Invasion of the Admonsters

Here's a little tale of local invasion, and how, with Orwellian-creeping stealth, digital advertising hoardings are now occupying every available prime, pleasant and green public space across the land.

Think War of the Worlds takeover, only waged by invasive corporate forces setting down their monolithic steel structures and gigantic screens on an unsuspecting public, all for the unworldly purposes of rampant profit and consumerist control.

On 12 November 2019, Glasgow City Council's Development and Regeneration (planning) department granted an application from Global Media for the erecting of two massive LED digital hoardings at the corner of a pristine piece of green land adjacent to Hampden Park, Scotland's national football stadium.

No one was consulted. As enquiries to the planning officer confirmed, no local residents or anyone else using this popular locale were notified. 

Disingenuously, the signed-off documents show that the council deemed residents 'sufficiently distanced' from the proposed signage.

Likewise, the planning department judged that 'on balance' the erecting and angular positioning of these hoardings on a busy corner road intersection, directly in front of unspoiled green land, and immediately fronting a mature tree, would 'not be over-invasive'.

The site had recently been restored to its natural state following extensive underground pipe work and major disruption. Two older ad hoardings had been removed from the same space during the work, leaving the area entirely clear of ugly corporate signage.

One can but speculate as to the mindset that weighs such matters. How does crass commercialism come to be prioritised over green space? Might we reasonably assume that local people, if consulted, would much prefer the latter?

But there's another obvious anomaly here with regard to supposed policy aims.

How can a council with 'strong environmental objectives' give ready permission to such aesthetically bleak and environmentally damaging constructions? 

How, moreover, can it reconcile those proclaimed eco-credentials with the kind of mass consumerist messages, most alarmingly carbon-promoting ones, being relayed on loop by these LED monsters? 

Is there anyone within this 'planning' bureaucracy and political chambers able to see, or willing to act on, this glaring contradiction?

Perhaps such questions might more readily occur as Glasgow prepares to stage the COP26 eco-summit later this year.

One wonders what visiting environmentalists and delegates might make of such eco-negating displays.

But then, this is a past council that signed-off an actual motorway through its own city, despite every environmental study warning of the damage it would cause, including massively increased vehicle traffic on local roads.

Of course, it's not just dear old Glasgow in the frame here. Just as every successive administration in this city has succumbed to 'commercial priorities', so it seems we've seen an entire surrender to corporate control of our urban landscape.

The corporate giant responsible for the above-noted eco-vandalism, and much more besides, is Global Media.

Based in plush London offices - owner also of major multimedia outlets, including Capital, Heart and Smooth radio stations - Global's slick message of corporate deliverance includes an all-inviting pitch to clients and viewers of outdoor media, with glowing notice of the 'compelling' benefits:

"Global is one of the UK’s leading outdoor media companies, with an extensive portfolio that combines airports, roadside posters, premium digital screens in prime locations and more. Our offering also includes Transport for London’s Underground network, shopping malls and cinemas, as well as the UK’s largest network of buses in major towns and cities across the UK. All told, Global’s outdoor division has over 235,000 sites. By combining outdoor with our radio and digital brands, and our world leading digital advertising platform, DAX, Global is able to provide the most compelling “one stop” solution to brands, agencies and advertisers."The proliferation of corporate advertising represents not only a colonisation of public space, but a violation of our very human rights. It's a concentrated assault on our cultural sensibilities, our cognitive development, our actual mental wellbeing. 

The most insidious part of this corporate onslaught is how unconsciously accepting and routinely inured we've become to it.

If you have any doubts about the deep, pernicious impact of mass advertising, or think it's of little psychological consequence, just reflect on why big business spends countless billions on it.

For children especially, exposed from their earliest years to corporate branding, capitalist advertising is not just an encouragement to consume and desire evermore products, it's a form of mind control, normalising a system of human targeting that could more rationally be regarded as abusive.

It seems disturbingly fitting that the above-noted ad structures will be sited in close proximity to a large school and busy youth sports centre.         

The most entrenched and dominant forms of control are the ones that not only go unquestioned but unnoticed.

If the message of corporate branding and encouragement to mass consumption flashing up on these screens is all too visible, the destructive forces and corporate messengers behind them remain conveniently out of sight.

At a time of unprecedented climate emergency, catastrophic loss of natural habitat, obliteration of species, alarming energy wastage and unrelenting pollution of the planet, it's truly staggering to think that mass advertising is not only permitted but allowed such freedom to expand.

From governments to local authorities, policy pledges and calls for greater environmental awareness sit as rhetorical greenspeak to 'commercial reality'. It's still, in every serious regard, business as usual. 

Back in that once-pleasing green space, two attention-demanding Admonsters will soon be blocking out a charming, earth-enhancing tree and wider natural view. 

Alongside their imminent physical arrival, it's a kind of deeper symbolic statement of where we are in this moment of climate reckoning, the choices we're making, our blinkered outlook on the planet, the views of the world we might wish for, the imposition of corporate others, the actual beauty and possibilities that this coroporate 'reality' is continuing to hide from us, the extent to which we tolerate, turn a blind eye to, and passively accept the banality and brutality of neoliberal existence.

