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[Jreengus]

Actually its pretty easy and effective to boycott Scotland. The only thing they really export is scotch whiskey and the USA is its primary market. Just don't buy scotch.

If its "typical American jackassery" that scottish people get targeted by an American boycott, I think thats a bit of a double standard.

If you were in Europe as an American tourist you would be treated like goddamn pariah because of the US government's decision to invade Iraq. Hotels and restaurants boycotted American tourists to protest the war from about 2003-2006 and some still do.

Yes but you're a BIG country. Scotland is just some little guy at the arse end of England.

Its the international version of people hating big companies just for being big and feeling that some little corner store is better solely because it's small.

Of course Scotland is more like an off-licence than a corner store but you get the idea.

[Sensei]

For the 9001st time...

A BIG COUNTRY IS NOT BOYCOTTING SCOTLAND.

A big country did not do most of the things various people complain about. Some people in the country did, by no means a majority, just a little vocal group. Again, AMERICA is not doing these things. Some dumbfucks in America are.

For the 9001st time, A) This jackassery is not strictly American B) America at large does not do the bullshit you hear about and C)... how is it logical to insult all of America when a few people hate all of Scotland for what a few Scottish people did?

[Jude]

Guys, if you would, for a moment, consider something. Not everyone in America is so retarded as for the condition to be terminal. I'm sure that every single country (Up until Mensa uses its physcic powers to make its own nation) has its fair share of stupid people. So, please. Shut the fuck up with America this, America that. You act like high and mighty gits because you were born where you were, but guess-the-fuck-what. We don't get to choose where we are born.

I was born in America, bro.

Also, the Iraq war is a completely different situation. I didn't support it back in 2003, but the vast majority of Americans did, and so it made total sense for people from other countries to make the assumption that, statistically speaking, any American had a pretty good chance of being the kind of bloodthirsty-bandwagon-jumping sheep that let the Bush administration pull off all the stunts it did with public approval.

Finally, I'm American. I know plenty of Americans who are not idiots. However, having lived here just about my whole life, I've seen enough examples of American xenophobia and painting whole other countries with one brush, and this is typical of that. Maybe other countries have the same thing. I haven't grown up around it though, so I haven't seen it.

[Jreengus]

 
Well I was just joking...

[Muz]

People have boycotted countries because of injustice in sports. A release of a mass murderer seems to be a better reason for it. So, yeah, go ahead, boycott stuff. Boycotts aren't terribly efficient, sometimes you hurt your own country more, but they do have more of an effect than marching around, waving posters.

I don't think anyone's yelling at Americans for being idiots, specifically. Americans are just a whole lot more xenophobic. X people died, including Y Americans. America bombs nation A, killing C terrorists and C*2 civilians, while C/10 soldiers die and it's a bad thing because the soldiers are dying. Now the people of the United States of America support a boycott that would hurt the jobs of X*1000 Scottish civilians. Yeeaaah, that's justice.

Other countries aren't as xenophobic. Unless they're sort of like of a different religion or have a different form of government. In a sense, the dislike for America is xenophobic

[Aqizzar]

Well well well...  It was only a matter of time.

Not that I'm saying that I take this sort of news at face value, but let's not be stupid.  Qaddaffi is Qaddaffi, and Britain is about the only national government as blatantly and rapaciously externally self-interested as the U.S.

[Buddybud]

Facts surrounding this situation seem to be lacking in this thread so here's a little article that gives details as to why this has occurred.... at least according to the dailymail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208432/A-2m-witness-payment-bogus-forensic-evidence-Pentagon-memo-blaming-Iran-How-Lockerbie-bomber-threatened-Scottish-justice.html#

some quotes.....

In a submission to the Court of Appeal running to thousands of words, Megrahi’s lawyers list 20 grounds of appeal which include:

    * Details of a catalogue of deliberately undisclosed evidence at the original trial.
    * Allegations of ‘tampering’ with evidence.
    * A summary of how American intelligence agencies were convinced that Iran, not Libya, was involved but that their reports were not open to the 2001 trial.

'There may well be political manoeuvres behind his release but at the heart was a decision to save the face of the Scottish judiciary - in particular the Crown Prosecution, who would have been shown to have been involved in an abuse of process by non-disclosure of witness statements.’

It took the use of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to unlock the full intelligence documents which are now highlighted in the appeal submission.

They show memos from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which suggested the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988, was in response to the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by the American warship USS Vincennes five months earlier.
In a memo dated September 24, 1989, and reproduced in the appeal submission, the DIA states: ‘The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran’s former interior minister.

So in short according to this article, the scot justice system jailed the wrong man and left him to rot even though the american inteligence agencies told them otherwise, and then they (the scotish justice system) went so far as to possibly tamper with evidence and further ignored witnesses to prove their case.

