Westminstenders: And so it begins

[RedToothBrush]

Promises made that can not be kept.

We have already fallen at the first stumbling block: the desire for parallel talks on exit and future relationship that May wanted has been rejected. Not that this is a surprise seeing as we were told this.

This isn't two years of negotiations for a good deal. Forget any suggestions that it is. It's two years of damage limitation and domestic pr.

For both the UK and EU.

I do believe that May's attitude - which seemed to be more friendly in her speech and letter yesterday - has burnt all our bridges.

This talk of the world needing the EU's 'liberal democracy' isn't aimed at the EU though. Her use of the words that produced uproar in the HoC yesterday was deliberate. Why use it? It was always going to produce a reaction.

When May says she will have a consensus at home to achieve this goal one of two things must happen: to prove just how much we need the EU to make a political reversal possible at the expense of her head or to vilify the EU to a point that Remainers suddenly change their mind.

To get a good deal for the UK she can not satisfy her hard line Brexiteers. It is impossible purely because to do otherwise is like breaking the laws of physics. Trade is done mostly with who you are closest too. This is the inescapable truth. We are leaving the EU but not Europe as keeps being pointed out.

If we want to trade we have to accept EU regulations. If we do not, we do not trade. Rules we can now no longer influence by must obey.

We can not reduce immigration. We have had control of non-Eu immigration and that is not going down due to skills shortages. To combat this schools are getting less money.

In terms of sovereignty and British parliament we just gave that away. The 'Great' Repeal Act is a power grab by the executive. It seems to give the powers of the monarch to Mrs May and take them away from parliamentary scrutiny. At the same time we are forced to become beholden to Trump's America. A man who screws people for a living and has not a shred of honour.

Using security as our bargaining chip misses the obvious. If we do not cooperate we endanger Brits abroad and ourselves domestically. Are we really prepared to stop?

The opportunities of Brexit Britain are bleak. This will be normalised.

Good luck folks. We are gonna need it.

One of the side effects of public trust declining in the democratic process is there is a reason to actually promote the idea that democracy does not work. Disillusionment is particularly strong in the young - who are more inclined to vote a particular way. This tactic was used on Bernie Sanders supporters and on some minority groups in the US elections to depress turnout.

Women, the young and minorities are also less likely to vote in the UK.

Even if everything is above board and squeaky clean, the perception of it not being, is to the tactical advantage of the Conservative Party.

The Electoral Commission being toothless, the police not taking action where expense rules have been broken and changing of boundaries effectively all feed this.

There is currently absolutely no incentive to tackle any fears like this for the Conservatives, and it goes beyond gaining votes - to trying to get others to be apathetic.

Of course, this might not last forever if the tide starts to turn. If you saw the link I posted in the last day from political betting which said most of the swing towards the Conservatives has come from the C2DE group - who were far more likely to support Brexit. If the Conservatives don't deliver a good deal or are seen to be 'undemocratic' in not giving the cake them promised, then guess what happens there... It won't be a vote for anyone else. Just someone who fails to vote at all.

C2DE's are already far less likely to vote (with 11% saying they definitely won't vote, compared to 7% for ABC1s and 52% saying they definitely will vote, compared to 60% for ABC1s).

Yes, Labour are suffering most at the moment from a lack of faith in democracy, and it would be easy for the Conservatives to try and ignore (and indeed promote) the idea. Trouble is, there is also a chance this neglect could backfire on them in the end.

Math, it's not an either/or situation with regard to native vs foreign (Russian) interference. Far from it.

patribotics.blog/2017/04/01/alfa-bank-trump-tower-and-a-social-media-impeachment/

If you saw the link I posted in the last day from political betting which said most of the swing towards the Conservatives has come from the C2DE group - who were far more likely to support Brexit.

Nor do they have the money that the Tories need. The perception also that the word Brexit is becoming toxic, isn't going to play well for the Tories, because it's Theresa May who has made it her slogan "Brexit means Brexit". Some how 'a new relationship with Europe means a new relationship with Europe' doesn't have quite the same snappy ring to it.

I got 'Dark Money: how a secretive group of billionaires is trying to buy political control in the US' for Christmas. I need to sit down and read. (I also noticed that there was another book entitled 'Dark Money: The Billionaire Agenda and its Stranglehold on the United States Government was released last month'.)

