Lewes 312

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I was about to go into my box at the Lyceum Theatre last night when I received a text that there was a pro-independence demo on at Holyrood. So I abandoned my hosts (I did not feel quite as bad about this as I had stood for pre-theatre supper), fled the theatre and positively jogged down to parliament. I passed most of the demonstrators leaving on their way home, saltires draped over shoulders and Guido masks on top of heads. But there were still a few hundred there when I arrived, listening to unpractised speakers telling their very real stories: the independence cause continues to be a genuinely popular movement. One young demonstrator told me how proud they had been as they marched down the Royal Mile, with pedestrians homeward bound after a day’s work spontaneously stepping off the pavement to join the march, and the bars emptying. I then watched the fireworks bursting over Edinburgh.

I said a while back that if we won independence, I would move back to Scotland. Well, independence is now so inevitable I am indeed moving back, and have been flat-hunting. This is now an Edinburgh blog, and I hope from this weekend will have its Edinburgh home.

Lewes has been much in the news lately. Yesterday they were going to burn an effigy of Alex Salmond, and then didn’t. It is a conundrum why a town which genuinely retains the most radical popular political traditions in England, also is the most fervent place of practice of the reactionary art of catholic effigy burning. They vary this now by burning protestants, too. Cameron and Clegg have been done. I think my fellow Scottish Nationalists who got very upset about the potential Salmond burning were perhaps overreacting. The mistake of the members of the Lewes Waterloo Society was to fail to realise that Salmond is not merely another self-serving member of the political class; the selection was not based on race.

The tradition of burning Guy Fawkes reflects the undeniable fact that there used to be a genuine popular enthusiasm for parliament, which was seen as a bastion against Papal despotism, even long before the large majority of the population had a vote. Nowadays Parliament has become a very different kind of symbol. It symbolises an highly oppressive, authoritarian, narrow political class which shamelessly makes money at our expense, while furthering the interests of vast corporations which enforce the low wage economy and astonishing, ever growing, wealth gap.

The natural instincts of most people today lie with the man who tried to blow up parliament.

It is truly remarkable that, while the BBC and rest of the mainstream media gave hour by hour coverage of the democracy movement protests in Hong Kong, there was virtually no coverage of the violent and brutal treatment, over days, of the Occupy Democracy protest in Parliament Square in London. Nor any mention that there was far less democracy in Hong Kong under British rule than Chinese.

In Lewes, I once spoke to a flourishing political society which claims a direct descent from one founded by Thomas Paine himself- a vivid reminder to us in Scotland that there is a native radical tradition in Southern England, deep underground and waiting to be rediscovered. Lewes also has as its MP Norman Baker, one of the most decent men in politics, who recently resigned as a junior minister over the government’s entirely illogical “war on drugs” – illogical not least because of the drug habits of so many MPs. My current host, Hugh Kerr, when an MEP once made a speech in the European Parliament where he pointed out that many members were voting against drug liberalisation with whom he had personally participated in drug taking. An example of the excessive honesty that led to Hugh being forced out of the Labour Party.

Norman Baker was the subject of many vicious pieces in the mainstream media following his resignation. The crime of daring to think outside the box on drugs, and even worse crime of disagreeing with right wing nutjob and media darling Theresa May, meant that Baker had to be thoroughly monstored. But the most disgraceful and cowardly of all these attacks came from the Guardian of state stooge Alan Rusbridger. This is simply an appalling piece of journalism.

I have met Norman Baker a couple of times, and had a very entertaining conversation with him about Murder in Samarkand on Lewes railway station. The subject of UFO’s never came up. Indeed, if you google “Norman Baker, UFO” you get hundreds of media stories, all of them put out following Baker’s resignation and very evidently put about by Theresa May, for whom the Guardian is but a sounding board. In fact Norman Baker did once suggest in parliament that UFO cases deserved proper official investigation, which seems a perfectly rational view – and as the British government has, over decades, amassed thousands of files on UFO sightings, a view clearly widely held.

Baker’s other great sin is to believe David Kelly was murdered. Well, I think it is very probable indeed that David Kelly was murdered, and so, I suspect, do a very large percentage of the population. If the establishment is truly so confident that David Kelly was not murdered, it is remarkable that they refuse to have an inquest and allow a jury to decide the question in the normal way.

Norman Baker’s true crime was not to be a fully paid up member of the political class. He had never been a special adviser or political assistant. he had some hinterland, other interests, and did not confine his thinking within the tiny sphere of neo-con orthodoxy beyond which the corporate media will declare you a nutter. Politicians must all look the same, and Theresa May and Nigel Farage are now the only acceptable templates.

