[Opinion: With cruise ship lawsuit decided, it’s time for Juneau to reap the benefits]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\nThe natural course of history is toward greater integration, and the increasing size of the world’s population militates in favor of more collaboration and cooperation. The existential threats to the planet posed by climate change can only possibly be addressed, and the course to destruction averted, by setting aside parochial policies in favor of shared approaches to solve the crises facing us.<\/p>\n
The road to Brexit began with the U.K.’s Labour Party opposing membership in the 1970s and 1980s based on anti-capitalist sentiments. This was followed by a vocal minority of the Conservative Party carping and complaining about annoying EU bureaucracy (which absolutely exists) and xenophobic (often racist) resentment of an influx of people of other races and nationalities into the British Isles. Instead of fixing the structural problems in Brussels, the extreme left and right components of the pro-Brexit camp whined and criticized the status quo, while stoking fears of people of color and non-English speakers, until former Prime Minister David Cameron decided to put the question to a vote of the people in 2016. This resulted in a slim majority voting in favor of leaving the EU, prompting Mr. Cameron’s resignation.<\/p>\n
The results of the Brexit vote should not be taken as a true statement of the people because we now know that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin deployed the extensive machinery of his state security apparatus to manipulate public opinion to alter the outcome of the referendum. Cameron’s successor Theresa May nevertheless has haplessly tried to run a government that will follow the purported will of the British people, invoking Article 50 of the EU Charter in March of 2017 and starting a two-year countdown to Brexit this year.<\/p>\n
May has failed to negotiate terms for Brexit that are acceptable to a majority in Parliament, and thus the very real possibility exists that the U.K. with “crash out” of the EU at the end of March this year, which would likely throw Europe into recession, probably causing the rest of the world’s economy to follow.<\/p>\n
Brexit still need not happen. The U.K. can revoke its Article 50 declaration, and hold a second referendum. Just as the 2018 elections in the U.S. were conducted with heightened awareness of the malign intentions of Russia to harm our country, a second vote on Brexit would take place in this improved and more secure context. A better informed electorate, not being deliberately misled, would choose more wisely, vote to keep the EU whole, and continue making progress toward a prosperous and sustainable future.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Benjamin Brown is a lifelong Alaskan, and an attorney, who lives in Juneau. My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first vote should not be taken as a true statement of the people. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":42566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-42565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42565"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=42565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}