Not Forgetting the Kurds!

    For a long time Robert Fisk always rendered his references to the Palestinian homeland with quotation marks - it will be 'Palestine' until it exists as a state he righty put it. That was the case until the UN voted to bestow a limited form of statehood to the Palestinians. At that moment 'Palestine', at long last, became Palestine. There remains another stateless people in the Middle East, and there is a state that has yet to be established for the political liberation of that people. I am referring to the Kurds and 'Kurdistan'. Even though the Kurds are the largest people without a state in the world it's a cause that too often goes unheard. It's a cause which deserves a lot more support than it is given in the West. By comparison the Palestinian cause gains much more coverage - even though it's mostly framed as a defence of the Israeli position on Palestine.

 

    The Western media regularly goes on the defensive whenever Israel engages in outright aggression. Typically it's the wars, not the systematic forms of oppression that the Palestinians are subjected to on a day-to-day basis. For a long time the Kurds have been ignored, as the crimes against them constitute the constructive bloodbaths which go on in the blindspot of mass-media. Note the presuppositions of all debate on the Kurdish grievances are often schewed to the side of their oppressors. This was true of the complicit silence of the West over the campaigns of ethnic cleansing in countries such as Iraq and Turkey. Somehow the Kurdish cause became a fetish of liberal hacks looking to justify their support for the invasion of Iraq. The Far-Left in many countries campaigned against the war and conceded this ground to the pro-war camp. It made perfect sense to many of the Kurds to support the invasion with the hope of regime change and the possibility of greater autonomy for their people.

 

    It was a mistake for the radical Left to disregard the not-so-historic grievances of the Kurdish people. For it was the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein that had subjected the Kurds to a brutal attempt of extirpation by poison gas. It was a campaign which left over 180,000 people dead in the late 1980s. At that time Saddam Hussein was a recipient of enormous support from the US and Britain, who cared nothing for the victims of his slaughterhouse regime. Nevertheless, the case for Kurdish rights would later be used as part of the justifications for the interventions in Iraq made by both Bush administrations. In 1991 it was convenient for George the Elected to make quick use of the Kurdish claim to rights and promptly abandoned them soon after withdrawal. Yet the Americans created a no-fly zone over the country they betrayed the Iraqis again, with support for Saddam over Iraqi dissidents and support for sanctions which ravaged the country.

 

    This was not the first time the Kurds had been betrayed by the US. It was in the 1970s that the caretaker administration of Gerry Ford pledged support to the Kurds and compelled them into a rebellion. It was an insurgency that was only defeated once the Iranians and the Americans abruptly withdrew their support for the Kurds. Later, The Kurds actually benefited from the no-fly zone in that the dark days of the late 80s were not revisited. By that time the campaign of violence had hardened the forces of Kurdish liberation. There was a price for this breathing time, Iraqi 'Kurdistan' later found itself the door into the country for Abu al-Zarqawi. The presence of Zarqawi in Iraq (the part not controlled by Saddam) was later used to back claims that the Ba'ath Party had links to al-Qaeda. Once again the Kurds would find themselves the beneficiaries of US-led interventionism.

 

    The first election to take place in occupied Iraq during the occupation instated Jalal Talabani as President. Talabani had been a leader of the fight for Kurdish rights and autonomy in Iraq long before and amidst the savagery unleashed upon his people by Saddam Hussein. Talabani's Kurdish sisters and brothers broke into celebration in Iran and Syria. Of course, the election was only held in 2005 after a great deal of protest within Iraq and, in the end, it was arranged to ratify a series of illegal economic measures imposed on the country. The mercurial socialist Talabani had no way of undoing the reforms passed by the Americans at that time. Just as Talabani had pledged loyalty to Saddam Hussein as the strong man annexed Kuwait. Fortunately, for the Kurds, Talabani had made a wise bet, whereas the Palestinians in Kuwait had made a most unwise bet. Soon the Palestinians became victims of Kuwaiti reprisals and were ultimately expelled.

 

    It is not difficult to see why the Kurdish question has gone unheard, only to be neglected by the Left as the US invaded Iraq and exploited by liberals at the same time. Whenever the rights of Kurds have positive value for the West then the discourse will turn in their favour. So as the Kurds became a force for opposition to Tikriti gangsters and the mullahs in Tehran the apologists for Empire discovered them. It's worth mentioning that the poison gas method employed by the Ba'ath Party was first advocated by Winston Churchill. That was just as the British occupied Iraq after the state was created in the aftermath of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It may be due to the lack of a certain plan for Kurdish emancipation that it has left the Kurdish people in an ambiguous position with regard to the American superpower. The Palestinians are certainly the victims of American imperialism.

 

 

 

    However, this should not deter us on the radical Left from standing in solidarity with the Kurds. The artificial condition of the borders of states such as Iraq and Syria lends greater weight to the case for Kurdich autonomy. The political emancipation of the Kurds may offer a way to redefine boundaries created by imperialism. It was the interests of British and French colonialists (let alone the Turks and the Russians) have always prevailed over any demands for Kurdish autonomy. This was the case when modern Iraq was created, the Kurds were first promised independence and then briskly stabbed in the back over the oil under their feet. Instead of a democratic state the Kurds were absorbed into Iraq, a state constructed without any regard for local tribal formations. And so it was the Kurdish people were left to languish in abject servitude for decades to come.

