Actually just read that Obama quote again:
“we obviously have a deep interest in making sure that one of the closest allies we will ever have remains a strong, robust, united and effective partner”
If the United States truly believes it has a deep interest in making sure that Scotland does not become independent, we can be quite certain that America will be pulling out all the stops to make sure that No wins. The language is the language of intelligence service tasking memoranda, which Obama is consciously or unconsciously reproducing. I have personally been involved in a great deal of intelligence service tasking. Intelligence service resources, both personnel and financial, are deployed to a greater or lesser extent to a task according to an assessment of the depth of national interest involved. If Obama has decided the US has a deep interest in the result of the Scottish independence campaign, we can expect hidden interference at Ukrainian levels.
I support the ‘Better vote Yes together’ lobby. If you can get that message out it’s a winner because it would mean the Yes vote got all the paid for publicity of ‘Better Together’. Just an idea.
Sorry if I’m repeating myself but I don’t have time to go searching through earlier posts: I want independence big-time, but can’t vote for it because I’m not a UK citizen. But I saw what happened when New Zealand in the 1980s tried to stop nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships/subs (esp. US ships/subs) from visiting their ports – not BASED but VISITING – the CIA helped to overthrow the newly elected Labour gov’t. So what do you think will happen in Scotland, which happens to ‘host’ THE most important nuclear submarine base in the N Atlantic? Strategically more important than any East Coast US base. Obama’s statement today is just the start – the next few months are going to be a nightmare of propaganda. I have friends who are pro-independence but not too engaged in the process; as the arguments get more strident, I’ll be amazed if they and many others stick to YES; the fear factor pounded on by the BBC and the mass media is just enormous.
I shouldn’t be too worried about the effect of any threats or fear campaigns.
If people believe that they are pursuing a course that is the right one for themselves, their families and their communities, they will have the courage to face the fear and defy the threats until what they want is achieved.
The shame of choosing to give in would be too much to contemplate.
Scottish independence would highlight the absurdity of P5 status for a truculent criminal pipsqueak like UK. With the civilized world chipping away at anachronistic UNSC inequities and the acknowledged corruption of the cascade effect, the US regime needs every pathetic shred of synthetic legitimacy. That makes the nominal sovereignty of its UK satellite seem vital. But the UK has no reason to exist if it can’t fulfil its duties to its peoples. It’s going to drop off NATO like a leper’s dick, with or without Scotland, followed by Italy and Greece. The NATO bloc is going the way of the Warsaw Pact. Good riddance.
Sorry Craig, but I think the fix is in. The language does appear particularly strong, and Obama, well he is who is. If the US don’t want an independent Scotland, matters will be arranged to make it so, if possible. Perhaps if the vote is clear – around the 60% mark – a fix will be impossible, mind.
I’m still not all that clear why Scotland would be of any importance to the US. They’ve got bases everywhere, and Scotland is small cold place, of no real strategic value. We do have oil, but that’s running out. I suppose any threat to remove Trident will worry the military-industrial complex, and history suggests any independence at all is frowned upon, perhaps that’s it. Who knows really? The US no longer appears to be acting rationally.
I’ve said before, I’m not that bothered about independence, but I am bothered about a good clean fight. Clearly, we won’t get that.
Things are really getting down and dirty now.
‘Alistair Darling has said that Alex Salmond is behaving like the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.
Mr Salmond last night demanded an apology from the No campaign leader following his outburst in an interview for political magazine the New Statesman.
Mr Darling picked up on the First Minister’s response to Ukip winning a Scottish seat in the recent European elections.’
/..
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/anger-after-darling-likens-salmond-to-kim-jong-il-1-3433590
June 5th 2014
I see that NATO are meeting in Wales in early September. Timing? It’s a wonder they didn’t choose Gleneagles.
https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/nato-summit-wales-cymru-2014/about
The venue for the NATO meeting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Manor_Resort
£200 a night!
and its owner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Matthews
What’s the UK’s advantage to the US? In addition to cannon fodder and an equipment budget which, though stretched, is at least not dependent on US aid*; Unsinkable aircraft carrier, Fylingdales, Menwith Hill, GCHQ and a choice of three, maybe four non-socialist** parties to implement the imperial will under the guise of freedom’ndemocracy. No need to learn Foreign to talk to ‘leader’. Good record of counterbalancing Germany in Europe. Staunch ally in
War On Individualismglobalised market economy, with mega-effective lobbying inputs for globalising marketeers. Big oil companies*** with worldwide production operations.Follow the money.
*unlike another noble ally with aspirant-nation problems
** or at least only slightly commie by US standards
***BP is very big in Azerbaijan, and we pay a special envoy to ensure its profitability there and in Kazakhstan. He was there this week-
http://www.azernews.az/azerbaijan/67689.html
(And if bloody Blair wasn’t, his plane was)
@Brendan
“I’m still not all that clear why Scotland would be of any importance to the US.”
