A blog by Al Harron which discusses Scottish independence, politics, culture, history and other subjects. Occasionally dinosaurs, art. Justice for Alex Salmond.
Gourock, Scotland
Joined September 2015
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To new indy supporters: welcome! Folk go at their own pace on the road to indy: wish you joined earlier, but you're here now. That's enough.
Wilderness of Peace retweeted
Unity Checklist
Stop policing the boundaries: let the fringes widen the window so the centre can move.
Acknowledge the division of labour: radicals expand possibilities; moderates consolidate and normalise the gains.
Enforce the rhetorical ceasefire: present your own approach as the logical next step rather than attacking allies.
Focus on the “what”: establish self-governance as ordinary and beneficial, not premature public war over the precise “how.”
Measure progress by movement and sustained majority support, not by tactical purity.
This framework does not require any faction to abandon its preferred mechanism or economic vision.
It requires all factions to stop treating other pro-independence approaches as the main obstacle.
When radicals make the unthinkable discussable and moderates turn the discussable into the sensible, the movement advances faster than either wing could alone.
Assigning stages, enforcing the ceasefire, partitioning the work and tracking shared metrics stops the movement cancelling itself out and builds a durable majority.
To turn the blueprint into the next practical steps, the two most useful immediate documents would be: internal arbitration rules for enforcing the rhetorical ceasefire when factions clash in public, and a short crisis-response media protocol for how mainstream parties handle union disputes or hostile press traps aimed at breaking the alliance.
I think both Robin McAlpine & Liberation.scot are vital in the ongoing movement for independence: both recognise the significant barriers in our way. We need to be able to disagree with one another, & be critical friends: we all have a part to play.
Robin McAlpine, apparently against his better judgment, finds himself describing the lives of Scots in colonial terms - resource extraction, economic backwardness, population loss and the lost cultural confidence he acknowledges, but exhorts Scots to pluck out of thin air. Independence - and he is not joking, he tells us - has to made about parking places. Robin's contempt for the past - what brought us to the dismal downtrodden, underdeveloped point he readily identifies - is what traps him, and keeps him thrashing aound for a gimmick to galvanize Scots into taking their affairs into their own hands; a parking place, a pothole repair. An 'independence thermometer', even. Professor Baird explains that we need to understand our condition in order to escape it. Postcolonial theory tells us this, just as any psychologist would. It is essential we put a name to it, and that name is colonialism. Doing so demands answers: where did it come from, what was its purpose, does it explains who and what we are? Here, with the asking of these questions, is Robin's sought-after confidence - the secret sauce he identifies as the producer of independence votes. Withouth understanding this, that confidence, and the votes with it, will continue to elude us. Keen to highlight the difference between the nations of the world that have escaped British colonialism and a Scotland still in its grip, here it is in essence: those nations understood their colonial condition, unobscured by adjacence, shared white skin and an imperialism holding out the offer of a subaltern role in its international ambition.
So, what about the United Nations, where Robin says Liberation Scotland is wasting its time? Will international opinion on Scotland as a candidate for recovery of usurped sovereignty have no bearing on the cultural confidence of our people? Will the UK government dismiss peer state judgment pointing to a problem of fundamental constitutional legitimacy? Might it not make a democratic event on Scotland's recovery of sovereignty a slam-dunk for a welcome back into the family of nation states? When it happens, will Scots still be weighing it up against the difficulty of finding a parking space? Robin's immersion in policy and party political strategy may be obscuring a far bigger picture altogether than the simplistic one he is presenting: the overarching picture of a nation recovering from a long colonial past. Liberation Scotland would welcome Robin's further reflection on this conversation. We would welcome all of Scotland's.
youtu.be/9n9WgfDKuEM?is=eaFP…
Ah, yes, clearly the best & most appropriate choice to play the tall, exceedingly lank, narrow-shouldered, long-limbed, shovel-footed, huge-eared, snipe-nosed, spindle-necked, "scarecrow eloped from a cornfield" Ichabod Crane should be the actor who last played LITERAL HE-MAN
I suppose the US leftie GIRFUY celebrations just hit a little close to home to me. I remember the elation in 2015 when the SNP won 56/59 seats. It really felt like the dawn of a new age.
Not even 10 years later, SNP were back down to single digits. All that goodwill squandered.
I remember some of the celebrations here in Inverclyde. The outgoing Labour MP met with "na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye" as he left the count. Labour, once immovable, now ousted.
10 years later, another Labour MP in Inverclyde, Scotland still in the UK. What was the point?
This has real "Ben Shapiro calling Andrew Neil a Liberal leftist" energy. Of all the people to criticise (& there are many), to paint *James Matthews* of all people as an example of the worst of UK journalism is just wild.
Michigan's Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed confronted @jamesmatthewsky, telling him he wouldn't answer his questions as he wants "zero" votes in the UK.
Watch the heated exchange between the two.
Watch our live coverage of the US midterms➡️ trib.al/BikRSb2
So relieved the wee lamb avoided jail, what did it do?
Man caught in car with £14k of drugs as a lamb ate chips in the back seat avoids jail bbc.in/4im0eQs
Wilderness of Peace retweeted
Sovereignty, Statehood, and Scotland
I am extensively quoted in this long article. open.substack.com/pub/founda…
Oh, gee, whatever would a rabid Scottish Nationalist like me choose, HMMMMM
if you could rewrite history, what would you do?
call off D-Day as Eisenhower? keep Rome from falling?
WorldOS lets you actually do it. every move has consequences.
history only happens once. you don't have to.
play it free → worldos.cc
Wilderness of Peace retweeted
The most significant political reality in the world is also the most under-discussed political reality in the world, and it can be summed up as follows:
There are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and we can force revolutionary change whenever we want.
