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Brexit

Brexit mega thread part 6: Invasion and Evasion

981 replies

Opal8 · 24/02/2022 19:54

New thread

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27
carltonscroop · 26/02/2022 17:13

Never assume that people who don't agree with your are bot/shills

Or if you can't help it, remember they're probably thinking the same about you.

And do bear in mind the sporting adage 'playing the man not the ball' - and remember it's foul play

prettybird · 26/02/2022 17:20

If you bothered reading these threads, you'd see that we do engage with those that bother coming up with coherent arguments. The problem is that they rarely are coherent, can't back up their claims and/or try to derail the discussion.

I also didn't make any specific accusation against any individual with whom I disagree that I thought they were a bot or a shill. I was very careful to say across various threads. Over the years, you get to recognise certain styles and timings that are suspect.

DGRossetti · 26/02/2022 17:33

Never assume that people who don't agree with your are bot/shills

Perish the thought.

Bots and shills are the "posters" who just drop something inflammatory and untrue into a thread and then run away like a dog from it's own farts. The classic Brexiteer behaviour being: ...

Brexiteer : Yay. So glad we're free of the tyrannical EU ! Now we can make our own laws

People with working brains: "What laws couldn't we make before ?"

Brexiteer : (either tumbleweed, an irrelevant cut and paste from years ago or ...) "wefiujhwepuewrhcv[aqwfh-wqhf'oaiu-8[9jher[9vhj9-"

I will take the rare step of presuming to speak for a lot of other regulars on this thread and say that we'd welcome debate and discussion. Because it would make a fuckng change. Instead we're accusing of bullying. What with our facts and so.

prettybird · 26/02/2022 17:51

Indeed DGR Sad

Or we're accused of having said something that we didn't - like "Brexit is the cause of Putin invading Ukraine" Confused

Fortunately, such claims are so ridiculous that most intelligent people see straight through them Smile

bossox · 26/02/2022 18:24

Is UK still holding out on visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees? I note that the Republic of Ireland has waived all visa requirements for Ukrainians, and have heard that many are taking up the offer.

Solidarity is what is needed now, not insularity in the name of "protecting our borders". Well now, is that a Brexit tenet or what!

Notonthestairs · 26/02/2022 18:37

Yes @bossox our visa requirements are unchanged. It's utterly shameful.

borntobequiet · 26/02/2022 18:39

Never assume that people who don't agree with your are bot/shills

We don’t. We assume they post in good faith until we notice the familiar patterns that tell us that they don’t. And they’re very easy to spot after six years or so.

prettybird · 26/02/2022 18:41

It would appear that the Home Office are acting true to form Angry - unless they have backtracked in the last few hours Hmm

https://twitter.com/iandunt/status/1497562446990647300?s=21

One of the replies talks about her MIL being eventually told she needs to get herself to Moldova/Poland/Rumania and from there she can apply for a tourist visa Hmm

Brexit mega thread part 6: Invasion and Evasion
borntobequiet · 26/02/2022 18:42

Is UK still holding out on visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees?

A very eloquent contributor brought this up on Any Answers this afternoon. It’s shameful.

Notonthestairs · 26/02/2022 18:44

twitter.com/davidlammy/status/1497634148843937799?s=21

David Lammy is arguing with Priti Patel about it on Twitter at the moment.

bossox · 26/02/2022 19:03

Thank you all for the links. I just don't know what to say anymore, the UK is becoming a very cruel place for our fellow Europeans in Ukraine, and elsewhere also of course.

I could put a word on it, but I cannot bring myself to write it out.

DGRossetti · 26/02/2022 19:29

Fortunately, such claims are so ridiculous that most intelligent people see straight through them

Brexiteers - or the ones that infest these threads - are not intelligent though.

AuldAlliance · 26/02/2022 20:24

Since the beginning of 2014 the UK has offered asylum to just 30 Ukrainians, but has offered entry clearance visas to 1,261 Russian oligarchs.

twitter.com/iainoverton/status/1497284772229304320?s=20&t=Kaa1GkmlACQ5AoYEpRuweA

prettybird · 26/02/2022 20:27

@DGRossetti - I realise that Wink - which is partly why I said it Grin

GreenLunchBox · 26/02/2022 20:54

@Notonthestairs

https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/1497634148843937799?s=21

David Lammy is arguing with Priti Patel about it on Twitter at the moment.

