Sunday, July 03, 2016

BERNIE OR BUST, EMPORER ERDOGAN


THE ABSURD TIMES

BERNIE OR BUST, EMPORER ERDOGAN

Illustration is self-explanatory.  The seven are Hillary's and the six are Bernie's representatives on the pre-convention committee.  Arguments in favor of Clinton only hold credibility to the extent that she is not Donald Trump.

There is something to this, however.  In 1964, there was a choice between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson.  Most felt at the time that they were voting for the peace candidate, but Johnson was responsible for the deaths of thousands of young Americans, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians in Southeast Asia.  However, it is highly unlikely that the Republican would have allowed the civil rights bill, the voting bill, and Medicare while Johnson accomplished these things to an extent. 

Still, the illustration explains quite clearly what the problem is with Hillary.  Also, note that all Republican attacks on her have nothing to do with her war mongering. 

TURKEY
Erdogan sold out to Israel just before the attacks by ISIS at the airport.  Apologists point out that such an attack could not be planed so quickly.  However, they overlook the fact that many attacks have been planned all over (no, I don't know where), and the participants are simply waiting for an excuse.

Here is some detail on the situation:

 

TOPICS
Funerals have begun in Turkey for some of the 42 people killed in a triple suicide bombing Tuesday targeting Turkey's main airport in Istanbul. The attack also left 239 others injured. Authorities said three attackers arrived at the airport's international terminal by taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire. The airport is the 11th busiest in the world. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Turkey's prime minister said the initial probe pointed to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or Daesh. A senior Turkish official told the Associated Press the three suicide attackers were nationals of Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Earlier today, Turkish police raided 16 locations in Istanbul and detained 13 people on suspicion of involvement in the attack. Turkey has seen an uptick in bombings since last year, when the United States began using Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to carry out bombing raids in Syria and Iraq targeting ISIS strongholds. We speak to Koray Çaliskan, associate professor of political science at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Funerals have begun in Turkey for some of the 42 people killed in the triple suicide bombing Tuesday targeting Turkey's main international airport in Istanbul. The attack injured more than 230 people. Authorities said three attackers arrived at the airport's international terminal by taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire. The airport is the 11th busiest in the world. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Turkey's prime minister said the initial probe pointed to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or Daesh. A senior Turkish official told the Associated Press the three suicide attackers were nationals of Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Earlier today, Turkish police raided 16 locations in Istanbul and detained 13 people on suspicion of involvement in the attack.
Turkey has seen an uptick in bombings since last year, when the United States began using Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to carry out bombing raids in Syria and Iraq targeting ISIS strongholds. Tuesday's attack came just one day after Turkey restored diplomatic ties with Israel after a six-year rupture.
On Wednesday, I got in touch with Koray Çaliskan, associate professor of political science at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul. We reached him at his home byDemocracy Now! video stream and asked him to respond to the attack.
KORAY ÇALISKAN: It's really sad that this happened. We know that there is a threat of international terrorism, but unfortunately this threat got materialized more in Turkey. In the last 12 months, we saw 17 bombings that costed the lives of 294 people, wounded 1,009. Not even a single official left office, resigned. And the Islamist authoritarian AKP government did not accept that there was a security breach in Turkey.
Remember that these three ISIS terrorists entered Istanbul airport passing a security check with hand grenades, AK guns, Glock guns, and then they entered the airport building after the first security check and began to shoot at people during and after the second check. This is a great problem, and I believe, because Erdogan decided to be a president in a presidential system—as you know, Turkey is a parliamentary regime—they have not been working well to take care of security measures and also take aim at the heart of terrorist organizations.
One of the most important sources for open source security and intel, intelligence, is Twitter and Facebook and internet correspondence, right? In Turkey, Twitter is blocked right now. Facebook is blocked. We can't talk to each other through Twitter. We can't talk to each other through Facebook. Why? Because the government and Erdogan himself do not want people to criticize them, criticize their weakness.
I'll give you another example. We had another unfortunate bombing in Brussels a few months ago, you would remember. It took Belgian authorities to open the airport six days, because they studied every security breach in that airport and fixed them and opened the airport. Six weeks—six days, excuse me. In Turkey last night, only six hours after the bombing, despite the unacceptable security breach in the gates of the airport, the government decided to open the airport. It costed 41 lives. Not even a single elected official resigned or forced to resign.
Nothing really works in this country. The economy is going bad. Democracy, we lost it. Technically, Turkey is a competitive authoritarian regime ruled by Islamists, authoritarian Islamists. In terms of security, you see what's going on. No one really feels secure in this country anymore. And because of the Kurdish question and the increasing terrorist activities of PKK, the government doesn't know what to do, other than bombing people, other than using military means, other than shutting down Twitter, other than doing what authoritarian leaders do, from North Korea to Syria, from Russia to Turkey.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the warnings, Professor Çaliskan, the warnings that had come in a few weeks ago of something like 30 or so ISIS fighters coming over the border from Syria? The Turkish government very much understood this, the possibility of an attack during Ramadan, and especially in these last days when people are traveling.
KORAY ÇALISKAN: There has been intelligence about it. And, unfortunately, we hear about intelligence regarding what's going to happen in Turkey from either U.S. Embassy or French Embassy or German Embassy. Our government doesn't tell us anything about it. The U.S. told about possibility of bombings and that there has been—there have been close to 30 terrorists entering Turkey, planning attacks. We didn't hear anything from our government.
