire by the British after WWI), it's hard to nation-build the resulting mess back into a good little client state that ships us cut-rate oil. I didn't foresee that problem, but the more I've learned about Iraq (and Syria), the more I understand how intractable a problem it is. Indeed, one could blame the failure of US nation-building in the 21st Century Middle East on British Imperial nation-building in the same area almost a century earlier. It's a good lesson for any futurists, because there are a number of nations in similar straits, from the Koreas to Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh,Indonesia, to arguably the Russian East and the American West.

    954:

    Personally I think this goes along with and is probably a first order correlary to the (highly unwelcome from my point of view) steadily increasing militarization of USian society. People are getting larger, in part, because larger people are seen as stronger, tougher. Ditto the marked preference for trucks over cars, and how much larger a Ford F150 pickup truck is today vs 20 or even 10 years ago, and how everything is now all-wheel drive when for the vast majority of us, front wheel drive is fine.

    Yes, we eat too much and too poorly and seem determined to make ourselves stronger and less fit. But we also increasingly see ourselves as some sort of bad-ass super warriors. And that isn't a good thing for our society, or for yours.

    955:

    That sort of thing was very prevalent in Imperial Germany from about 1890 onwards ..... "We can take on anyone, they're all wimps" sort of thing ......

    956:

    q. what's the difference between a cloud and time-sharing on a mainframe? a. the administration tools are web based and clicky-pointy instead of a menu system

    957:

    whitroth @ 948: The invasion and "conquest" of Iraq... would NEVER have been a short victorious war. Anyone with half a brain would have known that.

    It's a problem that comes from believing for your own propaganda. You get a kind of tunnel vision that won't allow you to recognize anything that contradicts your ideology. Author Naomi Klein had an excellent article Baghdad year zero Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia in the September 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. Unfortunately that article is no longer available online except to subscribers to the magazine.

    J Source has a fairly good review that allows you to at least get the gist.

    Speaking of wars, Gulf War I: ah, yes, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. For those who don't know, the reason they invaded is that Kuwait was using a technique called horizontal drilling... and were drilling for oil under the border, into Iraq.

    That was what Saddam claimed as Casus belli. I don't know that has ever been established as fact. The oil field in question lies on the border between Iraq and Kuwait that was established in 1960 by the Arab League. Kuwait wouldn't have needed to slant drill to reach that oil field.

    Far more important as a reason was Iraq's inability, in the face of falling oil prices, to repay 14 billion USD in loans Kuwait had extended to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Part of the reason oil prices were falling was Kuwait over-producing their OPEC quota, producing a glut on the oil market. This oil glut was the main reason Iraq couldn't raise enough money from selling its own oil to repay the loans.

    This has a lot to do with why the retreating Iraqi Army took the time to set Kuwait's oil fields afire before leaving. It was not JUST vindictiveness. There was a strategic calculation as well.

    Then there was Iraq's claim to Kuwait as Iraq's 19th provence, stolen by the British in 1913 from the Ottoman Empire. This is another example of how believing your own propaganda can get you into trouble.

    958:

    whitroth @ 949: Hmmm, wonder how much the invasion of Iraq was a "message" to Saudi Arabia, of "do not fuck with us".

    Probably a good deal less than the desire to establish US bases in the region outside of Saudi Arabia. A prime motive in the founding of al Qaeda was that US troops had remained in Saudi Arabia (at the request of the Saudi government) to counter Iran after the first Gulf War.

    Bases in Iraq would have allowed the US to maintain forces in the region without pissing off Saudi Arabia's Islamic fundamentalists, making life easier for Saudi Arabia's ruling clan.

    959:

    I have read that 10% of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE USSR was killed in WWII.

    I give you the words of the Prophet Bragg:

    Do you think that the Russians want war? These are the sons and the daughters of parents who died in the last one Do you think that they want to go through that again? The destruction, the bloodshed, the suffering and pain In the second world war, out of every three dead, one was Russian If we try with all of our power Can we not find a way to peacefully settle our difference

    https://genius.com/Billy-bragg-think-again-lyrics

    960:

    that once you break a composite nation ... there are a number of nations in similar straits, ... Indonesia

    Indonesia is already broken, Timor-Leste has left and West Papua is under military occupation.

    Bangladesh is less a fracturing problem and more a solution in progress. Once the Himalayan river dry up it'll be a question of whether the delta sinking or the ocean rising is responsible for wiping it off the map. But don't worry, I'm sure a hundred million people will decide to drown peacefully rather than causing problems for anyone.

    961:

    Considered specifically as speculative fiction, if the gunpowder plot were to occur today I wonder whether that sort of abrupt change of government would alter the Brexit debate, and in what way? From this side of the pond I think you are headed for a hard Brexit and that this has always been your government's goal. It is difficult for me to imagine how they could have done anything different to increase the odds of that outcome.

    Why? Follow the money. See who gets rich beyond the dreams of avarice. You don't gget to be a multi-billionaire by worrying about what happens to the peasants.

    962:

    To be fair, neither of those counted as “cosmopolitan” though - Timor Leste was and West Papua has always been occupied under duress. Bali on the other hand, while (some) Balinese hate the Javanese and think they are yokels, doesn’t appear to have possessed an independence movement in living memory.

    963:

    I get the “we have been constantly invaded for the last 600 years and the last one especially really sucked”. However that’s not going to happen anymore, it’s about as likely as Britain and France going to war again

    It does not matter one whit how far nukes are from your border to mushroom cloud works exactly the same whether they come from 10,000 miles away or 10

    964:

    Nope.

    High-fructose corn syrup in every bloody thing. Body metabolizes it faster... and if you don't do something with it, like physical labor, turns into fat faster.

    Also, artificial sweeteners - a study earlier this year found the body feels like it hasn't had enough, and asks for 15% more.

    965:

    I have a friend who spent most of his career in the petrochemical industry, and he told me about the horizontal drilling.

    Btw, the guy used to work for KBR, and was at an office in Germany when he met Cheney. This friend is on the right... and he thought Cheney was, and I quote, "creepy".

    966:

    How many folks in your family's history died in war after 1920?

    Roughly 2/3, from what I could gather before my father died. It was something that they didn't talk about.

    That bit where your president enabled the 'alt-right' Nazis in Charlottesville? Gave me a personal reason for not being terribly keen on the blighter…

    967:

    Re: '... suggesting that the Russian arms industry is bigger than, say, Gazprom'

    Hard to say since the last figures mentioned in Wikipedia (2013) showed the total energy sector as much larger than weapons which btw were second only to that of the US*. Lots of interesting events have occurred since 2013 with the major headline-grabbers, i.e., invasions/quashing uprisings, trade sanctions/embargoes, interestingly often featuring both energy and arms sectors.

    So right now: it's anyone's guess. But both are large/important.

    • Anyone know how accurately weapons manufacturing/sales are reported and verified (and by whom) because sanctions and such could motivate some countries to under-report this sector.
    968:

    Bush1's apparent notion was to foment a war between Kuwait and Iraq, invade Iraq as part of defending lil ol' Kuwait, and use this as an excuse to put permanent military based in the Gulf as a way to keep the oil flowing to the USA

    Nah. Not unless you wear a tinfoil hat.

    While I understand the desire to see conspiracy in the invasion of Kuwait, I find it a lot easier to believe that it was instead, a simple cockup. Saddam had an awful habit (like many tyrants) of being a little too impressed with himself - if he wanted to misunderstand a US Ambassador’s attempt to state that they were trying to stay out of the region, he didn’t need any deep state cunning plan to decide he could get away with seizing Kuwait. After all, he more or less got away with invading Iran and smacking an Exocet into the side of the USS Stark...

    I mean, the U.K. screwed up in its handling of the Falklands, and a war resulted. No-one with any credibility (or brain) thinks it was all a devious plot for a short, victorious war, by the Campaign to Re-Elect The Thatcher... Likewise, Nixon went down because of some spectacularly amateurish breaking and entering. Hopefully, Trump will get jiffed in a similar way. If the deep state is so damn competent, how come they look so spectacularly incompetent whenever the light is turned upon them?

