Burning Books

The minister of Culture in Warsaw has issued a Directive banning certain books from the lists of texts to be studied in Polish schools for the national curriculum.

Witold Gombrowicz is banned for homosexuality; Herling-Grudzinski, who wrote of the gulags long before Solzhenitsyn, too. These are not left intellectual classics, to say the least, but banned they are.

As is Goethe (too German, and immoral for writing of characters entering into pacts with the Devil); Kafka (condemned with a single word, Nihilist); Dostoyevsky (too much attention to a criminal's confessions in Crime and Punishment).

The peculiar twins who run Poland have called in the Directive for 'consideration' after an outburst by Adam Michnik (of Solidarnosc fame), but the Teletubbies (gay) are not offered such distinguished defenders.

The Roman Catholicism that keeps an Index of banned books is alive and vigorous in Blair's favourite European ally.

Macaulay and his lessons

The glittering ranks of the armies of the Etruscan city states, Lars Porsenna at their head, stand at the Tiber. Before them lies the narrow way across the bridge to the river gate and into Rome, defiant in its overthrow of Tarquinius Superbus and the king's drab replacement with Republic men.

With the Etruscans are some Romans loyal to Etruscan civilisation and its superior culture, but party to that culture's corruption, in Rome, by self interest and cruelty (symbolized in Lucretia's rape), that has caused the Roman revolt.

The Etruscan forces, gorgeous in their person, culture and achievement, incredulous that they should be called upon to fight, will not be put to flight, nor defeated in a set-piece battle; although their hero, when at last he deigns to step forward across the corpses of lesser men, will be struck down by the power of Horatio's desperation to assert the New Order and impede its distruction by such superiors.

Just as Horatio's fully-armoured survival in the Tiber was applauded by Porsenna as he staggers from the water, so they will accede to the republican's drab demands for recognition of what has been wrong in Rome. And from this fatal courtesy the republicans will spread outwards, assimilating, rewarding fawning (or even acquiesence), punishing with death, torture, exile, exclusion, any local and individual resistance - too little and too late.

For the moment was to force the bridge before it was hacked away, but the Etruscans were taken by the spectacle of individual combat and its rules, when there should have been all the powers of their civilisation and its laws, expressed in their presence and their strength, used against the usurpers of proper rule and the city of Rome.

There's not a lot of time left for us, either.

Bleeding Labour

The Labour party is losing even more members as the bullying arrogance of Gordon Brown's and Jack Straw's exclusion of even a constituency, union and other membership vote sinks in.

The behaviour of the outgoing Executive in this wholly unconstitutional inter-regnum, signing up for the European Constitution (again) if it can, plus the criminalizing of all living beings in England (though not Scotland) who do not 'walk down the street looking neither to right nor left and breathing evenly through their noses', and the locking up as mad for compulsory medical treatment any person communicating settled dislike for the corrupt and criminal Executive, has added further losses, as the disillusioned membership watches the antics of the deputy Leadership sack race.

They should remember that the Labour party knows where they live.

Labour Executive Lies

The widespread discussion of encroaching state power over civil liberties is admirable and shows we're not accepting the Labour party Executive's behaviour as reasonable.

The silence, on matters so central to the relationship of individuals and the political authority they cede to government, on the part of the Labour party's Leader in waiting (he cannot be called Leader-elect as he's Leader-imposed) is of Holmesian proportions. We must take it that he likes it all, particularly as none of it applies to Scotland.

Peculiarly distasteful is the revelation of measures, backed up by specialised staff and a 'secure' unit, to detain at will and without review or judicial means of intervention, any person indicated as communicating a threat to public figures.

'Persone in vista', coupled with the infamous 'lei non sa chi sono io' (you don't know who I am) is the hallmark of authoritarian attitudes to those who should be regarded as the givers of authority.

Guevara's understanding that a socialist society could never exist without first a socialist conciousness in man, applies equally to authoritarianism of any kind. The condemnatory response to Labour's behaviour, ranging across the political spectrum from far left to far right and taking in all of us except the minority statist conformists of the Labour cadres, illuminates this:

No-one in the United Kingdom accepts the need for any of the so-called 'terrorism' laws. All recognize that the country is more vulnerable than others to targetting (and whose fault is that?) but just as in the years of the Troubles in Ireland, we will keep or vigilance high, and keep our liberties.

