May 18, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
14:50
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| So I've been trying to record the Brexit video that I've been promising everyone, but the reason it's delayed is because it's really difficult to find information that I can be at least reasonably certain isn't complete bullshit. | |
| And I'm going to be honest, most of this is coming from the Remain camp, which has been labelled Project Fear because basically that's what they're doing. | |
| Everything that's coming out of the Remain camp appears to be naked fear-mongering. | |
| I'm no expert on the EU, so I'm relying on what the experts are meant to be telling us, and there's such a range of conflicting opinions and conflicting statistics, I don't know what I can trust. | |
| And it doesn't seem like the British public does either. | |
| All the polls that I've seen appear to be about 50-50 with a slight tilt either way, depending on the current news articles of the day. | |
| Apparently, it's basically impossible to predict how British people are going to vote. | |
| Apparently there was an ORB telephone poll showing a 15%age point lead for the in campaign, and that sent Sterling up to a two and a half year high against the Euro. | |
| And then within hours, a second poll conducted by TNS showed the out campaign with a three-point lead. | |
| So it's one of those things that there is simply no consistency in the information we're being given. | |
| David Cameron has said that there will be no second EU referendum if the result is close, which, frankly, I think it's going to be. | |
| Unsurprisingly, the political classes outside of Britain and the EU want Britain to remain in the EU. | |
| Obama appears to have implicitly threatened Britain by saying that they'll be at the back of the queue for trade talks. | |
| France appears to be threatening to weaponise refugees, having issued a not-so-veiled threat earlier this month when it warned a Brexit could result in migrants who are stranded in Calais travelling unchecked across the Channel. | |
| Well, how exactly would that happen unless you were encouraging it? | |
| French Finance Minister Emmanuel Macron said the British withdrawal from the EU could spell the end of the 2003 treaty which allows UK border guards to be stationed in Calais. | |
| And of course France will roll out the red carpet for bankers wanting to repatriate from the city of London to Paris. | |
| Why they would want to do that is not in any way specified. | |
| German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schabel warned a Brexit would be a poison for the British European and global trade. | |
| He said years of challenging negotiations and insecurity would follow if the UK leaves the EU. | |
| Merkel herself has actually been a lot more reasonable about this, saying that she would force a fair deal for Britain under Brexit. | |
| The opinion of the leave camp is that this is due to the very high number of German cars the British buy. | |
| Apparently it's somewhere around 30% of our cars are manufactured in Germany. | |
| So apparently the German government have made provisions for Britain leaving the EU, which include toning down any reference to punishing Britain for leaving, which we have seen other people will do. | |
| Forging a UK-EU cooperation agreement to deal with all strategic, economic and migration issues, including as a top priority the United States. | |
| So basically that seems pretty fair. | |
| We're still going to trade and to cooperate with Europe. | |
| They're simply not going to rule us. | |
| These are not the provisions of people who think they're going to be dealing with a failed state, which is basically the prediction that the Remain camp are making. | |
| At least if you listen to anything that they've said. | |
| For example, you've got former Chancellor of the Exchequer under Labour, Alastair Darling, warning that Brexit will trigger another economic crash. | |
| You know, despite the pound gaining strength, when polls show that people are in favour of leaving Europe, we know what happens when confidence plummets. | |
| Confidence remains low and uncertainty is making it worse. | |
| Well, are you sure? | |
| Because it doesn't seem that way. | |
| It actually seems the more confident Britain is in leaving the EU, the stronger the pound gets. | |
| And it just gets more crazy from there. | |
| A former Labour minister claimed that people who vote to leave the EU are extremists. | |
| And Cameron came out and said that Brexit could lead to Europe descending into war. | |
| Which is maybe something he might want to tell the Germans, because if he's preparing to declare war on them, they should know because they look like they are preparing for trade deals. | |
| But Britain will pay a high cost if we turn our back on the EU. | |
| Well, what? | |
| Like, increase tariffs on cars or what? | |
| I mean, how many people do you think are going to die from this, David? | |
| I mean, David Cameron seems to be becoming unhinged by this. | |
| The other day he said that al-Baghdadi of ISIS and Vladimir Putin would be happy if we left the European Union. | |
