uziq
Member
+492|3422
of course it is. we have medium-sized business owners who voters for brexit expecting a bonanza and have instead voted to effectively cripple their own businesses.

brexit was won on official campaign mendacity and emotional appeals and irreason. expecting a brexiteer to understand EU travel visas is like asking a raccoon to recite virgil.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

Larssen wrote:

So since Brexit january 1st a few dozen British tourists have already been refused entry into the country. As they're no longer part of the EU they no longer have the right to travel freely on the continent, esp. considering the covid lockdown restrictions (essential travel only from outside EU).

Apparently most of them were outraged and angry at being sent home again. Most of them were also middle aged. I bet this is the same crowd that voted for brexit.

Dilbert_X wrote:

How much whining is there going to be when the Brexiteers find they can't just retire to Tuscany or Burgundy or whatever.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
Oh I'm sure they'll just rationalise it as the EU punishing them for wanting to be independent. How dare they take their right to travel! They'll go back home even more steadfast in the belief that brexit was the right choicr after all.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the U.S. is re-designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, citing its harboring of terrorists.

“The Trump Administration has been focused from the start on denying the Castro regime the resources it uses to oppress its people at home, and countering its malign interference in Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere,” Pompeo said in a statement.
The Obama admin tried to normalize relations with Cuba by removing them from the list. Trump admin at the last minute decides to screw things up further for the incoming admin. I hope Biden again attempts to normalize things with Cuba. You don't need Florida to win the presidency anymore. Cuban Americans can get fucked.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
And in the next chapter of 'fuck boris johnson'

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55742664

The UK is refusing to give Joao Vale de Almeida the full diplomatic status that is granted to other ambassadors.

The Foreign Office is insisting he and his officials should not have the privileges and immunities afforded to diplomats under the Vienna Convention.

It is understood not to want to set a precedent by treating an international body in the same way as a nation state.

(...) The British decision is in marked contrast to 142 other countries around the world where the EU has delegations and where its ambassadors are all granted the same status as diplomats representing sovereign nations.(...)

EU officials privately accuse the Foreign Office of hypocrisy because when the EU's foreign service - known as the External Action Service - was set up in 2010 as a result of the Lisbon Treaty, the UK signed up to proposals that EU diplomats be granted the "privileges and immunities equivalent to those referred to in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 18 April 1961".  (...)

A European Commission spokesman said: "The UK, as a signatory to the Lisbon Treaty, is well aware of the EU's status in external relations, and was cognisant and supportive of this status while it was a member of the EU.

"The EU has 143 delegations, equivalent to diplomatic missions, around the world. Without exception, all host states have accepted to grant these delegations and their staff a status equivalent to that of diplomatic missions of states under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and the UK is well aware of this fact."

He added: "Nothing has changed since the UK's exit from the European Union to justify any change in stance on the UK's part.

"The EU's status in external relations and its subsequent diplomatic status is amply recognised by countries and international organisations around the world, and we expect the United Kingdom to treat the EU Delegation accordingly and without delay." (...)
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
If Britain wants to only recognise nation states I think thats their choice.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Larssen
Member
+99|1858
It's ridiculous. The UK itself has even signed off to the EU's diplomatic status ffs. The whole Brexit deal was negotiated with the EU and every aspect of trade will be negotiated by the EU. Yet it's not allowed formal diplomatic status?

Really it's just the umpteenth insult thrown our way. Fuck the UK government.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
and fuck france and germany that veto'd any number of democratic agreements and EU treaty frameworks to get their own way.

did you forget the shenanigans during david cameron's time that precipitated this whole event? lmao.

from the blessed days of 2015.

The Franco-German pact, agreed as the Greek debt crisis comes to a head, was finalised last week on the fringes of the EU summit in Latvia and sent to Juncker at the weekend, Le Monde reported.

The summit in Riga last Friday was Cameron’s first opportunity since re-election to present his ideas to fellow EU leaders. But it appeared that Merkel and Hollande had bigger fish to fry.