This happened before. The last bombing in Istanbul was in Istiklal Street, very close to Gezi Park. And German Embassy asked German schools to be emptied, told their citizens to not to go to Istiklal Avenue and around it. Less than 24 hours later, we had a bombing in Istiklal Avenue. Our government didn't tell anything, because, first, in their mind, if they warn people, they think that people will think that they are not doing their job properly. But on the contrary, if they warn us, if they take intelligence seriously, we would think that they are doing their job. Right now, no one really thinks that they are doing their job. They are just shouting at journalists, academics, intellectuals, for criticizing them.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you again about the timing. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a restoration of ties with Turkey, including increased cooperation in oil and gas production. This is what he said.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU:[translated] Israel has reached an agreement of a strategic significance to the state of Israel, to security, to regional stability and the Israeli economy. ... The gas field Leviathan can supply both the Egyptian market, which we intend to work with, but Leviathan can also supply the Turkish market and the supply of gas via Turkey to Europe. This is a strategic matter for the state of Israel. This matter could not have been advanced without this agreement, and now we will take action to advance it.
AMY GOODMAN: You have the re-establishment of ties between Turkey and Israel this week, and also Turkey seeing an uptick in bombings since last year, when the United States started using Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to carry out bombing raids in Syria. Well, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke after the deadly attack on the airport in Istanbul.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: We are still collecting information and trying to ascertain what happened and who did it. And I won't comment further on it, except to say that this is daily fare. And that's why I say the first challenge we need to face is countering nonstate violent actors, for a host of reasons.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Çaliskan, can you respond to both Kerry and also the re-establishment of ties with Israel, if you think these issues are related?
KORAY ÇALISKAN: I don't think the bombing in Istanbul is related to Turkey's establishing of the diplomatic relations with Israel and Kerry's comments, for two reasons. First, you can't—you don't have time to respond that fast, if you're a terrorist organization, two days after Israel and Turkey announced that. Two, in the last 12 months, there have been 17 bombings, Amy, in Turkey. You're talking about one bombing, one terrorist attack, every three weeks. This is another threat. There is a war against Turkey that President Erdogan and the government of Islamist authoritarian AKP do not take seriously.
On the issue of rapprochement between Israel and Turkey, I think it is very sad that Turkey stepped back from its principles, its foreign policy principles. They said that they were against the blockade, the embargo of Palestinians, and they legitimized the blockade itself by agreeing to give the aid to Israel so that it can distribute the aid to any Palestinian anytime it wants. They got the money for the families of nine people the Israeli Defense Forces killed in international waters, thus violated international law. And Turkey accepted that they won't be sued in Turkey or they won't be taken to court in international justice system. This is a disgrace.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the Israeli military attack on the Mavi Marmara, that was trying attempt to break the blockade of Gaza.
KORAY ÇALISKAN: Yes. So, that's why, for two reasons, they are not related. I believe what Erdogan is trying to do is that he realized that he has been making a lot of mistakes. Russian planes were bombing ISIS, and they downed a Russian plane, with no legitimate reason. And they had to apologize from Russia. And in Turkey, they say that they didn't apologize; they just said they were sorry, as if that was a substantive difference. They are planning to pay for the downing of the plane, and they are planning to get the money from Israel.
I don't really understand what principles are changing here. On the one hand, they are criticizing the military coup d'état in Egypt; on the other hand, they are willing to make peace with them. On the one hand, they pretend as if they have principles; on the other hand, they do their best to violate those principles. I think they are losing control of foreign and domestic policy because of one reason: Erdogan's dream of becoming a president of a presidential system.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor, earlier this year, more than a thousand Turkish academics signed a peace petition. Several of them were jailed. Can you talk about Erdogan government's reaction to dissenting voice and how that relates to the climate of terror in Turkey right now?
KORAY ÇALISKAN: Of course. I signed that letter, too. First, it was signed by more than 1,200 academics. When Erdogan called us terrorists or voices of terror, 1,000 more academics signed it. Since then, more than 100 academics lost their jobs. They were fired from public and private universities. Four academics were jailed for more than a month; they are free right now. And many academics are being prosecuted, just because they criticized AKP's handling of Kurdish question. This is another move of Erdogan to silence civil society in the country. He silenced the media. The most important editor-in-chief in the country, Can Dündar, was about to be killed, less than two months ago, after Erdogan targeted him. A fascist just began shooting at him, and the journalist's wife prevented him from taking aim at Can Dündar. So the press is being silenced. The academics are being silenced. How can academics, who have PhDs from states, Europe, Turkey, accept to be terrorists? What Erdogan does is to do what all authoritarians do: If there is—if he is being criticized and if he doesn't agree with academics or journalists, he accuses them of being with terrorists.
He has another strategy in addition to that. When you criticize him, he considers it as an insult or libel against the president. I have a court case. My next hearing will be in September. And I—the prosecutor general wants me to be jailed by eight years, three months for writing a tweet criticizing Erdogan. And the tweet didn't even mention his name. So, imagine, there are hundreds of court cases like this. He is winning them. He is making money out of them. People are being in jail.
But what we see, unfortunately, is the following: Turkey is leaving democracy, and United States is just watching it. You cannot have a secure world with authoritarian leaders. Remember what happened in Cold War: We were at the brink of a nuclear war. And right now, world democracy is being threatened by poverty, mostly organized by capitalism, and by terrorism, mostly organized by organizations like ISIS. There is only one way to deal with this double threat: democracy now.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you afraid to be making comments like that, speaking to us from Istanbul, where you teach?
KORAY ÇALISKAN: I'm not afraid, because my job is to tell the truth. I don't tell the truth, I don't do my job. How am I going to explain this to my children and to my students in the future? Am I afraid? I think right now intellectuals in Turkey are not afraid. They are concerned about their colleagues. They are concerned about Turkish democracy. But we will continue to tell the story of democracy, freedom, equality and liberty.
AMY GOODMAN: Koray Çaliskan, associate professor of political science at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. We were speaking to him at his home.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Das Absurde TIMES