Think Allende’s Chile – the danger of a good example, as John Pilger put it. Suppose UK continues with the neocon economic model, casting most of its people back into impoverished serfdom, but Scotland returns to the values of post war social democracy (or even further left)and makes it work. That might create a bit of restlessness south of the border – the fearful Domino Effect.
I think the neocon strategy will be to hope for a No vote in September. Their propaganda efforts to dissuade the Scots from this option range from hilarious to frankly abusive, and if they are having any effect it is opposite to the one intended. I think they to some extent understand this (or they don’t look at Twitter) and reason that black ops before the vote could actually produce a landslide Yes.
The time to be watchful is after a Yes vote when I’m sure attempts will be made to intervene in any way that could void the referendum result, hobble the ensuing independence negotiations, or create internal divisions in Scotland (e.g. that old chestnut, partitioning).
Uzbekistan is also a valued ally –
http://neweurasia.tv/en/index.php/events-and-opinions/965-nato-plants-flag-in-uzbekistan
We can be cast as the new Venezuela complete with our own Chavez , interesting that that part of the world contained the Darien scheme , the author of all our troubles.
The Herald Newspapers, Evening Times plus a myriad of local newspapers in the UK are owned by Newsquest in the UK which is part of the USA based media conglomerate Gannett.
Gannet own a number of TV franchises across the USA and the only pan US daily, USA today. USA today is to investigative journalism as Channel 5’s morning show is to intelligent television.
Gannet is bqsed in Langley, Virginia and their next door neighbour is, quite coincidentally the CIA Headquarters.
http://gannettgovernmentmedia.com/company/audience/
I’ve put a bit of flesh on the bones of my idea at 5 Jun, 2014 – 11:18 pm
http://johngossip.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/better-vote-yes-together.html
The western oligarchy here and in the US do not want any of the EU nibbled away of course.
TTIP Here we come.
The lies behind this transatlantic trade deal
Plans to create an EU-US single market will allow corporations to sue governments using secretive panels, bypassing courts and parliaments
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/02/transatlantic-free-trade-deal-regulation-by-lawyers-eu-us
George Monbiot above.
…one of the closest allies we will ever have…
Looks as if we’re about to do something nasty together -again. I really don’t like that future tense. Agree (from the depths of my bottomless ignorance of the CIA, but with a fair ear for nuance) that line was very carefully constructed.
“If Obama has decided the US has a deep interest in the result of the Scottish independence campaign, we can expect hidden interference at Ukrainian levels.”
So they – and we! – and Europe! – did interfere in the Ukraine then. Well, I’m glad that’s finally been cleared up. If you listen to the Beeb, it was all down to that nasty Mr. Putin! (He’s just like Hitler, you know – Hilary Clinton says.)
So anybody who is apt to dismiss the concept of karma can nonetheless see that we are set to reap what we have sown. Whatever the cause, whatever the rights and wrongs, it won’t look anything like as funny when it happens to us. One day, much sooner than people think, it will happen to the U.S.A. too. Separatism is quite a widespread phenomenon – in China (reasonably well-known), in India (with the exception of Kashmir, somewhat less well-known) and even in the U.S.A (less well-known still and never publicised).
For all kinds of reasons I am an unapologetic Unionist. Still, at least we are set to settle the matter in Britain on a vote – or more likely on a series of votes until they give the right answer. The pattern for the U.S.A. was set 150 years ago. Unless they are very lucky, separatist movements there, constitutional or otherwise, will be opposed with state violence.
So Cameron meet Putin in private during his Paris visit. One wonders what they have been talking about, because D day does not seem to have featured, despite the 20 million soviet citizens that died for all our freedom.
It was the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler at his last stand in Kursk, so why all this one sided bollox without considering all our allies effort?
what a bunch of self centred warmongers.
http://asiansecurityblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/remember-the-russians-on-d-day/
“The USSR had essentially stopped the Nazi drive by the fall of 1943. Stalingrad, the turning point, was over by February of 1943 (as was El Alamein, a British victory, in late 1942). The last major German offensive around Kursk in the summer of 1943 was halted. The enormous Soviet offensive of 1944 dwarfed anything the Western allies could put on the continent that same year. This event would have proceeded without the Allied invasion. To be sure, an unknown counterfactual is how the USSR would have fared if the Wehrmacht had not been forced to prepare for a western landing. Furthermore, allied bombing obviously took its toll. But nonetheless, the FDR administration was quite content to allow the Nazi and Soviet totalitarians to exhaust each other.”
Absolutely Craig, although I wouldn’t dwell exclusively on the Scots lives lost as a result of the US war machine’s drive for profits. From North Waziristan to Slavyansk, it is an indiscriminate killer.
