Are we seeing a para-political coup against Scottish democracy? Some notes on the present moment in Scottish politics , with a special focus on the introduction of electronic election technology.
'The hostility shown towards Alex Salmond by the Scottish LibDems is almost pathological. These are parties which agree on almost everything - local income tax, fiscal powers, nuclear power - and yet the LibDem leadership seems determined to relinquish any prospect of having these policies implemented by refusing the Scottish people a say on the constitution.' Iain MacWhirter in the Sunday Herald, 18 th February 2007.
Many people are talking of a Scottish 'Prague Spring'. They are assuming that the LibDems will eventually strike a deal with the SNP. I am not so sure. [Since the first draft of this I hear that the LibDems propose to allow the SNP to lead a minority administration, but I also hear of the possibility of Labour challenging its loss of Cunninghame North by only 48 votes.]
In what follows I place the present tense situation or impasse in the light of broader consideration of para-political phenomena, many of them little noticed or tabooed to mention or even notice. Although I hope to see a SNP-led adminstration, I think that the British State is engaged in pulling out the stops to block this, even to the point where we can almost talk of an on-going coup against Scottish democracy. (Alternatively the SNP leadership may be allowed a share in office, not power, only once they have dropped opposition to Trident, unorthodox plans to raise money by selling bonds, and anything else which doesn't fit with the neo-liberal consensus.)
At the risk of being howled down by waves of insider-metropolitan derision for being conspiracy theorists, let us sceptical Scottish natives begin by recalling the sheer power of secret elites to infiltrate, 'manage' (or else block) a range of civil society organisations, not least political parties and lobbying organisations.
At one level we observe that those who wish to lead 'Western democracies' (plus Nato and many EU bodies) seem to have to attend Bliderberg group meetings for group approval - or otherwise ( http://www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#wand). More directly we recall with researchers like Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril the secret services' plotting against the Wilson government, their work with the CIA to promote the Atlantacist and pro-Zionist SDLP which let Thatcher - supported by Airey Neave and MI5 take over, then break the power of the unions with the aid of big business and the 'media-intel complex', and finally raise up New Labour - with Blair himself an MI5 informer/agent of influence, according to David Shayler www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/westcountry/2005/10/325840.html . [This is consistent among much else with the coincidence that on first arrival in the Commons he 'happened' to be allocated a room with Militant MP and fellow 'new boy', Dave Nellist]. (See Ramsay's brilliant little The Rise of New Labour, 2002, and Dorril and Ramsa's Smear: Wilson and the Secret State, 1991] Now that New Labour has served its purpose for a while, one can see the hand of history (Bilderberg, etc) moving back to support David Cameron, at least so long as he drops his 'traditional tory' objections to neo-con revolutionism abroad.
As for the LibDems I believe that here too a degree of MI5 influence at the top is the rule rather than the exception. One thinks of the eminently blackmailable Jeremy Thorpe, whose long-known-about interest in boys and young men, was eventually exposed by a section of MI5 as a way to destroy the Lab-Lib pact. [The role of MI5 sponsored boys homes/abuse circles in Northern Ireland (Kincora), Scotland (Dunblane) and probably Cardiff mirrors on a smaller scale the systematic role that State- sponsored child abuse has played in the certain centres of power in the US (and Brussels) . see the work of Glen Yeadon: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/littleboys.html .]
After David Steel we saw military intelligence officer Paddy Ashdown's meteoric rise to leadership, plus the tendency of 'unreliable' contenders for the leadership to implode, now leaving the field clear for St Andrews based safe pair of hands Menzies Cambell, a confirmed Atlantacist who has developed pretending to be critical of the US and Israel (while pulling all his punches) into an art form. As for the antiwar Left I take it for granted that MI5 manages to play a role in guiding certain key groupings, promoting those perspectives with which it can live, and shutting out as beyond the pale other perspectives, e.g. on false-flag terrorism or on the 'War on Drugs', where we have seen the price of heroin fell after the West took over Afghanistan.
Of course there are many other difficulties and shortcomings which confront all of us who want serious social change, many of which many better be understood in 'structural' terms, or in terms of institutional, gender, economic, cultural, social-psychological, psychological and even spiritual perspectives, rather than - or rather than mainly - the products of fiendish para-political manipulations by ruling and other secret fraternities .... . But unless we are alert to the possibility or actuality of the latter, then we can easily over-explain in other terms ('Scottish cringe') or misunderstand what is really going on.