I've just looked at that thread.

Patel and Dorries disgust and enrage me Angry

How can they spout disinformation like that and double down on it even when caught out? And their supporters are piling in calling Lammy all sorts of names even though her own link proves what Lammy is saying is correct.

It has made me cringe this week when the government was lecturing Russia about breaking international law when they did not so themselves not so long ago. This is why it's important that we have serious people in charge, so when serious things happen we can be taken seriously. As it is we are a joke because we elected a clown and a cabinet of liars.

mathanxiety · 26/02/2022 21:39

AuldAlliance

- he’s destabilised the Middle East supporting Assad
The opposition in Syria was supported by the US State Department as part of the very misguided Arab Spring idea.

- a never ending stream of bots and media stories etc to destabilise democracies in Eastern Europe
Democracies in Eastern Europe have functioned fine - as well as the British and other western democracies have, arguably (Italy, Greece, the US, jury out on France). The presidents and prime ministers they have thrown up have not always held liberal values, but this is not unexpected given the social and political histories of many Eastern European countries. There are many western European countries where very conservative and authoritarian voices have also been part of the political landscape for decades - generally speaking, you can correlate active and enthusiastic co-operation with Nazis in accomplishing the Holocaust with popularity of right wing and authoritarian ideas in the present time. You are not going to find that a population has done a U turn in the following decades in terms of subscribing to ideals of tolerance or even something as basic as respect for the rule of law. And also, the idea that the worth of progressive, liberal values and ideas is self-evident is one that does not always hold true. There are plenty of people here who have grave doubts about one progressive policy in particular.

- encouraged Russian money into the UK
How? And if so, is it the fault of Russia that Russian money was greeted with open arms? And is the Tory Party currently considering breaking up the NHS and selling off its component parts to the highest bidders?

- donated money to the Tory party
See previous comment. Political parties tend not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Same goes for sellers of expensive property, flashy cars, etc.

- supported Brexit with disinformation and money
There was plenty of disinformation coming eastward from George Mason University and the many thinktanks it has spawned too. And we still don't know where the money spent by the DUP on ads in London came from. Maybe you recall the Constitutional Research Council? Who or what is it? What about AggregateIQ, the Canadian Company which spent £££££ millions on Facebook ads, and Cambridge Analytica (aka Robert/Rebekah Mercer)? And what possible interest could Saudi Arabia's Prince Nawwaf bin Abdul Aziz al Saud have in Brexit? Do you remember an arms deal with SA that followed Brexit?

- supported the election of Trump after providing money to him for years
The evidence for this is not as strong as evidence of far bigger amounts written off by American banks and money thrown at his campaign by American interests.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-donors-advisory-council-b2019114.html
"Tory donors put on secret ‘advisory council’ with access to ministers in return for £250,000"
Pay to play is nothing new in the UK (or in the US).

- engages in never ending cyber attacks
Agree, but they are not the only ones engaged in this murky business.

And it seems that is ok to be a part of this side of computer science as long as you are a bank in Switzerland or Panama or South Dakota and not Edward Snowden or Julian Assange.

- encouraged European dependence on Russian gas
This is like saying Putin encouraged the Tories to take Russian money.
European governments (and the west in general) have not taken energy security or the environmental effects of fossil fuel reliance seriously despite all the evidence that ignoring those factors places us all in jeopardy.

mathanxiety · 26/02/2022 21:42

...as long as you are a bank in Switzerland or Panama or South Dakota and not Edward Snowden or Julian Assange

...or hacking into Angela Merkel's phone.

AuldAlliance · 26/02/2022 21:59

Thanks, mathanxiety

Just a couple of points, as it's late and I'm deeply weary:

Reading several of your arguments, I don't really see how they contradict the idea that Putin has been working to destabilise the EU and therefore Brexit is a boon to him. Sure, he didn't have to go to much trouble, and there has been a lot of crap policy in the UK and elsewhere that facilitated his aims, but he has nonetheless been tinkering away at them for years.

