I have been much criticised for referring to Unionists – and No voters are precisely Unionists – as evil or stupid. I have given this much thought, as a number of very well-intentioned people have urged me to apologise. After a great deal of angst, I have decided to offer a heartfelt apology. Not all Unionists are Evil or Stupid. Some are just Cowards. There, I think that covers it.
My analysis runs thus:
Evil
The United Kingdom has become a force for ill in the World. In invading Iraq against the express wishes of the UN Security Council, Blair and Bush did to the United Nations what Hitler and Mussolini did to the League of Nations. The UK was up to its neck in complicity with extraordinary rendition and torture. Its foreign policy is based on resource grabs for the benefit of a few wealthy corporations. Even this year it is in Court still defending the atrocious deportation of the entire population of Diego Garcia to make way for a US airbase, and still preventing their return. It is actively preparing to do the same to the Ascension Islanders. It supports the hideous dictatorship of Bahrain and was implicated in the overthrow of Egypt’s only elected government by the CIA’s General Sisi. It constantly works against the interests of the Palestinians at the UN.
This week the UK has been passing still more laws attacking fundamental liberties in the name of “counter-terrorism” and increasing surveillance. It has an economy dedicated entirely to the interests of very wealthy people in the City of London. Its wealth gap between rich and poor is massive and still growing. The UK has 100 billionaires, and malnourished children, living on a small island. It is dominated by corporations run on a low wage model and has systematically destroyed workers’ rights.
On balance, the government of the UK has become a force for evil in the world. not a force for good. To support it in full knowledge of the above is evil.
Stupid
Given the existence of the tremendous communications possibilities of the internet, and given the wide range of information available above all in Scotland where a new political consciousness has developed, there are few excuses for having been ill-informed in the referendum. The failure to inform oneself, given the resources available, was itself evidence of a lack of gumption.
Some people are Unionists not because they support the policies outlined under Evil, but because they fail to perceive them. This group overlaps heavily with those who do not believe the Labour Party is now a fully paid up neoconservative party subscribing to everything above, and with only a sham concern for social justice. Despite the Red Tories’ open pledges to be tougher on welfare reform and immigration than the Blue Tories, these stupid people believe social progress is possible within the UK under Labour. They also actually believed that The Vow on Devo-Max would be delivered. This group of Unionists are incapable of perceiving evil when they see it, even when it comes certified with membership of the Henry Jackson Society. These people are stupid.
Cowardly
I have added this last group. These are people who did perceive the evil of the UK, and thus weren’t entirely stupid, but were too scared of social change to abandon unionism. A substantial section of the cowards should in fact be grouped under evil, because the cause of their fear was entirely self-centred. They could see the evil the UK does, but cared rather more about their own pension, job, mortgage etc. than they cared about anything else in the world. This combination of selfishness and fear of social change is of course classically Tory. But not all cowards fell into the Tory category. Some were genuinely fearful that things might somehow get even worse for everybody. They would not have boarded the first trains in case their heads were blown off by the 30mph winds.
Conclusion
After four months of constant thought, I cannot think of any hypothetical unionist position which does not fall into one of those categories. I am grateful for the criticism which led me to realise that I had left out the cowards. Some of that criticism came from nationalists who do not like politics to be described in moral terms, and for whom national independence should rouse no more passion than a change in local council boundaries, being a simple question of the best technocratic management of broadly similar political systems. That is a position I wholeheartedly denounce. For me national independence for Scotland is a great ethical choice for good – and against evil.
Fortunately a great many of the stupid are realising their mistake – being slower on the uptake does not stop you getting there eventually. So now there is a definite majority, for Yes. I am pleased about this, and view Independence as absolutely inevitable in the near term. I shall certainly live to see it. I don’t see converting No voters as part of my personal mission in life. The Wizard of Oz could give the Coward a medal and the Stupid a diploma. I shall content myself with being the one who throws water over the Evil.
Finally, for those who cannot get their heads round the purpose, style and conventions of political polemic, plainly you don’t have to be a No voter to be stupid. I have No voters in my family and among very close friends, including some without whose assistance I couldn’t keep this blog going. An attempt to introduce intellectual rigour into political discussion and test positions as part of political debate in no sense equates to personal animosity. As I have repeatedly stated in the context of the hundreds of political issues this blog has debated over ten years, I do not choose my friends by their politics. Otherwise I guess I wouldn’t have any đ !