It would be nice to think there might be some kind of last minute intervention to halt this local invasion, a late realisation of the expansive ugliness about to be bolted down on this pretty landscape.
   
But, of course, that would be to trust in the delivery of real civic awareness and political vision, rather than the depressing public outlook and corporate vision we're being relentlessly subjected to.

Little system-serving kindness on this unloving island

Having limited knowledge of Caroline Flack, her life or latter state of mind, I feel little inclination to comment on the particular circumstances of her sad passing.   

But it does prompt some more reflective observations on the questionable context within which such matters are aired, and the selective notions of 'love and kindness' it helps sustain.      

It needs to be said, at the outset, that the idealised TV 'place' behind this story is certainly no Love Island. 

It's the latest variant of a deeply-exploitative, fantasy-as-reality genre. And the superficiality of such branded 'locations' reflects a deeper and wider set of truths about what we're conditioned to understand as our 'base desires' for physical and emotional gratification. It's a microcosm of the sad, lonely and often tragic process that passes for escape, happiness and love.

But this actual country, the place where so much discussion of this story is being conducted, is no island of love either. 

It's also a place of peddled illusions and false hopes, offering little means of true emotional well-being or meaningful escape, a place built on a system that's actually incapable of projecting, nurturing or cultivating authentic ideas of compassion, empathy or love. 

Indeed, this is a system that stands for the very antitheses of these virtues, a system predicated on competition, acquisition, consumer status, greed, vanity, envy, low-esteem and the actual promotion of unhappiness; a system that relentlessly pushes market ideals of enterprise, fame and material success as capitalistic versions of - never-to-be-realised - fulfillment, harmony and contentment. 

Between the fantasy and the real, no wonder so many vulnerable souls succumb to the pressure, the rejection, the deception, the dejection, and the final act of tragic self-abandonment. 

But we're concerned not only here with lost celebrities. We're talking of all those more anonymous souls lost to this unkindly place and unloving system.

In the last six years alone, at least 69 people (a figure very likely to be far higher) have been lost in suicide tragedies over fear of having their paltry, Dickensian-level benefits removed. 

Millions more live in perpetual poverty and fear of premature death.  

A recent UN report has cast damning light on the UK's "draconian sanctions regime" and poverty-driven deaths of its 'own people', including evidence of what likely led to such multiple suicides. 

Those kind of tragedies and anxieties receive no such headline or celebrity attention. 

Their loss, the pain for their families and friends, falls under the much less loving rubric of 'political decisions' and 'government policies', Orwellian language used to make respectable, even 'kindly', the wanton wickedness crafted and executed to persecute and kill poor people on this island. 

Where's the public sadness or outrage over this level of human desperation, absence of care and preventable loss? Where's the revulsion over the corporate media's failure to spotlight the extent of this human tragedy? And where's the media's self-examination of its own deeply complicit part in it?

When the poor and unknown fall into poverty and depression, their lives cut brutally short, they are rendered effectively meaningless, the 'natural fallout' of an all-prevailing market system.

When a celebrity 'product' of that same market system comes crashing down - after being propelled up by that very system - we see outpourings of media grief and concern, all wrapped in the worst forms of hypocritical projection.

How readily media notables rush to be part of the great 'be kind' meme when a celebrity passes away.

And with this comes the familiar 'mainstream' media agonising: what can we do to stop this social media menace, this trolling, this hounding of such exposed and vulnerable people? 

Yet, while social media is certainly part of the issue, consider the vastly greater influence and impact of the 'mainstream' media in such matters.  

Of course, the Sun, Daily Mail and other shameless rags have their scabrous prints all over such cases. Hopefully, they'll be shown more of the 'Liverpool response'.

But what of the seemingly 'respectable' media?

From its distinctly unkind part in taking down 'dangerous political celebrity' Jeremy Corbyn, to its craven silence over the UK's distinctly criminal part in bombing the 'unpeople' of Yemen, the BBC and other 'mainstream' media is responsible for far more damaging forms of intimidation, silence and all round service to state villainy.  

For outlets like the Guardian and BBC, willingness to cover and expose the true system-based misery inflicted on the people of this island, and so many others beyond it, should be the real test of how we measure media adherence to principles of love and kindness.

How, thus, might we judge the Guardian over its 'burned at the stake' treatment of admirable journalist Julian Assange? Where's the compassion, support and pledge here to 'be kind' to this persecuted, suffering and fragile man?  

Might we ever, in this regard, see a BBC journalist given prominent space to lament the killing of an unknown Palestinian, breaking down as they urge Israel, our own state and others to 'be kinder' over the treatment of a brutalised people? 

Many might even just be content that they meet their basic remit of being fair and impartial. 

This latest 'mainstream' castigating of social media is merely a continuation of the whole 'fake news' blame game, a convenient deflection of its own sins and complicity.  

Yet, there's one sense in which all such human losses are more 'commonly regarded' - or even disregarded. 

Subjected to the media's own corporate-establishment narratives, we're conditioned into thinking that, from the poorest to the more famous, such people are all just inevitable, collateral victims, the weak and unfortunate who, for whatever reason, just couldn't manage to survive and deal with the 'real world' of competitive, zero-sum capitalist society. 

