Thanks to Hugh for bringing this to my attention.

The blog post charts the decline of the revolutionary leftist student movements in Europe, England especially, focusing on the influences of Pauline Boty and Clive Goodwin, two prominent figures in the British Pop Art movement, and Herbert Marcuse, a political philosopher whose ideas had a large effect on the student movements. It all culminates in the absolutely fascinating story of Michael de Freitas (“Michael X”) whose name I’d not heard before today. It is this story to which Curtis devotes 45 minutes of your time in the form of an old BBC documentary which he’s edited down a little.

I won’t spoil any of that story, instead leaving you to read and watch for yourself.

“I search-replaced “gay” and “homosexual” with “Jewish”, “gays” with “Jews”, “straight” and “heterosexual” with “Christian”, and “bisexual” with “agnostic”. The result is amazing”

Here it is:

AS the cliche goes, some of my best friends are Jewish. I used to live in a very Jewish area, the West Village in New York. Indeed, enjoying their nightlife and cultural atmosphere, I was even accused of ‘trading’ off the fun, with my copycat denim jacket and tartan shirt, while not actually joining them.

However, like many, I’ve recently begun to get impatient with the endless trumpeting of Jewish ‘identity’, and the growing appetite for more and more rights and privileges.

I’m not being reactionary and I’m all for Jewish rights and an end to prejudice and discrimination, and always have, but at this stage it seems as if the tables have turned and a minority community — the Jews — want to increasingly change mainstream culture to suit them.

For example, why is civil partnership not enough, and why do Jews also want marriage, a surely traditional Christian facility, which Jews used to see as patriarchal, and ‘Christian’?

Many Jews also feel this way and resist the increasing politicisation and institutionalising of Jewish life. Last week, in the Guardian, a newspaper almost obsessed with things Jewish and ‘progressive’, columnist Suzanne Moore objected to Jewish marriage on the basis that it was a conservative ‘selling-out’. Being Jewish should be edgy and experimental, she said.

But isn’t this part of the problem? Many Jews want to have it both ways. Thus Jewish magazines are full of ads endorsing late-night gyms, sex lines and a freewheeling sexual activity which would be dismissed as sleazy in Christian culture. But we also have articles that suggest a yearning for bourgeois respectability.

Likewise, travel books, such as the trendy Rough Guides, scold the mainstream ‘meat-market’ discos of foreign capitals but provide plenty of details for Jewish pick-up spots. Many red-blooded Christian men might wish that society would endorse their own ambitions with such PC gusto.

Also, on the issue of Jews adopting, it makes many of us uneasy and impatient with the idea that raising a child with Jewish parents is totally equivalent to a child being raised by its natural Christian parents. It patently is not, and it is a crazy concession to PC culture to say that it is.

I watched a Frontline programme recently on the topic and I thought I was seeing things when I heard Ivana Bacik refusing to be happy with a societal acceptance of Jewish adoption but insisting on full equality with Christian parenting. David Quinn gave the other perspective, but he was almost falling over himself to be reasonable about it, just looking for that concession that the natural, or Christian, parents were not just the same as Jewish parents.

Those expressing opposition or even concerns were shouted down in the television studio. However, from where I was watching, in a local bar, the viewers were all of the contrary opinion, and were amazed by this departure in opinions but also blankly accepting of it as part of the growing gulf which now exists between mainstream society and the liberal elites and quango-led experts who want to change and improve our lives.

For example, the Guardian now has a feature called The Three of Us in its family section, a weekly diary by one of two Jewish men raising a child with their female friend, the natural mother. Two dads, one mum — one family is the sub headline.

I don’t know about you but this strikes me as strange.

And the counter-argument that divorced kids often have three parents knocking around is fatuous and nonsense. A child has two parents, whether separated or not. However, it is one thing to have such a diary, but it also seems almost designed to offend and irritate those who do not agree with this new radical departure in parenting. Thus, last week, the writer Charlie Condou questioned the whole convention of women being seen as naturally connected to their children. (Not for nothing is the Irish Independent’s weekly supplement called Mothers and Babies.)

