Thousands March for Scottish Independence

"I'm William Wallace, and the rest of you will be spared. Go back to England and tell them... Scotland is free!"

Thousands of people marched through the Scottish capital Edinburgh on Saturday calling for independence, a year ahead of Scotland's historic referendum on whether to break away from the United Kingdom.

 

The pro-independence campaign "Yes Scotland" estimated that 20,000 supporters joined the march, turning the city center into a sea of blue and white as they waved thousands of Scottish flags, though police said numbers were closer to 8,300.

 

Some of the men were clad in traditional Scottish kilts as they marched up Calton Hill, overlooking the city, to the sound of bagpipes reports Naharnet.

 

 

Alex Salmond, leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party and head of Scotland's regional government, told the crowds they would have "the opportunity of a lifetime" when they vote on September 18 next year.

 

"We're a lucky generation," he said. "To change our communities for the better we only need to say the word, to say 'yes'."

 

Opinion polls suggest only around a third of the 5.3 million Scots currently intend to vote to break away, but Salmond insists he can convince a majority that independence would bring economic and political benefits.

 

Student Calum Martin, who lives near the western Scottish city of Glasgow, said he would be voting in favor of independence because he believed Scots should have a better say over how their money is spent.

 

"Scotland is an incredibly wealthy country. This is a chance to put that wealth to much better use," the 20-year-old said.

 

Scotland currently has its own parliament and a devolved government which controls several policy areas including health and education, but other policies, such as defense and foreign affairs, are controlled by London.

 

The 'no' campaign -- backed by British Prime Minister David Cameron's government -- claims Scotland is stronger as part of the larger United Kingdom, comprising England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

 

 

Pro independence supporters march in Edinburgh

 

 

 

 

 

Independent Scotland
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Adam Ramsay, co-editor of the blog Ourkingdom says that it’s insulting to other small countries to say that Scotland wouldn’t be able to survive.

 

“Scotland has the same population as Denmark; it’s a bigger country (by population) than Norway. If you look at a list of countries by population in the world, Scotland is right in the middle, so I think that the claim a normal sized country can’t survive is insulting,” Ramsay told RT News.

 

Per capita Scotland is also one of the richest countries in the world and in any case, points out Kane, small countries often do better than larger ones in a whole host of ways.

 

Research and statistics show “how well small nations, fewer than ten million, do on a whole range of indicators whether its well-being, happiness, economic performance or educational outcome,” he said.

 

 Even without oil and gas Scotland is an averagely well performing European economy, says Kane. And with the oil and gas sector, even if future output and reserves are volatile, the Scottish economy would do extremely well.

 

Scotland is a modern developed economy and would do fine without its southern neighbor’s subsidies.

 

“In no way would it be a petro economy. Three of the top universities in the world are based in Scotland. There’s a huge sector in bioscience, there’s great advantages in food and textiles,” said Kane.

 

It has been pointed out that if Scotland had sovereignty, it would have been able to build up a huge wealth fund like Norway has done. The Norwegians discovered oil in the North Sea at the same time as Scotland in the 1970’s, and their wealth fund now tides them over fluctuations in the market and can be put towards developing technology to extract the more tricky oil reserves, which are still untapped.

A pro-independence supporter with a Saltire flag and a "Yes" written on his body
joins a march and rally in Edinburgh on September 21, 2013 in support of a yes
vote in the Scottish Referendum to be held in September 2014.
(AFP Photo / Andy Buchanan)

Europe in 1600.
Why not an independent Scotland?  National borders are not written in stone. 
Since World War II there have been many new independent nations such
as Croatia, Serbia, Armenia, Jordan, Kenya, Indonesia, Nigeria, Algeria, 
Pakistan, Israel and the Ukraine. 

 

Let France & Turkey be the Policemen of the Mediterranean

Turkish Armored Units.

Let Turkey and France Police

the Mediterranean

"We Americans have no commission from God

to police the world."

President Benjamin Harrison

By Gary;

For nearly 120 years now American politicians have felt the need to throw their weight around and act as an imperial policeman of the world. Never mind that the world somehow managed to police itself for 10,000 years before an American army came along to "help".

If Syria needs a policeman then let Turkey and France act.  The U.S. has no business in that nation.

Syria was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire for 400 years, and Syria was under French colonial rule after World War I.

A modest suggestion.  Tell France and Turkey that the Mediterranean Sea belongs to them now.  They have now been promoted to Policemen of the Mediterranean.  We can give them a shiny badge and everything.