All subsequent responses are predicated on our fundamental acceptance of the unkind and unloving 'reality' of the prevailing order itself. In short, the brutality of the system is unconsciously assumed, taken for granted, understood as an intrinsic, 'common-sense' part of our daily existence. 

Grasping for rationalisations or kinder ways of seeing, we resort to varied speculations over the poor mental state of the victim, their susceptibilities to hostile treatment, and their inabilities to cope, while paying little or no such critical attention to the pathology of the very system that drives people to such states of fear and despair. 

While 'failing aspects' of the system may be identified, prompting calls for 'remedial treatment' - let's all be a little more careful and kinder on social media - the real systemic issues remain conveniently unseen or overlooked.

And so, following 'decent intervals' and more gushing tributes, the whole false process and emotional exploitation resumes, fantasy-fueled Love Island and other fetishised formats helping to keep us distanced and distracted from what's happening on this real island of loveless capitalism. 

So, yes indeed, be more actively kind and loving: by bearing true witness to this unkind and unloving system, the propaganda and false memes holding it up, and in truly caring support of all the lost, silent and suffering souls laid waste by its ruthless depravity.                        

Indy people beware: there's no political comfort or progressive promise under the EU flag

What crimes and illusions lie behind the flutter and creases of a flag? Far too many for this limited space to document. But here's a short reflection on the enduring villainy of one and the deeply problematic embracing of another. 

It would be great if schools and other places of 'learning' could shed serious educational light on the dark deeds of the British Empire, and how it still wraps its active criminality in the Union flag.

As historian Mark Curtis calculates, the British state has been responsible for or complicit in the deaths of around 10 million people across the globe since World War II.

Lamentably, this little island is still singing Rule Britannia and waving that ugliest of emblems while continuing to invade, bomb and use every other nefarious means to 'civilize' foreign others.

Look no further than the UK-backed Saudi bombing of Yemen to see how Britain flies the flag for its brutal arms trade and in support of heinous regimes. 

I wonder whether the RAF 'fairs' now sneaking their way into schools and other public places might tell children that their bombs and assistance are blowing thousands of other kids to bits in that now devastated country.     

But beyond the sins and blood of the British Union cloth there's no comfort to be found in the blue and starred insignia of the European Union.

And, in the wake of Brexit, it's been strange and jarring to see so many Indy-supporting people in Scotland using it as a kind of adopted love emblem.

This is a flag which has flown atop Fortress Europe, dumping goods, imposing tariffs and locking the continent of Africa into generations of economic servitude. It's the flag of 'securitisation' that's been planted on Europe's beaches to block, cage and abandon desperate refugees. It's the flag of 'economic stability' which the EU's central bankers used to decimate and punish Greece for daring to think it could deviate from its rigid neoliberal rules. It's the flag under which member state Spain has been allowed free EU reign to brutalise and imprison protesting Catalonians. It's the 'freedom' flag that continually protects, promotes and militarily assists the murderous, apartheid state of Israel. It's the flag of an 'egalitarian' EU that turns a blind eye to Macron's relentless battering of anti-neoliberal street protesters, as well as France's banning of any public protest in support of Palestinians. It's the flag of a parliament which aligned itself with Trump to support an illegal coup and effort to impose a Washington-approved pretend leader on Venezuela. It's the flag still being flown by member state Hungary, dismissing token EU warnings to its rampant fascist leaders. It's the flag flapping in enthusiastic partnership with that of Nato and its militaristic hawks, in joint support of neo-fascist forces in Ukraine, and as a supposed 'bulwark' to the 'Russian menace'.

In short, this is a flag which, after even a few decades, is deeply stained by economic oppression, political brutality and military aggression. A flag of empire in the making.

What progressive person, in Scotland or elsewhere, would want to be wrapped in that kind of emblem?

The SNP's Euro project

This latest EU flag-bearing spectacle in Scotland reflects the seriously questionable political priorities of the SNP leadership.

At the outset of the 2016 EU referendum, it appeared that the SNP's eager part in resisting Brexit was neat tactical positioning: look, they could say, we've played our dutiful, responsible part in showing we care about the negative impact for the wider UK in leaving Europe. Now that we've demonstrated our respectable credentials and fitness for moderate politics, we can now move seamlessly on to our own fully-safe version of independent governance.

And recall all the brownie points Sturgeon collected in the process from voters outside Scotland: 'if only we could have Nicola down here'.

Yet, it became increasingly obvious that Sturgeon's obsession with resisting Brexit wasn't just about having a star part in that long-running Westminster production and living in the political glow. 

It said much more about the SNP's own signature politics as a party now deeply-wedded to EU-sided neoliberal continuity.

And, of course, Sturgeon was always on safe electoral territory here, in reflecting a very authentic Remain majority in Scotland.

But rather than use that majority, the material change of Brexit, and the repeated political/electoral mandates it offered for securing Scottish independence - the SNP's supposed reason for being - Sturgeon and her tight hierarchy have continued to play the European card in order to sideline, marginalise and actually relegate Indy as a foremost cause.

And wrapping itself in the EU flag and 'leave a light on for Scotland' emotionalism has all helped keep that political deception from real public scrutiny.

