^ Why do you think Europe is so bad off with the Eu, and having free trade along with freedom to move around, within Europe? Do you think this will remain after a Eu meltdown? Dream on!
England did not even sign the Schengen treaty, but it still uses "immigrants" as a reason for their 'brexit'. It already had all kinds of special treaties deviating from the EU, but the people did not even know that. This is all flying bs. It is about fear, and nationalist pride, and a "gut feeling".

As i said there is of course a lot of bureaucrcy and corruption in the EU. This is normal and also present in all national governments though, and obviously just human.

Funny enough with all the work awaiting England to now negotiate with all single nations bilaterally, it will need much more experts and "bureaucrats" than the UK currently has. This means a time of too few, a time to train, and then to pay all those new legions. And with what, if London loses its financial appeal.

The only help against the money-pumping European Federal Bank EZB and inflation would be a strict policy and laws against certain illegal national financial transactions and zero interest, but the UK does not want that! It is one of the reasons just of all the UK wants to leave the EU! :haha:
England does not want corrective measures against the inflation, it would burst the London bubble, it would be seen as against the banks, free trade of shares internationally, and anti-capitalist. But whatever happens, don't blame the Eu anymore!

Regarding Skybird and native Europeans dieing out versus the muslim battalions churning out kids and future armies of terrorists, undermining the german family cell.. as if i heard chancellor Kohl talking :doh:

Globalized free trade also can have massive social and financial costs. its not just gains for everybody. Several studies have showed that over the past couple of years. Free trade can cause - and does cause - distortions in the social/communal/cultural structre of different societies that balance , sometimes completely counter the gains. Its not all just shine and roses. Like currency unions only have a chance to work for some time if all participants are on a comparing economic and financial performance level (which in the Eurozone is not the case, that is why it is such a spectacular disaster) , global free trade must be put in question because it ignores that the various zones participating in it are of very different development, skill and performance standards. these difference do not get neutralised by just having free trade - they get instead accentuated and by this strengthened.

Criticism of CETA, TIP and TTIP by demonstrating grassroot activists and organizations, ist to a prominent degree right about this.



Free movement was never something I signed in for to the degree the concept is propagated today. Local, native populations of a region, a country that they call home - another of these uncomfrotable "identity" things - have all right there could be to refuse foreigners permission to roam in their home land or cross the border at will. I have repeatedly argued that for this very reason i strictly oppose the genral universla right for asylum as it is claimed today. It is a violation of most profound human rights of already residing, native populations of a place.

You are free to move at your will only where you travel land that is not beign claimed and is not used and lived on by already existring human settlers and communities. How often must I repeat this? Foreigners have no claim for life in our country. Not. At. All. All they are allowed to, is to ask. And we are free to say Yes or No, and to ask them what they could contribute to us in return for being allowed to stay.Exotic folk dancing and selling flowers in the streets are not what would make me change my mind. And last but not least, I demand foreigners to be able to support themselves. In germany, this demand alone already turns me into a heartless monster and a Nazi.

After all, it is this free movement right that causes plenty of growing uncomfort and unrest amongst European population. The probolem is less the German worker working across the danish border, or the Dutch coming over the day to aGerman border town, but the many foreigners from beyond Europe that abuse this to just freely roam across Europe as they like, as if they would call this palce theirs.
You can think of this any way you want, Catfish, but one thign you cannot deny: these things happening today in extremis have caused plenty of unrest, anger, hostility, and growing discomfort amongst native populations. It has had tremedous effect in forming up those critical moveemnts that today get in generally defamed as "populists".

I hinted one posting above at why there is this growing resitence. I also have pointed at that the same happened at the end of the first Roman republic, which led to the establishing of the imperial order and the military dictatorship it effectively was.

Push a dog into the conrer and beat and kick it, and it starts to bite back. Tell Europeans that they have to identifxy themserlves with foreigners more than with their own historically grown tarditions, and you will hit resistence and declining loyalty and obedience. Continue with it, and sooner or later you get anarchy, and civil war. Its just atural, almost reasonable. Force a living beign to act against its own nature, even its own right - and dont wonder if it does not only turn stubborn, but sooner or later attacks you.

