I love alliterations. So shoot me.

 

A twat.

…and some people really want to.  They – the ones who voted to make Great Britain Not-So-Great anymore – are shocked and appalled, Mr. Speaker, that anyone would ever, ever suggest that (a) they used dog-whistles to win or (b) they have a disproportionately-large number of knuckle-draggers on their side.

So, let’s look at the evidence, shall we?

• When Shahesta Shaitly asked a cabbie in the Midlands at the weekend: “Why did you vote leave?” she was told: “To get you lot out of here.”Her case is unfortunately not unique. It is one of more than 100 reports of racist incidents since the EU referendum that I have collated for the Muslim Council of Britain. The result seems to have unleashed a Pandora’s box of bigotry and Islamophobia – one that will require strong collective action to close.
• Last May UKIP member Ken Chapman, hoping to be elected to Amber Valley Borough Council in Derbyshire, wrote the following post:“islam is a cancer that needs eradicating multiculturism does not work in this country clear them all off to the desert with their camals that’s their way of life.”
• Police believe there has been an increase in hate crimes and community tensions since last week’s referendum. Initial figures show an increase of 57% in reported incidents between Thursday and Sunday compared with the same days four weeks earlier, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said.
• Last year UKIP was forced to distance itself from local council candidate James Elgar after the discovery of tweets like this: #ThingsAsianBoysDo groom and rape underage white girls, stab and rob innocent old white people, bomb innocent white people #EctEctEct [sic]”
• According to reports from the Cambridge News, a number of cards saying “Leave the EU/No more Polish vermin” in both English and Polish were found outside St Peter’s school by teaching assistants and students, including an 11-year-old Polish child, who reported they made him feel “really sad”.Cards bearing the same message were posted around a number of properties, police confirmed.
• More than a hundred incidents of racial abuse and hate crime have been reported since the UK voted to leave the European Union.  Many of the alleged perpetrators cited the decision to leave the EU explicitly.  One video, purportedly filmed in Hackney on the morning after the referendum, shows a man arguing with someone in a car before yelling: “Go back to your country.”
• Reports of racial abuse on Britain’s streets have spiked following the country’s bitterly fought Brexit referendum, campaigners say. More than 100 alleged hate crimes have been brought to the attention of the Muslim Council of Britain since Friday’s result. Immigration was among the chief concerns of “Leave” voters, according to pollsters, and the “Remain” campaign accused some of its opponents of encouraging racist and xenophobic attitudes. In the wake of the “Leave” victory — 17.4 million votes to 16.1 million — dozens of people posted on social media that they had suffered or witnessed racial abuse by people apparently using the result to legitimize their views.

And so on.  There’s plenty more, for those with a stomach for it.

So, to those Brexit types who say that they didn’t make implicit/explicit appeals to bigotry to win – to those who say they weren’t anti-immigrant – I say:

Go tell Ms. Le Pen, and Mr. Trump, and Mr. Putin, and the assorted European neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rallied to your cause because it was anti-immigrant, anti-refugee and pro-racist.

They’ll laugh at you, too.

 

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Losers. 

Referenda are blunt instruments? So are elections. What matters more is what is on the ballot. The ballot is a fine instrument.

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) June 26, 2016

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President Trump says he will suspend immigration from “areas of the world” with “a proven history of terrorism.”  So, no more immigration from any other country, including the U.S.! Vatican folks, you win the Green Card lottery! Woot!

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…but we talked about Chretien and other things. There are some surprises in here, if you care to listen.

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WINNERS

• Racists, nativists and isolationists: There is a reason why Trump, Le Pen and their ilk favoured a “leave” vote: their prospects are always improved when people are divided and not united.   Last night, they won a decisive victory by demonizing immigrants, governments and “bankers” (cf., traditional code for The Jews).  Trump, in particular, has had his economic “vision” validated.
• Scottish secessionists: As some of us predicted as the votes were still being tallied – because Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain within the EU – a second Scottish independence vote is now inevitable.  It will likely succeed – not because Scots are “racists, nativists and isolationists,” of course, but because they know they must maintain trade and political links to greater Europe to succeed as a nation.  Scotland can’t let an isolated Britain pull them down into the economic muck. They won’t.
• A united Irish: As I wrote when over there in January, Ireland has the strongest economy in the E.U. because it is part of the E.U.  The Kinsella-Cleary-Carr motherland will now move to build on that strength (which is good), and there will be a concurrent push to unite Northern Ireland with the Republic (which is potentially bad).  Bad, naturally, because it raises the spectre of a possible return of The Troubles.
• Anti-traders: For those who can always be counted upon to rail against freer trade – the Sid Ryans and Maude Barlows and assorted solipsistic trade unionists – the “leave” victory provides a critical talking point.  To wit: “If a modern, successful nation like Britain can do it, why can’t we?”
• The separatists: For the likes of the Parti Quebecois, this is a dream come true.  Their core argument – that new nations can be formed, that identity politics are okay – has been authenticated, paradoxically, by the very nation that they historically have used as a straw man to argue for secession.
• Jason Kenney: Yes, Jason Kenney.  Me and plenty of others were shocked, last night, when the former federal cabinet minister tweeted triumphantly about the results.  I’m not joking, either: he did. Kenny, accordingly, is a disgrace.  He should now go back to Alberta to join the similarly-addled Wildrose Party, where he belongs.