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312 thoughts on “Lewes”

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  • Peacewisher

    Youtube video from interview with Ukrainian General in March 2014 telling it as it is (subtitles added so we can understand…)

  • Silvio

    Mondoweiss publishes an interview with a Zionist who fell out of love with Israel:

    In and out of love with Israel: Tzvia Thier’s story

    Late in June, there was a demonstration in New York’s Union Square against Israeli raids in the West Bank at which I interviewed a curly-haired Israeli-American woman handing out flyers and found myself riveted. Tzvia Thier was 70 and had been a Zionist till she was 64 years old; now she could kick herself for believing Zionist myths. She had never met a Palestinian till 2008, she explained; and she’d accepted Zionist myths and passed them on as an educator. “There is no connection between Judaism and Zionism,” she said. “American Jews…don’t understand that they are fooled by the Zionists. They are so naive..”

    The response to that video interview was overwhelming. Two people told me more about Thier. Heb posted a video from 2010 of Thier badgering a settler on the West Bank who was trying to steal a Palestinian shepherd’s water; you see a woman in her 60s standing up to a young zealot with what can only be called a heroic presence– she pulls his ponytail, his pants almost fall off.

    Shmuel Sermoneta-Gertel emailed me to say he had researched Thier in Hebrew sources and learned that she had authored Zionist texts for children, had taught in Jewish day schools in the U.S., and her brother had been killed while serving in the Israeli army in 1983 in Lebanon. Tzvia Thier had led her life entirely inside the Zionist experience, Shmuel said, directing me to ask her about her attachment to Zionism and her decision to break with it.

    I spoke with Thier on a couple of occasions. I apologize for the length of this Q-and-A, but I don’t think you will find a more honest and humorous advocate for equality and justice than this thoughtful woman who loved Israel with all her heart, until she didn’t.

    http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/israel-thiers-story

  • Arbed

    O/T

    For those interested in the Julian Assange case and/or Monday’s Parliamentary debate and vote on whether Britain should opt-out of the European Arrest Warrant, there’s a campaign and template letter to email to MPs ahead of Monday.

    http://wiseupaction.info/2014/11/06/open-letter-to-uk-mps-julian-assange-and-the-parliamentary-debate-on-the-european-arrest-warrant-monday-10th-november-2014/

    Dear xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx MP,

    Parliamentary debate on the European Arrest Warrant, 10th Nov 2014 – Julian Assange

    I am writing to ask you to raise the case of Julian Assange during the upcoming Parliamentary vote on whether the UK should opt out of the EAW entirely. The cost issue sets Julian Assange’s case apart from other extradition cases and shows how badly wrong things can go when the EAW system is abused. See this website for details: govwaste.co.uk.

    The government is trying to hide behind the recent EAW reforms, but they don’t deal with the fundamental problems of the European Arrest Warrant, which leaves British judges little alternative but to rubber-stamp extraditions without any prima facie evidence being presented. Adding that a ‘decision’ to charge has to have been taken does little to prevent misuse when the person issuing the EAW is an official (investigator/prosecutor) rather than a judicial figure (judge/magistrate), as in Sweden’s system. EAWs issued by non-judicial authorities cannot be blindly trusted to be independent and impartial, especially when the issuing authority also has the role of Chief Investigator, as is the case with Marianne Ny, the Swedish prosecutor demanding Mr Assange’s extradition for questioning over allegations of sexual misconduct.

    The rushed introduction of the EAW into British law has led to the UK having to aid unjust proceedings in other parts of Europe, often at enormous cost. The Assange arrest warrant is a case in point: it has cost UK taxpayers nearly £8 million in just over two years. Since 2012, the UK has spent 20% of its entire EU extradition budget against Assange, the equivalent of 600 extraditions when calculated on the average £13,000 cost per extradition.

    Britain has also borne the cost of facilitating Sweden’s misguided use of the EAW to extradite Julian Assange through the UK legal system, when Mutual Legal Assistance protocols could have been used to question him all along. The Assange embassy situation is an absurd consequence of enforcing an arrest warrant where there is no formal accusation. Not only has he not been charged – the Swedish prosecutor won’t even come here to interview him.

    The case of Julian Assange provides ample illustration that there are insufficient safeguards in the judicial systems of other European countries and the EAW basically extraterritorialises these, imports them wholesale, makes the UK bear the costs, and obliges it to execute the orders. That is unsatisfactory and should be unacceptable for any parliamentarian concerned about their constituents’ rights as UK citizens or residents.