THE ABSURD TIMES
Das Absurde TIMES



Das Absurde TIMES Viele von Ihnen haben so freundlich, oder zu so vielen Abbildungen in letzter Zeit darauf zu senden, dass ich einfach nicht die Kapazität haben, um die Dinge für sie zu schreiben. Allerdings erklärend meisten Selbst und verdienen größere Verbreitung, so hier sind sie: Latuff hier über die Türkei ist ausverkaufen: Und was ist dahinter: Hier Terrorismus in Israel ist: Home grown terrorism, pre-9/11: Dies würde zu lösen Detroit Probleme: vergessen Sie nicht, die Ukraine und ihre Nazis: (Jailed unterstützt Federation)

Many of you have been kind enough to send or point to so many illustrations lately, that I simply do not have the capacity
to write things for them.  However, most are self explanatory and deserve wider circulation, so here they are:


Latuff is right here about Turkey selling out:

And what is behind it:


Here is terrorism in Israel:


Home grown terrorism, pre-9/11:


This would solve Detroit's problems:


Don't forget Ukraine and its Nazis:

(Jailed for supporting Federation)

llustrations on the World


THE ABSURD TIMES


Many of you have been kind enough to send or point to so many illustrations lately, that I simply do not have the capacity
to write things for them.  However, most are self explanatory and deserve wider circulation, so here they are:


Latuff is right here about Turkey selling out:

And what is behind it:


Here is terrorism in Israel:


Home grown terrorism, pre-9/11:


This would solve Detroit's problems:


Don't forget Ukraine and its Nazis:

(Jailed for supporting Federation)

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Brexit, And Boris, and Trump, OH MY!


THE ABSURD TIMES








Brexit, and Boris, and Trump, OH MY

By

Czar Donic



            The UK has voted to exit the European Union.  This is bad for Briton, the EU, and capitalism in general and, hence, a good thing, although few see it that way.