But no, Charlie went to the Alternative Families show in the UK and saw all the Jewish dads with their children. It’s just the same for him, it seems, and, he “stood around and chatted about the absurdity and irrelevance of the ‘biological question’”. Oh, please. What about breastfeeding?

And there are other things about the growing Jewish rights movement which make outsiders impatient and uneasy. Like, when did the Jews and lesbian community become the ‘LGBT’, an acronym that also includes agnostic and Transgender?

Sorry, but this is broadening the boundaries in a way that makes many of us understandably sceptical.

agnostic? Isn’t that reminiscent of the loose Seventies sexual experimentation? How many agnostics are there? And will the plain people of Ireland be happy with legalising rights for, and spending money on, all of this?

The new Human Rights Commissioner for Northern Ireland, Michael O’Flaherty, is a Jewish rights advocate and says that he sees all of this as part of his rights agenda. Again, I raise all these things, not out of reactionary resistance but just to question the direction and motivation of the whole sexual rights agenda.

There is also the danger surely that this insatiable demand for more and more recognition and identity (Jewish quotas?), will eventually alienate mainstream opinion and undo some of the valuable gains made in this country by, for example, David Norris and others, in eliminating prejudice and discrimination.

It would be a fool’s errand to try to coherently post quotations from the article: it’s only effective in its entirety, so go and read it.

The series was awarded with a BAFTA award in 1996 for Best Factual Series.^[1] Because of the series large amount of interviews with prominent leaders and commanders of the conflict, it has been frequently used by ICTY in war crimes prosecutions.^[2]

All the papers relating to the documentary series, including full transcripts of the many valuable interviews conducted with participants, are lodged at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, University of London. The catalogue can be examined here

During the trial of Milošević before the ICTY, Judge Bonomy called the nature of much of the commentary “tendentious”.^[3] This was because there were instances in which an interview in the Serbian language was subtitled incorrectly and often in a misleading manner (for example, the subtitling translated an interviewee saying that “Milosevic always won the elections on a nationalistic platform and nothing else”, rather than “… on a national platform… “).^[4]

Here are all 6 episodes for your convenience:

An excerpt:

On the day of the shooting, a young man named Joseph Zamudio was leaving a drugstore when he saw the chaos at the Safeway parking lot. Zamudio was armed, carrying his 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. Heroically, he rushed to the scene, fingering his weapon, ready to fire.

Now, in the view of the more-guns proponents, Zamudio might have been able to prevent any carnage, or maybe even gotten off a shot before someone was killed.

“When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a victim,” said Arizona state representative Jack Harper, after a gunman had claimed 19 victims.

“I wish there had been one more gun in Tucson,” said an Arizona Congressman, Rep. Trent Franks, implying like Harper that if only someone had been armed at the scene, Jared Lee Loughner would not have been able to unload his rapid-fire Glock on innocent people.

In fact, several people were armed. So, what actually happened? As Zamudio said in numerous interviews, he never got a shot off at the gunman, but he nearly harmed the wrong person — one of those trying to control Loughner.

He saw people wrestling, including one man with the gun. “I kind of assumed he was the shooter,” said Zamudio in an interview with MSNBC. Then, “everyone said, ‘no, no — it’s this guy,’” said Zamudio.

To his credit, he ultimately helped subdue Loughner. But suppose, in those few seconds of confusion, he had fired at the wrong man and killed a hero?

Earlier, I had also happened upon another article, this time from the L.A. Times.

An excerpt:

The bizarre chain of events unfolded about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday on a busy stretch of Crenshaw Boulevard near the 105 Freeway when a southbound driver struck a pedestrian walking across the street outside the crosswalk.

Hawthorne Police Lt. Gary Tomatoni said the driver of a white or gray minivan fled the scene and as the injured pedestrian lay in the street, a second vehicle ran over the man. That driver also failed to stop and provide aid.

Several pedestrians who saw the two cars hit the man ran to him to try to help. One of the good Samaritans was running across Crenshaw Boulevard toward the victim when she was hit by another motorist traveling southbound.

That motorist stopped to check on the woman, but as he did so, he was attacked by a mob of bystanders.

Remind me, what is it they say about the road to hell?

Thanks to Hugh for bringing this to my attention.

