One of my oldest and dearest friends has gone public on his support for Scottish Independence. I am greatly cheered by this. More thoughts later.
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Just heard the first argument for Scottish Independence that gets anywhere near being convincing – George Galloway is against it, but reassured that Mr Goss is now on the opposite side of the debate.
More seriously can anyone thing of a case where encouraging more nationalism rather than dampening down has ever been a force for good.
So you and Andy finally made up? Congratulations!
You can always say sorry.
Hullo Jon…good to see ya still aroon…
i can see some of your points… but –
But I wonder, for folks here who believe the financial elite want to shift the UK towards an unfettered neoliberal economic model, would independence worsen austerity policy and widen the wealth gap in England? Indeed, if we think it might, would that be a reason to suggest that Scotland should remain in the union?
i have wondered about this…how would the Elite allow it ( independence ) But the thing is…it aint for the Criminal Elite to Decide…. Rather the people of Scotland… Or Should Be. Obviously.
Rd …Come on…is that not a daft Question….
Perhaps a better question would be –
” can anyone think of a case where encouraging more nationalism rather than dampening down has ever been a force for good…. DEPENDING OF COURSE ON SIZE OF A NATION / ISLAND…
But going back to your original Question…. whether it be a nation of just many hundreds… or just a few thousands…Yes i can think of a few examples.
I’m Scottish (insofar as i was labelled thus at birth and i had no input on that).
I’ve not really decided yet although,as a principle,i think all countries should have the right to self-determine thus i’m veeeeeering towards the Yes camp.
I have one major worry though:
If Scotland votes to seperate then for those who think Westminster has a big enough say presently it’s gonna get much worse after independence.
It’s just that Scotland will be overrun by shadowy London spook types(moreso than it is already) seriously trying to destabilise and control.
That worries me alot.
@Jon 26 Mar, 2014 – 10:00 pm
Hi Jon,
Nice to hear from you.
I have more time for Galloway than most on this blog. Sure I disagree with a lot of his ideas, but then again I’ve never found anybody that I’m in total agreement with. In fact I’ve never known any two people who totally agreed with each other.
The world as presented by the MSM is a lie, an illusion created and maintained by clever, subtle people with powerful tools. There are probably enough clues in the public domain for an intelligent person to piece together the truth, but distinguishing all those clues from the lies, misinformation and false histories is practically impossible. My own awakening began about 20 years ago, and I thought then I had a pretty good idea of how it all worked. But 19 years ago I saw through more of the illusion and realised that the 20-year old me had been pretty naive. Then 18 years ago, I found out how little the 19-year-old really understood. And every year since more scales have fallen from my eyes, exposing more of my beliefs as conditioning, more of my ‘facts’ as lies, more of my ‘knowledge as disinformation.’ That process continues to this day, and I have no reason to believe I’ve reached the end of the journey. The logical inference is that some of my beliefs are incorrect. [yes, really!]
All truthseekers are going through the same journey and even Galloway has to sift the wheat from the chaff. He undoubtedly has access to better sources of information than me, but he probably has less time and more people determinedly trying to mislead him. He and I and everybody else on this blog have spent our lives evolving our own world models to reconcile our own beliefs with optimum consistency …. and none of our models match. We’ve all taken a different path, have a different blend of beliefs, had a different set of lies slip past our guard. Nor is he, or I, or (sorry to have to say this) anyone else on this blog perfect. We all have our individual blend of hang-ups, vanities, weaknesses, blind-spots.
If we’re only going to respect someone who is omniscient and perfect, forget politics, try religion.
I disagree with him about Scottish Independence – he’s spent most of his life in politics, his perspective is from Westminster. His argument is bad psychology and misses the point when he tells Scots that they shouldn’t want an Edinburgh parliament because of the detrimental effect it will have on Westminster party politics. As to the knock-on effect on Scotland of an eternal Tory Government in the rest of the UK, I believe he is ignoring the requirement of the establishment to preserve the illusion of democracy in our land. I bet that no party will ever rule Westminster for more than two terms in my lifetime – just as it has always been. And anyway, hasn’t his doom and gloom prediction “of economic liberalism gone truly mad” been a reality for 2 decades?
So I disagree with some of his opinions, big deal, I still respect him hugely. He fights and sacrifices himself for causes which I believe in but don’t have the strength of character to do myself. He’s a Socialist, tireless supporter of Palestine, peace campaigner, and champion of the underdog. That’s good enough for me. He’s a far better man than his detractors on this blog. For all his talk, he walks the walk too.
George, Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.
Stunning Piece of Thought A Node
I will never forget his (GG) spanking of the Senate re Iraq sanctions…
but i wish he’d Drop the God willing stuff… just gives his detractors amo.
anyhoo…cheers for that A Node
Jon – The waves of damaging economy in any situation are a potent force and who can ignore this incestuous lure.
I wonder thinking in this way do we not buy into the greed, selfishness and ‘be happy’ black hole of the financially elite?
@ Herbie (26 Mar, 2014 – 4:46 pm)
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2014/march/25/meet-the-americans-who-put-together-the-coup-in-kiev.aspx
That is a great article on Ron Paul’s site, it bears reposting.
I do believe the movement for Scotland’s Independence is truly endogenous, all the dirty tricks and outside interference are coming from the establishment in support of the No camp. Tonight’s (Mis)Reporting Scotland had the BBC again, for the nth time, bigging-up predictable and disingenuous ‘sky will fall in’ economic scares and ‘warnings’ from the CBI. The details were fuzzy, it just seemed a made up story, an anti-independence screed fabricated on the spot as a time-filler before yet more effing football ‘news’ which predominates the whole program. There is a serious failure here to provide any actual real news, the ITV companies have been castigated for this, especially Scottish TV; in the case of Border TV there’s no need for any media study there, there might as well be no referendum taking place, its flagship ‘Lookaround’ program treats its viewers as apolitical cretins, with paint drying somewhere on the Isle of Man or a lost wheel-trim in Kendal, as exciting or controversial as it gets. The BBC however must somewhere in its charter have a stated duty to provide actual news. It wasn’t like this on STV in days of John Toye or of ‘What’s Your Problem’.
BBC Scotland tonight also downplaying shady looking forced evictions, making it seem as if the house demolitions for the Commonwealth Games have affected just one brave woman who’s portrayed as eccentric standing up to them, but whole streets and districts of once fine imposing red-sandstone tenements, that define Glasgow, are being demolished wholesale, thousands cleared from properties which have been purposefully unmaintained and let fall into rack and ruin. Hardly anyone is aware that in a city with acute housing shortages the vast number of ‘athletes village’ houses have been constructed with no kitchens, which after the games, would be better demolished themselves as no amount of retro-fitting can tack on kitchens to rabbit-hutch never designed to have any from the outset.
I think the BBC have over-reached in their dishonesty and half-truths, the people aren’t having it, not for a long time and never again, certainly the BBC will suffer, they are amongst the enemies within. As for fucking CBI -Boycotting these behemoths and dinosaurs must be the only way to hit back, shaming them won’t penetrate their thick skins. Big companies such as BAe are hard for consumer-based actions to target, firmly attached to the public funding teat through penetration of government itself and are effectively remote-control[l]ed arms of Westminster, we don’t many of us shop for aero-engines or frigates or fighter planes or find supporters amongst the foreign despots they arm to the hilt. The only low-hanging fruit might be BP, but the CBI has many smaller fish too. There doesn’t seem much cohesion of diaspora Scots that could have significant impact abroad, but memories are long and CBI members party to this attempted interference in Scottish politics might take note, there might be not long till the referendum, but there’s a long time, the whole future to consider after it.
http://www.businessforscotland.co.uk/business-for-scotland-response-to-cbi-release/
“Today’s release from the CBI in London is an entirely one-sided misrepresentation of the business and economic evidence concerning a vote for Scottish independence. Business for Scotland – which has a membership of over 1,600 Scottish businesspeople – considers that Scotland will be better off financially with the full economic powers of independence.”
Seems the CBI is reticent about publishing its membership list, I expect many are glad to remain in the shadows, you would think them an overtly public organisation but are a private company, conspiracy, cartel and price-fixers and engaged in such dirty tricks as employee and union activist blacklists, even with our woeful state broadcaster showing their interminably dull conferences of shiny-suited spivs, its hard to find there any respectability or relevance, the predominance of titled ‘Lords’, CBEs and other pretend titles doesn’t hide, it confirms that they’re really Crime Incorporated. Does anyone have a comprehensive list, it’s almost as shady as the mysterious Tory-supporting Midlands Industrial Council (MIC). I know Sainsburys are amongst them but probably most other UK-owned retailers are too.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), not the last but the first resort.
