Making welcome sense of the Scottish 'blog war'

As many observers of the Scottish independence scene will know, a small 'war of words' has broken out on social media between some of its key sites.

Yet, while many will regard this as an unfortunate deterioration of Yes politics, it can be seen, more readily, as a healthy outpouring and illuminating debate.

Readers can get up to speed with the issues and arguments via these pieces:

GA Ponsonby, Newsnet: Battle for the ‘list’ vote: why backing RISE won’t help independence

Stuart Campbell, Wings Over Scotland: AMS for lazy people

Mike Small, Bella Caledonia: Shsh for Indy

James Kelly, Scot Goes Pop: EXCLUSIVE: Read the article on "tactical voting" that Bella Caledonia refused to publish

Mike Small: A reply to James Kelly

James Kelly: Response to Mike Small's Facebook post  

Angela Haggerty, CommonSpace: Why a hectoring online fringe is putting the achievements of the Yes movement at risk

After a short lull, Mike Small has also now restated his case in this Sunday Herald piece: Shouting down those who don't share your narrow vision is about as far from the spirit of the Yes movement as you can get
 
Small laments an apparent shift from the "joyous chaos" of referendum engagement to a now more censorious party politics and stifling containment:  

What seemed best about the Yes movement's openness, diversity and free thinking now seems to be being corralled into a stupefying dead certainty. An air of negativity hangs over much of the remnant movement.

Valid observation. But the fact that we're having this very debate highlights the still considerable capacity within the broad Yes movement for mature self-examination.   

Hard as it is, amid the hubris and rancour on display here, it helps to distil all these issues and exchanges down to three relatively distinct questions.

1. Should Yes movement people be taking a quiet line with regard to SNP policies and positions - should we be prepared to 'Shsh for Indy'?

Surely not. We shouldn't be keeping quiet or acting passively at this vital point. On the contrary, this should be viewed as a most crucial time for open, constructive and challenging discussion, a new flowering of views. The 'let's get to indy first' argument, advanced by GA Ponsonby and others, is neither practical nor desirable in promoting a still-maturing indy project. The beauty and inspiration of the independence movement is still about real civil participation, not quiescent parties and dormant politics.        
 
It's also misguided to think this in any way harms the SNP. The key point of such criticism is to encourage more progressive thinking and leftist policy within the SNP as the leading indy party. That, in every sense, is a work in progress, just as independence is a process, not an ending. It's not just about saying it's better to travel than to arrive. It's about living and learning from the journey itself, in better anticipation of what's to come.

One needn't adopt particular defences of the respective sites in these exchanges. There's merit in all the arguments, giving that same vital food for independent thought. Nor should we indulge the 'oh, let's all just stop this divisive spat and concentrate on indy and the real enemy' line. There's a great big valid discussion to be had here, even if it would be enhanced by a serious curtailing of some ugly invective.

As a blog with distinct positions on these matters, Bella are within their rights to pitch their own perspectives, and even to exclude that which conflicts with those core views. Bella editor Mike Small had no obligation, in this regard, to publish James Kelly's response piece. However, Bella can't, at the same time, claim to be some completely open forum. For all his efforts in mediating the Bella case for hosting diverse voices, Mike Small erred in his editorial handling of the proposed Kelly piece for Bella. Either say up-front that you won't publish such material in honest protection of your own space, or publish it without qualification (allowing for reasonable presentation) as part of an agreed format for dialogue. Again, though, this should be treated as part of the same generous learning curve rather than the subject of rival recrimination.

Likewise, while GA Ponsonby and Wings Over Scotland have a similar right to protect their own blogs from questioning commentary, they've chosen to attack Bella and Rise in an over-barbed manner. The impressive James Kelly blog has also resorted to some caustic denunciations of Bella and Rise in the course of his otherwise laudable argument over the problems of tactical voting.

It's a lamentable irony that the very social media we hope to see as a growing and serious alternative to ego-driven corporate media should be acting in such hostile and territorial ways. While the actual debate around all these issues has been energising, any endeavour towards a true alternative media comes with the need for more humble acceptance of one's own 'status' and positioning.

2. Is it desirable to have other left/green indy-promoting parties sharing the Holyrood parliamentary space?

Yes. So long as there's a working SNP majority to spearhead and advance the indy project, there should be nothing to fear from the participation of other left, indy-supporting voices. They/we are a core part of the movement, and were vital in helping to build the '45'. In this regard, Bella are making a legitimate case in promoting Rise as part of that same dynamic politics. Whatever people think about the standing and viability of such parties - Rise, Greens or Solidarity - there's no persuasive evidence that the presence of any other progressive-minded, indy-supporting MSPs would be detrimental to the SNP, the Yes cause or political atmosphere at large. For left-thinking SNP supporters, it should be a welcome enhancement of their own political agenda.

3. On the coming Holyrood election, is voting SNP (constituency) and left/Green (list) a rational tactic or an irrational gamble?

This is by far the hardest question to address. The above two answers favouring fair criticism/encouragement of the SNP, and the case for other left/Green representation, should lead naturally to support for a 'split' vote.  However, both James Kelly and Stuart Campbell have made impressive cases showing that there is, indeed, a substantial element of risk under d'Hondt, or the Additional Member System (AMS) for Scottish elections.

Various exchanges between Kelly and Rise have ensued, with Rise's Craig Paterson outlining the party's case via Bella. Taking-up Stuart Campbell's repeated warnings on the gamble of a 'tactical' vote, further useful debate can be viewed here. Angela Haggerty and James Kelly also engage the issues in good constructive manner in this Bateman Broadcasting podcast.

All that can be said with reasonable certainty is that there is no certain formulation to adopt here.  So, on this particular question, voters will have to think very carefully about their options.