Wtf is Ben
its hard trying to keep peace aroon here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e77tLfkiVn8
Giyane i’m afraid your anti-Semitic “the Jews did it” theory is not supported by the facts.
Canada, which has had Stephen Harper and his Liberal party governing it since 2006, who are as right wing, neo-con in their foreign policy and pro-Israel as they come, did not have a banking crisis, because it had regulated its banks properly. So bang goes the zionist conspiracy theory explanation of the banking crisis i’m afraid. Facts don’t support it.
Add to that some of the most outspoken critics of Israeli atrocities and land grabs in the British parliament are in fact Jewish MPs – e.g google Gerald Kaufman on Israel.
And some of Israel’s strongest critics on the other side of the Atlantic, like Norman Finkelstein, are also Jewish.
So please don’t spout ridiculous, prejudiced, anti-semitic conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence to support them.
And i’m “conservative” am I? I’ve stood as an independent candidate three times criticising all the big parties’ records, campaigned for Craig in the Norwich North By election, and you will not find many people more critical of Israeli atrocities and land grabs in the occupied Palestinian territories, nor of Coalition war crimes and torture in Iraq. I opposed the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war from the start.
You clearly know about as much about me as you do about the causes of the banking crisis – which is to say sweet fuck all. All you have are some wild theories based on nothing and in complete conflict with all the facts.
If you ever stopped to think you might also realise that no one ever persuaded anyone to change their mind on something by insulting them, so Craig insulting all No voters is not exactly a great tactic for getting enough of them to vote Yes to get a majority for it next time.
P.S I sincerely hope “decent regime like Bahrain” bit is a joke given that the monarchy in Bahrain had protesters shot and tortured when they dared to protest. You do know the British and US governments back the Bahraini monarchy and arm them right?
OK
Remove the Jewish and everything”s fine?????
Criminals need safe places to launder their cash. Canada goose!
If you know what caused the banking crisis, which you don’t, tell us.
Apart from evil, supid and cowardly, other categories may include indifferent or careless – there are a whole swathe of people who haven’t thought things through as thoroughly as you have. Perhaps you categorize these people as stupid, though it’s fairer to say that they were remiss. The challenge is to stimulate these people into relaising that the issues +matters+.
Deregulation in both the UK and the US. Thatcher began the deregulation of the financial sector with her 1986 ‘Big Bang’ deregulation of the City of London financial district. Subsequent governments continued it for every economic sector, including finance.
In the US after the 1929 banking crisis that, along with austerity, caused the Great Depression FDR’s administration brought in much stricter regulation of banking, including the 1933 Banking Act (often called Glass-Steagall after the members of congress who sponsored it).
From the 1960s on congress and Presidents began deregulating, fastest from Reagan in the 80s on, but including Clinton’s administration which removed the last remnants of Glass Steagall.
Canada and Norway, both of which had regulated their banks properly, had no banking crisis, despite Canada having had incredibly right wing (and extremely pro-Israel) governments under Stephen Harper and the Liberal party. Norway’s government, far more pro-Palestinian, didn’t have a banking crisis either, because it regulated its banks properly too.
Now on this Canada having been the safe haven for all the money. You presumably have some (any?) evidence of this instant theory come to without checking if there are any facts to back it up? Of huge transfers of money by the banks to Canada just before the crisis?
Also why would the banks need to transfer the money anywhere given that they’d bought up so much political influence in their own countries through donations to the main political parties and their election campaigns, having former bank executives appointed as Federal government regulators in the US and to positions in the Treasury and Bank of England in the UK that they can get governments in the US to bail them out and hand them billions in quantitative easing money, not prosecute them for frauds like Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs = thousands of debts parcelled together so no one has time to check all the credit ratings of them), as well as not re-regulating them? Half the donations to the Conservative party since 2010 have come from the financial sector. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is a former executive of GoldmanSachs bank.
Federal Reserve staff go back and forth between employment in banks like GoldmanSachs and the Reserve itself, as tapes reported on by Bloomberg and the New York Times show.
So why would they need to do anything in Canada when they have so much bought up influence with governments in the US and UK?