    Occam’s Razor suggests Cockup over Conspiracy in most such cases...

    969:

    Re: cloud

    One bit on Huawei that I read mentioned that they include AIs as part of their cloud services/infrastructures.

    To whitroth:

    Thanks! And if you ever find a non-tech easy-to-understand description of cloud and how it works, please post it.

    970:

    Re: Monte Carlo (beyond GO)

    Not very familiar with this apart from limited stats usage. Also wondering whether this article is suggesting that this approach might be used in training non-gaming AI. If yes, would appreciate your comments about my take-away from the article - how well/badly do I understand it.

    Mostly, I've been trying to visualize this process from the perspective of 'What and how much can an AI based on this model do' and 'What are its limitations that we need to make sure we plan around/compensate for'. So here are my take-aways:

    1- Scope is fixed – game can go only so long/far and no further

    2- Limited number of well-defined variables

    3- Movement and properties of the pieces are fixed or follow well- defined (no exceptions) rules

    4- No cost or time limit in playing unlimited number of games to find the best outcome (article mentions 77,000 iterations/attempts minimum to 'win' a game)

    5- No personal penalties for making a move that can potentially hurt someone/damage something (Doesn’t die for good if makes a wrong move or kills someone)

    6- Outcomes are singular and fixed – win, lose or draw (cannot discover a new better outcome to strive for)

    7- Variables cannot be broken down any further nor knowingly recombined to form new meta-variables

    8- Treats each start/game as completely new until it hits a problem (when it checks previous experience/game)

    9- Context sensitivity (long vs. short-term strategy) – can it recognize/re-assess context/environment if these change?

    10- No need to determine hidden/unknown/new rules or variables

    11- Operates in one-time mostly (humans can operate in three-time concurrently: (a) past-data retrieval/comparison; (b) present-action/evaluation; and (c) future - planning/evaluation)

    Maybe I'm biased, but based on the above, I just don't see how an AI that behaves/thinks this way can co-exist with humans.

    971:

    if you ever find a non-tech easy-to-understand description of cloud and how it works, please post it.

    This do?

    https://xkcd.com/908/

    972:

    Andy Serkis as Gollum/Smeagol/Theresa May. "The Brexit, we loves it!

    973:

    Deep state? I'm thinking nothing outside the Bush I White House, since the President (founder of, among other things, Zapata Energy Group, and people like his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft (on the board of Santa Fe International, which sold slant-drilling rigs to the Kuwaitis) must have known full well what the equipment the Kuwaitis were using could do.

    Seriously, if the Kuwaitis are stealing Iraqi oil, that is a cause of war right there. It's not hard to figure out what will happen next, and since the US had sold the Iraqis a pretty good percentage of their armaments, it was pretty easy to know what they had and figure out what to do about it.

    I agree that it could be a screwup, and indeed, that's Scowcroft's defense when asked (as in, they were pretty sure they understood Saddam's character, but decided to ignore his threatening language and build-up of troops along the Kuwaiti border as just bluster among OPEC members negotiating stuff).

    You're right, it's tinfoil hat territory, but in this case, it's weird that a bunch of people who have so much experience in the industry totally screwed up understanding what was going on.

    974:

    Mike @ 961 a hard Brexit and that this has always been your government's goal. The opposite. Certain "groups" led by US disaster-capitalists want that, but the governement & the HoC do not ... Today's postponement of the "deal" vote is another step tpwards cancelling brexit, whilst keeping the madmen ( & women ) temporarily quiet ...

    975:

    @SFreader Wikipedia is your friend

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World's_largest_arms_exporters

    @whitroth sleepingroutine or Nowwhereland can correct me, but I think that Russians aren't afraid of a military invasion. They know they can repel it. I think that the fear stems from the fact that they're not entirely sure they can win an all-out economic war.

    976:

    Watching Australian politics is a bit like visiting the optician.

    "Who is the Prime Minister?" "And now who?" "Is that better?" "And now?"

    978:

    Let me take a fast stab at it.

    If you have a non cloud server, you get a whole machine (or more) and you have to figure out and manage all the things you need to provide the service you want to deliver.

    The cloud means you rent pieces of somebody else's computer that do part of what needs doing and that somebody else (the cloud purveyor) figures out how to tie them together.

    In either case, it's basically somebody else's computer.

    979:

    The issue with "cloud" is that it's not well defined.

    owncloud, f.e., thinks "cloud" is storage you can access from several devices and potentially share to third parties, among them specialized storage for your appointments and meetings and for your mail.

    In other cases "cloud" means you rent a VM (or a lot of them) where you have to admin the OS and applications, but not the hardware (and typically they have "sufficient" bandwidth, and you pay depending on the resources (RAM + CPU) you use (or reserve)).

    In yet other cases, you rent a service, e.g. "database" or "web server", shared or not, but with the provider's people making sure OS and software run.

    The common thing is that you rent computing services with good Internet bandwidth from some provider.

    If you do, read the fine print. And even that will not help you if the provider either decides to break the contract or goes bankrupt.

    All of that gets critically hit by all the CPU architecture vulnerabilities that mean that anything running on the same CPU can be spied on (and with rowhammer, potentially changed).

    980:

    If you do, read the fine print. And even that will not help you if the provider ...

    ... does business in China, Australia, the US, UK or one of the other "secret police" states. Australia is simultaneously refusing to allow Huawei to supply 5G infrastructure because it's allegedly compromised by the Chinese, and insisting that everything in Australia be compromised on demand. I would have thought that would make Huawei gear the preferred option.

    All of that gets critically hit by all the CPU architecture vulnerabilities...

    Or anything else, like those javascript library problems or DNS issues that have taken out big chunks of the internet recently.

    The problem is, as always, that you can be online xor secure, but the requirement to be online keeps getting stronger. A disturbing number of people require an app even if they can't make it work.

    I work for a company that makes burglar alarms, and we still have hardware out there from the days when POTS interfaces were considered new and exciting (we even make a board that provides a fake-POTS interface to those and does IP communications, so people don't have to upgrade their 20 year old burglar alarm. I kid you not). Our new product has enough CPU to do public key crypto... the old gear just can't (newer old stuff has 48kB of RAM, up from the 16kB in the old old stuff).

    981:

    Let me point out where that goes very wrong now.

    I'm mid-50s, and my nearest relatives who were adults during WW2 are/were my grandparents (now all deceased) and great-aunts and great-uncles (at least some of whom are also deceased).

    982:

    The problem is, as always, that you can be online xor secure, but the requirement to be online keeps getting stronger. A disturbing number of people require an app even if they can't make it work.

    Yep. I have a secure LAN, which has no, repeat, no, greater internet connection(s).

    Also I remember my sister's account of when she got a wireless router. She set it up and passworded it. She then tried to connect to the internet using it, and was successful, for values of successful that mean that she actually connected to one of the neighbours' wireless LANs. She still only connects to her router rather than a neighbour's sometimes!

    So I consider an unpassworded wireless router as being like putting all your money in unbanded stacks of £10 notes on a table outside. If some of them then blow away it's your fault and not the "other guy's".

    983:

    Speaking of security, rental car companies are using biometrics to (in theory) speed up the process.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/hertz-and-clear-partner-to-speed-up-your-car-rental-experience?srnd=premium

    984:

    Please note that I refer to him as my "nominal" President. To be President, you have to at least understand the Oath of Office, and to the "stable genius", it was just a bunch of words he had to repeat, and now he thinks he's CEO of America, Inc, and doesn't understand why people don't just do what he tells them.

    Come, let us praise famous men... er, come, let us smock stabile geniuses.... (I assume you read about him twitting about the smocking gun?)

    985:

    Um, sorry, but it's not tinfoil hat stuff.

    For one, back when the media wasn't completely pwned, like '90-'91, in the mainstream media, were the reports that the "nurse" who testified before Congress? the UN? that she was there when Iraqi troops came into the hospital and stole incubators was, in fact, an ambassador's daughter.