Paul Kavanagh, aka Wee Ginger Dug, resolves his dilemma, to a certain extent, by returning to the case for voting according to conscience and localised factors. I'm broadly with that view. But, in the final analysis, people will have to weigh a number of speculative issues relating to the strength and worthiness of candidates, together with their assessment of how well the SNP are likely to fare at given constituency levels, whether they think this might deliver or threaten a safe enough SNP majority, and whether such numbers call for 'safety first' or offer room for an alternative choice on the list. Hopefully, closer statistical projections will become available as the election approaches, helping to shed further light on how best to proceed. Good luck to voters with all of those deliberations.

But, whatever the difficulties, none of this should be seen as an unwelcome task. Unlike the archaic Westminster system and blatantly undemocratic FPTP, we, at least, have scope here for a more imaginative use of the franchise. Like the need to embrace reasoned criticism and common left-indy participation, any 'calculation' here, however flawed, should be regarded as an educational experience.

Media Lens expose Kuennsberg, Daily Politics and more deep BBC bias

"Nobody with a questioning mind seriously expects impartiality from BBC News."

That may seem an outlandish assertion to many who still cling to the BBC's self-proclaimed values of 'impartiality' and 'objectivity'. But this opening line from the latest Media Lens Alert - ‘Our Only Fear Was That He Might Pull His Punches’ – BBC Caught Manipulating The News - relates a fundamental truth about the now blatant bias of British state media. 

Media Lens detail how the BBC's chief political editor Laura Kuenssberg, along with producers and other presenters at the Daily Politics show, sought to stage-manage the resignation of a front-bench Labour MP as part of a sustained effort to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and his new left politics. 

It also assesses why an unusually frank BBC blog piece detailing these orchestrations at the Daily Politics was swiftly deleted by BBC managers, and subsequently declared fit only for "internal" purpose. 

Please read and share this timely indictment from Media Lens.      

For a little more evidence of the BBC's particular capacity for institutional denial and lofty dismissal of a questioning public, here's my own complaint, and the BBC's response:

(8 January 2016) 

I wish to complain about the biased conduct of presenters and producers at the Daily Politics in contriving to have Labour MP Stephen Doughty resign on their show over the Corbyn cabinet reshuffle. In particular, I would like the conduct of presenters Andrew Neil and Laura Kuenssberg and producer Andrew Alexander to be investigated. Is it the job of the Daily Politics and BBC to influence the news rather than report the news? Please see the following:

https://tompride.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/bbc-producer-deletes-blog-where-he-admits-political-manipulation-before-pm-questions/
 
This is a clear breach of BBC guidelines on impartiality. It's also part of a more consistent bias in reports and presentations by Laura Kuenssberg and Andrew Neil against Corbyn.
 
Also, I would like a specific answer as to why producer Andrew Alexander's BBC blog article relating details of this affair was removed.
 
Regards
John Hilley

The BBC's template reply:

(13 January 2016) 

Dear Mr  Hilley  

Thank you for contacting us about the resignation of Stephen Doughty MP from the front bench of the Labour Party on BBC Two’s ‘Daily Politics’, and a subsequent blog written about the matter on the BBC Academy website.

As you may be aware, the BBC’s editor of Live Political Programmes, Robbie Gibb, has responded to the Labour Party about this matter. We believe Mr Gibb’s response below addresses the number of issues being raised. That said, we have received a wide range of feedback about this subject and are sorry in advance if this reply doesn’t address your specific concerns. Robbie Gibb’s email response to Seumas Milne, Director of Strategy and Communications at the Labour Party, was as follows:

“Dear Mr Milne

Many thanks for your email of the 8th January following the Daily Politics on the 6th January.

I would like to reassure you that we are committed to producing impartial journalism and programme content that treats all political parties fairly. I would like to respond to the specific concerns raised in your email.

Firstly, I reject your suggestion that we orchestrated and stage-managed the resignation of Stephen Doughty. As he himself confirmed on Friday, Mr Doughty had decided to resign his front-bench position on Wednesday morning, before speaking to any journalists. He subsequently spoke to Laura Kuenssberg who asked if he would explain his reasons in an interview on the Daily Politics later that morning. Neither the programme production team, nor Laura, played any part in his decision to resign.

As you know it is a long standing tradition that political programmes on the BBC, along with all other news outlets, seek to break stories. It is true that we seek to make maximum impact with our journalism which is entirely consistent with the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and values.

Your letter suggests that our decision to interview Mr Doughty in the run up to Prime Minister's Questions was designed to "promote a particular political narrative". This is simply not the case. The Daily Politics does not come on air until 11:30am on Wednesdays and the BBC's Political Editor always appears live on the programme in the build up to the start of PMQs. As the confirmation of Mr Doughty’s resignation was Laura Kuenssberg's story, we felt it appropriate for her to introduce the item. Again I do not accept, in anyway, the programme has breached its duty of impartiality and independence.

The programme this week provided a balanced account of the shadow cabinet reshuffle. Lisa Nandy was interviewed at length on Wednesday while Cat Smith discussed the issue in detail the day before.

You also made reference in your email to the deleted blog. It might be helpful for me to explain the background to this. Following the media reaction to Mr Doughty's resignation and appearance on the programme the BBC's training department, the BBC Academy, contacted me asking for an article explaining what goes on behind the scenes when a politician resigns live on air. I had assumed (wrongly) that the article was for internal purposes only. When it became apparent that it had been published more widely, we decided to delete it as the piece was written in a tone that was only suitable for an internal audience. No other inference should be drawn from our decision to delete the blog.

I would just like to finish by underlining our commitment to ensuring our coverage of the Labour Party is fair, accurate and impartial.

I hope we can look forward to working constructively together over the coming months.”