 

    We can further the cause of human emancipation without giving up on anti-imperialism. The liberation of the Kurds won't be fulfilled until the boundaries created by Empire are undermined and the economic system that sustains the situation in the Middle East has been overhauled. The bourgeois forms of liberation made possible by liberal interventionism may hold extrinsic value insofar as these means facilitate the emancipatory process. The invasion of Iraq had tremendous disvalue, the occupation was a great injustice and Iraq still lives with the horrifying consequences of its results. The intrinsic value is in the ultimate liberation of human beings. It's possible to walk a fine line on this question. It takes subtlety and sophistication. Something our discourse lacks desperately. Even if the Iraq war had been a total success then the position of the Kurds would still be one of relative insecurity. It was a military project that was never concerned Kurdish liberation.

 

    There are obvious limitations in liberal internationalism as in the precarious position it has left the Kurds in. The copious quantities of oil under the feet of men like Massoud Barzani means that the autonomy may well be subject to the whim of foreign interests. The prospects of independence are interesting right now as a new pipeline between 'Kurdistan' and Turkey may enable the Kurds to export oil without permission from Baghdad. Potentially this could give 5 million Iraqi Kurds a degree of economic independence in order to further enable greater political independence. It's not impossible for Turkey to decide that it is not in its interests to defy Baghdad and break up Iraq. After all the Turks have their own Kurds to worry about. As Patrick Cockburn reflects "Self-determination is close, but not quite there yet."

Eurofreaks!

Much has been made of the democratic deficit in the European Union (and no doubt there is a battle to be won) yet the right-wing critics usually have little to offer by way of serious reform of the system. This is especially so as many rightists would just like to see the whole project crash and burn. The improvement of the system could only risk prolonging its existence. At best the Right offers to reaffirm liberal ideas of democracy and freedom in the nation-states currently held captive by the European bureaucracy. Naturally it appeals to the small government fetishists of libertarian ilk, as well as the hyper-nationalist herd and populist shepherds like Nigel Farage. It's an easy game to play as the European Union lacks the legitimacy of a liberal democratic nation-state.
 

It's no coincidence that the same people - namely UKIP - who want a referendum on the EU are for the elections for Police Commissioners. The same crowd have been hollering for elected judges, all of which could be of great advantage to smaller parties looking to break in where voter-turnout is light. In such instances, we find that direct democracy is rather convenient for certain figures, those who need a horse to ride to their destination. And yet the majority would prefer a job of such importance to be done well. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the turnout for the election of Police Commissioners was so low. The defects of democracy in such an area of public service are clear to most people. It's only when there is an obvious blockage in the democratic system, as in Europe, that the ideal of democracy can move us to a burning rage. This is why the Eurosceptics need Europe, just as American conservatives need liberals to rail against in the culture wars. Victory would be a defeat.

It is the undemocratic state of affairs in Brussels that the Right can't resolve, as that would mean the end of the basis for their 'scepticism'. The calls for 'democracy' are doubly shallow as the Right has no serious solutions, or even an alternative, to a project which is in fundamental accordance with the neoliberal agenda. The austerity junkies in Brussels are hardly leftists. Yet even as the EU seeks to permanently limit the expenditure of its member-states Cameron vetoed it and still poses as a heroic bulldog to Eurosceptics. It would seem this is really a clash between different concentrations of capital, not the people of European nations. Furthermore, we know that in historical terms the idea that it's wrong to establish a political entity, like a nation-state, without democratic means is groundless. The European Union has developed into a powerful and effective structure precisely because it has no electorate as such. There is no 'European people' in the same way that there is an American people. The EU couldn't have gotten this far without its democratic deficit.
 

Consider the wedge-issue of immigration with regard to the European project. Immigration is meant to be the disruption of our cohesive and well ordered society, through its corrosive impact on civil society by way of its 'otherness', its dependency culture, abuse of our public services and advantage-taking of Western privilege. Common claims like "They're taking the jobs!" and "They're all on benefits!" stand together arm-in-arm in ignorance without bliss. At least these complaints of many working-class people about immigration have an economic basis (a more about that later) which we can't say about the culturalist whining of conservatives. The Eurosceptic rightist tend to foam at the mouth over the apparent loss of British sovereignty, for we can only limit non-European immigration. It's at this point that the Right loses sight of the Muslim 'problem' to gawp at the hordes of Slavs unleashed by the death of Communism. This is the doomed battle of anti-immigrant populists, just like the battle for democracy it cannot be won.

If immigration were actually blocked ff forever then the rightists would have lost in their own victory. Limitations on immigration can't possibly satisfy the demands placed on them: firstly, because the migrant serves a structural need within capitalism for fresh labour to squeeze dry; secondly, migrants can become a point of division insofar as they form a labour reserve army to be deployed to hold down the wages of the working-class. For these reasons immigration can only be impeded temporarily out of a cheap electoral opportunism.  The increased scarcity of labour in Britain would hasten the need for such unpopular measures as higher taxes to support the growing number of retirees. Of course, a cheap way out of this would be to pull the rug out from under the pensioners and privatise the whole pension system. All the while the lack of a readily available reserve army of labour would deprive the system of a means to hold down wages for an ever dwindling workforce.