The subject has been floating around for a while. When it comes to British politics I think we have less awareness of it, as we are supposed to have caps on the amount that you can spend on promotion in UK elections to protect us. I think that has made us somewhat complacent and there has clearly been much bending of the rules and new attitudes of finding ways to deliberately find loop holes.

Not only this but election spending exempts spending on internet advertising and promotion which we all know has been used to great effect.

There are problems that the government don't want to address - as much as anything, because politically they can't due to the 2015 election and because it is something that currently favours them in a variety of different reasons.

The EU are allowing Spain a veto on any deal that would entrench or confirm the position of Gibraltar.
Any of the E27 could veto a deal that it considers against its national interests, e.g. Poland wrt its expats. [BigChoc}

Ireland?
Wrt any number of issues including a hard border, status of the GFA and place of the ECHR and ECJ, trade, citizenship...

www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170330-the-foreign-workers-leaving-britain-because-of-brexit
Wrt 'sly, insipid racism':
In the ethnically-diverse London neighbourhood in which Alex and his family live, there haven’t been any major problems yet, just some snide comments and a sense of gloating, he says. “It’s off-putting,” Alex says. He’s now made it a habit not to mention his Romanian nationality.

Going way back to the discussions of anti EU billionaires with 'links' to Russia. Way back at the time of the Lisbon Treaty, Declan Ganley, Irish millionaire telecommunication entrpeneur burst from nowhere to lead the No campaign. I cant help feeling anyone who dug into this would find a lot of interesting threads to pull

"Alfa Bank is a front for Russian intelligence. Along with Dimitry Firtash, a Russian agent of influence, it owns Cambridge Analytica, the data targeting company used by Trump’s campaign...

...Cambridge Analytica and SCL use Facebook data they had no right to acquire, illegally stolen by a Russian spy working at Cambridge, to build an unbeatable target database of propaganda."

Simply not true, Kaija (and the rest of the blog is very dodgy too) - your blogger needs to do a bit more research on Robert Mercer and learn some very basic facts on how elections are conducted.

Nobody needs to hack into or steal databases. They are freely available.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_database

Semi"It is entirely up to the people of Gibraltar to decide their future."

This made me think of the Chagos Islanders. And your very strong words and a very patriotic tone. A sort of Martyrdom.

"As a former member of the armed forces, I would have absolutely laid my life on the line for a colony of 18 (as per your example)."

I am just wondering is that for a colony of 18 people of British origin and with oil/gas at that. Maybe the self determination and forcible removal of the a similar population of Chagos islanders doesn't stir the heart. Just like the Falklands and Gibraltar, they lived in a British overseas territory. Even worse that just just changing statehood, these people were evicted by the UK from the islands and cannot go home. And yet the gov't aren't beating their breast and people aren't lining up to give their support (never mind military laying their lives on the line) for them. Yet they sent gunships to the Falklands.

Don't we live in such a hypocritical world.

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/17/mauritius-threatens-to-take-chagos-islands-row-to-un-court

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/29/chagos-islanders-lose-supreme-court-bid-to-return-to-homeland

www.chagossupport.org.uk/

Sorry for typos.

Math I understood from ither articles too that it was facebook data obtained by CA
That gives a huge wealth of info that enables CA to target each voter according to their individual foibles, when combined with the voter database.

There are v strong indications of Russian involvement, far too many to say so dogmatically that they are not involved.

It is very natural that an ex-KGB colonel (Putin) would turn to his intelligence services to increase Russian influence in the West, especially since the Russian economy is in desperate straits and the military with it.

All countries try to extend their influence over other countries by murky ways, including the UK.
What is different:

• Putin has been brilliantly effective, because of linking up with CA / US far right / US oligarchs.

• AND we are seeing Russia influence Western democracies, like the US, UK, France, Germany ....
  In the past, the West has heavily influenced elections in developing countries, but is not used to being the victim.
  It's not nice being on the receiving end.

7Days, Ganley made his first fortune looting the forests of Latvia and northern Russia right after the breakup of the USSR (i.e. the wild and heady Yeltsin days), and also sold Russian aluminium in the same period.

It is Ganley's current links in the US that are possibly more interesting, with many notable figures on boards of his companies. Rivada is a US defense contractor that specialises in military defense systems.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo_Adriatic_Investment_Fund_SA
Ganley and the looting of Albania through what was basically a ponzi scheme, with possible involvement of Paladin Capital (incl James Woolsey, ex director of the CIA).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liam_Lawlor
Liam Lawlor, corrupt TD and associate of Ganley's in the Albanian scheme. (Died in a limo north of Moscow while on business).