Good to see true Liberals still support “Home Rule”. It was after all a Liberal mantra for many years.
An interesting link on Liberals in Scotland
http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/8918-illiberal-non-democrats
A Node
Brilliant post. Thank you for that. I have made a similar journey. I’d put John Pilger alongside George Galloway.
I abhor his indy fathead venality.
“Seems the CBI is reticent about publishing its membership list,”
Not half as reticent as Salmond is about publishing the budget deficit forecast.
Please God. Not another Western warmonger to visit the Pope.
ZBC said Obomber hoped to pick up some shine from the contact as his ratings are very low. Wonder why that is!
Obama to meet Pope during Rome visit
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26761181
Not forgetting GG’s overland relief convoys to Gaza. Such energy and commitment.
I remember him being attacked on Sky News by one of the presenters, Anna Botting whom I actually like. Her attack was most likely scripted as he is always attacked by the corporate media. He gave as good as he got. Here –
George Galloway on Sky News with Anna Botting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMF1G-IgYj8
Wonderful.
Sky had another go later that year.
George Galloway Smashes Sky PART DOUX
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXPzMssNSis
His best ever performance at the US Senate Committee.
George Galloway BLISTERING ATTACK on the U.S. SENATE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4LDQixpCa8
The list is endless in the RH column on You Tube.
If anyone is the least bit interested. What a line up. Wasn’t the ginger in Simply Red Cherie’s fave?
‘BBC Question Time will broadcast from Brighton today.
It will be the first time the political panel show has been filmed in the city since 2012.
On the panel for the weekly debate programme will be Conservative MP for Putney Justine Greening, Labour MP Diane Abbott, Roger Helmer UKIP MEP for the East Midlands, pop singer and songwriter Mick Hucknall and chief executive of clothing retailer Next, Simon Wolfson.
It will be shown on BBC1 from 10.35pm.’
Brighton Argus
~~
A reminder who Hucknall is!
http://extremelisteningmode.com/2008/05/07/fantastic-news-mick-hucknalls-back/
Andy Myles continued
: “As a liberal, I believe that sovereignty starts with the people and is passed upwards. Devolution is, on the other hand, about sovereignty being passed downwards”
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
Tax havens need to be addressed and postal coded.
Let me second all the thanks A Node for thoughts on Galloway, and special thanks too for Tony M, for his Ron Paul link. I have argued, badly it would seem from the number of converts, that the so-called popular rising was a US initiative, with links to those organisations like Swedbank, NATO, Chatham House that openly sponsored Yatsenyuk. The Ron Paul article tells how a new media outlet played its part. Yesterday we learnt that 4 main Russian TV stations had been stopped from broadcasting in this new ‘democracy’.
“Revolution on Demand
Arriving in the Ukrainian capital on August 3, Pyatt almost immediately authorized a grant for an online television outlet called Hromadske.TV, which would prove essential to building the Euromaidan street demonstrations against Yanukovych. The grant was only $43,737, with an additional $4,796 by November 13. Just enough to buy the modest equipment the project needed.
Many of Hromadske’s journalists had worked in the past with American benefactors. Editor-in-chief Roman Skrypin was a frequent contributor to Washington’s Radio Free Europe / Radio Libertyand the US-funded Ukrayinska Pravda. In 2004, he had helped create Channel 5 television, which played a major role in the Orange Revolution that the US and its European allies masterminded in 2004.
Skrypin had already gotten $10,560 from George Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), which came as a recommendation to Pyatt. Sometime between December and the following April, IRF would give Hromadske another $19,183.
Hromadske’s biggest funding in that period came from the Embassy of the Netherlands, which gave a generous $95,168. As a departing US envoy to the Hague said in a secret cable that Wikileaks later made public, “Dutch pragmatism and our similar world-views make the Netherlands fertile ground for initiatives others in Europe might be reluctant, at least initially, to embrace.”
For Pyatt, the payoff came on November 21, when President Yanukovych pulled back from an Association Agreement with the European Union. Within hours Hromadske.TV went online and one of its journalists set the spark that brought Yanukovych down.”
And its not even April 1st yet!
“Male university students in North Korea are now required to get the same haircut as their leader Kim Jong-un, it is reported.”
