Craig Murray's Blog, page 158

The Stolen Seas

Now tell me Labour or Westminster can be trusted with Scotland’s interests. This is the answer to the frenzied pledges from London, as the entire UK Establishment and mainstream media faces humiliation on 18 September.

When the push polling has to stop

YouGov stood to have its reputation shattered if it continued to put out polls showing ten point leads for No, when Yes is very obviously headed for a majority.

Those massive YouGov leads for No were all part of the Unionist tactic of making independence appear both uniquely impossible to Scotland, as opposed to any other small nation state you can name, and an unattainable dream. Too poor, too wee, too stupid and politically isolated. YouGov are known in the trade as “You Can Have Any Result You Pay For Gov”. For months, James Kelly on the Scot Goes Pop blog has brilliantly analysed the methodologies they employed to give those large No leads – asking prior leading questions, a large preponderance of Labour voters in their panel, and the “Kellner Correction” – an assumption that lies or faulty memory about how people last voted, would penalise Labour unless corrected for statistically. The result was YouGov polls that were great reading for the No camp, but made no sense whatsever to anybody who had talked to voters.

My own view is that there has not been an extraordinary 12 point swing in a fortnight, as illustrated by YouGov’s last two polls. What there has been is a continuing stead swing and a realisation in YouGov that, having helped the No campaign for over a year by trying to make a Yes vote seem hopeless, to be over 12% out on this vital vote might damage YouGov’s share price fatally. So they have had to start publishing something close to the truth.

As I have been reporting, the truth has been very obvious to people on the ground for weeks. And the truth is not only that independence is coming, but that the entire political class, BBC and mainstream media has been rejected, and a new form of popular power, based on community democracy and social media, has taken over.

I received an invite from the National Library of Scotland to a post-referendum debrief at 9am on 19 September. Anybody sober at 9am on 19 September (unless having medical excuse) is not part of the New Scotland. But more crucially, the panel includes Henry McLeish and Michael Moore – and they want people to pay 35 pounds to listen to their words of wisdom.

They really haven’t got it yet. Nobody will ever care what Moore and McLeish and their like have to say again, and the kind of democracy we will have will not involve paying substantial sums to hear pearls of wisdom drop from troughers on a pedestal. Nor will members of the old political establishment have a future in that career. It was a good tactic for Alex Salmond to say that Darling and Carmichael will be on the negotiating team: the people will not allow it to happen.

There is at last some understanding that Yes will win: the penny has not yet dropped that this is a revolutionary moment, not a polite constitutional shuffle.

Speaking Date Availability

I am available again for Yes meetings on 15, 16 and 17 September. Invitations welcome through the contact button above. Happy to go anywhere I can do good. My St Andrews speech a week ago has now had 75,000 views on Youtube.

It is symptomatic of the way this campaign has gone that I can find nothing online from the No camp which has had one fifth as many views, with the solitary exception of the PatronisngBTWoman video, which has massive views from people making fun of it.

Miliband was in Blantyre yesterday where his every bodily function was breathlessly reported by Severin Carrell in the Guardian – but even the Guardian could not pretend his audience in the “Labour stronghold” amounted to more than “dozens”. I am told it was under fifty. Better Together support on the ground has simply evaporated. What they rely on is that the massive output of mainstream media and the authority of the Westminster parties will have sufficient impact on their key demographics – pensioners, and housewives in a 1950′s sense – to shore up a residual no vote of the easily scared. My challenge to people to identify any Better Together gathering of more than 300 has been met with resounding silence.

Television has been wall to wall Miliband lately, and the BBC in Scotland seem to have simply abandoned their obligation to give equal broadcast time and treatment to both sides. Presumably many of the New Labour hacks who control Pacific Quay realise that their behaviour has made a Yes win a career threatening situation for them, so at this stage they see nothing to lose.