    Yours sincerely,
    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Your name

  • YouKnowMyName

    Sofia, wow, your google link not only didn’t work for me, it leaked a lot of your metadata!

    you (or better put your Googlebubble) claims that you are in Ireland, using Firefox web-browser, with an English, but the US flavor of English, possibly US keyboard and US system setup. Then the actual codes that were included in the link might have been more personal unique identifiers, or maybe related to the article.

    One good way to check this is to
    a) Go directly to Google and search for your name. Look at the URL.
    b) Go directly to DuckDuckGo.com and perform the same search. Look at the URL., compare & contrast!

    Google keep changing their ‘search parameters’ so we don’t know what they all mean

    anyway – back to the death of citizens part due to the current ‘hybrid warfare’ or ‘information warfare‘, or in otherwords, poor Ukraine.

    From the Estonian Postimees online newspaper today , we can read about the recent UA elections, from the personal experience as an International Expert Group Observer of Vladimir Velman (born 25 September 1945 in Tallinn ) an Estonian politician and journalist.

    “People are afraid of everything: journalists, observers, the change of power, and what they actually think, they hold deep within themselves. The most that they were ready to enter into a polling booth and put a cross. Not surprisingly, the percentage of participation in these elections was the lowest, while those who went to the polls, saying that they were going to vote to avoid war. Here is a sad mood. They are afraid to continue the war with the Donbas, they are afraid of Russia, and the closer to the east, the less afraid. And the people in the east are more open than in Kiev”

    On the Khreshchatyk [Kiev high-street] it is terrible. All street, beginning from Kreshchatik metro station, it is decorated by photos, candles. When you see faces in these photos, and you perceive “heavenly one hundred” and the Maidan in a different way: these are ordinary people who arrived from all Ukraine and it is unclear whom and for what were killed. When I saw it, in my consciousness there was a revaluation of events. Of course, I knew before that the game goes over the heads of ordinary Ukrainians, but when I saw these specific bereaved, then realised that they did not need to do that – to come here and give in to provocations. These people – were the romantics of the Maidan, the romantics of revolution and the romantics are always the victims of the revolution. ”

    To the question of how Velman evaluates the results of elections, the politician said: “The trouble Ukraine is that there is no leader, no political forces that would be able to unite all, based on some kind of compromise, and if not, then there is no country. There is concern that after the start of a new parliament can be a new Maidan. There was not passed into parliament the extreme right-wing forces, there didn’t pass loudmouths of the Maidan like Tyahnybok, and it is good.

    The political establishment in Estonia and Europe believes that the success of the elections to the parliament was the victory of pro-European forces. I consider however that a victory of pro-Ukrainian forces, in a broad geographical and state sense would be a success, and only then the inhabitants of the Ukrainian state would decide themselves where to swing in their geopolitical preferences. The feeling is that Ukraine is increasingly heading into the abyss, and it has no wings, nothing left that could take it out.

    sorry for my poor translation, but it was better than leaving it in Estonian or Russian.
    Полностью интервью читайте в свежем выпуске еженедельника «День за Днем»
    Loe kogu intervjuu viimases numbris nädalas “Päevast Päeval”.

  • doug scorgie

    Sam
    7 Nov, 2014 – 12:42 pm

    “…I can recommend an excellent place to catch live music in someone’s living room, where all of the proceeds go straight to the artists.”
    ______________________

    Now that would be a shebeen Sam and could get Craig locked-up.

  • Juteman

    Congratulations to Craig on standing for the SNP in the GE in May.
    I wonder if Fred will still post on a Blackshirts blog?

  • nevermind, there's a future, still

    Hallo Juteman, when did Craig say he’ll be standing for the SNP at the next GE and in which constituency?
    Just asking so I can prepare the victory celebration.

  • Juteman

    “Just announced at the Way Forward Conference. Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador who exposed the corruption of the British State, is moving to Scotland to stand as an SNP candidate at the General Election”

  • nevermind, there's a future, still

    Now that is good news, thanks Juteman, and what a valuable MP he will be, looking forward to his acceptance speech already, it’ll be pure chilli peppers to the establishments eyes.
    excellent this made my day.

  • doug scorgie

    Fred
    7 Nov, 2014 – 2:04 pm

    “Negative campaigning is one of the things that crept in from the USA that I consider a detriment to democracy and everyone working constantly to demonize every party bar their own results in governments elected by default rather than sound thinking.”

    Quite true Fred. Negative campaigning is exactly what the Better Together Campaign did, including lies and false promises.

