Assange and a coop

We walked back from the V&A and came to Harrods, since I wanted to see the police guard round the Ecuadorian Embassy at the back - the one costing £11 million over the last 3 years, or £9,000 a day according to LBC last year.

We could hear a megaphone, but rounding the corner we saw a woman bawling animal rights slogans outside Harrods' café. We turned left into Basil Street and there at the far end was a lone policeman by the Embassy door, who spotted our attention, slank away into Hans Crescent and disappeared.

£3,000 a multi-personnel shift. Maybe there was some scheme going there, or had been. I wonder how this would have been explained to the National Audit Office. Cheaper surely to spy on him from an upper storey of Al-Fayed's shop, which is what Assange is now claiming.

Allegedly, what is effectively a house arrest is getting to him. According to Buzzfeed News, which has "independently corroborated several details from within [leaked Ecuadorian] documents" - a phrase that could mean anything - he's going crazy there and the Ecuadorians have kited various ideas to get him out, including smuggling him out in drag, like Mr Toad's washerwoman.  The Telegraph obligingly re-rumoured this fluff, which originated with Brazilian journalist Fernando Villavicencio.

Villavicencio is described by the Latin Times as an "opposition activist", so again there may be another agenda at work. For the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is an anti-globalist and according to the Sydney Morning Herald warned the UK as he offered asylum to Assange, "You don't know who you are dealing with".

There's a reason for that ignorance, and Assange's outfit Wikileaks has tried to amend it, shedding light on transnational agreements being forged in secrecy, such as TISA and TPP. Previously also, Wikileaks leaked details of masses of US State Department cables relating to what many now see as the illegal war in Iraq, and footage and other information about the 2007 "collateral murder" airstrike in Baghdad.

Forty-odd years ago the USA was tearing itself asunder over the Vietnam My Lai massacre (Lt Calley ended up with three years' house arrest, like Assange - and then a Presidential pardon, something Chelsea Manning has so far been denied). Today we are encouraged to take a much more hawkish view. Clausewitz said "War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means"; Wikileaks is educating us on both, to the fury of the USA.

The pretext for the ongoing Ecuadorian Embassy siege? The BBC summarises, in part:

______________________________________

11 August 2010

Julian Assange arrives in Sweden on a speaking trip partly arranged by "Miss A", a member of the Christian Association of Social Democrats. He has not met "Miss A" before but reports suggest they have arranged in advance that he can stay in her apartment while she is out of town for a few days.

14 August 2010

"Miss A" and Mr Assange attend a seminar by the Social Democrats' Brotherhood Movement on "War and the role of media", at which the Wikileaks founder is the key speaker. The two reportedly have sex that night.

17 August 2010

Mr Assange reportedly has sex with a woman he met at the seminar on 14 August, identified as "Miss W".

[And then the sweethearts learned about each other...]

Some time between 17 and 20 August, "Miss W" and "Miss A" - the woman who arranged his speaking trip - are in contact and apparently share with a journalist the concerns they have about aspects of their respective sexual encounters with Mr Assange.

Cue the European Arrest Warrant - withdrawn 21 August 2010 ("I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," says one of Stockholm's chief prosecutors, Eva Finne) - but the case is reopened by Swedish DPP Marianne Ny on 1 September, who applies for extradition.

At first it is said that the law requires Assange to be questioned on Swedish soil; two years later it is said to be "a matter of prestige."

Some will see the Swedes as beaters, flushing out Assange for a vengeful American State, and the British Government as guarding the cage in readiness for the release of the bird.

What happens when "my country, right or wrong" turns out to be "wrong", and no longer your country?


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Puppet politics

I keep asking what exactly is meant by "Left" and "Right", which are used more as labels in political argument to cut discussion short before it becomes intellectually awkward. Here's a suggestion:

I think we need to move on from the Left-Right way of seeing. Tony Blair could just as easily have stood for the Conservatives that his father had supported. It is about power, and both sides of that specious divide love it.