            I asked a journalist in England, who had for a short time been an MP, and then decided he could accomplish more through journalism whether he though Boris Johnson looked like Donald Trump after being locked in a pizza parlor for three months.  At the time, he was hospitalized, so I said I could wait until he recovered.  His response what that he didn't have to wait, he agreed.  [You can get his podcast called "The Three Muckrakers" off the net.]  I should point out that someone sent me that poster (above) right after the response from Dennis.



            I understand that Boris started out as a comedian, but he obviously do not ven come up to Rodney Dangerfield status and so went into politics and became Mayor of London.  Many consider this the best joke of his career, until now.



            Upon hearing of England's decision to quit, Germany seems to have said, and I translate freely, using some of the words literally and adding a few, "Ve must make zis bloody! Ze must feel pain! Ve vill build U-Boats!" 



            After the voted, Google announced that the two most Googled terms from England were "What happens with leaving the EU?" and "What is the EU?"  Perhaps the greatest blow to England's prestige is that the people have lost the right to look at American voters as more stupid than they.



            For some reason, the Labour Party is splitting and some are calling for the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps the only sane politician in the entire fiasco.  Cameron, of course, will resign.



            I am told that both Johnson and Cameron attended Oxford.  If this is true, Oxford University now has a great deal to apologize for. 



            It has been awhile before someone thoughtful has commented on this situation.  Trump said it was good for golf.  One of its supporters said "Well, I was lying when I said it would mean 350 million pounds a week to the health service".



            However, below, we have a thoughtful analysis:



Britain remains in a widening crisis days after voters chose to leave the European Union. British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his resignation. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing a coup within his own party as more than a dozen members of his shadow cabinet have resigned or been sacked. Scotland has announced it will take any steps needed to stay inside the European Union, including possibly holding a second independence referendum. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to Brussels and London to discuss the political and economic upheaval caused by the Brexit vote. To make sense of what's happening, we speak to longtime British journalist Paul Mason, who has worked at the BBC and Channel 4. His new book is titled "Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future"




TRANSCRIPT


This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Britain remains in a widening crisis days after voters chose to leave the European Union in their Brexit vote. British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his resignation. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing a coup within his own party as more than a dozen members of his shadow cabinet have resigned or have been sacked. On Sunday, Hilary Benn was removed as the Labour Party shadow foreign secretary.

HILARY BENN: He's a good and decent man.

ANDREW MARR: So was it hard for you?

HILARY BENN: He's a good and decent man, but he is not a leader. And that is the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has rejected calls to step down as opposition leader, saying now is the time for the party to stand up for its values.

JEREMY CORBYN: Our policies on trade, economy and migration will have to change in light of the referendum vote. But that cannot be left to the likes of Johnson, Farage and Gove. Labour will fight to ensure that our agenda is at the heart of the negotiations over withdrawal from the European Union that lie ahead, including the freedom to shape our economy to work for all, maintain social and employment protections that benefit all, and that whoever leads the government is intensely held to account, to democratic account, throughout the whole process.

AMY GOODMAN: Scotland has announced it will take any steps needed to stay inside the European Union, including possibly holding a second independence referendum. On Sunday, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the country will do whatever it takes to remain in the EU. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland's deputy leader, Martin McGuinness, called Friday for a vote to unite the two sides of the Irish border.

Global stock markets have plummeted. More than $2 trillion was wiped off global equity markets on Friday in the biggest daily loss ever. Earlier today, the British pound hit a 31-year low. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to Brussels and London to discuss the political and economic upheaval caused by the Brexit vote.

To make sense of what's happening, we go now to London, where we're joined by longtime British economics journalist Paul Mason, who has worked at the BBC and Channel 4. His new book is titled Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future.

So, talk about the fallout from the Brexit vote, Paul, and also why this vote to leave the European Union ever even took place.

PAUL MASON: Well, the vote to leave the European Union took place because, repeatedly, 25 percent of British voters were, in fair elections—that is, the proportional representation system—were backing a party that wants to leave the European Union. And this impacted onto the Conservative Party, and it made it necessary for David Cameron to take a gamble of having a referendum to bury the issue for a generation, though he gambled and lost, because Cameron wanted to stay in the European Union. Fifty-two percent of British voters voted to leave. And as a result, Mr. Cameron, who's signaled his resignation but is not yet gone, will go down in history as the Conservative leader who, first of all, destroyed the European Union—I mean, we have left the major bloc in the world economy—and he's going to destroy the United Kingdom, as well, because, as you suggested in the introduction, Scotland will leave.

