Month: December 2016

The Momcat sent me this a couple of nights ago. She found it on one of her favorite hangout sites.

The rest of America 9:25 PM EST WashPost Dec. 27, 2016

“I listened as you called my President a Muslim.

I listened as you called him and his family a pack of monkeys.

I listened as you said he wasn’t born here.

I watched as you blocked every single path to progress that you could.

I saw the pictures you made of him as Hitler.

I watched you shut down the government and hurt the entire nation, twice.

I watched you turn your backs on every opportunity to open a worthwhile dialog.

I watched you say that you would not even listen to any choice for Supreme Court no matter who the nominee was.

I listened as you openly said that you will oppose him at every turn.

I watched as you did just that.

I listened.

I watched.

I paid attention.

Now, I’m being called on to be tolerant. . To move forward.

To denounce protesters.

To “Get over it.”

To accept this…

I will not.

I will do my part to make sure, this great American mistake, becomes the embarrassing footnote of our history that it deserves to be.

I will do this as quickly as possible, every chance I get.

I will do my part to limit the damage that this man can do to my country.

I will watch his every move and point out every single mistake and misdeed in a loud and proud voice.

I will let you know in a loud voice every time this man backs away from a promise he made to you.

The people who voted for him. Yes you, the ones who sold their souls and prayed for him to win.

I will do this so that you never forget.

And you will hear me.

You will see it in my eyes when I look at you.

You will hear it in my voice when I talk to you.

You will know that I know who you are.

You will know that I know what you are.

Do not call for my tolerance. I’ve tolerated all I can.

Now it’s your turn to tolerate the ridicule.

Be aware, make no mistake about it,

every single thing that goes wrong in our country from this day forward is now Trump’s fault just as much as you thought it was Obama’s.

I find it unreasonable for you to expect from me, what you were entirely unwilling to give.”

————————
The above posts were from a comment by screen name “The rest of America” to Kathleen Parker’s column in the Post today titled “Trump has released a malevolent spirit upon the land. Happy new year!”

I found
Parker’s column in the Washington Post and spent a looong time scrolling through the more than 2400 comments. I didn’t find it, but presumably it’s down there somewhere.

At any rate, “The rest of America” said pretty much everything that needed to be said on the subject. Far, far better than I ever could.  I hope it gets passed around enough that it goes viral.

One of the best things about 2016 coming to an end is that, at midnight, we’ll have a new governor of North Carollna. Before he goes, though, Pat McCrory wants to cause a little more trouble.

With just one day to go before Gov. Pat McCrory (R) leaves office, it appears North Carolina Republicans are throwing a legal Hail Mary to the U.S. Supreme Court in another effort to undermine the incoming Democratic governor’s ability to govern.

Lawyers for GOP state legislative leaders filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to pause a court-ordered special elections for more than two dozen state legislative districts in 2017 — special elections in which Democrats could have an opportunity to pick up seats in North Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature.

A federal court found in the summer that 28 state House and Senate districts were racially gerrymandered, but the three-judge panel made the unusual decision to let the election go forward in those districts because it decided it was too late to redraw the maps. After the election, the court ordered the legislature to redraw the lines by March and hold special elections later in 2017.

Now, Republicans appear to be making one more, last-minute attempt to stop all that from going forward.

When the ball drops, I’ll spend a moment celebrating the changing of the guard in the Tarheel State.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Cold Spring, NY street scene.  The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.  I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 6×6 inch canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I’ve continued with the car, adding paint to the lower portion.  Note the wheels and grille.  The street received some attention as well.  The tip of the car up front is now blue.  Out back, the shadows and trees have been recipients of paint as well.  Note the progress on the front of the porch.  Finally, the fence has been repainted.  That color will change down the road.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

Let’s have a concert.

Los Angeles, give me Norfolk Virginia
Tidewater four ten O nine
Tell the folks back home this is the Promised Land callin’

And the poor boy’s on the line

A good piece in the Post:

“Those of us who live in the world of poverty research and rigorous measurement have watched many global indicators improve consistently for the past few decades. Between 1990 and 2013 (the last year for which there is good data), the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more than half, from 1.85 billion to 770 million. As the University of Oxford’s Max Roser recently put it, the top headline every day for the past two decades should have been: “Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 130,000 since yesterday.” At the same time, child mortality has dropped by nearly half, while literacy, vaccinations and the number of people living in democracy have all increased.”

