Month: July 2014

Congress can’t do much, but they did manage to send the president a bill today that will prevent the Highway Trust Fund from running out of money in August. That’s the good news, and the only good news coming out of Capitol Hill. The bill itself is ridiculous, which is what you would expect from something wholly created by House Republicans without any input whatsoever from the Senate. That didn’t prevent 81 senators from voting for it, however. Among Democrats, only Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware voted against it, presumably because it is such a stupid way to finance our infrastructure spending.

But at least Congress was able to kick the can down the road so that we can drive on it. They solved a problem. Not so for the tens of thousands of unaccompanied children who have arrived at our borders since last October. Boehner has a new majority leader and a new whip, but they aren’t any better at doing their jobs than their predecessors. Once again, Boehner had to pull legislation off the floor rather than see his own caucus vote it down. The House will convene tomorrow morning which was supposed to be the first day of the August recess. They don’t want to go home without giving the president any money to deal with the kids at the border, but they can’t agree on a bill that the Democrats might support. They can’t even agree on a bill that the Democrats won’t support. They are not capable of governing.

In the Senate, the Republicans blocked the confirmation of a bloc of State Department nominees, including the ambassadors to Guatemala, Russia, and South Korea. They did this because they’re still miffed about Harry Reid using the nuclear option. But, last I checked, Russia had just been involved in downing a commercial airliner, Guatemala was flooding our borders with desperate children, and South Korea was one of our closest and most important allies in the Far East.

Since the long-term unemployed aren’t about to form a Super PAC, they’re still screwed, too.

I remain guardedly optimistic that enough Americans will notice what is happening in Washington that the GOP will not be rewarded for this non-performance. But the fact that I have reason to doubt this is a pretty bad indictment of where we’re at as a country.

Sorry, Obama, but you’re wrong. Here’s DCI John Brennan in March:

“When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong,” Brennan said.

Here’s John Brennan this week:

After briefing committee leaders, Brennan “apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the [inspector general] report,” the agency’s statement said. Brennan also ordered the creation of an internal personnel board, led by former senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), to review the agency employees’ conduct and determine “potential disciplinary measures.”

And here’s the White House press secretary:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Obama supports Brennan and disputed that the CIA director’s reversal on the clash with Congress had damaged his credibility. “Not at all,” Earnest said, noting that Brennan had initiated the inspector general review.

“He currently is operating in a very difficult environment to ensure the safety of the American public,” Earnest said. “He is somebody who has a very difficult job, who does that job extraordinarily well.”

That is the rankest bullshit. John Brennan has zero credibility left and he ought to be run out of Langley on a rail.

Searching BooMan, I came across my diary – ‘HezbSjitan’ ¶ A Blogger from Beirut – and googled the name of the blogger …

An excellent opinion piece written for The Guardian, deserves more attention. Abdelkader describes perfectly my ordeal with intolerance, discrimination and racism in Dutch society today. I too dread tomorrow, especially when politicians like Geert Wilders gaining more votes in national elections.

I migrated to Europe with hope. Now I feel nothing but dread

As the Dutch ban the burqa, one of Holland’s leading writers mourns the passing of a welcoming continent

 « click for more info
Abdelkader Benali on twitter - @abdelkabenali

The Observer, Sunday 3 October 2010   
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When I arrived with my mother in Rotterdam in the late 1970s, we thought we had found a safe haven. Coming from the sharp-edged mountains of north Morocco, the streets of the Low Countries felt like a place where everything could be done better. It did not seem possible that, 30 years later, the likes of Geert Wilders would wield influence, pushing his ban on the burqa, but then there were no burqas to be seen in the street.

The Netherlands felt like a country that would never betray me. I was greeted with enthusiasm at kindergarten; my name was the longest among the pupils and it was assumed I was very proud of that. Dutch culture was like a tattoo being imprinted on my brown skin. I learned the language and delighted in excelling at it in front of my teachers. I was their dream of multiculturalism: a foreigner who showed he could adapt to their culture through language. The mothers of classmates would inform me that they loved Moroccan cuisine, especially couscous. They would speak vividly, romantically about foreign cultures such as mine, and I felt proud. The fact that I was different made me feel special. And the Dutch created wonder in me as a child. They tolerated their dogs on their couches; they gave generously to faraway peoples suffering from disaster and sickness. I didn’t only read fairy tales, I lived one.