Mussolini was better looking

Cries of 'Duce, Duce, Duce..' are echoing. Year I begins today, though formally on 24 June. Will it take us until Year XXI for civil war to break out?

Even the post modern imperialism of the Abyssinian invasions is reborn in the post modern imperialist adventures in Iraq.

Corporatism

Familiarity with Italian political and religious culture has given little insight into British political life, until the last decade. This evening the United Kingdom is on the verge of becoming a fully blown corporatist state. At the close of nominations for the leadership of the Labour party at noon tomorrow a corporatist political party will crown its stalinoid candidate for the office of prime minister, and all the executive powers of Crown prerogative will fall under their control.

It is a truism that history never repeats itself; but the evils associated with authoritarian state corporatism will act, are acting already, even if in a fashion transformed but recognisable from over half a century ago.

Individual liberties have been abolished, even habeas corpus; evidence obtained by torture is readmitted into legal proceedings; the right to be secure from delivery into another criminal jurisdiction has been abrogated; trial by jury limited; the freedom to go about lawful business without a requirement to identify oneself is gone; failure to proffer information on statuses and wealth is criminalised; no one may conduct their life within the law without constantly proving their conformity.

A network of appointed state officials has siphoned off the authority and funding of elected local authority; large sectors of society no longer form their exchanges and relationships with one another in families and familial structures, but with the state as it advances into every aspect of private life by means testing and regulation, the creation of moral hazard.

We never experienced the first round of these systems' establishment - indeed our grandfathers fought them. So they are not recognized for the threat they present to a proper and democratic political system, and a moral way of life.

Monarchy and the Democratic State

The hollowed-out pumpkin that is the office of our country’s head of state has been displayed fully in the last week.

The Prime Minister has offered his resignation in the Trimdon Social Club.

The Labour party has designated the incoming prime minister.

The date of the handover has been fixed in private discussion between members of the Executive.

Bearing in mind behaviour exhibited over the courtesy of wearing formal dress at formal and official dinners, the chances of the kissing of hands and acknowledgement of higher authority are poor.

All powers denominated Crown prerogatives now rest with the Executive and, more specifically, with the prime minister of the day. What and who the prime minister answers to is no longer a Constitution, or its custodian the Head of State.

It is 30 years since the office of head of state showed any signs of constitutional life. Discretion is a virtue but this obscurity veils powerlessness and inaction while our Constitution is lopped of its limbs, and our liberties consumed.

Nor is it a Parliament to which the exercise of power is answerable, when the majority party is responsive to particular organisations and interest groups with their own objectives and factional discipline, rather than answerable to the whole electorate, and to those too who are without a vote.

The respect for the Crown even now connects to the mystic notion of powers devolved from God. More importantly the immense regard in which the present monarch is held has been cynically appropriated to project an emotional narrative of safety and security in the enjoyment of our lives.

Monarchy, constitutional or no , lies uneasily with democracy. So now we are faced with government by an appointed prime minister, an appointed countrywide nomenklatura , unchallenged in office and in power by the undefended and severely damaged permanent constitutional structures of the state.

Why are we putting up with this?

England doesn't want Gordon Brown and his Labour MPs sitting for Scottish seats, like him, deciding policy for England in Westminster. Why should it? The Scottish have their own Parliament to make their political choices and have little and spurious claim to involve themselves in ours.

And now it's clear that Scotland doesn't want Labour Scottish MPs sitting for Scottish seats making political choices for Scotland either.

So Scottish Labour MPs sitting for Scottish seats who are members of the Westminster Parliament are going to be making political choices for the English electorate who have not voted for them, and for the Scottish electorate who have voted them out of office.

From pluralist democracy to dictatorship of the state

1 First make your nomenklatura

Since the end of the eighteenth century there has been long drawn out resistence to democracy as the means for settling conflict of interests. Through the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century democracy carved a way through institutions and settled power relations across the world. This force, fragmented into the hands of all of us, is still the target of power elites - acting for our own good, acting for the greater good, in truth acting for themselves.
Power elites have many names - nomenklatura is that most associated with avowed statism. To deny democracy, a nomenklatura is essential.

Method
in making a nomenklatura the mind should hold the image of making a hand-beaten mayonnaise. Obsessive narrowness of focus, attention to detail, constant monitoring of condition of the outcome, and infinite patience in the steady drip, drip of the process are pre-requisites.
Process
take two lists: one of positions of authority and of influence in the target structure, the other of those who might be introduced into it.