We hope this addresses your concerns, thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Kind Regards
BBC Complaints www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Here, again, we see the BBC in classic damage limitation mode. And, as the Media Lens take-down shows, the Daily Politics manipulations are only part of the BBC's continuing efforts to smear and damage Corbyn - all in the face of mounting approval of his policies and positions among party members.

Of the deleted blog, the BBC say:

When it became apparent that it had been published more widely, we decided to delete it as the piece was written in a tone that was only suitable for an internal audience. No other inference should be drawn from our decision to delete the blog.

'Internal audience' and 'suitable tone'. Doesn't that say it all about the BBC's coveted club, its self-selecting language, and the kind of information it considers appropriate for the 'know your limitations' rest of us?

As intimated in the first line of the Media Lens article, it's likely that increasing numbers of questioning readers will be drawing more specific inferences here: of patronising dismissal and feeble mitigation, of a hasty, embarrassed cover-up, and another damningly exposed claim of BBC impartiality.

American gun law and the real Wild West

Imagine walking down your street or into your local bar and seeing shoppers, neighbours and random others carrying real live guns in side holsters. The stuff of fanciful Hollywood Westerns? Not if you live in Texas, where, for the first time since 1871, the open wearing of holstered pistols will now be permitted.

The ruling comes as Obama ponders unilateral measures to bring about "common sense gun laws". Reportedly frustrated by his inability to deal with routine mass shootings, Obama:

said he would seek to use his executive powers as president because the US Congress had failed to address the problem. Analysts say there will be a backlash from gun activists and Republicans. But Mr Obama told Americans that he had received too many letters from parents, and teachers, and children, to sit around and do nothing. "We know that we can't stop every act of violence," the president said. "But what if we tried to stop even one? What if Congress did something - anything - to protect our kids from gun violence?"

Images come to mind here of Obama as the impossibly-tasked black Sheriff Bart trying to bring law and order in the comedy Western Blazing Saddles. Incredibly, though, this is America 2016, and its latest 'serious' efforts at gun law, not 1874 and the rollicking fiction of Rock Ridge.


This is a country where the National Rifle Association  - "Freedom's safest place" - and Republican-backed gun lobby still effectively define the law at political gunpoint.

As the NRA load up for another 'right to bear arms' brawl with Obama, it all evokes romanticised notions of saloon bar duels, blazing guns and lawless frontier life.

Yet, as historical research shows, this is "a widely shared misunderstanding of the Wild West":

Frontier towns - places like Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge - actually had the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. In fact, many of those same cities have far less burdensome gun control today then they did back in the 1800s. [...] A visitor arriving in Wichita, Kansas in 1873, the heart of the Wild West era, would have seen signs declaring, "Leave Your Revolvers At Police Headquarters, and Get a Check." [...] When Dodge City residents organized their municipal government, do you know what the very first law they passed was? A gun control law. They declared that "any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt with according to law." Many frontier towns, including Tombstone, Arizona - the site of the infamous "Shootout at the OK Corral" - also barred the carrying of guns openly.

Today in Tombstone, you don't even need a permit to carry around a firearm. Gun rights advocates are pushing lawmakers in state after state to do away with nearly all limits on the ability of people to have guns in public.

In response, much of the liberal media are hyping Obama's 'executive intervention' as a 'High Noon' moment. Yet his 'last stance at the Congressional corral' looks more like a fairground shot at improving background checks on gun ownership:

A source familiar with the administration’s efforts said Obama is expected to take executive action next week that would set a “reasonable threshold” for when sellers have to seek a background check [...] Going into his final year in office, Obama said his New Year’s resolution is to move forward on unfinished business.

While a service media report all this as Obama's 'great showdown', and attempt at a 'last hero legacy', there's no discussion of what might constitute any “reasonable threshold” regarding America's own suitability to wield arms, both at home and around the world. There's few serious "background checks" here on what Obama and prior administrations have done in the name of protecting their own or any other townspeople.

As ever, like those matinee Westerns, the propaganda posters keep us straight on the good guys and the bad guys, who gets to do the shooting, who gets to be taken, dead or alive.

While US authorities and media were in a rush to display the recent killings in San Bernardino as another jihadist terror attack, the actions of right wing "sovereign citizens", like the organised militia attack in Oregon, are treated as some wayward resistance to federal government. Rather than terrorist subversion, this was reported as 'gun-bearing invocation of the constitution'. As Bonnie Greer tweeted:

Can we please get 1 Muslim to join the right-wing terrorist militia in Oregon so our media can cover it?

But the problems of citizen guns and enforcement links much deeper into America's culture of violence. The causal connection between guns on US streets and higher US homicide rates, as set against other countries, has been ably mapped. Yet this is rarely viewed in relation to the extensive list of global US militarism, invasion and violence.

While Obama gets to be cast as the exasperated marshal trying to clean up the town, domestic gun culture is a reflection of America's wider self-proclaimed right to wield arms. Founded on Wild West violence against its indigenous people, the US acts as Top Gun and leading sharpshooter in spreading the West's own wild violence around the globe. And, as we see in Syria, Britain and France stand dutifully alongside as deputy marshals, a righteous Western posse enforcing their own violent law and disorder on Muslim lands. 

Where do we find 'mainstream' reporting or political discussion of US domestic gun violence framed as an issue of American exceptionalism, the state's 'exclusive right' to violence at home and abroad?

Obama has spoken in the past of the need for restrained violence in foreign policy:

"our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.  Instead [...] our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint."

Yet, America's dark record of mass murder has continued with Obama's own unrestrained killing of foreign others. While he promises to curb gun violence on the streets of US cities, he presides over a drone policy which has seen around 2500 people (January 2015) cut down in streets and villages across the Middle East:

And the covert Obama strikes, the first of which hit Pakistan just three days after his inauguration, have killed almost six times more people and twice as many civilians than those ordered in the Bush years, the data shows.

