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"What gave me, and many on the left, the biggest problem with Scottish independence, was the idea that we were running out on our English comrades, leaving them to the mercy of a built-in Tory power block. " Reading as a Canadian, this hits home. Losing the Quebec / sovereignist left in the bigger Canadian picture would be a disaster, and a Quebec separation would add the nightmare of a physically-split have-not Maritimes, ripe for nothing so much as US absorption (although some radical leftists out there dream of independence as well, conservatives seem to have the upper hand even in harnessing the independence spirit). The idea of an independent Quebec also raises the hackles of the conservative west which rattles its oil-powered sabres about creating an independent conservative nation in response. Moreover, the Quebec independence movement was always stuck in a quandary between recognizing their own colonization by the English (-Canadians and -Americans), without acknowledging their own identity as a colonizing force as well. The question of Aboriginal secession from a separate Quebec is enough to get tempers flaring in any discussion of Quebec sovereignty. I think Scotland lacks this complexity. Now Quebec's left has moved in the opposite direction from Scotland's, especially after the racist "reasonable accommodation" debate revealed that the rural elements of the Parti Quebecois were actually extremely Xenophobic. With their "Charter of Values" they chased a muslim MLA out of their caucus and alienated the multicultural elements in their party, small as they were. Quebec has now moved to a Liberal government provincially and abandoned the Bloc Quebecois for the (sort-of-like-Labour) NDP federally, which, as I said, is the opposite of what's happened in Scotland. The left is actually having some great success fighting tuition raises, etc, so it's not like the fight's gone out of them. -- * WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD? http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison * FLICK's WEBSITE: http://www.flickharrison.com Zero for Conduct ^| Grab this Headline Animator # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org