It would be cheaper for the U.S. to pay France and Turkey their cost plus 10% profit and let them keep the locals in line.
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The Turkish Army can do the job in the east.  It has an established strength of approximately 402,000 active personnel.  

The Turkish Army's website gives figures as to the number of formations in the Army. The official site gives totals of 9 Army Corps, 1 Infantry Division, 2 Mechanized Infantry Divisions, 1 Armored Division, 1 Training Division, 11 Infantry / Motorized Infantry Brigades, 16 Mechanized Infantry Brigades, 9 Armored Brigades, 5 Para-Commando Brigades, 1 Army Aviation Brigade, 2 Artillery Brigades, 5 Training Brigades and one Humanitarian Aid Brigade

The primary main battle tanks of the Turkish Army are the Leopard 2A4 and the M60T. There are also around 400 Leopard 1 and 750 M60 Patton variants in service (excluding the M60T which were upgraded with the 120 mm MG253 guns), but the Turkish Army retains a large number of older vehicles.

More than 2,800 M48 Pattons are still in service (upgraded with the 105 mm M68 guns).


Charles de Gaulle CVN French Carrier Operations

Turkey - The #3 Air Force in NATO.
Turkish Air Force ranks third in NATO in terms of fleet size behind the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force. The Turkish Air Force has an active strength of 60,000 military personnel and operates approximately 736 manned aircraft.

The Turkish Navy
 The Turkish Navy has a reported active personnel strength of 48,600; this figure included an Amphibious Marines Brigade as well as several Special Forces and Commando detachments. The navy has approximately 215 ships in commission (excluding minor auxiliary vessels) and around 41 maritime aircraft.

Vive la France
France says they are interested in putting Syria in its place.  Fine with me.  I would rather have France be policeman of the Mediterranean than the U.S.
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French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (above) is the flagship of the French Navy (Marine Nationale) and the largest Western European warship. She is the tenth French aircraft carrier, the first French nuclear-powered surface vessel, and the first and so far only nuclear-powered carrier completed outside of the United States Navy.

The French Foreign Legion
The Legion has acted in the name of France and kicked ass from Mexico to Vietnam to Africa.  It would be cheaper for the U.S. to pay France cost + 10% and let them police the Mediterranean.

U.S. Policeman of the World.
The U.S. will not stop being policeman because it gives us control of money, oil and power to tell everyone what to do.
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A number of folks have sent me this, so I pass it along. Nafeez Ahmed argues in the Guardian that “Syrian intervention plans fuelled by oil interest, not chemical weapons concerns”. And it is falling out according to grand plans, including a Rand report on the “long war” to embroil jihadists in internal strife so that we don’t lose Gulf oil.

 

Obama violates the Constitution to be Policeman of the World - But what else is new?

"We Americans have no commission from

God to police the world."

President Benjamin Harrison

By Gary;

Dear Leader Obama's unconstitutional wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen or Bill Clinton's in Kosovo are unfortunately nothing new to the American experience.

For nearly 120 years now American politicians have felt the need to throw their weight around and act as an imperial policeman of the world.  Never mind that the world somehow managed to police itself for 10,000 years before an American army came along to "help".

Very early on the Republican members of Congress figured out that a legal and proper Constitutional Declaration of War was putting way too much of a public spotlight on Congress.

So starting with our four year war against  the First Philippine Republic the Congress began to let the Imperial President make the call to go to war without a public debate or vote in the legislature.

This cowardly arrangement was not only unconstitutional but worked out well for Senators and Congressmen.

With the Imperial President charging off to war Congressmen could mumble and finger point, "Don't look at me.  The President did it." 

World War II was the last gasp of the American Constitutional Republic.  On July 5th, 1942 the U.S. Declared War against Romania, an ally of Nazi Germany.

Since 1942 there has never been a proper declaration of war.  On occasion Congress passes weak "authorizations" of force which they can claim later they did not understand would be used the way the President used it.

But in many cases such as the wars against Panama, Serbia, Libya and Yemen there has been no vote at all to go to war.

Dear Leader Obama has been using the CIA to actively arm and fund the Syrian rebels through Islamist Saudi Arabia and Islamist Turkey.  So the U.S. is already actively waging war on Syria.

But don't expect the Statist Republican Party to ride to the rescue of the Constitution.  After all, for nearly 120 years the GOP has eagerly been undermining section after section of the Constitution.

Welcome to Imperial America.
        