If independence is achieved it will be down to a popular movement and not to any politician. Indeed, if one person has to be singled out, I would say the Rev Stuart Campbell has made the most decisive individual contribution in the campaign. If Social media has beaten the mainstream media, the central rock around which millions of flowers have bloomed has been the Wings over Scotland website. This has a significantly larger daily readership than any newspaper in Scotland. The Wee Blue Book I found everywhere, including copies already available in pretty well every pub I entered, as I toured the East Coast. Over 400,000 downloads of the PDF have been made and 250,000 copies centrally printed, as well as a number of private initiatives which had already obtained professional printings from the PDF. Conservatively, there are over half a million hard copies out there, as well as all the reads online. In a population of 5.2 million, that is a major impact.

When we close down BBC Scotland and create a new citizen based, cheaper and more arts-oriented organisation in its place, let’s put Stuart Campbell in charge. Some state-funded drama and arts output seems to me commendable. State funding of pap entertainment is not needed – the private sector can do that perfectly well. State funding of “journalism” which investigates nothing and never challenges the establishment must be stopped.

Michael White Lies

The Guardian’s Michael White is a revolting liar. He writes today in The Guardian:

Why so few “no thanks” posters or union flags? “Because we don’t want our windows smashed or tyres slashed,” some no voters reply.

That is a plain lie, Michael White. No “No voters” said that to you. You made it up. Nor has there been a single instance reported of any No voter having their windows or car trashed.

White also retails a story that a woman allegedly told him on hearsay about somebody else who was “seized by the throat” on canvassing because of their English accent. Well I have lived more than eight years of my adult life in Scotland and never once had any adverse reaction of any kind to my very English accent, including while canvassing in some very deprived areas. This incident is also an invention.

White has always been revolting, his constant snide support for Tony Blair and his wars, covered by that horrible false bonhommie, is repulsive. But the move into straightforward lies disguised as reportage to please his New Labour masters (and their creature Rusbridger) cannot be allowed to pass. Michael White is a disgrace to the profession of journalism.

NATO – An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

In the past dozen years, the armed forces of NATO countries, whether operating under the NATO banner or in related ad-hoc coalitions, have killed many hundreds of thousands of people. Of those hundreds of thousands of people, only a few hundred at most ever had any connection to any attack on a NATO country.

Whatever modern NATO has become, a defensive alliance it is not; that fact is beyond rational dispute.

It is also the case that the situation in countries where NATO has been most active in killing people, including Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan, has deteriorated. It has deteriorated politically, economically, militarily and socially. The notion that NATO member states could bomb the world into good was only ever believed by crazed and fanatical people like Tony Blair and Jim Murphy of the Henry Jackson Society. It really should not have needed empirical investigation to prove it was wrong, but it has been tried, and has been proved wrong.

The NATO states as a group have also embarked on remarkably similar reductions in the civil liberties of their own populations during this period. NATO to me is symbolised by the fact that its Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as Danish Prime Minister blatantly lied to the Danish parliament about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. When Major Frank Grevil released material that proved Rasmussen was lying, it was Grevil who was jailed for three years. In the United States, no CIA operative has been prosecuted for their widespread campaign of torture, but John Kiriakou is in jail for revealing it.

NATO’s attempt to be global arbiter and enforcer has been disastrous at all levels. Its plan to redeem itself by bombing the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria is a further sign of madness. Except of course that it will guarantee some blowback against Western targets, and that will “justify” further bombings, and yet more profit for the arms manufacturers. On that level, it is very clever and cynical. NATO provides power to the elite and money to the wealthy.

But what of Putin’s Russia, I hear you say? I am no fan of Putin – I think he is a nasty, dangerous little dictator. But little is the operative word.

Russia is not a great power. Its GDP is 10% of the GDP of the EU. Its economy is the same size as Italy’s. The capabilities of Russia’s armed forces are massively exaggerated by the security industry, including the security services, and by arms manufacturers. The entire area of Eastern Ukraine which Russia is disputing has a GDP smaller than the city of Dundee.

Russia is only any kind of “military threat” because of its nuclear arsenal. The way forward to peace is active international nuclear disarmament – and the existence of NATO is the greatest obstacle to that. The idea that almost the entire developed world needs to encircle and contain Russia with massive military threat, is as sensible as the idea that it needs to encircle the UK or France – both of which have substantially larger and more diversified economies than Russia and much larger and more technologically advanced arms industries.