Then came the fall of the Wall, the 1990s and change. Europe decided it needed immigrants. The first change I saw was at home. My parents, growing older, gave up hope of the family returning to Morocco. Slowly, the feeling took over that we were here to stay, maintaining the privileges and opportunities of living in Europe. With that came the unease that their children would lose their identity. Already, we spoke Dutch, not Berber.

Meanwhile, the Dutch were waking up to the reality that most immigrants would never go back.

[Read on at The Guardian …]

How Dutch “Open” Society slammed the doors shut on its own people

More below the fold …

Friday evening in Rotterdam saw large groups of immigrant children in the streets, estranged from their roots, trying to find solace in consumerism and urban culture, but also feeling alienated from Dutch society. Turks hung out with Turks, Moroccans with Moroccans. The melting pot didn’t heat up, the elements weren’t mixing. In my neighbourhood, former convicts stopped me to talk about Islam. They felt that my staunchly secular lifestyle would not only bring disaster to me, but also to the spiritual community of Islam. A young friend introduced me to his uncle who had just came back from Afghanistan. He was a mujahid.

I failed to see the shift. Immigrants had been seen by most Dutch as a marginal, colourful people from whose shops they could buy their meat and vegetables at ridiculously low prices. I knew this because my father had a butcher’s shop and I would sell them their lamb chops. As the 1990s progressed, the difference between allochtoon – one “originating from another country” – and autochtoon – “one originating from this country” began to be emphasised. Allochtoon started becoming synonymous for criminality, big families, bad living and Islam. This wasn’t restricted to Holland. In Germany, questions were being raised about Turkish immigrants adhering to a fundamentalist Islam. Thousands of young French-Algerian football fans stormed the pitch when France played Algeria, their way of saying: “We don’t feel we belong in this country.”

So what had changed? I believe it was memories of war. The mass destruction of its people had given Europe a self-image as an intolerant, cruel continent. The deep feeling of guilt towards the victims had to be made good in the attitude towards new immigrants. The immigrant became a totem of the left-wing elite, of which there could be no criticism. Multiculturalism became the catchphrase.

In the banlieus of Paris, young immigrant girls could not go out in the evening for fear of being beaten by their brothers. No criticism. Immigrants from West Africa could keep four woman in the same quarters. The elite did not intervene, for this was their culture. Society leaders believed that over time these immigrants would assimilate. A Moroccan would become Dutch, an Algerian French, a Turk Swedish.

This did not happen. They did the reverse. This was the moment the fear crept in, threatening the idea that Europe could assimilate its new citizens. If these immigrants adhered to their practices and rituals such as slaughtering their sheep on the balcony and not allowing their girls to go to school, Europe was being undermined from the inside.

It is in this context that Geert Wilders can proclaim that there is no moderate Islam, that any Muslim who calls himself a Muslim will one day become radicalised. This is not just a trick of words; when Dutch people who voted for Wilders looked out of the window, they really had this feeling that their Muslim neighbours were becoming more Muslim, not less. They saw girls in burqas, proclaiming that this was an individual decision strengthening their spiritual relationship with Allah. The Dutch wondered if somebody putting a cloth over herself could be a individual in their open society.

The burqa worried me too. But I saw Wilders’s move as a dangerous way of turning populist sentiments into cold-blooded politics and creating a new sort of fear.

The place of the Second World War in all this is growing more complicated. Populist parties in the Netherlands, Denmark and France are linking Islamist ideology to fascism. Islam is the new Nazism and Muhammad is their Hitler. History has become a blueprint for a new history: the world war against Islam.

In the 1980s, this message would have made people laugh, but not now. Look around. In Sweden, the debate around Islam and migration is growing in urgency. And Islam is just a particularly toxic element in the anti-immigrant movement. Nicolas Sarkozy, who is part Jewish, is throwing out the Roma. In Germany, the country of the Holocaust, a former head of the Bundesbank, Thilo Sarazzin, is making a plea for reducing working-class immigrants because of their low IQ.

 « click for more info
An immigration row in Germany: Sarrazin vs the Saracens (The Economist)

The idea that Europe is being kidnapped by an ever-growing non-western population is creating fear and populist parties are winning. But it will be impossible to stop migration. European populations are growing older, the workforces shrinking. But speaking in favour of migration – passionately, because I am a child of migration and make literature out of all its painful and comical contradictions – has become a form of blasphemy.