I'm not as optimistic as you about all Eastern European democracies. A fair few are shaky, several have been through recent crises, resignations and elections and their governments are divided and young. Putin's remarks about returning to "pre-1994" borders are alarming from that point of view, even taking on board the lack of realism underpinning his rambling speech earlier this week. Although, from what my sources in one E.European country tell me, those remarks have had the effect of focusing minds and reducing division pdq.

And Russian propaganda is working quite effectively on some in France, I can confirm.

mathanxiety · 26/02/2022 22:56

Progressive policy should be 'progressive' policy.

HannibalHeyes · 26/02/2022 23:14

Math, whataboutery is not an argument...

mathanxiety · 26/02/2022 23:43

Reading several of your arguments, I don't really see how they contradict the idea that Putin has been working to destabilise the EU and therefore Brexit is a boon to him. Sure, he didn't have to go to much trouble, and there has been a lot of crap policy in the UK and elsewhere that facilitated his aims, but he has nonetheless been tinkering away at them for years.
Any smart political leader with geopolitical ambitions will be ready to take advantage of instability to advance his or her interests. This has been an overt part of American policy since the days of Land Lease. Only recently, under Trump, did the US disavow its policy of regime change in countries where it suited its interests, which it has followed since WW2.

The UK did the majority of the spadework in destabilising the EU by advocating so strongly for the admission of eastern European countries, at the behest of the US, who saw an opportunity in the weakness of Russia in the 1990s. Those countries for the most part do not share the democratic traditions of the west (sometimes the western democratic traditions are pretty new-found and shaky themselves). The US under Trump was hell bent on demolishing the EU, for its own reasons, and actively supported Brexit, with many big donors to Trump, and Cambridge Analytica/the Mercers playing an active role in Trump's campaign and the Brexit campaign. The captains of industry who threw money at Trump have not gone away and still hope the EU can be dissolved, clearing the way for American agribusiness and hedge funds to carve up the pickings. They also want Ukraine, btw.

I'm not as optimistic as you about all Eastern European democracies. A fair few are shaky, several have been through recent crises, resignations and elections and their governments are divided and young.
I'm not optimistic at all about eastern European democracies. The alliance of nationalists and conservatives doesn't bode well in Poland or Hungary, while Romania and Bulgaria are barely integrated into the EU economy.

Putin's remarks about returning to "pre-1994" borders are alarming from that point of view, even taking on board the lack of realism underpinning his rambling speech earlier this week. Although, from what my sources in one E.European country tell me, those remarks have had the effect of focusing minds and reducing division pdq.
I am not optimistic about the long term effects of any resurgent nationalism in eastern Europe in countries that are most likely to be affected. Resurgent nationalism in eastern Europe is not going to be forward looking. It will ensure that the loudest voice expressing nationalistic views will get votes regardless of what else that voice shouts - an end to women's rights, denying human and civil rights to immigrants and asylum seekers, Roma/Sinti minorities, speakers of minority languages within borders, whatever...

To a large extent, Europe is still debating the question of the important founding event of the modern era in Europe - is the starting point the French Revolution or the Congress of Vienna and the Holy Alliance? A lot of eastern Europe (and Russia, continuously since 1815) says the Congress of Vienna and in particular the Holy Alliance, with its emphasis on stability above ideals, particularly if those ideals are liberal/progressive. There is a lot of sympathy for that stance in Poland and Hungary. This doesn't mean P and H will collapse. It does mean they may not feel very much at home in the EU.

mathanxiety · 26/02/2022 23:46

@HannibalHeyes

Flinging the kitchen sink at Russia is a case of letting the zeitgeist carry you away.

HannibalHeyes · 26/02/2022 23:47

Word soup...

HannibalHeyes · 26/02/2022 23:50

You talk about the money behind Trump, Mercer, Cambridge Analytica et al, without once acknowledging that much of that money came from Russia...

Peregrina · 27/02/2022 01:44

The UK did the majority of the spadework in destabilising the EU by advocating so strongly for the admission of eastern European countries, at the behest of the US, who saw an opportunity in the weakness of Russia in the 1990s.

I am not sure that it's quite as simple as that. The expansion towards E Europe was encouraged by Major as a way of appeasing the right wing Tory agenda, by having a broader, looser EU rather than deepening ties with W European states. No doubt pulling the E states away from the orbit of Russia was also a hidden part of the agenda.

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