NATO is by far the largest danger to world peace. It should be dissolved as a matter of urgency.

Orange March IS Illegal

The great Orange March in Edinburgh will be the only occasion on which the No side have managed to gather more than 300 people in one place in the entire campaign.

The average turnout for David Cameron’s big speeches of the campaign in Glasgow and Perth was under 200 people. On my own recent speaking tour we substantially beat that in Dundee and equalled it in the small town of Insch! Not to mention the 70,000 people who have watched my St Andrews speech online. Gordon Brown’s speaking tours have been strictly ticket only – and a fair number of the invited have declined the opportunity.

Search online as much as you like. There are no substantial No gatherings of any kind, no No flash mobs or mass canvasses. There is no speech for the No campaign that has a fifth of 70,000 views online.

But they do have the Orange Order and their grand March in Edinburgh on the 13 September. This parade of knuckle dragging Neanderthals, many of them off the ferry from Northern Ireland, is the only show of popular enthusiasm for the Union ever to be mustered by Better Together. Unfortunately it is illegal.

As I posted on 11 August, this proposed Orange March is plainly in contravention of the Public Order Act 1936, which bans any demonstrations in uniform for a political object.

Section 1 (i)

Subject as hereinafter provided, any person

who in any public place or at any public meeting wears

uniform signifying his association with any political

organisation or with, the promotion of any political

object shall be guilty of an offence :

Normally, the Orange Order in Scotland are allowed to march on the (dubious) grounds that their object is cultural not political. But on this occasion they are marching as a registered participant with the Electoral Commission in the Referendum campaign, and with the avowed object of promoting a No vote. There is therefore no doubt whatsoever that the march is political and, if in uniform, illegal. Orange Order sources confirm they will be marching in uniform.

The march can be carried out in uniform with the consent of the Chief Constable and the Secretary of State for Scotland. But an assiduous reader of this blog has received confirmation from the Scottish Government that the Orange Order do not have this permission:

Dear xxxx

Thank you for your email. Following a search of our records I can advise that the Scottish Government has neither received nor granted an application from Police Scotland under the Public Order Act 1936 to permit the wearing of political uniforms by members of the Orange Order. As I stated in my previous email, I am unable to provide legal advice interpreting whether or not the Act applies in this situation.

Yours sincerely

Mathew West

Police Powers Unit

Safer Communities Division

Scottish Government

What is at question here is not whether it ought to be illegal to march in uniform for political objects. The fact is that plainly it is illegal. The law is not moribund – it was applied for example against Irish republicans in London in the 1980s.

The real question is whether the law is applied impartially to all, or are those who have the support of the Establishment allowed to break the law flagrantly and massively?

After Project Fear, Expect Project Terror

Delighted that the popular upsurge in Scotland has been reflected in the polls and the mainstream media have started to notice it is happening. There is no doubt that unless the No campaign can find a game-changer (and a curiously untraceable person throwing an egg at Jim Murphy isn’t it), then the people of Scotland are going to seize their chance to escape from neo-con domination and create their own society.

But I also have no doubt the establishment are not going to accept this lightly. They are not simply going to let Scotland’s people walk away with Scotland’s resources. They have yet to make serious use of their most frequent instrument of population control – the “War on Terror”.

The scene has already been set. Cameron has already told parliament that ISIS, or the Caliphate as it calls itself (I always think it is better to call people what they call themselves, rather than some made-up name) poses a major and imminent threat to the UK. Jack Straw is back on Radio 4 saying that Britain must bomb Iraq, as though the very cause of the Caliphate was not the last time he invaded Iraq. Saudi Arabia, which funded and still funds the Caliphate, is giving warnings to the security services of planned attacks in the UK.

The truth is that everybody who has ever carried out an actual Islamic terror attack in the UK (of which there have been very few indeed) has stated that they did so because of British bombings and invasions of Muslim countries – a fact which is very plainly true. The notion that the way to stop this is to bomb or invade Muslim countries is quite incredible.