Immigration suits the businessman - cheap labour supports his profits while an expanding population creates additional demand. Ironically the Socialists may be cutting their own throats by going along with it, as the economically poorer countries from which many of the immigrants come have traditional ideas about family and community and may agree with British Conservatives when the latter preach that you should look after your own and not have to pay higher taxes for layabouts to whom you are not related.

As inequality of income and wealth increases, the most fortunate are in a position to detach themselves from their native lands and float about the world like the inhabitants of Laputa, escaping taxes and regulation and increasingly, using their servants in the political assemblies below to change the rules on both to suit themselves. And of course they are also co-opting the Fourth Estate. I have long said that this nexus of business, politics and the media is becoming the new pan-European (perhaps global) aristocracy. "Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (Let others make war; you, fortunate Austria, marry)."

I suppose they also hope to escape the dangerous social consequences of the instability they create, but perhaps like the ancient Mayans they will discover they are more dependent on their inferiors than they had assumed.


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Did a Bond film inspire Monsanto's Terminator gene?

The James Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is on ITV today. Released in 1969, the movie, scripted by Richard Maibaum, features Telly Savalas as the villain Blofeld. His scheme is to threaten the use of a biological agent that will permanently render infertile selected crops and animals.

In reality, the technology for this was developed much later in the USA - the patent application was not submitted until 1994. Its potential is, to use an overused word, awesome. Imagine the profit - and power - if you could make the world's farmers buy their seeds from you afresh, every year. Or refuse them.
 
"The technology was developed under a cooperative research and development agreement between the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land company in the 1990s, but it is not yet commercially available," says Wikipedia article on "genetic use restriction technology".

Monsanto bought Delta and Pine Land in 2007 for $1.5 billion, having previously (1999) pledged never to "commercialise gene protection systems that render seed sterile". (Note the careful use of the word "commercialise".)

That hasn't stopped Monsanto from patenting seeds and suing farmers whose crops have been inadvertently contaminated by GM plants. In 2011, the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association brought a lawsuit challenging what they saw as the aggressive pursuit of such patent claims, but it was thrown out and a year ago the US Supreme Court upheld the decision.

As Ludwell Denny said in "America Conquers Britain" (1930):

"We shall not make Britain's mistake. Too wise to try to govern the world, we shall merely own it. Nothing can stop us. What chance has Britain against America? Or what chance has the world?"

From the review of the book in the Sydney Morning Herald (7 April 1930)

Denny did not foresee that eventually it would be, not nation against nation or empire against empire, but multinational corporations over all. We shall be managed, farmed...

Bond villains are not so implausible, then.


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A child's-eye view of robofascism

The above clip is from a child's game called Raft Wars 2. As with the original, cute little characters (including a baby) bravely battle a series of teams of bad guys.

But one of the teams in version 2 interests me. The bad guys are in blue and labelled "Security" - and not our security, obviously. This team appears more than once in the game, and has a helicopter and several missile-launching drones.

Is it too much to treat this as a sign of the times? More in a moment...

IT'S BEEN 40 years since the William Tyndale School scandal began to brew- ooh lefty teachers and their progressive methods, good job they were smacked down.

Except that such methods were not unique to that school, but were generally accepted and enshrined in the Plowden report. Today even more than then, we are aware of the multiple differences between children in their mental and emotional makeup, not to mention the multifarious traumas that they carry with them because of modern widespread family dysfunction.

A not-terribly-well-written 2008 review of the affair by a retired head (how come so many teachers can't write?) got a riposte from Brian Haddow, the deputy head at the time. He maintains that what made it important to smack down Tyndale was that implicit in a more cooperative learning approach is the principle of active democracy.

Up to a point. Tyndale was a gift to reactionaries because of the intransigence of the leadership. If the latter had taken time to sell their ideas to all those involved, tweak their systems in the light of experience, and soothe those who were upset, the outcome might have been very different. But the British are just as uncompromisingly self-righteous as any other nation - quite possibly we can blame the revolutions and civil wars of the eighteenth century onward, on the pig-headed Puritans that Elizabeth I contained for so long during her reign. So it was "my way or the highway" - and the fragmentation began.

