Obama’s
threat that “is not a threat”
The
Telegraph: "Why
should we take advice from a president who has surrendered the world
to chaos?"
Seemorerocks
Jonathon Freedman of the Guardian (should I refrain from calling him zionist presstitute" ?) has come out with a conspicuous opnion piece:
"The
US president destroyed one of the Vote Leave campaign’s core
arguments, ending a week that may define the referendum debate"No
wonder they were desperate that he keep his mouth shut. At his podium
in Downing Street Barack Obama flattered his hosts, paid lip service
to the notion that the referendum on British membership of the
European Union on 23 June is a matter for the British people – and
then calmly ripped apart the case for Brexit."
Elsewhere the Guardian opines,“Barack Obama used his farewell trip to the UK as president to make the economic and security arguments for membership
Well, have a look at this:
If Obomber's public statement is an argument then so too it is when the Godfather "makes an offer that cannot be refused"
For those who weren't brought up on the Godfather like me:
The
Godfather chief was capable of making a pretty good “argument”
Let's first just get the facts from an outside source (RT)
‘Back of free trade queue’: Brits slam Obama for ‘threats’ over Brexit
US
President Barack Obama speaks during a press conference at the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office in central London, Britain April, 22,
2016. © Andy Rain / Reuters
The
British public has been vocal in venting its anger over visiting US
President Barack Obama’s remarks warning that if the UK votes to
leave the EU, it would be sent to the “back of the queue” as far
as trade deals with Washington were concerned.
Obama
made the comments while speaking at a joint briefing in London
alongside UK Prime Minister David Cameron after their Friday meeting
at 10 Downing Street. The US leader is in the British capital for a
three-day visit coinciding with Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday.
“I
don’t think the EU moderates UK influence in the world – it
magnifies it,” he dded.
Obama’s
veiled threat comes amid talks over the controversial Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal that would create a
US-EU free trade zone. Recent surveys have
revealed a sharp increase in the number of Europeans who believe the
pact would have a negative impact on the EU’s economy and consumer
protections.
Cameron
responded to Obama’s comments by calling him “a
very good friend” who
the UK could rely upon for “sage
advice.”
The
British PM, a known opponent of Brexit, also said that “Britain’s
membership of the EU gives us a powerful tool to deliver on the
prosperity and security that our people need.” Praising
the current state of US-UK relations, he stressed that “when
it comes to the special relationship between our two countries,
there’s no greater enthusiast than me,” while
referring to Obama as “my
friend Barack.”
David Cameron
I've spent the afternoon in talks with @BarackObama. The special relationship is as strong as ever.
The
British PM also talked about security issues, hailing the Iranian
nuclear deal, fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in
Syria and Iraq, as well as imposing sanctions on Russia, as major
US-UK achievements. .....[ ]
.....
.....
I've left out the rest of the article because I think that the British media can speak for itself
It would be an understatement to say that a large part of the British media (outside liberal apologists like the Guardian) is absolutely (and quite justifiably) up in arms.
Let' s just have a small look:
The Daily Mail
The Daily Mail
Don’t you dare leave the EU, warns Obama: Fury as President threatens British people with ‘going to back of the queue' for trade with America after Brexit
The Express
Boris Johnson: UK and America can be better friends than ever Mr Obama... if we LEAVE the EU
And finally from the paper that is NOT a tabloid but as close as you'd get to the (Eurosceptic) mouthpiece of the Tory Party, the Telegraph.
"The iron fist of a message inside that velvet glove of carefully recited claptrap about the special relationship is that Obama’s America wants us to stay in the conveniently monolithic, homogeneous trading bloc with which it can most easily do business"
"The iron fist of a message inside that velvet glove of carefully recited claptrap about the special relationship is that Obama’s America wants us to stay in the conveniently monolithic, homogeneous trading bloc with which it can most easily do business"
This article is worth quoting in full.
Could
this bizarre intervention have been more cynical or wilfully
misinformed? In the end, it seemed to come down to trade advantages –
to what might once, back in the day, have been called the global
interests of US corporate capitalism. Mr Obama even made specific
reference in his article in Friday’s Daily Telegraph to the
importance of current negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would reduce barriers to US
business interests in the European Union.