From some status of erosion and anarchy on, people may become so desperate, and thankful for any promise of law and order and stability, that they will accept just any villain or hero, gangster or paladin who gives them that. So that happened in Rome. And it is easy to see that the same most likely will happen in Europe in this century again.

Multiculti, tolerance, freedom, peace and humanist values will be lost then. If you want to keep them, stop pressing people to act like the EU wants them to act. The problem is not the people so much. The problem is that the EU does not understand that what it wants to be causes this anger and growing resistence. The EU is fantasizing itself to death.

Behind-the-stage contacts between German and American diplomats and officials indicated to be anything but reassuring for the Germans, despite the friendly words of Pence at the Munich Security Conference. I think the Germans still live by illusions.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu...-idUSKBN1601DS

^ So you think it is good that Trump encourages right-wing populists to break the EU? Isolated nations will be easy game for US Trade 'guidelines'. Maybe we should talk directly to Bannon, instead of making the detour over Trump?

Which is why the "amorphous" EU (lol) should now stand together. We cannot know what Bannon/Trump's strategy will be really like, not even Trump knows it yet. They should be very careful though to break transatlantic ties. The EU could find that Russia is altogether a better trading partner.

German Bundesbank seems to plot kind of an indirect attack course on the ECB - by daring to openly name the many risks that so far get sweet-talked and glossed over by the majoirty of the Euro-drunken polticla establishment.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ntional-policy

The caluclation is not new. That they want to publicly announce it and call the mess by its name, no longer hiding it under the table - that is what is new.

German politicians need to weigh the wish of fooling the public about the Euro against the need to counter "populists" gaining more votes. In 6 or 7 months there are national elections , and some elections in the federal states come even before that.

AfD seems to have lost sympathies, however, due to endless self-cannibalising.

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Additional to what the article mentions, the worries of the Bundesbank also manifestate in the now almost 800 billion in TARGET-2 saldi the Germans hold against the ECB and that the Germans were stupid enough to accept. In simple words, this is money the ECB owes Germany for trasnactions the Bundesbank did for oher central banks, but with the Bundesbank's own money, while handing the traded goods - investment paper slike bongs - over to that other central bank that owes the Bundesbank nothing: the ECB owes Germany that money.

For comparison: the last gross domestic product GDP of Germany was nominally around 3.5 trillion, and the last total government budget marked at 307 billion. The Target2 saldi of Germany - money that it will never get from anyone, not states, notthe ECB! - rate at

-roughly one quarter of the German GDP,

- and almost three times the government budget !

And that is just Target2.

I think it is America'S interest. Divide et impera. Single states are weaker in comaprison to the US, than a union of states showing a soldi and united frontline. And Trump was voted for by Americans (not Europeans) to hold up American interests - not European wishes.

And being against the EU - or Islam or mass migration , for that matter - does not automatically make somebody neither "rightwing" nor a "populist". In fact it can be a sign of intellectual sanity and a reasonable mind to oppose these three evils, or to oppose the "left-wing populists" trying to enforce it on a more and more unwilling population in Europe.

Quote: "A stream of euphemisms...hollow structures and a military that is slowly wearing out."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1136140.html

But the openly left-ocnrfessing SPD already tries to suffocate any further raises of defences by demoinosing it as a "rearmament spiral".

Well, I imagine it is a bit of a twitchy subject in Germany, all things considered, bit like Japan (who spends 1.0%) but, certainly a measured increase would not go amiss. It's just a matter of framing it in a manner that doesn't stir up old ghosts.

That is an interesting article Sky and I suspect, accurate and indicative of more than a few NATO members.

It is the problem of mass.

I am not sure if any NATO member (with exception of the US) can muster sufficient mass for independent operations. For example European old core members (France, UK, Germany) at best could assemble a light mechanized corps each (2 mech divisions, UK can no longer do this), meaning that they are unable to conduct independent operational level warfighting.

Thus, paradoxically European nation-states would have to either do something revolutional or to transfer their national soverenity to some third party. In my opinion it is in the interests of those nation-states and their people to transfer their soverenity to an entity answerable to them.

You'd need to erase two millennia of history to get that to happen. :03:

I disagree - there were moments in history when nation-states have merged for the purpose of security.