Though there's nominal reporting of this 'controversial policy', the deep extent of Obama's assassination program has been poorly disseminated to the public. Now, a new whistleblowing source has provided vital insights to The Intercept as part of its Drone Papers series:

The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source said.

While Obama weeps for the families of domestic gun victims, the families of those slaughtered by US ordnance in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and other places of American "restraint" have received no such empathy. To the American public, it's all presented as 'proactive security' in preventing 'terrorist Deadwood'. For foreign others, it's Tombstone exported.

As holstered and bolstered Texans walk the' tumbleweed' streets of 1871 again, imagine if the media were to talk about Obama's 'executive interventions' and his call for "common sense gun laws" in these more searching and damning terms.

Farewell to the Media Lens message board

Time has been called, alas, at the Media Lens message board. Postings will end on 4 January 2016.

The page will be sadly missed by contributors and visitors alike. Over the last 14 years, the board's valiant editors have hosted a dynamic and fast-flowing space for comment, links and discussion. I've been around the site since 2004, and, like others, have gained enormously from it as a source of news, information and opinion. It's been a deeply educational and inspiring place. Amid daily threads exposing our corporate and service media, it's been an immediate go-to resource, with vibrant engagement on every notable issue, conflict and event, from the invasion of Iraq to the bombings of Gaza, from the crisis of climate change to the rise of alternative media.

Lately, the editors have felt unable to cope with the volume, intensity and liability of board correspondence as they endeavour to write their hallmark Alert articles and manage ML's other major online output. Their concern and decision to close the board, in these regards, is understandable.

Along with many other contributors, I'd like to thank them for their great dedication, patience and humour in running the board, and wish them well in their efforts to strengthen the ML project. I hope people will continue to follow ML's vital output at the main ML page, via Twitter and Facebook - problematic, yet still valuable forms of media outreach - and through ML's many fine books. The editors have intimated that they may maintain an abbreviated board for their own messages, comments and links. I particularly hope so, given the important familiarity of the site for so many visitors.

Most of the board's regular and long-time contributors have now taken 'residence' at (the temporary-titled) Lifeboat News. I wish them and arriving others well in their/our founding efforts to develop a similar ML-minded community, offering stimulating information and respectful discussion.

Best wishes and a Happy New Year to all.

Donald Trump, just the mad haircut of deeper fascist America

So, Donald Trump is now fully revealed by liberal critics as a fascistic crazy. All to the good. But, besides relating an elementary truth, does this denunciation of Trump also suggest something more troubling about the blindness and evasions of such critics with regard to deeper fascistic power in America? 

Laurie Penny provides a vivid witness account of Trump's ugly rallying:

Trump has already promised to build a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants, who he says are “rapists”, and to force all Muslims to register to prove that they are not terrorists; he gleefully mocks black people, women and, most of all, the mainstream press that hangs on his every outrageous statement.  His followers love him not in spite of his cartoonish fat-cat persona but because of it. His platform is nationalist, militaristic and soaked in the language of big business. The usually cautious American liberal media has called him a fascist. I’m here to see if they are right.

Then, as Penny records, comes that infamous declaration:

“Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Thunderous applause.

For Penny, Trump:

may or may not believe the xenophobic race-baiting he peddles, but his audiences certainly do. This campaign is giving hundreds of thousands of Americans permission to be nakedly racist and unabashedly xenophobic. It’s not about truth. It’s about power.

So, take good note, she concludes, it's:

too late for laughter. Trump is selling fascism with a cartoon face. It’s the only type of fascism that was ever going to sell in America.

And, sell it does, certainly to a core populist right and worryingly wider audience. But does such deconstruction of Trump also help sell, by default, other easy notions of our 'more respectable' leaders, and the 'benign liberal democracy' Trump seems to be 'subverting'?    

Perversely, Trump is the best thing around right now for crusading liberals and, more particularly, crusading liberal interventionists. It gives them great moral cover. 'Look', they can all shake their heads, 'see what a nasty, racist xenophobe he is. Let's all denounce him', while the liberal missionary West gets on with bombing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and all those other troublesome Muslim lands they're busy delivering democracy to (liberal coda for invading). So, while Trump wants to ban Muslims, Obama, Cameron, Hollande and their apologists are content to bomb them. While a hypothetical curtailing of Muslims gets roundly denounced, actual killing of Muslim people gets soundly approved.

Of course, in this latest case, most Muslims and others are to be 'dutifully protected', as it's 'only' the bombing of Islamic State that's been approved. And, not just quietly approved, but cheered ecstatically by all those sturdy Tories and Labour 'rebels'. Never mind the need for basic solemnity in approving a war that will see so many more Syrians and others killed. Wasn't it so telling of our 'noble parliament' that the cry to bomb human beings could be made so gleefully? And reported in the same way. Alas, spoiling it all, with his usual lack of deference, Jeremy Corbyn had the temerity to denounce the cheering of Hilary Benn's forth-to-war speech as "jingoism".  

While a lofty liberal media rail against Trump's fascistic spiel, Benn has been venerated for equating the fight against fascist Franco with the liberal crusade against Islamic State. What was more preposterous: Trump's fascist rhetoric to advance his own narcissistic campaign, or Benn's spurious invocation of the left's anti-fascism to help sell another fascistic war in the Middle East?     

Stop the War's highlighting of such hypocrisy and Benn's fabrications could have been hailed by our media. Instead, note Media Lens, it was wilfully used to denounce them, all as a pretext for more smearing of Corbyn.

