Former UK Army Chief Calls for Ground Invasion Against ISIS

Oh my, the very same people who are internationally acclaimed for their negative descriptions of Americans don't like two way streets ! Who knew?

The majority of my family was shipped out of Scotland during an early wave of English ethnic cleansing there and as such don't consider themselves to be Brits or take offense at what someone calls Brits.

Of course, there were some in Scotland who were four square behind the English cleaning out "those" Scots so, King and country, tip a pint, eh?

After all "the only thing wrong with Scotland is it's full of bloody Scots", eh ?

If you’re referring to the Clearances, they were almost all Scot-on-Scot wickednesses. Scottish tenants evicted by Scottish landlords (often their own clan chiefs), backed by Scottish law upheld in Scottish courts by Scottish judges and juries. The dirty work on the ground carried out by Scottish factors (land agents) aided by Scottish police. The English were involved marginally, if at all - as sheep farmers who bought the newly cleared estates, or northcountry shepherds imported to run them. The myth that the English were somehow responsible for the clearances is an egregious piece of recent Nationalist revisionism.

And the Scots doing the dirty work were doing it because they wanted to become part of the English establishment. They were well rewarded, just like the Scots who went to Ireland and laid the groundwork for a famine years by throwing Irishmen off the land where they were essentially self-sufficient so that large profitable estates could be established.

Divide and conquer has long been the English way of ruling their colonies and the fact that they could get one faction to slaughter another doesn't change the fact that it was the English who set the policy and enabled the slaughter.

Nice try, but that's no different than saying that since the majority of the Army that slaughtered villages full of nothing but women and children on the US Plains was made up of Irish and other immigrants it's really immigrants who were responsible for the slaughter, not the Army policy and attitude that, "nits make lice".

Oh dear. You've obviously imbibed the myths in a big way.

Until recently it was difficult to find accessible, objective histories of the Clearances because so much writing on the subject was polemical. But for a recent, scholarly but highly readable account, which among other things explains the economic background which made Highland depopulation (although not the methods) inevitable, I'd recommend Eric Richards' book simply titled 'The Highland Clearances', published by Birlinn. I somehow doubt you'll take up that suggestion, which would be a pity.

(No, Scotland has never been an 'English Colony' and no, there never was a 'policy' for the Clearances devised by anybody, let alone the English, who were barely aware they were happening until they were well under way - at which point it was English public opinion, as well as enlightened Scots public opinion, which drove the reaction eventually leading to the Napier Commission and the 1886 Crofting Act. The only charge that can be laid at the door of the English is that the new, highly profitable sheep farming techniques, which the Highland landlords sought to import as a means to avoid rapidly encroaching insolvency, originated in England).

Scotland has never been part of England, we joined the UK in 1707 BECAUSE England could never conquer us.

As to Ireland, whilst it was England that from the 12thc has conquered Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster happened under a Scottish king of all Britain (James VI of Scotland/James I of England).

James encouraged Scottish settlement because English and Welsh people wouldn’t settle in Ireland. And do you know why many Lowland Scots moved?. Because of FAMINES in early 17th C Scotland, esp in the Lowlands. You didn’t think only Ireland got famines, did you?. Scotland and Ireland have had as many famines in their history as Ireland. England in fact more!.

James wanted the hard working Scots as buffers between the Catholic Irish and the small group of English settlers. That’s why NI today is so Scottish/Ulster Scottish, as opposed to English.

You obviously know some Scots/Irish/British history, but its a bit wonky, and like many non-Scots, its too mired in myth and heresay.

Some more points:

1—Remember the native Irish were nothing of the sort. They themselves are descendants of the Gael invaders who invaded Ireland and subjugated the original natives, the Beaker People.

2—The famous Irish famine: you DO know that PROTESTANTS died in the famine, not just the Catholic Irish. The Catholic Irish-American, helped by film and TV, has grossly distorted the famine. BUT the famine hit EVERY county in the island, and many Protestants died. Some figures have it at 100000, some even as high as 300000!. Protestant counties like Ulster were badly hit.

A fact which is another mail in the myth that the famine was deliberate and anti-Catholic. Protestants suffered and died as well, and many (inc my own paternal great-great grandfather and his family) moved back to Scotland or to England and Wales, or the US/Canada/Australia/NZ/SA, just as the Catholic Irish did.