Juncker is preparing policy options for the June summit on how to integrate the eurozone fiscally and politically as it struggles to emerge from more than five years of crisis. The Franco-German proposals are likely to settle the direction of policy. They talk of economic, fiscal and social convergence, combining German insistence on monetary stability with French demands for greater investment.
radically reshaping european integration and exercising ultra vires powers not included in the lisbon treaty. great!

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 02:24:01)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858
How is that problematic? The eurocrisis showed the need for a way forward and they proposed one. The UK meanwhile had been fucking useless for most of its membership, often pushing back and abusing the veto power themselves.

To anyone with a brain it was obvious you can't have political union and monetary union without fiscal union. And you can't really have much in the way of fiscal union without some form of economic union. Nor will the political union be tenable in the future without real more far reaching common foreign policy. And so on.

What was the UK plan, exactly?
uziq
Member
+492|3422
the UK wanted to re-open the lisbon treaty and the constitutional basis for the EU's authority, at a time when german and french banks were looking to annex the south? doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.

but yes, for people with brains, the EU makes perfect sense. it's not at all an ideological apparatus of its own. no sirree. it's just commonsense.

opting out of the euro was the best decision countries like the UK, norway and switzerland ever made.

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 02:41:00)

Larssen
Member
+99|1858
The UK wanted to question and ponder the constitutional basis at a time when the rest of the union was on the brink over the disaster in greece. Ffs what would that even have led to? Then, in a room where 27 other members disagreed, the UK is shocked and appalled it didn't get its way and that the french and germans ended up setting the course.

Throughout the EUs evolution the UK was the recipient of opt out after opt out. They were never really in and never saw the EU for the potential it has, rather mostly a threat to its interests which it pursued through for example NATO and the UN security council membership. Truthfully I have said I was always impressed by the  quality of the UK civil servants but your political ideology was and still is antiquated and backwards. Brexit is the result, as is the refusal to formally recognise the EUs diplomatic status a symptom. Your tories live in complete denial of reality, and though I'd like to say labour is better, looking at Corbyn I very much doubted it.

The UK is in no way comparable to switzerland and norway. Both of those countries might I add do recognise EU authority and accept tons of its provisions and regulations, yet have no voice in their construction.

Yes, the EU is very logical. There's ideological elements but those have been muted in the last 20 or so years.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
you have a very naive and disingenuous take on 'EU unanimity' and 'consensus'. what it, in fact, means is that what france and germany want, they get. please stop referring to '27 member states in agreement' like everyone was in perfect agreement about it. it's seldom the case. and withdrawing and side-stepping the 'official rules and procedures' to make a pact in private when a major third party does disagree, rather speaks volumes about the EU's approach to 'consensus', doesn't it?

BuT thE EU's aWesOme PoTenTiaL!!!

There's ideological elements but those have been muted in the last 20 or so years.
haha, ok. yes, draghi et al are not ideological. amazing that we’re in 2021, a decade on from the financial crisis, and centrists are still declaring themselves to be ‘post-ideological’, as if they have a pure and unfiltered apprehension of reality.

are you really going to tell me that the EU has no ideology when there's now 500 'jean monnet chairs' at universities and institutions across the EU? really?

https://www.project-syndicate.org/comme … cesspaylog

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 04:12:11)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
how many world leaders in history have proclaimed their system to be 'perfectly logical'?

wasn't 'rational' government advocated by robespierre?

wasn't soviet communism supposed to be 'scientific and logical'?

but the EU has certainly figured it out and bleached itself of all ideology.