Should it actually require having to say that Donald Trump is a racist, a bigot, a corporate megalomaniac, a fascist? Sure, Trump's a crazy in all these regards - though quite an intelligent one, if measured by the capacity for calculated PR. But is he more crazy than those engaged in the actual mass murdering of Muslims? Is he more crazy than those behind the US plan - divulged by ex-General Wesley Clark - to pick-off a top list of Muslim lands? Is he as crazy as those now still actively pursuing that agenda through more bombing and destabilisation?   

How did we ever get to such a state of crazy selectivity where rhetorical racism is deemed much worse than wilful, racist killing? Yes, let's be alert to what Trump might do in office. But let's see, more immediately, the carnage caused by those already in-office suits, Obama, Cameron and Hollande.      

There could be a case for banning certain Muslims, like the Saudi elite, as they fly into US, UK and French arms fairs in search of weapons to carry out mass murder in Yemen. But there's been little media scrutiny of these ugly appeasements, and how their economy of death imperils even more Muslim lives. 

Without even having to mention Trump, Chris Hedges relates how "the creeping villainy of American politics" at large has now ravaged US civil society through the infection of hate speech and vilification of Muslims.  

In truth, people like Trump are able to say what they do because they feed from that state of political villainy. And with that political protection comes corporate-cultural approval. Trump has also got away with so much for so long because of his celebrity-corporate status and media-led fascination with star billionaires. Thus, the acceptable personalisation of corporate monsters. Piers Morgan, for example, still counts Trump as a friend, an honourable man, and seems perplexed by his latest racist outpourings. Of course, this says much more about Morgan himself who, as a notable media liberal, has nothing to say about the more dangerous truths behind US Inc. 

Thus strides the corporate behemoth, giving seemingly safe cover to other 'prudent associations', many now awkwardly undone after Trump's outing. Note, for instance, Alex Salmond, who openly courted Trump in the name of 'economic development', leaving a lot of displaced people and ruined land in the lamentable process. A little lesson learned, hopefully, about dark company regrettably kept.

Not so, when it comes to the 'liberal media's burden'. While America has Trump, we have his kindred spirit, Boris Johnson. Here's a man who does already hold significant political office, and, incredibly, may become prime minister. While keeping safe political distance from Trump, this is another mad-haired populist who speaks reverentially of 'our higher right' to kill, in this case crowing about Britain's "martial spirit" in having invaded 176 of the world's nearly 200 countries. Johnson's Etonian bombast may make him sound, to some, like the "rogueish swordsman" of the Flashman novels. In fact, he's peddling a neo-fascistic doctrine of imperialist exceptionalism, the exclusive right to invade and murder. Yet, unlike the response to Trump, Johnson's misty-eyed reflections on Britain's mass violence around the world seems to endear him even more to our liberal quisling media.

As Trump's own campaign claims become evermore shrill, how convenient to hold him up as a demonic stink to 'Western civilization', allowing rising approval of the 'politically fragrant' Hillary Clinton. And here we come to the real beneficiary of Trump's crass soundings, all played-up by a Hillary-adoring media.

Here's what Clinton tweeted in response to Trump's 'ban all Muslims' call:

This is reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive. @RealDonaldTrump, you don't get it. This makes us less safe. -H

A brazen piece of self-denial, when one considers Clinton's own wilful promotion of conflict, division and negation of human safety around the globe.

Recall her support for invading Iraq and extending troop numbers in Afghanistan. Remember her cackling "We came, we saw, he died" hysterics over Gaddafi. Recall her taking care to 'stand by her man', as husband Bill carried out a sanctions policy that saw half a million deaths in pre-invasion Iraq. Think of her support for fascist coup forces in Ukraine.  Reflect on her relentless defending of Israel's brutal occupation and mass killings in Gaza, and her steadfast support for Israel against Iran. And don't forget her urgings to arm the 'moderate' jihadists in Syria in pursuit of regime change. By a clear distance, Clinton's insatiable militarism and promotion of corporate warmongering is much more of a threat to Muslims than any of Trump's wild invective.

Many left-leaning observers are issuing emergency warnings about Trump, and America's dark slide into fascism, without apparently even seeing the extent of Clinton's own militarist-fascistic politics. A seemingly well-intentioned piece by Mike Small at (the often illuminating) Bella Caledonia is a good case in point:

Clinton’s challenge is to present herself as a future-facing candidate rather than a figure from the past. She will be, possibly even more than Sanders, a lightning rod for the right-wing media and Fox culture of America’s shock-jocks and online frenzy. Whoever wins the nomination it will be the most politically-charged and divergent race in decades. The stakes couldn’t be higher. With the world in a state of heightened tension, with multiple points of conflict, Putin at the helm in Russia and crucial climate commitments being brokered, the prospects of Trump gaining power in America are terrifying.

Here, we're being asked to consider Clinton's problem - the "challenge" of new presentation and dealing with Fox-jocks, rather than the problem with Clinton. As Putin, the standard liberal bogeyman, looms large in this troubled scenario, we can, at least, rest easier knowing that:

If the unthinkable happens, and [Trump] becomes the Republican candidate he will at last be under the glare of some proper media scrutiny. Head to head with any of the Democratic candidates he will be taken apart.

 And which part of that "proper media" will be there to scrutinise Clinton, or dare to take apart the sham process of those taking Trump apart?  

All those foretelling the terror of Trump should be ringing much louder alarm bells over the coming calamity of Clinton.

As writer Roqayah Chamseddine more concisely notes, Clinton has used Trump's racist eruptions as an opportunistic veil, a capacity for duplicitous positioning seen in her past lauding of George W Bush's 'reassuring' words after 9/11, when he declared:

“America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens" [and then] went on to torture and extrajudicially execute Muslims and deprive countless Muslims of their civil liberties.