This is the part of globalization that is tough for people like me who are concerned about rising inequality and stagnant incomes.  If all I cared about was the United States or the developed world as whole I would be right to be worried. In point of fact I am RIGHT to be worried.

But as I saw in China, it is a simple fact that globalization has helped the majority of mankind. Ironically on a GLOBAL basis one can argue inequality is actually decreasing   The best measure of inequality, GINI, actually declined marginally between 1988 and 2008, though the subject is complicated, and some dispute the measurement.

Of course there is little question life expectancy is increasing on a global basis:

Life expectancy across the globe has increased by five years since 2000, the fastest rise in lifespans since the 1960s, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Less noticed is the global decline in violence – a truth that to any watcher of TV news would find incomprehensible.  But globally the number dying in battles is at near lows , and on percentage basis fewer are being killed than at any time in human history.

Beyond the decline in deaths from wars there is of course the decline in crime in the US – by most measures near century lows.  This is another case where people simply don’t believe it – but that doesn’t make it any less true. This is not just a US phenomenon, globally murder rates have dropped. The data on mass killings is pretty clear as well – it has declined significantly over the last 30 years.

This period of history is not “uniquely dangerous”.  Certainly it is far less dangerous than it was during the Cold War.  

What I think is striking is how most people would react to this news.  One of the biggest challenges developed economies face is from automation.  Grim reports exist about the loss of jobs.

But even here there is irony.  If a robot can do a boring task isn’t it in the grand scheme of things positive?  The failure is rather in our ability to figure out how to make sure everyone benefits.

The problem with all of this happy talk is the environment – and there I have no happy story to tell.  In fact, when you attempt to actually look at reality (as opposed to applying some preconceived notion of it) this is surely the single biggest problem we face. And here I have no happy talk to share with Trump coming into office.

It is a simple truth – perhaps it is part of the nature of our species – that fear governs so much of our perception of the world.  But that fear distorts.  It is not the truth that in general the world is going to hell in hand basket.  It is not true that for most people on this planet life is getting worse.  A global war is is less likely than it was 35 years ago.

You ain’t seen nuthing yet … 😉

Vulnerability of the Internet is by design under tutorship of the US in order for it’s intelligence agencies (NSA) to spy on every citizen through back-doors. Trojan horses are decades old en designed into large IBM main frame computers for global espionage. One of the targets was the European Union HQ in Brussels.

Trump’s Cybersecurity Policy by John McAfee

The most difficult fact for any Nation to accept, is the fact that that nation may be totally outmatched, in some critical field, by some foreign agency or organization.

Under the administration of Harry Truman, “Operation Paperclip” was instituted. This controversial program – designed to bring thousands of Nazi scientists into the U.S. after WWII – was the result of Truman’s recognition of U.S inferiority in the realm of the then critical rocket and space sciences. The developer of Germany’s V2 rocket, and later, our Saturn V rocket, and even later, head of our National Aeronautics and Space Administration – Werner Von Braun – was one of those scientists. Without Truman’s recognition and acceptance of U.S. inferiority in this critical science, the world today would be radically different. Our current domination of space – our manifest satellites – is the cornerstone of our military dominance and us based on the science brought to the U.S. by Nazi scientists.

My hope is that President Elect Trump is both smart enough and strong enough to ignore the U.S. internal propaganda and accept our extreme vulnerability in the current critical science of Cybersecurity, that, today, is far more critical than rocket science was at the end of WWII.

Are the constant pronouncements from within the U.S. Government that the U.S. leads the world in cybersecurity in fact propaganda? Let’s look at the facts:

Pic

We live in a world where teenagers hack the Pentagon and NASA, or even shutdown government networks, around the world. The full personnel records of every employee of the U.S. Government, including every Top Secret cleared employee, for the past 50 years, were scooped up by an unknown agent in 2015, and virtually every covert agency and even Homeland Security are routinely hacked.

It is absurd to believe that our government can keep any secrets at all from nation states or organized hacking groups. Yet we have no coherent plans, policies or practices to counter this growing threat.

Which brings me to one of the most frightening aspects of Trump’s published Cybersecurity platform:

Of all the Agencies of the DOJ, such as the Asset Forfeiture Division, the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Office of Juvenile Justice, etc, it is clearly the Federal Bureau of Investigation to which this obligation will fall.

