The new Troubles

 

An interesting video c/o Edward Dutton about the recent riots in Northern Ireland. From a "pro-Unionist" perspective, since you want to know. The short story is that Gypsies from the Balkans have settled deep inside a staunchly Loyalist area. You do the math...

These are the new Troubles. 

It´s a crazy, crazy, crazy world

 

- Yes, killer squirrels. I mean, come on...

Some random science articles from the site "Live Science".

Did the wildfires drive them mad, I wonder?  

Killer squirrels in California public park

Everything was better before Christianity. No, wait...

Decapitated woman found in Irish bog

This has apparently been debunked. Well, I hope...

Cats caught bird flue from their owners

Do we even know what´s in our very own cosmic backyard?!

Oort cloud finally confirmed?

A second Kuiper belt?

Does the Donald really want Greenland? And how far above the sea is Mar-a-Lago exactly?  

Greenland´s ice shelf will collapse next century

And finally, an old classic...

What if a meteorite had not wiped out the dinosaurs?

Det nordirländska tillståndet

 

Vår ofrivillige grannbloggare nu igen. Enligt Hübinette har det inte sprängts så här mycket i Sverige sedan slutskedet av kriget mot Ryssland 1809. Lägg även märke till jämförelsen med Nordirland!

När ska vi börja kalla de här händelserna för inbördeskrig? Eller åtminstone terrorism.

Är förresten tillräckligt gammal för att minnas när medierna för bara en månad sedan skröt med att antalet sprängningar i Sverige minsann börjat minska... 

Januari 2025: den månad då det bombats mest på 216 år 

Sede vacante

 

SPOILER ALERT, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

“Angels and Demons” is the second film in the so-called Robert Langdon franchise, based on novels by Dan Brown. It´s the sequel to the notorious flick “The Da Vinci Code”. Somewhat confusingly, the original novels were published in exactly the opposite order, with “The Da Vinci Code” being the sequel to “Angels and Demons”. I never read the novel “Angels and Demons”, but judging by Wikipedia´s summary, it´s more extreme than the film adaptation. But sure, the film is pretty extreme and unrealistic too! That being said, it´s the best of the three Robert Langdon films. Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor and Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård are some of the highlights.

As per usual, “symbologist” Robert Langdon and a female sidekick get embroiled in a crime investigation with religious undertones, and run around various old churches frantically searching for clues in obscure artwork. This time, the entire plot is set in Rome during a papal conclave. The four most likely candidates for the papacy are kidnapped by the Illuminati, who intend to murder them under ritualistic forms at symbolically potent places around the eternal city. The assassin is not a religious or anti-religious zealot, however, but a freelancer who reminds me of Joubert in “Three Days of the Condor”. The Illuminati have also gotten their hands on an anti-matter bomb they intend to detonate inside the Vatican. Since enormous crowds have gathered at St Peter´s Square, thousands of people are at risk of being killed in the blast.

The somewhat unexpected plot twist is that the Illuminati don´t exist, the entire terrorist plot really being planned by the Camerlengo (the pope´s secretary) to make himself pope after murdering his superior. In other words, a classical false flag. The Camerlengo is angry at the pope´s attempts to reconcile faith and science, the pontiff even expressing support for CERN´s search for the “God Particle”. When exposed, the Camerlengo (apparently a Catholic fanatic from Northern Ireland!) burns himself to death as a pleasing sacrifice in the eyes of the Lord. In the novel, the story is even more gruesome, with the Camerlengo being the pope´s illegitimate child with a nun through artificial insemination. Overcome by shame, the unfortunate secretary (who is Italian in the novel) self-immolates.

Well, I didn´t say the plot was logical.

Although released in 2009, one can certainly draw parallels between “Angels and Demons” and the strange shenanigans four years later surrounding Benedict XVI´s resignation and his replacement by Francis I. The riotous crowds in the Piazza San Pietro could be seen as a metaphor for the conflicts between liberals and conservatives within the Church. Real conspiracies – or conspiracy theories – have been mined for inspiration. The Vatican archives, the Vatican bank and the murder of a progressive pope (John Paul I, hint hint) all play a role. Note also the weird coincidence that the new pope in the film calls himself Luke, this being a name no pope has used before. In real life, Francis also adopted a name no supreme pontiff has used before…

So while “Angels and Demons” does come across as Hollywood´s crazy look at a papal election in Old Europe, it does make you wonder about a thing or two. 