The real answer of an extensive unionisation across borders to accomodate free-moving labour is out of the question for the Right. Even though that would mean higher wages for 'native' and 'foreign' workers alike. The same can be said of the possibility of repairing the damage of the brutal transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe. The contradiction between the economic need for immigration and the widespread opposition to the unconstrained flow of labour across borders can't be resolved by the mainstream parties. So it is the stomping ground of demagogues looking to ride a wave of racism into public office.

The Refuge and its Scoundrels.

When Dr Johnson famously remarked that patriotism is the 'refuge of the scoundrel' he was actually referring to the Patriotic Party. Johnson was a Tory and wouldn't have written-off the love of one's country, and to some extent, he was right to do so. For patriotism can come in handy, in the war against Fascism it was the Churchillian vision of a determined island nation that held the people mesmerised. It's also worth noting that the great anti-colonial struggles of the last century involved revolutionary nationalism, especially in Vietnam and Cuba. The calls for Irish independence and reunification came primarily from nationalists. Of course, there is the darker side of nationalism, the jingoist harbinger of irredentism and nativism. And it's worth noting that the dark spirit of nationalism is much more common than the progressive and revolutionary possibilities of nationalism. Today we can see the reactionnaire appeals of nationalism against the European Union, while there are active pushes towards independence in Catalonia and Scotland where greater moves to regional autonomy have hardly failed.

It makes sense that the ultra-nationalist defenders of secession are crawling out of the woodwork in Europe at this time. Though this isn't simply the case where independence is concerned. If the referendum had secured Catalan independence recently it seems likely that the new nation would've been quickly subjected to a series of austerity measures. Because once a country of that size has broken-off it would need a new orbit and the European Union offers the strongest alternative. There are progressive arguments in favour of Catalan and Scottish independence. Yet it seems highly unlikely that a fledgling Celtic republic would escape the clutches of neoliberal globalisation either. There's some truth in Portillo's words that the country might easily be transformed into a land of low taxes and a shrunken state sector. In other words, Scotland could easily become a breeding ground for an even more merciless variation on the free-market ideal. At this point we need more unity, not less. This was most potently demonstrated by the demise of Yugoslavia - one of the great tragedies of the last century.

Yugoslavia was a federal socialist system of devolved republics and autonomous regions. It was free of Soviet domination and maintained a multi-ethnic society where Christianity and Islam were practiced side-by-side. All of it was held together under Marshall Tito who inculcated notions of 'brotherhood and unity' into the society as he fought to stamp out the remnants of nationalism in the masses. The state was maintained by a market socialist economy, which featured decentralised cooperatives and worker self-management as well as  a state planning apparatus. It combined the state as a primary mechanism for the organisation of the society and economy, while markets and cooperatives offered secondary mechanisms. The people enjoyed a guaranteed right to a job with a month's paid vacation, as well as free universal health-care and education as part of a comprehensive range of state services. There was never a Soviet-style collectivisation of Yugoslav society, for that may have torn apart the entire project of a country for Southern Slavs.

For a time Yugoslavia prospered with an average rate of growth at 6% and remained a leading model of independent development. The literacy rate reached 90% and life expectancy rose to 72 years. To expand the productive base and increase consumer goods the Yugoslav government borrowed from Western governments throughout the 1960s and 70s. Given that Yugoslavia had achieved development along independent lines (from Russia and not just the US) its federalism came under attack in the 1980s. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia became a concerted US policy as the National Endowment for Democracy began to focus on Yugoslavia as to hasten its breakdown and implement a series of neoliberal reforms. The IMF then began to force an austerity programme on Belgrade as a condition for payments on the country's debt. The austerity measures did not just mean a reduced public expenditure, but huge job losses and wage-cuts for the working. Eventually it would amount to the abolition of workers' self-management in the Balkans.


In spite of the decline of economic conditions inside the country Yugoslavia remained the only socialist republic after the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. The people didn't rise up to overthrow the Communist government despite widespread discontent and rising nationalist sentiment. By now the dream of a Yugoslavia free of the old ethnic strife was dead in the water, with the rise of nationalist demagogue Slobodan Milošević. The Serbian nationalists wanted to hollow out Yugoslavia to establish a Greater Serbia. But the other nationalist movements wanted to break-off from Yugoslavia completely. To hasten the burst of secessionism the US began to yank the chain. In 1990 the Bush administration saw to it that Congress cut-off aid to all Yugoslav republics unless they declared independence within six months. The US demanded elections in all republics and went on to stipulate that every election must meet standards set by the US State Department. Later Italy would try to bribe Montenegro with aid to leave Yugoslavia and join them in the new Europe.

Within two years the US delivered another blow to Yugoslavia in the form of international sanctions to put a halt to all trade to and from the country. The economy quickly dived further into the abyss, unemployment spiralled to 70% while the health-care system collapsed and inflation exploded. Michael Parenti sees this as part of an agenda to turn the Balkans into a Third World developing region and to reverse the achievements of the Communist era. It would be a fractured region of republics incapable of independent development. The economy would be shattered, its natural resources stripped open to exploitation by multinational corporations. The people of Yugoslavia would provide a skilled workforce vulnerable to suppressed wages, as well as a reserve army of labour to be deployed to sink the wages of workers in Western Europe. The designs of neoliberalism to break-up Yugoslavia - only for its people to be rinsed by the forces of globalisation - converged with the aims of nationalists.