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 03:49:26)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
The​ only occasion when a major proposition on which Germany and France insisted met intransigent opposition, the Fiscal Compact vetoed in 2011 by Britain, lit up the realities of the structure of power in Europe. Without delay, Berlin and Paris simply bypassed the Council with an international instrument outside the legal framework of the EU, the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance, to which all the other member states dutifully signed up. The effect was exactly the same. Cameron was left to complain that Merkel and Hollande had not even bothered to respect appearances, stitching together this arrangement on Union premises in Brussels. The lesson is clear. Should the two European hegemons encounter – post-Brexit – similar obduracy in a matter to which they attach importance, they can respond with a bilateral (or multilateral) international treaty, making an end run round the obstacle in the same way. It is scarcely a coincidence that Jean-Claude Piris ended his 2012 book, The Future of Europe, by pointing out how convenient and fruitful the resort to such ‘additional’ treaties might be. As things stand, however, with Britain out of the way, there is little call for the device. One incongruous fact alone is enough to bring home the outlook, and power, of the Franco-German duo. There have been three presidents of the European Council since the office was created in 2010. Of these, two have been Belgian – a country with just over 2 per cent of the population of the Union. Why? Because inconspicuous politicians of a weak state, handily placed between France and Germany, can be relied on not to cross either, but to help out the good intentions of both.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n01 … oser-union

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 03:56:37)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

Larssen wrote:

To anyone with a brain it was obvious you can't have political union and monetary union without fiscal union.
None of those were ever part of the origins of the EU

What was the UK plan, exactly?
Not pander to the french and germans and their eurofascist lunacy?
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Dilbert_X wrote:

None of those were ever part of the origins of the EU
indeed, only an outwardly ideological bunch of euro-crats, supreme court judges and council ministers have tried to make it thus. a select few had this 'vision' from the outset, perhaps, which is of course ideological and political in nature, and set about to enact it, mostly by juridical or executive fiat.

to claim that the EU was always meant to be a tightly integrated political-fiscal-monetary union is false. it was taken down that route by a cadre of ideologues who wanted a supra-national state or a federation from the outset. that wasn't on everyone's agenda.

to claim the EU has purged itself 'of ideology' is fucking hilarious.

i voted remain but this attitude of the EU being some benign organization for the betterment of all is naive to the point of ignorance. that larssen is up-close to the processes of the EU but consistently doesn't want to read it in terms of power structures and relations, is very fucking odd. how does that kool-aid taste?

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 04:56:11)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

indeed, only an outwardly ideological bunch of euro-crats, supreme court judges and council ministers have tried to make it thus. a select few had this 'vision' from the outset, perhaps, which is of course ideological and political in nature, and set about to enact it, mostly by juridical or executive fiat.
The objectives are now political union, monetary union, fiscal union and fighting cancer
President of the European Commission

On 2 July 2019, von der Leyen was proposed by the European Council as their candidate for the office of President of the European Commission. On 16 July, she won with 383 to 327 votes. She is the first woman to hold the office and the first German since the Commission's first president, Walter Hallstein.

When she lived in Brussels, her little sister Benita-Eva died of cancer at the age of eleven and she remembered "the enormous helplessness of my parents" in view of the cancer, which she cited as one of her reasons in 2019 that her EU Commission "to take the lead in the fight against cancer".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen

These people are nuts. It should have remained a trading block and the unelected ideologues should have been reined in.
At this point Britain may be better off out of it.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-01-21 05:05:49)

Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i don't agree that britain is better off outside it, in fact i think the EU was better with a strong third nation in it that could challenge the franco-german dynamic. the EU has lost one of its best chances for reform and something resembling a genuine opposition in britain leaving. larssen's triumphalism is severely misguided.

the EU has a pantomime act of 'opposition' and deliberative process in its parliament, which is hampered in almost all respects when it comes to the supreme court, central bank, or council getting its way. in effect it seldom ever vetoes anything that comes its way. that's not a democracy and it's not good for any of the diverse polities in the EU.

that the main powers just go outside the EU 'playbook' and create treaties/pacts that suit them, anyway, whenever there is something like genuine veto or disagreement, is also disastrously bad for the hundreds of millions of people affected by these 'omniscient' leaders. to claim that the path taken post-2011 with austerity and then QE was 'not ideological' is a fucking JOKE.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Dilbert_X wrote:

These people are nuts.
b-b-b-but it's only british tories who are corrupt, venal, and self-interested. the EU is post-ideological!

and recall that von der leyen was appointed in the first place because EU leaders got tired of the pretenses of a spitzenkandidat. i guess like with the french and germans sidestepping normal process in 2011, sometimes things really are just too pressing and important for all that democratic stuff.