And why would it need to be a Jewish or Zionist conspiracy when all the evidence points to the banks just being able to buy political influence easily, made easier by deregulation?
Did someone mention banks.
The World Today – FROM THE HORSEâS MOUTH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc_pnP8wZkk
And the Iraq war did not only benefit Israel. Israel wasn’t even the main beneficiary of the Iraq war. Ariel Sharon had wanted the US to go to war on Iran first. It benefited Halliburton and its Kellog Brown and Root subsidiary, which, through Dick Cheney, Halliburton’s former CEO of Halliburton, got government contracts to supply troops in Iraq and provide fuel for them from Kuwait without having to bid for them and on ridiculous terms. They made a fortune ripping off their own taxpayers and military.
It benefited all the recipients of the billions of dollars that went missing under ‘Governor’ Paul Bremer’s effective military dictatorship of Iraq – money that came from Iraq’s UN Oil for Food fund. And it benefited arms companies providing weapons and ammunition.
Through the Iraq war the Bush administration robbed both Iraqis and Americans of billions of dollars.
On top of that it got BP, an Anglo-American oil company (since its takeover of the US oil firm Amoco before the war) oil contracts in Iraq again which they hadn’t had since the end of the 1991 war.
The Israeli government hoped to get the old British empire period oil pipeline through Syria to Haifa re-opened. Bechtel, the US firm, had the contract. But the Iraqi insurgency/resistance and the Syrian civil war put paid to that plan. And while Israel has more influence in the US than it should have, it does not have complete control over the US government or US foreign policy.
i should say the Bush administration and its allies in various American companies (and private contractors hired by the admin) robbed Americans and Iraqis of billions
âWe’re borrowing from the futures of the students and children and savers, to take a payout for CEOs todayâ
“OK, whatâs âthe evidence to the contraryâ please?”
Your response proves my point.
You obviously believe you are superior to those who don’t share your irrational fanaticism.
Mick Pork
Had I lost the candidate selection to a vote of members I should have been perfectly content. My objection is to being barred from a vote which I was confident of winning, by some grey men in suits who live off the taxpayer.
Morning, Fred. Hung-over again, I see. From someone whose every vapid utterance drips with scorn for his readers, that was an excruciatingly funny post. Have a nice day.
Iâve not had time to read all the comments on this thread. Duncan McFarlane @ 1.25 and 2.33 am makes key points with which I agree. Craigâs âapologyâ – because âevil or stupidâ missed out the alternative of âcowardlyâ â is shameless cheekiness (or âdumb insolenceâ) rather than an example of polemical exaggeration for effect. Gratuitous insults (whether by Craig or Charlie Hebdo) are no more effective as arguments than are sticks and stones. Iâd put calling Ed Miliband a âwarmongerâ into the same category.
Usually Craig’s postings are not just polemical (ie they promote the writer’s position aggressively, taking on all comers)but have the added appeal of being closely and effectively argued. For me, this was a weak defence of an earlier mistaken posting. It would have been better to admit that in the heat of battle a valiant polemicist can sometimes be hoist by his own petard ( (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petard, which carries a whiff of Craig as an admirer of Joseph Pujol, the great petomane).
“Morning, Fred. Hung-over again, I see. From someone whose every vapid utterance drips with scorn for his readers, that was an excruciatingly funny post. Have a nice day.”
Brent crude $45 a barrel.
Provocation met by provocation…..it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the courts (if it ever gets that far).
“Le polĂ©miste DieudonnĂ© a Ă©tĂ© placĂ© en garde Ă vue, mercredi 14 janvier, pour “apologie du terrorisme”, aprĂšs avoir Ă©tĂ© interpellĂ©, Ă 7 heures, Ă son domicile dans l’Eure-et-Loir, selon une source judiciaire citĂ©e par l’AFP, confirmant une information d’i-TĂ©lĂ©. L’humoriste est entendu pour avoir dit, dimanche, sur Facebook, se sentir “Charlie Coulibaly”, en rĂ©fĂ©rence Ă Amedy Coulibaly, qui a tuĂ© une policiĂšre Ă Montrouge et quatre personnes dans une Ă©picerie casher de Paris.