The same dark calculus continues with Clinton, an arch warmonger with a past record which those emoting fear over Trump rarely address:  

Anti-Muslim animus goes far beyond ornamented stenographers to power obsessing over the statements of Donald Trump. It is systematic, and often cloaked in the language of humanitarian hyper-militarism and even inclusion. Despite Hillary Clinton’s sentimental rhetoric, her policies and political affiliations are concrete and show that she has never been a friend to Muslims, nor will her administration be one.

So, Clinton or Trump, who is the real political psychopath, the more fascistic figure? It's a mark of the liberal media's service propaganda that very little of this deeper issue about fascist America will feature in the next 'great presidential race'. Many more millions of dollars will be spent before we know which faction of the US corporate elite has managed to buy the election. Whichever it is, we can be sure that the same shared business and political interests will prevail. 

Yet, wasn't it always so about the US? Noting Mussolini's dictum that "fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power", the late, great American historian Howard Zinn said that, while there are shades of democratic engagement in the United States:

We've had a union of the governing and corporate power ever since the formation of this country. There's an element of fascism in that. 

More recently, the ever-acute John Pilger wrote of "America's modern fascism": 

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations - 69 countries - have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

For Pilger:

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture.

In railing against Trump, rather than exposing these deeper fascistic forces, media liberals are playing a key part in that twisted conceit.

Loki on 'Utopia Scotland', problematic, but still a valued rant

A recent article at Bella Caledonia, Scotland: the Utopia That Never Was, by the writer/rapper Loki, has caused quite a reaction, much of it hostile. And with some justification. Yet, unlike so much mainstream media assault, this wasn't just more of the #SNPbad meme, or parading of that other facile 'One Party State' cliché.  

Loki appears, with earnest intent, to be addressing a certain 'conceited' SNP/Yes element: 

Yes, you, the morally certain, reactionary branch of the dead Yes campaign.  An obtrusive minority of unconsidered opinion that unconsciously exploits every political moment – even the ones where people die – in the singular pursuit of re-animating a corpse for one last blind lunge toward freedom. If Scotland is a cheap haircut you are its puritanical fringe. You intend to vote SNP twice next year because you love democracy.  You call the First Minister Nicola.  You think Braveheart is a documentary.  You have The National delivered directly to your ego and you live in a world where the next referendum is always around the corner – should the right crisis occur. What a paragon of virtue you are.  Except there is one thing you haven’t considered fully that I want to draw your hysterical attention to: the independent Scotland you dream of is actually no more moral, or just, than the Union.

While the Bella editors rightly defend Loki's piece as usefully provocative, there's a lot of over-caustic language and tendentious claims here about a supposedly sclerotic Yes movement, and what he sees as a high-minded indy mindset. It's over-generalised in many places, with some specious charges, notably the suggestion that the indy cause is still seen through a 'Braveheart' lens. Perhaps it still is by some. But that sits very marginally against the much wider maturing of a sophisticated Yes electorate. Some of Loki's raw claims here looks as insular as the 'Nicola' mindset he seeks to call out.

But while some commenters have taken rightful umbrage, Loki's article still has significant polemical merit in helping keep a check on 'comfort independence', most notably the idea that the SNP, for all its vital purpose, can be relied upon to pursue any kind of radical agenda. 
 
Of course, a vibrant left within the party's ranks have also been pushing hard over key issues like Nato, climate evasion, fracking, TTIP and a neoliberal/banker class EU. That's good. But who would deny there's some very big progressive ground still to be won? Even as the latest 'power transfer' unfolds, why aren't the SNP using existing powers much more assertively, for example over land reform, particularly given its mass popular mandate? 

Loki is, similarly, unsparing in his view of 'branch Scotland':

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Scotland: The Slightly Less English British Franchise. The Franchise where elites a little closer to home enjoy the perks of cronyism and privilege.  The Franchise where we remain plugged into the neo-liberal apparatus we, ourselves, identify as the root of the inequality all the masochistic Unionists apparently love. The Franchise where corporation tax is lower than it is in London.  The Franchise where you can still go to jail for possessing cannabis, but hey, didn’t we show those English twats who is boss? The Franchise where we still operate on the same moral playing field as the union we so denounce – politically, economically and militarily insulated by NATO and the EU – while believing ourselves to be morally superior.

Again, beyond some questionable assertions (is Scotland really more regressive than the rest of the UK on things like corporation tax and drug laws?), and the 'our moral superiority' overload, there's a number of uncomfortable truths here, if what we really seek is a radical form of independence, free, in particular, from NATO and failed state militarism.
 
Loki also slates readers of The National newspaper as 'paragons of virtue', which looks like a kind of inverse virtue egotism, even if it's a legitimate articulation of his own class experience, as outlined in the piece. Yet, as one Bella editor, Kevin Williamson, usefully asks in a reply comment, where might we actually go to find left criticism of The National? For all its vital worth in pushing the indy cause and giving a voice to the Yes left, it's still corporate-run media, with all the structural boundaries that entails.

This should be prompting deeper questions about the need for more radical media platforms. And, for all Bella's own valued part in such, and valid defence of Loki's piece, that includes open discussion of some of its own, at times, 'Guardian-lite tone' and questionable liberal pitches, as in the space it gave to a recent 'Truth about Syria' article.
 
Another 'more tempered' version of the Loki indictment can be found here. Again, all good, constructive argument, making the case for not having all our indy eggs in the one basket. It's important to be having that kind of stripped-down examination in this pre-indyref2 period. 

Loki's piece is most welcome in all these regards. As a left Yesser, who sees the movement, rather than parties, as the primary force for independence, it's good to have Loki's and other 'awkward' voices around. 

Passing of Ian Bell

Very sad news.

A fine and principled writer, capturing so much political truth, articulating so much radical hope.

As a small tribute, here's part of Ian Bell's powerful and poignant blog article, 31 December 2014, lamenting that year's lost opportunity, yet asserting the coming day of independence:

The Old Year Ends. Part One.