As I recall, the leaks and counter-briefing began with a member of staff who was not a teacher and who didn't feel her views had been valued (some teachers today may find that their TA can be a challenge as well as an asset).

At any rate, Parliament got into the control issue and we now have inspectorate squads of Fault-Finder Generals roaming the country in search of schools to pick apart and justify conversion to the Latest Great Thing: Academies! The business model rules - if by that you understand widening disparity in pay, increasingly high-handed (and venal) management, etc. We've seen it all before in tertiary education.

Returning to Brian Haddow's letter, one of the things he says points the way to the debate we should be having today:

"We are tightly regulated and policed because of social fragmentation and a breakdown of ideological consensus."

I'm not sure when we did have consensus, except in response to the dreadful threat of the Nazis and then the need to rebuild our country after 1945. But economic globalism is driving fat wedges into our population, as billionaire Jimmy Goldmsith warned so clearly in 1994 during the GATT talks (see the interview here). With overpriced assets (especially houses) powered by ridiculous levels of debt, we cannot possibly drop our wages to compete with the emerging economies. The playing field has been heavily tilted towards mobile capital and against much-less-mobile labour.

And then there is identity. I find it really hard to understand why political leaders don't appreciate how much identity matters to people. Yorks v Lancs, Scots v sassenachs, one football team v another - surely it must be obvious that these reflect fundamental instincts that need to be handled very carefully. Yet the EU's insistence on totally unrestricted freedom of movement creates just the sort of strains that its starry-eyed Ode To Joy brotherhood theme was meant to deal with. There is no such thing as a unihuman.

Now since globalism won't work*, it must be made to work, and the hammer to drive the square peg into the round hole is: security.

The "conservatives" (they aren't) with their money-obsession, and the Left with its amorphous goodbuddy dreams are combining to create the conditions for fascism.

Do we really want a world full of robospies and ubiquitous buzzy drones? Do we have to make nervous old ladies check for beardies under the bed? Couldn't we just have national sovereignty and the Rule of Law?
______________

*(Of course, it does work - most for those who matter most - otherwise it wouldn't be allowed.)


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Crouching Koala, Hidden Dragon

By Daley & Riley

Australia has signed a wonderful trade agreement with China. It will "open up billions of dollars in new markets for Australian exporters."

Except that increasingly, the assets producing these exports will be owned by the country they're going to. Oz is going the same way as the UK: quisling politicians and businessmen are selling off not just the family silver but, bit by bit, the estate itself.



Veteran comedians Clarke and Dawe are not fooled. That doesn't help

farmlandgrab.org tells us how mighty concerns are buying up the world's agricultural resources, while internet wits comment daily, wryly and helplessly, like birds in a cage on the back of a cart. If you're lucky, you can make a living out of protest, that's all.

Businessmen, they drink my wine
plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
know what any of it is worth


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Ebola and liberty

Ron Paul argues that the solution to containing diseases like Ebola is to allow foreign countries to grow their economies so that they can afford modern medical facilities.

On the face of it that makes sense, as does so much of he says. But it does link to another issue: what is free trade, and what should it be?

Twenty years ago, billionaire Sir James Goldsmith warned that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade would destabilise society by undermining the labour forces of developed economies. This is exactly what has happened, and it also has the potential to unsettle the countries to whom the work has been outsourced or "offshored". I had previously produced a jokey graphic to illustrate the disruptive effects of what I might call "free trade without brakes or steering":

from Broad Oak Magazine, 18 June 2012

The order-givers have, in effect, used the Chinese like coolies and are quite prepared to switch to other countries (such as Vietnam) to keep down labour costs; and to "re-onshore" business to the USA when robots can do the work instead.

I don't at all include Ron Paul in this picture, but it does seem to me that if we are to have peaceful evolution on world trade then we need more than GATT, TPP and TTIP, which are (as far as I understand) simply battering-rams for accumulated capital to force its way into markets irrespective of the human costs there and at home.


