The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in CH

[Urs Max]

	Quote:	marton
	Finally let us not forget Saddam himself claimed he had WMDs, if he had allowed UN inspections he would likely still be around?

I seem to remember he actually did, and the findings were "nothing there". But of course that was mostly ignored, and the rest drowned in the ubiquituous lies.

[Blueangel]

	Quote:	Aeneas
	Now, they may have really meant to have voted to "do you want to limit EU immigration to the UK, but suffer no negative consequences?" but ultimately they didn't and they exercised their right to vote without seemingly having a clue what they were doing and now perhaps regret their decision, now they handed over the reigns to the likes of Farage and Davis, but that's what they did and the cake and eat it option that perhaps they really wanted was never on the table. Sorry, that's democracy. Your right, your mess.

Labour MP for Ashfield, Gloria de Piero, stated on tv this morning that she polled her constituents to ask what they hoped to achieve from leaving the EU and what they didn't want to lose. She says that her prupose for the poll was to help her best represent her constiency because she was a Remainer but her constituency voted Leave. Gloria had 1,200 responses and the overwhelming majority hoped to control immigration but didn't want to lose access to the single market.

[marton]

	Quote:	Urs Max
	I seem to remember he actually did, and the findings were "nothing there". But of course that was mostly ignored, and the rest drowned in the ubiquituous lies.

	Quote:
	In 2005, the CIA collaborated with the Army Intelligence Corps in contacting an unnamed Iraqi individual who had knowledge and possession of all chemicals WMD stockpiles and munitions in Iraq. They cooperated with U.S. intelligence measures and sold all known chemical WMDs to the units heading Operation Avarice. As a result, the CIA and Army intelligence acquired over 400 rockets, missiles, and other chemical weapons in varying states of operation. The sales varied in size, with the largest tradeoff being for 150 separate rockets containing chemical agents. Some of the weapons analyzed indicated a concentration of nerve agents far higher than military intelligence had initially expected Iraq held the capabilities to formulate, with the highest "agent purity of up to 25 percent for recovered unitary sarin weapons", which was considered highly lethal and dangerous. The mission resulted in the largest recovery of chemical weapons during the Iraq war. It was confirmed that these weapons were remnants of the Iraqi weapons program first developed during the Iran-Iraq war and confirmed that the Hussein government had failed to dismantle and dispose WMDs in its possession.

Source

[me.anon]

	Quote:	marton
	In 2005, the CIA collaborated with the Army Intelligence Corps in contacting an unnamed Iraqi individual who had knowledge and possession of all chemicals WMD stockpiles and munitions in Iraq. They cooperated with U.S. intelligence measures and sold all known chemical WMDs to the units heading Operation Avarice. As a result, the CIA and Army intelligence acquired over 400 rockets, missiles, and other chemical weapons in varying states of operation. The sales varied in size, with the largest tradeoff being for 150 separate rockets containing chemical agents. Some of the weapons analyzed indicated a concentration of nerve agents far higher than military intelligence had initially expected Iraq held the capabilities to formulate, with the highest "agent purity of up to 25 percent for recovered unitary sarin weapons", which was considered highly lethal and dangerous. The mission resulted in the largest recovery of chemical weapons during the Iraq war. It was confirmed that these weapons were remnants of the Iraqi weapons program first developed during the Iran-Iraq war and confirmed that the Hussein government had failed to dismantle and dispose WMDs in its possession. Source

Yes. It does appear to be true. Or at least it appears to be true that the Wikipedia does now contain that quote. Interestingly, according to the edit history, there appears to be an army of historians at busily at work on that Wikipedia page, feverishly revising the history of Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction with retrospective discoveries of the sort contained in the above post.
Surely if anything was discovered, no matter how small, it would been seized on at the time by the US as justification for that war and Colin Powell, one of the chief actors in that whole sorry episode of history, would not have found it necessary to make the speech of half atonement here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU6KMYlDyWc (between about 7:00 - 11:00)

[marton]

	Quote:	me.anon
	Yes. It does appear to be true. Or at least it appears to be true that the Wikipedia does now contain that quote. Interestingly, according to the edit history, there appears to be an army of historians at busily at work on that Wikipedia page, feverishly revising the history of Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction with retrospective discoveries of the sort contained in the above post. Surely if anything was discovered, no matter how small, it would been seized on at the time by the US as justification for that war and Colin Powell, one of the chief actors in that whole sorry episode of history, would not have found it necessary to make the speech of half atonement here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU6KMYlDyWc (between about 7:00 - 11:00)

You might want to google "operation Bedouin" and "operation Bedouin II"?