And how competent in cybersecurity is the FBI? Judge for yourself:

Not only are computing devices owned by individual agents hacked, but critical files have been taken, with regularity, from central FBI databases by the Chinese, by the hacking group Anonymous, by hackers as yet unnamed, and by numerous others.

But perhaps the most telling is a hack of the FBI by a 15 year old boy early in 2016 in which the personnel records of 75% of all FBI employees, including undercover agents, we’re published on the Dark Web.

If the above is insufficient for an indictment of cybersecurity incompetence, then consider that the FBI’s had to turn to a hacking organization in order to hack into the,San Bernardino iPhone that was in FBI possession.

McCain in Ukraine: Russian cyberattacks ‘an act of war’ | Reuters |

Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said on Friday that Russia must be made to pay the price for cyber attacks on the United States and that it was possible to impose many sanctions, including on financial institutions.

McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has scheduled a hearing in the New  Year on foreign cyber threats.

“When you attack a country, it’s an act of war,” McCain said in an interview with the Ukrainian TV channel “1+1” while on a visit to Kiev.

“And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay, so that we can perhaps persuade the Russians to stop these kind of attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy.”

Headline is for consumption of RT viewers only 😉 …

“Not the Russians” interview Larry King | RT |

Article on RT  

Russian Cyber-Espionage Group Tracked Ukrainian Military Using Android Malware

A cyber-espionage group linked to the Russian military has developed Android malware which it used to infect the smartphones of Ukrainian soldiers and track Ukrainian field artillery units, according to a report released today by Crowdstrike.

The report comes from the same security firm that discovered the “alleged” Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers in April 2016.

According to CrowdStrike, the group behind the Android malware that targeted Ukrainian military forces is named Fancy Bear, one of the two groups involved in the DNC hack, albeit the other group, named Cozy Bear, was far more active.

In 2013, a Ukrainian soldier named Yaroslav Sherstuk, with the 55th Artillery brigade developed a mobile phone application to help aim its long guns. The Android app was intended “to more rapidly process targeting data for the Soviet-era D-30 Howitzer employed by Ukrainian artillery forces.”

It was a math app for real time combat. Ukrainian soldiers using Soviet-era Howitzers had to  figure out the elevation of the target and the curvature of the earth, etc., using pen and paper, which took too much time. Sherstuk’s app did the same job quickly and easily: plug in the coordinates of the targets and the app would tell you settings that you needed to set for the Howitzer. Targeting time went from minutes to 15 seconds.

When fighting began in Ukraine, the app spread among users on VK (the Russian-language Facebook knock off) and the like, eventually reaching more than 9,000 downloads.

The Russian military realized that they could simply infect the app with X-Agent and the malware would spread as quickly as the app. “On 21 December 2014 the malicious variant of the Android application was first observed in limited public distribution on a Russian language, Ukrainian military forum. A late 2014 public release would place the development timeframe for this implant sometime between late-April 2013 and early December 2014,” Crowdstrike writes in their report.

Based on multiple reports from several security firms across the globe, the Fancy Bear group appears to have ties to the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

The Fancy Bear group is also identified under several other names in different cyber-espionage reports. Across time, the group has been referenced to as Strontium, APT28, Sednit, Pawn Storm, but most of the time has been named Sofacy.

Sofacy is also the name of its primary espionage tool, a remote access toolkit (RAT), also known as X-Agent.

The Sofacy (X-Agent) malware is unique because it was developed by the Fancy Bear group, and only deployed in its cyber-espionage operations, and nowhere else.

○ US Prepared Huge Cyber-Attack on Iran, In Case Israel Bombed Iran and a War Started
○ NSA anlong with Israel’s Unit 8200 built the Stuxnet worm in attack on Iran’s nuclear plant
○ Stuxnet: US-Israel cooperation Cyber Warfare on Iran using Siemens controllers by Oui @BooMan on May 31th, 2011
○ Dagan, Ofer and Israel’s Growing Iran Credibility Gap

I hate polls that demonstrate that some astronomical number of people are foolish. For example, there’s a  a new poll from The Economist/YouGov that says:

1. Forty-nine percent of Republicans believe it is definitely or probably true that “leaked email from some of Hillary Clinton’s campaign staffers contained code words for pedophilia, human trafficking and satanic ritual abuse.”
2. Fifty-two percent of Republicans believe that President was definitely or probably born in Kenya.
3. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans believe either than the climate is not changing (16%) or that it is changing but human activity isn’t a participating cause (43%).