I fear that we will shortly see arrests of young Muslims in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We will be told they were planning to detonate a dirty nuclear bomb in George Square, or convert the Scott Monument into a giant ballistic missile using fertiliser and Irn Bru. We will be told that only the UK security services have saved Scotland from destruction. The media hype will be on a par with the liquid bomb plot. Like the liquid bomb plot, when it turns out to have been non-existent the media will not tell you that. Anyway the referendum will be over by the time the story is debunked.

In truth, of course, an independent Scotland which does not invade other countries will be a safer place than the continually aggressive and murderous United Kingdom.

My Scotland

Yesterday the licensing man from Dundee Council went down the taxi ranks ordering saltires and yes stickers removed from the taxis. (would he have ordered No stickers removed as well? We can never be sure as there weren’t any.)

Having missed the train to my Cupar meeting last night, I got in a taxi (it’s not far) and the taxi driver was giving his side of the story. He said he told the council man that “There is an argument that he was within his rights to tell me to remove the sticker, but when he told me to take off my lapel badge, I told him that he was infringing my absolute right to freedom of speech under article ten of the European Convention.”

This campaign has been the most uplifting experience imaginable. It will not be possible to put the people back in the box of media-induced apathy after this.

One of the most unexpectedly invigorating aspects of the campaign is that in packed town hall meetings, I have been sharing the platform with people who are not good public speakers. If that sounds paradoxical, it is because often they have never done any public speaking before. Yesterday in Cupar there was an excellent lady who works in the NHS who had a deep knowledge of its workings and of the threats from privatization of its services, including the mechanisms by which these privatisations were being advanced. She believed that after a No vote it would not be possible for the Scottish NHS to continue to be insulated from some of these trends, and she explained why she felt that.

There was no polish to her quiet delivery, but her heartfelt sincerity and the depth of her knowledge held the audience in intent silence. She had never spoken in public before. It was truly inspiring.

The substance of the campaign is people in local communities actually talking to each other about what is important to their communities and they way their society is organized. I have never seen anything to compare this to. No wonder the politicians have no idea how to counter it. The happy lack of hierarchical power structures in the campaign on the ground seems to relate to the fact that so many women are coming forward as speakers – for the third time, I was the only male on the panel yesterday.

Better Together have women too of course. Just in case anyone has been living under a rock and hasn’t seen it, here is the Saatchi and Saatchi produced Better Together broadcast that set the campaign on fire. The many spoofs are great, but I think nothing quite equals the sheer comic genius of the original.

I have added this picture as pro-government commenters have started to come on the site with their ridiculous propaganda claims that NATO killed very few people in its 398 bombing raids on Sirte. What you see is just one street of scores in similar condition. You can believe your eyes or the propaganda.

Truth in the Sun

Good Lord http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scots...

Cupar

Tonight’s meeting is upstairs at Watts of Cupar (Fife) 7pm. I have been astonished by the wave of popular enthusiasm and above all by the incredible meld of social media activism and old-fashioned street campaigning. The mainstream media have no idea what is going on as, on the rare occasions they try to cover a Yes happening, they are utterly thrown by the absence of men in suits to interview.

The other quite astonishing thing is the level of political radicalism at all the events I have attended. The world should pay attention to Robin McAlpine. In my view, Robin has the ability to become one of the most important contemporary political philosophers not just in Scotland, but in the World. His ideas of future political and social co-operation in more useful forms of economic transaction, and of politics without party structure, are profound. When the campaigning dies down I will discuss further.

Nobody wants simply to repeat Westminster corporate power structures in Scotland. There is a movement happening here which is truly revolutionary and feels like nothing I have experienced in my life before. I am deeply moved. If we achieve independence, it truly will be the victory of the people, not the politicians.

Postscript

An encounter at the Wellgate Centre Dundee today captured a key aspect of the campaign for me. An old lady refused to take one of our Yes leaflets. She said she was Labour, and that she had been told by the Labour Party that if Independence came, we would let all the foreigners in. I have no doubt she was telling the truth.

The Labour Party – running a Tory funded campaign against the people to try to hang on to their Westminster jobs, and resorting to the racist tactics of UKIP. An absolute moral disgrace.