For What It's Worth

by Les Bertrand

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This site was launched with the aim of adding another pro-independence voice to the Scottish debate online.

Part of the reason we called ourselves 'Off-Topic' is because we wanted a permanent reminder (for ourselves as much as anyone else) that the independence of our country is about engaging with the wider world, not withdrawing from it as many unionists would claim.

We do not exist in a vacuum and our future is bound to that of many others, not least of all our English neighbours. But we should not have to spend our every waking minute defending ourselves against charges of bigotry, 'blood and soil' nativism, or any of the other tireseome pejoratives so predictably deployed by ever-more desperate agents of the British State.

Scotland will become independent again. It's just a matter of how much longer we have to wait. And we are convinced, now more than ever previously, that the democratic route has been exhausted.

Right now, in Rafah, Gaza, more than a million Palestinians are waiting to be slaughtered. Some may survive but that won't be any thanks to the nations of the west who have given the green light to increasing barbarism over the past four months just as they've facilitated the oppression of the same people for the past 75 years.

No-one cares what we think, about Gaza, Scottish independence or anything else, but we're going to say this anyway in the knowledge that it will be forever on the record. It may be used in evidence against us, but so be it.

The British State, at the behest of the United States, has made us all complicit in one of the most heinous war crimes ever committed. The damage done is beyond the imagination and can never be repaired.

There's not a thing we can do about it apart from attend rallies, use social media to share the latest information, and speak to those around us. We can be witnesses, and we can promise to remember.

What we can also do is send a message, loud and clear, to the British Establishment.

We will no longer legitimise this terrorist state by perpetuating the myth that it is a 'democracy'. Because it is not. Any state which acts in such blatant opposition to popular will has forfeited the right to claim that description. A democracy functioning without the voice of the people? That's an unsustainable contradiction by any measure.

Not another vote should be cast, by any citizen, in any election at whatever level. A complete boycott. Peaceful civil disobedience. Silent protests. Occupations. Whatever it takes to get the message across. But not one 'X' on one piece of paper.

It's already too late for the 100,000+ Palestinians who have been killed, injured or remain missing, forever buried beneath their own homes. And in the four months of hell they've endured, neither the UK PM or opposition leader has been able to utter the word 'ceasefire'.

Questions of justice and reparations will have to wait for now, but if there's nothing else we can do, we can bring about permanent change to the system which made us all complicit.

The whole issue of 'abstentionism' has now moved well beyond its usefulness as a tactic for securing independence - it is now a moral duty for any citizen who disavows what is being done in our name.