Bubblehammerblog

Yesterday afternoon I was in a large charity shop, called Bluebell Wood. It was quietly busy, but above the usual hubub a single voice could be heard clearly; it was a tubby, scrub-bearded youth of about eighteen, he looked rather like a younger version of Comic Book Guy, who was talking to the ear of a disinterested older man busy making marks on a clipboard. It was action films he was talking about.

“A love it, me. A've seen em all. A count em, me, tick em off in this book. Name any film, an a'll tell yer ow many...”

He began naming various current action blockbusters, commending each for the number and glory of its explosions, woundings and fatalities. No one in the shop could escape the voice, but when I took a mildly interesting book from a shelf and started reading the volume seemed to decrease to a murmur. A few seconds later the voice intruded again. He'd turned up the volume and was now declaiming to the assembled listeners:

“Of course, the numbers were grossly exaggerated. Grossly exaggerated.”

Now he was talking about the Shoah. He clearly enjoyed the phrase 'grossly exaggerated' because he said it again. He then went on to explain that had so many really died at Auschwitz it would have taken 68 years to kill them all. This number had not just been plucked out of the air, but was the result of extensive scientific research conducted into the capabilities of cyanide gas and furnaces in the annihilation of human persons.

I found myself standing before this young man, the owner of the voice. He blinked, I tried to smile.

“Who told you the numbers are grossly exaggerated?”
“A red it. A study it.”

The other customers had turned and were listening now.

“You like to watch people being killed. Is that why you study it, so you can imagine yourself counting off the naked bodies as they go into the gas chambers?”
“It's history.”

I invite readers to send in their own suggestions as to how this conversation might have ended. I simply walked out of Bluebell Wood into the bright afternoon sun and headed for the fish market.

|

I'm not going to add to the torrent of media babble about last week's shopping and torching disturbances. Any enjoyment I might have got from the sight of politicians and opinion makers elbowing their way up towards the moral high ground to condemn all rioting as 'unexcusable', and trying to outdo one another coming up with the most brutal, vile, spiteful or bizzarre punishment for the perpetrators, was spoiled for me when about Tuesday I watched this video clip.

NATO KILLS 85 CIVILIANS IN LIBYA

Watch it, it's heartbreaking.

The village, called Majer, 150km east of Tripoli, to which NATO brought this massacre has no military significance, no troops, bases nor installations. All the people killed were civilians, including 33 children. Unfortunately for this village it is on the invasion route to Tripoli from the east, and some NATO arsehole decided it needed to be 'neutralized'. To say this represents a serious war crime doesn't begin to describe it.

So when I heard the word 'moral collapse'' coming out of the mouth on Cameron's smooth face I felt like punching it..

Is it not Camron's direct responsibility, this casual massacre of civilians? Not the responsibility of Sarkozy? They're protecting the skins of hardworking Libyans, you might say, from the depredations of the cruel tyrant. Killing children is an unfortunate collateral consequence of this essentially humanitarian endeavor.

The political leaders of the Atlantic Alliance, who diverted the object and purpose of Resolution 1973 to engage in a war of aggression against a sovereign state, are personally responsible before international justice. Indeed, according to the jurisprudence established by the Tokyo Court following the Second World War, crimes cannot be ascribed to either States or organizations, but to individuals. - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28882.htm

And it also struck me, watching these agitated mouths and chins, that our governing elites have form when it comes to trashing and torching cities: Belgrade, Tripoli, Baghdad, are just a few that come to mind. And as for looting, our disappointing children who lay hands on the odd telly, a pair of jeans or box of crisps, are no match for the US Special Forces, who, in a single night in Baghdad in 2003, ransacked most of the material heritage of an entire civilisation. But we should take the realistic view, nation states do not have morals, they have interests.

Should it matter which side, the winners or the losers, committed the war crimes?

Here's an interesting piece about what's happening in Libya:

|

The contradictions thrown up by capitalism have become so glaringly obvious that they can blot out the horizon, fog the landscape, occlude the moon.

