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Press TV has conducted an interview with Scott Rickard, former US Intelligence Linguist, Orlando about the upcoming vote for or against Scottish independence.

Press TV: Our guest William spring talks about sinister forces at work to break up countries around the world, he talks about Syria and others.

This movement coming from the people - aside from what happened in the Middle East – we could look at the May parliamentary elections that happened in Europe, the far-right came into the picture.

France is a perfect example where 25 percent of the people came out and voted for Jean Marie Le Pen’s (far right) party. And basically we could reflect that maybe on Scotland they want to push back against the establishment in Westminster saying we don’t want to follow the rules that you have, we want to have our own independence? Do you think that impression can be made and perhaps the sentiment the Scots have?

Rickard: I can’t agree more with Mr. Spring. He makes a good point when he talks about the fact that people are getting fed up with the old guard.

Politicians, really, they come and go and they are basically puppet heads for the corporatists, bankers and the old guard that he refers to that is paying off these politicians to continue their illegal invasions; continue the military industrial complex; put our children’s lives at stake and also destroy our economies.

I think the Scottish are right to rebel against this and I have to say my hat is off to the Scots at getting this momentum in less than a months’ time to be able to move forward and potentially break away after 300 years with the union of a very dominant empire that has been around for over 500 years. And typically empires don’t last more than 500 years.

The British Empire by no means is failing. The banking system that is behind the British Empire is failing, but that’s happened before in the early 1900’s.

So I see it as an opportunity for Scotland to further its independence and its sovereignty and speak out like they do and my hat is off to Scottish folks. They’ve been extremely objective on geo-political affairs and they’ve spoken out against apartheid Israel much more so than the House of Commons. Thankfully there are some people in the House of Commons that do courageously speak out.

But essentially the Scottish economy is not as strong as it could be if it were independent. They produce over 40 billion dollars worth of oil, which is a sixth of their GDP. And you also have an ability to raise the personal income because obviously in England the per capita GDP is much higher and I believe that the Scottish people would actually benefit from this. They export over 75 billon dollars per year just to England alone.

So I think this would be a great thing for the Scottish. They would have the opportunity to build the kind of programs like Norway has built with their oil industry and potentially take the country much further and excel the actual legitimacy of their sovereignty.

Press TV: This referendum based on the polls and based on all the news outlets, I think you would agree in some respects have said this is going to be a very close call, up to the minute at this point 51-49 percent depending of course on who you’re listening to.

So isn’t it very odd that you’re not going to have any type of international monitoring that’s going to go on? People are saying, how could that be? Here we have all these other voting taking place around the world and we see what happens after the votes are announced and there are international monitors, but not for this one. Why do you think that is?

Rickard: That’s a great question. You see a lot of corruption, even in American elections. Hopefully the Scots will have put down some form of counterbalancing to that kind of corruption that may occur in this particular referendum.

My take on that is obviously you will see individuals that are in favor of sovereignty and in favor of becoming independent that will be quite vocal if it is gone down even if it is 2-3 percent off. So my take on that is if you have as much as 50 percent of the country that wants sovereignty form the British Empire, I think that’s pretty damn good for a nation.

Regardless of the outcome of the vote, the Scottish people have spoken out very clearly and said, ‘we are through with the corruption of the British Empire and we prefer to have our independence.’

Press TV: Spain’s Prime Minster Mariano Rajoy he has come out warning of any move to independence in Europe. Your reaction to that?

Rickard: Obviously the folks that are threatening and going against the referendum, this is the old guard. These are the individuals who understand that this is a sign of the times.

People are becoming more informed and they understand better and they’re not as overwhelmed by their controlled media. There has been a great move in the communications and information age whereby we’re able to communicate on a much broader scale individually.

So this has proven to be a point where you can clearly see the lines drawn between individuals like Clinton and Cameron and so on and so forth, even Kerry and every American politician, all of these politicians that are aligned with this old guard that Mr. Spring refers to are all following lockstep with the empires that are illegally operating around the world.

And it’s good to see a country like Scotland - and I hope it’s just the beginning of better things for many countries around the world.