As the year expired, an elderly lady materialised on TV sets across the land. In deference to centuries of invented constitutional theory, Her Majesty did not purr. Instead, she gave us a little talk. Her theme was reconciliation.

This was odd, even by the traditional standards of the royal house. It displayed a strange ignorance. It seemed to insist that Scotland in 2014 had endured terrible scenes of estrangement, anger and upset. HM Queen, like the rest of the British establishment, seemed to need to believe that Scotland had gone to war with itself over a vote.

An egg got broken: that, as best as I could tell, was the casualty figure. Everyone who was anyone got death threats. In the slapstick of social media, tempers and spelling sustained some damage. But that was it. Two million said they'd rather be British; 1.6 million said they'd rather not; and no one had to call the cops.

So what was Mrs Windsor on about, exactly, at Christmas? With whom – for grammar survived – did our 1.6 million require reconciliation? An historian yet unborn will one day say 18 September 2014 was the day Britain died. It was the day when close to 45% of the lieges told the nice old lady that, all things considered, they had their eyes on another kind of future. 

But they did not riot. They did not, most of the time, fare badly with friends, family, or colleagues. Though too polite to say so, HM was another who was still determined to believe things about the desire for self-determination that are simply – very simply – untrue.

In 2014, people who really ought to know better called me a Nazi. Some of the old-school followers of the flag promised me an execution “come the day”. The nicer opponents just wished me a long spell of unemployment. Permutations on various uses for eggs and half bricks were plentiful. Back in the real world, people went about their business, and made their choices.

The Queen missed that part. Scotland made its choice in 2014 with enormous dignity, in enormous numbers, and with great panache. The kids turned out; the grandparents turned out; folk who'd never vote for any of the usual local deadbeats turned out. Reconciliation was neither desired nor required. The community of Scotland voted. And even those who voted No – especially those who voted No – made a point about their country. It lives.

Tragically, you will not find any of that in my forthcoming campaign diary, Memoirs of a Government Stooge. This was a good year for Scotland, but a bad year for most versions of my trade. I used to avoid the “parcel o' rogues” cliché. As it transpires, the gold is still plentiful, like the stooges, but passable prose is hard to come by. The stooges should be ashamed, but are not. There's time enough, though, for fun with them in the years ahead.

That point was missed this year, by winners and losers alike. The most important day for me was the day after. I did my share of consoling. A lost vote is scant recompense to those who were not around in 79. But you have to remember reality on behalf of those who are less dim than a monarch. We got a vote on independence? We got almost 45%? So why do you think our opponents were so very agitated on that morning after, and on every morning since? They fear something.

Self-determination is a glacial thing in this country of ours. In 1979, we were robbed of an “assembly” with no legislative powers worth a damn. In 2014, we declined Alex Salmond's prospectus of HM Queen, Nato, and a currency left in the sweaty mitts of George Osborne. We chose to regard those facts as details while we determined a future. But anyone who thought all matters were settled in the early hours of 19 September failed to attend to facts.

What do you do, exactly, with 1.6 million churlish folk? You could demand that they just “get over it” and go back to voting for their local Jimmy or Jim. Sitting in the back room of a London tower block, you could write a long lecture on “anti-politics”, then explain to the provincials that a vote for self-determination is just another protest against a “status quo”. There are lots of ways to miss the point. The status quo ante covers most.

In 2014, Scotland decided that things could not go on as before. Those who wished to keep their powers, and their jobs, and – no small detail – their bonuses from head office, took fright. David Cameron, a Prime Minister, made stentorian speeches to describe his love for the churlish sorts. Her Majesty's head of government feared that his heart would be left in bleeding pieces if the churls got too churlish. But that didn't work.

The other one, the Conservative given charge of the Queen's Treasury, decided that scaring the Jockos would work better. I'd say only this: if George Gideon Osborne puts that effort on his CV, the Tory Party is in bother. Still, a few soft nationalists toughened up. A few Scots asked themselves about the actual negotiable worth of the currency the Chancellor meant to reserve – with half a dozen constitutional howlers – as his personal gift. A majority didn't care for that behaviour. They really didn't care for it.

In 2014, there was a historic event that had nothing to do with a plebiscite. This part is complicated. A great many Scots – possibly as many as 1.6 million – don't know, to this day, quite what they did, or why they did it. They've heard the shouting. They've seen all the usual media suspects announcing that the corpse lives, breathes, and walks. But we all know: on 18 September 2014, the Labour Party in Scotland expired. How come?

Like many, I get queasy during this part of the tale. In 2014, one mark of Labour's decline was that so few in its ranks understood why an alliance with the Tories would disgust quite so many people, and so deeply. What, asked their stoats and weasels, time and again, is your problem? If you followed their logic – feel free to take a crack – a pact with bankers' hirelings was the only way to ensure justice for all. Such was their genius.

Labour's role in Scotland in 2014 was to secure the proles for Britain. There is no nice way to put it. Threaten their pensions, frighten their children, make a desert of their future, but – so that message ran – get it done. These were old pages from an ancient script. The cold numbers say it worked a treat, on schedule and on target. The revenge taken on Scottish Labour is, however, another story entirely.

You could tell it in terms of those astounding SNP membership numbers. You could tell it by the semaphore of opinion polls, spelling out SOS for Westminster politics and Ed Miliband. You could even make a story from all the old comrades hearing last orders for a peerage. None of that would get you beyond act three in Labour's little tragedy. When push came to shove, the party that wrote Scotland's story for a century preferred suicide to the national interest. And, still worse, was proud of the fact.

We, 1.6 million of us, just turned our backs. They think we'll be “reconciled” to the rebranding of honest Jim Murphy? They think we'll be stampeded, as usual, by the old, rational fear of Tories? Labour is done. We're over it. In 2014, for or against, we were not dealt with honestly, from January to September. Those seasons will not be forgotten or forgiven. Humpty Dumpty can kiss goodbye to his wall, and whatever else he was sitting on.