What we need now is a plain, ergonomic tool that can be used by anyone to understand the workings of histories and societies. A simple use for such a tool would be the production of slogans. Au pouvoir l'imagination*, seems an apt example. But it would have many other uses and become the Swiss army knife of revolutionaries.

Engineering such a device might start by drawing up various schemata. I came across a recent example of one these at UbuWeb Written by Henry Flynt, it can be found at: http://goo.gl/2geRv

* The original as I recall it was au pouvoir l'imaginaire. My Petit Larousse has under imaginaire : Qui n'existe que dans l'imagination: chimérique. Someone might explain this to me.

|

I read today that the odious twat Martin Amis intends to leave England for good, citing family reasons but also bemoaning the 'moral decrepitude' of the country. He intends to write a novel, to be called 'The State of England', in which he will deliver a clip round the lughole to his disappointing homeland. He doesn't want to be English anymore.

I met Amis once, many years ago. I was limping through Hyde Park, having just had my foot run over by a motorbike. I was almost penniless due to the drink and needed tube fare to get me home. It's never bothered me asking strangers for money; if I'm approached myself I invariably cough up respectfully, recalling a saying of the Besht about not turning your back on an outstretched hand.

It was only when I was halfway through my politely delivered request for a pound coin that I realised I was speaking to a famous son of a famous writer, though I didn't mention it to him.

I think he was alarmed by my Northern accent, which can sound barbarous to his kind, though we speak a more authentic German dialect. He wouldn't look at me, refused me the coin, and concluded the exchange with the words 'Now move on.'

It wasn't his refusal of the coin but those final words, with their intimation of a police order, that caused my knuckles to tingle. I considerd punching him in the face, but thought better of it since the park was busy and my lame foot might impede flight. Now when I glimpse him on TV or see his face in the paper I feel a small pang of regret over that missed opportunity. He has eminently punchable features. If he doesn't deserve a fat lip for refusing me a quid all those years ago he deserves it for the ignorant remarks he made in Manchester about Muslims.

I agree with much of what Amis said about England – but has he only just noticed that the monarchy are philistines and the culture superficial? He clearly despises working people, (the leading character of his new novel is a lottery winning violent criminal called 'Lionel Asbo'), imagining that they are responsible for the superficiality of the tabloid press and the loathsome 'celebrity culture' that fills it..

He can't help feeling nostagic for the Empire though, and like others of his class links it's passing to the continuing decline we're experiencing now. He says that were he to be offered a knighthood he'd refuse it. That's how jolly well fed up he is. You can hear guff like this at the bar of any boozer in the Home Counties.

And where's Amis going to escape English philistinism and superficiality? You guessed it – America.

|

From today’s Ha’aretz, under the headline, Israel's plan for next year's school curriculum: Reinforcing Jewish and Zionist values

A survey released two weeks ago found that 60% of Jewish youths aged 15-18 believe "strong" leaders are more important than the rule of law, and 70% believe that when the state's security needs and democratic values conflict, security should win out. In addition, 46% said Arabs should not be allowed to serve in the Knesset, and 50% said they opposed having Arabs live in their neighborhood. The main trend is that Jewish nationalist values were growing stronger, and respect for democratic-liberal values were weakening, concluded the survey-makers.

So Jewish values and Zionist values are the same thing?

I know this is too easy a trick to pull but let’s turn the clock back to, say, 1935, and run that paragraph again:

A survey released two weeks ago found that 60% of German youths aged 15-18 believe "strong" leaders are more important than the rule of law, and 70% believe that when the state's security needs and democratic values conflict, security should win out. In addition, 46% said Jews should not be allowed to serve in the Reichstag, and 50% said they opposed having Jews live in their neighborhood. The main trend is that German nationalist values were growing stronger, and respect for democratic-liberal values were weakening, concluded the survey-makers.

Far too easy.

|