The implication here, once you realize that Trump received just shy of 63 million votes, is that about 31 million people believe that Hillary Clinton is involved in satanic child abuse and pedophilia, that about 33 million people think Obama was born in another country, and that 37 million people are deeply misinformed or in denial about climate change. And these are just the Republicans. There are many independents and even a substantial number of Democrats who believe these asinine things.

It’s a wonder that more people don’t gargle Drano and die because it seems like a sensible thing to do.

I hate these polls because I find it demoralizing to be reminded about the critical thinking skills of so many of my fellow citizens.

I’d rather not know the details. I’d like to imagine that reason and real information might play some decisive roll in politics. But it doesn’t feel that way right now, and polls like this aren’t helping.

The New York Times editorial board is pleased that President Obama has taken some retaliatory actions against Vladimir Putin, but I found part of their reasoning very interesting.

While it is definitely too late, and may also be too little, there should be no doubt about the correctness of President Obama’s decision to retaliate against Russia for hacking American computers and trying to influence the 2016 presidential election.

It would have been irresponsible for him to leave office next month and allow President Vladimir Putin to think that he could with impunity try to undermine American democracy. That would have been a particularly dangerous legacy given President-elect Donald Trump’s alarming affinity for Mr. Putin and stubborn refusal to accept the conclusion of American intelligence agencies that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed at helping him and hurting Hillary Clinton.

According to the editors, it would be “dangerous” not to take strong actions against Russia because of the incoming president’s “alarming affinity for Mr. Putin” and his refusal to accept the conclusions of the Intelligence Community that Putin is responsible for ordering the hacking of Democratic organizations and the selective leaking of pilfered information to aid him in his bid for the Oval Office.

To be clear, I don’t disagree with this conclusion, but I think it minimizes what we’re dealing with in this situation. If it would be “dangerous” not to retaliate, that’s really a minor threat compared to Trump becoming president, no?

You might argue that it’s important to dissuade Russia from repeating their reckless act, or that a message needs to be sent to other would-be meddlers from other countries or transnational organizations. But the editors chose to casually link the importance here to Trump’s affinity for Putin.

If the danger really resides somehow in Trump’s closeness to Putin, then a non-response by Obama would be small potatoes compared to Trump taking the oath of office.

That’s how Putin evidently reads the situation since he’s opted not to respond in kind. Why stir up a bunch of anger when his man is about to replace Obama?

I wish the editors would make explicit what they’ve left implicit here.

Update [2017-1-8 3:38:15 by Oui]:
In reponse to the late addition from oaguabonita, self-righteousness …
while the 4s are well received from the two perpetrators …

After publishing two diaries on topic, I’m done with arguments …
The behavior of 2 bloggers nalbar and marduk continues unabated …
Position of proprietor can be found in a post below …
No other option to counter bullying tactics …
I will retaliate in kind … always!

A shame what has become of the pond, a murky swamp with predators …
Almost what we see daily in a divided state, town, community …

History is all there for anyone to read, or better abide by the rules and intent as set out by Martin in 2005. Standard SCOOP software was used, which unfortunately had the multiple ratings system to detriment of modern day (ab)users. There has been a discussion about the abuse before and Martin looked to change the software. Due to unnecessary expense, he decided not to adjust the ratings system.

Welcome to the pond

Booman Tribune has been around for some time now, and I have begun to get some questions. First of all, this is a SCOOP site, and many of the questions are common to all SCOOP sites.

I will be developing a community guide for BooTrib soon. In the meantime it may be helpful to refer to Pastor Dan’s dKos Community Guide. If you have a question about what Trolls are, Pastor Dan explains it well. [This is from a dKos article in 2004, many bloggers @BooMan fled in horror from big Orange]

“Hang around long enough and collect enough 0s and 1s, and you become a troll, and are liable to get kicked off the board.  While Kos and some other users have the ability to summarily eject particularly difficult users, most banishees are removed by an automated system.”

RATING COMMENTS

As mentioned above, this site operates on a rating system; commonly known as `mojo’. Users are able to rate comments based on whether or not they feel the comment is helpful to the discussion. This does not mean that you should down-rate comments you don’t agree with.

The ratings are used to frog-march any trolls, or pond scum, from the site.