A lot of Irish individuals and companies made money in Russia and the former Eastern bloc immediately after the fall of the USSR, including Aer Rianta, which ran the duty free shops at Moscow airports.

www.moodiereport.com/pdf/twr_7.pdf
An interesting side note is the way Irish firms and individuals including semi state bodies apparently traded way outside the EU with no bother.

your very strong words and a very patriotic tone. A sort of Martyrdom.

Fuck off.

As a member of the British Armed Forces I went wherever I was sent.
That was my job, and a job I was proud to do.

Perhaps you don't know how it works?
The individual members don't get to decide where/when/for what reason - they are directed to by the govt & parliament.

How disingenuous of you to take my words & twist them for your own agenda.

I'm off this these threads now.
There was no fucking need to make this personal to/about about me.

The only part of that that is not pure speculation is that CA mined FB, BigChoc.

(Actually, it was the Univ of Cambridge forerunner of CA that developed the algorithms to make sense of the big data that FB offered, using online testing to inform psychometrics).

And as seen, the voter database is available to all parties and others with an interest in it. No need to hack into it or steal it.

This isn't just coming from Mensch. Indeed this line of her rantings (and yes they are rantings even if there is any truth in them) come from her following up on a BBC report:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39435786

I quoted this before, but I'll do it again

"This is a three-headed operation," said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated "bots", then on Russia's English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US "news" sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls.

It's funny i mentioned this to DH yesterday and he said that this might not be true either. Instead fake accounts befriend people on Facebook and whoever is behind them can freely take information then openly available to them. He asked me if I'd had any strange requests, which i have. I leave unwanted requests pending so we had a good look and yes, there was a fake account which was shouting about Britain First a lot.

In terms of fake accounts in the past I ran into some of this stuff ten years ago, with Facebook games. There were people creating literally thousands of accounts to cheat. This included trying to get information about teams though fake accounts. The scale of it was staggering, as we got suspicious and started to investigate. It was a revealing experience about how far people were prepared to go to cheat. And how many people just befriended accounts they knew nothing about and were generally lax about security.

In one case we also got a lesson in how much you reveal via Facebook unwittingly and how secure it is. One person got their account 'hacked'. DH is a programmer and got asked about it, so he looked into it. He was convinced it was not 'hacked' in the way most people think of and instead it was just a case of being unaware of how vulnerable your security can be.

It took DH less than five minutes to log into this guy's account. His password was the name of his favourite footballer which was obvious from photos. DH simply guessed it, knowing that was his passion. No fancy tricks or computer stuff. The guy was shocked to say the least, but rather relieved at the same time that it wasn't something more sinister too.

To see similar things potentially picked up, on an industrial scale really wouldn't surprise me. On the contrary i guess it was inevitable given people were doing similar over a pointless game. If there was something to be gained economically or politically then it would be a natural progression.

There were other incidents too, and all in all a rather depressing reflection on humanity and social media. Though in general my social media experiences have been very positive over the years.

When someone says they would lay down their lives in a military situation for a 'colony' that is a patriotic martydom. Sometimes it is pursuit of better or worse things than others. Not automatically noble, to be respected or even regarded in such a precious way by others not so indoctrinated.

Pity you can't handle someone else's opinion without invective.

My point still stands is I don't see people doing it for the Chagos Islanders who were also the inhabitants of a British overseas territory as much as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. The patriotic zeal is capricious.

We live in a hypocritical world.

Social media
Yes, the potential power from data-mining and then targetted use of that data is very worrying.

I've never been on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp etc
being a suspicious old bag, they all seemed to me like letting the world peer into the windows of my house and go through my dustbins.

MN is the only social media I've ever posted on and it's under a separate EM address and separate Apple ID, used only for MN.
No EM to / from the EM account except to MN.
And like most pp, I "modify" personal details on MN.

Still won't protect from a determined pro, but I'm not sufficiently important for that.

It is politicians who decide where service personnel are sent, to lay down their lives if unavoidable.