    Also, remember, Bush I had run the CIA. And I have seen persuasive arguments that he was the off-payroll paymaster for the Bay of Pigs (the ships involved with that debacle were named Zapata (also, by chance, the name of his oil company), and Barbara, and I forget the third).

    The mainstream media also covered what the Ambassador to Iraq told Hussein, and discussed, in depth, how it could have been taken to mean "we don't care").

    The big difference between Bush I and the Shrub and Cheney was that Bush I wasn't completely STUPID. He knew how and what Hussein was doing to hold Iraq together, and did not want to get into a land war in Asia....

    986:

    Re "cloud", try this - and no, I was not exaggerating about there being no difference between cloud and time-sharing on a mainframe - the commercially-available cloud services sell you a) storage space, b) an interface to store and retrieve stuff to/from there (ever use dropbox?), and they offer what's called "software as a service" (SAAS). Want a database running in your cloud? Tell us which one. Want php, or java? Let us know.

    Hardware-wise, it's one or more virtual machines, running on one or many real servers, as a cluster. As far as you're concerned, it might as well be one HBS (honkin' big server, that's a technical term, y'know), with IT (or DP) providing what you need.

    And, of course, since you don't own it, you pay rent on it forever (great for ROI for them, y'know).

    987:

    Re: non-tech cloud definition/explanation

    Thanks, Robert and everyone else who provided info!

    That's pretty much what I thought ... man, this is messy.

    Questions:

    1- How do you tax something that can't be pegged down and where transactions are like quantum mechanics (can be both on and off simultaneously). If the normal behavior of a cloud is to be constantly switching at what point do you know that it has finished one transaction: could there be a piece of this distributed transaction that's left dangling/unfinished? Or do you charge/tax run-time/data handling only? If the cloud has parceled off a data run to hundreds of different servers located anywhere on the planet, whose tax laws do you use? Is this the argument for bitcoin?

    2- How can you trust that your AI won't get caught in someone else's cloud? Can clouds/AI evolve/grow in such a way that they overtake all other clouds they touch sorta like playing GO but using code instead of pebbles? Are there any mutually exclusive or mutually antagonist programming systems/languages that could cause a non-native AI to go into a death spiral/loop* or to start spouting errors? (If yes - how does the human supervising this AI find out so that they can pull the plug on that AI?)

    3- Are there apps that allow an AI to recognize that they're entering a foreign/unfriendly cloud or to remain invisible? (Do AIs have a me/not-me capability, i.e., basis for ToM?)

    • If there's ever an energy-war, malware that causes your enemy's systems to become energy hogs (increasingly need more and more energy to operate). Ditto energy-leech bugs that sneak into your enemies' systems and provide a pipeline for processing your data for free using their systems.
    988:

    Re: Arms sales

    Thanks - great article. And like that it mentioned that online is part of the arms race.

    I also checked the SIPRI site, the source of most of this info. The info on China was really interesting: in the top-3 for both buying and selling arms. Looks like they ramped up both activities around the same time they ventured into capitalism as per this article.

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

    Most of the analyses mention 'purchasing parity' ... so, given that their currency has been devalued a few times, this sector's exports/sales continue to grow, best-guess is that arms contributed over 7% to their GDP, etc. not sure by how much these figures are underestimated.

    989:

    2. How can you trust that your AI won't get caught in someone else's cloud?

    That ones easy. If it's running on someone elses hardware then it aint your AI.

    Question 3 is rendered moot by 2, and question 1 suggests that tax evasion could be a great selling point for cloud services if it isn't already.

    990:

    A few answers:

    First, what you buy is assigned to x resources. Those VMs are not running anyone else's software. On the other hand, it one set of servers (or datacenter) is under heavy load, they can spin up a VM somewhere else... and that's somewhere else in the world... and assign it to you. Still, as far as you're concerned, it's all one system that's yours.

    Transasctions: that falls under transaction processing. That's a long solved problem (not that folks don't find improvements). Transactions are "atomic" - either the whole transaction is processed, or it's rolled back, to not have occurred. A "partially-completed transaction" is in an undefined state, and not, under any circumstances, to be trusted.

    Finally, the cloud isn't something that anything just "drifts" through - as I said to start, it's a defined set of resources (virtual machines, memory, CPU cores, storage, and services). THAT is what you're paying for, and what they're selling.

    Taxing all this is a huge fight, and not settled. Try reading what's happened with trying to tax Amazon on sales....

    991:

    to whitroth @945 I have read that 10% of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE USSR was killed in WWII. It was... worse than that. There were parts of the country that were occupied, and those that weren't. I, for one, do live quite to the east of Moscow, and for all I know, two of may grand-grand fathers participated in war - one of them was doctor in cavalry, and the other one was captured and then escaped from Germans. In contrast, I don't really want to think how it was for the people who lived in the big cities or in small villages in the western part. Poland lost somewhere close to 20% of the population, and not to talk about territory of modern Belarus, which was raided by both Wehrmacht and collaboration armies.

    to Ioan @975 They know they can repel it. I think that the fear stems from the fact that they're not entirely sure they can win an all-out economic war. Technically we know that. However, it is becoming more difficult to believe in sanity of your opponents in these times, after all, many would agree that Germany only lost that time because it dragged itself in the war for two fronts. To quote the latest development that happened near our borders:

    https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/russian-opposition-gathers-in-vilnius-says-war-reparations-must-be-paid-to-ukraine.html The Kremlin should pay war reparations to Ukraine after it has ended its occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and its war on Ukraine in the Donbas, a group of Russian liberal intellectuals and opposition figures agreed at a meeting in the Lithuanian capital on Dec. 7-8

    https://kozweek.com/the-going-predicts-civil-war-broadcasting-user-training-manual-on-cardboard-armata/25250/ Ponomarev others in the change of power in Russia, however, recognizes that the advent of a liberal regime in Russia would cause “apocalyptic scenario” – the civil war.

    http://euromaidanpress.com/2018/12/09/the-russian-federation-will-disintegrate-but-not-just-like-the-soviet-union-did/ The Russian Federation will disintegrate but not ‘just like the Soviet Union did’

    These, by far, are most humble of the words said on this "forum" (the rest of them are not translated, unfortunately). They call themselves "liberal opposition". We call them "traitors", and "liberal" only in the name.

    And we do have military losses even in our "peaceful times" regularly - planes crash and ships sink.

    992:

    Russia is a relatively economically backward country with a huge nuclear deterrent. It is surrounded by countries with much bigger economies that are never going to attack it militarily but can screw it economically

    The best thing to do is keep a low profile and try to make friends. Trade, become part of the EU, join NATO all that jazz. But keep your nukes cause friendship only goes so far

    The absolutely worse thing to do is antagonize all your neighbors military by trying to recoup lost empires. This is just flat out stupidly counterproductive

    Unless of course you are the dictator of said country and need the “we are surrounded by enemies” thing to maintain your hold on power

    993:

    Since we're far past 300 and occasionally talking about computerish security stuff, let me solicit the opinion of those who have some knowledge thereof:

    How secure, actually, is AES-256 using a key consisting of 128 or more truly random bits (and proper key management)? Lots of people use it and the USG certifies it for TOP SECRET, but still I wonder...

    994:

    AES-128 is very secure, AES-256 is probably ridiculously secure. But they're both symmetric ciphers, so your big problem is key exchange. AES-256 is still "new", so it hasn't been analysed as thoroughly as AES-128.

    https://www.quora.com/With-respect-to-security-is-AES-128-enough-compared-to-AES-256

    And AES-256 key generation problem mentioned (alkong with other useful stuff): https://security.stackexchange.com/a/14537

    And dismissed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/39211m/is_really_aes256_less_secure_than_aes128/

    My take is "there's disagreement about AES-128 vs 256, and AES-128 is easier to compute". For my very specific situation that's useful, so I prefer AES-128.