Some old notes on Ireland I have that may be of interest:

a-—’Historian Brendan O’ Buachalla has stated that in the 17th and 18th centuries,there was extensive intermingling and intermarriage between the new Scots settlers and the ‘native’ Irish,so that by the 19th century,there existed in Ulster several population groups,apart from many individuals scattered here,partly of Irish descent,partly of Scottish descent and Irish in language and belonged to one of the Protestant faiths’

Ian Adamson ‘The Identity of Ulster’ (1982) page 15

b—’The fact that many native Irish became Protestants is well illustrated for example by the Hearth Money Rolls for the Presbyterian parishes of Stranorlar and Leck in Donegal for the year 1665,as well as the by the presence of old Cruthinic names such as Rooney,Lowry,MacCartan and MacGuinness in the records of the Episcopalian Diocese of Dromore in South and West Down.Representatives of other well-known Gaelic families abound

Murphys,Maguires,Kellys,Lennons,Reillys,Doghertys and many others are quite numerous.Historian Brendan Adamas has shown that quote “a large part of the native Irish became absorbed in areas such as the North Down into the various Protestant faiths” ‘

Adamson The Ulster People(1991) page 60

c—’Neither must it be assumed that all the Scottish emigrants to Ulster in the Plantation were Protestant.For some were Scottish and English Catholics.Thus a letter from the Bishop of Derry to the Lord Earl of Abercorn in 1692 says that “Sir George Hamilton since he got part of the Popery there,has brought over priests and Jesuits from Scotland”.Historian A Perceval-Maxwell has shown that within just a generation one of the most sucessful parts of the ‘Protestant’ Plantation was in fact led by Roman Catholics’

Adamson(1991)—page 60

‘There was much intermarriage,with or without the benefit of the clergy than convential history makes allowance for. Many planters became Catholic and many natives became Protestant.

‘It is a gross and emotional oversimplification to see the Ulster Plantation in terms of ruthless Protestants seizing land and chasing the Catholics into the bogs and the hills.

In fact,history and recent archaeology shows us that in fact a very substantial proportion of the original population was not disturbed at all’

ATQ Stewart: ‘The Narrow Ground-Studies of Ulster History’(1986)

(the late ATQ Stewart was regarded as THE finest Northern Irish historian of modern times, hailed and respected by both sides as a fair and honest historian)

Concur. As far as our mess goes, we are trying. Our enemies of the Republic and freedom are strong: the Mainstream Media is 99% socialist/Marxist, the Donkey Party is Marxist, the RINO Party is socialist, and then there's those of us who believe in the Constitution. I suspect that the MSM in the UK is much like ours and is in league with the enemy trying to destroy you. I've always wondered about the MSM suicide pact with the enemy — don't they know they'll be among the first ones shot if the bad guys take over? I guess DENIAL isn't a river in Egypt

Well said, MasterGunner, but I have to say the press in the UK sometimes seems more free than the press in the USA, especially on subjects involving us.

We often see stories posted here on FR from British outlets that don't appear in the DNC media of the United States.

You've nailed the mind numbed robotic lockstep of the American Media. They are like programmed zombies that only can think and respond in one certain, predictable way. They simply cannot tell the truth. They cannot just present the facts without their peculiar spin attached or, worse, they spike any truth about the story. Worse, they simply refuse to cover a story because it hurts their agenda or political friends.

At least an American that wants to be informed has the Canadian, Australian, and British Media. They have many of the same faults as their American cousins, but a glimmer of fair and original thought shines through on occasion.

The American Media idiots will slam Fox News and Talk Radio because they have become the alternative media to the brainwashed opinions of the MSM. Fox News isn't as conservative as it is painted by the rest of the MSM. What Fox News does is to offer a relief from the nonstop propaganda of the MSM: ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/LAT/NYT/WaPo/Boston Globe/Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The conservative Talk Radio hosts thrive precisely because they are NOT liberal spin machines. Liberal Talk Radio programs, like Air America, have gone broke and aren't on the air because no one listened. In the television Media, both CNN and MSNBC are in a accelerating death spiral to bankruptcy. Which one will win? It's too close to call. One last thing about the penetration of the "fair and balanced” Fox News into the American Media market — Fox News is only carried on cable TV or on satellite hookup. Even with this small market share, they positively trounce the usual band of suspects on TV news.

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