Not my personal opinion but it's one of the few articles i could find explaining why it occurred.  Hope that helps though i have to admit it's always dodgy knowing who to trust out their.

I don't think a boycott of Scotland would be quite appropriate...but i'll leave that up to you yanks 

[Nilocy]

Yeah my post was in jest earlier on and basically I don't give a rats ass about a few americans trying to squash a little country. Quite frankly I think it was the right thing to do, alot of people believe that Megrahi didn't do it and was just the scape goat.

I havn't researched or looked into this very much, but I can say that Kenny Mackaskil (our justice dude) did the right thing to free him. Our justice system isn't like america's, we believe in a more humanitarian sentances and our is based on rehabilitiation and whats fairest for the criminal. Where as on the other side of the pond the American justice system is all about revenge. Case and point the capital punishment you guys still have in some states.

Mr Mackaskil did everything right, he took onboard everyones views and came to a logical conclusion, which your american government seems to have forgotten about.

This guy has frikken prostate cancer, I can't imagine a more horrible way to die than that, he was released legally under compasionate grounds because he obviously wasn't going to survive the rest of his term, and it would have been terribly unfair (and expensive) to have flown his whole family to Scotland on his final days.

How our government is taking it is quiet frankly admirable, we're a small country of 5 Million people who were effectively being bullied by america to do what they wanted. For example, Hillary Clinton. She had a press conference saying it was a terrible thing, and this is one of your elected officials, giving a sodding sob story to try to win people over, extremely unproffessional. But we stood up against the power politics being played out and we did what we saw fit.

And also, Americans are in no position to complain about our justice system, when in my eyes it remains one of the worst in any western society. The evidence coming through about Guantanamo bay, how illegal torture was preformed knowingly under the last administration, and still is.

Oh, and I do believe your CIA leader Mueller... or what ever his name is, did send an angry letter to us

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

FUCK YEAH, the Queen v.s. the President!

Now... If the Majesty herself... fought against America openly... That would make EU THE BRITISH EMPIRE 1000x better in the eyes of the rest of the world.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

If you boycott Scotch Whiskey, I'll have to drink 10 times as much to keep them in business.

[JoshuaFH]

If you boycott Scotch Whiskey, I'll have to drink 10 times as much to keep them in business.

You planned to do that anyway Maggarg!

[Starver]

If you boycott Scotch Whiskey, I'll have to drink 10 times as much to keep them in business.

Can I boycott the term "Scotch Whiskey"?  If it's "Scotch" (and not "Tape"), it's should generally be "Whisky".  (Although not necessarily vice-versa.)
I like the odd whisky (e.g. Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie), but cares not for whiskey of the US kind.  This might be because the "Good Stuff" does not travel far, of course, so that here in England we get decent Scottish stuff but not the best examples of the US-style Bourbons/etc.  Or maybe it's just a preference for the general Single Malt style I'm used to that doesn't translate too well to the other brands I've tried.

(Edited because I don't like the semi-ironic semi-geeky "slash-me" thing I used converting to square-me-unsquare tag combo.)

[de5me7]

Geoffry Boycott is a legend

compasionate grounds by definition are underserved. If it was deserved it wouldnt be compassionate but but just a standard release. So any one who says it was underserved is correct, but at the same time not really making a point.

I personally would have released him. Hes going to die in three months. I dont think making him suffer will bring any comfort to the families who lost loved ones. In my limited experience of life, hate brings no comfort.

as far as encouraging terrorism goes i think this will discourage it. Anti western terrorism is built on the premise that we are an evil empire. Compasion undermines this view.

Also, have any of you been to Scotland? I doubt the average scot gives a flying **** if some colonists boycott them.

[Duke 2.0]

I personally would have released him. Hes going to die in three months. I dont think making him suffer will bring any comfort to the families who lost loved ones. In my limited experience of life, hate brings no comfort.

 Thing is though, it has been brought up earlier that this excuses the justice system of taking care of his medical needs. Released, he would have to find his own way of paying it. And while I don't know his financial situation, I'm rather sure getting a loan/insurance is out of the question.

 What a tangled web we have here. I would just like to point out we are a young country, and our rashness is just a remanent of us trying to stay float in a world of superpowers. Sure we may be one of those powers now, but that power came relatively recently.

 To those who say that was a BS excuse(It was), it was no better than defending Britian for being a "Small Country".

[sneakey pete]

I very much doubt he really did it anyway, and i'd challange anyone who things that releasing a "uncompassionate terrorist" to actually read up on the circumstances on which he was convicted, and what has happened since, before saying anything else.

Btw, to put buddybud's post into prespectice: he was set to fight an appeal for his trial soon, which is where the evidence of evidence tamering would supposedly have come out.