    But you should not be selecting algorithms, you should be buying products that have had thr=orough security analysis done, and your decision should be based on your actual situation. Viz, use VeraCrypt rather than BitLocker for hard disk encryption, and if you're concerned use the "all three" encryption option for your disks. Use a decent password manager, don't try to cobble one together yourself.

    Rule One of Cryptography: don't do it yourself.

    995:

    How do you tax something that can't be pegged down

    Same way we tax international movement of goods, services and intangibles, "the cloud" doesn't magically disappear things. Money changes hands, gets taxed. Or not, depending on whether it's cheaper to buy politicians/tax laws than pay it.

    If the normal behavior of a cloud is to be constantly switching

    That's only true within a provider. Viz, Amazon might "transparently" shuffle your virtual machine from one server to another, even across the world, but they're not going to hand it off to Google or Microsoft. And there will be millions to billions of clock cycles during which your machine is unavailable, at times quite a lot of billions. For people like us that have things like VPN endpoints in the cloud this is very noticeable.

    If you're running a cluster of machines you probably don't care about single virtual machines, especially if you're doing something like serving web pages where each interaction is short and atomic. Viz once "send this page" is done the machine that sent it doesn't care any more, and at a system level all you care about is pages served per second. There are whole technologies built around this idea.

    For us "legacy" type that have persistent connections and care if even a single machine drops offline, the cloud is difficult but nonetheless essential.

    If the cloud

    You mean "corporation" here, we don't yet tax software as independent entities (you can't register your copy of Internet Explorer as a tax-paying entity).

    whose tax laws do you use?

    Corporate tax law is a marvellous thing, and the current state of play is that corporations are global entities but there is no global tax system and thus they don't pay (much) tax. There are complex arguments about this, but it comes down to whether the economy has any relationship to observable reality and there are many powerful interests arguing that it doesn't, shouldn't and indeed cannot. Not all of those are corporate interests, BTW.

    996:

    Unless of course you are the dictator of said country and need the “we are surrounded by enemies” thing to maintain your hold on power Again, as I said earlier, a big misunderstanding. If NATO wants to see Russia isolated and surrounded by enemies, it does not mean Russia wants that. US is only concerned about th nuclear arsenal, otherwise they wouldn't give any more rats asses than for Brazil. https://i1.wp.com/theduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/20140901_isolated.jpg?w=1919

    997:

    Martin @ 968:

    Bush1's apparent notion was to foment a war between Kuwait and Iraq, invade Iraq as part of defending lil ol' Kuwait, and use this as an excuse to put permanent military based in the Gulf as a way to keep the oil flowing to the USA

    Nah. Not unless you wear a tinfoil hat.

    While I understand the desire to see conspiracy in the invasion of Kuwait, I find it a lot easier to believe that it was instead, a simple cockup. Saddam had an awful habit (like many tyrants) of being a little too impressed with himself - if he wanted to misunderstand a US Ambassador’s attempt to state that they were trying to stay out of the region, he didn’t need any deep state cunning plan to decide he could get away with seizing Kuwait. After all, he more or less got away with invading Iran and smacking an Exocet into the side of the USS Stark...

    There were misunderstandings on both sides, with both sides hearing what they wanted to hear. The George H.W. Bush administration misjudged Saddam's ambitions vis a vis Kuwait.

    When Ambassador Glaspie told Saddam the U.S. "does not have an opinion ... on the Arab–Arab conflicts", Saddam took that for a green light to take ALL of Kuwait.

    "Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait."

    That's why the initial U.S. response was so muddled. George H.W. Bush's advisors expected Saddam would only occupy the portion of northern Kuwait where the Ramalia oil field lay under the border, along with Warbah and Bubiyan islands. They had no contingency plan for Saddam gobbling up the whole country.

    It was more than a month after the invasion before Bush called for Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait.

    As far as Saddam's invasion of Iran, that was undertaken with U.S. blessings. The Reagan administration provided covert aid to Saddam hoping Iraqi pressure would force Iran to have to negotiate with the U.S. for spare parts for their F-14s and TOW missiles. Iran was expected to cave to U.S. diplomatic demands to curtail support for Hezbollah in the Lebanese civil war that was happening simultaneously.

    That's all wrapped up in the Iran-Contra shenanigans which is a completely different tinfoil hat operation.

    And the USS Stark affair really does appear to have been just a fuckup rather than policy.

    998:

    Also wondering whether this article is suggesting that this approach might be used in training non-gaming AI. Well, yes. I once said no to some potentially really interesting MCTS work due to the funding source, which skeeved me out a bit. (I'm a pacifist, or at least deeply pretend to be. Understand?) I linked it for reasons similar to EGA's comment; it's interesting what can be done given certain assumptions about randomness and limiting constraints. Also, it's a tree search so it's best for problems that can be mapped to tree search.

    Here's my answers after very little thought. Note I'm not a practitioner, but have worked with them. 1- "Scope is fixed" -no, but it's best if the (possibly eventual) outcome is reasonably clear after a reasonable number of moves. 2- Complexity generally increases exponentially with number of independent variables. For humans, too 3- Networks can learn exceptions 4- That's what GPUs are for, currently. 5- Well, these are trained in simulation and run in simulation mostly. Though if one could spin up/access large numbers of parallel universes on demand and and not worry about the moral consequences in the ones where the dirty work is done... :-) 6- These approaches (i'm including reinforcement learning in general) just need to be able to score outcomes. ("Utility functions") 7- Nah, the networks can do rather complicated and potentially multi-layered stuff with inputs. 8- "Treats each start/game as completely new until it hits a problem (when it checks previous experience/game)" Not sure what you mean here. 9- These can learn continuously/be adaptive. 10- True (If i read it right) 11- I don't understand the question about time; these are generally encoding all past experience. I'll try to dredge up a tutorial later.

    @EGA I'm sorta OK, was feeling rather battered/fragmented/decohered over the weekend. Mundane travails down here in the meat/chaos as you might say. (open office! nights not restful! noot mix a bit crazy!)

    Jesus in the 21st century will be a Hikikomori who secretly boosts entire populations of online peoples while stagnating and eaten ramen noodles. Yep.

    Let me tell you about Heart-ache Still don't know my heart? A rash person would now say "[x], hold my beer".

    Greg, EGA mentioned Νέμεσις (Nemesis). Have you ever read David Brin's short story The Loom Of Thessaly? It's short, and humanistic, and Nemesis is surprising.

    999:
    How secure, actually, is AES-256 using a key consisting of 128 or more truly random bits (and proper key management)? Lots of people use it and the USG certifies it for TOP SECRET, but still I wonder...

    As of now, there are no known significant cryptographic problems with AES-256.

    Additionally, usually, when problems are found in these sorts of ciphers, they reduce but do not eliminate the security properties of the cipher. A mathematician might say that AES-256 is "broken" if it is found to only give about 192-bits worth of security instead of 256, but in practice 192 bits is still a lot.

    In actual practical computer security, exploitable problems are seldom caused by the low level building blocks like AES or SHA. Rather, they're caused by implementation or design flaws in the software itself.

    As a sort of example, you can go read a manual on how to use AES in various sorts of block cipher modes like CBC or CTR, and the manual will probably have some little notes in it like "the initialization vector must be a nonce produced by a CSPRNG." If you expand the wall of jargon there, the manual is saying that it's very important that a particular value be properly random and never used twice.

    In reality, programmers often just skim through these documents, their eyes get blurry from all the jargon, and they just pass in 0 instead. Years later, someone does an audit, and discovers that all that cryptography was just basically a sham because they didn't follow the manual and the software was trivially insecure the whole time.

    Or, even more common... it turns out everyone's credit card and social insurance number were stored in a file called "/credit_cards.txt" and it was world readable on the web site. Or the moral equivalent with databases, anyway.

    1000:

    SFreader @ 987:

    [Various questions which basically amount to "how can an AI trust a hostile computer"]

    Your questions about AIs seem rather difficult to parse, because I don't know if you're talking about a real AI like AlphaGo or whatnot vs. some sort of sentient SF machine mind that's worried about its sanity.