See the FAQ page for more info on trolls. The `mojo meter’ is as follows:

• none – no rating given for the comment
• 4 – Excellent
• 3 – Good
• 2 – Warning!
• 1 – Troll
• 0 – Mega Troll (only Trusted Users can give a Zero rating)

Users can give out mojo by clicking on the “Rate All” button that follows each comment on a thread. With this feature, you can submit all your ratings at once for a page after you’ve read through all the comments; rather than having to rate each comment individually.

For a fun post on the community’s thoughts on mojo, check out this diary posted by the Booman himself.  

I get pretty fed up with two vigilantes who remind me of the time at dKos, that’s not why I became a contributor @BooMan some 12.5 years ago …

Always find a reason to downrate comments they are not closely involved in:

Well, according to Eric Barker for Time Magazine, these scatterbrained tendencies of yours may actually determine how smart you are. Citing Steven Johnson’s book “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History Of Innovation,” Barker presents a theory that says messiness is an indicator of intelligence. The basis of the theory hinges on the idea that a more congested, idea-cluttered brain will lead to more potential breakthroughs.

After a post by oaguabonita, I replied as follows and added this diary as a response.

I don’t have any beef with you … I surely don’t need an interlocutor.

Yep I wrote that diary and have no regret whatsoever. Indeed, Booman wrote his comment and I heeded his advice!! Just look at the timeline for the facts. Both nalbar and marduk were at it again in a matter of hours as I recall.

From the early months when Martin created the dream pond in 2005, I have been a steady contributor on a daily/weekly basis. In more than a decade, we didn’t downrate comments of fellow bloggers here at the pond. Surely we had our differences on policy and opinion, but we never, ever troll rated anyone!!

These two assholes continue their policing of the blog and I can’t recall Martin has ever hired these two to intervene on his behalf in this community. If it has become usance and acceptable, I will vent my opinion to the contrary.

Jon Worth is one of the few knowledgeable UK commentators on the EU who has some idea of how politics works on the other side of the channel based, as he is, in Berlin. I had the pleasure of meeting him at a blogging conference in Rotterdam some years ago. I even did a short video interview with him about his political and journalistic ambitions against the backdrop of a boat trip around Rotterdam harbour:

   

Naturally his critical but basically pro-EU views get him into a lot of trouble with Leavers in the UK who seem to specialize in demonizing and abusing him rather than engaging with the actual factual points he makes. Recently he fisked Andrew Marr’s delusional view of Brexit which drew a lot of abuse which he referenced in a follow up blog. None of his detractors seem to have the slightest idea of the political realities of the EU and fondly imagine that the UK can have more or less what it wants out of the Brexit negotiations and that the UK will be able to negotiate far more advantageous trade deals with the rest of the world than it ever could as part of the EU.

I have tried to show him a little support and add some “balance” to the debate by highlighting how the Brexit campaign is viewed from outside the UK. Even though I was as provocative as possible, no Leavers have acknowledged never mind responded to the points I made. They appear to be operating in a parallel universe. Anyway, for what it’s Worth, I copy and elaborate on my comments below:
My comment on his original piece: Fisking Andrew Marr’s delusional view of Brexit

Marr’s piece provides one moment of illumination: It demonstrates how little the UK political and media class understand of what the EU actually does and does not do. Many of the negative trends in the EU identified by Marr have been British led, whilst all the positive opportunities he sees in leaving are already happening in other countries within the EU. The UK influence within the EU has been almost overwhelmingly negative – from pushing the Iraq war and a military driven middle east policy to over-rapid expansion of the EU into former Soviet dominated states. It is the EU which will be liberated by Brexit from the neo-conservative and neo-liberal wet dreams of UK Conservatives, not the other way around. And if Marr thinks that Brexit will lead to a progressive direction in UK politics, he has not been paying attention. Instead the UK will degenerate into a neo-fascist nationalist nightmare without regard to the global environment, human rights, worker’s rights or indeed consumer rights: A low tax haven for corporate USA and austerity for everyone else; a trade war with the EU27, and an invasion by two million elderly UK expats currently living in the EU as they lose their EU health benefits. If you think the NHS has problems now, wait until those two million join the waiting lists…

And another comment on his follow up blog.