Certainly there is something rotten in multiculturalism, but turning the stereotypical victim into the stereotypical scapegoat is cheap and does not do justice to reality. I know that the Netherlands of my childhood will never come back. We are entering a dark period. A generation is growing up with xenophobia and the fear of Islam has become mainstream.

It’s time to come up with a new idea of what Europe is, drawing on the humane Europe as defended and described by writers such as Thomas Mann and Bertol Brecht. A Europe that newcomers consider a refuge, not a hell. If not, Europe will not die for a lack of immigrants, it will die for lack of light.

Rotterdam is the city of Pim Fortuyn who was assassinated by an animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf, who has been freed recently on probation. Geert Wilders took over where Pim Fortuyn started a populist revolution, only Wilders is more of an reactionary who exploits racism to further his seats in parliament. A very decisive figure.

Although some people dispute this, when the sun comes up in the morning, it is sometimes described as a sunrise. In other news, when you torture someone to death, it is sometimes described as torture. This is the insight of The Hill‘s Mario Trujillo, who managed to get the following published without spontaneously combusting:

A forthcoming report on the defunct CIA enhanced interrogation program “tells a story of which no American is proud,” according to leaked State Department talking points.

The White House on Wednesday accidentally emailed The Associated Press the proposed “topline messages” the department prepared in anticipation of the declassification of the Senate Intelligence Committee report.

The executive summary of the committee’s report on the Bush-era techniques — sometimes described as torture — is expected to be declassified in the next few weeks.

The CIA’s use of torture is not the end of the story. People were murdered:

The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.

“”There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,”” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “”High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal that has rocked our military.””

We’ve buried this information so deeply that our reporters can’t even begin to call it murder. They can’t even call it torture. It is “sometimes described” that way, but, you know, opinions differ.

Bill Kristol advises the House Republicans to pass nothing to address the crisis at the border involving a flood of unaccompanied minors arriving from distressed Central American countries.

If the GOP does nothing, and if Republicans explain that there’s no point acting due to the recalcitrance of the president to deal with the policies that are causing the crisis, the focus will be on the president. Republican incumbents won’t have problematic legislation to defend or questions to answer about what further compromises they’ll make. Republican challengers won’t have to defend or attack GOP legislation. Instead, the focus can be on the president—on his refusal to enforce the immigration law, on the effect of his unwise and arbitrary executive actions in 2012, on his pending rash and illegal further executive acts in 2014, and on his refusal to deal with the real legal and policy problems causing the border crisis. And with nothing passed in either house (assuming Senate Republicans stick together and deny Harry Reid cloture today), immigration won’t dominate August—except as a problem the president is responsible for and refuses seriously to address. Meanwhile, the GOP can go on the offensive on a host of other issues.

When you think about it, whether the House Republicans pass something to deal with the crisis or not, they are basically going to have to go to the public in the fall and defend their decisions to do nothing about anything.

In fact, their pitch to the electorate will be “reelect us and we’ll continue to do nothing.”

I think they may be overestimating the allure of that pitch.

Astonishingly, Joke Line still exists and is receiving a pay check.

It really is kind of stunning that most Arab governments are more supportive of the Israeli’s war on Hamas than the American government is, but this is the result of the failure of the peace talks. The Obama administration is pissed off, but the Arab governments seem perfectly content to see Hamas decimated.

For those who see America as complicit in this war, they should at least see the distinction between how this war is playing our compared to prior confrontations. America’s position is that Israel should stop the violence, but that position isn’t really shared by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or the United Arab Emirates. They’d like to see Israel crush Hamas.

Given that Israel has this unprecedented amount of regional support for their war, they really should do a better job of avoiding atrocities against United Nations schools, for example. They’re making it very difficult for even the people who approve of their actions to support their behavior.

And when this is all over and Hamas is defeated, assuming that is even accomplished, then Israel will immediately lose its erstwhile allies if they don’t reopen the peace talks and get real about ending the occupation.

I was interested in politics at an unnaturally young age. I was born in 1969, but I was actively supportive of Jimmy Carter’s campaign for the presidency in 1976. I still remember one girl who voted for Ford in our second grade straw poll, and I never forgot her perfidy. I remained fiercely loyal to Carter when he was challenged by Teddy Kennedy, but I flirted with the candidacy of John Anderson. I actually watched the Republican debates in 1980.