As you progress in building your mass you will encounter other clots and agglomerations: these will be either weaker than you, in which case they can be whipped into the mass; equal , when alliance is the temporary measure; or more powerful. With the more powerful any accommodation should be made to permit continued smooth growth.

You will be part of a highly unstable overall structure made up of petty hierarchies and your dynamic is to move upwards through them all, while taking their mass into the whole. As you progress those you have subsumed pay in loyalties and should be required also to pay in cash insofar as their means allow.

Agglomeration with the more powerful, often nomenklatura of earlier regimes or extra-territorial power elites, can be achieved principally by purchase (straightforward corruption), by profitable alliance (giving access to the profits from power you have acquired in return for equality of status, and further funding by means of introduction fees), or by exclusion.

By this time you should have achieved sufficient mass to create climates unfavourable to embedded and unresponsive, if not opposed, elites such that they either lose their statuses, and/ or leave. Leaving should not be discouraged in the first instance but later, as your mass grows, it should not allow departure holding any useful wealth or capacity to command service. Later still these, taken by earlier leavers, can be gathered in, as may be the leavers themselves.

At all times an ambience of democratic validity must be maintained until control of a stable power mass has been achieved and a shadowing network of reliable appointees to match democratic institutions at every level has been installed, and is funded and operating.

Once this is so, you are in a position to begin harvesting the benefits of democracy’s over throw (first choice of means is usually the corruption of election processes or their outright denial in the name of some over-arching emergency or threat to the existence of the state itself), and to reinforce your power system with further rewards of appropriate redistribution from the wealth producing sectors. Should the attention waver, or ambient factors intervene such that the mass goes mad, these nomenklatura structures will be sufficiently agglomerated to maintain your power base while restorative homogenisation measures are used.

Control of the military and civil authorities usually offers the quickest way to contain mass breakdown into loss of control and madness.

Next

2 Appropriating resources

3 Going global

Horses for Courses

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We all take our unique place on the spectrum from neuro typical to raving mad. At times we shift our position when our lives lead us or we lead our lives into places and actions that trigger exaggerated response. We all know a great deal about this although we may think and speak of it in different ways. Touchy-feelyness speaks of reaching out, feeling the pain, knowing where you’re coming from, stressed out; more formally we may speak of empathy, kindness, sympathy, understanding, anger, or exhaustion; and as we respond to others we automatically assess and adjust to their condition and the effect it might have on their normal position. This response is part of an innate capacity - a theory of mind, what is called social cognition. It permits interaction with the rest of the world in real time so fast that responses can begin even before the concious mind notes them.

There are people so far along the spectrum from the majority cluster of neuro typical, positioned there at all times and moving rapidly towards the other extreme when circumstances other than tranquility confront them, that neuro typical people recognise their difficulties instantly and respond - sometimes kindly and making allowances but, depending on circumstances, sometimes with contempt, or even worse cruelty; always with circumscription at lesser or greater levels.

We pick up deviance and measure it consistently and irresistibly ; it is our nature. Sometimes it does not matter; sometimes, it has been argued, specifically for this kind of difference there are benefits where narrowness of focus, high detail attention and the imposition of logically constructed models onto very diverse data is required and contributory.

What spectrum position does political leadership call for? The fastest, universal understanding of complex, and differently ordered and weighted, inputs; intuitive grasp of the slightest of given signals in face to face contacts; the ability to construct diverse scenarios and imagine outcomes; infer hinterlands of reasons and aims; the capacity to understand - not to construct a model of others’ behaviour derived from a list of recognised inputs for a set of situations and generate a model specific response - to understand and respond to another’s viewpoint.

When we see for ourselves, on the national and international stage, a candidate for our highest political office ungroomed, unkempt, ill-dressed, unable to control the most florid symptoms of obsessive behaviour, and we are told by ranking officials, by civil servants who of their professional nature are the most discreet of people, by political colleagues who have every interest in promoting their party, that what we see displayed publicly is privately more and worse displayed in every aspect of official and private interaction, then we must speak out.

Horses for courses.

Gordon Brown cannot be a politician at the level of a country’s leader in a pluralist democracy.

What he would be is what he is; and he is the stuff of a dictator.