This said, although the then male-dominated SSP will surely have had its fair share of people who tend to see things in dualistic terms, which has predisposed the left to splits over many years, who can seriously imagine that MI5 hasn't played some role in possibly entrapping and then exposing Sheridan, and then stirring things further towards a destructive party split - which has surely contributed to the 'success' that the Scottish parliament has now been 'cleansed' of any serious ideological opposition to neo-liberalism.
However the 'threat' from the left isn't the only threat the British State has to worry about. The 70's saw a rise of a strong Scottish Nationalist tide, whose ebbing is surely connected with the association of nationalism with extremism in the public mind. Again, one doesn't wish to paint out of the picture the Braveheart syndrome of masculinist nationalism, which deterred amnd deters many throughtful people, especially women, from embracing and fashioning the SNP as a internationalist and national, not a nationalist party. Yet granted this vulnerability was there, we also need to be aware of the role played by the likes of Major Busby and other agents of the British State, and the numerous 'liberation armies' they spawned, ever ready to claim credit for bomb blasts, hoaxes, letter bombs, etc. Of course they also drew in some naive 'genuine' extremists they were manipulating, inciting, etc (See Tartan Terrorism and the Anglo-American State by Andrew Murray Scott and Iain MacLeay, 1990) For a recent parallel we need to realise that secret services now manipulate and largely create the phenomenon of 'Islamic' terrorism: see Nafeez Ahmed's brilliant online article Subverting 'Terrorism': Muslim Problem or Covert Operations Nighmare? ) .
Both these texts are aware of the determination of the British and 'Western' (US/Zionist) Powers that Be not to give up power lightly. Thus we get the phenomenon of false-flag terrorism, e.g. the use of Brigadier Kitson's pseudo-gangs moving back from Kenya to Northern Ireland (Force Reconnaissance Unit) and then out again to Basra and Baghdad (Joint Services Group), all the time being given ideological cover by 'counter-insugency' 'terrorism' experts in the RAND-Corporation-linked Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews, as chronicled by Campaign Against Criminalising Communities http://www.campacc.org.uk/embedded.htm .
Although the SNP leadership is prepared to trim to the needs of business to get into office (witness, many believe, the convenient dropping of the popular demand for re-regulation of the buses just prior to receiving half a million pounds from Brian Souter), Salmond remains too unpredictable, anti-war and anti-Trident for comfort. In any case nationalism has a tendency not just to derail class politics but sometimes to stimulate class and anti-imperialist awareness. Greater Scottish confidence and mental independence could manifest in dangerous ways, e.g. it might question other aspects of the British (Anglo-American) State, e.g. the right of central banks to make (debt-freighted) money 'out of nothing'; or the British Broadcasting Corporation's slavish endorsement of the absurd 911 nonsense - even down to actively reporting the 'collapse' of the Salomon Brothers Building Seven 26 minutes before it was internally blown up and fell at the speed of air resistance at 5.20! (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/260207building7.htm ; on the demolitions at the World Trade Centre, see www.911review.com and www.911scholars.org )
Hence, as Scottish Nationalism appears to be on the rise again, we could well see the Anglo-American State revive the use of a panoply of tactics - including false-flag terrorism ascribed to 'extreme nationalists'; attempts to entrap, blackmail and discredit SNP leaders; concerted economic threats and announcements by Unionist business leaders, bankers or even (as in the 1980's) the US ambassador, etc. The emergence of well-funded groups like Scottish Voice on a policy-free pro-Unionist agenda may or may not be laying down a marker for future interventions - its founder is the son of Col David Stirling whose GB75 citizen army was recruiting people to help maintain 'order' in a coup in the seventies. Awareness of the record of the British State abroad suggests that it often seeks to cling to power in (and over) a country be means of stirring one ethnic or religious group up against another. The same applies to ruling parties desperately trying to hold onto power, e.g. Milosovic in former Yugoslavia. Here we all need to be aware of the amount of sectarian tinder which still lies around in many parts of Scotland, with Rangers-supporters increasingly being drawn to define themselves against the Scottish nationalism of Celtic-supporters. At times the BNP - which sees itself as being adopted/coming to power via crises - may also play a role in stirring up opposition to 'separation' and 'republicanism' as well as immigration and 'Islamic terrorism'.
On May 3rd the BNP 'appears to have polled' 25,000 votes, advisedly, for this brings me to yet another technique which may be deployed to frustrate Scottish Nationalism, indeed may already have been used, namely electoral fraud.
Attempting in a UK context to connect the world of 911 truth activism/false-flag terrorism awareness and the Voting integrity community, where I am seeking to alert the Electoral Reform Society to the dangers of the UK 'modernising' its voting mechanism, and awaken the peace movement to the 'Frats', Brotherhoods and 'Men's huts' which threaten our one Earth Motherland.
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