Default identities

One can readily understand why many in Scotland, including progressive Yessers, have defaulted to a 'We're Still European' line in intuitive rejection of Little Englander Unionism.

But this is still a false dichotomy. Over 17 million Leave voters - many in Scotland itself - can't all simply be boxed as flag-first narrow British nationalists. 

Beyond much visceral liberal hatred of working class Brexiteers, Corbyn, at least, still understands the more complex grievances, motives and mood of the Leave electorate.

How easily we disparage the whole Farage, Mogg, Widdecombe ensemble with its puerile paeans to 're-found and restored Britannia'. Yet, what higher enlightenment in its ridiculous replacement 'I love Europe' motif?

While seemingly more egalitarian, the EU flag-embracing 'Ode to Joy' response in Scotland is itself a kind of self-consoling delusion, a comfort blanket, a faux 'setting us apart' form of identity politics.

Passing disclosure: this writer has little regard for the very idea of flags or any other state/nationalist insignia. So much of it is elite-composed identity, jingoistic exhibitionism and an artificial compartmentalizing of humanity.   

However, a flag can still act as a valued expression of progressive identity, defiance and resistance. Which is why a Scottish Saltire at an Indy march or gathering still has more resonance than any EU regalia.

The flying of a Palestinian flag is a more particular act of open solidarity, helping to express common opposition to the relentless murder and subjugation of a people. It's a visual statement to an occupied and besieged population that, whatever Israel and its complicit allies do to shield their suffering, people around the world won't abandon them.

The contrivance of 'I'm European'

How does that kind of solidarity-raising act compare with the imagined belonging to a powerful European monolith?

Aside from the convenience of middle class residence, careers and study in Europe, what makes people supposedly feel European - or more European even than British or Scottish?

Is much of this 'I'm European' insistence really anything more than an assumed 'tourist identity', a conceit of the 'EasyJet generation', with its ready passports to 'the continent', a 'holiday nationalism' bound up in vacation experiences - the romance of Paris, the allure of Amsterdam, the charms of Venice, the ex-pat bars of Spain?

Many in Scotland will, of course, invoke deeper ideals of a continuing Scottish-French 'Auld Alliance'. 

But this seems more like recourse to ancient stories of crown alliances, chess-board wars and Jacobin romance than being of any real relevance to modern political identity or/and sense of radical feeling. 

Scottish Enlightenment figures may have owed much to the great icons of French and European thought, gifting us some valued political-cultural legacies - as in Scotland's strong and enduring rejection of Thatcher's 'there is no such thing as society'.

Yet, do present day notions of 'EU Europeanism' - supposedly ‘founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights' (Lisbon Treaty 2007, Article 2) - really offer any comparable intellectual, political or humanitarian inspiration? 

If so, why are human needs and social well-being, the climate emergency and wider global justice, the truly higher principles that should occupy an EU community, so routinely relegated to concerns and discussions over competing supranational powers, trading bloc interests and territorial militarism?

So much of the current 'I'm European' cry is not only a populist-emotional prop, but passive and conditioned adherence to elite-serving narratives.

Moreover, it luxuriates, albeit subconsciously, in an imagined European identity that hides its own kind of racist exceptionalism; an 'inclusive Europeanism' that effectively excludes any more common identity with a wider, much poorer, non-white world beyond Europe's privileged shores.

Civil-cultural incorporation

Perversely, the SNP has been a leading force in projecting that imagined 'inclusiveness' via its 'Scotland in Europe' project; in essence, a politically-packaged copy of 'social democratic Europeanism' and 'free movement' ideals, all duly adhering to the 'imperatives' of 'common-sense' neoliberalism.

That narrative has, in turn, been adopted and enabled by a 'new liberal-left civil establishment' in Scotland.

It's been instructive to observe its formation over the recent devolution years as the SNP became politically entrenched, giving rise to the possibilities of independence.

From business figures to lawyers, church leaders to media editors, the civil landscape has been shifting and adapting to the new political terrain. 

And with this has come a whole new field of civil agencies, social enterprises, NGOs, social media platforms and a 'critical' commentariat, what Gramsci would have understood as a proto 'intellectual class', the surrounding, coalescing and supporting cultural elements of an emerging hegemonic order.

Increasingly, discussion, output and activism on independence has been guided, encouraged and framed around that 'defining' SNP 'ambition' of 'Scotland among other independent states of Europe'.

The heightened emotionalism behind this could be seen as Brexit approached, for example in the lamenting 'don't forget us' and 'we'll be back' speeches in the EU parliament by departing SNP MEP Alyn Smith, and in the parliament's own goodbye renderings of Auld Lang Syne.

Again, it was a lament largely endorsed by an SNP-sided commentariat and chorused by much of the Indy liberal-left.

Yet, such has been the hubris around Brexit that the SNP's intensified branding of itself as a proto-European entity has only diminished its supposed primary goal of independence.

Which has left much of the Indy street standing redundantly in the street holding EU flags rather than engaged in ready, productive campaigning for any date-stamped referendum.

Beyond all expectations from 2016 of seeming referendum certainty, that's a serious fall for the Indy movement, clinging on to any hope now of a poll even beyond 2021 and the SNP's pitch for yet another Holyrood 'mandate'.