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ISIS vs CHERWELL

ISIS now faces formidable resistance from a new force called CHERWELL. The latter's acronym stands for Corporate Hellcats' Endless Robot Wars Extending from Libya to Lebanon.

A General Atomics Predator deploying an AGM-114 Hellfire Missile

Unfortunately, since the remote operators are unworldly youngsters recruited from GTA5 and Minecraft fanboards, the prospects for peace in Oxford have dimmed. After Mesopotamia, Jericho? Then the Bodleian?


(Click to enlarge)

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MAD

AK Haart raised the question of how over-entertainment and superinformation are changing us. I think it's at least as serious an issue as the phoney drugs war.

Mentally Addictive Devices (MAD) seem to me to be shortening attention span, overstimulating and exhausting the mind with trivial and repetitive tasks, and fostering a hazy expectation of instant gratification in other aspects of life.

They also divert attention from pursuing action that furthers one's real long-term interests - there are students flunking college because of their addiction to computerised role-playing games.

And they override alertness to real physical risk. Look at those who walk blindly across a road while on their cellphones; and the poor girl murdered on a Birmingham bus last year had previously noted the strange behaviour of what was to be her killer, but had merely commented on it on her phone - I think the phone gives the illusion of society and so misleads one into a false sense of security.

What if Orwell's eternally ruling Party had realised that you could subjugate the people with endless dreams?


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Magna Carta - the tree of freedom is plucked bare

Images adapted from: BBC, Saga's Cottage

 

We think of Magna Carta as a bulwark of English liberty against arbitrary State authority, and it was seen as that at the time:

 

From a list of inscriptions found in Tewkesbury Abbey:

 

309. In the Presbytery (the second brass from the south).
 

(Clare chevrons) Gilbertus de
Clare nomine primus

comes Glocestrie 6s et Hertfordie
5s Obijt 25o Octobris Anno dni 1230.
(pen) Magna carta et lex
caveat deinde rex (scroll).

 

Translation:

 

Gilbert de Clare, the first of that name, 6th Earl of Gloucester and 5th of Hertford, died 25th October A. D. 1230. Magna Carta and law, let the King henceforth beware.

 

That same inscription was quoted by Stanley Baldwin less than 80 years ago:

 

" "Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out."

So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out."

• Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 4

Yet very little of Magna Carta remains in force, as A P Herbert pointed out in his humorous "Misleading Cases" piece from 16 February 1927, "Rex v. Haddock: Is Magna Carta Law?" Albert Haddock is trying to get out of (or have reduced) a parking fine, but the judge says:

 

"... it was argued before me that at least that portion of Chapter 29 still has effect which reads:

 

'Nor will we proceed against a freeman, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.'

 

But it was proved in evidence that in fact this method of condemning the freeman is the exception rather than the rule, and it was suggested that this portion of Magna Carta must be interpreted in the light of recent statutes, so that it reads:

 

'Nor will we proceed against a freeman, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, or Government Departments, or Marketing Boards, or Impregnable Monopolies, or Trade Unions, or fussy Societies, or Licensing Magistrates, or officious policemen, or foolish regulations by a Clerk in the Home Office made and provided.'

 

The judge in that story also points out that notwithstanding Clause 40, the law is known for its delays - and expense:

 

"... much justice is sold at quite reasonable prices, and ... there are still many citizens who can afford to buy the more expensive brands."

 

What's left?

 

From the BBC:

 

"Only three of the 63 clauses in the Magna Carta are still in law. One defends the freedom and rights of the English Church, another relates to the privileges enjoyed by the City of London and the third - the most famous - is generally held to have etablished the right to trial by jury.

Below are the full translations of the relevant clauses from the 1215 copy of the Magna Carta held at the British Library.

1. Clause 1: The liberties of the English Church

"First, that we have granted to God, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired.

"That we wish this so to be observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church's elections - a right reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and importance to it - and caused this to be confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith by our heirs in perpetuity.

"To all free men of our Kingdom we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs."

