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The Scottish elections


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2 hours ago, RANGERRAB said:

No doubt the Tesco checkout lady was a fully paid lying NAT

More likely one of their bleating sheep.

 

What unnerves me is the substantial number of over 70s, who should know better, saying that Nicola’s been looking after them in the covid crisis. Dear God. They’re lucky they weren’t in care homes.

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6 hours ago, Uilleam said:

"Iran is peddling disinformation in an attempt to swing the Scottish parliamentary elections in favour of pro-independence parties to destabilise the UK, a report has warned."

 

The mullahs will have to go some to outdo the Mullah of the Nation hersel', in the disinformation stakes. 

 

Personally, I have always worried more about the SNP putting the Kool-Aid in Irn Bru bottles.

It looks like this has actually happened: 

 

A think tank has said that Iran is engaging in “Russian-style disinformation campaigns” to destabilise the UK

A think tank has said that Iran is engaging in “Russian-style disinformation campaigns” to destabilise the UK

 

 

Iran ‘peddling disinformation’ to influence Scottish election

Matt Dathan, Home Affairs Editor

Monday May 03 2021, 12.01am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/iran-peddling-disinformation-to-influence-scottish-election-dlfk27npc

 

Iran is peddling disinformation in an attempt to swing the Scottish parliamentary elections in favour of pro-independence parties to destabilise the UK, a report has warned.

Cyber specialists acting on behalf of the Iranian regime are targeting voters on Facebook and Twitter by creating fake accounts, groups and pages, according to a study by the Henry Jackson Society think tank.

They pose as locals sympathetic to Scottish independence, and encourage real users to share pro-separatist material, graphics, memes and cartoons with their contacts online.

Fake websites with domain names chosen to influence campaigns have also been set up to trick internet users. This is part of a wider Iranian disinformation campaign, similar to efforts by Russia, and designed to sow chaos and division to weaken their adversaries, the society said.

 

Its report concluded that the growing presence of activity encouraging Scottish separatism was an attempt by the Iranian regime to “attack the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom”. The report concludes: “Iran has shown itself to be a country which engages in Russian-style disinformation campaigns, repeatedly establishing fake websites and internet accounts in an effort to disrupt the political systems of liberal democracies. Judged within this context, Iran is almost certainly looking to disrupt our current elections, most likely those under way for the Scottish assembly.”

 

Facebook and Twitter are taking an increasingly proactive role in identifying and banning “co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour” by various regimes. Most of the Iran-related activity is targeted at Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan. However, the report said Iranian activity had been increasingly detected in Scotland over the past year.

The findings were part of a wider investigation into Iran’s increasing attempts to interfere in foreign elections.

 

The study says the campaigns are being generated by agents acting on behalf of the Iranian regime so its leaders can deny responsibility and avoid repercussions. The aim is to “cause harm to adversaries with clear military superiority, and at the same time, maintain a margin of denial that will prevent international censure or even sanctions and a counterattack”, it said.

Dr Paul Stott, the report’s author, said Iran could no longer be considered a “third tier” country in terms of cyber capabilities. The study said: “Iran has become increasingly sophisticated in both the scope and choice of its target.”

In March Facebook removed hundreds of fake accounts and pages connected to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting corporation, the state-controlled media group.

Fake accounts shared and promoted the pages, groups and memes to try to generate content to go viral. In one example an image was reproduced of a post from a fake Iranian online persona mocking the Scottish Conservatives. It was one of 446 accounts closed by Facebook for violating its policies against foreign interference.

Is that a picture of the think tank? They do not look like they have a thought between them!

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9 hours ago, Uilleam said:

Here's one:

 

[Offensive image redacted]

Really no need for that!

 

Seriously, it would be great if there were some separatists here to explain this madness.

 

Anybody would think that there were no separatists in the Rangers support.

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1 minute ago, ranger_syntax said:

Really no need for that!

 

Seriously, it would be great if there were some separatists here to explain this madness.

 

Anybody would think that there were no separatists in the Rangers support.

There was a couple but they dissapeared back under their rock a while back.

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3 hours ago, Bill said:

I believe the nationalist philosophy is that any lie that promotes nationalism isn't a lie at all. Any fiction that promotes nationalism must in fact be reality.

 

You might equate this with the Roman Catholic principle of absolution, where any sin is forgivable as long as you maintain your loyalty to the cause. Just as the Catholic can sin and be forgiven, so the nationalist can lie and have all guilt absolved. It's a convenient escape from truth and accountability. It's also complete bollocks.

Where is the BBC Fact Checker when you need it? It seems only to have come out during Brexit and for Trump and has been put away, because as we know the liberal establishment would never tell lies.  

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1 hour ago, ChelseaBoy said:

Could you copy the article? 

Here it is, from The Spectator.

 

In the great debate around Scottish independence, one word is never far away: identity. ‘Who am I?’ is elevated from mere navel-gazing to expressive political allegiance. On one side are those who feel that one can be both Scottish and British without fear of contradiction, while on the other are those who feel that one crushes the other. By casting off Britishness, one’s Scottishness could flower more fully, or so it is supposed.

