FROM NOON WEDNESDAY.
Through A Scottish Prism midweek specials are back. With summer now officially over and autumn with us, the parliaments at Holyrood and Westminster have returned to business as usual. Therefore, we too returned with our Wednesday offering.
While the Sunday TASP reviews the political events of the week, our midweek show chooses the topics that we feel are relevant to Scotland now and in the future. This midweek we look at the rapidly changing world around us that one day soon we hope to be joining as an independent nation.
As independence supporters we are only too aware that our mainstream media and broadcasters do not serve us well. They are loyal to our imperial colonisers. Everything they write from front page to back page is crafted in such a way as to downplay Scotland and big up Mother England. Everything we have or do is deemed to be inferior to the England version. That applies equally to politics as it does to our law, our church, our language, our rugby or football team. To confirm this just watch the coverage of the Rugby World Cup in the coming days.
They don’t achieve this by outright lying, although they also do that many times every day. It is by omission and distortion of facts that they are at their worst. However, cynical as I am, I am almost out of words to describe the reporting of global events by our media. The conflict in Ukraine and the recent coups in Africa have taken these western deceptions to a new level of dishonesty.
From the outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the present day, the omissions and distortions in the reporting are on a scale I have never seen in my three score and ten!
As someone that has been anti-war their entire life, it has pained me to watch as the warmongers and profiteers (One in the same in many cases!) have managed to create a false narrative around the western involvement to prolong the needless slaughter and profit taking in Eastern Europe.
Just as in all matters independence, Prism will always try to bring you the truth and reality when we produce a programme on any topic, internal or external of Scotland. Ask yourself this, why is it that you are sceptical about everything these outlets write or broadcast about Scotland and independence that makes you want to believe them when they report on global matters?
Just as London and its media want to create a narrative that allows them to colonise and profit from Scotland so it is for all global neoliberal governments throughout the world to do likewise to other less powerful nations. Until now how many of you had even known about Niger or Gabon? How many knew of the vast mineral wealth that both these nations held that benefitted France more than it did the locals? How often do you hear any good news stories regarding the African Continent?
The collective west want us all to believe that all of Africa is a basket case that only survives because of the largesse of the generous white European and American nations. Sound familiar? The reality with Africa is similar to ourselves in Scotland. How often do you hear or read Scotland good stories? How many times do you read or hear these outlets telling you how much wealth we have in our seas or land? That was rhetorical of course, at all times it has to be the Trainspotting narrative, Scotland is shite! The last thing our imperial masters want is us gaining any confidence in ourselves or our nation. Then we might just decide that we do not need those broad shoulders of the union to look after our vast riches!
So it is in the rest of the world. Our media would have you believe that the world, just like the UK is divided into two camps, the good guys and the bad guys. Always the recipients of the wealth from the natural resources and wealth are the good guys. The people or nations that are being colonised and abused are the bad guys. The worst guys of all we are told are those nation states that refuse to allow western capitalists to steal their resources!
This is why Colonel Gadaffi is dead and your entire life you have been told the Palestinians are the bad guys and the Israelis are the good guys. How dare those Palestinians want to have their own land and resources! Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria all bad guys because the American and European spivs cannot own and control the natural resources of these lands.
Outwith Africa no other landmass has so many natural resources and minerals as Russia. All our lives we have been told to hate and fear the Russians. ‘Reds under the bed,’ ‘Putin is Hitler reincarnate.’ He is evil and if we do not kill him and regime change he will invade the rest of the world. Russians, like Muslims and socialists everywhere are the most evil violent wicked people on the earth we are told daily in our doses of propaganda.
Therefore, when Russia entered the Donbass to end the genocide of ethnic Russian Ukrainians in the east, the western media went into Russia bad mode. This time on steroids! This time though it has not even been subtle. They not only omit vital facts for you. The lying regarding the war and Russia is of a scale that surprises even cynical me!