    The LibDems were central in that campaign.

  • Ben-9260th dojo katana

    Loretta Lynch nominated for Attoney Gen by Obastid. Typical corporatist good ol’ boy/girl network.

    In 2001, Lynch left the office to become a partner at Hogan & Hartson (later Hogan Lovells). From 2003 to 2005, she was a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.[10] She remained there until January 20, 2010, when President Barack Obama nominated Lynch to again serve as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

    Hogan Lovells is among the largest lobbying firms in the United States. Before the merger, by revenue, Hogan & Harston was among the top five lobbying firms in the United States.[27] Since the merger, the firm has remained among the largest lobbying firms, servicing $12.3 million in lobbying 2013.

  • Tony M

    In the Borders, where generally the towns voted Yes – just above and some just below 50% – but the countryside swung it over to NO, it will be interesting for once, come the UK GE, and it is potentially winnable for the SNP or Yes Alliance or whatever, as current Tory MSP John Lamont (£15,000 expenses, just for “office supplies”, that’s a lot of staples) announced a year or two ago he’d be standing against sacked former Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, for ‘his’ Westminster seat, giving the unionist voters a bit of head-scratching to do when they come to vote, over which pillock to pick, voting as often by candidates name, the more recognisable the better, regardless of their opaque views and sorry records, than by party. The Labour vote was never and isn’t much, but could come over enthusiastically to the Indy side, it if hasn’t fully already.

    A problem in those parts is determining which party allegiance if any the local councillors have as many have left the unionist parties publically for whimsical reasons, but really to save their own hides from party disaffection by standing confusingly in council elections as “Independent” candidates. The unionist parties there are in profound disarray and look set to further unravel, it isn’t even out of the question that Moore is sufficiently disaffected with the LibDems and the coalition, which to his credit ousted him, to put Scotland before his moribund ex-party and defect to the Scottish National Party if he could secure the Westminster candidacy; his prominence in the referendum campaign was negligible and his insincere arguments for the union, as were Lamont’s, were lamentable, puerile drivel, only sniffed at by chip-wrapper Johnston Press local rags captive but dwindling audience, but certainly not lapped up without reservations.

    This once considered least winnable seat after Mundell’s bewilderingly deviant D&G fiefdom, is looking ever more promising for the SNP and Moore could carry it, but never again under the tattered Lib Dem Banner. He could then after the inevitable independence easily send Tory boy-blunder Lamont packing from the almost corresponding Holyrood seat. If Moore doesn’t jump, the unionist vote is going to be sorely split between him and Lamont in 2015. That rumbling noise, it’s not foul fracking, but is a seismic shift of sorts taking place underfoot.

  • doug scorgie

    Peacewisher
    8 Nov, 2014 – 11:58 am

    “New EU Foreign Affairs leader, Federica Mogherini, calling for Palestine Statehood”
    ____________________________

    More false hope I’m afraid Peacewisher.

    Israel has no intention of allowing a Palestinian state. That should be clear to all by now. The two-state solution is dead and indeed, was never alive.

    Mogherini says: “We need a Palestinian state — that is the ultimate goal and this is the position of all the European Union”
    ___________________________

    In other words – the EU hangs on to the no-longer tenable two-state solution.

    “Mogherini said Sweden’s recognition of Palestine did not represent a template for other EU members, as a new Palestinian state should be established, rather than recognized as it is at the moment.”
    _________________________

    In other words – the EU will not recognise the state of Palestine until a Palestinian state is established first.

    That means that the states of Israel and Palestine have to be established by mutual agreement in advance of any EU recognition.

    It’s not going to happen because of Israel’s Zionist, expansionist and racist policies.

  • DoNNyDarKo

    Doug, the one state option is anathema for the Israeli’s.They could never share a State with the Palestinians on equal footing & definitely not when the demographics in 10 years will mean any and every majority in a PAL/IS State is Arab.
    It’s right to push for the 2 State solution,but therein lies the major obstacle… there are walls and settlements,motorways and rail links which divide the Palestinian part.
    Was speaking to a Russian Jewish friend that lives in Tel Aviv last month,and he said it’s a bit like the last days of Rome there.He’s going to hang on as long as the good times roll and then it’ll be hello Europe.Most Israeli’S seem to hold dual citizenship.
    Maybe the zionist experiment will have a happy ending.