[Urs Max]

	Quote:
	... the Hussein government had failed to dismantle and dispose WMDs in its possession.

Actually this most crucial part looks like phantasy. Pure phantasy.

CIA conducted all actual purchases under Operation Avarice (the US counterpart of the British Operation Bedouin), but they never revealed who they were dealing with nor how the seller got the weapons. From this NYT article:

"Military officials said that because the seller was a C.I.A. source they did not know his name or whether he was a smuggler, a former or current Iraqi official, a front for Iraq’s government, or something else."

Do you really think government and CIA would have remained silent had they been able to prove the weapons had officially existed, had been know to Saddam, in spring 2003?

[Aeneas]

	Quote:	Blueangel
	Gloria had 1,200 responses and the overwhelming majority hoped to control immigration but didn't want to lose access to the single market.

This is the 'cake and eat it' scenario. It's even been been called that and the UK has been warned that this is not on the cards by the EU. Access to the single market is tied to the four freedoms, of which freedom of labour is one, so limiting the latter and allowing the former is not on offer. Full stop. The EU has repeatedly said this.

Meanwhile members of the British government have argued two separate things; firstly that being able to have full access to the single market and control over immigration is a perfectly reasonable position. Secondly that the UK could return to being a World trading power as it was in the nineteenth century, presumably focusing on the Commonwealth and the Anglosphere.

What will result is that the UK will naturally fail to achieve the 'cake and eat it' scenario and given there will be limited time to hammer out a bespoke deal, will largely fall back on WTO rules. When this happens the EU will be blamed for not accepting the 'reasonable' scenario that the British public will have been told was reasonable for many months. A little bit of patriotic jingoism and blame for the fiasco will be shifted onto the EU for being anti-democratic Johnny Foreigners, rather than the buffoons who promised what they knew they'd never be able to deliver. The rest of planet Earth will not believe this, but that's OK as they don't vote in UK elections.

Will the UK suffer as a result? Of course it will and this is independent of whether it can successfully go out on it's own without relying on the common market, simply because it will take years to put the necessary deals into place, even if everyone was gagging at the bit to make such deals with the UK. Which as we've already seen, they're not, because everyone is going to look to get the best possible deal (oddly enough). So with only two years to prepare and perhaps decades to build up a new trade network, the UK will naturally fall in-between and take a hammering.

So to summarise; unless the UK or EU swallow humble pie, a hard Brexit almost certain, UK will face at least the better part of a decade in a subsequent recession and the Conservatives will seek to employ jingoism to place the blame for this on the EU.

[Jim2007]

	Quote:	Aeneas
	Access to the single market is tied to the four freedoms, of which freedom of labour is one, so limiting the latter and allowing the former is not on offer. Full stop. The EU has repeatedly said this.

It also requires acceptance of ECJ rulings - You can't have players in the market that are not subject to the laws of the market. Another little stumbling block.

	Quote:	Aeneas
	What will result is that the UK will naturally fail to achieve the 'cake and eat it' scenario and given there will be limited time to hammer out a bespoke deal, will largely fall back on WTO rules.

That requires the UK's relationship with the rest of the world to be more or less the same as it is now in terms of trade, 'cause that is how WTO works. So there will not be any great deals for the UK out there, unless they only want to trade with the 12 non member countries...

	Quote:	Aeneas
	So to summarise; unless the UK or EU swallow humble pie, a hard Brexit almost certain, UK will face at least the better part of a decade in a subsequent recession and the Conservatives will seek to employ jingoism to place the blame on this on the EU.

Good summary.

