Sounds more romantic than the Finland Station!
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Peacewisher I’m sorry it’s late. I will try and address issues tomorrow.
Node:
We all cheered for plucky Iceland when that happened, but their economy is very small. That episode is no more than a tiny footnote in the grand overarching story of the decline of western democracy.
A small state, no matter how decent its government, will always be impotent in the face of the unaccountable forces of 21st century globalised capitalism, and its people will be robbed and held to ransom no matter who they elect to lead them.
A large, united, powerful state in left-wing hands has far more potential to resist, and to protect its citizens from those forces.
It is a very tall order to build such a state, but while we remain united there is hope that we can bring that about in Britain.
Scottish secession would end that hope, for all of us on this island.
Divided we fall.
Vote ‘No’.
Look at Gutter putting on his cloth cap to pull off a leftist act. No, dipshit, the aim is not to reform your degenerate British kleptocracy, the aim is to dismember it. If you believed what you’re saying, gutter – and you evidently don’t because you’re transparently full of shit, talking out of six sides of your mouth – then you would continue to dismantle the City of London’s feudal domaine from wherever it is that you live. But you’re a sockpuppet of inbred British pedo-toffs, preaching boilerplate US hope-and-change.
The Scottish people have no obligation to reform your fucked-up illegitimate regime. It has forfeited its sovereignty by holding rights and rule of law in contempt. Just leave it or dissolve it or shut up.
@Ben: Always good to read your comments. Thanks for keeping it going here, you put a lot of effort into it.
Hey, thanks for exposing the myth that ‘No’ campaigners are facing abuse and intimidation from you separatists.
H.M. the Syphilitic Whore should be so lucky. Ben is good-hearted and well-meaning and has no experience knocking over enemy regimes.
You’re intimidated? What kind of whining sissy are you? Britons didn’t use to be afraid to mix it up. All this kissing US ass has emasculated you.
What on Earth are you on about?
Large, united, powerful. Come on, we’re talking about the UK. George Soros crushed you. Shia tribesmen kicked your arses out of Basra. You haven’t been united or powerful since India kicked you out. The Scottish are down-to-earth people, you’ll just make them laugh with your grandiose sentimentality.
Glen Second that… Cheers Ben.
I spent a long time trying to re-locate my Hero girl (Lindsay ) video…after the nasty bastards Banned it…not havin much luck
But i thank this ex IDF guy for speaking out
Former. IDF Soldier Calls on Americans to Stand Up to Israel War Crimes | Interview with Eran Efrati – Thank you Eran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u59ii5znkLI
G,S:
I think you missed the word ‘potential’.
Yes, the UK’s been a craven US poodle lately, but we weren’t when we stood alone against Hitler, nor when we built the NHS.
To tear ourselves apart now is to abandon hope.
A wee state is a weak state.
Unity is strength.
Vote ‘No’.
Whatever the outcome of the referendum, Scotland and the rest of the UK will soon find new cause to unite in a common battle for the preservation of their respective cultures.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sleepwalking-toward-armageddon
Would you buy a used car from any one of these?
Would you believe any promise they made in the light of their actions so far?
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77608000/jpg/_77608509_leaders.jpg
‘The Vow
Three leaders sign promise to Scotland’
The Daily Record.
Dave moaned with sadness, as sugary at times as a foreman’s cuppa: QUENTIN LETTS watches a passionate PM contemplating his own fate
‘Breathy, beseeching, David Cameron made a thespy, creaky-voiced plea in Aberdeen late on Monday afternoon.
Please don’t lose faith,’ he implored, looking down the barrel of the TV camera in front of him, taking his case beyond the audience in the hall into millions of living rooms as Middle Scotland sat down to tea.
Don’t lose faith? Did that sound desperate or heartfelt? Did it sound like the last words of a despairing lover? ‘
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2757057/Dave-moaned-sadness-sugary-times-foreman-s-cuppa-QUENTIN-LETTS-watches-passionate-PM-contemplating-fate.html
Funny stuff.
Some poison from the doctor who should know better. He should stick to doing what he’s paid for and stop the privatising of OUR NHS.
