Part one is HERE
Nation:
A large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a
particular region. A cultural and/or ethnic identity.
State:
An area or territory considered as an organized political community under one government.
A geopolitical Identity. The Ukraine for example
Nation State:
A state formed of nations. The United Kingdom for example or any historic Empire made up
of multiple
nations.
By International law, by the definition of self determination from the UN and by the carefully crafted
vagueness loved by Lawyers everywhere it is not possible to legally try to separate yourself from a
state you do not wish to be a part of except by violence or threat or violence.
The UN and existing governments have worked long and hard to keep the world as it was when the
UN was founded.
The right of self determination is all too often inconvenient or an open threat to those in power and
the more divided the State is the more of a threat it represents.
Which is why for an ethnic or cultural region to try to separate itself from a state it does not wish to
be part of is illegal. Only with the permission of the National or State government is it possible to gain
self determination, democracy at a local level has no part of the process. The will of the people involved
is irrelevant, only the state can act, only the government can do anything.
Governments for the most part exist to keep themselves in power. An individual, a political party or a
religious or cultural group seeking to keep control.
Much of what a government does is focused on keeping the reins of power, be it by force in the more
totalitarian regimes or by concentrated support and wealth in areas that will guarantee votes in the
more liberal democracies.
So when a State is faced with regions or peoples within its borders calling for independence the result
is all too often the same. An iron shod boot or propaganda through the media.
Very few governments are prepared to accept a loss of power and territory that comes with part of a
country becoming independent.
Real or not the loss of power and status is unacceptable to the ruling classes and they act to prevent it.
Sometimes by asking what problems the would be independents have and looking to solve them to keep
them happy and part of the country. Sometimes by stepping in and trying to block the independence
movement by whatever methods are acceptable and often a few that are on the line between legal and
criminal.
The loss of the Scottish MPs from Parliament would make the Tories almost permanently the majority in
the house and yet they oppose Scottish independence because they would lose power, influence and
wealth.
No one is seriously talking about how to allocate shared assets, Faslane cannot be lost to the UK and yet
neither side are talking about what would happen to this great naval facility in the event the vote is Yes.
There are no plans being set out. In a way no one seems to be taking the situation seriously enough to
prepare for a yes vote. Odd that.
We find ourselves in the post industrial age or more relevantly the information age. Today anyone with
the technology can film events and broadcast them online and countless millions of people around the
world who find themselves trapped within States or countries not of their choosing can see that
there are others in the same situation.
Today anyone with a smart phone, and there are an estimated one and a half billion out there, can act
as a broadcast journalist, a historian, the leader or member of a widespread group that share views or
ideals or in fact any cooperative and communicative venture that in the past required vast resources.
Those rumours that the government is cracking down again or denying rights to one group or another,
here is the film. All those friends and relatives that you have not been able to meet or talk to for decades
because someone created a border between you, here they are to see, talk to and make plans with.
There is a reason why the more totalitarian regimes are cracking down on social media and trying to
jam smart phones as soon as they start to crush dissent and attempts at democracy or self determination.
The power of communication is hard to quantify but it can bring down governments and States and
create new Nations. That makes it feared and rightly so by the leaders of the worlds States.
A single person or a small group of people have very little power on a national scale. They are easy to
ignore or repress and there is little that they can do to change their situation.
But when they can communicate with each other, when they find that they are not just a few people
but thousands of people, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, and then they become able to
make changes and work together.
Millions of people live their lives as part of a global community, doing business with the world, having
friends and contacts around the world, buying and selling across the world. Such people growing up as
part of the global community more and more come to ask themselves why they are being trapped within
lines drawn on a map when they live their lives across the whole world. Such questions threaten the very
existence of governments who cling so tightly to those lines on a map without understanding that nations
and governments can be part of the world and still be nations
These are the people and the questions that strike fear into the hearts of governments everywhere.
When small Nations try to separate themselves from larger states they often find themselves fighting
opposition not just from the government trying to keep them under its power, but also from international
organisations, companies and other Nations or States.
Most of the time this is for greed or for political self interest on the part of the external organisation.
States and Nations that contain their own restive populations can hardly be seen to be supporting
breakaway groups in other countries in case their own breakaway groups get ideas. Multinational
corporations fearing and condemning the separation of a new small nation from the grip of a larger State
face the loss of cosy and often exploitive trade agreements made by friends in the State government.
Indeed many groups want freedom and independence to escape economic exploitation at the hands of
their State Government or its allied Corporations.
The web of trade agreements and deals in place across the world is mind bogglingly complex and completely unnecessary. It exists to maximise profits of the corporations and countries that take advantage of rules
designed to prevent some from competing while allowing others to exploit situations and use money to
enslave populations.
New nations could add to the complexity or they could create the impetus to tear down the whole mess
and create a new global set of rules governing trade, simple and fair to all.
Simple fair trade rules, hardly something the profit minded corporations of the world are interested in.
We see much of this in the current campaign for Scottish independence. The UK Government is lining up to
say how bad it will be, to highlight all the negative points and to emphasise how it will be a complete
disaster and not a single one of them seems to be attempting to work out a solution.
A number of corporations that have been happy up till now to operate in dozens of countries around the
world are saying they could not do business in an independent Scotland. Even the SNP themselves are
conspiring against a democratic self determination by doing a fairly inept job of actually planning for
independence.
It’s not as if the UK government will close the border roads and put up passport offices, or are they that petty.
Will there be a wall, wire fences and mine fields?
Will Scottish citizens have their UK passports taken from them and be made to walk through the “Other” gate
at airports.
The EU is just as bad. In what way does a Scottish Parliament suddenly cease to be head of a nation that does
business in Europe if the vote is in favour of independence? Why do all of the free trade agreements that are
already in force and understood cease to apply?
Is Scotland going to somehow fall off the European continent?
What is the difference between Scotland as it is now and one that is a sovereign nation bound by treaties of
mutual self interest to the United Kingdom?
Aside from the Bureaucracy there is none but it sets a terrible example to every other region of Europe that w
ants independence and this is the problem as far as the Eurocrats and governments see it.
But for all this Scotland with its own Parliament is more independent now than England is, there are no
regional assemblies in England, we have no English Parliament to match those in Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland, we have no parliament representing London which by wealth and population is larger than Scotland and
Wales together. What we have is the British Parliament.
Ash Kashaul durbatulûk.
One Parliament to rule them all.
Self determination as enshrined by international law has nothing to do with self, it is the determination of a
nation or state to determine its form of government. It should more correctly be called State Determination.
True freedom to determine your own status is a right denied to all too many, even here in the UK had the
Government decided it did not want to allow Scotland to hold that vote then the SNP would be in violation of
the same international law that the Crimea is being blamed for violating.
The states and Nations of the world are fighting to keep themselves in power, the people of the world are
struggling to find their voices and to claim for themselves the right to determine who they are.
Modern technology brings communication which brings cooperation.
The more we talk and claim our voices the stronger democracy becomes.
Democracy does not mean an end to nations, people who want to be in a nation should be free to do so.
What this means is an end to the tyranny of lines drawn on maps, the gentle or harsh tyrrany of governments
claiming that because you live on one side or another of those simple little lines drawn on paper that they control
you.
Nations are no more than the voices of a people speaking together. States are a construction forced on people
who were all to often given no choice.
We even need nations as protection from the great corporations that so ruthlessly exploit peoples and regions
for their own profit until such time as the world community itself acts to crush the greedy multi nationals.
But they should be nations we chose to be a part of, nations of the wiling not the trapped.
Some words of wisdom to end with
“Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and
intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's
happiness”.
Charlie Chaplin the Great Dictator.