And now – independence for Ireland?

All I am about to say has been published by us in 2 CSP books (2012, 2013). Here I am just trying to spark a real debate (ie one that will end with action, perhaps in conjunction with our Scots cousins)

First of all, unlucky indeed is the land that needs  heroes; but  non-existent is the nation that doesn’t have them. Scotland’s shame will last a generation; it has been 35 years since the 1979 referendum and by 2049 North Sea oil will be gone. In 1960 JFK won less than 50% of the vote; by 1962 surveys showed 64% claimed they voted for him. We will have a lot of yes voters in 2015's Scotland

 What this campaign showed was the limits of the purely civic nationalism the SNP espouses. The Scots could be scared by rebuttal of Salmond’s economic arguments; what was needed was a narrative tying them to their land.  Yet his central thesis, that a low population density, resource-rich country can thrive in the 21st century is one we Irish need to pay attention to.

In my 2013 book, I argued that we should be willing to risk losing foreign investment as we refuse to pay the “debt” imposed on us in 2010 to buttress the  neoliberal world order. We always had the ability to do without Google, Facebook and other US garbage. Then again, so has Scotland. Instead we created garbage like Deri in SFI and imported criminals who continue to assert (in publications written with Botox’s manufacturer) against attested lab work that Botox cannot reach the brain;

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/whistleblowers-lab-probe-scientist-to-take-up-irish-post/188052.article

There has recently been controversy about censorship of poets in the Maldives. Are  we in Ireland really in a position to throw stones here? W  do not allow musicians to make a living – it is documented that the chair of IMRO, FF’s Shay Hennessy, was stealing copyrights in the 1990’s at an industrial scale. The state then colluded with him via Enterprise Ireland to sell off the songs at a cut rate via Walmart. So we celebrate Dolores Keane’s return, we should be aware of the factors that caused her depression and drug abuse. Specifically, not getting paid for her work

Secondly, our “legal system has nothing to do with justice.  The Gardai rarely investigate white-collar crime; when they do, as with the Hennessy music scam, the prosecution in interfered with at the DPP level and the musicians had to go to Federal court in the USA, where they won. The alternative is grinding through a system whose legal costs  that has spawned three of the top 20 biggest legal firms in the EU from a population of 1% or so of the total

Thirdly, we do not have academic freedom in Ireland. The 1990 act prohibits strikes for “single” dismissals of everybody, including uni profs. Only Paul Cahill’s willingness to declare bankruptcy in the event of his losing prevented mass sackings at DCU.

The Irish State has a classic corporatist structure, with evisceration of civil society. By all means invite poets from anywhere to speak here; but it should not turn into another excuse for not investigating the institutionalized criminality  and brutalization of artists and thinkers rampant in Ireland

Our  country did not fail for lack of talent and hard work

 Seán O Nualláin

PS Now for the good news; in 1979 only 32% of the Scottish electorate voted in favour of devolution. In 2014 38%  of the Scottish electorate voted in favour of outright independence. The trajectory seems clear, and Westminster will have to "think again" as "Flower of Scotland" puts it.

Looked at through this filter, Salmond looks like the last hope for an independent Scotland that remained loyalist and in NATO. The response from Westminster may be devolution on their terms, with the Scottish Labour MP's hamstrung by the "West Lothian question" and so irrelevant that the Scots begin to replace them with the SNP. Then comes an ethnic national independence drive, possibly after a UK EU withdrawal, one that has a hard man like Jimmy Reid in charge, one that will rightly ignore the BS we heard from international banksters

Next time we Irish should explicitly support outright independence for Scotland

PPS  It is as well to mention, given this scandalous incident of vandalism by Irish students in the SF area;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJyXL4h3iY

that in 2013 Mel and I formally wrote to the Irish consul-general there complaining about how the behaviour of these students might create anti-Irish sentiment