What about Mali?

Yesterday.

In early 2012 the US was seen as turning a blind eye to the Tuareg rebellion, at least by many Malians who find it unlikely that the US would not notice the return of many of Gaddafi's fighters-for-hire to Northern Mali. The Malian military overthrew Amadou Toumani Touré because he was seen as too ineffectual in fighting the Tuaregs. A popular view in the country was that Touré had allowed soldiers to be killed defenselessly. Captain Amadou Sanogo seized the healm once Touré was expelled from the country. Sanogo was smart enough to make the usual pronouncements of working to rescusitate democracy and the state's sovereignty. Interestingly, Amadou Sanogo was trained in the US and more than likely had the approval of the US State Department to overthrow Touré. It looks as though the era of coups is not over after all. Nevertheless the military coup failed to prevent the Tuaregs from seizing the North about ten days later. It was then that the Tuaregs declared the North to be the independent state of Azawad, it would seem with Iyad Ag Ghaly at the healm.

The international community has not recognised the declaration of independence. In the new state of Azawad we know that the MNLA has not solidified its hold over the whole territory. There is Ansar Dine, a Jihadist group with alleged ties to 'al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb', which has the aim of unifying Mali under Shariah. The French seem to be leaning towards a 'humanitarian intervention' to restore the South's dominion over the North. Alternatively, there has been some discussion about the prospect of an African-led intervention, probably due to the strained resources of the imperial triumvirate. The Germans have expressed a willingness to train Malian troops. Meanwhile, the Islamist leadership of the forces in Azawad have threatened to launch an assault on Mali's capital if the intervention goes ahead. The drumbeat of war was playing at The Guardian where the case for intervention was laid out on October 17th. The case against intervention was laid out as well, in standard liberal practice - the illusion of neutrality.



In case you haven't heard of Mali, it's the seventh largest country in Africa with a population of around 15 million people. Like many African countries Mali was a French colony until it became independent in 1960, incidentally the demands for Tuareg autonomy predate independence. As for the economic conditions, Mali is built on agriculture specifically cotton in the South and cattle in the North of Mali which has been damaged by American and European economic policies. Around half of the population live on less than $1.25 a day. This remains so even as prospectors are keen to find gold and oil in Mali, while narcotraffickers use the country as a midway point to Europe. The life expectancy in Mali is about 48 years for Men and 52 years for women. In cultural terms Mali is very diverse, 90% of the population are Muslim, 1% are Christian and 9% adhere to an "indigenous religion", though it's not uncommon for Muslims to blend their beliefs with traditional animism. Notably the majority of the population live in the South, while the Northern chunk of the country is actually far larger and extends into the Sahara.



Today.

 

The economic situation in Mali has long been exacerbated by Western policy. The US government subsidises American cotton farmers with more money than the Malian government spends in it's entire budget. Nor can the Malians compete with the Europeans, since the EU subsidises each farmer with 500 euros per each cow and that is even more than the per capita GDP in Mali. The Minister for the Malian economy once said: "We don't need your help or advice or lectures on the beneficial effects of abolishing excessive state regulation; please, just stick to your own rules about the free-market and our troubles will basically be over." His words fell on deaf ears in America and Europe. The politicians placing tarrifs on imported goods and restrict imports by establishing administrative barriers often claim to be "putting country first". Clearly capitalism is not synonymous with economic liberty, whether it be a free-market or free trade. All of this I noted a couple of years ago, and it should kept in mind that Islamism is typically divorced from economic doctrine.

This is where the Tuaregs reside and have long demanded autonomy from the central government in the South. And it's not an illegitimate claim as the nation-state is not an African phenomenon, rather it was an imposition of European colonialism. But that's not to say that these countries can just be torn apart. The Tuaregs could be seen as similar to the Kurds, a desert people who are on the move and reside in countries such as Algeria and Niger. It wasn't until 2012 that the Tuaregs demanded total independence. This may have been avoided had autonomy been granted to the Tuaregs sooner. Incidentally the Obama administration has reached out to the Algerians, with talk of an African-led intervention. It's important to understand this crisis with regard to the NATO intervention that helped to finish off the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Mali's most important neighbours are Algeria, Niger and Burkina Faso, though it was Libya which intervened in Malian affairs under Colonel Gaddafi. Now it looks as though Gaddafi's fall has affected Mali.

Ironic as Gaddafi was the mediator of negotiations between the Malian government and the Tuareg rebels. Near the desperate end the Colonel had even enlisted Malian mercenaries, including Tuaregs, to fight the rebellion. It seems as though the mercenaries passed into Mali with new arms and confident in their experience of a lost battle. It would seem that this is the sort of situation that has already gone too far in its very happening. The Tuaregs have a legitimate grievance, the claim to autonomy was a legitimate one. The hybridity of Malian society, including among its Muslims, shouldn't be forgotten. This is as much a threat to animist Muslims and the remnants of Sufism as it is to Malian Christians and the descendents of slaves. Of course, it follows that the Islamists tearing down Timbuktu's cultural heritage and looking to silence all music is not a legitimate expression of this grievance or any other for that matter. There's the very real possibility that this will become another front in the imaginary culture war between Islam and the West. This remains so if the conflict is left to stew as it was in Sudan.