| And it's like, well, that's wonderful, David. | |
| I don't care. | |
| I would be happy as well. | |
| And I've got nothing in common with them. | |
| I'm pro-democracy. | |
| And Cameron seems to be forgetting that if you're going to scapegoat someone and turn them into the arch nemesis of your nation, they can see this. | |
| The Russians have the internet too. | |
| And in fact, the Russian embassy put out a statement that was just, well, really mature, and made David Cameron look like a screaming child. | |
| This is the statement they made. | |
| For quite a while the British government has been referring to perceived Russia, the Kremlin's interest, when facing a problem of selling its policies to the public opinion at home, otherwise suspect and unconvincing. | |
| It is done at various levels of the government, including foreign and defence secretaries. | |
| What all the pronouncements of this sort have in common is that they claim to know better than the Russian government where our national interest lies and what our policies are. | |
| In a sense, Russia is scapegoated for almost everything that has gone wrong in Britain, and the West, over the past 25 years, i.e. the war in Iraq, the misadventure in Libya, the global financial crisis, the advent of deglobalisation, the Ukrainian and Syrian crises, and now the rise of anti-establishment sentiment in the Western Crisis of the EU. | |
| That behaviour has reached a new high now that Russia is being dragged into the domestic debate on Brexit. | |
| Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, speaking at the Chatham House on 2nd March, said, The only country that would like us to leave the EU is Russia. | |
| And that, according to him, should tell us all we need to know. | |
| First of all, why is the wicked Russia thesis used to explain a government policy, be it the presumed deal struck with EU partners, or a more fundamental issue of the EU membership, which must be defended on its merits? | |
| And why shift the topic? | |
| The EU is not a military alliance, which is NATO. | |
| It is not about the special relationship with the US, neither is the British nuclear deterrent involved, nor is, for that matter, London's permanent seat at the UN Security Council at stake. | |
| It goes without saying that we have a huge problem with this strategy and tactics. | |
| It seems that the present British government has a vested interest in a dysfunctional bilateral relationship with Russia. | |
| Another conclusion one may draw therefrom is that the authorities thus admit that they cannot win the argument in an open and straightforward debate. | |
| As to the Brexit debate, we find any outside interference unacceptable and counterproductive for the cause of the government, especially given the fact that the issue is viewed by many in Britain as an in existential terms. | |
| Links are in the description if you'd like to read the rest of that. | |
| But this is what I mean. | |
| This is a much more mature response than say Harriet Harmon saying, oh, a Brexit's going to cause an increase in sexism. | |
| I mean, it's just puerile. | |
| It's childish. | |
| It's stupid. | |
| Which is why the Leave campaign have just taken to mocking the Remain campaign. | |
| Because Project Fear have just talked this up so much to such a ridiculous extent, it's become a battle of the memes now. | |
| What dystopian future is Britain going to endure once they leave the Euro? | |
| Bum bum bum! | |
| Fire, floods, natural disasters, Godzilla, dinosaurs, dragons, who fucking knows? | |
| It could be anything that finally destroys Britain. | |
| But it shouldn't be too surprising that all of this fear-mongering about a topic the average British person doesn't really know much about is kind of working. | |
| There's apparently in various polls, again, you can't really trust the polls, but there seems to be a slight tip in favour of remaining because of this. | |
| And I think this is why Cameron was like, if it's slightly above, then we're taking it, and I really hope it goes slightly against, so he's then forced to endure his own words. | |
| Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, has been one of the most vocal proponents of leaving the Euro, and he thinks that this is the biggest stitch up since the Bayou Tapestry. | |
| After a leaked letter reveals that the Prime Minister Cameron was plotting an anti-Brexit campaign during the EU renegotiation, he called for an inquiry into what appeared to be collusion after a leaked letter revealed that Cameron was apparently secretly plotting with big business to fight the Brexit. | |
| Johnson thinks that this basically means that Cameron's EU renegotiation bid was fiction and had already decided to campaign for a remain vote, which he might have done. | |
| Cameron was making a big song and dance of how they're going to reform the EU from the inside, something which, honestly, from what I've seen so far appears to be a labyrinthine impossibility and frankly a pipe dream, an absolute pipe dream. | |
| But I was going to do a further video on this in more depth later because I'm still trying to get the facts, which is the problem with all of this. | |