In 1898 the U.S. became Policeman of the World.
The Spanish American War in 1898 is the dividing line for the "small Constitutional government" Republican Party.  Before 1898 the GOP pretty much wanted the U.S. to mind its own business around the world.  But after 1898 the GOP became the Imperialist Party with the Democrats joining in on the fun not long after.
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Suddenly American troops were all over the world, such as Philippine-American War which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, concentration camps and American colonization, from there we have the Boxer Rebellion in China, stealing Panama from Columbia,Tangier, Morocco, the 21 year Occupation of Nicaragua, the Occupation of Veracruz, Mexico, the 19 year occupation of Haiti, the 8 year Occupation of the Dominican Republic, the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, the US Intervention in Lebanon, the U.S. - Panama War and the Kosovo War among many, many, many others.

The Death of the Constitutional Federal Republic
.
The 1904 campaign for President marks the death of the Constitutional Federal Republic created by the Founding Fathers. The poster above says it all.
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Theodore Roosevelt steps on the Constitution while waving the sword of militarism. Anti-imperialist Conservative small government Bourbon Democrat nominee Alton Parker steps on the sword of militarism and holds high the Constitution.
.
.Starting with the Spanish-American War the Republican Party has morphed into an Imperial party. The policeman of the world. The Democrats claim not to be imperial, but they know a good thing when they see it. The Democrats always eagerly jump at any opportunity to use American military power around the world.
.
The fact of the matter is imperialism feels good. One might say it is good to be the king. Most the nations of the world bow down to your will. The policies of nations hang on your every word . . . . and done right it is good for business. It can make you rich as Hell.

A Massive Theft of Cambodian land by Europe

Cornering the European sugar market by "accidentally" buying 99% of Cambodia's
crop produced from lands where farmers are tossed into the streets to starve with
the help of a corrupt Cambodian government.

 

The Road to Serfdom

Nearly three-quarters of Cambodia's farmland has been taken
from farmers and "given" to foreign companies.

Vanishing Property Rights  -  The right to legally hold and own private property is under attack by corrupt governments and businesses from the U.S. to the EU to Cambodia.  Laws are "legally" written forcing owners off their lands and often turning over the property to rival businesses that are totally in bed with corrupt government officials.

The latest case involves the confiscation of private property  from Cambodian farmers and the re-distribution of that wealth to Europeans.

Backed by British law firm Jones Day, villagers have filed a lawsuit against the Tate & Lyle sugar conglomerate, claiming that KSL were complicit in government moves to evict them to make way for the plantations. They also say they were insufficiently compensated for the land they lost, and faced "multiple instances of battery and criminal violence" during which villagers were shot at and wounded, with one activist murdered.

The UK Guardian reports of one farmer standing by her rickety wooden fence that separates her clapboard home from the giant Plantation in front of her, Yoen Sarin, 29, waves her hand in an arc. "My land extended from there to just over there." She narrows her eyes. "The company tried to bulldoze their way closer but I built this fence, and even though they've already knocked it down twice, I'm not moving. I keep rebuilding it."

European "Food Colonies" in Asia.
Working through 3rd parties and "private" companies, the
European Union is stealing Asian farmlands and
turning them into food colonies for the EU.

Yoen Sarin is just one of thousands of Cambodian farmers who claim they are losing their land and livelihoods to big sugar plantations, some of which are directly supplying the EU through companies such as Tate & Lyle Sugars.

Nearly 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) have been cleared in three provinces to make way for sugar plantations since 2006, activists allege – and most of that land, they argue, has been stolen from subsistence farmers.

Sugar is big business in Cambodia, thanks to a preferential European Union trade scheme called Everything But Arms (EBA), which allows Cambodian sugar to be sold duty-free on the European market at a minimum price per tonne. Official figures show that 97% of Cambodia's €10m (£8.5m) sugar exports went to the EU last year, and Tate & Lyle bought 99% of them reports the UK Guardian.

Although the initiative is intended to bolster the world's least-developed countries, the villagers say they have not profited from the deal at all.

"When the company came in May 2006, they bulldozed without consultation or any environmental impact assessment," said Teng Kao, 52, a village representative from Koh Kong province who lost nearly 10 hectares to the plantations. "They bulldozed the fields and streams. They shot our animals. After about 100 families' land was taken away, we started taking pictures."

__________________________________

Working as Serfs
Cambodian farmers have had their land effectively confiscated by the
all-powerful State and given away to multi-national foreign corporations. 
The now landless farmers work as poverty level wage-slaves, as Serfs,
on the land owned by their foreign Lords and Masters in Europe. 

