It is sickening that Spanish courts continue to jail, and remove from political life, Catalan politicians who are the victors in democratic elections. That the European political class and media is almost entirely complicit and supportive in this truly vicious repression of the Catalan people, has shocked many of us to our core, and made us realise how thin is the veneer of democracy and how fragile are the rights we believed we held.
If the UK were any kind of a democracy, opposition parties would have held firm against the rush to conflict with Russia, until serious and thorough investigation of the Skripal case had yielded real results. At the very least, you would expect to see a select committee of the House of Commons call the head of Porton Down to give evidence and quiz him about the level of certainty they have of the identity and the Russian manufacture of the substance which poisoned the Skripals.
Instead, we have seen all the establishment parties fall over themselves to appear as belligerent and faux-Churchillian as May and her pipsqueaks, in order to placate the tabloids. This is ludicrous. You cannot out-jingo the Tories, and the rush to increase international tension benefits nobody except the armaments and security industries.
I am obliged to say I was disgusted by Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP leadership and their premature condemnations of Russia. By coincidence I spent much of last week at pro-Indy events and I have to say I found this disgust almost universal.
The odd voice was prepared to offer the usual Nicola excuse of “She is trying not to alienate the Unionists”. But what is the point of not alienating the Unionists by, to all intents and purposes, becoming a Britnat yourself? The continued failure – for years now – of the SNP to argue to the public the case for Independence, the attempt to dodge Indyref2, all of it leaves me to feel that the SNP leadership have got their feet under the table within the UK, as a form of controlled opposition.
The SNP leadership are far happier talking about which powers devolve to Holyrood from Brussels, and which stay at Westminster, than they are talking about Independence. I don’t give a damn about the precise contours of the devolution settlement; I want my country to be free of Westminster entirely, and soon.
We are not yet subject to the extreme state repression afflicting our counterparts in Catalonia, but you can be certain the Tories have noted the template, and that other Western political leaders will support them if they start putting people like me in the pokey for thirty years for sedition. Sadly it has become abundantly clear that there is no danger of the highly paid SNP elected representatives, their SPADs, and party bureaucrats, ever putting themselves in that position.
They would be with those handing down the sentences, as their attitude to Carla Ponsati shows.
Just as MEPs lined up one after another in the European Parliament to defend Francoist thugs batoning grandmothers trying to vote as the “rule of law”, and use the same excuse for lengthy sentences for political prisoners, so there was an echo of this distancing in Nicola Sturgeon’s response to the extradition of Catalan campaigner Carla Ponsati through the Scottish courts, potentially to spend the rest of her life in a Spanish jail just for peacefully campaigning for freedom for her country.
Nicola referred to “the fact our justice system is legally obliged to follow due process in the determination of extradition requests”. She too is hiding behind “the rule of law” and thus turning a blind eye to the Francoist attack on fundamental rights.
Very few voters of the SNP put Nicola Sturgeon into parliament in order to warm her toes at the Robert Adam fireplaces at Bute House, while Catalan leaders are dragged from Scotland to a terrible repression. The SNP leadership have become far too adept at speaking with British Establishment voices and thinking with British Establishment minds.
At some stage they have to accept that achieving Scottish Independence is in itself a revolutionary act, and that it will never be achieved without real constitutional conflict with the UK, the sort of political conflict which has attended the birth of every independent state. If you are afraid to do something “unconstitutional” under the present repressive system, you have no right to pretend to be a part of the Independence movement.
For Sturgeon to hide behind the Edinburgh High Tory Scottish legal establishment and wash her hands, Pontius Pilate like, over the extradition of Carla Ponsati is simply unacceptable.
Saving this brave woman is as noble a cause to launch a constitutional crisis as one might wish for. The Holyrood parliament must pass a Bill forbidding the extradition of Ponsati and the Scottish government must order Police Scotland to enforce it. We need finally to show we are serious about challenging the UK. If Sturgeon declines, then the Scottish people must physically defend Ponsati. And the Independence movement must fundamentally reconsider its leadership and strategy.