I first became aware of Israel during the Camp David talks, and they were a great success for President Carter. I guess I thought the problem was solved, and I didn’t really think about it one way or the other. I certainly had no understanding of the underlying issues.

The first time I actually had to confront the Israel-Palestine question as a moral quandary might surprise you. Through the mists of time, I might get some details wrong. But I can kind of reconstruct it, I think. It must have been in 1982, shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon. I remember seeing on the news that Yasser Arafat was on the run and might be in the sights of Israeli gunships. The portrait that was painted was that Arafat was in imminent danger of being assassinated.

Now, I had internalized that Arafat was a bad man. He was a terrorist. But I also remembered him smiling and shaking hands with Menacham Begin on the White House lawn. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I guess I figured that the Palestinians must have gone back on their word. I was not inclined to be sympathetic to Arafat, but I didn’t exactly harbor any ill will towards him, either.

So, the next day, I went over to the house of a classmate after school. There I found my friend’s mother in a state of great concern for the well being of Mr. Arafat. She was adamant that the Israelis were committing some grave injustice and seemed horrified that they might kill Arafat. This confused me greatly because my friend and his mother were as Jewish as Jewish people can be. Why was she taking the side of the enemy?

But she convinced me that it would be a terrible thing if Arafat was assassinated and I remember having trouble going to sleep that night because I had joined her in her great concern.

As it turned out, either the Israelis never actually had a bead on Arafat or they decided that it would cause too much trouble to kill him. He survived and I was relieved, even though I still had no real idea why I should be relieved.

This all happened when I was twelve or thirteen years old. I would only really begin to learn about the Middle East when I took a class on the subject during my senior year in high school.

What lasted for me, however, was the idea that proud Jews could be so critical of the Israeli government and so sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. Later on, I’d hear such people pilloried for being self-hating Jews, but I knew them well enough to know that there was no self-hate involved. There were values that were steeped deeply in Jewish tradition, and those values won out over any kind of stunted tribalism.

I’ve been reading a lot about the current conflict in Gaza and I keep seeing references to the way Israel used to be viewed in this country and in most of the West. I read about how they made the desert bloom and how they championed a kind of socialist paradise that was broadly admired on the left. I was too young to be subjected to that kind of propaganda or those kind of sentiments. I had just turned four during the 1973 war. I never had to unlearn my romantic feelings for Israel.

When I first began to become aware of the conflict, I was pretty immediately subjected to a Jewish family validating the Palestinians’ grievances while they deplored the actions of the right-wing government in Israel.

If anything, I’ve moved right on the issue since then, seeing more of the Israeli’s point of view. But, given where I started, that isn’t saying much. I was basically given permission from the outset to call it as I see it without giving a crap if I am seen to be taking sides in favor of one tribe over another.

For that, I am still grateful for that fortuitous visit to my friend’s house over thirty years ago, now.

Update [2014-7-31 9:7:36 by BooMan]: As happens when a 44 year old tries to reminisce about being a twelve year old, I conflated Sadat with Arafat when I talked about the White House lawn. My apologies.

Scotland votes in an independence referendum on 18th. September.

Whilst the debate on independence is hotting up in Scotland, I have been surprised at the lack of discussion both here and in Ireland. Indeed Irish Government Ministers have been briefed to avoid commenting on the issue one way or the other. So far the major “external” interventions have been by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, saying that an independent Scotland can’t have the “British pound”, and outgoing EC President Barosso saying that Scotland can’t take continued EU membership for granted. Both have been seen as somewhat maladroit attempts to bully Scotland into remaining within the UK.

For those interested in following the debate in Scotland more closely, a good summary can be found here.  I am interested in discussing the issue primarily from an Irish perspective, but hope this diary will provoke a broader discussion here.

On the face of it, you would expect Ireland to be exhibit 1 in any discussion on the feasibility of an independent Scotland: After all Ireland and Scotland are close neighbours, share a somewhat similar Celtic cultural background and language, and are of remarkably similar size in terms of GDP, area and population. (Ireland  €162 Billion, 84,421 km², 4,6 M; Scotland €161 Billion, 78,387 km², 5.3M).