Happy new year Jon. I think you will find debating with Brexiteers is pointless. Brexit is an article of faith with them, and facts are irrelevant – hence the frequent and early resort to abuse. But I also think you are caught in an impossible position in the middle – trying to mitigate the worst problems a hard Brexit will create. You will have few friends on either side, EU supporters elsewhere in Europe have fast come to the conclusion that Brexit is good for the EU, and the harder and quicker, the better. Hence my conclusion that we will have neither a hard nor a soft Brexit, but a train crash Brexit where there will be no substantial Brexit deal of any kind. The UK will likely just crash out of the EU with a hugely damaging trade war the result. Given that c. 40% of UK exports go to the EU whilst just 4% of EU export go to the UK, this trade war will hit the UK about 10 times harder than the EU.

As an Irishman that makes me hugely worried because even if Ireland attracts a substantial volume of City financial services business, this will not make up for the huge volume (c. 14%) of our trade with the UK which could be severely curtailed as a result of Brexit. Sterling depreciation has already caused some damage, and a hard customs border will make this many times worse. It’s not even the tariffs that will be the most damaging, but the customs delays and paperwork disrupting just in time supply chains and transnational manufacturing operations.

Worse still will be the smuggling across the border with N. Ireland and the likely re-ignition of the Troubles. The Good Friday agreement was predicated on a much closer relationship between the UK and Ireland, the elimination of all border controls, and a much closer integration of the economies and societies of North and South under the auspices of the EU. Arguably Brexit in breach of that international Treaty (registered with the UN), but in any case any attempt to re-build that border could result in violence that will not be limited to the Border region.

So British Irish relations risk going back to the dark ages. The British Irish common travel area and trading and commercial links may slowly wither and die, and it is little consolation that Scotland could ultimately join us in the EU. A de-stabilised N. Ireland will see to that. And I am under no illusions that N. Ireland or the Irish economy will be a primary concern for EU leaders on their side of the negotiation – we will be swallowed up in the maelstrom of anti EU and anti-UK sentiment on both sides of the divide leading to a trade and economic war if not actually direct military engagement.

Cooperation in almost all spheres will perish as the UK comes to be viewed as a Trojan horse for US imperialism in Europe. NATO will not survive both Brexit and Trump and will (unfortunately) be replaced by a greater militarisation of the EU.The EU has been instrumental in providing 70 years of peace in Europe since WWII: No one in Europe will risk going back to the bad old days for the sake of preserving good relations with the UK and unfortunately Ireland North and South will suffer significant collateral damage. And those like you who try to stake out a middle ground will end up being shot at by both sides.

Perhaps I was being a little hyperbolic but I don’t think the scenario I painted is all that far fetched.  There appears to be no appreciation by Leavers in the UK that the primary purpose of the EU was to copper-fasten peace in Europe and that trade and political integration were only means to that end. UK Leavers take great comfort from the fact that the rise of Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Andrzej Duda, and other hard right Euro-sceptic nationalist movements in the EU could result in the eventual disintegration of what they consider an evil empire. They see the UK as being in the vanguard of that almost inevitable trend. There is little consideration for what happened the last time hard right nationalist movements were in the ascendency in Europe and no appreciation of what a return to competing nationalisms could destroy.

Ireland, as I indicated in my comments above, has the most to lose from Brexit in the medium term, but even here there is relatively little debate about exiting the EU. There is simply too much to lose, not least the prospect of further lasting peace and prosperity in Ireland and the EU as a whole. That is not to say that the EU cannot or should not be reformed, but that, ironically, should be easier once the UK is no longer in the forefront pushing a neo-liberal and neoconservative agenda.

So I don’t know if it is really Worth it trying to knock some sense into UK Leavers. They are leaving, and much as we would have preferred things otherwise, we now have to make the best of their leaving. That means salvaging as much of our trade with the UK as possible, re-orientating our target export markets, and grabbing as much of the City’s financial services business as possible in part compensation. This will exacerbate the already overweening economic importance of Dublin relative to the rest of the country, but that is an internal political problem we will have to try and ameliorate as much as possible.

Northern Ireland, too may end up becoming part of the EU as part of a united Ireland, as even some British voices are advocating, but we must be patient and that will take time. One Unionist commentator has recently noted the similarities between the Good Friday Agreement (aka the Belfast Agreement) and the Hong Kong handover. We have a way to go yet before that can become part of the general public discourse. But if Brexit has the devastating effects on the N. Ireland economy I expect, even Unionists may soon come around to that idea.