That its top ranks have long been corrupted by immunity in their occupance of power is plain. It is enough to make a roll-call of its leading ornaments. Christine Lagarde, current president of the European Central Bank: suspected of complicity in fraud and malversation of public funds in covering for the crook Bernard Tapie, improperly paid €404 million by Crédit Lyonnais in 2008, when she was minister of the economy in France; in 2016 discharged by the state for ‘negligence’ with no penalty, in view of her ‘personality’ and (no doubt especially) her ‘international reputation’. By that time she was head of the IMF – where her predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, had had to resign on charges of sexual assault and attempted rape and his predecessor, Rodrigo Rato, had been imprisoned on charges of embezzlement.

Ursula von der Leyen, current president of the European Commission: charged in 2015 with plagiarism on 43 per cent of the pages of her 1990 doctorate at Hannover Medical School; the university commission that absolved her, headed by an old acquaintance from the alumni association at the institution, was heavily criticised in the media, but after the fall of two previous ministers in Merkel’s government, both on charges of plagiarism, exhaustion had set in and she was allowed to keep her doctorate.

Von der Leyen’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg: survived repeated exposure of his involvement in the tax avoidance and policies facilitating money-laundering for which his country is famous. Her vice-president and high representative for foreign affairs and security, the Spaniard Josep Borrell: forced to resign as president of the European University Institute in Florence for concealing the annual salary of €300,000 he had been receiving from a Spanish energy company. Michel Barnier, EU commissioner in charge of Brexit negotiations with Britain: showered with ‘donations’ amounting to more than 300,000 francs – more than seven times the total received by his seven rivals – when running as a Gaullist candidate for Haute-Savoie in the legislative elections of 1993. Olaf Scholz, finance minister and vice-chancellor of Germany, hoping to succeed Merkel next year: caught in the media headlights after appointing – a first in the country – the co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs in Germany and Austria, Jörg Kukies, as his deputy for financial market and European policy, only to have to admit that he knew Kukies had been on intimate terms with Markus Braun, fraudster boss of the now bankrupt Wirecard company (assets once valued at $28 billion), the largest financial scandal in the history of Germany. Scholz’s chances of surviving parliamentary investigation intact: slim.
i guess it's so much easier to make out that britain was the 'naughty sibling' and now the EU is free to get along like one big happy family, sharing in a 'logical' post-ideological common destiny.

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-21 05:24:44)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Well obviously the tories, Farage etc are corrupt, whether they're more corrupt than the euro-fascists would be hard to say. Even if they only have their own interests at heart thats better than german interests.

Its probably fairly easy to construct a theory that having failed to dominate europe twice by military means someone in germany must have read Sun Tzu and been hit by the realisation that its a whole lot easier and cheaper to achieve domination by political and economic means.

Thats what the EU has become, a mechanism for germany, with the help of its lickspittle france, to dominate every country.
Britain was right to push back on it, now the economic blitz means trade is fucked - whether the EU will put u-boats in the atlantic to completely choke it off I guess we'll see in due course.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-01-21 13:04:31)

Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
China has passed a law that for the first time explicitly allows its coastguard to fire on foreign vessels, a move that could make the contested waters around China even more volatile.

China has maritime sovereignty disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and with several South-East Asian countries in the South China Sea.

It has sent its coastguard to chase away fishing vessels from other countries, sometimes resulting in the sinking of these vessels.

China's top legislative body, the National People's Congress standing committee, passed the Coastguard Law on Friday, according to state media reports.