Soldiers are required to obey orders sent down the chain of command - but only legal orders.
So, they can't choose to somewhere they are not sent, but they can refuse something they think is against international law, e.g. Geneva Convention.

btw, I prefer the philosophy that
"it's not about dying for your country, but making sure that the other bastards die for their country"

And I don't know why you are flouncing off. You can't handle that someone else's opinion isn't automatically deferential to your statement. Or voices what they think it is, without the rose tints. I haven't been rude to you personally, just gave my take on your statement.

I'm the one who has had the foul mouthed invective personally directed at me. If anyone has a grievance, it should be me.

Yes, I understand that the army are deployed by the state. I am just saying that the whole zeal around the rights of certain territories seems to be somewhat bankrupt and hypocritical when you see others are actually evicted and cannot return.

wrt "laying down your life", I was furious at Enoch Powell's disgraceful conduct towards Uk armed forces at the start of the Falklands War:

There were about 200 lightly armed Royal Marines who put up a brave fight against a heavily armed invasion force of 10,000 Argentinians.
Naturally, they had to surrender quite soon.

Enoch Powell called for the commanding officer of the Royal Marines to be court martialled for treason for surrendering.
He claimed they should all have fought and died to the last man, because the UK govt had not given permission to surrender.

However, the CO acted perfectly correctly in surrendering, being almost certain his men would be well treated as POWs and also that the civilian population would be treated properly.
Dying to the last man would not have achieved any benefit for the UK.

A govt cannot require that servicemen and women die needlessly, just to save the govt's face.

We should criticise politicians - and most Leave / Brexit posters - for being very selective in which territories they suddenly want to protect.
They should have listened to the warnings from Gibraltar politicians before the referendum.

and I keep asking why protecting NI is a red line for the EU, but not the UK.

However, we should leave the service personnel out of these particular criticisms

Richard North again:

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86430

"It is a curiously Quixotic way to show we are no longer ruled by the laws of the EU to bring in a Bill which just turns all those nasty EU laws into nice "British laws".

But all those dreams of a "great repeal" and a "bonfire of regulations" will go up in smoke when the politicians discover just how many will have to stay on the statute book if we wish to remain trading at all with the EU:
not to mention how many of these originate from UN and other international bodies to which, outside the EU, we will still remain signed up."

"Despite the clever-dickery to be found there, we're also hearing from those in a position to know, including Donald Tusk and Michel Barnier for the EU, that

there simply isn't enough time in two years to negotiate by far the most complicated agreement the EU has ever undertaken with any "third country",

covering not just trade but countless other issues, from foreign policy to agriculture and fisheries."

"The EU affirming that it will refuse to negotiate a free trade agreement until we have left the EU should have made all the front pages
but it has hardly been mentioned."

"This anodyne phrasing and low-key reporting doesn't in the least to justice to the enormity of what is being said which, in one sentence, condemns the UK to years more of uncertainty, while we battle through the details of an agreement which will be calculated to leave us worse off.

The very fact that
the EU is now openly referring to the United Kingdom as a "third country"
seems to have passed without comment"

"In that there is an important lesson, reminding us of the frailty and the ignorance of the media, reflected in the readership which so willingly parades its ignorance, week after week, on the Booker column comments.

If there is anything further we can learn from this, it is that the EU is going to repeat its messages many times more before they sink in.
Publishing them in the form of proposals to the European Council simply hasn't had the impact that one might have expected.

What I think we're seeing is a phenomenon we should have anticipated.
There is too much detail there for the media to cope with.
Almost as if it is hidden in plain sight, they ignore it, only to indulge in displacement activity, obsessing over marginal issues such as Gibraltar.

No wonder the commentariat doesn't see the point.
The media doesn't get it and the politicians don't get it.

We have a long way to go before reality smacks them in the face so hard that they have to take notice.

Until then, the clever-dick abuse will continue."

RTB:
"This is a three-headed operation," said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated "bots", then on Russia's English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US "news" sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls.

None of that is necessary because Cambridge Analytica is providing the data that is freely available to them, and Breitbart and many more right wing sites are doing all the propaganda and have been doing it for at least a decade. Wikileaks have denied Russian links to the e-mails. You are trying to interpose a middle man where none is necessary.

theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-russia-hacked-the-dnc-its-not-enough/
There is a good deal of suspension of disbelief required in order to believe the allegations that are being bandied about.

consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/
Some intelligence community thoughts on the 'hysteria about Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. election', suggesting that the e-mails were leaked, not hacked.