@detroitmechworks  

The British-American coup that ended Australian independence

In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam […] dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price

So yes, if we had the same setup as Australia, the Queen could indeed dismiss Trump. Alas, if history is a guide, Her Majesty would almost certainly be doing so as a cat’s paw of the CIA, as a means to reverse the election result and install Clinton.

a prime minister.

Elections in the UK are different from the US. They're voting for the Parties, and it's expected that the Queen will appoint Corbyn as PM if Labour wins a majority of the House of Commons.

Although the Queen stays out of political interference for the most part, she CAN potentially dismiss the PM. (It happened in Australia in 1975...) Sometimes I think it would be really nice to have a Monarch failsafe to rely on when we get a complete charlie foxtrot like the last election...

Of course, this is all secondhand knowledge from an Anglophile still trying to get a handle on the Commonwealth's political structure.

@karl pearson May isn't Trump, she's Hill. Down to the logos and colors.

Bernie Sanders will be more than a footnote in history. I see him as a political John the Baptist. Hopefully, the Brits will associate May with Trump and reject this brand. Trump's disastrous visit to Europe probably didn't help May either.

@lotlizard
are an immigration magnet. How could they not be? Numerous YouTube videos of the situation at the Calais border crossing bear clear testimony to it.

Yet British and European politicians fail to recognize what's staring them straight in the face: The direct correlation between NATO's military involvement in MENA, and the overwhelming flood of refugees that have resulted from it. You can't have a liberal, humanistic domestic policy, and an aggressive, militaristic foreign policy at the same time.

The same people who are anti-Corbyn were strongly against Brexit and for remaining in the E.U. — namely, neoliberal politicians across the spectrum, including many sitting MPs in Corbyn’s own Labour party.

Brexit’s win proved a populist cause — one championing the interests of the forgotten, much-maligned deplorables ordinary small-town folk left behind by globalization — could win.

Expansive government benefit programs also become more imaginable with Brexit. Why? As unsavory as it sounds, in the back of people’s minds is the thought that generous government programs are an immigration magnet. Brexit offers some assurance that appropriate barriers can be erected to prevent public coffers from being bled dry by “them.”

@on the cusp

If yes, it should work. What doesn't work anymore is the image loader. JtC explained to me it is so full that its only function is that of archive.

It won't play. What do I need to do?

@Mark from Queens I find this encouraging because it shows how many people are ready for the correct shift in policy--and politics.

I find it discouraging because, inevitably, it's all centered on an individual politician. We all use politicians as shorthand for the policies we want. It's a bad habit, because, as Bernie has shown, an individual can be managed and controlled.

A free Bernie doing this would be great. Tom Perez Unity Tour Bernie who talks about how the Russia narrative is unquestionably true--not so great.

I'll take it, for the reason I said above, but it has the same problem his campaign did. I'm glad people support those ideas--using Bernie the person as shorthand for those ideas is an Achilles heel.

This one is from the Brighton Festival in England. Pity the beginning is cut off so we can't hear the rapturous applause he most definitely received, which is clear in the above video in Germany.

This Guardian piece had some news about the massive grassroots support Corbyn has, and how Bernie campaigners are helping them.

Sanders’ volunteers are also helping Momentum, the grassroots organisation that grew out of Corbyn’s two leadership contests. One of the first of them to arrive, Erika Uyterhoeven, flew in from Boston on Friday and spent the day helping with training, before heading out on Saturday to canvass in a north London marginal seat.

As one of the national organising directors for Sanders, Uyterhoeven, 30, was responsible for bringing in volunteers to help in the battleground states for the Democratic nomination. “When I started on the Bernie campaign, we were more than 20 points down nationally and we walked away with the largest margin of victory for the first primary in the nation [New Hampshire],” she said.

Momentum has 23,000 paid-up members and more than 100,000 online supporters, according to the organisation. Uyterhoeven said throwing its volunteers into the 100 constituencies that would decide the election could make a difference.

The organisation will use an app that enables campaigners to make calls from home rather than attend phone-banks. Uyterhoeven, however, said text messages were a more effective campaigning tool than phone calls or emails because surveys showed a higher proportion of texts were read.