That's all despite opinion polls now showing a clear and healthy majority of voters in Scotland supporting a Holyrood-legislated consultative referendum without any UK Section 30 permission.

This has now prompted some other senior elements of the SNP into supportive recognition of that more legal-sided option, all adding to the pressure on Sturgeon. 

Beyond her calls for 'patient deliverance', it's becoming increasingly clear to many Indy supporters that there is no serious party leadership plan, and that "the path to independence and Sturgeon's career path are not the same path."

Process matters

As the signs of disenchantment towards Sturgeon and her circle grow, a brooding Indy street is realising that it must now assume its own autonomous direction.

The essence of that task should be to re-set its campaign focus on the Indy process proper, on how it secures an actual break with the British state, rather than this futile 'keep holding' line and facile engagement of the SNP's Euro narrative.

Drilling down, it's not difficult to see the distracting purpose and flag-bearing superficiality underlying that agenda. 

Instead, there has to be a clear re-stating of the urgent and beneficial case for dissolving the British Union, rather than holding on to forlorn and uncertain hopes of progress via a re-entered European Union.      

Real progressive independence for Scotland isn't about rejecting others in these isles. It's about enhancing social bonds and solidarity while working actively to break up the British state, its coveted Union and all the archaic insignia locking us - and others - into that repressive structure.

By the same logic, progressive independence for Scotland can be about maintaining fair connection and solidarity with peoples in Europe and beyond, while resisting the need to be tied into an all-constraining EU superstructure.

Any contemplation and decision over that latter issue will, of course, have to await another democratic day.

But whatever people in Scotland ultimately decide vis-à-vis their post-independence 'place in Europe', they should be deeply circumspect about resorting to any kind of flag-waving European nationalism, either as a current comfort blanket or as an imagined future emblem of any truly inclusive, fraternal and progressive community.   

False flags and SNP betrayal on Brexit 'independence' day

And so, here we are, last day of January, with sundry Brexiteers waving Union flags and celebrating their 'Independence Day'. Well, obnoxious and crass as it all seems, good luck to them.

The more substantive question one may ask on this day is: independence from what? From one form of hegemonic control and elite rule to another? And, indeed: transition to what? Same capitalist system, just a different set of neoliberal economic arrangements?

Still, let people have their moment. When all the dust has settled over the 'Brexit Issue', many will hopefully come to realise that this was really an establishment-rooted crisis all along, and that when the varying elements of the self-serving capitalist order at the core of it are finished 'sorting it out', there will be no appreciable benefit for all those so cynically dragged into and embroiled in their 'Great Debate.'     

For others here in Scotland, this could have been another red letter day, one, indeed, that could have transcended Brexit Day itself, by marking the decisive moment that Nicola Sturgeon set out the date and plans for a new Independence referendum. 

Instead, Sturgeon and the SNP leadership have evaded that key opportunity by wrapping themselves in another nationalist flag and set of jingoistic bunting. And, no, it's not the Saltire. 

As it has done for the past three-and-a-half years, the SNP has been waving EU flags and emblems as it prioritised the issue of Brexit over Scottish Independence.

All the key political resources and energies it has expended on defending the UK from Brexit could have been concentrated on building, planning and agitating for independence.

Not only has it won successive popular mandates and parliamentary votes for Indyref2, it has now, on this official Brexit Day, exhausted every last possible 'wait and see' excuse for not proceeding with those approvals.

Sturgeon's speech today was a classic in political window-dressing, stressing the 'importance' of 'realistic holding' rather than 'false routes', and 'ongoing political persuasion' over 'obsession with process'. It has to be 'legal' and 'legitimate', she insists.

Yet, none of this provides the remotest explanation of how she or her party are going to counter Johnson's, or any other agent of the establishment's, perpetual blocking of that process. The reality of the SNP's 'problem' here may be obvious. The absence of any serious Plan B after all this time is completely inexcusable.

What, moreover, is this insistence on the 'proper way of doing things'? As one timely comment has it: "If people in the past relied on politicians ‘doing things properly’ we would still be waiting for the vote!"

And, indeed, one can only but suspect a more base purpose behind Sturgeon's 'realism' and 'hope' speech: the reality of protecting SNP party interests, careers and salaries, and keeping their MPs in cosy Westminster seats; and her hope that the Yes street can be tempered, managed and encouraged to keep building and delivering those very convenient mandates.

It's understandable, of course, that Indy supporters and other Remainers in Scotland will be lamenting the Brexit hour tonight. Scotland, after all, voted strongly to stay in the EU.

Yet, while many are wrapping themselves in that blue and starry flag, they should remember that the UK decision to leave represents the very material change that gives them this vital new opportunity to realise Indy.

That Sturgeon has still managed not to utilise and advance that golden opportunity even by this Brexit Day is politically unconscionable.

And judging from the wave of disappointed, disillusioned and dejected Yes people responding to her "excellent...proper cut above" speech, she and her inner cabal must surely see the dangerous new political waters they now find themselves in. 

On this day of Brexit and lost chance for Scotland, many will now come to see not only the Union establishment as a major impediment to Scottish independence, but the leader and supposed party of independence itself.