[marton]

	Quote:	Urs Max
	Actually this most crucial part looks like phantasy. Pure phantasy. CIA conducted all actual purchases under Operation Avarice (the US counterpart of the British Operation Bedouin), but they never revealed who they were dealing with nor how the seller got the weapons. From this NYT article: "Military officials said that because the seller was a C.I.A. source they did not know his name or whether he was a smuggler, a former or current Iraqi official, a front for Iraq’s government, or something else." Do you really think government and CIA would have remained silent had they been able to prove the weapons had officially existed, had been know to Saddam, in spring 2003?

"Do you really think government and CIA would have remained silent" I do not need to think; they did remain silent!
Did you google operation Bedouin?

One can only guess at the reasons, maybe they hoped to buy more weapon grade stuff from the source and did not want to frighten them off or maybe they did not want to admit the war was a failure to capture WMDs and they had to buy the WMDs or......

"how the seller got the weapons" Not really relevant; there are very few corner shops selling weapons loaded with poison gas - if they did not come from Iraq then there were practically no other sources?

[marton]

The Financial Times reported today that the EU is developing rule changes that could see London stripped of one of its flagship financial businesses by enabling territorial restrictions on the clearing of some euro-denominated transactions even before Britain leaves the union.

London is the world’s biggest centre for clearing euro derivatives, handling three-quarters of all transactions, with an average daily value of $573 billion

According to the ft, Lloyds of London also today confirmed setting up a new subsidiary in the EU, no information on whether this will be small or a large operation.

[Urs Max]

	Quote:	marton
	Did you google operation Bedouin?

I find that a rather useless question after my "Operation Avarice (the US counterpart of the British Operation Bedouin)".

	Quote:	marton
	"how the seller got the weapons" Not really relevant; there are very few corner shops selling weapons loaded with poison gas - if they did not come from Iraq then there were practically no other sources?

It's about who produced them but rather who possessed them previously. For instance they may have been registered as destroyed by Iraqi military, in such a case official figures say "destroyed", Saddam rightfully claims "nothing there", and yet the shells still exist and may get sold to whoever years later.

However, this is rather off topic. I suggest we close here (and continue in an appropriate thread?).

[marton]

A number of UK newspapers made a big issue about May not being invited to the EU leaders dinner last night.

Seems the dinner was anyway cancelled

	Quote:
	The Brexit discussion, set to be held over a three-course dinner, ended up lasting just 20 minutes as talks about other pressing issues, including the refugee crisis and ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine, continued late into the night and led to the dinner being cancelled.

Source

They have already made a number of consistent statements about their negotiating position for Brexit so it was anyway optimistic to assume they would need a long time to discuss this topic.

[me.anon]

Here is a current report on an exemplary application of direct democracy. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sw...KBN1450VS?il=0

It refers, of course, to Switzerland, a land with a wealth of experience in managing direct democracy, and balancing the will of the people and the practicalities of running a state. The matter at hand is not dissimilar to the main issues of the BREXIT campaign. That is, the Swiss voters, as their British counterparts, don't like horrid foreigners clogging up their country and stealing their jobs etc., so when the opportunity arises, their votes reflect this.
The main difference being in the handling of it by the respective governments. Switzerland's long history of direct democracy has taught the government that, whereas the will of the people is paramount, there are times, as in this case where a severe economic impact would be the inevitable consequence, when it [the will of the people] should be ignored for their own good. The government of Britain, on the other hand, as in the case of the BREXIT, lacking any experience in these matters, has treated the will of the people as paramount without qualification. And look at the mess this amateurish dabbling with direct democracy has got the country into. Having to unravel years of work, risk years of economic uncertainty and misery. And all for what? The clear lesson to be drawn from this is that direct democracy must be managed with extreme care and is not for the inexperienced.

	Quote:	marton
	A number of UK newspapers made a big issue about May not being invited to the EU leaders dinner last night. Seems the dinner was anyway cancelled Source They have already made a number of consistent statements about their negotiating position for Brexit so it was anyway optimistic to assume they would need a long time to discuss this topic.

If your work had a party and invited all your colleagues, except you, would you be happy?

If the party was subsequently cancelled due to an unforeseen event, would you then not be bothered you weren't invited?