“It seems that haircuts have been state-approved in North Korea for some time – until now people were reportedly only allowed to choose from 18 styles for women and 10 for men. Earlier, North Korea’s state TV launched a campaign against long hair, called “Let us trim our hair in accordance with the Socialist lifestyle”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26747649
“Let us trim our hair in accordance with the Socialist lifestyle”.
More cuts, eh? Remind you of someone else’s lifestyle? I wish the little bastard would stop calling what he does Socialism, though.
Re. Galloway’s Gaza relief convoy – yes a convoy arrived, and yes it probably did some good, and I’m not disputing that. But did it do as much good as it claimed, and how much of the cost was directly raised by Galloway’s organisation? The Charity Commission’s investigation continues…
http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/governance/news/content/16661/charity_commission_removes_galloway_spokesman_from_order_requiring_viva_palestina_to_file_accounts
This is a thorny topic,and care in steering between Galloway’s supporters and some poisonous Israeli-BICOM propaganda is strongly advised.
In terms of lasting advantage to the causes he supports (and I often support), I think GG is a bit of a liability, actually.
An Australian reporter here in the mould of John Pilger.
Mrs Weiss is lovely – “this land was promised to the Jewish nation by God.” No argument. She acknowledges that there was another people on the land – a difference from the PR statement of Golda Mwir who said “A land without people, for a people without land.” Always thought that slogan came from Bernays or similar.
What hateful people. Devils, and the countless world leaders who support them are devils too.
Stone Cold Justice Four Corners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz8_qzdDdM4#t=418
Published on 10 Feb 2014
The Israeli army is both respected and feared as a fighting force. But now the country’s military is facing a backlash at home and abroad for its treatment of children in the West Bank, occupied territory.
Coming up, a joint investigation by Four Corners and The Australian newspaper reveals evidence that shows the army is targeting Palestinian boys for arrest and detention. Reporter John Lyons travels to the West Bank to hear the story of children who claim they have been taken into custody, ruthlessly questioned and then allegedly forced to sign confessions before being taken to court for sentencing.
He meets Australian lawyer Gerard Horton, who’s trying to help the boys who are arrested, and talks to senior Israeli officials to examine what’s driving the army’s strategy.
The program focuses on the stories of three boys. In two cases the army came for the children in the middle of the night, before taking them to unknown locations where they are questioned. A mother of one of the boys described the scene.
~~~
‘This is a thorny topic,and care in steering between Galloway’s supporters and some poisonous Israeli-BICOM propaganda is strongly advised.’
So why raise it? Ammo for the t—-s. I agree there about BICOM. The CC has its chairman William Shawcross, a Zionist supporter. How about the CST trustees being given anonymity by the CC. Why?
John Goss: The Ron Paul link was Herbie’s originally. The sums from the ebay/paypal guy who blocked Wikileaks from Paypal and is backing Greenwald’s new news venture are greater. I think most of the estimated $5billion the US.gov pissed through various intermediaries has went on bribes.
Net nanny mode: Topic is drifting, we’re still on the first page.
“So why raise it?”
Why not? Don’t you like a discussion to represent differing viewpoints? Maybe “thorny” is what put you off? You think GG is cool, I think he’s a bit of a bags. Discuss.
And your question is one I have wanted to ask you, repeatedly, but usually managed to stop myself, as some wholly irrelevant interjection, usually C&P’d from the MSM, is yet again hurled into the middle of a discussion about something else. Sorry, but you asked.
All the parts the convoy visited, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, thereafter experienced western-backed Arab Springs installing extremists. Wheels within wheels.
I’ll clarify that:
While there will have been many with a sincere desire to help the trapped, starved people of Gaza/Palestine involved, the convoy will/may have been used by others for other purposes
Mud sticks. And a lot has been thrown at Galloway. By whom? Work it out.
“It’s this kind of bigoted and narrow-minded outlook that gives the yes campaign such a bad name.”
It’s this kind of ignorant and superficial thinking that gives the liberal establishment a bad name.
No smoke without fire. And I smell burning…
Picture, if youse will, a Tory MP being paid regularly by a PR firm:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10218/george_galloway/bradford_west
A Tory MP with this voting record –
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10218/george_galloway/bradford_west
And a Tory MP with this record (scroll down – no. 622) of responding to constituents’ letters.
Imagine what you would say about such a Tory MP. Or I can do that for you if you have trouble with that.