| So this secret plan involved asking FTSE 500 companies to put in their annual reports warnings about the dangers of Brexit. | |
| And I think it's understandable why Boris Johnson would be angry about this. | |
| He says, it stinks to high heaven. | |
| FTSE 100 chiefs are seeing their pay packets soar while uncontrolled immigration is forcing down wages for British workers. | |
| Now that we learn that some fat cats have been secretly agreeing to campaign for remain while angling for lavish government contracts, it makes us look like a banana republic. | |
| It is now beyond doubt that the so-called renegotiation was a fiction designed to bamboozle the public. | |
| It was a meaningless mime, a ritual, a kabuki drama in which the outcome was utterly preordained. | |
| This is not the far-reaching and fundamental reform we were promised. | |
| So I'm sorry that I couldn't be more conclusive and informative in this video. | |
| This is just one of those issues that it's murky. | |
| So I'm going to finish on an interesting statement put out by the Norwegian No to the EU campaign, because they are familiar with these tactics. | |
| They have experienced all of them and can tell you basically that as far as Norway is concerned, all of this fear-mongering was complete horseshit. | |
| Britain, do not listen to the scaremongering. | |
| Statement from the Board of No to EU in Norway. | |
| From the campaign in 1994 to keep Norway out of the EU, No to EU is familiar with the tactics the British people are currently experiencing. | |
| No to EU is watching the debate in the UK with great interest. | |
| Whether the UK leaves the EU or remains in the Union is entirely for the British people to decide. | |
| The EU Commission in Brussels must also respect this fact. | |
| We know from our own experience the EU system and the government apparatus will do everything possible to inject fear into people about the consequences of leaving the EU. | |
| The disaster stories of lost jobs and promising pounds if the UK would dare leave the Union sound desperately familiar to NoTo-EU. | |
| Prior to the referenda on the EU membership in Norway in 1972 and 1994, the Norwegian people were told the industry would flee the country and 100,000 jobs would be lost if we voted no to the EU. | |
| The reality has turned out to be quite the opposite. | |
| Since 1994, the Norwegian economy has developed and grown much more than the economies of the EU member states. | |
| Norway has full sovereignty in the agricultural and fishery sectors, and the management of Norwegian fisheries has been a great success. | |
| British EU supporters, with the help of the Norwegian government, present Norway's association to the EU through EEA agreement as a disaster. | |
| The British government has repeated the myth that Norway must accept three quarters of EU laws and regulations. | |
| The reality is that Norway has implemented less than 10% of the laws and regulations, which the EU has adopted in the period between 2000 and 2013. | |
| In addition, the EEA agreement has a clause enabling Norway to refuse the implementation of new EU rules, a right EU member states do not have. | |
| The Norwegian government claims that the EEA agreement is a poor model for the UK. | |
| On the other hand, it is not willing to look at the alternatives to the EEA agreement for Norway or use the flexibility permitted by the refusal clause. | |
| Not EU wants to end this undemocratic paradox by replacing the EEA agreement with a modern trade agreement with the EU. | |
| From the beginning of NoTo-EU's history, our aim has been to safeguard our democracy, defend our sovereignty and our natural resources. | |
| Our stance is based on international solidarity with people, both in the EU and in developing countries. | |
| Outside the EU, Norway has an independent voice on the international scene. | |
| A UK outside the EU would be an interesting partner for Norway in achieving a modern trade agreement with the EU, preferably through EFTA, where we have cooperated previously. | |
| Now like I said, I'm not an expert on this, and I'm starting to think that there aren't very many experts on this who can be trusted, because many people on either side appear to have a great deal of vested financial and personal interests in the campaign that they're supporting. | |
| So like I said, I'm going to continue looking to this and I'm going to prepare a longer video with the arguments for and against directly rebutting each other, so you can at least see them in context. | |
| And then I guess then I guess I'll go and vote. | |
| But I mean, personally, from what I know of the EU so far, it's extremely undemocratic. | |
| And that for me is the important point of all of this. | |
| I would rather live in a poorer democracy than a rich oligarchy or tyranny. | |
| And so I will probably be voting exit. | |
| And the fearmongering and the outright nonsense that we can see coming from the establishment almost everywhere is just making me think that they stand to lose something. |
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