Jag är skeptisk

Rätt roligt att Aftonbladet kallar Sinn Fein för "Londonskeptiker" på startsidan. 

Överlag säger nyhetsrapporteringen nästan ingenting om att det faktiskt är en nationell och religiös konflikt mellan två distinkta folkgrupper. Istället framställs Nordirlandkonflikten som en vanlig partipolitisk konflikt á la Brexit.

Londonskeptiker? LOL. Fast det kanske är partiets eget fel? Dagens Sinn Fein kanske är helt jävla gay...

Give them more agricultural subsidies!

Dissolving the United Kingdom? Why not? Scotland and Northern Ireland can Remain. Let the bureaucrats in Brussels solve the Northern Ireland conflict, MU HA HA HA!

For workers' unity and Protestantism

“Troubled Times” is a book by Peter Hadden, who until his death in 2010 was the leader of a small Trotskyist group in Northern Ireland, the Socialist Party (previously called Militant Labour). The Socialist Party is an affiliate of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI). In the United States, the CWI is represented by a sympathizing group called Socialist Alternative, which is involved in the Sanders campaign. And yes, there is a similar group in Sweden, as well (the RS). These guys are everywhere!

Hadden wrote several books on the Northern Ireland conflict. “Troubled Times”, published in 1995, seems to be a general summary of his group's position. Hadden argues at length that Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland aren't two separate nations. Nor are Northerners in general a separate nation. Rather, the two communities in Northern Ireland are still sufficiently close for the sectarian divide to be abolished. Hadden believes that this can only be achieved on the basis of workers' unity and socialism. The Socialist Party therefore opposes all “capitalist” solutions to the Northern Ireland conflict: a united (Nationalist-dominated) Ireland, an independent (Protestant-dominated) Ulster, repartition, power sharing between Sinn Fein and the Unionists, or the British status quo. Many left-wing radical groups, including many Trotskyists, supported Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA, a position Hadden calls “left republicanism” and opposes. Hadden calls on the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) and the unions to call an extraordinary congress, adopt a set of specific socialist demands and struggle to carry them out.

The author believes that the Irish working class, North and South, could have been united and that this came close to happening in the aftermath of World War I, when a wave of militant strikes and mass rallies swept the island. Barricades went up, workers armed themselves and even “soviets” were formed. The British ruling class partitioned the island to split the working class, whip up sectarian frenzy and stop the revolutionary situation from developing. To Hadden, two sectarian states were formed through partition, not just one. The Catholic-dominated Irish Free State, later the Republic of Ireland, was just as sectarian as Protestant-ruled Northern Ireland. An opportunity to unite Catholic and Protestant workers came again during the civil rights struggles and labor upsurges of the 1960's, but was squandered when the Troubles began. Hadden says relatively little about this transition or the Troubles themselves, presumably because they are covered in another book, “Beyond the Troubles?” (which I haven't read).

What makes the Socialist Party of Northern Ireland controversial among many leftists is that they, despite pretending to be against everyone and everything, do seem to have a “Protestant” slant. As Militant Labour, they worked inside the Protestant-dominated NILP, rather than the Catholic SDLP (which is larger and in continuity with the 1960's civil rights campaigns). Hadden's group is opposed even to the slogan “For a united socialist Ireland”, instead preferring the more general “for workers'unity and socialism” or the frankly bizarre “For a socialist federation of Ireland and Britain”. It seems the Irish can never get rid of Perfidious Albion! Hadden even “guarantees” that if the Protestants want to create their own socialist state after the revolution, they will be allowed to do so (it will be smaller than the current Six Counties, though). This respect for Protestant sensibilities seems to contradict what Hadden writes in the rest of his book, however.

It implies that the Protestants really are a separate nation, after all…

Trotsky on terrorism

"Against Individual Terrorism" is a pamphlet published by the U.S. Socialist Workers' Party (SWP). It contains a number of articles penned by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky on the subject of terrorism. The term "terrorism" can mean a lot of different things, and Trotsky's discussion is limited in scope to assassinations and similar violent actions carried out by small groups against hated regimes. He specifically criticizes anarchists and Russian "populists" (Narodnaya Volya, the early SRs). Of course, Trotsky's criticism of terrorist tactics against repressive, authoritarian regimes can also be applied more broadly to terrorism against democratic governments with broad popular support, the indiscriminate killing of civilians in peacetime, and so on.

