What's Up with Scotland?

Britain just went through a bout of elections are various levels of government, including a referendum on proportional representation that was thoroughly smashed at the ballot box.  More interesting to the broader shape of the country's political makeup is the results of the elections for the Scottish Parliament which have left Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party with a majority.  A mandate they believe to hold a referendum on whether Scotland should separate from the United Kingdom.

I can't help but think that this divide in the makeup of the United Kingdom isn't at its core the result of the fundamental shifts in the British economy since Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s and the drastic effect it had on Scotland.  Deindustrialization and financialization destroyed the Scottish economy as it was and the traditional party of the working class, Labour, shifted towards the centre and accepted the fundamental tenants of Thatcher's reforms.  Without a party willing to go to bat for the region economically, Scotland began to drift towards acceptance of the SNP.  After this election Scottish Labour is a complete mess and Salmond has the opportunity to demand the devolving of extra fiscal powers to the Scottish Parliament, in addition to pushing for a referendum on independence.

A significant problem for English proponents of the United Kingdom, though, beyond all of the economic factors at play, of which there are many, is the apparent incapability to articulate a modern vision of British union.  Englishmen can't merely expect that arguments that Scotland can't 'go it alone' are somehow going to convince Scots, especially given how the Cameron governments spending cuts are likely to hit Scotland hard, working right into the SNP's arguments.  Few of the papers in the United Kingdom have even bothered to wonder about the broader issue of British identity and how the articulation of Scottish identity, amongst others, fits or doesn't fit into it.  This seems particularly jarring considering how significant the discussion of these issues have been in Canada.  Even the question raised by The Guardian as to whether it was a mistake to grant devolution to Scotland in the first seems ridiculously short-sighted.  Scottish devolution was originally widely advocated for by Scots since the late nineteenth century and ending Holyrood isn't about to fix any fundamental fault lines in British union.

Osama Bin Laden Finally Dead

Via The Guardian.  It seems that finally Osama Bin Laden has been killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  It's been a long time in coming, and makes a particularly good coda for a ugly era of global history.  Since September 11th, 2001 we've seen a wide expansion of American military adventurism, arguably not even related specifically to the bombing of the Twin Towers some would say.  Potentially hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of the fallout from 9/11 in addition to the destabilization of states around the world, the erosion of civil liberties in the west as well as a significant expansion of the military-industrial complex in the west.

Despite these political developments, Americans as well as others around the world should feel contented at Bin Laden's demise.  Not necessarily at his death, but at the diminishing of his influence in the Muslim world as the Arab Awakening has created new circumstances in which Muslims can successfully resist authoritarianism in the Middle East.  No longer does it seem as if the adoption of Al-Qaeda's example is the most logical course to dismantle the military dictatorships, as revolutionary overthrow of the regimes through popularly-directed action from below has accomplished far more than Islamist-inspired bombing campaigns ever could.  Not only therefore does Bin Laden's death echo the shrinking of Al-Qaeda's influence in Middle East affairs, but provides in retrospect the clearest example of the fundamental shift in the Arab World to a new mechanism in which to public manifest their discontent and overthrow the military dictatorship.  Bin Laden died hidden and removed from the world in a compound in north-eastern Pakistan, while in the meantime Arabs around the Middle East and northern Africa have attempted and in cases succeeded in public programs of popular resistance and mobilization.

Arabs and Muslims in general shunned away from Bin Laden's example and succeeded where he and his cohorts failed miserably.  The regimes that they both loathed and sought to see removed are increasingly being laid low and threatened far more than Al-Qaeda-style terrorism ever could accomplish.  The trends before the Arab Spring indicated that the influence of Islamist terrorism was in decline.  Afterwards it most certainly is dead and buried, as the media indicates Osama Bin Laden is as well.  It is this fundamental shift in the Arab World that Americans, as well as all people around the world, should rejoice in.