According to draft wording in the bill published earlier, the coastguard is allowed to use "all necessary means" to stop or prevent threats from foreign vessels.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-23/ … d/13084754

Just what we need right now with the China-virus running rampant, China agitating for a war.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Larssen
Member
+99|1858

uziq wrote:

The​ only occasion when a major proposition on which Germany and France insisted met intransigent opposition, the Fiscal Compact vetoed in 2011 by Britain, lit up the realities of the structure of power in Europe. Without delay, Berlin and Paris simply bypassed the Council with an international instrument outside the legal framework of the EU, the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance, to which all the other member states dutifully signed up. The effect was exactly the same. Cameron was left to complain that Merkel and Hollande had not even bothered to respect appearances, stitching together this arrangement on Union premises in Brussels. The lesson is clear. Should the two European hegemons encounter – post-Brexit – similar obduracy in a matter to which they attach importance, they can respond with a bilateral (or multilateral) international treaty, making an end run round the obstacle in the same way. It is scarcely a coincidence that Jean-Claude Piris ended his 2012 book, The Future of Europe, by pointing out how convenient and fruitful the resort to such ‘additional’ treaties might be. As things stand, however, with Britain out of the way, there is little call for the device. One incongruous fact alone is enough to bring home the outlook, and power, of the Franco-German duo. There have been three presidents of the European Council since the office was created in 2010. Of these, two have been Belgian – a country with just over 2 per cent of the population of the Union. Why? Because inconspicuous politicians of a weak state, handily placed between France and Germany, can be relied on not to cross either, but to help out the good intentions of both.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n01 … oser-union
What is bullshit is this entire article, I'll get back to that later. The funny thing about the EU council is that there's tens if not hundreds of thousands more academics and journalists writing on its intricacies than people who ever actually worked inside of it. And many of them are often very wide off the mark. The insistence in this article that 'of course' the reality of the EU is unfettered German-French dominance or implying that the use of the stability compact was illegal are utter nonsense. But cleverly brought to the unassuming reader as though these are unquestionable truths everyone just knows. Cynical trash.

This feels like a uno reverso where I should start berating your arrogance uziq because unlike you or our dear LRB writer, I've sat in the listening booth on a number of council meetings and worked for one of the preparatory bodies/working groups. But sure, give me more of this nonsense about how poor Britain was bullied into submission by Merkel and her french counterparts, or how 'behind the scenes' the EU is just an undemocratic Franco-German empire building exercise. It wasn't at all the UK that was often trying to conduct crude realpolitik and who stymied many ambitious EU initiatives to satisfy its own national selfishness above eurozone members or the entirety of the EU. Your government even solicited the US to pressure member states to do the UKs bidding. Besides, in many topics they found strong allies in several EU blocks. The visegrad group, the Dutch, the Finnish - they were often more than willing to back up the UK in so many issues.

And yes uziq, the EU has become entirely less ambitious and positively ideological since, I would say, the treaty of amsterdam. There's a lot more cynicism and immediate 'practical politics' than compared to the late 90s. Brexit gave a short new impetus for a more ambitious drive but it was short lived so far. To expand on that I am not at all someone who's blind to the failings of the EU or its commissioner appointees. Speaking of dark politics and such, what's funny to me is that the spotlight is always on the commissioners and the ministers whilst the by far most powerful people in the EU are seated in COREPER II.

To me the most ridiculous thing here is to state it's all just about France and Germany and the rest don't matter. Just lol.

Last edited by Larssen (2021-01-23 03:09:01)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
So China is acting aggressively, making threats and ramping up military activity in at least four different directions, plus the trade wars with Australia and America, the elimination of democracy in Hong Kong and the genocide of the Uighurs.

Taiwan
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-28/ … r/13100738

Japan
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-28/ … s/13099032

Philippines, Vitenam, Laos etc
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-23/ … d/13084754

India
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-26/ … e/13090732

Plus obviously deliberately infecting the world with the Wuhan Bat-Flu and lying about it.

They've taken all the worlds manufacturing and more importantly technology, they've probably calculated they don't need to be on good terms with anyone now.

There is going to be a military escalation soon, they've sunk foreign fishing boats already, they'll start sinking govt ships of ally nations any moment now.

What then? Is the US going to wade into a war?
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

Larssen wrote:

The insistence in this article that 'of course' the reality of the EU is unfettered German-French dominance
Thats how its been seen from the British perspective for decades.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
World War 3 would be pretty bad ass to witness. History gets kind of boring once you get past the World War 2 unit. And after we send off all the young men to a Manchurian meat grinder there will be plenty of available 20ish year old girls who will need men in their lives.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg

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