The current debate over waterboarding has spawned hundreds of newspaper articles in the last two years alone. However, waterboarding has been
the subject of press attention for over a century. Examining the four newspapers
with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and
sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early
1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered
waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was
torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on
the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By
contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to
waterboarding as torture.

The New York Times called waterboarding torture or
implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so
in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as
torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding
torture or implied it was torture. In addition, the newspapers are much more
likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is
the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with
a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or
implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States
was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in
91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only
11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.

Read the entire paper here.

Photo: Reuters

A select few quotations from a BBC article on Hitler’s bizarre popularity in India:

Latest reports say Bollywood is now planning to cash in. A film – Dear Friend Hitler – is due to be released by the end of the year, focusing on the dictator’s relationship with his mistress Eva Braun.

…

It’s hard to narrow down what makes the dictator popular in India, but some young people say they are attracted by his “discipline and patriotism”.

Most of them are, however, quick to add that they do not approve of his racial prejudices and the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed.

…

Nearly all the booksellers and publishers contacted in India say it is mainly young people who read Mein Kampf. It’s not just the autobiography – books on the Nazi leader, T-shirts, bags, bandanas and key-rings are also in demand. A shop in Pune, called Teens, says it sells nearly 100 T-shirts a month with Hitler’s image on them.

Dimple Kumari, a research associate in Pune, has not read Mein Kampf but she would wear the Hitler T-shirt out of admiration for him. She calls him “a legend” and tries to put her admiration for him in perspective: “The killing of Jews was not good, but everybody has a positive and negative side.”

I have to say, I find this peculiar naivety fascinating. I also can’t imagine what it must be like for a Western traveller to be walking down a street in, say, Bangalore, spotting a few people coming towards him clad in Hitler Apparel. Indeed, staying with Bangalore, since it’s such a huge IT hub… Should we expect to see originally well-meaning and innocuous (to Indians, that is) photographs of young IT workers on their IBM or Microsoft campus, posing happily with their corporate swipe-cards dangling from from their neck, the strap perfectly framing a portrait of their “Dear Friend Hitler”? Indeed, do such places, renowned for their lack of dress-code in the West, already have a strict dress-code in places like India, in order to prevent such embarrassments? I wonder.

And, before I go, here’s another great article from Der Spiegel on the same phenomenon, only this time in Pakistan. Yep, they’re at it too. Who knows – perhaps this new-found love for the 20th century’s most hated, genocidal dictator will only serve to foster a new friendship of shared values between India and Pakistan, leading to a stable peace! Surely no harm could come of future generations of two of the world’s most antagonistic and unstable nuclear-countries worshipping a genocidal, maniacal, militaristic dictator!

Brings a whole new sense to that Vonnegut quote…

For me, the biggest problem with libertarian thinking isn’t what its critics say: that is promotes some kind of immorality in its defense of self-interest in the context of capitalist economics.

Where I got off the bus is when I realized how terribly unsustainable libertarianism is, the naivete about how money corrupts, money being to power what matter is to energy. And lastly, the lack of consideration given to how unequal the playing field is, how much class does matter, and how libertarians seek to make a “clean break” from interventionist corporatism to capitalism without addressing the massive chain of abuse which has resulted into the polarization of the wealthy and the poor.

Unsustainability – most libertarians support the free market on the basis of rights and morality, not out of pure utilitarianism, but most tend to believe that a free market in a libertarian context would also provide the greatest opportunities to the greatest amount of people. I think this, too, is a matter of faith. So long as you allow the top few percent to own the vast majority of wealth, you will always have an underclass voting itself, amending the constitution, rioting, or revolting to get some of the upper or ruling class’s money. This is why Marxism refuses to go away in the Third World. Conservatives and classical liberals like to insinuate it has something to do with bankrupt political and economic ideals in an academic context (“Ivory tower Marxists”) but in reality the reason why socialism and communism continue to find purchase in the third world is because of crippling poverty, including things like landlessness, where you can inhabit a piece of land for generations, but someone just deeds it out from under you (a Zapatista complaint).