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
That seems to be happening to MC Drone King and his PNAC fluffers.
” The USSR had essentially stopped the Nazi drive by the fall of 1943. Stalingrad, the turning point, was over by February of 1943 (as was El Alamein, a British victory, in late 1942). The last major German offensive around Kursk in the summer of 1943 was halted. The enormous Soviet offensive of 1944 dwarfed anything the Western allies could put on the continent that same year. This event would have proceeded without the Allied invasion. To be sure, an unknown counterfactual is how the USSR would have fared if the Wehrmacht had not been forced to prepare for a western landing. Furthermore, allied bombing obviously took its toll. ”
Stalin was constantly badgering Churchill and FDR to open a second front in europe, without Normandy and Italy, with the Germans able to concentrate all their efforts on the Eastern Front there’s no telling how much longer the war would’ve dragged on for and how many more millions would’ve died. If and when the Soviet forces had overcome the Nazis they’d have almost certainly pushed on to the Atlantic coast and we’d be living in a very different europe.
On top of the disruption caused by allied bombing a large part of the German war effort had to be diverted to home defence. Half of Germany’s artillery production was diverted to making anti-aircraft guns together with large amounts of ammunition and hundreds and thousands of men which could otherwise have been deployed to the east.
” the extra required to guarantee a win may be picked up from Conservatives/Labour/LibDem voters who want to abandon the NWO ship as 911 truthers,now that the false flag has been proved to have been a mini nuke event ”
So Scottish independence is going to rely on the tin-foil hat brigade. Good luck with that.
How can you be sure Obama isn’t working a bit of reverse psychology here? That it isn’t part of the Americans favourite game of divide and conquer.
Well said there Nevermind. 11.54am
So Cameron meet Putin in private during his Paris visit. One wonders what they have been talking about…
Very likely the recent moves by Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in the general direction of Moscow, as contrasted with our obliging shift towards Uzbekistan, came into it. We’re back to Great Game politics (and wars).
Slightly OT, but tangentially relevant: we’re going to have austerity as a permanent feature, judging by this –
http://www.communitiesandculture.org/funding/
1.The funding source is Research Councils UK, ie it’s in line with government policy…
2. God alone knows what ‘digital engagement’ is meant to mean. But someone really needs to get their finger out.
How can you be sure Obama isn’t working a bit of reverse psychology here? That it isn’t part of the Americans favourite game of divide and conquer.
Because we’re already conquered, that’s why.
” Because we’re already conquered, that’s why. ”
Oh well then it’s not going to happen; or if it does it’ll part of the Master Plan.
WW2 could not have been won without the USSR as Nevermind says. Cameron and Putin were the only two leaders who did not shake hands according to Russia Today. But apparently they shook hands afterwards.
911 truthers,now that the false flag has been proved to have been a mini nuke event (with that vast “pothole” of molten rock and instantly “rusted” vehicles)
Proved by whom and to whose satisfaction? Even for a (lol) truther, that’s monumental bollocks. What molten rock? The pics show exactly what you’d expect there, rockwise: glacially scoured Manhattan Schist (an absolutely bogstandard metamorphic rock, originally sediments, but deformed and recrystallised by heat and pressure around 450 million years ago) The formation extends into New Jersey. What’s the problem with “instantly” rusted vehicles? Once the paint’s been stripped – eg by heat and/or abrasive fallout – it takes no time flat for cars to rust.
Just to take this seriously for a second, with huge reluctance, if a nuclear explosion of any kind had been detonated at that location, there would have been an instant pulse of gamma rays and neutrons, both of them capable of penetrating thick walls. Many people away from the towers would have died. The towers would not have collapsed vertically, but
been blown radially from the blast centre. There would have been a visible (blinding) fireball at ground zero and a blast wave which would have collapsed everything standing within a large radius. The depth of the hole is not sufficient to have contained the explosion even of a small ‘tactical’ weapon below ground.
So try again. Try the builder’s moneysaving wheeze of failing to protect structural members with fire-resistant coatings (as the plans specified)
Yo ho ho. Tomorrow you’ll post the 4pm link, then you’ll libel the McCanns again. I think not, you cowardly pervert!
“WW2 could not have been won without the USSR as Nevermind says.”
As John Goss says.
_____________________
Probably right.
And some say that it would have been won a damn sight earlier in the absence of the German-Russia (Ribbentrop-Molotov) Treaty.
***************************
Following a little bit the commemorations at the Normandy beaches today, I am moved by the sacrifices of the Allied troops. It’s ironical to think that they died, indirectly of course, to allow people like Mary, Tony M, Ba’alZievel, Mike, Nevermind, Herbie, Mr Scorgie and so on to pour oit their daily tribute of hate against the UK, their own country.