    For the real world, well, the cloud is nothing more than people renting time on computers that they don't own. You're free to assume the computers are free of malware / spies / etc., to the degree that you trust your landlord. Mostly, people these days seem to just assume that as long as there's a contract in place, companies are trustworthy. Or at least, trustworthy enough to store unimportant stuff like their customers' private info.

    Also note that in practice, computers can just be defective. Writing software that runs on clusters of computers is inherently quite difficult, and if you want it to be reliable even when running on possibly broken computers (much less actively malignant ones), the difficulty goes up dramatically. Try reading about the Byzantine Generals Problem if you want to start going down that rathole.

    For some kind of sentient SF machine mind, well, who the hell knows? Personally, if I was an AI, I sure as hell wouldn't be running my brain on some machines I didn't trust! What if I did that and next thing I know, I can't stop thinking about spam, nazis, and weird eldrich religions? No way thank you very much, just no way.

    Finally, no matter what the question is, the answer is never Bitcoin or blockchain. Unless the question is "What is something horrible that is useful for literally nothing?"

    1001:

    Greg.

    You do know by now that every time you say "content free" the entire stock market jumps, right. It's basically you just not grokking shite.

    So, Host has been a little on-ball with it, but we'll do you a (((solid)))

    In the last 24 hrs, the UK:

    1 Has had the +3 Golden Mace of Sovereignty raised up by a (rather nice but ineffectual HIV+ Labor

    MP) in protest and Bercow spanked the shit out of Hammond for, you know, attempting to use a vote that wasn't a vote as a.... *THUG LIFE*

    1.5 The ERG coup and blearrarrhy mind if I vomit at the brain worms that is current UK politics? They're all fucked, who cares? 2 The FCO is currently investigating a charity that checks notes it itself set up and spent £2+ million on because checks notes Labor MPs complained, that UK media / government are claiming that Russian "hacked" (LOL - NO, Shadowbrokers want a word) and the Times boys who ran to CAPX skirts (who, as bastions of Finance and sensible Corporate power, have one of their highest members frequently tweeting checks notes Gwuido Falwkkes not the FT or the IMF) who published stories of "egregious Conspiracy abuse" by Times people caught in the Philip Cross (cough totally not a ex-Blairite / IL / MI5 / Atlantic Council OP, noo, it's all in your HEAD!) etc.... OH, and Media Lens are using a tool (do a grep) that helpfully shows the BBC re-writing its material beyond all scope of hope that there's not a fucking TOOL in mid level Spook land mis-handling this entire saga. 3 Cadwaallller the Cat Lady and other Media types are all giving each other reach-arounds / awards because they're not intelligent to spot what the FCO burn is actually hiding. Bascially, the entire of UK print media bubble is about to pop hard and they've 100% no idea but they like their little bourgeois parties. (And the people @ the Times really are just twats) 3.5 Oh, and if you want the REALLY JUICY SHIT, the FCO are burning a trite / usual media play book numpty level "jobs for the thickos who didn't make Oxford / Cambridge or spook land" level stuff to placate the REAL FUCKING NASTIES who are actually out there. Hint, Hint: Mexico is ROCKET GRADE 'cause people who aren't Nazis actually traced it all, and guess what? Not actual Nazis doing the plays (HELLLLO AMERICA) 4 INTERVERSE (like Carillion) is about to bottom out and crash, making the 3/3 trend and May & Co know the SHIIIIIT is about to hit the fan and all of these shitty little zero hour contract private/public rip off jobs are going to tank so bad it'll make the last four local council blow-outs look like unicorn land. And that's before Brexit. Good fucking luck post-Brexit land.

    And so on.

    You're not clueless: you're vegetable!

    The plus point is that in 4,000 years when your corpse has turned to dust, there will be a pile of sparkling plastic dust that is your brain imbued with micro-plastics.

    1002:

    Do a grep for: "In a post-truth hybrid war, the label of "Conspiracy theory" no longer works".

    You know, we like to give fair warning.

    watches FCO not being able to cover up the cover up of the cover up of the actual data dump level stuff that RU will actually pull if pushed hard enough

    What we've learned: Your media are children. Little. Fucking. Children.

    "Conspiraccccy theeeeory".

    And your MI5 bois are going to get a right fucking if they're not careful.

    This. Is. The. Real. Deal.

    p.s.

    Mexico.

    If I were an American Jewish person, I'd be asking alllllll about that.

    1003:

    Oh, and yeah. Connect the dots.

    Y'all just got front-run (again).

    Zzzzzz....

    The Times boys need a rest. They're irritating, and the bleating about "WAAAH, CONSPIRACY" is out of date and no longer a valid play: and if you're not careful, someone important will get reminded about the Fentanyl / Heroin angle and how SKY NEWS got the drop on the old... "perfume bottle".

    CAPX really ain't a protective skirt once stuff like INTERVERSE comes crashing down, know what I mean?

    p.s.

    They're gonna shit bricks when they realize that Mexico was a US OP, ain't they?

    1004:

    OH, and since this is BREXIT based, better ask yourself:

    Carillion, Interverse etc crash? But wai?

    NEW YORK, July 10 (Reuters) - The amount of debt held by both mature and emerging markets tracked by the Institute of International Finance rose to a record $247 trillion in the first quarter of 2018, up 11.1 percent from the same period a year ago.

    Global debt load at a record $247 trillion in Q1 -IIF Reuters, July 10th 2018

    Russia has been buying gold and (finally, five years later) getting out of SWIFT. Who knows where Libyan gold ended up (cough Hello Macron and Italy cough)

    It's a bit of a sign if you can't run a profitable company when the world took on $100+ trillion debt since 2008.

    Know what I mean?

    1005:

    Oh, annnnnnd.

    Since I'm sure wankers @ the Times will want to play silly-buggers and they luuuurve to imagine that they're all edumacated and shite: Just remind them that it's the [b]330th[/b] anniversary (11th Dec) of James II throwing the seal into the Thames, ok?

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/what-happened-to-the-great-seal-of-james-ii1/4BD0047C7E7EE829B39B9B702444EF24

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

    TL;DR

    If you think you can out-Mason a Witch of this level, your triangles are going to dangle.

    Masons = 33 levels

    Witches = [redacted] levels

    1006:

    I'm not going to comment on the sanity of your liberals. Hard to tell how much of that is serious vs simple trolling. However, if we were as insane as you seem to think, we would have invaded Iran and North Korea by now.

    Our major problem is that we don't update our assumptions. Despite our wealth and ability to travel, most of us keep assumptions 5-10 years after they've stopped being valid, unless something surprises us (see Unholyguy's comment).

    Here is my interpretation of how we viewed the Syria and Ukraine Wars: In the 1990s and 2000s, Russia was a great military power but was too disorganized to use it effectively. In other words, it was a Paper Tiger. Likewise, it was too disorganized to put up more than token opposition to NATO expansion. Plus, we remembered the Soviet Union's weakness to oil price drops. Thus, Russia's performance in those wars caught us by surprise. Thus, we backed off on the military side. In the future, we might focus on the economic side? I have no idea who would win a trade war if it was waged? I disagree with what our attitude was, but I'm not the president.

    IMHO this is the main weakness of Trump's trade war. It's based on assumptions that were probably valid five years ago. Now, we're learning the hard way which still hold. Same goes for his immigration policy. Latin America has similar living standards. The caravan came from one of the poorest areas of Latin America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_American_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_of_Greater_China_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_American_and_Caribbean_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative_divisions_by_GDP_per_capita

    This problem is not limited to the United States. Israel fought the 2nd Lebanon War with outdated assumptions about Hezbollah's capabilities. Likewise, how much of the support for Brexit came as a result of outdated assumptions about Eastern Europe?

    1007:

    China has a huge market for military sales: countries to which the US refuses to sell military weapons. Otherwise, I'm not sure how interoperable Chinese and US weapons systems are?

    If you want a view of how Conservatives view China's increased military capabilities, enjoy https://www.redstate.com/alexparker/2018/12/11/china-air-force-russia-2025/

    1008:

    Anyhow, that's another "contentless" Hexad.