The Luck of the Irish.

The Blood Never Dried.

It was on October 3rd 1981 that the Irish Hunger Strike came to an end, it was the culmination of a five-year protest by Republican inmates at Maze Prison. For the Thatcher government it was a Pyrrhic victory as the protest came to an end and Sinn Féin became an established party of the mainstream in the wake of the protests. Margaret Thatcher became a Republican hate-figure as she maintained "We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political". So the British refused to budge on the withdrawal of Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners as 10 inmates starved to death. When Bobby Sands died Thatcher had to comment in Parliament "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims". Naturally Thatcher has since been hated almost as much as Oliver Cromwell, who expropriated Irish land and allotted it to officers and soldiers in his army.

The IRA reacted with violence and in 1984 bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton where Thatcher stayed to attend the Conservative Party Conference. In the aftermath the IRA issued the statement: "Mrs. Thatcher will now realise that Britain cannot occupy our country and torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war." Bare in mind that the British government introduced internment in order to detain suspected terrorists without charge. The intention being to crush the IRA but it actually turned into a major recruiting pitch for Republicans. Then came Bloody Sunday in 1972 in which British soldiers fired on unarmed protestors and bystanders, hitting 26 and killing 13 on the spot. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry of 2010 concluded that the shooting was unjustifiable and came without any warning. None of the dead posed a threat to the British soldiers. Finally David Cameron issued an apology for the massacre which was long overdue.

Let's not forget about Irish history. The Easter Rising led to the War of Independence and then to the Irish Civil War of 1922-24, a very savage affair, fought between Irish nationalists on the issue of the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British, which established dominion status for Ireland (a self-governing Free State, but still part of the British Empire) with the right of exclusion (to be left out) for loyalist Northern Ireland. The partition was established in a desperate political compromise with the Irish to save some face before the country could be sufficiently humiliated once more. The seemingly age-old antagonism between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland was instigated by the British in collusion with land-owners looking to exploit religious sectarianism. The division remains a source of great strife in Ireland, while class is pushed aside as an issue of debate at all. Republicanism remain the official means by which the Catholic working-class is supposed to express its' interests. The great irony being the role of Protestants in the roots of the Irish Republican movement.

Back in 1867 Karl Marx noted that the Irish needed self-government and independence from England, to achieve an agrarian revolution it would be necessary to implement protective tariffs against England. From 1783 to 1801 the Dublin Parliament, which represented the Protestant land-owners and bourgeoisie, maintained protectionist measures to insulate Irish industry from England. These measures were possible because the Dublin Parliament was able to attain a degree of independence from England in 1782. Then came the Irish Rebellion of 1798, after that the Dublin Parliament was abolished and the measures it had introduced were reversed. Free trade was established once more between Ireland and England in 1801. All industrial life in Ireland was destroyed, with the exception of a small linen industry, in a manner reminiscent of the measures imposed under Anne and George II to suppress the Irish woollen industry. As Marx pointed out, Canada and Australia had achieved independence only to go protectionist and maintain economic independence from England. The same can be said of the United States.

By the time that WB Yeats was writing the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy had failed to provide any meaningful leadership at the political level and had resorted to a cultural leadership in order to revive the Gaelic culture that they had previously repressed. It was the possibility of a cultural common ground on which all the Irish could head for and leave behind the old politics. What came before the Reformation was the ancient myths which were conveniently excluded from sectarian enmity, the project of the enlightened Anglo-Irish tradition, while it remained an opponent of conservatism. This is where a marginal element of the Protestant elite became fused with Catholics through Celtic revivalism, nationalism and idealism. As Terry Eagleton notes the irony of the Anglo-Irish who dismissed the Catholics as superstitious only to flounder in the supernatural and the spectral, from Bram Stoker to Oscar Wilde. The occult and strange magic served the Irish Protestants as a substitute for Catholic doctrine. But then Dracula could be seen as an Irish landlord deprived of the sustenance of his soil.

In the aftermath of the Rising the British soon put to death the seven, and eight others, who had signed the proclamation of an Irish Republic after the General Post Office in Dublin was seized. This is what Patrick Pearse described as the "blood sacrifice" of the Easter Rising, which was necessary in order for the War of Independence to be fought. The so-called "progressives" of the time in the British Parliament declined to issue a certificate of support for the Irish rebels. The survivors went on to shape history, the 'Big Fella' Michael Collins became leader of the Free Staters and Éamon De Valera went on to help establish the Republic. Incidentally, De Valera had escaped death because his mother was an American and the British government feared alienating the US, whose entry into the First World War on the British side was of top priority in Westminster. De Valera went on to become a cultural conservative and founded Fianna Fáil in 1926 - which has since degenerated to the point that it has signed away Ireland's future to European bankers. By the mid 1920s the small country had been left devastated by civil war and a war of liberation from Britain.