A ‘Hadrian’s Wall of health’: Medical director of NHS England warns of risks to cross-border healthcare if voters vote ‘yes’
Professor Sir Bruce Keogh has warned of the risks to cross-border healthcare should Scotland vote for independence on Thursday, with 44,000 Scottish patients treated in England last year alone.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2757239/A-Hadrian-s-Wall-health-Medical-director-NHS-England-warns-risks-cross-border-healthcare-voters-say-yes.html
~~~
Bitter together even roped in Geldof and Izzard yesterday. Enough to turn the milk.
Bah ! Mandela had to spend 20 years in solitary to gain freedom. Begin had to kill 46 at the King David Hotel in 1946. The IRA had to bomb Thatcher at Brighton.The Americans had to have a Boston Tea Party.Etc,etc. But all the Scots have to do is use a soft graphite pencil to mark the YES box on Thursday and they will have regained their land and independence and Mary Queen of Scots,William Wallace and Rabie Burns can stop turning in their graves. Or be forever referred to as bravepensioners instead of bravehearts !
Its baffling how can English NHS/HMRC/Pension/etc gold sway the latter day parcel of rogues, when they have £6 TRILLION of their OWN black gold right under their own N Sea. For a population of only 5 million, it must be said Salmond has not been forceful enough to lay the numbers on the table?!! Or perhaps ha has been quietly confident all the time.
Peacewisher, it got a bit late last night. Of course Moazzam Begg is of interest to the secret services and has been for a long time. Despite having evidence of secret services involvement in torture he has cooperated with them over Syria.
“A few months later, in October 2012, I was called by an MI5 officer who said they wanted to talk to me about my views on the situation in Syria after having read my article. I told them that they must be aware that I was investigating several leads regarding British and American complicity in rendition and torture in Syria. They called back after consulting with their lawyers and said they understood that and would still like to meet. I agreed to speak to them and meet at a hotel in East London. Both MI5 and me had our lawyers present.
MI5 was concerned about the possibility of Britons in Syria being radicalised and returning to pose a potential threat to national security. I told them that Britain had nothing to worry about, especially since British foreign policy, at the time, seemed in favour of the rebels. At the end of the meeting I was assured by MI5 that my proposed return to Syria to continue my work would not be hindered, and it wasn’t.”
http://www.cageprisoners.com/our-work/opinion-editorial/item/7453-the-real-reason-behind-the-confiscation-of-my-passport
That was when the UK was trying to depose Assad. But now he is our friend again and the government whorehouse is pumping out all kinds of misinformation through its Big Breasted Courtesan nobody knows what to believe any more. But my advice to all Muslims, all young people in fact, is not to fight for any country or perceived ideal.
Yes, the UK’s been a craven US poodle lately, but we weren’t when we stood alone against Hitler, nor when we built the NHS. To tear ourselves apart now is to abandon hope.
How long should we have remained hopeful, then?
And it’s not just the US we’ve been belly-up for, for decades. Our essential services have been sold to French and Chinese concerns. Our once leading-edge rail system is an expensive shambles (try telling the operators scrambling for taxpayer subsidies that ‘unity is strength, eh?’. The NHS, with the able cooperation of our bribable leaders has been turned into an functionally inefficient cash cow for US ‘health providers’ – another term for the Orwell lexicon – and the entire economy is arranged for the sole benefit of semicriminal banks and obscure moneygrubbers hiding in tax havens. Managers proliferate and prosper, workers watch their income falling year by year. Inequality is at an all- time record. Don’t even mention food banks for the forgotten or the insane price of housing. And we’re broke….face it. Thank you the banks, thank you the wars-which-create-more wars, and thank you the fiscal incompetence of our leaders, who, even when they can produce a single economics degree among their number, ignore him.
I suppose you might remain hopeful if any major pan-UK political grouping showed the faintest sign of recognising the fundamental problems (service industries and finance don’t create real wealth but just look as if they do: half of any bill presented to the taxpayer consists of gravy for a middleman, etc…) and doing anything about them. All, however, are funded and infiltrated by indistinguishable lobbyists promoting their parasitical political economy.
Need I refer to the wonderful ‘flexible labour market’ in the UK? Cowed, though skilled workers on zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships, the desperate ‘self-employed’ and the harassed, increasingly longterm unemployed as a reserve pool to undercut anyone suggesting a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work?
And Scotland’s been getting the shitty end of this stick for longer than most. Devolution has been tried, and found to bring improvements. More devolution, without separation, was rejected as an option by UK plc…tough shit, chaps, that was your choice.
