European stock markets crashed this morning after the surprisingly strong 51.9-48.1% vote in the U.K. for that country to leave the European Union. The pound sank an astounding 10%-- to its lowest levels since 1985, from as high as $1.50 to $1.33. Gold shot up 5%.
There are high hopes that Corbyn, who is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, vice-chair of CND and national chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, will eventually break Britain out of the cycle of servitude to US neo-con and Zionist diktats.
The long, long campaign for leader of the U.K.'s Labour Party is over, and the results weren't even close.
Labour's Jeremy Corbyn is drawing huge crowds across the U.K., just the way Bernie Sanders is here in the U.S.-- and for similar reasons. Both progressives are battling a distrusted and failed political Establishment and championing the concept of power to the people-- the polar opposite of what Trump is championing: power to the strong man who will look out for you (one of the roots of fascism). Corbyn's popularity is going through the roof.
As we mentioned yesterday, the right-of-center, Wall Street-owned New Dems are making a play to assert themselves within the Democratic congressional caucus. They are following in the footsteps of the Tony Blair New Labour wing of the UK's Labour Party, which took over the party but has more recently lost support by inching further and further right.
Today, almost all politics are a politics of fear, and almost all policies are defended and excused through some notion of 'security'. Fear-therefore-security is the dominant political dynamic of our time. This week I take a look at these concepts, exploring whether all politics is a politics of fear, and offering examples of when this can work well and when it can work very badly. I focus in on the recent general election in the UK, showing how every candidate, even those offering some degree of real opposition, are all engaged in a politics of fear and security.
Image credit: Veterans Today
The UK’s dysfunctional democracy has enabled a mere 37% of voters to give Cameron a clear majority of seats. From this travesty he claims a full ‘mandate’ and no doubt feels all-powerful as he parades his troops.
During the American Revolution, Patriots didn't just have the British Army and Hessian mercenaries to contend with. At least 20% of the white colonists, conservatives, were traitors and sided with the British. As many as 2.5 million colonials were Tories or Royalists and after the war almost 100,000 of them fled the 13 colonies for Britain, Canada and other British colonies.