Le parquet de Paris avait ouvert, lundi, une enquĂȘte pour apologie du terrorisme contre l’humoriste. Mardi, Manuel Valls a appelĂ© la justice Ă ĂȘtre “implacable Ă l’Ă©gard de ces prĂ©dicateurs de la haine”, faisant rĂ©fĂ©rence Ă DieudonnĂ©. “Quelle honte que de voir un rĂ©cidiviste de la haine tenir son spectacle dans des salles bondĂ©es au moment mĂȘme oĂč, samedi soir, la Nation porte de Vincennes se recueillait”, aprĂšs l’attaque contre la supĂ©rette casher, a lancĂ© le Premier ministre.
“Morning, Fred. Hung-over again, I see. From someone whose every vapid utterance drips with scorn for his readers, that was an excruciatingly funny post.”
____________
Zeus (aka Baal or is it Komodo) descends briefly from his lofty perch on Mount Olympus and mixes it with mere mortals.
Morning Fred, spot price of oil please. I see that the leader of the labour party in Scotland says that he is no longer a Unionist. Does tbat make him an onanist or a Nazi:-)
Brent crude $45 a barrel.
Pavlov, where art thou?
Vive la republique? 50+ anti-Muslim attacks across France in Charlie Hebdo aftermath
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz72nsMqoGM
13 January 2015
~~~~
“Morning Fred, spot price of oil please. I see that the leader of the labour party in Scotland says that he is no longer a Unionist. Does tbat make him an onanist or a Nazi:-)”
That makes him a politician.
Insight into what’s going on with oil here, anyway –
http://asokoinsight.com/news/crude-oil-prices-near-six-year-low-45-per-barrel-nigeria/
OPEC competing with Russia/FSU for Asian (read Chinese?) market. First to blink loses market share. Giant Vampire Squid predicts $50 for 2015, rising thereafter to something saner, but GVS earlier predicted rise to $200 so not infallible: demonstrating for Fred the huge uncertainty attending a volatile commodity during a global recession.
@HomeAloneara*
“Did someone mention banks.”
________________
Yes, they did.
Especially Duncan McFarlane in his couple of excellent comments, above.
You should read them as part of your own personal adult education process instead of wasting your time posting dubious links.
“Brent crude $45 a barrel.
Pavlov, where art thou?”
________________
Still down from Olympus and mixing it with the mere mortals, Zeus (aka Baal aka Komodo)?
âYou should read them as part of your own personal adult education process
What like your ‘education’, no thanks.
And how would you know if the link was dubious, your not allowed to see them are you? May rock the blinkers.
RUSSIAN NEWSPAPER: âDID AMERICANS PLAN THE PARIS TERROR ATTACK?â
Erdogan stood next to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas when he attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for attending the rally in Paris, claiming âhe has killed 2,500 people in Gaza with state terrorism.â Erdogan made a similar argument, claiming Netanyahu âshould first give an account for the children and the womenâ he allegedly killed. He also blamed the Westâs attitude towards Muslim as a reason for the massacre.
âThe Westâs hypocrisy is obvious,â he said. âAs Muslims, weâve never taken part in terrorist massacres. Behind these lie racism, hate speech and Islamophobia. Please, the administrations in those countries where our mosques are attacked need to take measures. Games are being played with the Islamic world, we need to be aware of this. French citizens carry out such a massacre, and Muslims pay the price. Thatâs very meaningful⊠Doesnât their intelligence organisation track those who leave prison?â
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/13/russian-newspaper-did-americans-plan-the-paris-terror-attack/
Duncan McFarlane
Maybe they’ve been crossing your greasy little palms with silver too.
Duncan McFarlane
Maybe theyâve been crossing your greasy little palms with silver too.
Nothing wrong with his post that I can see. Good summary of who gained from Iraq. It wasn’t just Israel. Follow the money.
“OPEC competing with Russia/FSU for Asian (read Chinese?) market. First to blink loses market share. Giant Vampire Squid predicts $50 for 2015, rising thereafter to something saner, but GVS earlier predicted rise to $200 so not infallible: demonstrating for Fred the huge uncertainty attending a volatile commodity during a global recession.”
“Volatility” that was the term Better Together used a lot wasn’t it? But not the SNP, they used the term “scaremongering” a lot.