A bit late to bring hope into it, I’d say.
Vote Yes.
Might alert the English to their hopeless condition, too.
“Bah ! Mandela had to spend 20 years in solitary to gain freedom. Begin had to kill 46 at the King David Hotel in 1946. The IRA had to bomb Thatcher at Brighton.The Americans had to have a Boston Tea Party.Etc,etc. ”
Mandela fought against division, apartheid, two peoples in one country each having their own schools, own buses, own cinemas. Mandela, in his later years at least fought for unity. Begin fought for division, he wanted to create two countries where once there was one, he used hatred and racism to achieve it but what he achieved was not freedom. The IRA killed for division they used hatred and sectarianism they didn’t achieve anything, the Unionist and the Republicans discarded their differences and joined together for the good of the people of Northern Ireland, it was Unionists and Republicans working together brought freedom divisions had only brought misery.
The Americans you talk of, is that the United States of America? Or the Divided States of America?
The IRA killed for division…
My impression was that they were killing for Irish unity. It was the Prods who were killing for division. But let it pass…
“And when is his case due to be heard?”
4th October if my memory serves. That means eight months in prison to keep him quiet. This is the free country we live in Peacewisher.
@John: Assad most definitely isn’t our friend again, and I don’t think he was at the time Moazzam was arrested. So that doesn’t explain it. There may have been a concern that, although they were on the same side (wanting to get rid of Assad) he knew too much and might spoil whatever was being cooked up in Syria. worse still, ISIS might have used underhand tactics to recruit him or Assad’s people would have kidnapped him and used him as a hostage.
They wouldn’t have decided to take/keep him in custody without plenty of thought. I can’t remember BBC reporting at the time… how were they portraying him… as peace activist or ex-Guantanamo Bay?
4th October! That’s not long. Again, surprising Stop the War coalition not making a fuss… maybe because they are pro-Assad.
@Ba’al. I’m just about old enough to remember the reason for the Northern Ireland civil war. It was Catholics not getting a fair crack of the whip. Remember Bernadette Delvin? And it was Edward Heath, I think, who decided to go for “internment”. What were NI Catholics expected to do, meekly submit?
Similarly earlier this year with the Donbass people. You’d think right-wing politicians would know better by now than to subjugate a “tightly-knit” people as a political tactic…
Peacewisher – I was simply questioning Fred’s assertion. Let’s put it the other way, and more trenchantly – the Unionists were fighting to preserve a divided Ireland.
It all depends on your perspective, but I really don’t believe that the IRA wasn’t ultimately looking for a united Ireland.
The provisional date for Moazzam Begg’s trial at the Old Bailey is 6 October. The Guardian report of this is worth reading for the indication of the carefully convoluted language of the charges against him.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/14/moazzam-begg-trial-october-terrorism-charges-syria-guantanamo-bay
This has the makings of a show trial, so I hope there will be large but peaceful demonstrations at the time of the trial. These might be best in sites away from the Old Bailey (where I would expect the police will find it far easier to prevent large numbers assembling).
Peacewisher,
What an overly simplistic interpretation concering the outbreak of the Troubles. I would also challenge it by saying that very few Catholics believed the IRA were fighting for them and their rights past 1972. Even fewer in the IRA, particularly with regard to the Provos, were fighting to gain rights for Catholics in NI as a constituent part of the UK.
Also by weaving the civil rights movement and Bernadette Devlin with Ted Heath and internment you have gone beyond simplistic and created an erroneous narrative.
@Mick
I’m just saying it as I remember it… via BBC news and current affairs with a left-leaning UK government. A lot of sympathy for the NI civil rights movement and no mention of IRA in those days. Also no mention of a political movement for a United Ireland… just pressuring for an equal number of MPs in Westminster.
Of course it soon changed into something must nastier.
Ok. Please tell me what was really happening in the late 1960s…
Thanks for the correction Iain. 6th Oct it is. I would have looked it up before I went.
Assad is our friend, or not. He is a pawn in the bigger game that NATO has unleashed in the Middle East. One minute he’s having dinner with John Kerry and wives, the next we are supporting rebels against him. It turns out these rebels are ISIS and likely to destabilise the puppet regime through which western interests have been siphoning oil in Iraq. Oil is our friend, my friend, oil.