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By Jason Michael
ANOTHER CANCELLED DATE. Just off the phone with an organiser of a prominent and active Glasgow Yes group. She was explaining she was gutted with the decision they were forced to make, the area in which their group campaigns for independence is “wall-to-wall with tories” and that hosting a speaker like me would have “serious repercussions” for members of the group who have employment and businesses in the community. Once again the union, with its lying and slanderous propaganda machine, has defeated the will of the rising people; the people for independence – but not yet. It is difficult not to be angry, not to be disappointed and let-down. While anger is the correct response, it is important to focus this rage in the right direction. People want independence, there are people all over Scotland who need independence, but given the arsenal the British nationalist media has at its disposal it is apparent the proclamation of freedom is still terrifying to many.
What’s all this about, then? Last week the Daily Mail deliberately and spitefully took my reportage on the deteriorating condition of the Good Friday Agreement in the occupied six counties out of context so as to paint me a supporter of violence. It stated that I considered British soldiers legitimate targets for Republican gunmen, making me an IRA sympathiser in the minds of its readership and thus a legitimate target for sectarian violence in Scotland. Later the same day this vicious lie was picked up by The Herald – a paper known to be connected to the British secret services, and the following day The Scotsman newspaper repeated the lie and tacked onto it the vindictive and false assertion I was a Holocaust denier – an accusation designed to wreck my academic career.
The purpose of this broad-based media assault was clear; it was an attempt to at once smear the Scottish National Party with links to violent extremism and rancid neo-Nazi opinion, and to put an end to my talking tour before it began. Sadly, the SNP complied and folded like a red-hot Mars bar – once again, putting a squeaky-clean reputation before the truth. Yet, I came to Scotland expecting nothing less. In fact, I was surprised to took the unionist-aligned media as long. But they made a massive mistake. Had these compromised reporters bothered to do their homework, they would have seen my credentials. Never have I hidden my Christian faith and my pacifism. Any amount of research would have shown them my involvement in the peace and reconciliation process in Ireland and my work for peace and non-violent resistance in Palestine. Google would have been happy to tell them all about my academic work on the horrors of the Holocaust and my decade-long participation in inter-faith dialogue in the International Council of Christians and Jews in Dublin and Heppenheim, but these reporters and their unionist papers were never interested in the truth.
Oh, but the damage has been done. This is the function of the British press. It manufactures the ammunition for its foot soldiers and their faux outrage is weaponised to spook the horses of the independence movement – and, by God, the horses are spooked. But there is no mistaking that we have allowed this to happen because our chief instruments are in a poor state of disorder. We have never been able to find the backbone to stand up to the lies, and this failure – and it is a failure – has left no small number of our champions exposed. Unless we address this serious fault, we will remain as we are – in no fit state to mount and win an independence campaign.
We are weakened by this prevailing middle-class opinion that we can succeed using England’s Queensberry rules. The Scottish independence movement is a threat to the British state and London will fight us with every disgusting perversion, lie, and violence it can muster. It will change the rules to suit its own purposes at every turn. Its papers will tell lies, twist the truth, blacken us, and criminalise us. They will, and without conscience, put in print lies that will see us mobbed on the pavements and soon enough – if we do not wake up – drowning in pools of our own blood on our city streets. Not even at this will the British state stop. When independence is all but won, the British state will unleash brutal and violent forces of oppression and repression we can scarce imagine. And if you think we can avoid this by playing by their rules, you are a fool. There are no rules.
Preach love and peace! England is a monster, incapable of understanding the raw power of love and peace – a power capable of bringing a nation together and forging such bonds of unity no power of hell can overcome. Trust me when I say it, I’m robed in red – let them who have ears understand, and I have great faith in the saints and martyrs, and chief among them one Padraig Pearse, the pedagogue of Ireland who wrote:
It does not suit the [British] government that peace and goodwill between Catholic and Protestant should be preached in Ireland,
and
…that in Ireland there must be, not two nations or three nations, but one nation, that Protestant and Dissenter must be brought into amity with Catholic, and that Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter must unite to achieve freedom for all.
Still, even his message of peace and love in Ireland – one Ireland – was said by Great Britain, the great divider, to be extremist, hate-filled, and violent. He too was robed in red, his reward – to be put against a wall in the stonebreakers yard of Kilmainham Gaol and shot on a beautiful Irish May morning. His martyrdom, like that of his brothers Thomas Clarke and James Connolly, was the crack of dawn for Ireland’s freedom, it’s bright, brand-new day. On the morning of 3 May 1916 Pearse knew, as he always had, that England would never play by the rules.
England will not play by the rules. Call it what you will – Britain, the United Kingdom, the beast is the same. England will never play by the rules; not in Ireland and not in Scotland. And for saying this – for stating the bloody obvious – they call me “Marmite.” Still, Scotland is a nation which, as it will readily confess, lives in ignorance of its own history, and if it does not know its own how can it know better the story of Ireland? How can we Scots so ignorantly believe Ireland’s story is not Scotland’s? The foe is and was always the same – England: a brutal, vicious, and violent imperial monster. Scotland, the time has come for you to wake up. You are the land of a rising people. Listen well to the lesson of Ireland – the land of a risen people, you must now get up off your knees. Your freedom will never be given. Your freedom must now be taken. Is this too frightening for you?
The Words of Patrick Pearse
Random Public Journal 
It’s the same techniques that has been used on every country that has sought independence from the USA onwards.
And if there’s valuable resources involved, it gets nasty.
It’s almost as if there is an ancient manual they pull out for every occasion when a group of the underclass wants freedom.
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Jason
I feel your exasperation in this post and even with all its logic and passion it is a difficult read.
To me, this post lacks something you always bring – that ability to see something in its true light, stripped of its Union disguise. You always made me see the emperor had no clothes.