The story about the items brought by “a friend” and “the husband of a friend” of Yulia Skripal “on a different flight” has the ring of truth about it. That’s how certain items really do get taken across borders. It wouldn’t surprise me if the “friend” turns out to be someone she didn’t know that well, or had once met 10 years ago.
Could Yulia Skripal, and possibly also her father, have been couriering?
If so, we have Nikolai Glushkov, found strangled soon after, who could have been EITHER the target of the operation OR higher up the chain.
The £150,000 may be a red herring. Her brother died, left a house, was divorced, his half went to their father, who handed it on to his daughter – nothing strange in most of that except perhaps the circumstances of her brother’s death. What may have happened is that a “certain agency” may have said they’d only release the money from a Russian bank account if she “helped” them by collecting a certain “item” for them after “a friend” brought it to Britain.
Litvinenko, some kind of darling hero for some people, could also have been carrying – in his case with Boris Berezovsky (Nikolai Glushkov’s business partner) either as the guy who commissioned the operation or as the target.
Is what is going on in British politics an attack at the very heart of free speech? The continuing double pronged attack on Corbyn has led to him becoming defensive on both accounts and accepting the attackers’ main ‘concerns’. I am not really hopeful that this will enhance reasoned discussions of real issues and unfortunately Corbyn has now become effectively neutralised. Sad really.
Is what is going on in British politics an attack at the very heart of free speech?
This implies we have free speech to be attacked. We haven’t done for some time. Restrictions have been imposed by the frog-boiling technique. Many people haven’t noticed. There are now many taboo subjects. Questioning the Isræl’s influence is one of them.
Corbyn’s treatment isn’t an attack on free speech – it’s the enforcement of limits on free speech.
Agreed, SA. The more Corbyn gives in to the demands of the state/media nexus the more they will go after him. He has to go on the attack to spin the whole thing round. I’d start with the Skripals and the obvious holes in that narrative. Press the Maybot for answers on the numerous oddities, such as the French connection. And, above all else, do not remain silent on Palestine. Corbyn got into this position of being a PM-in-waiting through being himself. If he backs away from that now he will be in trouble.
An utter croc of horseshit from BBC Radio 4 Today.
Jeremy Corbyn bad, Syria ‘regime’ bad, Russia bad, many conspiracy theories from Russia about the Skripals bad, ad infinitum ach item being more astonishing than the last ending up with a very interesting item with
But the thing that made me choke on my cornflakes was the item on Jeremy Corbyn and anti-semitism. Jeremy Corbyn bad because he attended a passover event with some Jewish friends. And they had Jonathan Goldstein on slating Corbyn in no uncertain terms. This Jonathan Goldstein:
https://www.thejlc.org/jonathan_goldstein
In fact Jeremy Corbyn has played a blinder in the anti-semitism issue by attending this Jewish event in his constituency. The attempt to smear him for doing so by some opponents has rather backfired as shown by these Tweets reported in the Guardian this morning.
In a Twitter post, Jewdas said its members were “proud to be Jews and proud of everyone who attended, whether they were Jewish or not. We want everyone to know – we’re leaving Mitzrayim (Egypt). Change is coming. Revolution will come.”
The Jewish comedians David Baddiel and David Schneider said MPs and others should not immediately dismiss Jewdas.
“They are just Jews who disagree with other Jews … To make out that it’s somehow antisemitic for him to spend Seder with them just because they’re far left is balls,” Baddiel wrote on Twitter.
Schneider tweeted: “‘Boo! Corbyn needs to get out and meets some Jews!’ (Corbyn spends Passover with some Jews at Jewdas) ‘Boo! Not those Jews!’”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/03/jeremy-corbyn-called-irresponsible-after-attending-radical-jewish-event
Today has been fooled into becoming a mere propaganda tool for people with obvious political agendas.