2. Clause 13: The privileges of the City of London*

"The city of London shall enjoy all its ancient liberties and free customs, both by land and by water. We also will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall enjoy all their liberties and free customs."

3. Clauses 39 & 40: The right to trial by jury

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

"To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled . nor will we proceed with force against him . except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. "  "

How few leaves are left on the tree of liberty! And if so many have been blown away already, what guarantee do we have that the rest may not fall?

If we love the idea of liberty, we shall have to re-assert it, and there are new aspects that we might wish to address in a modern version, particularly the endless spying by the State on its citizens.

That's if we can call the State to account any more. After all, we are not powerful barons, nor (it seems) is the Crown in Parliament fully sovereign.

The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta falls on 15 June 2015. Should we do something for that day?
__________________________________________________

*See Graham S McBain's "Liberties and Customs of the City of London – Are There any left?" (2013) - www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ilr/article/download/28685/17142


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Is the UK a tax haven? For frackers?

The Washington Post lists a host of US companies that have relocated their official headquarters overseas to reduce tax.

Apart from the usual dodgy destinations - Bermuda, the Caymans etc - there are some who have chosen the UK, and three of them are drillers. Is there a story here?

Data from Washington Post.

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Overpopulation and the New World Order

(Pic source)

If the above graph was of the stock market, where would you expect the line to go?

Meanwhile, as the world's population increases and we are crushed closer together, our social and political arrangements move towards tighter control, says JimQ on Washington's Blog, developing the ideas of Aldous Huxley, who "foretold all the indicators of a world descending into totalitarianism due to overpopulation, propaganda, brainwashing, consumerism, and dumbing down of a distracted populace in his 1958 reassessment of his 1931 novel Brave New World."

In the animal world, a population "correction" can be devastating:

(Source)

But that is because animals lack foresight and management. In the event of global social breakdown - civil war or anarchy - such a disaster might happen to us.

The UN offers a range of projections:

(Source)

 

Assuming instead that we have governments that aren't cruel, mad or seriously incompetent, then we have to agree to being managed with a view to the long term. But the twentieth century shows us that we cannot take that assumption for granted.

And a heavily interconnected world is more vulnerable, in all sorts of ways. Rulers seem to think that centralisation is the answer, whereas diversification and dispersion may offer the best chance for species survival.


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Scotland's Government-appointed godparents

I don't know how I missed this...

"The proposal to appoint specific named persons from the NHS and councils to monitor every young person's well-being from birth to 18 is considered one of the most controversial aspects of the bill."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-26208628


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Tax haven sh*ts

Vanuatu Independence 1980 ribbon and medal (Images source)

Andrew Roberts in this week's Spectator:

"To the magnificent Skinners’ Hall in the City to watch my wife, Susan Gilchrist, CEO of the financial communications group Brunswick, be feted as a newly elected honorary fellow of King’s College London. A tremendously proud moment, only slightly spoilt by the fact that I seemed to be about the only person there not to be wearing an order, medal or decoration. I felt naked. Along the enormous rack of medals sported by Field Marshal Lord Guthrie was a yellow-ribboned one I didn’t recognise, so I asked him what it was for. ‘I had to put down a native revolt in Espiritu Santo about 30 years ago,’ he said, before adding, ‘They only carried bows and arrows and all they wore were penis-sheaths.’ I suddenly felt awfully less naked. Intrigued, I looked into what’s called the coconut war of 1980 and, needless to say, Charles was being modest. It was a nasty, sharp little engagement in which people died and the French seem to have been on both sides."