If you happened to be old enough, nevertheless, it made for a strange year. A Scotland without Labour – Labour rough, foolish, thuggish, compassionate, or stolidly determined – involved an act of imagination. What were we without the familiar cast and the usual soap opera? When Johann Lamont quit as her party's branch office under-manager after the referendum, she managed – ever the good teacher – to deliver a lesson and ask a question. If Labour has rendered itself worthless, what remains?

Strange to report, some of the smarter girls and boys already had answers scrawled on the backs of their hands. While the usual dullards filled their column inches with tales of protest votes and anti-politics, a new Scottish generation presented itself on behalf of the Common Weal, as a National Collective, as a Radical Independence Convention. They were as incoherent, sometimes, as any nascent movement. They were also a lot of fun. More than that, they cared deeply and thought hard.

With my own faded colours up on the sagging mast, I spent most of 2014 wondering what had become of the British state. Why were its responses so feeble, its prose so vapid, its tunes so banal? For much of the referendum campaign, the only noise from the No side seemed to involve a clamour for “passion” on the United Kingdom's behalf. Time and again they tried. Time and again, while superannuated stand-ups and hack actors dumped their love bombs, they failed to manage sense, far less joined-up sentences.

I found that revealing. More than once, I caught myself thinking, “Jeez, I could make a better case for Britain than that”. In the year when we were being told to honour the carnage inaugurated in 1914, when the meaning of a United Kingdom forged in unspeakable sacrifice should have furnished a phrase for the meanest hack, we instead had self-satisfied jokers cackling that “No means no”. And so Britain died.

They haven't quite noticed yet. Her Majesty did her Christmas thing as though normal service had been resumed. Scottish Labour went on acting as though a Jim Murphy is the solution, not the name of the condition. But 1.6 million are beyond all that. We've handed in our notice. It's why all the instant cliches over who really won and truly lost have such force this winter. That British game, we say, is a bogey.

In England's capital, there is no shortage of folk turning a bob by explaining that these are strange days for conventional politics. They employ a couple of propositions. One says that a loss of trust in “Westminster” has invigorated those known traditionally as “other parties”. The antithesis holds that those others have done for the big old parties. A variant, tricky to prove, says that this is going on all over the western world.

So think of that, if you voted Yes in September. When you come to your senses, you'll go back to voting mostly-Labour. Were you living below the Border, you'd probably be backing the racist ticket. Your considered response to 307 years of Union was just a spasm, an “anti-Westminster” thing. You'll get over it. You'll be reconciled.

Understood?

There's some truth to it. As 2014 ends, the parties accustomed to treating Westminster as their private Hogwarts can barely scrape together two-thirds of the vote in the average opinion poll. They and their institution are not held in esteem. Their scandals have given the very business of political argument a bad name. Coalition government has left many – let's say – unimpressed, and made the death of Liberal Britain seem less strange than inevitable.

None of that has much to do with what happened in Scotland in 2014. In all the chatter over parties and the usual politics, an essential fact got overlooked. A new generation got to vote and said, simply, “Why?” Their parents sentimentality for Labour evaporated. Any deference towards Conservatives and monarchs and old stories of a scepter'd isles disappeared. They looked at their country and imagined a better future. Their opponents just told scary tales.

The Yes voters lost, of course. There is no point in arguing over it. Equally, no one of a sound mind believes the 2014 generation will lose twice. Britain's best efforts turned out to be paltry. This writer expected more, in spring, than a few hacks turning puce for the sake of the honours list, or a consignment of party leaders shipped north in a hurry to placate the locals. For Unionists, the advice is offered free: poor show. 

Those who believed their country should determine its own future might also wish to look back on the year ending. Why were so many of our people so easily frightened? Why were we hemmed in by an argument over bank-notes? Why did our older folk fall hostage to puerile arguments and barter a future that was not theirs to trade? And who said, finally, that we must dodge the heart of the matter?

If you seek the independence of Scotland, you must be ready and willing to talk about the country and its people. Your opponents will have plenty to say about “identity politics” while promoting a British identity. It's tricky and complicated. It tends to get messy. You have to be alert to every nuance. But in the end you have to be honest.

In my opinion, the referendum was lost because too many of us were afraid to say why a Scot would not want to be British. Too much time was spent attempting to square a circle: everything would change and yet, somehow, nothing would change. Currency, monarchs, the telly: it was as though we were doing no more than rearranging junk in the attic. And too many of us – this scribbler included – said we'd deal with these little matters later. That was a mistake.

Despite everything, 1.6 million believed that Scotland's interests could be managed better in Scotland. They are no worse off for it. The mess emanating from the Smith Commission will make life difficult for a few years, but a principle will be secured. In future, no one will ask why a power should be retained by Westminster. They will ask why it hasn't been devolved to begin with, as a matter of course.

Long years ago, sitting in a Glasgow pub with the finest Scottish novelist of my generation, the question of independence came up. My answer then, as now, was that it would happen in my lifetime. I didn't anticipate that we'd be cutting it a little fine, but Willie, cheery as ever, couldn't see it happening. McIlvanney was the one who called us feart in 79, after all, and he wasn't wrong. But in 2014, the fear fell away.

I'll remember that. They brought up every pop-gun in the armoury and people far younger than I found all their threats comical. Scotland woke up. Its young men and women turned the lead of the usual political crap into gold. They didn't get an answer worth the name from the decayed hulks of old political traditions, but they kept on asking their questions. They exposed the rot.

 

Things are set fair, I think, for a wee country.

 

ends

 

http://prosperoinc.blogspot.co.uk/