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:
	If your work had a party and invited all your colleagues, except you, would you be happy? If the party was subsequently cancelled due to an unforeseen event, would you then not be bothered you weren't invited?

HaHa, the concept of work & party is not something I would get very excited about either way.

[marton]

	Quote:	me.anon
	Here is a current report on an exemplary application of direct democracy. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sw...KBN1450VS?il=0 It refers, of course, to Switzerland, a land with a wealth of experience in managing direct democracy, and balancing the will of the people and the practicalities of running a state. The matter at hand is not dissimilar to the main issues of the BREXIT campaign. That is, the Swiss voters, as their British counterparts, don't like horrid foreigners clogging up their country and stealing their jobs etc., so when the opportunity arises, their votes reflect this. The main difference being in the handling of it by the respective governments. Switzerland's long history of direct democracy has taught the government that, whereas the will of the people is paramount, there are times, as in this case where a severe economic impact would be the inevitable consequence, when it [the will of the people] should be ignored for their own good. The government of Britain, on the other hand, as in the case of the BREXIT, lacking any experience in these matters, has treated the will of the people as paramount without qualification. And look at the mess this amateurish dabbling with direct democracy has got the country into. Having to unravel years of work, risk years of economic uncertainty and misery. And all for what? The clear lesson to be drawn from this is that direct democracy must be managed with extreme care and is not for the inexperienced.

Thanks
According to the link

	Quote:
	In any event, Swiss voters look set to decide for a second time whether to impose curbs on immigration or reaffirm close economic ties with the bloc.

I am not sure about this.
The latest SVP pronouncements seemed to be along the lines that they have "cold feet" about starting a new referendum.
The people who collected signatures for an anti-MEI referendum seem to have decided to withdraw this if the MEI lite plan works out OK with the EU.

[marton]

	Quote:
	If your work had a party and invited all your colleagues, except you, would you be happy? If the party was subsequently cancelled due to an unforeseen event, would you then not be bothered you weren't invited?

Assuming like May I had already said that I planned to resign from this "work" then would I have grounds to be unhappy?

[Blueangel]

	Quote:	marton
	Assuming like May I had already said that I planned to resign from this "work" then would I have grounds to be unhappy?

Apparently, when May is unhappy with all this Brexit related guff, she asks for guidance from a 'special friend'. Only problem with this is, the friend isn't too thrilled at the thought of being asked...

	Quote:
	After Theresa May said God will guide her through the Brexit process, God has clarified he has no intention of going anywhere near such a colossal cluster.

http://newsthump.com/2016/11/28/god-...h-a-bargepole/

[Medea Fleecestealer]

	Quote:	marton
	Thanks According to the link I am not sure about this. The latest SVP pronouncements seemed to be along the lines that they have "cold feet" about starting a new referendum. The people who collected signatures for an anti-MEI referendum seem to have decided to withdraw this if the MEI lite plan works out OK with the EU.

Nope, just announced if quotas aren't included in the new law by 9th Feb they'll launch a new initiative to dissolve the accord regarding Free Movement.

"People’s Party cries foul

Members of the conservative right Swiss People’s Party, which had proposed the February 2014 referendum on quotas, argued up until the final vote that the latest parliamentary proposal violates the Constitution because it does not contain quotas and therefore fails to apply the will of the people.

The People’s Party has said that if cabinet does not intervene by February 9 with a version of the law conforming to the 2014 initiative, it will launch a new initiative “as soon as possible” to dissolve the bilateral accord with the European Union concerning the free movement of people."

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/new-immi...urdle/42769316

[Sbrinz]

	Quote:	Medea Fleecestealer
	.....edited.... The People’s Party has said that if cabinet does not intervene by February 9 with a version of the law conforming to the 2014 initiative, it will launch a new initiative “as soon as possible” to dissolve the bilateral accord with the European Union concerning the free movement of people." http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/new-immi...urdle/42769316

It looks like the SVP will be forcing another referendum, the Swiss cabinet decided to ignore the 2014 result,

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38340407

I hope Britain finally gets the message, "there can be no soft Brexit"