THE LOSERS

• The U.K. Conservatives and Labour: Cameron is gone, others will soon follow.  The vast majority of British MPs supported the remain side; all are now reflecting on their political viability as a result.  British politics is entering a period of chaos and inability, in which the voices of the aforementioned racists, nativists and isolationists will dominate.
• Obama, Merkel, Trudeau, et al.  All took a chance, and weighed in on the Brexit referendum.  All expressed the view – properly, correctly – that a British withdrawal would hurt every one of us.  All are now going to enter a protracted period where trade agreements, political alliances and strategic military pacts will need to be re-assessed and possibly renegotiated.  It will be time-consuming and very difficult.
• Hillary Clinton: Trump has been handed a stick, and he is not going to hesitate beating his opponent with it.  Brexit gives the putative Republican presidential nominee a perfect frame for his anti-trade, anti-immigrant, anti-Wall Street bumpersticker sloganeering.  I still believe Hillary will prevail in November.  But her task got a bit harder, last night.
• You and me:  Markets around the world are plummeting.  Currencies (particularly, and unsurprisingly, the British one) are worth less than they did just 24 hours ago.  Investments – that is, your pension – will not be worth what they were.  Only God knows where it will lead – but, God knows, uncertainty is never good for national economies.  This is a disaster, for those of us who believe in unity, cooperation and tolerance.  Don’t believe me? Think I’m overstating things? Let me end with a comment I received from a triumphant “uRtheTyranny” [24.36.151.239] late last night: “Our jobs are shipped overseas with treasonous trade deals and then foreigners brought in by traitors to take the rest and then whites have to go to the end of the line with affirmative action. Then you fill our neighbourhoods with foreigners that hate us, rob us, rape us and kill us.  You keep demonizing us for trying to defend our people and culture. The people are resisting your Orwellian tyranny. The fire rises.”

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Coming up: another vote on Scottish secession, and a push for Irish unification. I mean, why not, right? #Brexit

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) June 24, 2016

The Parti Quebecois is cheerier tonight than they've been in years. #cdnpoli #Brexit

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) June 24, 2016

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And so it ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Unlike some folks, I don’t hate Stephen Harper.  All of my five reasons are personal.

1. When my Dad was dying, he phoned me and my Mom to talk about fathers.  He did this despite the fact that Yours Truly had ripped him, on TV and radio and in newspapers, for years.  He was kind to my Mom, and I never forgot that.
2. On the aforementioned TV and newspaper and radio and newspaper platforms, I predicted – as did others – that, with a Parliamentary majority, he would make abortion and gay marriage illegal, he would constitutionalize property rights, and he would send us into illegal wars alongside Republican presidents.  He did none of those things.
3. Unlike some Liberals I will not name, he was always respectful towards my political father, Jean Chretien, even when Chretien ran him down a bit.  He told me he admired Chretien’s commitment to Canada, and his discipline, and his fiscal probity.  And it showed.
4. Even though I was a dirty rotten Liberal, he twice hired me to be a Ministerial Special Representative on aboriginal files.  (He did likewise with Chretien’s nephew Raymond, too.)  Under his watch, spending on aboriginal programs grew, dramatically.  I discovered he wasn’t what some of his detractors said he was, at least in respect of those things.
5. I thought he might wreck the place.  He didn’t wreck the place.

In light of all those things, why did he still lose? Two reasons.  One, he didn’t heed the Ten Year Rule – he thought he could defy The Rule, and beat the new kid.  Two, he didn’t ever show, publicly, how some of us had seen him to be in private.

Anyway, fare thee well, Stephen Harper and family.  They deserve now what they never got in Ottawa – privacy, quiet and no more bullshit.

 

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How weird am I? This weird: the most interesting thing I’ve read in weeks is an analysis of the fonts used in Blade Runner. Story here.

The subtitle reads WORLD WIDE COMPUTER LINKUP PLANNED, in what looks like Optima Bold. While the idea of a World Wide Computer Linkup might seem passé as we approach 2019, it was still very much unusual in 1982 when Blade Runner was released. Indeed, it wasn’t until March 1982 that the US Department of Defense, creators of pre-Internet network ARPANET, declared TCP/IP as the standard for all military computer networking, pretty much kick-starting what we know as the modern-day Internet of 2016.

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