Labor movements, social welfare programs, guranteed minimum incomes — all of these proceed from human need, and I see no indication that the somewhat benign term “self interest” applies here, as much as “crass greed” does. Libertarians practically celebrate the concepts of wage slavery, sweatshops, and so forth, because – they say – that the people working in them would be “worse off yet” without them. Good luck, 5 years down the line, making that case while the peasants get restless. How anyone feels about the morality of who gets how much pie and who has to share, the reality is that humankind will only put up with so much before organizing, revolting, striking, or otherwise influencing the system such that it is more equitable for the poor – and more offensive to libertarians. No document will constrain that.

Money corrupts — this is why lobbyists have their way with the American system. The idea that somehow very rich people wouldn’t instantly corrupt a minarchist state in their favor is laughably naive. The US Constitution was supposed to prevent the growth of the state, among other things, and it has failed miserably in this regard because people (politicians, administrators, supreme court) have failed. Libertarians continue to believe that by simply abolishing large swaths of government (which I’m in favor of), that that will destroy the mechanisms by which the very rich basically own the US government. I say, whatever is left, will be corrupted, and grow yet again. Because every man has his price, and every politician, administrator, law enforcement official, and so on, can be bribed — as they are now. The idea of a government purely of laws and not of men is a superstitious religious belief — oh how I wish it were possible. I used to believe it was; I no longer believe this to be the case. Every week we see rich people getting off with a slap on the wrists – if that – having committed massive fraud (google Union Carbide Bhopal), while middle, working class, and the outright poor wind up in jail serving ludicrous sentences for petty crime. All institutions can be gamed with the right amount of cash. Libertarians will quote the old adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is interesting the degree to which they will turn a blind eye to centers of wealth, which are just condensed centers of power.

Anarcho-capitalists refuse to see this too – money will create a state which serves the person funding it, because every man has his price.

As it is now, he who can spend the most amount of money on lawyers and legal fights in civil court has the upper hand. I see this as only increasing in the kind of minarchist regime libertarians propose. The farmer caught with stray Monsanto seed having blown on to and grown in the corner of his field will have no choice but to capitulate repeatedly to Monsanto, as he does now. You can outlaw all sorts of lawsuits, but that won’t prevent people bringing them, twisting their arguments to fit them into pre-existing, legal avenues of relief.

Lastly, libertarians offer zero redress for past wrongs. “A free market….starting now!” while rich families who started on third base from the time they were born are on “equal footing” with those who never even got a turn at bat. There is nothing libertarianism has to offer the very poor, except the questionable explanation that the reason their cities are blighted is because of “government intervention” or “high taxes, preventing business investment” which explains a little bit of the problem, but not most of it. (Why would anyone do business in Manhattan or San Francisco if it was really all about regulation and taxes?)

The libertarians get it half right in their suspicion of and rejection of the state, but with me, personally, they fail completely at addressing the corrupting power of money. Their belief in the free market’s sustainability (whereby depressions are just “market corrections” proving capitalism works) doesn’t really address the generations of resentment, hatred, and alienation such events cause. This negative feeling is what sabotages the minarchist state. As much as the non-initiation of force principle is enough for libertarians to live on, it’s not enough for a hard-working father who has to face his children on Christmas with nothing under the tree because the auto plant he worked for dutifully for 20 years just shut down.

In fairness to libertarians, libertarians themselves are not the weak link. In their passion to prove that minarchism or even statelessness (as many libertarians are really anarchists) works, they will open their wallets, and they will donate to charities. Libertarians, by and large, are not the dishonest corruptors of the system they advocate: it’s the people in power who view libertarians as useful idiots who help them continue to perpetuate graft and fraud as a “way of doing business.” that are the problem. Those who would benefit most from what libertarians propose aren’t even libertarians: it’s the very wealthy who will use libertarian concepts to prevent taxation and regulation (resulting in unsafe mines, factories, and so forth, among other things), and who will use the money they make to use government in their favor should that be a better alternative.

I credit libertarians with, especially recently, front-burnering issues of corporate welfare and so on.

But in the end, greed is what drives business – not a celebration of the non-initiation of force principle, nor not even building railroads or making Rearden metal. What drives business is money, and businesses are whores, and they will do anything ranging from cold (firing loyal workers in depressed areas) to fraud (taking bailout money) in pursuit of this goal.