Someone said a great political message needs to do 3 things:
– Engage the base,
– Persuade the middle
– Make the opposition show their true colours.
Just to me, this post lacks your usual smack between the eyes as I think it misses the second 2 of those.
The task is not only to warn, its to get people to move. That first movement from them is the hardest…is it fear or desire that will make them want to move?
.
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Come the hour, come the man.
This is the hour.
You are the man, Jason.
I am with you!
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Yes , iut has been apparent to me and others for some considerable time that the SNP lack backbone and because of this ,the independence movement suffers from it. Here in Dundee we have seen the SNP council actively trying to block independence events. On one occasion when they were trying to persuade us to postpone an event in the City Square, scheduled for the week before the 2015 general election, a very prominent SNP politician said :” we cant have saltires and yes banners being waved around the City Square the week before a general election” That was the General Election that returned 57 SNP MP’s to parliament. Since Nicola Sturgeon was made leader of the party the cause of independence has went into reverse, I do not think there is any doubt of that.
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Reblogged this on Ramblings of a 50+ Female.
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Happy to host your cancelled gig in Strathaven on 6 March Jason. You have our details, get in touch.
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Rutherglen have already taken it – but drop me an email and we can arrange another date. mccannjm@tcd.ie
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Nice Strathaven…:D
Jason, would you consider live-streaming your Orkney and Shetland visits? I think it is so important that the Isles are brought to the centre of YES discussions.
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I will do my very best!
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I agree with all you say, play by your enemies rules, and your enemy will win. I fear the SNP are doing just this, and we will lose our last chance to break free and stand as a nation. The SNP need to be strong, forceful, and say NO, this is our land!
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Would you be interested in coming to Musselburgh to do a talk?
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Yes, of course. Send me an email and we can work something out. mccannjm@tcd.ie
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violent extremism and rancid neo-Nazi opinion,
Surely if the area is wall Tories????????
Missed in your talk in Killie. Catch you in another place.
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I heard through the grapevine that Inverness and Alness may have cancelled your visit? Very welcome to come up for your scheduled appearance. I have the venue and can give you board and lodgings.
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Sorry but “serious repercussions” ? For hosting a meeting? Who from? What the hell are people afraid of? If people aren’t willing to stand up for their beliefs and attend a talk by someone deemed “unsuitable” by the people we are opposing then how the hell are we ever going to achieve independence? You are right – it’s becoming a twee little middle class stooshie. I was once told at work that I’d have to replace our Saltire with a union flag for an event. I refused and when I was told I couldn’t refuse I said “sack me then”. They didn’t, of course and nothing further came of it. These bullying arseholes need standing up to not knuckling under and kow towing to. What happenned to “nemo me impune lacessit?
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Great story, I agree wholeheartedly with it.
I think the SNP have to do things a little differently from the rest of us they know very well that in doing so they will be accused of being weak but they also know that if you are to defeat an enemy getting into their fortress is a definite advantage.
Westminster is England’s fortress.
If we leave Westminster England will dismantle holyrood and attack Scotland even more than it does at present.
SNP weaken their position and ours if they withdraw from Westminster.
Independence is our aim it’s the SNPs aim and we know for sure that the SNP have wise experienced and strong campaigners in the party and outside it who know the dirty tricks Westminster pull.
Brexit will force Westminster to do things it doesn’t want to do ,it has hemmed itself into a straight jacket and all we have seen this past few months is the desperate jerking movements of England’s Westminster looking for a way out, there are none,once it accepts that there are none we will see the frenzied screaming head banging and then silence before it loses its head.
A British border across Ireland is very possible,trouble will ensue,British soldiers will be deployed possibly wearing police uniforms armed nevertheless.
Irish reunification will follow.
Scottish independence will be fought by Westminster and it’s possible that Scotlands independence might be attacked by the rump of British NI to the west as well as from the south.
Scotland doesn’t have armed forces.
Westminster does.
Would they put armed soldiers on the streets of Scotland ? YES they would.
Would people in Scotland fight the soldiers ? I don’t think so, it’s not the same as Northern Ireland here in Scotland ,certainly not in Dundee where I live.
Nothing like it.
I know, I lived there through the troubles in Northern Ireland in the late sixties.
We will march and protest and seek international support.
A fifth of people in Scotland are not Scottish and don’t really care that much,yes they will vote if eligible but they won’t fight for Scottish independence and for sure we know that we will only win if we fight for it.
Trouble ahead, no doubt about that.
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Not frightening to me.
I’m ready to take black control of my country from the English.
English people in Scotland do very little talking about Scottish independence but they sure as hell do a lot of voting against it.
Quiet ,unseen ,never march ,never display their sentiment apart from the odd Union Jack hoisted in a garden, of course they don’t need to, the English control is everywhere everyday in the form of the union flag on produce in shops and in the newspapers and on tv the state does it all for them.They will remain hidden.
Its the Scottish britnats we will go head to head with, they are noisy brash brazen and out of control it’s they we will meet in the streets when the time comes.
We outnumber them and they are mostly old.
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NEVER….NEVER….NEVER underestimate Westminster. It is a state built on the plunder of others wealth.
You are not dealing with tottering old unionists..you are dealing with the full might of a State, their media, and if it comes to it….their military. Even recent experience has shown that Westminster has and will use any and all means to enforce control.
Scotland is about to again see what the full force of colonialism looks like. If you prepare like naive children..you have no hope.
Map: Army suppression of Scotland post Culloden 1746-53
https://twitter.com/grouse_beater/status/1039439401036800000.
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Not entirely true. there are very many English born supporters of Scottish Indpendence and they are as vocal, if not more so, than some Scots, I meet them in the Yes groups I attend and regularly at SNP meeting. and they are very keen to get people converted to Yes.
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