Michael Keaney wrote:
> All of this leads me to support Mark's claims
> re the switch made by MI5 and the redundancy of the
> Sherman/McWhirter/Pincher/Rees-Mogg/Harris clan.
Useful stuff. The points are wanted to emphasise are (1) Tebbit's
revelations about spook involvement in the current British General Election
(which I'm sure considerably understate the case in fact) are, as Michael
Keaney says, only the latest in a string of such revelations. The meaning is
that British 'democracy' is a sham; it is an organised ruling class
consipracy, and the orchestration of public mood music, the use of
defanmtion and ridicule and other dirty tricks, and manipulation of public
attitudes and mass consciousness--represent a range of Orwellian strategies
originally evolved in external conflicts, latterly the Cold War with Russia.
The same techniques of disinformation, 'kompromat', psychologicla fine
tuning, black proaganda, and worse, which were refined in the war on
communism, are now fuly deployed against the British people themselves.
(2) Anyone who thinks that imperialism doesn't exist has to reckon with the
reality of US involvement in the internal affairs of its 'allies', ie
satraps and quislings, including not only the failed states of souther
America, Africa etc, but even that of major allies like the United Kingdom
which, according to New Labour's own self-celebratory propaganda, is now the
world's 4th largest economy.
And (3) the capitalist worl system is subject to such a high degree of
conscious structuring, re-articulation and organisation by the hegemon and
its subalterns, basically because it is *out of control*: that is to say,
capitalism is, as it was, governed by blind laws of motion which constantly
revise the earlier judgments of history, and which constantly threatens the
status quo not only in dependent states, the periphery etc, but in the core
imperialist states also.
(4) Underlying this sorry tale of the British 'Dark Forces' is the
continuing dynamic of inter-imperialist rivalry above all between Europe and
the US. Britain is pulled and twisted between the two centres like a length
of silly putty; behind the ostentatious posturings about the 'Special
Relationship' or the still more ludicrous theorising along the lines that
Britain is 'Greece to the USA's Rome' etc, lies the desperation and chronic
uncertainty of a failed empire which has still not quire rediscovered its
place in history: as an offshore island linked in essentially dependent ways
to larger and more powerful European states, primarily Germany.
(5) Despite all the blather about globaloney it is still this dynamic of
inter-imperial rivalry which is historically/politically over-determining,
ie which is the 'determining last instance' of modern capitalism, the motor
which drives accumulation dynamics on and which constantly threatens to
precipiatte general crises requiring equally conatnt remediation efforts by
states, central banks and parastatal instiutions, the IMF etc.
In this connection, a word on the euro. Hamish Macrae has an interetsing
article on the gyrations of the euro v. the dollar in the Independent
(archived in the commentators section at http://www.independent.co.uk/ ).
This bears on what is today the rubbing edge of rivalry between Europe and
the USA, and the mechanism which is driving forward the process of political
integration in Europe: this drive for political integration is a conscious
response to the underlying dynamic of DISintegration: the stresses and
strains of world competition which is constabntly destabilising Europe,
derailing grand plans for EU enlargement and tearing at the
carefully-nurtured by highly-expensive fabric of social democracy. The
Europe of social rights and guarantess which Lionel Jospin was banging on
about only today, is threatened by the export of capital from the core
states, ie the most highly-capitalised social-democrat states which have
achieved social solidarity. The constant drain of capital, amounting now to
capital-flight, from Germany, Benelux and France in particular, in
anticipation of the full imposition of the euro next January and the finakl
abandonment of national currencies in the eurozone, is deeply threatening
and is perhaps cause as much as effect of the unexpected slowdown in the
German economy in particular. A moment of truth is approaching fats, and the
British etsablishment wants to be ready for it. One of the reasons why is
has anaesthetised the British electorate today is precisely because the
continued decline of the euro makes the most important Blairite policy also
the most difficult to sell: ie, British membership in the eurozone and the
abandonment of sterling. This massaging of the electorate, the wash of mood
muzak emanating not only from New Labour but from even the Murdoch and
Conrad Black press, is a most striking and conspicuous evidence of
'orchestration' and 'regulaton' of mass consciousness, a technology now
developed to a degree which Goebbels could only have dreamt about. The
virtual silence of the Murdoch press on the question of the euro is
particularly significant, since it represents the public abandonment of a
neoliberal/globalist position most vociferously and vehemently argued by
Murdoch and his drones in the past. Is this tacit recognition of ineluctable
national/state realities behind globaloney? Or smthg more sinister?
In any case, the saga of the euro, still the cinderella currency, and its
impact on accelerating and catalysing euro state-formation, underscores the
fact that euronation (if one may re-utilise Edward Thompson's term) is going
to go on come fair weather or foul.
(6) The subject of Britain's baroque defence industry (also raised by
Michael Keaney) is a major topic and worthy of another post. Right now, the
sun is shining in south London and I have a barbeque to tend.
Mark
