Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Two Borders

Siamese Twins,

"Two Borders for Four Years" is BoJos Brexit offer. "Take it or leave it", quoth he. 
It proposes that Northern Ireland will remain aligned with EU regulations on manufactured and agricultural goods for 4 years. He apparently has just enough support in Northern Ireland for this, and does not have support in Ireland. The trajectory is toward no-deal-Brexit, unless the EU capitulates from their hard line stance. 
Boris will certainly go to court, and could conceivably go to prison, but...

Boris speaks to Tory Party Congress in Manchester, saying this is his best deal, it is a compromise on the part of the UK and that the EU must compromise in it's turn, or there will certainly be no-deal-Brexit. 
He will not extend article 50 again.
The European Commission said "they will examine the proposal objectively".

John Ward is dubious that anything will actually happen for Brexit until the EU breaks up. The high-eurocrats are bound to be worried about the same thing. It should be clear that crash-out-Brexit is a huge threat to the EU power elites.

Kiev has agreed, in an odd multilateral signing process, to the 2015 Steinmeier Formula for devolution of Eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Lugansk, into a separate autonomous entity, but with Ukraine formally controlling the border of that entity with Russia. This is unpopular among Uko-Nazis, who call for blood. Zelinsky is trying, and risking his life.

Chinese Communist Party 70th anniversary military parade prompts a look at global military spending changes in the past decade.
Infographic: How Military Spending Has Changed Since 2009 | Statista

 Helen of DesTroy, writing for RT, tells of a war that has already made many of us POWs.
Humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish, according to a study from 2015 - meaning the 8 seconds found among those study subjects has probably shortened still further in the intervening years. In that study, 77 percent of 18-to-24 year olds answered “yes” to whether they reached for their phone if nothing was occupying their attention. This is perhaps the most ominous accomplishment of technology - it has rendered us incapable of being alone with ourselves..  
​ ​The internet began as a surveillance technology, and it’s important to remember this whenever we cede control of some aspect of our lives to it. A government looking to implement a technological control grid would be wise to convince those who are to be controlled that they need it, want it, can’t live without it - and this process is even easier if they truly can’t live without it. The unquestioning embrace of technology will ultimately rob us of our humanity - a feature, not a bug, according to those AI evangelists eager to “merge” with the machines. Is this a tradeoff we want to make?  

Confined to Solitary

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