Over the course of the Civil War the same men who had stood shoulder to shoulder in the War of Independence. It began with the antagonism consequent of the establishment of the Irish Free State. From one perspective it might have been seen as the "freedom to achieve freedom", but it was also seen as a betrayal of the movement. As Michael Collins signed the Treaty with David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to seal the deal in 1921 he remarked "I tell you, I have signed my death warrant." And so it was the following year, in the early months of the Civil War, the 'Big Fella' was murdered by Republicans in a roadside ambush in Cork. The people who had fought together for Irish independence then turned their guns and bayonets on one another. The Free Staters set about shooting their prisoners without mercy and the Republicans soon sought revenge. Out of all the slaughter the Free Staters emerged victorious but it would be the Republicans who triumphed in the long-run.  The Irish Civil War left a bad taste behind in the country, as civil wars tend to do even without the kind of partition Ireland has had to endure. Since then it has been sang by some:

"Take it down from the mast, Irish traitors,
The flag we Republicans claim.
It can never belong to Free Staters.
You brought on it nothing but shame…

You've taken our brave Liam and Rory,
You've murdered young Richard and Joe.
Your hands with their blood are still gory,
From fulfilling the work of the foe.

For we stand with Enright and Larkin,
With Daley and Sullivan bold.
We'll break down the English connection,
And bring back the nation you sold…"

Easter, 1916.

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

W.B. Yeats

The Latest Series from Adam Curtis.

Here are the three episodes of the latest series by documentarian Adam Curtis, in full wholes and not in tedious 10 minute chapters, along with the articles I wrote on each episode and the series in recent weeks. I strongly recommend the work of Adam Curtis, whether it be his documentaries, his blog or his articles in the press. The commentary he has to offer is related to the areas of his focus back in Oxford, specifically: genetics, evolutionary biology, psychology, politics, sociology and elementary statistics. In his latest series of films he looks at the way we have come to believe that the old hierarchies of power can be supplanted with self-organised networks from the internet to the global economy. Today we dream of systems which can balance and stabilise themselves without the intervention of authoritarian power. In reality this is the fantasy of the machines, it is not indicative of nature and it is an insufficient means of changing the world for the good.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Ayn Rand, Computers and Capitalism

Adam Curtis has offered a consistently fascinating and intelligent alternative to the realm of acceptable commentary in the mass-media. With the standard BBC accent Curtis comes across as just another Oxbridge liberal and, in all fairness, Curtis studied and worked at Oxford before he went to work in television which means he was born into a bourgeois background. But it is not the case that Curtis is a part of the Establishment and has been routinely attacked by the commentariat for his more controversial documentaries. In Pandora's Box he explores the dangers of the use of technocratic and supposedly rational theories in politics to run society, whether it be the social engineering of Bolshevik Russia or economic science in Britain. The acceptable commentary on monetarism in Britain is that it has been a successful way of controlling inflation and Curtis challenged this and pointed out that the money supply was actually on the rise by the time inflation was brought down to less than 3% in the 1980s.

In the conclusion of The Trap Adam Curtis calls for the reformulation of positive liberty in order to pursue radical change, which will not necessarily lead to tyranny and oppression as Isaiah Berlin argued. Before that in The Century of the Self Curtis argued that the average citizen has become a slave to their own desires, just as politicians have as well, in doing so we have forgotten that we can be more than that and that there are other sides to human nature. In The Power of Nightmares he concludes that the politics of fear will not last forever and leave the political class where it was left to concede that it has no ideas to offer the masses. For him the "War on Terror" is a grand narrative which was used to make sense of the world, it served the interests of politicians, journalists and terrorists in this way. The view of terrorism Adam Curtis put forward in The Power of Nightmares was criticised on the false grounds that he "implied" that al-Qaeda did not exist. It is clear that these are not the projects of just another Oxbridge liberal.

Social Networks, Resistance and the New Capitalism

Holism, White Whines & Multiculturalism

As a commentator Curtis is primarily concerned with the way ideas can effect the world, which would distinguish him from classical Marxists who would stress the role of the economic system in relation to ideas and the way the world is run. He is concerned with the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few. The latest series of films challenges the ideas of the Left which originate in the counter-culture of the 60s. Since then have been fused with the ideas of the libertarian Right, so to eliminate race, gender and class in a radically individualistic conception of the world. For him there is a dire need for leadership and inspirational visions of a better world on the Left, to challenge power we need to go beyond self-organised networks of individuals. There is a lack of a grand alternative to capitalism right now, there are plenty of alternatives which are not articulated well and are left to stew in academic circles for a long time.

The thesis is reminiscent of the Žižekian call for serious collective acts, as well as an examination of old ideas like communism, critique of ideology and the reactualisation of Lenin. We should not be so fearful of power, but rather be willing to use power. Slavoj Žižek would also emphasise that there are times when we can and should just sit still. He has also suggested that the contemporary Left should "begin from the beginning over and over again." In other words, we should not attempt build further on the revolutionary epoch of the 20th Century and descend to the point at which we started and rethink what we are doing. After doing so we can once again attempt to ascend the High Mountain, to borrow a simile used by VI Lenin. Even after the disaster of the 20th Century we should reorganise and make another serious attempt at radical change, just as Samuel Beckett once wrote "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Africa, Barbarism & Civilisation

The Post-Politics of the Selfish Gene

Social Networks, Resistance and the New Capitalism.

Genealogy of Systems.