Even so, it is something that, even in these times of performative politics, could remain between you, your God and your woad supplier. It certainly isn’t something to which an agency of the state would take much interest. Except that, if the Nationalists prevail, then at least three governments would be most interested in the legal expression of that identity – citizenship.

Let us assume that independence day is upon us and that somehow Scotland has been able to negotiate acceding to the EU without a decade in the wilderness. The time has come to decide who gets Scottish (and therefore EU) citizenship as a matter of right. Who passes the test? 

The franchise for the independence referendum includes everyone legally resident in Scotland, regardless of nationality. It should surely be assumed that all of those people would be granted Scottish citizenship – if they weren’t, how could their votes be reasonably counted in the referendum? Such an expansive offer of citizenship would certainly fit with the SNP’s view of Scotland, even if it doesn’t chime with the view of most Scots

They say that there are no atheists in a foxhole. Well, how many nationalists are there in a pension queue?

Next, would Scottish nationals resident elsewhere in the UK (such as myself and 750,000 others) be entitled to Scottish citizenship? We are currently denied a vote on whether we want it to exist at all, but it would surely be hard to refuse it. But would it be automatically conferred or would we have to apply? What about spouses and children? And what of the many millions of British people who could claim Scottish citizenship based on recent ancestry? Even a conservative estimate would put that number at many millions. Scotland could be the first state where a majority of its citizens were not actually resident in the country, a bizarre state of affairs for a new country to find itself in.

Also, what happens after that? Would the Scottish franchise remain limited to residency, or would it be like the UK (and most other countries) and allow ex-pat voting if the person had been abroad for less than a set period of time. Might I be unable to vote in the independence referendum, but immediately be able to vote in a subsequent Scottish general election for a party that would reverse the decision? And would I then be immediately disenfranchised again in a constitutional hokey-cokey?

So far, so confusing. Now, let’s look at it from the British side. It is not clear that the rest of the UK would permit dual citizenship as a matter of right — doubt has previously been cast on the matter (to the disdain, bewilderingly, of the SNP). Ireland provides some precedent, with all Irish citizens born before 1949 automatically being British subjects (which is why Terry Wogan could be knighted), but more recent examples, such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union, would require people to choose one or the other. 

 

However, assuming that all Scots could apply for it, how many would? Based on current polling, if independence is attained just less than half of the population will have voted for the status quo. We might assume that the majority of them would take steps to remain British. But there will also be those who voted for independence who nonetheless feel that a British passport might be a rather useful thing to have, just in case. Might some people even spurn Scottish citizenship but remain as a UK ex-pat resident in Scotland?

For an example of why this matters, let’s look at a familiar issue. It is clear that pensions of Scottish citizens would be the responsibility of the Scottish Government, which might show a benefit in not being a Scottish citizen. The UK will obviously have retained sterling, one of the world’s reserve currencies, while Scotland would most likely be in the early days of a new currency for two reasons. First, with its twin fiscal and balance of payments deficits, Scotland would find sterlingisation a shortcut to national bankruptcy. Second, to join the EU necessitates having a floating currency and a central bank standing behind it. That currency would be likely to decline against sterling and also be much more volatile. 

Meanwhile, the UK will probably persist with the ridiculous ‘triple lock’ steadily increasing pensioner income, while Scotland will be undergoing sado-austerity to bring its budget deficit down. Which would you prefer: a growing pension paid in a reserve currency or a shrinking pension in a volatile, depreciating currency? And so, when you have to choose a nationality, which do you pick? They say that there are no atheists in a foxhole. Well, how many nationalists are there in a pension queue?

Of course, continuing to stump up for Scots pensioners would be enormously unpopular in the rUK. It would also be unthinkable for the new cohort of ex-pats to have voting rights. Some measly form of reduced citizenship would doubtless be conjured into being just for those poor North Britons who want a memory of how things were.

But then we have to consider matters of residency. If someone were to rent a flat in Carlisle for a month before independence day, would they get full-fat or skimmed UK citizenship? If so, investors would be well advised to build thousands of studio flats just off the northern reaches of the M6. Realistically, independence would not occur for several years after the referendum. At what point would the decisions about who was where and when become carved in stone?

Furthermore, it would be foolish to suppose that Scotland would have absolute carte blanche to set its own criteria if becoming Scottish automatically entailed EU citizenship. Currently member states do have the right, but the European Commission recently launched action against Cyprus and Malta to prevent them from granting ‘investor citizenships’. How would the EU view the granting to millions of British citizens of freedom of movement in the EU without any reciprocity? And given that Scotland would have to be signed up to Schengen, will they demand that the sheep are separated from the goats at the border with England?

Given the fundamental importance of such matters, it would be nice to think that the Scottish Government would have some clear answers or at least some clear aspirations. Unfortunately, it seems that citizenship is destined to join the currency, the border, the constitution, the EU, NATO, and every other item of consequence in the ‘too hard, wait till after the referendum’ bucket. Still, at least we know what the flag will be.

 

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