Crystal ball

 

In Tolkien´s "Lord of the Rings" (or at least in the LOTR films), Sauron uses magical crystal balls known as palantírs to spy on Middle Earth. The palantírs are Sauron´s "eyes". Or a fantasy-esque form of surveillence technology, if you like. However, the sinister crystals can also be used to brainwash and control select people. Thus, the wizard Saruman (who was originally good) is "turned" and joins the dark side through the power of Sauron transmitted by one of the palantírs. 

And yeah, after reading Wiki´s nerdy entry on the topic, I realize that the full story is much more subtle than in Jackson´s movie adaption. But...

While created by the Elves, the palantírs are at best ambivalent, at worst evil. Apparently, they were Tolkien´s Christian-inspired warning against magic and pagan divination. Which still makes it...I don´t know...strange that Peter Thiel calls his computer software business Palantir. Yes, this would be the same Thiel who "created" J D Vance, the current vice president of the United States and heir-apparent to a certain Donald Trump. So who is Sauron and who is Saruman in this scenario? Asking for a friend named Gandalf!

Thiel has double citizenship, the US and New Zealand. It´s almost as if I want to write a science fiction short story in which Thiel and Vance tries to overthrow Trump, fails, Thiel escaping to New Zealand in the process. The story ends with Trump ordering the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade the Pacific island-nation (a US ally). Suspense ending! 

Or is this too realistic? I mean, I don´t want to get arrested next time I show my ass in the Lower 48. Or on the North Island, for that matter. 

Waitangi Boy

 

LOL. Dude, get a grip.  

Kiwi migrant crisis

 

Protests in Aotearoa against illegal aliens. Not a moment to soon! 

I learned a new word today

 

Or rather term, the term in question being "Zuiyo-maru truther", a person who still insists that the carcass found by the Japanese fishing boat Zuiyo-maru in 1977 actually was a plesiosaur...

Twitter thread on the topic

The true Taliban Mindset

A very, very bizarre story. 

Taliban helps pregnant New Zealand reporter after her own government abandons her due to COVID restrictions

ComCrit and other cultist shit

In another lifetime, I actually met the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) and the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), the two Trotskyist groups mentioned in the links below. The IBT seemed nice as persons and their message was indeed known as "Spartacism with a human face". The RWL were more weird, but not *that* much weirder than any other hyper-activist leftist group I was familiar with (read: the CWI section in Sweden). Or so I assumed...

The links below show what was *really* going on behind closed doors in the IBT´s New Zealand (sic) section, and the RWL in the United States. I´ve heard the accusations against the IBT before, but the RWL stuff was news. I assumed the RWL was just a bunch of petty bourgeois kids from the local art college who couldn´t tell semi-Stalinophilia from pro-paedophilia, but clearly I didn´t know half of it!

It´s interesting to note that both groups are splits from the super-cultic Spartacist League, although it´s not entirely clear whether there is a direct connection. After all, these kinds of practices, bizarre and deeply *unserious* at the same time, exist in all kinds of outfits...

And since you wonder, I don´t know who Samuel Trachtenberg is (was?), nor have I ever met Bill Logan...

"Appendix 1" (on the PRG) 

"Appendix 3" (on the RWL)

Wtf, I love Evo Morales now

Evo Morales stand-in, heinous Andean capitalista 
Luis Arce 

I forgot to link to this little gem from 2020. This kind of BS is why nobody in Latin America takes Trotskyism seriously, certainly not in this "pure" version. Had I been a Stalinista, I would have said something really nasty about "Yankee imperialist provocation" and what not, but as it is, I just shake my head. But sure, if the IBT has some kind of fantastic game plan to make a revolution in, ahem, New Zealand, I´m sure Red Aotearoa can somehow come to the aid of the Bolivian working class, rescuing them from the heinous political deviations of "Andean capitalism" (whatever that is exactly). 

I´m not holding my breath, though.

"MAS/Arce Election Win in Bolivia: No Victory for Bolivian Working Class"

Logan's run

“The Logan Dossier” is a collection of bizarre documents published by the Spartacist League, a small but notorious far left group in the United States. The Spartacists claim to be Trotskyists, but their politics sound more like a parody of official Soviet Communism. Apart from the main group in the U.S., there are smaller groups of adherents around the world, often with similar-sounding names.

In 1979, the international Spartacist tendency expelled one Bill Logan from its ranks. Logan had been the leader of the bombastically named “Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand” (SLANZ), actually a small group of less than 20 people in Australia. He later became chair of the Spartacist group in Britain. Logan was accused of “crimes against communist morality and elementary human decency”. Are we to believe these documents, the Australian group functioned pretty much as a cult, with all the usual ingredients: hyper-activism, communal living, prohibition against having children, the deliberate breaking up of couples, strange sexual mores, and (of course) authoritarian leadership. The main accusation against Logan was that he had attempted to force a young female member to abort her child, or to foster it out once it was born.

Logan was expelled after a “trial” at an international Spartacist conference. All 393 seated delegates voted for the expulsion. However, the only outside observer of the proceedings, veteran Ceylonese Trotskyist Edmund Samarakkody, refused to participate in the vote. Instead, he submitted a minority report, charging that *both* Logan and the U.S. Spartacist League were equally responsible for the cultic practices in Australia. This seems to be about right. After all, where did Logan learn his practices? During the 1980's, a group of defectors from the Spartacist League, the Bolshevik Tendency, exposed the cultism of the Spartacists themselves. Indeed, it's difficult to see how cultic practices can be avoided in a small, hyper-active group with a hysterical attitude and a completely unworkable sectarian program?

“The Logan Dossier” reprints a letter from an American Spartacist, confirming that the Spartacist League discourages members from having children. While the letter states that such a decision is “ultimately” a personal one, it's difficult to see how this can be the case in a high-demand, authoritarian group where the quasi-official line is that “comrades” shouldn't have babies? Also, frequent transfers of members between cities or even countries were typical of the Spartacist tendency overall, obviously putting strains on members' personal relationships. Several American members were transferred to Australia to aid Logan's operation, while Logan himself was ultimately transferred to London to lead the “Spartacist League of Britain”. My guess is that Samarakkody realized that pretty much everyone in the Spartacist tendency, both accusers and accused, were barking mad and acted accordingly.

The Logan case has an equally strange postscript. After being expelled from the Spartacist movement, Logan returned to his native New Zealand, where he formed a new group around himself. In 1991, this group was allowed to join the Bolshevik Tendency (BT), with Logan quickly being elevated to a leadership position. Yet, the BT had been formed as a reaction *against* the cultic practices of Spartacism, including those of Logan! Soon enough, defectors from the BT began to accuse Logan of cultic manipulations at membership meetings in the form of “communist criticism” sessions (apparently, something like encounter therapy á la Landmark).

Somehow, it feels as if nobody walked away with entirely clean hands in this affair.