As a Marxist, Trotsky's objections to terrorism have little to do with "morality" per se. Trotsky's opposition to terrorism flows from his Marxist view of history, where the broad masses in general and the industrial working class in particular are agents of social change, and where the goal is a complete socialist transformation of society. Thus, only the working class can organize real labour unions, go on strike and prepare the mass strike, which will finally bring down the system. Anyone can grab a gun or learn to use dynamite. Terrorism is therefore not a specifically working class form of struggle. Since the masses are the only medium for social change, terrorism is regressive since it replaces the politically conscious mass with the heroic individual or the secretive small group. When the small band of revolutionaries is destroyed by the state apparatus, the masses inevitably become demoralized and passive. Trotsky also argues that terrorism is a historically outmoded form of struggle. Here, he is tacitly appealing to the Marxist schema of history, where capitalism is fated to be replaced by socialism, making individual terrorism at best a road to nowhere. Tyrannicide, celebrated even by "bourgeois" poets, may be romantic but has no place in the new dispensation. His analysis of Russian populist and anarchist terrorism is interesting in this regard.

Trotsky also has more tactical or technical arguments against the use of individual terror. He views terrorism as politically inexpedient, since an assassinated government official is quickly replaced with another just like him. Any temporary confusion in the ranks of the establishment is usually overcome, as the military or police cracks down on the terrorists and cripple the revolutionary movement. Trotsky doesn't believe that terrorism and the mass struggle can be combined. The creation of an underground terrorist organization crave so much planning, energy and resources, that revolutionaries joining it won't be able to function as mass organizers. A dual form of organization doesn't work either, since the legal organization and even the Central Committee will be subordinate to the terrorist organization in practice - otherwise, what's the point of creating one in the first place?

Three of the five articles included in "Against Individual Terrorism" were written before Trotsky became a Bolshevik, at a time when he had a more "Luxemburgist" view of the revolution. This presumably explains the emphasis placed on strikes and the "mass strike". As a Bolshevik, Trotsky regarded a vanguard party as indispensable to the success of the revolution. However, Lenin also saw mass support as essential for overthrowing the old (i.e. mass support for the party), making Trotsky's arguments in the two latter articles virtually identical to the previous ones.

In my opinion, "Against Individual Terrorism" doesn't close the case. The SWP editors regard the following groups as "terrorist organizations" (their term): the Tupamaros, the ERP in Argentina, the ETA-V, the Provisional IRA, Black September, Weathermen and the bizarre "Symbionese Liberation Army". Some of them were supported by the SWP's opponents within the Fourth International. However, the various group mentioned are strikingly different. For instance, both the IRA and the ETA had or developed legal political arms, Sinn Fein and Herri Batasuna, respectively. Sinn Fein was one of the strongest "Catholic" parties in Northern Ireland! It's also unclear why the SWP attack Black September but not Fatah or the PFLP. Indeed, the SWP supported Arafat and the PLO. If they supported the PLO, what's the difference between the PLO and the IRA?

I think it's clear from Trotsky's article that the main Marxist argument against terrorism must be the political one, the argument that terrorists can't transform society in a way specifically congenial to Marxism. This seems to be the tacit supposition of the SWP. An argument from pure expediency is ultimately unworkable. Frankly, I don't think Trotsky has managed to prove his purely technical-military point, that terrorism is always futile or that terrorism and "mass struggle" can't be connected. Obviously, if terrorism is *defined* as "armed actions with no support", then terrorism will always fail, but that's a tautology. The proposition that terrorism and "mass struggle" can't be combined is more interesting. It seems to be incorrect. In Trotsky's own time, there was a right-wing terrorist organization in Macedonia, the IMRO, which had some success due to support from Bulgaria. On the left-wing end of the political spectrum, the IRA may not have defeated Britain, but they eventually forced them into a stalemate, laying the basis for peace negotiations and co-government between Nationalists and Loyalists. If you think this is a desirable goal, then "terrorism" really does work. If you want Cuba-style socialism (SWP's preferred option), I suppose you could say that terrorism doesn't work, after all...

Ultimately, the question is one of different political agendas.

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All roads lead to...Belfast?

"Coriolanus" is an ultra-modern version of Shakespeare, with the original Shakespearean lines intact somewhere among the Northern Ireland rubble. Visually striking, but not my cup of tea, I'm afraid. The strange combination of ancient Roman references, modern warfare and 17th century theatre just makes me nervous. But yes, I may be subjective...