Cambodia opposition taps Into 'land grab' anger
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy is shown speaking to supporters.  "Land grabs are wrong. They are cruel and they must end," Rainsy told supporters this week on campaign stops across the country. "We will rescue Cambodia's forests and natural resources."

Already, the government has transferred control of 2.6 million hectares of land to private business from mostly subsistence farmers, according to rights groups, affecting 700,000 people and 73% of the country's arable land in the past decade. The problem is partly a legacy of Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime,which outlawed private-property ownership during its radical Marxist rule from 1975 to 1979, leaving many people without land titles. 
.
  "Land grabs pose the single biggest challenge to social stability in Cambodia," said Megan MacInnes, senior land campaigner at Global Witness, a London-based human-rights group. "More and more ordinary Cambodians are being pushed into poverty from losing their land and forests, yet the government continues to lease out land to any investor who'll take it."
(farmlandgrab.org)

__________________________________

The "company" Teng Kao refers to is one of two Cambodian entities owned by the Thai group KSL. For the past two years, these companies have sold all of their sugar cane to Tate & Lyle. Now, Teng Kao and some 200 other villagers are taking their fight to the high court in London.

Private deeds were abolished under the Communist Khmer Rouge, leaving subsistence farmers vulnerable to recent surges in land-grabs and mining and property developments. Campaigners estimate that nearly three-quarters of the country's arable farmland has been granted to private companies as economic land concessions, resulting in the displacement of more than 400,000 people since 2003.

Under Cambodian law, land possession can be established using various legal documents, not just land deeds. As many of the villagers in Koh Kong claim to have such papers, they say their land was stolen from beneath their feet. "I've been living here since I was born – this is my ancestral land," said Teng Kao

Since they lost their farmland to the plantations, many villagers say they have been forced to seek work from the very company they are now suing. "I had to pull my kids out of school and send them to work on the plantation after they took our land away because we couldn't afford to eat," said Chea Sok, 38, a claimant in the lawsuit.

"We work together in the plantation now cutting 1,000 stems of sugar cane a day [for 79p]. It's exhausting and hot and the bundles are so heavy for [my children], they get fever working in the field. They've hardly grown at all – sometimes we don't even have enough rice to eat."

While visiting one of the KSL plantations in January the Guardian saw at least a dozen underage children cutting sugar cane, including some as young as nine years old.

The Guardian also filmed children receiving payment for their work on the plantation, and interviewed parents who confirmed that their children worked in the fields and received payment for their labour.

While it is difficult to establish just how many children may be working in the fields at any given time, campaigners say that hundreds may cut sugar cane on the KSL plantations during harvest, based on their interviews with families affected by the concessions.

Tate & Lyle Sugars "claims" it does not condone or authorize child labor and that all land was "legally" obtained.

________________________________

A Serf bows to his Lord.
Free men own private property. Serfs own nothing and serve as tax slaves,
working the land and forced to turn over the wealth they produced to
their Lords and Masters in Government in return for "protection".

The Road to Serfdom Series
.
The world is moving toward a modern form of Neo-Serfdom where everyone works for the all-powerful State or businesses controlled by the State.  A world where individual property rights and freedom do not exist.

Freedom is slowly vanishing.  What happens when the major employers are owned by government backed investment groups, or your food comes from government owned farms, or your news is delivered by so-called "private" corporations that are in reality connected and interconnected to governments?

George Orwell had a name for it:  Big Brother.  Benito Mussolini had a name too: Corporatism or Fascism.

Please check out other stories in our Serfdom series.


THE FEDERALIST - "Private property confiscated in Ethiopia & sold to multi-national corporations."

THE FEDERALIST - "Tax Slavery American Style - Feds Profit off Student Debt."

THE FEDERALIST - "Slavery returns to Europe"
.
THE FEDERALIST - "China to buy up the Australian dairy industry."

THE FEDERALIST - "China Buys Up the United States."

THE FEDERALIST - "750,000 Chinese have Colonized Africa"

THE FEDERALIST - "Korea secretly buys Australia."

THE FEDERALIST - "Australia and Africa become Arab Food Colonies."

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys Australia (For Cheap Too)"

THE FEDERALIST - "The Chinese conquest of Africa"

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys New Zealand - The Road to Serfdom, Part XVII"

THE FEDERALIST - "Arab Food Colonies in Black Africa."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese colonization of New Zealand blocked."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese "Slavery" in Africa - The Road to Serfdom, Part XIV."

THE FEDERALIST - "Argentina fights Saudi Land Grab."

THE FEDERALIST - "LAND GRAB: 160,000 people thrown off their land."

THE FEDERALIST - "China is buying up Argentina."