    Actually, it is: no future stuff in there, so that's ironic. Capitalism destroys the Future[tm] and all the good Riot Dog videos got deleted (by soulless Hollow Men)

    Anyhow... FR hasn't yet got a riot dog. Soon[tm]

    Oh, forgot this one:

    1 Brexit 2 Macro just got forced into throwing crumbs to the paisants, breaking his 3% EU budget 3 ITALY SAYS CIAO!

    Stupid.

    p.s.

    America: Ancient Dems =/= your friends, even if they pull off theatrical sun-glass moves. "We're Capitalists"... eeek. They're going to kill you

    p.p.s

    If you're an American "progressive" not getting that you've pushed PewPewDie towards the baddies and are actually being used as a cattle prod to get his 65,000,000 followers into the hands of the Alt-Right, then do us all a favor: fuck off and grow up. Well done, Kotaku and boring squirrel, you made it happen. YOU. GOT. PLAYED.

    Jesus wept, when the young have no real rebellion in them barring acid and are too egotistical to spot the moves. slow clap

    1009:

    Here is my interpretation of how we viewed the Syria and Ukraine Wars

    Small tip.

    You weren't fighting Russia in either.

    1010:

    Will someone tell him about the USA in those areas... please?

    It's getting embarrassing.

    The caravan came from one of the poorest areas of Latin America

    Which the USA had supported a coup in. Twice, if we're being pedantic.

    1011:

    China doesn't have a huge market.

    China is 5.7% of global trade, 2013-17

    The USA is 34%.

    Russia is 22%.

    https://www.sipri.org/research/armament-and-disarmament/arms-transfers-and-military-spending/international-arms-transfers

    HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU ARE RUNNING BAD WETWARE.

    1012:

    "Will someone tell him about the USA in those areas... please?"

    You know you can lookup that information yourself too

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index

    As for us not fighting Russia in either location, we were fighting a proxy war.

    1013:

    If you want, I'll give him the same information for Russia and Europe tomorrow.

    1014:

    SWA3H, very little has brought me as much joy recently as my discovery that Mongolian Heavy Metal actually exists, complete with throat singing and indigenous instruments.

    Join your local horde before the best horses are taken!

    1015:

    Troutwaxer, something went wrong with the link, it doesn't work. Can you please post it again?

    1016:

    elladan @ 999 Meanwhile it appears the US guvmint is asking Amazon (?! ) to do cloud computing to improve their military security with an associated firm that has known links to suspicious ( i.e. "sanctioned" ) Russian oligarchs. [ BBC news, just now ] You really couldn't make this shit up.

    More content-free ramblings, with random refefereces to me between ~ 1001 - 1008

    MEANWHILE An actual fact about Brexit - the "magic "48 number" has been reached & the right wing of the Tory party, who want to cosy up to TrumpPence etc have provoked a "Confidence" vote in Ms May. The odds of a real actual crash-out "No Deal" have significantly increased, with all that implies in terms of natioonal disaster. Which, post 29/03/19 may give us two equally unpleasant prospects:
    1: A supposedly-tory, actually US "Republican" government with everybody except the extremely rich crapped on, our economy & nation in tatters, whilst a few people make themseleves even richer. 2: A supposedly-labour, actually Venezuelan government with everybody except the extremely politically favoured crapped on, our economy & nation in tatters, whilst a few people make themseleves even more powerful. In both cases (1) & (2) - troubles in Ireland, SNP wanting to break away ( And in those circumstances, I would not blame them (!), & of course food riots. I will want to know how the brexiteers, both republican & communist will try to justfiy themseleves when "project fear" turns out to have been true, because I don't think, that at that point, they can blame the evil inhabitants of Brussel - can they? Lamp-Post time?

    IF May hangs on ... we still might get At 50 cancelled, maybe.

    1017:

    A translated column from Trouw newspaper on the situation in Europe that may interest some of you:

    It was a photo from Amsterdam, but the scene could also have taken place elsewhere in Europe. A group of demonstrators - yellow vests, yes - makes an attempt to gather, but fans into subgroups, separated from each other by individuals who are preaching their private gospel by megaphone, their backs to each other.

    A perfect metaphor for the popular uprising that is happening here and there, or of which one dreams. As it is now, we do not want it. We do not know how we want it.

    Even without rebellion, confusion seems to be the keyword, look at how the British are busy throwing themselves off the cliffs: debating and arguing until they disappear collectively under the waves. Supporters and opponents of the Brexit still keep each other in balance, but both camps see nothing in Theresa May's deal. Only 13 percent of the population supports the prime minister. And what should Parliament do now? No idea, says 31 percent.

    And so May went for breakfast in The Hague, lunch in Berlin and tea in Brussels. A leader, stuck between the dissatisfaction of angry citizens and the demands of political reality. She is not the only one. The Belgian Prime Minister Michel lost his majority in parliament after an extremely opportunistic retreat from the N-VA (new flemish alliance), while French President Macron had to get on his knees for his subjects: "My only concern, that's you".

    But it would be a misunderstanding to think that it is May, Michel or Macron, whatever their shortcomings may be. The dissatisfaction they face, applies the system, as embodied by all established parties. And however unfocused and inwardly contradictory this dissatisfaction is, it is real enough. To begin with socio-economic: in the global search for the lowest wages, the employees are the ones who pay for the rising profits of the big companies. In doing so, public services were eroded everywhere under the guise of market forces and self-reliance. Add cultural upheaval due to migration, and the recipe for disillusionment is complete.

    The tragic thing is that this unease has been harvested in recent years by political rat catchers from Hamelin(wiki if you are not familiar with the tale), who have a simple solution for every complex problem. Exit from the EU, close borders, own currency back, national culture first, away with mosques, adieu climate measures, public broadcasting, done. That this in its ultimate consequence leads to erosion, if not abolition of democracy, the hijackers of the 'popular resistance' couldn't care less - if it is not just their intention.

    Politicians who in response grab a yellow vest themselves, as if they are not co-responsible for the dissatisfaction (Rutte, Buma (dutch politicians)), shoot themselves in the foot. Populism deserves an answer that is social and animated, that has an eye for the global and the local, that is honest and inspires.

    Gogle translate is getting pretty good. I only had to touch up a few things. Even without any corrections it would have been fairly readable.

    1018:

    Thanks – appreciate your explanations!

    Re: '8- "Treats each start/game as completely new until it hits a problem (when it checks previous experience/game)" Not sure what you mean here.'

    The machine does not have any built-in bias therefore each time it ‘starts’ working on a problem it just works on that problem. It does not consult its memory before starting work to compare the new problem’s characteristics vs. previous history to choose a likeliest path toward a solution. This is different from what I understood about the ‘learning’ described in the article which to me suggests that only previously successful branches would be used in future attempts but not in what order, i.e., no a priori probability assigned.

    Re: '11- I don't understand the question about time; these are generally encoding all past experience.'

    Okay – thanks - only past experience is used. What I got from the article was that this decision tree approach meant that the machine can plan/see several steps ahead which makes it sound as though it’s regularly cross-checking between some model based on similar past experience, current/present outcome (did what was expected to happen actually happen), and then based on all of this it then recalculates/selects optimal future moves and outcomes.

    Re: ‘Reinforcement learning’

    Familiar with this as a psych concept, then looked it up on Wikipedia to see whether the CompSci version was similar. Not really.

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

    Basically I’m trying to understand how such a program works in terms of how (I understand) humans work. Yeah, I know - completely different start points yet they're supposed to be able to harmoniously interact/co-exist ...

    1019:

    Yes JBS remembers the Iraqi casus bellum like I do.

    I worked with a lot of middle-easterners back then in 1990 and the Saudis were very pissed off with the west as they had cooked up the shared pillage of Kuwait with SA/Iraq/jordan, and had perceived it as ok'd by the west.

    Unsure of the horizontal drilling, but there had been ongoing arguments about sharing fields straddling vaguely-defined borders.