And it's worth noting at this juncture that before we ever get to that Independence Day for Scotland, we better also start thinking about just how independent it can ever be from those prevailing neoliberal rules and the kind of establishment-abiding values and priorities that this party continues to uphold.       

January gloom: fearful skies, elite narratives and political tumbleweed

January. New year, new decade. But little hopes of earthly wake-up or political cheer.

Australia is on fire. Martian red skies. Choking black smoke. Eden razed. Climate reality. Apocalypse right here and now.

Across the grey floor of forest ash, blackened, bewildered sheep stumble amid the mass incineration of another half a billion creatures.

A dehydrated koala sups welcome water from a kindly fireman. But it's feeble little eyes may also be asking: 'What have you done to my ancient, loving habitat, careless caretaker species?'

Australia's own ancient humans may be sharing the same thought.

As fleeing kangaroos gather in abandoned streets and residents retreat to shrinking shores, the country's leader, like most of his global accomplices, babbles and postures, lost in the suffocating smog of denial, beholden to king carbon, unable, it seems, even to comprehend the staggering implications of such corporate greed and political complicity.

While the fires rage on, massive flash floods, hail and dust storms ravage other parts of the country, all part of the new catastrophic mix.       

Elsewhere, Everest melts, grass replacing glaciers. With rapidly-rising Himalayan temperatures, once reliable seasons of Hindu Kush water flows are giving way to erratic floods and looming drought for millions below. 

There's no such permanent thing now as 'permafrost'.

We're now seeing every severe symptom of climate breakdown, from hotter oceans to unstoppable wildfires, ferocious tornadoes to expanding desertification, and even the distinct likelihood of more epic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Dark hawk skies

Amid this historic emergency, already fearful skies are filled with more dark menace as neo-con jets and drones swoop down like righteous vultures on yet another 'errant regime'.

The planet may be burning, multiple species being erased, human extinction imminent, but Washington's hawks and their allied flock must still bomb, plunder and patrol, keeping vigilant claim over all coveted lands and resources below. The warmongering priorities of Empire.

And, of course, while carefully caveating their 'discomfort' over Trump's illegal assassination of Soleimani, dutiful Democrats and every other every voice of calibrated liberal imperialism still manage to avoid the remotest expression of sympathy for Iran.

How quickly Western media used the tragic error of the Iranian-downed passenger plane to demonise an entire state, talk-up nominal street protests as 'mass insurrection', and push the usual liberal interventionist script for 'regime change'. 

Beyond the hype, University of Tehran professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi offers this more  grounded admonition: "Western media claims there are big protests going on in Iran. This is crude and desperate propaganda. Iran is calm and things are normal. Anti-Iran warriors can fool the ignorant, but they sharpen the wits of the wise. The expulsion of US occupation forces from Iraq is inevitable."

Palace placebo

If the real world of Middle East suffering and climate calamity are all too much to contemplate, there's always the facile world of 'royal crisis' to occupy us, as spluttering columnists and craven 'correspondents' keep the subjects dulled and diverted with agonised speculation over the 'exiting couple'.

Which all goes to prove the high propaganda value of narrative control, in this case a vacuous slew of 'news', comment and deliberation over 'titles, roles and financing', rather than elementary challenging of the monarchy itself.

No need to ask serious questions about the very existence of a grossly privileged, indefensible institution when we're all consumed with the 'problem' of how to 'modernise' it. Altogether, a right royal scam.

As with a contrived Brexit narrative, we're now enjoined to take a 'position' over 'Megxit': how will they manage to live, conduct their duties, derive their income, maintain their security?

Establishment narratives, establishment tensions, establishment crises; how humbly grateful we should be in serving to engage and 'resolve' their 'problems'.

The laughable notion of British 'political modernity': from military to monarchy, and media framing of both, another parched wasteland of deference, obedience and conformity. A tumbleweed of obsequious infantilism.

Gloom after Corbyn 

And so it is with the political wilderness we now survey in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn's defeat. The dark cloud over that hoped-for dawn will take a long time lifting. 

This wasn't any normal election. It was a very British election coup. No prospective progressive leader like Corbyn, threatening the inner sanctum, could ever have withstood such a virulent onslaught of establishment attacks and media smears.

How did it ever come to this? Remember also that Labour had been out of power for over a decade. Yet, even having weathered the cruel storm of Tory austerity, a working class 'Red Wall' still voted for Johnson.

How could such people have opted for more Tory punishment rather than Corbyn's promising policy alternatives?

Beyond the easy 'Tory turncoat' line, it's more useful to consider the impact of public exposure to narrative propaganda.

Voters had been driven by an all-encompassing Brexit narrative that had enshrined leave or remain as the 'absolute issue', the 'dominant question of the day'.

Accordingly, Corbyn had been placed in a seemingly impossible position, coerced and cajoled by the usual cabal of backstabbing PLPs and Blairite centrists, yet had still found a way of trying to balance and maintain the support of both leave and remain bases.

Yet, an already toxic Brexit narrative had turned into a polarising zero-sum game, leaving Corbyn in a no-win one.

And the more liberal remainers ramped-up the Brexit fear factor, the more Corbyn's already fragile leave constituency diminished.