From Wikipedia on Espiritu Santo:

Between May and August 1980 the island was the site of a rebellion during the transfer of power over the colonial New Hebrides from the condominium to independent Vanuatu. Jimmy Stevens' Nagriamel movement, in alliance with private French interests and backed by the Phoenix Foundation and American libertarians hoping to establish a tax-free haven, declared the island of Espiritu Santo independent of the new government. A Republic of Vemerana was proclaimed on May 28. France recognized the independence on June 3. On June 5 the tribal chiefs of Santo named the French Ambassador Philippe Allonneau "King of Vemerana", Jimmy Stevens became Prime Minister. Luganville is renamed Allonneaupolis. But negotiations with Port-Vila failed and from July 27 to August 18, British Royal Marines and a unit of the French Garde Mobile were deployed to the Vanuatu's capital island but did not invade Espiritu Santo as the soon-to-be government had hoped. The troops were recalled shortly before independence. Following independence, Vanuatu, now governed by Father Walter Lini, requested assistance from Papua New Guinea, whose forces invaded and conquered Espiritu Santo.

From Wikipedia on the "Coconut War":

Prior to Vanuatu's independence, the islands were known as the New Hebrides. The New Hebrides were governed by a condominium of France and the United Kingdom. In 1980, France and the United Kingdom agreed that Vanuatu would be granted independence on 30 July 1980.

Beginning in June 1980, Jimmy Stevens, head of the Nagriamel movement, led an uprising against the colonial officials and the plans for independence.^[1][2][3][4] The uprising lasted about 12 weeks. The rebels blockaded Santo-Pekoa International Airport, destroyed two bridges, and declared the independence of Espiritu Santo island as the "State of Vemerana". Stevens was supported by French-speaking landowners and by the Phoenix Foundation, an American business foundation that supported the establishment of a libertarian tax haven in the New Hebrides.^[5]

Confrontation

On 8 June, 1980, the New Hebrides government asked Britain and France to send troops to put down a rebellion on the island of Espiritu Santo.^[6] France refused to allow the United Kingdom to deploy troops to defuse the crisis, and French soldiers stationed on Espiritu Santo took no action. As independence day neared, the Prime Minister-elect, Walter Lini,^[7] asked Papua New Guinea if it would send troops to intervene.^[1] As Papua New Guinean soldiers began arriving in Espiritu Santo,^[8] the foreign press began referring to the ongoing events as the "Coconut War".

However, the "war" was brief and unconventional. The residents of Espiritu Santo generally welcomed the Papua New Guineans as fellow Melanesians. Stevens' followers were armed with only bows and arrows, rocks, and slings. There were few casualties, and the war came to a sudden end: when a vehicle carrying Stevens' son burst through a Papua New Guinean roadblock in late August 1980, the soldiers opened fire on the vehicle, killing Stevens' son. Shortly thereafter, Jimmy Stevens surrendered, stating that he had never intended that anyone be harmed.^[9]

At Stevens' trial, the support of the Phoenix Foundation to the Nagriamel movement was revealed. It was also revealed that the French government had secretly supported Stevens in his efforts. Stevens was sentenced^[2] to 14 years' imprisonment; he remained in prison until 1991.

No important people were harmed in the making of this colonial program.


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Where is all the money going?

I read recently that both in the US and the UK, a significant part of the "quantitative easing" is repurchasing sovereign debt from foreign holders. In other words, money is being created to buy back government bonds from overseas investors.

This says two things to me: (a) the new money thus created is not going to help kick-start our economies, and (b) foreigners are losing confidence in us and want out, before inflation and defaults shrivel the value of their investment in us. As to the latter point, I said last August that I thought the Chinese wouldn't let themselves be swindled.

So I suspect we are still headed for slump, currency devaluation and, eventually, high interest rates.

Maybe a new currency, to whitewash the mess and make further progress towards some New World Order political grouping - Oceania, Eurasia etc. Any news on the Amero?

Gordon Brown and the New World Order

"...we can together seize this moment of change in our world to create a truly global society..."

Does he know what he is saying? How would one vote out, or flee, a world government?

As Huckleberry Finn says,"I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it."

Any suggestions as to good places left to flee to?

The New World Order: a philosophical objection

A deep essay by Christopher Quigley here, but one I intend to re-read. Marxist philosophy always made my eyes water, practically instantly, as I have little tolerance for prolonged abstract multisyllabic holy-rolling, but I'll steel myself because we have to have some understanding of the madness that seems to have seized our modern conspiratorial ruling class. "Affairs are now soul-size".