Adam Curtis has churned out an article on the history of the 'ecosystem' in relation to the protests against cuts. The notion is linked closely with the idea of a universal equilibrium in all of nature. The central problem with the idea is that it can be manipulated by the powerful and utilised to serve other ends. It can be used to justify and enforce a particular view of the world, in order to maintain power structures of authority and domination. The idea of an 'ecosystem' was used by the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s as thousands of young Americans formed communes in order to leave behind the old forms of control - political, hierarchical, sexual and so on. A new order would be forged out of a network of communes throughout which information would flow freely in house meetings and a kind of stability would emerge as a result. In actuality, house meetings turned into sessions in which the strong would bully the weak and everyone else could only stand back and watch.

It was Arthur Tansley who came up with the concept of an 'ecosystem'. He had done so after he read Freud in search of answers for a disturbing nightmare he had in which he murdered his wife. Tansley actually underwent psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud. He took the Freudian idea of the brain as a kind of electrical machine - a network throughout which energy flowed - and applied it to nature. For Tansley the complexity of the natural world conceals an array of interconnected systems around which energy flowed and he coined a name for them - ecosystems. From here Tansley went on to claim that there is a universal equilibrium in nature, everything from the mind to nature and society tend towards a state of equilibrium. Essentially Tansley had projected mechanical qualities onto nature, in order to make sense of the complexities of it, without any real evidence to do so. Then Jan Smuts came along with an even grander theory of nature, Tansley hated it.

Jan Smuts was one of the most powerful men in the British Empire and he ruled over South Africa. When the Hottentots refused to pay their dog licenses Smuts sent in planes to bomb them. Smuts found time to get away from bombing black people to go up into the mountains, get naked and contemplate the natural order of things. Smuts came up with Holism, which held that the world is composed of wholes which are each a part of a giant system that would find its own stability if all the wholes were in their right places. Each of the small wholes are evolving and coming together to form larger wholes until all come together into one big whole. As critics pointed out, Smuts was merely providing a justification for imperialism as well as racial segregation. It was clear that the Empire could be seen as a giant self-organised and regulated system in which wholes are kept in the proper place: blacks should stay in their natural whole and not disturb the order of the system.

The Hippies used a hybrid of the ideas of Arthur Tansley and Jan Smuts in combination with cybernetic theories drawn from recent innovations in computer theory in the 1960s and 70s. The dream of a better world which could regulate and stabilise itself failed time and again, whether the ideas were applied for radical or conservative ends. It is incapable of dealing with power, as there could be no sides to take nor alliances to forge in a totally self-regulated and stabilised system. It leads to that same managerial style of political engagement, which has become prevalent since the end of the Cold War in this post-political era. Today the anti-cuts movement has adopted the same idea of how to reorder society through systems organised through autonomous networks, literally the social networks of the internet. Though it is a very effective way of organising demonstrations which are creative and expressive, it is not an effective method for changing the world. The concentration of power must be confronted.

The New Capitalism.

The article was controversial as it linked the libertarian approach of UK Uncut, and by extension the other anti-cuts demonstrations, with the dominant ideology. In an interview, before even the first episode was shown, Adam Curtis explained that he supports the protests but believes that the form of the protests is deeply flawed. The cuts cannot be defeated by self-organised and regulated networks of individuals rallied through social networks like Facebook. Without adequate leadership or even a central vision the schismatic tendencies within the movement can explode. For Curtis the retreat to the idea of a self-organised resistance is a cowardly one made by the Left from confronting the concentration of power in very few hands. There is a great need for an inspirational alternative to unite and rally the people in protest against the cuts. There is some truth in that given there are alternatives to the cuts, but these alternatives are not articulated very well in protest because of the self-organised nature of the demonstrations.

We ought to note that Curtis refers to the figures of the counter-cultural movement, like Stewart Brand, who converged with the libertarian Right in Silicon Valley. The libertarian Right are opposed to old hierarchies and power structures which obstruct the forces of the market and the freedom of the individual. The central thesis of the free-market libertarians is that the capitalist system will flourish if it is liberated from all old constraints and obstacles. Similarly the counter-cultural Left held that through the construction of systems, outside of political power and away from the Establishment, we can build a new society without hierarchy where we are all free and equal in a system. This is where computers come in as a means of self-regulation through which risks can be removed and stability ensured. Government is redundant and so is the Establishment. Today we find the notion of systems as self-regulating is carried over from the reactionaries to the revolutionaries.


For him we are not living in a post-ideological era, the age in which we live is still thoroughly ideological and Curtis aims to explore politically loaded concepts like ecosystems which are commonly taken as apolitical and objective. The idea of a system composed of interconnected nodes which maintain the stability of the system, through the feedback of information, is profoundly ideological for Curtis. It becomes even clearer when we look at the role of the idea that the innovations in computer technology can rid a system of risk. This is the kind of thought which abolished boom and bust under New Labour. The rise of computers has given birth to the idea of a new kind of capitalism in which perpetual growth is possible and the system is not only capable of self-regulation but also self-organisation. The inherent risks and instability of the system can be abolished forever whilst competition and productivity can be enhanced.

