{"id":43349,"date":"2019-01-31T06:52:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T11:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43349"},"modified":"2019-01-31T06:52:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T11:52:36","slug":"flash-balls-pitchforks-and-a-backstop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43349","title":{"rendered":"Flash-Balls, Pitchforks And A Backstop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Flash-Balls, Pitchforks And A Backstop<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Jan van Eyck\u00a0\u00a0Madonna and Child at the Fountain\u00a0<\/strong>1439 (height: 7.4\u201c, 19 cm)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s educational and even somewhat entertaining to observe the role of the western press in the ongoing erosion and demise of democracy in Europe. But while it\u2019s entertaining, it also means their readers and viewers don\u2019t get informed on what is actually happening. The media paints a picture that pleases the political world. And it it doesn\u2019t please politicians to lift a veil here and there, too bad for the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shakespearian comedy that was performed last night in the UK House of Commons is a lovely case in point. Basically, MPs voted whether or not to allow PM Theresa May to change the Brexit deal she had told them about a hundred times couldn\u2019t possibly be changed. Brexit has turned full-blown Groucho by now: \u201cThose are my principles, and if you don\u2019t like them\u2026 well, I have others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was exactly two weeks ago last night that lawmakers voted by a historic 432 to 202 count to reject May\u2019s Brexit deal. And now they voted to a) let her change it and b) go talk to the EU about changing it though Brussels has said as often as May herself that it cannot be changed. Remember: the UK is set to leave the EU 59 days from now, and counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like in a game of chess that has long turned into a stalemate or threefold repetition<\/strong><\/a>situation: you stop playing. No such luck in British politics. The only way the parliament could find \u2018unity\u2019 (in a narrow vote) was to agree to ditch the Irish backstop that is an integral part of why the EU accepted May\u2019s deal to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flash-Balls, Pitchforks And A Backstop It\u2019s educational and even somewhat entertaining to observe the role of the western press in the ongoing erosion and demise of democracy in Europe. But while it\u2019s entertaining, it also means their readers and viewers don\u2019t get informed on what is actually happening. The media paints a picture that pleases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[5582,95,14087,181,204,279,24237,24239,24238,18001,20639,18175,13924,5177],"class_list":["post-43349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-brexit","tag-brussels","tag-corbyn","tag-crisis","tag-democracy","tag-eu","tag-flash-ball","tag-groucho","tag-guillotines","tag-macron","tag-may","tag-pitchforks","tag-raul-ilargi-meijer","tag-the-automatic-earth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43350,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43349\/revisions\/43350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}