The US Bernie Sanders campaigners lending Jeremy Corbyn a hand

Momentum, the leftwing pressure group, uses these offices as its headquarters, and this was the third in a series of training events it has held to coach Labour members on how to canvass voters.

The sessions are held with the help of organisers from the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US, who are providing assistance in the form of lessons and the introduction of new digital tools.

Parkin encouraged campaigners to mention their own personal story about what drew them to Labour. “Everyone’s got a personal story. We’ve all got ways of how these policies affect us … if you change two people’s minds, you’ve tripled your voting power. You can’t change everybody’s mind either, but you can plant a seed.”

Almost 190,000 people signed up as Labour members before and immediately after Corbyn’s first leadership bid, and the party membership currently stands at approximately 528,000.

Momentum alone has nearly 24,000 members and 200,000 supporters. Were all of them to get out and canvass voters, Labour could win the election, the group maintains.

Uyterhoeven agrees. Corbyn’s campaign, like Sanders’s, is a people-powered one, she said, and there is a lot more interest than the traditional system can handle.

“Every training we’ve held, over 100 people have showed up. When we launched the carpool website [trialled in the Stoke byelection], we had 20,000 unique visitors within 18 hours. Imagine trying to talk to all these people without the tools in place.”

Peer-to-peer texting, for example, was crucial in building the Sanders movement, and while email blasts from Momentum are opened by about 20–40% of those who receive them, peer-to-peer texting has nearly a 100% open rate and a reply rate of approximately 40%.

"There’s a slogan – ‘You can’t buy Bernie.’ He’s never been swayed by money or political influence. Corbyn is the same" says Bernie organizer, Erika Uyterhoeven.

Labour party’s future lies with Momentum, says Noam Chomsky

So many similarities between these genuine, self-effacing, honest self-proclaimed socialists.

I haven't been following this race as closely as I should, just checked around now for this stuff. But Corbyn to me has been one of the few, real bright spots internationally to get behind.

I really hope he pulls it out. Hard to see him not, with all the grassroots support knocking on doors, getting their friends out to vote, etc. Same kind of grassroots, door-knocking energy won Ireland's same-sex marriage campaign.

@gjohnsit @MrWebster I'm sure May is using the same consulting firms. Look at her.

I am pulling for Corbyn--lot good that will do. But also shaking my head at what the democratic party and media did to cheat and destroy Bernie's candidacy.

#3
The neoliberal Blairites used his lukewarm opposition to Brexit to launch their soft-coup against Corbyn.

Now it turns out that not only was Corbyn not the disaster for Labour the Blairites said he was, but because he didn't take a hardline position against Brexit means there is a whole section of UK society willing to vote for him that wouldn't have voted for a Blairite.

The biggest losers in this election could be the neoliberals.

Brexit

For the Liberal Democrats this was meant to be the comeback election. The party of the 48 percent of Remain voters who would flock to its leader Tim Farron to stop Brexit in a second referendum. Polls, however, suggest a return to the big time is further away than ever.

“The whole thing about having a second referendum is just not working for the Lib Dems at all,” one Labour candidate fearful of not regaining his seat a month ago but now “feeling good,” told POLITICO.

“They are having an absolute shocker. People just don’t want to rerun the whole thing. They think that decision was taken a year ago and want to talk about other things — schools, hospitals and all of that.”

Corbyn’s decision to order Labour MPs to vote for the triggering of Article 50 left the party free to focus on other issues during this election campaign instead of refighting the referendum campaign like the Lib Dems, the Labour candidate said. “In hindsight, it would’ve been disastrous for us. You have to hand that to Corbyn,” said the fierce critic.

Clive Lewis, who resigned from the shadow cabinet over Labour’s position on Brexit, and has openly supported the idea of a second referendum, said Brexit rarely came up on the doorstep in his Remain-voting constituency. “They [the Liberal Democrats] bet their house on a Brexit election and it didn’t materialize.”

@doh1304 Just like Hillary, though apparently this was A-OK to most voters over here. At least most people seemed far less shocked by it than I was:

(start at 4:31. If you haven't seen this, you really should click through. This is what would have made me reject Hillary Clinton even if I had been 100% for her up till this speech:)

May's, "What's the use of having a nuclear deterrent if you don't use it?" has anything to do with it? (Yes, she actually said it, in Questions)