The key here, in my opinion, is making EU structures democratic - ie answerable to the people of the EU and elected by the people of the EU.

Yeah, but this is Europe, the whole of Europe...working together. I'd like to see it happen, but I won't believe in the ability of it happening until it actually happens.

Well, I don't know about the rest of the EU, but we've always had the ability to elect members of the European Parliament.

Every chain, even the longest one, is only as strong as its weakest link. I do not buy the idea of that weak members increase the strength of the community they join. They weaken it.

Hitler learned that the hard way with Italy. The German war was serioulsy hampered by the need to move resources from areas where German military was needed, to places where Mussolini had failed.

Diplomatic stage acts and supercomplex, superclever, super wellmeaning intentions only work as long as it is still the time of playing diplomacy. No treaty paper saves you from injury once they start sending bullets at where your heart is. That is what political appeasers refuse to understand: the very convincing power of naked, raw physical violence. One should never underestimate the forming power of violence in history. It already was the decisive factor that before they invented the wheel and started to type books. Becasue in the en, it comes down to this simple truth: its easier to bring down, than to build.

I mean look at the modern nation states of Germany and France, they were assembled from component states that had a very complex history.

That is true for an alliance of independent nation-states and not for the (partial, regulated) transfer of soverenity to a (democratic) super state authority.

The whole reason behind that process is the inherent inability of modern European nation-states to independently maintain adequate ability to use violence (the problem of mass that I have mentioned earlier). To use your comparison European nation-states are Italies of the modern age at best.

^ But this trend for super state auuthprity is what drives the ordinary people away - sicne such construction, may it be the UN, may it be the EU, heavily violate the drive of most people to confess to theirt historiclaly grown feelings of idnetity and according rite, cultural behavour, value system. instead thes eorganisaiton create their own artifical, lifeless stil-birth of universlaistic values that expect people to identitfy with all mankind instea dof their social and cultural peer groups. It does nto work, it is against human nature. As i currently read in a fantastic book - the sam eproblem there alreayd was in Rome, it had tremendous inflouenc ein the fall of the firts republic.

Do not tell people to behave against their human nature and their desire to identitfxy themselves with what they call their home - you must lose if you nevertheless work against this nature, and must necessarily cause violent resistane to your "inhumane" claim sooner or later.

Living in Russia with its modern extremely strong form of nationalistic sentiment and pro-Russia-"cult" :), you should have no problems to see the truth in what I say.


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Huch! Spies spy! The germans do it as well! Drama! TRAGEDY! SCANDAL...!!!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1136188.html

Tsk tsk, you're not allowed to spy, naughty Germans. We're only allowed to spy on you. :O: Besides, why spy on the BBC, it's 'fake news' remember? :haha:

ikalugin, you have a good point, but these German and French states did have the advantage of having some sort of cultural joint identity, in that they considered themselves French or German, but that doesn't tend to extend to the whole continent as much. People tend to think of themselves as country first continent second.

Family first. Tribe next. Then neighbouring populations of close cultural roots. Then things like countries, empires, kingdoms.

Thats why the left - and the EU - is so determined to destroy the institution "family" as central key and core cell of the identity-providing social fundament. Already Lenin formulated that. They money is to be destroyed to destroy the fundament of capitalism. The family is to be destroyed as fundament of communal spirit and burgeouise identity. Both have to to be destroyed to create the space neeed for one collective, centrally controlled and defined test-tube-identity defined by the party/elite.

The people should not elect the leaders they want - the leaders instead want to create the people they demand.

I cannot be sure in case of the German state, but in case of the French state it is actually quite clear that they did not - that identity was created together with the French nation-state

A more recent example would be Ukraine - the national identity was enforced onto the population in one generation. Should EU survive and survive on the pre crisis trajectory for a generation - there would be a new identity out there (anti-Brexit protests sort of did show that process occuring, even though we observe early stages of it).

Identity tends to be something sticking to a people for generations and centuries - and that is how long it takes to form or change one. That it could be done shorter, metaphorically by pushing a button on some bureaucrat's desktop or by printing a stamp in some official formula (or drawing lines on a map in a different manner than bfeofre, for that matter), is the big illusion.