However from what I can see, Ireland has barely featured in the discussion. I suspect that the demise of the Celtic Tiger and the embarrassing bank bail-out has reduced Ireland to the rather wayward cousin no one mentions to avoid embarrassment all round.  Indeed the referendum could not have been timed better from the point of view of advocates of the Union, what with Ireland having fallen from grace, and the EU and Euro generally seen as being in something of a mess.

But if you were trying to articulate a view on Scottish independence based on the Irish experience, what would it be?
The Irish Experience of Independence.

The first thing that has to be said about the experience of Irish independence since 1922, is that it all started rather badly with a bitter civil war fought between two factions (which often divided families) over whether or not to accept the 1922 Anglo-Iish Treaty with Britain which ceded six counties in the North East of Ireland to continued British rule as a separate Northern Irish statelet. When allied to the debilitating effects of the Famine and the centuries long struggle for independence, this meant that the Irish economy was in very poor shape indeed.

Before the 1800 Act of Union Dublin had been, briefly, the second largest city in the British empire, but by 1922 it was, in many areas a slum city with a great deal of poverty and industrial and social strife which had resulted in the Dublin lock-out 1913/14. Ireland lacked the coal and steel resources which helped fire the Industrial revolution and remained a largely rural, peasant, agrarian economy divided into many small subsistence farms.  

The new Government hardly had any resources to work with, virtually no industrial base and very poor relations with their former colonial masters and chief market culminating in the Anglo-Irish Trade War 1932-38 and not helped by Ireland’s official refusal to take sides in the Second World war (because of the unresolved N. Ireland dispute with Britain).  I say “Official” refusal, because many Irish citizens did indeed volunteer to fight in WWII, and the Irish Government was, informally, as helpful as it could be to the Allied side without actually formally taking part in the war.

Things didn’t get a whole lot better in the 1950’s with the dead hand of the Roman Catholic Church and a sclerotic ruling class keeping economic development to a minimum.  It is worth noting, however, that despite some flirtations with Fascist sentiment and an anti-communist ideology, the state did, in fact take a very strong lead in economic development setting up numerous “Semi-state” semi-commercial companies to develop public transport, airports, electricity, gas and communications grids, forestry, sugar manufacturing, peat harvesting, food production, horse racing and numerous other industries. Socialism by any other name!

The 1960’s saw an end to rule by the civil war generation of leaders, an opening up to foreign direct investment to develop the economy, and the introduction of free secondary education to provide a more skilled and educated workforce. Entry into the EU in 1973 exacerbated these trends and also led to the introduction of much needed progressive employment, social, and environmental legislation. However it is something of a myth to say that subsequent Irish growth was fueled largely by EU subventions. Ireland lost almost as much in potential fisheries production as it gained in agricultural subsidies, and the chief benefits of the EU was in access to wider markets, sources of investment, and a broadening of the skill base of the workforce.

The 1980’s saw the onset of a severe recession brought on partly by much increased oil prices but also by “give-away” budgets and tax reductions which greatly increased Sovereign debt. It also marked a last stand by the Catholic Church in seeking to control the social agenda through passing constitutional amendments banning abortion and divorce. But by the late 1980’s the economy was growing rapidly again fueled mainly by FDI from companies seeking to gain access to the EU market, low corporate tax rates, and a skilled and youthful workforce.

The 2000’s saw the Celtic Tiger morph into a gigantic property and public spending bubble fueled by property related windfall taxes and largely unregulated banks pumping credit into the economy. Even without the ill-fated bank guarantee the fall from grace would have been pretty spectacular as the property bubble burst and government property transaction tax revenues plummeted.  But this more recent history of Government and regulatory failure shouldn’t let us lose sight of the very significant progress which has been made by Ireland since independence.  Perhaps the most significant achievements include:

1. The achievement of a large degree of national reconciliation after the civil war with public order maintained by an unarmed police force and democratic institutions strongly embedded in the national political culture. (The Cumann na nGaedheal Government – winners of the Civil war – lost power to Fianna Fail, the losers of the Civil war in the 1932 elections and handed over power to their sworn enemies without quibble or incident).
2. A strong infrastructure of state enterprises developing almost every sector of the Irish economy.
3. An almost unrivaled infrastructure of industrial dispute settlement (since the 1980’s)  and national wage bargaining which have led to the entrenchment of employee rights and low levels of industrial disputes.
4. State FDI attraction agencies which have succeeded in attracting virtually every emergent technical leader in the ICT and biopharma industries to set up their European Headquarters and very significant manufacturing and service industries in Ireland: (Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Paypal, SAP. Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer, Genzyme etc.)