If much of Trump's support in the poorer blue collar hinterlands was a backlash against years of Wall Street/Obama/Clinton liberalism, a similar anti-liberal mood in the UK had found sullen, determined expression in 'Get Brexit Done', and held to Johnson as its fast and ready 'deliveroo'.

Yet, for all the valid leftist reasons for rejecting a deeply neoliberal EU, much of the wider leave public have been played in thinking that Brexit will deliver them from the same neoliberal penury.

In or out, the key issues of economic injustice still prevail. All the real political battles for socialist change still need to be fought.

But the electorate were also deeply influenced by the relentless demonising of Corbyn, the most ferocious media assault in modern political history, staining his character and casting doubt on his 'too radical', 'undeliverable' manifesto. This was narrative propaganda on an emergency scale.

Recall what many voters related as the 'main reasons' for Labour's defeat. The trip words and accusations resonate like an echo of every media-generated soundbite, from the Sun and Mail to the Guardian and BBC: he was a 'friend of' Hamas/Hezbollah/IRA; 'soft' on Russia; 'untrustworthy' on national security; 'confused' and 'dithering 'over Brexit; and, of course, 'antisemitic', and 'unable to deal' with the 'antisemitism crisis'.

All this drip-drip repetition and innuendo was enough to plant a sufficient level of suspicion and doubt in the public mind, more than enough to tip the balance. And after the close run in 2017, the establishment was leaving nothing to chance.

The BBC's part in the smearing of Corbyn was so extreme that Justin Schlosberg, a notable Jewish academic and co-author of Bad News for Labour. Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief, is preparing to mount a legal challenge over its output.

Days after Corbyn's defeat, Blair was back, picking over the bones like some gloating ghoul. But even worse than his salivating over Corbyn was the BBC/Guardian et al's indulgence of his shameless message, proving the deep pathology not only of Blair, but his eager host media.

And be under no illusions here. The establishment won - assisted, vitally, by its establishment liberals. A hopeful, historic socialist project duly nullified. 

Cravenly pledging 

Nor does it stop with Corbyn's removal. As the new leadership contest unfolds, the same set of forces are moving to ensure that no such threat ever presents itself again.

With dismal predictability, all five contenders have given due notice of their entirely safe credentials.

In a key show of compliance, every one, notably Corbyn 'continuity candidate' Rebecca Long-Bailey, has endorsed a 10-Pledges document laid out by the Jewish Board of Deputies 'to end the antisemitism crisis.'

An admirable open letter by Tony Greenstein criticising Long-Bailey's decision notes how, contrary to its grand claims, the BoD speaks for less than a third of Britain's Jews, has a relentlessly Israel-defending agenda, has approved the mass bombing of Gaza, and is in every main political sense part of the Tory establishment.

Under the BoD's Pledge 4, previously expelled figures like Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth would be permanently banned from the party. Anyone supporting such people would be banned under Pledge 5. Pledge 7 would give sole responsibility to the Jewish Labour Movement for 're-education' of 'errant' members. And Pledge 8 would render the Corbyn-supporting Jewish Voice for Labour a 'fringe' body, with only 'main representative groups' like the BoD to be engaged by the party.

A much-commended letter of response from Jewish Voice for Labour also denounces every aspect of the Board's document, noting with perfect clarity:

"The Board of Deputies Ten Pledges to End the Antisemitism Crisis is staggering in its chutzpah.* This organisation, deeply unrepresentative of British Jewry, presumes in effect to dictate to a major political party how it should run its internal affairs." 

Long-Bailey's acceptance of the 10 Pledges places her in the same position as establishment-approved Sir Keith Starmer. 

For many Labour leftists, it's a capitulation too far: "It's over."  Other Jewish Labour members have resigned in protest.

What chance of any radical positioning now from Long-Bailey, a prospective leader that caved so quickly to such a reactionary body? And, as Asa Winstanley reminds us, she did so in "a fawning blog post on The Times of Israel website acceding to all the Board of Deputies’ demands."

Jon Lansman, Long-Bailey's campaign director, has commended her for signing up to the Board's document, and for making this astonishing claim: “It is never OK to respond to allegations of racism by being defensive...The only acceptable response to any accusation of racist prejudice is self-scrutiny, self-criticism and self-improvement.”

Which, in effect, means that, within Labour, you now only simply have to call someone antisemitic and they have no primary right even to deny the charge. We have, it seems, fallen into a whole new dimension of black-hole McCarthyism.

And what, meanwhile, of Palestinian suffering, so intentionally erased from view by this whole peddled 'crisis'?

As Rachael Swindon notes: "Since 1967, Israel have demolished more than 50,000 Palestinian homes. This is ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, made worse by global powers turning a blind eye to routine atrocities. Shameful."

She also poses this small test of the candidates' political morality: "Palestinian homes are being bulldozed to the ground by occupation forces. Don't be afraid to say it. I'm interested to know the Labour leadership contenders position on ethnic cleansing."

For Chris Williamson, hounded from the party and abandoned by faux 'leftists': "No decent person could look at this and still defend the apartheid state of Israel."