Adam Curtis is suspicious of the suggestions that the web has distributed power just as he is opposed to the suggestion that the market has distributed power and that even the class system has been broken down by the meritocratic forces of capitalism. We have abandoned the belief that there could be a better world, that is not based on market principles, and have settled for a managerial approach to capitalism. There has been a shift from the Enlightenment view, that the human being is separate from nature, to the idea that we are each one node in a chain which constitutes the entire system. The system is too complex for a single person to understand, but it can be analysed and predicted by computers. It can remain stable through the flow of information. All of this underlies the view that there can be an economic equilibrium to the radical idea of autonomous cells of resistance to global capitalism. The recent demonstrations in Britain parallel a tenet of the dominant ideology which the protesters are fighting against.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

THE RISE OF THE MACHINES AND THE DREAM OF A STABLE WORLD WITH NOVELISTS, ANIMALS, THE WORLD WIDE WEB, PRESIDENTS, LOVE, CYBERNETIC PROPHETS, A BALANCED ECOSYSTEM AND A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS.

Good news fellow travelers, Adam Curtis is back with a new documentary series called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, it's title was borrowed from a poem by Richard Brautigan, it looks to be typical of his style and quality. Apparently the "vertigo-inducing intellectual leaps, choppy archive material and disorienting music" will be included in the package. The central focus of the documentary is the way computers have not liberated us, contrary to popular belief and instead we have lost our vision in a disillusioned age of managerial post-politics. Engrained in computer systems are notions of a perfect balance in ecosystems, ideas which go back to the hippies but have made the leap to Silicon Valley and then onwards to Wall Street. With some contributions from Ayn Rand and Richard Dawkins along the way of course, we know Enron couldn't have done without the selfish gene and free-market fundamentalism.


The pseudo-spiritualism of hippie counter-culture in the 1960s with it's communal living, free love, experimental psychedelia and emphasis on the balance of nature's ecosystems have had a great deal of impact over the trajectory of recent decades. It was a cultural revolution of sorts, the individualism of which has since been harnessed by the system. Some of the hippies went on to be major figures in Silicon Valley, the ideas of a natural equilibrium have been built into technology. Now we have social networks as the sign that we are all free and connected, even in love. The idea of a economic equilibrium is appealing to radical free-marketeers like Ayn Rand with her devotee the Chairman of the FED Alan Greenspan. Once we have made the links between hippies turned soft-ware capitalists, Objectivism and the economy we can easily greet Richard Dawkins with his ideas about the selfish gene. But these are just my thoughts on some of the issues Curtis looks at.

WE LIVE IN A DREAM WORLD CREATED BY THE MACHINES WHERE WE ARE ALL CONNECTED AND WE ARE ALL FREE. EVEN IN LOVE. BUT THE MACHINES BROUGHT WITH THEM ANOTHER IDEA, THAT WE ARE ALL COMPONENTS IN SYSTEMS – NODES IN A GLOBAL NETWORK. WE DREAMED THE SYSTEMS COULD STABILISE THEMSELVES, THROUGH FEEDBACK, AND CREATE A PERFECT BALANCE IN NATURE’S ECOSYSTEMS. AND IN HUMAN SOCIETY. AND IN CAPITALISM. WITHOUT POLITICS AND THE OLD HIERARCHIES OF POWER. BUT POWER HASN’T GONE AWAY. IT NEVER DOES.

Adam Curtis was "inspired" to make this documentary when he watched amateur footage of a mass experiment that took place in 1991 and was hosted by Loren Carpenter. Hundreds of people were given a paddle and told nothing, but when a big screen in front of them projected a game of Pong all of them began to participate. The people had to operate it together, spontaneously and without any preparation, in the end they succeeded in playing a game of Pong. Loren Carpenter saw the experiment as freedom and order manifested. For Curtis the people were not free at all, in the self-organising systems we are expected to be "happy components" in a machine and our only duty is to stabilise the machine. We are all just cogs in the machine, each important in a way though as a mass the individual cogs are irrelevant and only matter in relation to the machine working smoothly.

Katharine Viner was right to emphasise the focus on power in the documentaries Curtis has churned out over the last 20 years. With Pandora's Box (1992) it was the use of science to control society and shape human beings. Similarly The Mayfair Set was about the collapse of political rise and rise of corporate power. The Century of the Self looked at the rise of Freudian psychoanalysis and the appropriation of Freud's theories by the public relations industry to market goods to consumers. My favourite is The Power of Nightmares in which politicised fear is explored as the only way for politicians to mobilise people in a disillusioned age. Now Curtis has moved onto machines and the way that the idea of a self-regulating ecosystem in nature has been torn from the thoughts of hippies and has become engrained in technology. The idea of a natural equilibrium eliminates the reason for the state and automatically writes-off all possibility of state-intervention. In this sense, the commune is a model for social networking as it is self-regulating and non-hierarchical.

Adam Curtis has also worked with Charlie Brooker in the past and has recently written for The Guardian in the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden. He argued that the death of bin Laden may herald the end of a grand narrative which has served American politicians, Western journalists and Islamists well in making sense of the world. It is only a question of what kind of narrative will open up to make sense of the world now, Curtis speculates that it may be the rise of China which will give America a reason to reassert itself in the world. This could be true as there has already been a great deal of emphasis on American decline and Chinese ascension in the mainstream discourse. Donald Trump made a big deal about imposing a tariff of 25% on imports from China. He might be right unless the Obama administration finds a way to maintain the current narrative of terror. As I am a fan of Curtis I will be making a post for each episode of his new series and I strongly recommend his work to all reading this article.