On
the same day, 38 Degrees – a front group for the more proactive
elements in the public sector unions – took out full-page newspaper
adverts campaigning against the adoption of TTIP (“…no trade deal
should give corporations more power than people”). If the Labour
Left were not in such disingenuous disarray, they could be making a
meal of this. In any event, unnamed US trade officials were being
ominously quoted as saying that, in the event of Brexit, the UK would
come very low on America’s list of priorities for new trade
agreements.
Then
Mr Obama himself abandoned such subtlety in his joint press
conference with the Prime Minister. Should the UK go its own way, he
said, there would be no trade agreement with the US any time soon.
Maybe some time down the line, as he put it, we could work something
out. But the UK would be “in the back of the queue” because the
US would be dealing with the big boys. So this isn’t a warning:
it’s a threat. Stay in the EU and make way for American
competitors, or else.
“Our
focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a
trade agreement done. The UK is going to be in the back of the
queue.”
----Barack
Obama
The
iron fist of a message inside that velvet glove of carefully recited
claptrap about the special relationship is that Obama’s America
wants us to stay in the conveniently monolithic, homogeneous trading
bloc with which it can most easily do business. In other words, the
tentative US economic recovery needs us to sacrifice our country’s
judicial independence and the primacy of our parliamentary system,
just as the US once sacrificed so many of its young military officers
for our survival. That’s the deal.
But
there is no indication, either in Mr Obama’s words or his actual
foreign policy, that America would now be prepared to make another
such sacrifice for its allies. The withdrawal of the US from world
leadership – from being what Mr Obama’s people refer to
disparagingly as “the world’s policeman” – has been one of
the most dramatic developments on the international stage of the past
eight years.
Into
the vacuum left by that withdrawal has stepped (or strode) Vladimir
Putin, who can’t believe his luck. At just the moment when Russian
national pride desperately needed a renaissance after the mortifying
collapse of the Soviet Union and the infuriating rise of all those
Lilliputian upstarts in the old Eastern Bloc, along comes a US
president who announces in no uncertain terms that America wants to
pull out of the global power game. Make no mistake, this began long
before the funk over removing Assad in Syria – which Mr Obama has
outrageously blamed on David Cameron’s failure to win a
parliamentary vote – or the “leading from behind” fiasco in
Libya, which Mr Obama also blames on Mr Cameron for having the
audacity to think that the US might have been prepared to lead from
the front. No, the Obama isolationist doctrine was there from the
start: deliberate and consciously chosen.
It
began in his first term as president when he visited Eastern Europe
and gave a series of speeches to make the point: the countries that
had once required America’s protection from a Soviet superpower
were now emerging democracies and fledgling free-market success
stories. They could take care of themselves militarily in future. The
interceptor missiles that had been scheduled to arrive in Poland,
courtesy of the US, would not be delivered. Although they had never
been intended as any sort of threat against Moscow, Obama still
allowed this move to be seen as part of his “reset” of relations
with post-Soviet Russia.
At
home, this was presented as a refusal to pay forever for the
protection of a Europe that was no longer threatened by aggressive
Communism. The disproportionate share of the Nato budget that the US
had been stumping up could be better spent on the kind of welfare and
health provision that Europeans took for granted.
All
this suited Putin’s self-image as a global strongman perfectly.
America and the West had definitively won the Cold War, and were now
apparently unconcerned that they might lose the peace. Putin saw
clearly that no one would stand in his way when he launched his
irredentist assault on eastern Ukraine. Not only did he annex Crimea
but the forces he had unleashed shot a civilian airliner out of the
sky – which might have been seen as a contemporary sinking of the
Lusitania. He went from triumph to triumph, playing hard-faced poker
against Washington’s half-hearted attempt at chess. In the Middle
East, Obama’s White House scarcely shows any interest now that it
is no longer dependent on the region for oil. It can only be roused
to do what is minimally required to keep Americans safe from Isil
terrorism.
But
permitting Russia’s proxy, Assad, to remain in place in Syria, as
American inaction does, drives every dissident in the region into the
arms of anti-Western extremism, and puts American (and European)
security at the mercy of a Russia-Syria alliance. Not to mention the
salient fact that Assad’s genocidal tyranny fuelled the migrant
rush to the European borders. Was Mr Obama aware of that great
success story of EU collaboration, in which an emergency was turned
into an international tragedy by bureaucratic incompetence and a
complete collapse of cooperative goodwill? The abandonment of border
checks inside the EU, combined with the unilateral decision by
Germany to encourage mass entry, created a living hell in which
organised people-trafficking on an industrial scale became a fixture
of life.