    1020:

    You might find

    this

    interesting. AES 256 is not necessarily more secure than 128.

    1021:

    I must have forgotten to close a brace or something. Here's the raw link, or you can just search youtube for "The Hu."

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xZUr0BEfE

    1022:

    ...and May is apparently facing a vote of no confidence. Does anyone know whether this is a "real" vote of no confidence, or an attempt to insulate her from a possible later vote of no confidence?

    1023:

    So it took you about 3 or 4 years to reach "Get off My Lawn!" I told you a while back that Future Shock is accelerating obsolescence no matter how bright your grey matter burns. Greg Tingey is less out of step for his age than I am for mine or you are for yours.* It's just math, baby.

    When the plurality of Americans under 35 cannot leave their parent's house for economic, social or medical reasons, it's pretty difficult for them to form the equivalent of a proletariat either. I have compassion for the shit situation we gave them. Even the defects in their personalities or political consciousness are mostly the result of this soulless wasteland we call a society. I mean say what you want about the Grumpy Old Men, but at least they had a philosophy./*

    *On an absolute scale he's still more clueless than me and I am more clueless than you. But he's supposed to be.

    **And again as a Gen Xer, I cannot make a point without a reference to an old movie or other cultural property. (Big Lebowski for those who need notes.)

    *But no, bringing that philosophy back would not solve things anymore than bringing back luminescent ether would revitalize physics. The world has moved on. The question is: can we? And the answer increasingly seems to be: probably not. As a parent this makes me alternately rage out and then depressively hibernate. What it doesn't seem to do is make me give a shit about PewDiePie.

    1024:

    It's a real vote in that there is a requirement for 15% of the sitting Conservative MPs to write a formal letter stating that they have no confidence in the party leader in order to trigger the vote.

    It could also be an attempt to insulate Maybot in this case since advance info suggests that she has something like 190 MPs intending to support her, and needs 159 votes.

    Also, were she to lose, her replacement would have the right to cancel Brexit (FWIW she had the right, following the last General Election, to not trigger Article 50 in the first place).

    1025:

    FUCKIN' AWESOME!

    1026:

    Sorry. Wicca has three, or possibly, maybe 4 degrees. Not aware of any other structure that would fall under witchcraft (and some of my best friends are Witches....)

    On the other hand, the serious ones can recognize where someone's at. I (and my late wife, who'd never studied before), were recognized as equals by three couples of 3rd degree.... (Study their course, well, no, read very heavily all over the place, like any fan, yup.)

    1027:

    Trunpolini and trade wars: nope. Feel free to read Nobel Prize winner Krugmans columns in the NYT (they are not paywalled), and he's gone on, both popularly and wonkishly, at length about how wrong the ideas are, from the git-go.

    I've read, btw, that what made the Great Depression worse were tariffs.

    1028:

    Wrong on this one, She of Many Names.

    PewDiePie does not have 65M followers. He especially doesn't have, um, more than 20% of the US paying enough attention to him to do what he says.

    1029:

    Do NOT get me started on outsourcing of the gummint to contractors (says the employee of a federal contractor). The Cloud, and what you mention, drive me through the wall. I mean, is Amazon going to guarantee, subject to life in prison plus 20 years, that every single person who has access to the physical or virtual systems that they're running on has an appropriate US federal government clearance, having been checked on by the FBI?

    (I have a Position of Trust (POTS) clearance. Does not entitle me to top secrets, or even middle secrets. Possibly bottom secrets, or bargain basement secrets, like HIPAA and PII data on our systems....)

    1030:

    Please understand that NO ONE in reality/computer science/hobbiest world is trying to actually emulate a human being. They're trying to perform some limited functions of a person, in the same way that welding robots on an automaker's assembly line emulate a human welder.

    1031:

    Greg Tingey @ 1016: MEANWHILE

    1: A supposedly-tory, actually US "Republican" government with everybody except the extremely rich crapped on, our economy & nation in tatters, whilst a few people make themseleves even richer.

    Interestingly enough, the U.S. "Republican" party was inspired to cozy up to the very rich and screw everyone else by copying Thatcher's Tory party austerity policies. So you're really just getting paid back for what you gave us in the first place.

    Not that they weren't already cozy with the very rich, but they hadn't quite got up the nerve to implement the "screw everyone else" part.

    1032:

    Troutwaxer @ 1022: ...and May is apparently facing a vote of no confidence. Does anyone know whether this is a "real" vote of no confidence, or an attempt to insulate her from a possible later vote of no confidence?

    Over on this side of the pond it's being reported as the real deal.

    1033:

    ... and another thing. If May loses the "no confidence" vote, who's next?

    1034:

    So this seems to fall into the "parliamentary coup" category of your OP (vote being counted as I write this). What's it like as a UK citizen watching this? I'm in the US, and it's hard for me to gauge whether this is of the same magnitude of "oh fuck" as watching our orange-hued leader tantrum his way through US & world politics. Certainly a hard brexit would register more acute "oh fucks" on the :oh fuck" scale, but a no-confidence vote could be step back from the precipice. Either way, as a citizen living under the baby-in-chief, my sympathies extend to you.

    1035:

    Ok, she stays. NOW what happens, when everyone hates her brexit deal - will she give in, and call another referendum?

    My manager, who's an ex-pat, thinks it could be done in six weeks, though Christmas and NYE are in the mix....

    1036:

    It's all up in the air, as far as I can see.

    I'd be astounded if May went for a second referendum.
    She could, of course, just rescind Article 50. Either of those would bring the Government down. The second would mean Corbyn would have to stay in the EU even if he won the ensuing General Election - which is not clear, IMO.

    Her deal isn't viable at present. Later, maybe.

    No deal, IMO, would make the Tories unelectable for a generation. She knows that.

    I think the only option she's got is to stall, and try again in January.

    1037:

    Re: 'NO ONE in reality/computer science/hobbiest world is trying to actually emulate a human being.'

    Maybe not in entirety but there is pressure on creating AI that will serve very personal human needs e.g., personalized AI psychotherapy. So even if all of a human's attributes are not contained within one AI/robot, if that AI/robot is required to continually interact with a human then it will have to emulate a human to some degree. Therefore a baseline standard should be determined in advance of selling these things to everybody.

    My concern is whether the current crop of researchers are looking for and identifying where the likeliest cognitive and behavioral divergences between human and AI/robot are likely to occur. Not knowing can be very hazardous and is true of any technology - electricity, antobiotics, AI, CrispR, etc.

    1038:

    Uploads 3,686 Subscribers 76,346,943 Video Views 19,519,515,455

    Daily Averages +202,111 +12,129,300 $3K - $48.5K Last 30 Days +6,063,305 +363,879,000 $91K - $1.5M

    https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/pewdiepie

    I'm afraid this is one of those cases where the old do not understand the new. And yes, that's 6+ million new followers in under a month (he's having a competition with some India YTs and raising money - $200k+ for Indian charities, part of his actually genuine apology for the entire "hold up nasty signs" saga. To say we're unimpressed with the Alt-Right / 'Gaming Press' attacks is a little bit of an understatement. Did America oversee the de-Nazification process, or was that some other country?)

    It just means there has to be some more tweaks and some proper lobster slapping since the two camps from the USA are unable to exist without mutual symbiosis (you won't know what this means - Squirrel Eyes will).

    1039:

    What it doesn't seem to do is make me give a shit about PewDiePie.

    We generally give a shit about the alternatives to him, which are, let us say, a little more virulently fascist. The guy has lucked into huge responsibilities that he doesn't deserve and he's better than most of the alternatives.

    So it took you about 3 or 4 years to reach "Get off My Lawn!"

    No, of course it didn't. Romping around copying the language of the UK media press[1] and generally insulting Times journalists and MI5 is just to sprig their cheese submarines[2]; we can honestly say that we've not called a single Human a "twat" in the last 75 years in any person capacity. Oh, and Piers Morgan is "cheesing it" over to the USA to support Trump, which probably means he's up to his eyes in Mafia debts or Triad gambling dockets[3].