I, as I am bored of saying am a peacenik. I have opposed wars all my life. My father who joined the RAF on the day the second World War was declared I thank for that. He served with distinction in what I believe to have been one of the very few justifiable conflicts. He was though determined that his sons would never see the horrors of war as he had done. He instilled in myself and my brother an anti-war mentality.
The day the Russian tanks crossed into Donbass I was pleading for an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. This, of course, allowed the uneducated and warmongers to immediately label me a pro Putinist. Calling for an end to violence and standing in the way of western profiteers does not endear you to those that have been taken in by the lies and omissions.
This week we bring you the facts behind the changing world. The African nations that are throwing off the last chains of colonialism. Their imperial masters may have returned to Europe however their corporations remained to steal the resources by other means.
We bring you the origins of the Ukraine conflict and the up to date state of that war. Some will not like to hear truth being told, it does not play into the western media worldview. When it comes to Russia and China western cognitive dissonance is at its highest level.
We explain BRICS and how it is likely to affect an independent Scotland. A New World is happening before our very eyes. You are all living through tomorrow’s history lesson and our mainstream media is denying you the truth and reality of the events.
We try in our very limited fashion to bring you some of the truths you are not being told. It is as always up to you to make up your own minds.
In the programme I mention this article I wrote long before the war began.
Superb programme, Roddy.
Lloyd and Finbar are very knowledgeable and put their points across clearly, concisely and where appropriate with a degree of hunour.
Excellent conversation , gentlemen . Would that our politicians would see with such clarity as yourselves . They all appear to be stumbling around in the Fog of War ; more accurately , the fog of relentless , truth-warping propaganda .
What a fantastic show Roddy, informing and terrifying, Finbar is such a great speaker on the subject of European arrogance. There’s also much talk of Turkey being invited into BRICS. If this is confirmed, it will set the cat amongst the pigeons, the shit will hit the fan explosively!
Delighted to hear you enjoyed it Mark. Hopefully future guests and shows we have planned will also meet with your approval.
what a brilliant show – it’s great to get Finbar & Lloyd’s perspective on international issues far and wide, eye-opening in lots of ways, nothing like this on MSM – wonder why ?
Part of the Prism. Ission Geoff is to bring the stories the media don’t want us to know. Next week I have an African guest who will bring us good news stories from the Continent. All the western media ever report from Africa is coups,famines and wars. Like Scotland they do not want African nations getting self confidence and find that the volunteers and their companies are excess to requirements!
I’m watching this Prism on Thursday afternoon on the shore of Loch Long in Lochalsh, on a beautiful day – geopolitics in the sunshine. The programme was just interrupted by four F18 multi role combat aircraft flying past at about 300 feet doing terrain-following training. Just to reinforce the points being made.
Certainly will be interesting for TASP to host international guests to contribute to discussions.
The world order is changing. The colonial hegemony of the West is in decline.
Nations, once colonies of the West, colonies of Great Britain even, are making huge technological strides in their economies. The once Grande Brittania is now a rump sliding down the world performance stats. Big on belligerence, big on how it has a mighty military, but in truth a busted flush. Look around you, creaking infrastructure, non existent manufacturing capability, a trade deficit, trillions of debt, a struggling NHS, the sign of decay and declining living standards are everywhere in a country that wages war after war after war, with its participation in the Ukraine proxy war no exception.
But consider the following statement just made by the Indian Prime Minister Sri Modi.
” The international order is very different now, especially after the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the geopolitical rift between the Western nations and China,” Singh continued. “India has a pivotal role to play in steering this new world order. As a peaceful large democracy with constitutional values, built since independence, and a large, growing economy, India commands immense respect globally.”
The words of the PM of a once British colony now landing space craft on the Moon and like China developing at a fantastic rate.
The days of colonies and gun boat diplomacy are ending. Britain and the US hegemony is sliding. Yes they may have military muscle but that in truth delivers nothing as we bleed and strangle our economies to fund a proxy war that we certainly don’t appear to be winning – economically or militarily.
Be interesting therefore Roddy to have international guests, many of whom know all about colonialism.