When
this referendum began, what seems an eternity ago, I was unsure how I
would vote. Membership of the EU on a day-to-day basis is pretty much
all gain for me, because I am an affluent professional who benefits
from the supply of inexpensive domestic help, willing tradesmen and
convenient travel that the EU provides. Unlike those whose wages are
being undercut by cheap imported labour, or who cannot afford to buy
their own homes because of the pressure on housing from unlimited
immigration, I have lost nothing.
But
I believe in democratic legitimacy, which means paying attention to
people who do not have my advantages. So should I go for
self-interest, or for political principle? Watching this campaign,
with its unscrupulous attempts to bully and terrorise a brave and
conscientious electorate, has made up my mind. I shall be voting for
Leave.
I will leave you with this from Zero Hedge
One Day After Threatening The UK, Obama Plays Golf With David Cameron
Following
his anti-Brexit Op-Ed which sparked much controversy and confusion as
to just why the US president was interfering with yet another
domestic issue, Obama held a press conference with UK PM David
Cameron in which he in no uncertain terms threatened the UK with
trade retaliation if the country were to exit the EU.
He
said that "it's fair to say that maybe some point down the line
there might be a UK-US trade agreement but that's not going to happen
anytime soon because our focus is negotiating with a big bloc, the
European Union, to get a trade agreement done. And
the UK is going to be in the back of the queue,
not because we don't have a special relationship but because given
the heavy lift on any trade agreement, us having access to a big
market with a lot of countries rather than trying to do piecemeal
trade agreements is hugely efficient."
Friday's
full press conference can be watched below:
Incidentally, as
reported earlier, thousands
of Germans are protesting precisely the kind of "big trade deal"
that Obama wants to entice the UK with,
as support for the TTIP there has plunged from 55% in 2014 to only
17%. Germany is not alone: support for Obama's "fair trade"
deal has also tumbled in the US, with those supporting it tumbling
from 53% to just 18%.
While
it is unclear if Obama's latest diplomatic snafu has hurt the
anti-Brexit camp, what is clear is what Obama did the day after. He
played golf with David Cameron, perhaps a hint of the "benefits"
that any future premier will be deprived of should the democratic UK
vote be against remaining in Europe.
It
was Obama's 286th round of golf in office, but the
first time that Obama has golfed during an international
trip, according
to CBS News' Mark Knoller.
As
Reuters reports, Obama played a round of golf with British Prime
Minister David Cameron at an exclusive course north of London on
Saturday, making time in a busy overseas travel schedule for his
favorite weekend pastime. Obama's
motorcade raced 20 miles (32 km) to The Grove after a meeting with
the leader of Britain's opposition Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn.
"The game at The Grove, a resort that is due to host the British Masters tournament later this year, is a sign of the close personal relationship between the two leaders: Obama rarely mixes business with his preferred way to take a break, and almost always golfs with friends and staff."
Reporters
were allowed to watch as Obama, ignoring damp and chilly weather,
emerged from the long grass near a duck pond.
"Ooooh!"
Obama groaned as he narrowly missed what appeared to be a 12-foot
shot.
"Did
you see that?" he shouted to reporters. "Robbed!"
There
was no official word on the score.
Saturday
is golf day for Obama, who usually plays on Andrews Air Force Base,
near Washington.
He
also plays in places where he travels, such as the stately Olympic
club in San Francisco when he was in the Pacific coast city earlier
this month.
He
golfs most days of his summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard, and
during the winter holidays in Hawaii, where he has played against the
prime ministers of Malaysia and New Zealand.
He
has played Tiger Woods, and occasionally golfs with other sports
stars, but rarely against other politicians. While on holiday in
2014, he delivered a somber statement on the murder of an American
journalist by Islamic State militants - and then proceeded directly
to a golf course to play 18 holes.
* *
*
On
Sunday, Obama heads to Hanover, Germany for talks with Chancellor
Angela Merkel, where he will pitch the TTIP, his legacy "free
trade deal", precisely the kind of deal that he is threatening
the UK with. The reason: support for said mega trade deal in Germany
has cratered.
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