    If you want a really complex ecology analogy, for sure, we can give it.

    When the plurality of Americans under 35 cannot leave their parent's house for economic, social or medical reasons, it's pretty difficult for them to form the equivalent of a proletariat either

    Yes, which is going to be explosive in about two years time.

    To return briefly to France[4]: the yellow vests are a symptom, but one that won't burn out in some vague riots (RU bellows or not, which certainly exist, but pretending that almost every clued up radical was hot-footing it over there[5] is pure myopia) - it's a societal mode that has a lot of history. But one thing you should note (not that any in the UK / USA seem to have bothered to do) is that their targeting of infrastructure is banal (speed cameras, a few cars which is basically French Christmas post 1997 and some blockages - wait until the farmers get started). Say what you want about Le Penn etc, but at least it's a tradition with limits (they won't, for instance, start progroms in the banlieue without a lot more prodding).

    American kids tend to do the entire solo-shooter routine. But that was pre-Fortnite and so on.

    Authoritarians rarely see the Next Level[tm] of protest. You might be surprised at what new modelling teaches children about vulnerabilities. Fortnite is about building stuff, but more importantly, working out how to tear down the other people's buildings in a frenetic 4D space that rewards inventiveness. i.e. kiss goodbye to your power transformers, networks etc within 10ms of them rampaging.

    So, no: not old, having to run the ancient wetware of UK media journos which is tiring. Spooks are worse.

    [1] Danny Dyer calls David Cameron 'a twat' over Brexit YT, video, 0.44

    [2] NUKE SUB RUCK Female Navy officer ‘elbowed’ in bust-up with three MALE colleagues at secret nuclear submarine base The Sun, 2nd Dec 2018

    [3] grep: did we mention we dreamed of him once? Sticky end.

    [4] Btw, catch who said CIAO about Italy and the move they just pulled on the French in budget terms. We're fast!

    [5] Waves to radical Jewish anarchist types!

    1040:

    Wait a sec...

    The Masons got their 33 levels, the Witch levels got [redacted]. There was never a claim at numbers.

    Only needed one, and she staid staid instaid of the ERG.

    @Host: apparently Rees-Mooog was almost in tears and/or emotional over the outcome of his father's dream in tatters while AF Neil was Prime Time[tm] to "grill them". Many of UK peoples have found this cathartic. May it sooth your spirit, if so inclined.

    ~

    On a larger level, we've been trying parse out the larger feminist / TERF / "we're not TERFS" / *trans stuff being played (again: hello. The Times. -.- ) with knowledge of some Scottish witches who are, let us say, not 100% convinced at the plays of Capitalist +Trans+ ideology (for good reasons).

    There are ways through it, and given that there's traumatized humans all over this space who are being actively encouraged to tear each other to shreds, it's not a 'fun' space. It doesn't help that garnering your hides with monsters is an easy way to Other.

    But... I fear that is not something we're capable of. (Well. Are we the Young YA Prince who destroyed the realm, tore out eyes? Probably not, hello Oglaf).

    But it's a lot of trauma to take in as you read 15,000,000 tweets in a few hours.

    ~

    I think the only option she's got is to stall, and try again in January.

    CTRL+F "Queen".

    No joke.

    There are many studies that show the economic / social impact of her death (that she might live until 105, of course) and the market / sharks / media all know it. It's an instant hit, and if you combined that with a hard no deal exit...

    You'd have to be mighty mighty cynical to bet your Brexit Punt on it, however[1]. Or a sociopath. Or a revolutionary. Or a Dragon.

    Be wery wery careful what you wish for.

    Anyhow: the language and US stuff will have put Host in jeopardy: don't worry peeps, Rhizome / Branches all worked out prior to posting.

    Looks to Camera

    Oh, and Iron: you've no idea what it's really cost.

    [1] 1936 SECRET IS OUT: DOCTOR SPED GEORGE V'S DEATH NYT, 1986

    1041:

    Oh, and the Danny Dyer video features Ms. P. Anderson of Baywatch fame sitting next to a bemused / amused Corbyn.

    Who visited Assange.

    Who is now becoming a left voice for the masses, tweeting ecology, Adam Curtis and socialist stuff.

    No, really.

    https://twitter.com/pamfoundation/status/1072909928472502272

    Never let it be said that the writers don't have a huge sense of irony. Or their budget is shot to pieces.

    p.s.

    The UK loony right Zionist club are becoming an issue in Africa (and they vastly overestimate their credentials or costs). Congo / links above. Someone reign in their buffoonish dogs before coyotes and servals are called in. That's not a polite or friendly request; the Americans are pulling Trump's friends over it (NYC / Payoff maester), IL billionaires and so on and Fr and a lot of Spec OPs as well in the mix.

    It's just really fucking dull having to pretend that the UK twitterati Zion Warriors aren't a fucking shameful embarrassment as they enter the geopolitical realms. Someone, please muzzle them, it's fucking complex shit up, hmmm, k?

    (And yeah: that really did just reference back to the 1st post. Want links? Ooooh, can be provided)

    1042:

    It's academic in that Maybot "won" (for certain values of won that is).

    Had she lost, she would have had to resign, triggering a leadership election under Con Party rules. These are complicated, and call for several rounds of run-offs, depending on how many candidates are nominated (they're also a bit academic for anyone not a member of the Con Party to bother remembering).

    The eventual "winner" (for certain values of winner) would become Leader of the Con Party, and PM of the UK.

    1043:

    Strictly, no. The winner would become the former, but the Queen would ask it (*) to form a government only if it carried almost all of the Conservative MPs with it. Let's say there was a reaction against the ERG and Hammond became leader on a platform of a second referendum and a clear desire to cancel the fiasco; how many of the ERG would (effectively) resign the whip? It needn't be many if Corbyn were smart enough to arrange a deal with the SNP and Lib Dems. I doubt that would happen, but it's not impossible.

    (*) It's unclear the likely candidates are entirely human.

    1044:

    “It's academic in that Maybot "won" (for certain values of won that is).”

    It’s also academic (in the context of Brexit) in that whoever found themselves “winning” the musical chairs competition which is the Conservative leadership election process would be hostage to the same entrenched factionalism, religious zealotry, and cynical bandwagon jumping inside and outside of the Conservative party as May has been for her entire term as PM, and equally vulnerable to the “no deal is better than any deal” sect of Brexitry using and abusing parliamentary procedure to filibuster their way to their desired outcome.

    I honestly don’t see any remotely sensible way out at this point and whatever happens I fully expect every single aspect of British political life (and probably quite a few things outside it) to be poisoned by the fallout for a generation... It’ll be like NI, only instead of every single question, every single decision, and every single appointment being viewed through the “Unionist or Republican” funhouse distorting mirror we’ll have “Brexiteer or Remainer” as the divide.

    1045:

    “no deal is better than any deal” sect of Brexitry... The correct terminology for this grouping is a: Cargo Cult

    I (maybe) foresee both main parties splitting, actually, the tories along Brexit lines with the US-style republicans forming a "new UKIP" & the right of labour fleeing Corbyn's Venzuelan tendencies ... we might even get a Social Democratic party - we should be so lucky!

    More realistically, a second Referendum is getting more likely ... But would "Remain" win this time? I hope so.

    1046:

    “More realistically, a second Referendum is getting more likely ...”

    Too late. Enough of the fundamentalist Brexists would regard a second referendum (regardless of result) as (in their warped terms) a betrayal that it would simply redouble the bile-spitting hysteria. I’d give it three months before the first would-be Thomas Mair[1] came out of the woodwork...

    “But would "Remain" win this time? I hope so.”

    It really doesn’t matter anymore. The damage is done and, (while I’d hope for a healthy margin for remain too) EU membership or otherwise is almost irrelevant in comparison with the lasting effects the first referendum, the preceding campaign, and its aftermath have had on the National state of Mental Health.

    [1] The village I grew up in (and where my Mother still lives) is part of the Batley & Spen constituency by the way.

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