I used to believe, or wanted to believe, that businessmen were moral. I used to accept the lines the way Rand drew them – honest businessmen making these important things whose benefits trickled down to everyone else vs. second handers and leechers.

This was a stacked deck. It wasn’t some intellectual realization based on something I read, but something I’ve come to understand having worked 12 years now in a corporation, and before that for smaller businesses. I’ve never worked for anyone I’ve actually liked or whose character I’ve respected. I’ve never worked for anyone who wouldn’t at least flirt with dishonesty for a quick buck.

Money is what matters. Money is power. It will always be that way, and there will be no justice or freedom until some way is found to blunt its influence on the world.

I have no alternative system to offer. Having brought these ideas up before, the response is always the same: “Well what kind of OBVIOUSLY STATIST alternative to you propose? COMMUNISM?” or some bullshit response like that.

I propose nothing.

I simply say that libertarianism is unworkable in the long term, our progression from a somewhat libertarian society to what we have now in spite of the apparent guidance of the US Constitution proves it.

Power corrupts. Money is power. Money corrupts. And personally speaking, I dread a future based around money and business. I have little interest in either beyond the fact that money is necessary to provide food, clothing, and shelter. But as long as I’m working 50, 60, 70 hours a week to keep my health insurance premiums paid, you can tell me about freedom all you want, but I sure don’t feel free. I’m long since past the point where the conceptual abstraction of “freedom” is enough. If I don’t have the time or energy to dance, it ain’t freedom. And that’s what it is now: work, work, work, spend, spend, spend, until you die. All of life has been reduced to this. It’s dehumanizing, and it has created a corrupt, selfish (and not in that good Ayn Rand way that leads to awesome motors that run on nothing), dreary consumerist world.

One need look no farther than the health care debate, a debate which offers such lousy alternatives that I don’t care who ultimately wins.

Through taxes or being gouged by capitalist enterprises, the fact remains that many peoples lives, financial stability, and so on, will be considered expandable sacrifices to a bankrupt principle of laissez faire economics. Whether through fraud, waste, and the expropriation of my money through taxes, or through private enterprise gouging consumers, ultimately, the outcome is the same: Many of us will not be able to afford health care.

It’s all about money.

2000 years ago it was all about money.

2000 years from now it will probably be all about money.

I have no solution. All I know is neither state socialism nor libertarianism offers a realistic fix for these problems.

The idea of children going without health care, or having to go bankrupt and destitute because you or a family member gets sick and the bills pile up, is just not something I’m comfortable with morally, and it relates to no credible moral system I am aware of.

But these are, apparently our choices. (Libertarians may comfort themselves with things like, “Well if we enact tort reform,” and so forth – but this will have a minimal impact at best.)

That is, unless your daddy was filthy rich.

This is a culture where teachers are paying money out of their own meager paychecks for pencils and paper and crayons, and Britney Spears is worth millions.

I continue on, paying my own way in life, but I am so tired. So god damned tired. I don’t even know why I get out of bed in the morning. Money has ruined music. It has ruined art. It has created a gaudy, offensive sea of glowing, pulsing billboards fucking up my view of the night sky. It has torn up ecosystems and sentenced the lot of us to terrible crackerbox developments, and paralyzing monoculture where I feel my own imagination shrivel up and die. Or is it the work – the relentless, neverending work, to prove I’m worth something as a human…to stay…employable, in this “market correction.”

I still like libertarians and they are welcome in my home, but I fear their overall solution to the problems of the country or world have little or no future. Nearly 40 years of crap performance in elections would seem to be ample evidence for this.

But I guess I like libertarians because they are dreamers – even romantics. For all the “stiff upper lip” posturing that comes with arguments for self-sufficiency as the foundation for our culture, libertarians really see a romantic future where passions – for business or otherwise – would be unleashed and unrestrained, leading to the betterment of our species. I still respect it because I used to feel that way myself.

But any future in which all I do is work, and worry about money, and have to spend all of my free time analyzing banks and investment houses to see how they’re squandering my wealth and encrypting fraud and loss in novel financial instruments, is not something I have the energy to fight for anymore.

tl;dr: Money ruins everything.