And the five candidates' responses? Resounding silence - except, predictably, to accuse Swindon, also, of antisemitism.

The hard lesson, thus, endures: such forces will never be appeased or placated. You can only come out, openly, honestly, assertively, and confront them, in the process making the unassailable case for Palestinian justice.

If Long-Bailey has fallen so cravenly at that first hurdle, Corbyn may also now realise, in retrospect, that, despite his much more honourable efforts, he really had nothing to lose in this regard.

Dreich Scotia

Still, every dark cloud has a (potentially) silver lining. Johnson's victory now gives relentlessly Tory-rejecting Scotland a vital new opportunity to escape the political desert of Westminster.

In optimistic spirit, 80,000 stoic souls braved the Glasgow wind and rain to march All Under One Banner - or maybe All Under One Brolly - for Scottish Independence.

Drab Scottish weather, long to rain over us, yet enduring hope of finding progressive shelter from the perpetual cloud of Tory, Union rule. 

But, of course, Johnson says 'no' - raining again on our parade. What a surprise. Democracy dismissed, like it or lump it.

Condemnation and defiant words from the SNP now are not only a waste of time, but a real distraction. We already know and understand the mind of power. It does what it wants. It doesn't even need to respond. The important response at issue now is that of the SNP leadership. Alas, that too is looking like a quiet, rainy day indoors.

What's the actual purpose now of 48 lame SNP MPs sitting in the comfy chambers of Westminster? What's the rational purpose of an independence party if it doesn't seize this crucial chance and do everything to disrupt, agitate and organise for independence? Might it even have the political courage to abandon Westminster altogether as a defining statement of its supposed ultimate goal?

SNP defence spokesman, Stewart McDonald - already establishment-proven in his posturing concerns over Britain's 'military capability', lauding of Nato and relentless Russia-baiting - tells us that the "problem for the Prime Minister is that many Scots have psychologically left Westminster behind, and our Parliament in Edinburgh is seen as the centre of political representation and democratic expression. His position simply will not hold."

But, as viewed from the Indy street, it is many of those very SNP MPs, now so psychologically and physically centred at Westminster, whose own comfortable positions will not hold.

It's also worth noting, lamentably, how many SNP MPs, like McDonald, and even much of the party 'left', fell conveniently silent over the establishment treatment of Corbyn.

There's a certain view within the Indy camp that we should avoid any 'preoccupation' over the Indy ref impasse and stay focused on building support for Yes. But even if that figure reaches its most decisive level, the establishment will still be saying 'permission denied'.

As Alan Bissett responds: "We can build all the public support we like but at some point there needs to be a political or legal mechanism which will enable independence – or at least a referendum – otherwise what’s it all for?...At the moment I’m hearing silence from the leadership of the SNP about what this mechanism will be, and I’m starting to suspect it’s that they simply don’t know and are stalling for time in the hope that we haven’t realised it."

Suspicions now abound that Sturgeon and her tight inner circle will string it out, urging the Yes street to concentrate on securing an SNP majority at the Holyrood 2021 election. But, again, why would yet another mandate change anything? Why wait?  

In effect, Yes demands for a September 2020 Indy poll are not only being blocked by a Tory establishment, but tempered and stalled by an equivocating SNP and narrow party interests.     

Big picture resistance

Quite reasonably, some may ask what relevance this, or any other, quest for independence has, anyway, in the face of a massively more imminent global environmental crisis.

It's true, of course. The planet comes first and foremost. No inhabitable world, nothing left to fight for.

But that primary undertaking shouldn't inhibit us from simultaneously mobilising for other kinds of progressive change. The point is to pursue all useful political openings that shake up the system, negates the existing order, and reclaims people power over elite institutions. 

Occupied Palestinians will resolutely never abandon their struggle against systematic brutality and a murderous apartheid regime. What moral excuse might relatively more comfortable others have?

From the massive shows of global protest over climate breakdown and public rejection of more Middle East warmongering, to the heroic Right of Return marches in Gaza and resilient street protests in France (subject to almost complete BBC blackout), corporate, state and political power is now facing its own set of existential emergencies, and, with its backs to the wall, resorting to even more brutal and fascistic actions.

This is abundantly evident, for example, in Trump's politically-distracting turn to neo-con warmongering over Iran and increasing overtures to Israel, and in crisis-ridden Netanyahu's own turn to all-out annexation of West Bank land and open embracing of other far-right states.

But it's also evident in the British state's continuing efforts to recreate and extend its militarist-imperialist 'might' and repressive connections abroad, while deploying every mendacious effort to hold together its fracturing Union and decaying political 'authority' at 'home'.

Any coherent challenge to such reactionary power and oppressive structures requires thinking at multiple and interconnected levels of resistance.

Radical internationalism, in defence of planet, rejection of militarism and support of global others, sits in perfect compatibility with radical civic nationalism, in pursuit of the same, more 'localised' goals.   

After the British establishment's panic halting of progressive Yes in 2014, and ruthless termination of Corbyn's own socialist project in 2019, wouldn't it be great to demonstrate that radical resistance and common weal resilience by winning Scottish Indy in 2020? 

'Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will', as Gramsci had it. Or, as the Bard assured us, 'it's coming yet for a' that'.