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Yes I heard Lansman with disbelief. I think the surrender now is complete. Of course anyone now supporting the Palestinian cause can easily be labelled as anti Semitic on the logic that supporting Palestinians equals supporting Hamas which by western consensus now is ‘a terrorist’ organisation’, which seeks the destruction of Israel.
Well instead of wailing about it, go and confront him.
Ask what he has ever done in his life other than appease Zionists?
Ask if he sees the Labour Party as anything other than a vehicle of self-advancement sponsored by Bibi Netanyahu?
People like Lansman have no substance, no credibility with real voters. They exist in their little bubble.
Burst it….
The ‘Scottish’ Tories attempting to stir up a moral panic to divert attention from their power grab and Scotland’s enforced EU exit.
Tory MSP Liam Kerr is their opening batsman in fulminating about the number – ” some as young as 8″ – of child housebreakers in Scotland in recent years. STV, The Sun and the Press and Journal are going with the story.
What about the Tory MSP democracy breakers in Scotland – some as young as 38 – who are currently going on a spree?
“The ‘Scottish’ Tories attempting to stir up a moral panic to divert attention from their power grab and Scotland’s enforced EU exit.”
They sound like the “London” Tories who are trying to force London out of the EU against that holy city’s expressed wishes, and without so much as an “aah’s yer farver?” or knowing the difference between a pearly queen and Mother Brown.
And if they can do it to the unwilling holy city with its population of 9 million, what chances for the unwilling sacred nation to the north with only 5 million?
I don’t get Craig Murray’s argument: Even if Scotland had independence it would still be part of the EU according to Nationalists. It would, therefore, be under legal obligation to extradite a citizen of Spain wanted under Spanish law. Give it to the SNP (whom I don’t support) they respect the rule of law and want only a legally negotiated independence. Catalonians tried a unilateral declaration of independence which was orchestrated by Marxists.
Craig
I thank you for helping to expose this fable of convenience. I am also appalled at the abuse you have received for expressing your honest opinion, which is probably very near to the mark. Nasty stuff, but gradually you and others will drive people away from shit media. You could not make it up, but they do. As with Jeremy Corbyn, the extent of abuse is beyond belief. If you need a bolt hole let me know.
Regards
It would be difficult if not impossible for an independent Scotland to build or rebuild its domestic economy and industrial base in the open market conditions that are an inherent part of EU membership, however great our potential might be, given considerable raw material resources, abundant energy from renewable and from consumable sources and an educated motivated workforce.
No country has ever pulled itself up from completely ravaged almost post-apocalyptic conditions where the remaining businesses are nothing more than parasitic, service sector Thatcherite excresences or BAE type jobs for the Billy-Boys arms manufacture. Some considerable degree of protection of domestic industry and markets, something close to autarky, self-sufficiency wherever possible, would be necessary in the short and medium-term before the existing base is grown such that unrestricted competition could be withstood, conditions which the existing viciously neo-liberal EU certainly could not and would not permit.
The time to act decisively would have been immediately after the 2015 GE, when the mandate for independence was unassailable. The 59 MP’s elected then should not have went anywhere near the Westminster Cess-pit, but should have convened in Edinburgh, Glasgow or wherever and simply declared that the game was a-bogey, the vile exploitative union was over and those MPs were thereafter redundant, having served their purpose.
We would then have been at liberty in our own constitutional republic to have a multi-issue referendum – after establishing a credible public-service broadcaster (after chasing the BBC high-heid yins) and print media and re-engagement of the disillusioned and disenfranchised, to resolve outstanding issues such as NATO, EU, Currency, and so on, as a first step and decisive step in a transition from representative quasi-democratic occupied, subjugated land, to an enduring more participatory system and style of government.
I had thought that the leadership of the SNP had some bottle, but feel now they’re sleekit cowering timourous beasties, another ever so prettily wrapped and coiffured parcel of rogues. Great Tumshies the lot of them. It’s time the central belt, (where anyone north of the Clyde-Forth line are still referred to derogatorily but also affectionately by the older generation as ‘Hielan’) took a back seat for a time.