  • Louise Zuzu Crosbie

    I enjoyed reading this thanks. I agree that in some ways people got overly upset but having never encountered the Lewes traditions before, the Alex Salmond and the 45% effigy brought my attention to it. on further examination I discovered their anti catholic sentiments too. then the traveling people…
    I know when a small small minority of people are offended by something that the majority are not offended by, its likely the minority are people who are just too easily offended.
    but in reverse, when a small minority of people do a list of things that offend MANY people of different cultures, religions, races then something is surely very wrong and it needs challenged.
    I think that is what caused the outcry. Our sudden introduction to this town and its archaic “traditions” that should no longer be seen as acceptable. information overload of racism, bigotry and questionable choices.
    when they burned the effigy of Cameron, we notice that he was only there to depict how well he was pulling the puppet strings of his little libdem associate.
    Personally, its the larger picture that has caused me to feel upset. not just the attack on 45% of voting Scots.
    PS: I too was on the march on the 5th Nov. keeping hope for social democracy alive.
    glad to have you home with us and taking part. 🙂

  • Mary

    Wonder if the suckers who have paid their £25 know that there is a scam.

    Just a third of Tower poppy cash is going to help our heroes: So who WILL be pocketing the rest? Stunning war memorial will eventually include 888,246 ceramic poppies
    Hundreds of thousands of people have paid £25 for their own flower
    But only a third of the money is expected to go to good causes
    Just £8.75 from each poppy will go to charity, while £12.08 will cover ‘costs’

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754319/Just-Tower-poppy-cash-going-help-heroes-So-WILL-pocketing-rest.html

    ‘Just £8.75 from each poppy will reach the six charities, according to official internal estimates, while £12.08 will cover ‘costs’.
    The Mail has learned this is about four times more than the likely expense of making the poppies – suggesting a large amount is being taken as profits.
    A company set up by the Tower of London and the artist behind the project, Paul Cummins, could potentially receive millions from the artwork, meaning businessmen who helped fund it could make substantial returns.
    The Mail tracked down one of the private financiers who lent money to help set up the project, Ben Whitfield, and put it to him that he was making an estimated profit of more than a million pounds.’

    ie The usual in this spiv ConDem setup.

  • Republicofscotland

    “You’re right, it was the press. So how did it get onto this blog? Why – through the good offices of none other than…..your good self, “Republicofscotland” !!

    You Trolls simply can’t get your story right, can you.

    “Gamma minus, I’m afraid.”
    _______________________________

    Habb=itual Liar

    Now you mention it, how the hell did you, get onto this blog, you have all the tendencies of a Remora fish.

    I must say Habb old boy you do have one hell of an amount of chutzpah, to call anyone else a troll.

  • Mary

    Louise Can’t help that. Amongst the Littlejohn type dross, they do dig up some telling facts.

  • doug scorgie

    DoNNyDarKo
    8 Nov, 2014 – 5:21 pm

    “Doug, the one state option is anathema for the Israeli’s.”
    ________

    The Zionists do want the one-state option but it is one state comprising all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank for Jews with the Arab population removed.
    ________

    “They could never share a State with the Palestinians on equal footing & definitely not when the demographics in 10 years will mean any and every majority in a PAL/IS State is Arab.”
    ________

    Which goes to show how undemocratic and racist the Israeli state and Zionists are.
    ________

    “It’s right to push for the 2 State solution…”
    _________

    It would be if Israel stopped expanding settlements and outposts and then moved back to the 1967 borders with Gaza contiguous with the West Bank; a situation acceptable to both Fatah and Hamas.

    Such a solution is not on the table though, so why push for it?
    _________

    “Was speaking to a Russian Jewish friend that lives in Tel Aviv… He’s going to hang on as long as the good times roll and then it’ll be hello Europe.”
    _________

    Well it seems that “the good times roll” in Israel if you are Jewish but the good times don’t roll in Gaza, the west Bank or Israel if you are an Arab.

    If a single, secular and democratic state with equality for all its citizens is anathema to Israeli Jews and Zionists then perhaps they should consider moving to Europe; but they must remember that European countries are secular and democratic with equality for all their citizens.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    DonnyDarkSide

    “He’s going to hang on as long as the good times roll and then it’ll be hello Europe.Most Israeli’S seem to hold dual citizenship.
    Maybe the zionist experiment will have a happy ending.”
    ___________________

    You mean the sort of “happy ending” called for in the Hamas Charter? You know : the one where all the Jews get thrown into the sea?

    Are you sure you’re not acquainted with the Hamas Charter, Donny?

  • DoNNyDarKo

    Why don’T you just cut and paste the piece Habbacopy with § # et al, and then we’ll be done with this Hamas charter crap?

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