Now, the overwhelming issue behind this vote was migration. And what we had was, basically, not just the kind of people who might support Glenn Beck and kind of Donald Trump arguing that migration had gone too far, but, as it turns out, many people who are organic and core supporters of the Labour Party. The free migration from East Europe and South Europe into the United Kingdom has brought about 3 million people over the last 10 years. And in many small communities, they feel—the people who are already here, including many black and Asian people, just said, "It's too many." And there's no way of stopping it without leaving Europe. That was made very clear to them. This is what tipped the vote.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul, talk about who voted for leaving and who voted for staying. And also, the age—wasn't it true that—

PAUL MASON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —most young people voted for staying in the European Union?

PAUL MASON: Sure. Seventy-four percent of young people who voted voted to stay in the European Union. The only problem is, we think somewhere between 35 and 45 percent of that age group actually voted—much, much lower than any other age group. The dislocation from politics meant that the people for whom this is going to mean the most had the least say. Now, many of them on social media are really angry. They want a—there is great support among them—politically, unfortunately, quite naïve people—for the idea that Parliament can cancel it all or that we can have a petition that cancels it all. It's not going to be canceled. It's happened.

Now, demographically, it's—let me try and explain this to United States readers. If you—London and Scotland voted to remain. Northern Ireland, by a majority, voted to remain. What did all those places have in common? They had a narrative that explains why remaining in Europe, even despite one's criticisms of it, was a good idea. The Scots had a left cultural nationalism. London is a buzzing multicultural city. But Northern Ireland, it was, by and large, the Catholic population which voted to stay in, because they see staying in Europe as a link to Southern Ireland, which they—you know, some of them would ultimately like to join. Who voted to leave was small towns. Small towns were the bedrock, small towns where the private sector provides mainly low-skill, low-wage jobs and where there's not so much unemployment, but a high degree of sort of drabness and lack—you know, there's no cinemas, there's no stores other than the basic kind of low-rent stores. And small-town Britain just attributed this—basically, the victimhood of neoliberalism to, I think, the wrong—the wrong course. They saw migration as the key thing that had changed in their lives in the last 10 years, and they said, because some evidence points to it at the low end of the economic scale, "Migration is hitting our wages. It's causing stress to our public services. We can't rent. There's a big shortage of rent and accommodation." And when people like me said the real issue here is capitalism, the real issue here is neoliberalism, they would say, "Well, OK, but stopping migration still makes it better." And ultimately, we—the shock on the night was that some university towns, you know, some towns that are high public service employment, therefore quite high unionization, maybe 30 percent black or Asian in ethnic mix, and with a couple of universities, voted to leave—so, Nottingham, Newport in Wales, Sheffield, where I went to university. These are kind of places like Ann Arbor, Michigan, and they still voted to leave.

AMY GOODMAN: What's happening to Jeremy Corbyn right now?

PAUL MASON: Right now, behind me in the Parliament, there is a revolt of his own MPs. I think he won't be able to face that down. And what it will lead to is another leadership election. I think this is the last thing we need. I think it's driven by—there's quite a big middle-class hysteria since the vote. The people really are feeling, "My whole life was shaped around the European Union." European Union is kind of the soul of the democratic and social justice story here in Britain. And many of those MPs have just lost their nerve. They say they don't think Jeremy Corbyn can win the election. I think, for the right wing of the Labour Party, the neoliberal wing, their fear is he can win the election, because the Conservative government barely exists. There is actually no policy at the moment, behind me, from the Conservative government about what they're going to do about negotiations with Europe, about what they're going to do about the public finances. There is effectively no budget. There is effectively a chancellor who's on borrowed time. He's our finance minister.

So Corbyn should be in a strong position, but his own party really want to cause civil war, so we're going to have that. I think we'll have an election in the autumn. If Corbyn survives this leadership challenge, we have a chance of having the first radical-left government in the developed world, you know, from a big country. And I'm sure, absolutely sure, that these challenges to Corbyn are being coordinated by the political representatives of big business and, you know, TTIP and free trade. You know, that's who's behind it. Who they put up to challenge him, we'll find out by, say, in the next 24 hours.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about who could be the next prime minister?