Now we see the reemergence of growth (c. 3% GDP) despite an enormous sovereign debt load (c. 120% GDP – up from 25% in 2008) and very considerable headwinds in both the EU and global economies, much more jaundiced attitudes to the EU, and much friendlier relations with the UK following the success of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The old imperial/colony relationship has been replaced by a much more reciprocal “equality of esteem” partnership and there is no longer a visceral inclination to “diss” the Brits at every opportunity.

Implications for Scottish Independence.

So what is the significance of all this for the debate on Scottish Independence? A few general observations seem appropriate:

1. For all the difficulties in the world and the EU at the moment, Scotland would be gaining Independence in a far more propitious environment than Ireland did. There are no world wars, trade wars, or civil wars on the horizon, and no economic devastation comparable to the Irish Famine and its aftermath (1 million dead, 1 million emigrated, 20% reduction in population, no industrial base)
2. Developing the full institutions of an independent state and the expertise to manage them can be a long, difficult and painful process, but can lead to a much more self confident, informed, and engaged citizenry.
3. Scotland will have to ensure it has the institutions and expertise to develop the economy away from reliance on oil, British defense industries etc. and to fight it’s corner within an increasingly central European dominated EU.
4. Some degree of “national reconciliation” may be necessary to bind the wounds of a fractious debate and to get all strands of Scottish society pulling in the same direction. This includes a need to define the terms of an amicable and yet real separation from England.

The Scottish Debate

In reading through the list of topics which has emerged during the Scottish debate, one is stuck by how infantile some of them are; how much scaremongering there is; and how little confidence some people appear to have in the ability of Scots to perform some of the basic functions of Government. It is as if Scots have had no hand act or part in the Governmental activities of Whitehall and will have to learn to do everything from scratch.

There is a strange mindset behind such fears, especially when articulated by predominantly English media: That the Pound, Whitehall, and all the organs of British Government will be retained by England, and that if the Scot’s want independence, they had better start again from scratch. It is as if the English are conceding that it is the English who have effectively ruled the Scots over the past few centuries, and that the Scots clearly have no experience or expertise to do this for themselves.

This rather gives the lie to the current ruling ideology that the UK is run by all for the benefit of all without regard to national background, because if that had been the case the Scots would have been as proficient at Government as the English and would merely be moving the main location of their part of the operations from Whitehall to Edinburgh.

Conclusion

For all the more recent wailing and gnashing of teeth in the wake of the failure to regulate the banks, the bank bail-out, and the sense that the EU is being run primarily for Germany’s benefit, very few Irish people regret independence or would want to go back to some kind of rule from Westminster. If anything, there is the stirrings of a debate about ceding less power to Brussels and reinforcing national independence.  Even that open sore that has been N. Ireland in the minds of many nationalists is receding into the background.

In the past, Irish nationalists might have looked on with glee as the UK tore itself apart and risked losing Scotland, and who knows, perhaps N. Ireland some time after that.  A weakened England/Britain would have been seen as a good thing, and an independent Scotland a kindred state. But now, insofar as there has been any engagement with the issue at all, there is a real sense that it is up to Scots to come come to their own decision and that we will be supportive whatever way they choose to go. Ireland and the UK are close allies within the EU and there is no point in stirring up a hornets nest in Northern Ireland again.  Far more worrying, from an Irish perspective, would be a UK exit from the EU.

My own personal view is that Scotland should go for Independence, but I am far from certain they have the self-confidence, cohesiveness, and balls to make that decision. The status quo is always the safer option, and this is not a time of great visions and great leadership. It will come down to a grubby little debate about how it effects each individual personally in the short term, and a few baubles in the form of “enhanced devolution” thrown out by the British Government will probably be enough to sway the majority to play it safe.

In a peculiar way the Scottish independence debate may come to mirror the British withdrawal from the EU debate:  A lot of huffing and puffing, but in the end a grubby little fudge in Brussels providing a “Better Deal for Britain” will allow everyone to save face and carry on much as before.  Oh the horror!

The other day, I joked about the pointlessness of having Sheldon Whitehouse debate Louie Gohmert. Well, we got something almost as good: Whitehouse debating (refuting, more accurately) Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma:

I also suspect that Whitehouse stole my material.