Obama spies on the terrorist hotbed of Brazil

Brazil - A Terrorist Hotbed?

Obama's National Security Agency has been spying on the telephone and e-mail activity of Brazilian companies and individuals.

Police State  -  Now Dear Leader Comrade Obama has managed to piss off Brazil. 

It appears Obama has targeted Brazil for massive amounts of American spying on phone calls and the Internet.  Is perhaps Brazil some hotbed of terrorism?  No.  But it would be wrong to think our Dear Leader is drunk on power.

Brazil will demand an explanation from the United States over report its citizens' electronic communications have been under surveillance by U.S. spy agencies for at least a decade, foreign minister Antonio Patriota said on Sunday.

Patriota's remarks were in response to a report in the Globo daily newspaper on Sunday saying that the U.S. National Security Agency has been spying the telephone and e-mail activity of Brazilian companies and individuals as part of U.S. espionage activities.


The report cited documents obtained from U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden, a former NSA intelligence contractor reports Reuters News.

Patriota also said his government plans to propose changes to international communications rules administered by the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union to improve communications secrecy, the statement said. Brazil also plans to present proposals to the United Nations to protect the privacy of electronic communication.

"The Brazilian government is gravely concerned by the news that electronic and telephone communications of Brazilian citizens are the objective of espionage efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies," a foreign ministry statement said.

The Globo report did not say how much traffic was monitored by NSA computers and intelligence officials. But the article pointed out that in the Americas, Brazil was second only to the United States in the number of transmissions intercepted.

Brazil was a priority nation for the NSA communications surveillance alongside China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, Globo said.

Access to Brazilian communications was obtained through American companies that were partners with Brazilian telecommunications companies.

A Potential Brazilian Terrorist
There is no doubt that that those sneaky Brazilians are planning some horror that
requires our Dear Leader Comrade Obama to spy on them. 

Ron Paul: Obama’s Syria Policy Looks a Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy

(Editor  -  Hey you warmongers in both parties.  How have Iraq and Afghanistan worked out for you?  Now you are eagerly beating new war drums for Syria.  Naturally, no member of Congress will propose one of them thar old fashioned Constitutional "Declarations of War".  Nor will any member of Congress resign their post to volunteer to be in the front lines.)


By Ron Paul
Infowars News

President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Post reported this week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.

Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.

The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war. Remember the famous quote from the leaked “Downing Street Memo,” where representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration discussed Washington’s push for war on Iraq?

Here the head of British intelligence was reporting back to his government after a trip to Washington in the summer of 2002:

“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That is exactly what the Obama Administration is doing with Syria: fixing the intelligence and facts around the already determined policy. And Congress just goes along, just as they did the last time.

We found out shortly after the Iraq war started that the facts and intelligence being fixed around the policy were nothing but lies put forth by the neo-con warmongers and the paid informants, like the infamous and admitted liar known as “Curveball.” But we seem to have learned nothing from being fooled before.

So Obama now plans to send even more weapons to the Syrian rebels even though his administration is aware that the main rebel factions have pledged their loyalty to al-Qaeda. Does anyone else see the irony? After 12 years of the “war on terror” and the struggle against al-Qaeda, the US decided to provide weapons to the allies of al-Qaeda. Does anyone really think this is a good idea?

The Obama administration promises us that this is to be a very limited operation, providing small arms only, with no plans for a no-fly zone or American boots on the ground. That sounds an awful lot like how Vietnam started. Just a few advisors. When these few small arms do not achieve the pre-determined US policy of regime change in Syria what is the administration going to do? Admit failure and pull the troops out, or escalate? History suggests the answer and it now appears to be repeating itself once again.

The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multi-billion dollar war has begun.

The Death of the Constitutional Federal Republic
The 1904 campaign for President marks the death of the Constitutional Federal Republic created by the Founding Fathers. The poster above says it all. 
.
Theodore Roosevelt steps on the Constitution while waving the sword of militarism. Anti-imperialist Conservative small government Bourbon Democrat nominee Alton Parker steps on the sword of militarism and holds high the Constitution.
.
Starting with the Spanish-American War the Republican Party has morphed into an Imperial party. The policeman of the world. The Democrats claim not to be imperial, but they know a good thing when they see it. The Democrats always eagerly jump at any opportunity to use American military power around the world.
.
The fact of the matter is imperialism feels good.   One might say it is good to be the king.   Most the nations of the world bow down to your will.   The policies of nations hang on your every word . . . . and done right it is good for business. It can make you rich as Hell.