PAUL MASON: Well, this Conservative MP, former mayor of London, Boris Johnson became the figurehead of the leave campaign. He's come out this morning with a very emollient position. So, the leave campaign was saying, "Let's walk way from Europe and just sign a free trade deal and go global." Today Johnson is saying, "Let's not walk away from Europe." He's implied they have to sign a single-market deal with Europe that would keep them within most of the European Union's regulations. So I think he's looking like the favorite. And then, from the remaining—remain side, there is a female minister called Theresa May, who is our justice minister right now, and I think she's going to be the one who puts up. But ultimately this is a shattered party. They just destroyed the thing that they exist—they're called the Conservative and Unionist party, meaning they favor the United Kingdom remaining together. And as result of what they did, we will leave Europe, and Scotland will leave the U.K.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the effect on Northern Ireland and Ireland, what's happening there, with Northern Ireland, like Scotland, saying no to Brexit.

PAUL MASON: Well, Northern Ireland didn't unanimously say no. The unionist community, the Protestant community, many of them said they wanted Brexit. And the main unionist party, the Democratic Unionist Party, which is the more hardline, sectarian Protestant party, really did campaign for leaving Europe. Now, why? Because the border—you know, you'll know, your listeners and readers will know, that the—and viewers will know, that the border between Northern and Southern Ireland has been the subject of two civil wars, a 20-year-long civil unrest and guerrilla warfare. Now, the point is that, with the European Union, that border was being eroded. Economically, you could cross it. And, you know, people could travel without really having to go through checkpoints. And those kind of developed a kind of understanding that, you know, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, despite years of warfare, probably have a common, shared destiny. Now, for the Catholic population, or the anti-unionist population, many of them now want a referendum to reunite with Ireland. At the moment, there's no party in Britain that's going to—ruling party that's going to deliver that. But it just has left, I mean, what we've been seeing over the weekend. And this is the interesting thing. Within the Protestant community, the kind of more—the kind of middle classes, they—every Protestant in Northern Ireland has the opportunity to apply for a Southern Irish passport. And amazingly, we've been seeing people who have spent their entire lives committed to maintaining Northern Ireland as a separate entity within that island applying for—applying for Southern Irish passports. In other words, we're seeing an amazing kind of almost cultural shift among the Northern Irish population towards thinking about what their future is, once Britain, as it will, leaves the European Union.

AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he did not blame the British people for voting to leave the European Union, but rather he blamed EU leaders.

PRIME MINISTER ALEXIS TSIPRAS: [translated] The chronic deficiencies of European leadership, the insistence on extremely unjust austerity policies and knee-jerk xenophobic reflexes and anti-immigration rhetoric have been feeding populism, chauvinism and nationalism for a long time. As much as the British people's decision troubles and saddens us, we must consider it a completely respectable decision, one that confirms there is a crisis of identity in Europe, a strategic crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: That's Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Paul Mason, your response?

PAUL MASON: Well, I think he's essentially right. What we should say, first of all, is that 52 percent people who voted to leave the EU, not all of them are racist and xenophobes. They had legitimate economic concerns, and many of them, like me, had severe criticisms of the European Union's action over Greece. This drove both a kind of left- and a right-wing response to Europe, which I tried to stop. I thought it would be a bad idea to leave now, but most people, 52 percent of people, said they want to leave. Now, Tsipras is right that this is essentially a crisis of European neoliberalism. We have governments in the center of Europe—Germany, France, Italy—committed to austerity, even as their own economy goes down the tubes. The Lisbon Treaty, which is the founding treaty of the European Union, mandates that they have to do the opposite of what, say, Janet Yellen has done or what Democratic treasury secretaries under Obama did, which is expand the economy. In a crisis, they're mandated to shrink the economy. This is killing the Europe—I mean, in other words, the European Union is killing the ideal of Europe. And Tsipras is right to worry about the right-wing backlash.

But even more urgent now for us is that what this is going to do—I mean, look, the market's response today, wiping $2 trillion off shares worldwide, is not about Britain. It's about what happens to the European Union. If we now see wave after wave of demands for other referendums and other countries beginning to leave—Greece should be the last one to leave, actually, but others might. And at that point, this 500 million-strong economic bloc, which is supposed to function and be one of the keystones, the capstone even, of the global world economic system, is disintegrating. And only that European Union stands behind the banking system. If the European Union breaks up into separate nations, then each of them will have to stand behind their own banking system, and their own banking system is already half-collapsed. That's what is frightening the markets.