That's it. There are a whole lot more ordinary people suffering under the status quo system of capitalism, imperialism, militarism and authoritarianism than there are people benefiting from it, and we can use the power of our numbers to overthrow that system whenever we decide to.
It's self-evident, and so simple that you can sum it up in a single sentence. But because our society is so deeply indoctrinated and mind-controlled, it simply doesn't show up in the normal every day conversations people have about politics and the problems we face as a society today.
We are encouraged to discuss elections and party politics with great vigor. We are rewarded with amplification on large plutocrat-owned platforms if we fan the flames of divisive culture war wedge issues or mainstream partisan punditry. But what we are absolutely never rewarded for and never encouraged to discuss is the fact that the oligarchs and empire managers who rule our society would be completely powerless to stop a people's revolution of sufficient scale.
We could all stop working and paying for things. We could barricade all the roads, railroads and infrastructure. We could demolish every bank, police station and government building. We could literally eat all the billionaires. Just, you know, hypothetically. We could do anything we wanted to do. No one could stop us.
All mainstream politics, media, and schooling is designed to direct our attention away from this political reality, while the people who rule over us never stop thinking about it. It haunts them. It consumes them. It keeps them up at night. They obsess over it.
That's why they're rushing to implement militarized robots, autonomous drones, and AI-driven mass surveillance.
That's why they're pushing for easily controlled digital currencies and digital IDs.
That's why they're working to re-centralize control of information to reverse the large-scale decentralization brought on by the internet.
That's why they've been hammering us with mass media propaganda for generations, and have been developing increasingly sophisticated mass-scale psyops in the age of AI and smartphones.
That's why we are actively herded into two mainstream political parties deadlocked in a perpetual tug-of-war to give us the illusion that we are engaging in meaningful political action.
That's why we are trained from when we are schoolchildren to believe we live in free democracies where people control the actions of their government using their votes.
It's because the rich and powerful are at all times acutely aware that the masses could turn on them at any instant, and must be kept in a perpetual state of manipulation and distraction in order to prevent this from happening.
I dunno, man. Sounds kinda unsustainable if you ask me. Especially given how discontented people are becoming as the capitalist empire stumbles over its own contradictions and runs out of arguments for its continued existence.
We're standing in a cage that isn't even locked. The door's not even closed. The only thing keeping us here is the recorded voice of the prison warden telling us "THERE IS NO ESCAPE" over and over again on repeat.
One day our gaze is going to turn to that door. And we will step out of it. And we will be free.
Ah, yes, Great Britain & Ireland "Unite." Much like how much of Eurasia "United" under Genghis Khan. Or southern Europe "United" under the Romans. Or (etc)
🇮🇪 Ireland's Taoiseach (PM) Micheál Martin is launching a new government body to research UNITY with Northern Ireland for the FIRST time.
It will examine 3 scenarios: full 32-county unity, NI remaining in the UK, and a united Ireland with a devolved North under Dublin.
Martin wants an evidence-based discussion, not partisan pushes that treat a border poll as easy and inevitable. He aims to include unionist voices.
Cabinet proposals are expected before Christmas.
Wouldn’t it be wild to see a united Ireland again?
Source: Reuters / Writer: Jamie
Wilderness of Peace retweeted
LOST MEDIA: In 1993, an animated series titled ESCAPE FROM JURASSIC PARK was in development.
It was eventually cancelled before full production; however, not before a lot of work was done, including a pitch trailer.
At long last, that trailer has been unearthed.
Dammit. hollywoodreporter.com/movies…
He was one of the celebs who signed this back in 2014. Scottish independence means everything to me. I'm still devastated by his death. Do you have *any idea* how special you have to be for a rabid Scottish Nationalist like me to still love you?
archive.is/Wu0ei
Wilderness of Peace retweeted
What a heartbreaking week it has been. Sir Patrick Stewart was a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor. From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did. Captain Picard stood for the best of us, and so did the man who played him. I was filled with affection and admiration for him and his work.
My heart goes out to Sunny and his family. He will be deeply missed.
Wilderness of Peace retweeted
just one correction: Darien didn’t bankrupt Scotland. It bankrupted some of the biggest Scottish investors and all but ruined many more. The Brits love to conflate individuals with nations when it vibes to colonies - Scots found employment or riches in the English only empire? Scotland was a colonising nation. Scots were bankrupt or ruined by Darien? Scotland was bankrupt. It serves their narrative. Challenge it every time you see it!
Good time at Scotland Comic Con. 8-year-old Aly got to talk to 3 of the 4 Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, & Mammy got to meet Captain Kirk. But best of all was meeting an old college friend that I hadn't seen in 8 years...
Wilderness of Peace retweeted
Recognise this, fellow Scots - Welsh, Irish? This is why we must go beyond the independence of a state to the liberation of a people, a nation and our own minds.
They taught the colonized child to see the world through the colonizer’s eyes.
And then, when the colonized child grew up and looked through those eyes and saw themselves...
They saw what the colonizer saw.
"Backward." "Primitive." "In need of development." Behind on a timeline whose destination was someone else’s present.
This is the wound that outlasts the empire.
The guns go. The administrators go. The flags come down.
But the curriculum stays in the mind.
The habit of measuring yourself against a standard that was designed without you.
The reflex of looking at your own culture and asking, involuntarily, what the colonizer would think of it.
The deep, persistent, half-conscious belief that modernity is something you are still catching up to rather than something you were always building in your own way.
This is why independence was necessary but not sufficient.
You can remove the occupier without removing the occupation of the mind.
Decolonizing the curriculum was not a symbolic act.
It was the harder and more fundamental liberation.
The liberation of the internal landscape.
The recovery of the right to know what you knew before they told you it didn’t count.