Thank you for your insight Willie. RASP will be doing just that, this coming midweek we will have a politicsl journalist from Nigeria joining us to share his knowledge of the changing Dark Continent.
I consider myself “reasonably” aware about the lead up to this situation in Ukraine, but I also think there is an equally unspoken tragedy and missed opportunity, that instead of three decades alienating and baiting the Russians, AFTER the collapse on Communism, we might instead have seen a profound reconciliation and normalisation of relations between Western Europe and Russia. What an opportunity missed.
Russia is NOT the natural enemy of Europe. In fact, we have Russia to THANK for having the Europe we do; it saved Europe from the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire, the Napoleonic Empire, and the Nazi Third Reich. And good Lord, didn’t they pay a price in terms of lost Russian souls?
Granted, ok, Communism and the decades of Cold War which followed WW2 were a dark period, but to put it in crude terms, in the decades since WW2, how can we reconcile the normalisation of relations with the Axis Nations, responsible for truly inhuman acts of unspeakable brutality, yet somehow, there is no similar hunger for reconciliation with our friends in Russia? Our ALLIES through two world wars!
Let me be clear, I am delighted we have moved on from WW2 attitudes and count Germany as our firm friend, and indeed I see the EEC / EU’s management of peace and reconciliation
as a high point in European history. The point I make is that we should have seen a similar reconciliation with Russia, but instead, we have allowed the USA’s failure to move on from it’s own Cold War mentality to permeate and indeed dominate Western Europe’s thinking.
I believe the US, no doubt in collusion with London, is profoundly jealous and mistrusting of a united European “super-Continent”.
I frequently wonder too, to what extent the UK’s apparent antithesis towards Russia, (and France), also has its roots in the popular revolutions which removed, and indeed decapitated, their ruling elites. It would seem the “British” Ruling Elite is determined that these “sins” must never be forgiven. Perhaps that seems detached from modern reality, but don’t forget, that very fear put British tanks on Glasgow streets just after WW1.
I repeat myself. Russia is not the natural enemy of Europe, nor is Russia the natural enemy of Scotland. Say it loud and with confidence. They are our friends.
We all know that John Paul Jones, the man from Kirkcudbrightshire widely perceived as the father of the American Navy, also had his fellow compatriot, Samuel Greig from Fife who is often referred to as the father of the Russian Navy.
I don’t know about you, but I am mightily sick and tired of this damned United Kingdom which time and time again, dictates who Scotland can and cannot be friends with. Traditionally Scotland has no enemies… bar one.
Let Scotland dictate where and when Scottish troops are deployed in the world, and equally, let us live within our means militarily, not strut the world state as some obnoxious, self appointed global policeman who has squandered any moral authority they “might” have been entitled to,… once.
Far better that Scots and Russians apply themselves to our own perennial battle for supremacy, persuading the entire world about the clear and obvious superiority of whisky over vodka.
Excellent comment Breeks
Gorbachev has a lot to answer for. Reviled in Russia. A dubious Ukranian tractor driver with bushy eyebrows got replaced with a dubious Ukranian tractor driver with a blotch on his head. Unfortunately the latter was an evangelising hard-core communist who attempted to introdude communism in a socialist country, with zeal. Hence cities have ‘perestroika belts’ of crapness from when workers were paid with copper piping etc. rather than money.
Putin likes invading countries: Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, Ukraine again, and others that don’t even get in the news, along with a controlling interest in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgystan and so forth. I’m not sure if he really exists – he could be an actor with his lines fed to him by a cabal. I suppose that modern Russia is kind of summed-up by the miracle of the Patriach of the Russian Orthodox Church’s wrist watch.
Well you have drunk of the Western Russophobia cool aid. You know western governments and elites love glaikit gowks like you, how they laugh at the likes of you as they count their ill gotten gains. I believe the term they use for you is useful jdiot!
I think the word you were looking for is a baiting troll Roddy.
Mr E’s comments have all the hallmarks of a pantomime Alf Garnet so characteristic of many of the lumpen intelligentsia south of the border. I doubt he actually knows where any of the countries he mentions actually are.