a northerly anarchist's ranting space

2017-11-17

the erosion of truth

The idea that the news media is not, in fact, a perfectly reliable source of information on politically divisive or sensitive subjects, even in societies we broadly consider to be free, is not a new one. Criticism of mainstream media has long been a feature of the unruly left in the old western block. Manufacturing Consent, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is a full book going to great lengths to elaborate on structural elements contributing to this.

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2017-01-23

When Free Speech Isn’t

In the past few days there’s been a lot of argument over things that should be a lot simpler. A government with all the hallmarks of fascism took power in the United States, immediately followed by protests from a lot more people than celebrated. This is the good part. The bad part is in how some people have reacted to some of the protest. You see, an out-and-out neonazi was punched.

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2015-12-29

The Enemy of the Good

I am a perfectionist. What’s worse, I’m the sort of perfectionist that really should know better. The title here is a reference to a well-attested, old phrase: “The perfect is the enemy of good.” It’s a phrase that’s been used in countless variations. Its basic message is simple. If you always wait until something is perfect, it will never, ever be finished. You might have done something good, but won’t. Because it’s never good enough.

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2013-06-21

On Confirmed Assumptions

For more than two years, the only thing served from this domain was a single statement, occasioned by my receipt of some legal documents from Google. That statement is preserved, more or less in its original form, below.

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2012-06-27

Chirality as a Fundamental Phenomenon

“Chirality” is a fancy way of saying “handedness”. It describes something that, when mirrored, can’t be made to fit with itself. Like so many other inordinately precise terms for everyday things, it springs from mathematics. The easiest example to name – indeed, the example that gives it its name – is your hands. Left and right, almost the same, but not exactly. A friend of mine recently used the phrase “post-chiral politics”.

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2012-03-13

Social Science – Singular or Plural?

Social science is, at present, divided into a bunch of different disciplines, all pretending their particular branch of human behaviour can be understood quite apart from everything else. (Well, some of them *cough*economics*cough* seem to think everything else is just a variant of their own, but that’s a different story.) This is the model for academia at the moment. Economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology (to an extent). Then you have historians raiding the whole lot to build their funny little narratives about the past.

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2012-03-12

Intelligence Organisations

About a year ago, I planned a sequence of blog posts on the subject of intelligence organisations. Not in the usual “that’s the CIA and that’s the NSA and that’s GCHQ and over there you have ГРУ” way. (Although, admittedly, ГРУ tends to be scary enough that people avoid mentioning it at all.) No; my plan was more ambitious: A theoretical look at the work an intelligence organisation did, the different parts such an organisation needed to function properly, and what the operational requirements were.

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2012-01-24

A Couple of Thoughts

First thought: Probably best I stop thinking of this as a place to get more-or-less well-formed ideas into the open. It’s not like anyone reads it, so I should be safe throwing out half-formed nonsense. I think. The real problem is a psychological block I need to deal with. Second thought: “International Relations” as a distinct discipline makes so little sense it’s not even funny. Or maybe that’s not entirely accurate.

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2011-11-29

Drafts of a Theory of State

The origin, structure and development of the institution typically known as “the state” is my chief interest. This is not because I consider the state to be a particularly worthy institution; quite the contrary. Every indication is that the state arose from violence and represents nothing whatever except the efficient organisation of exploitation. It is not necessary, and its abolition is vital for the progress of humanity. This is not a view shared by the mainstream of academics, whether their discipline of choice is history, sociology, economics (although they will claim otherwise, the bastards), or something else relating to studying the social structure we live in.

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2011-11-26

On Irreducible Complexity

Class. Hooo-boy. There’s a term that gets the blood boiling in most cases. Who’s rich and who’s poor; aren’t we all middle-class? Isn’t the industrialised west as a whole the global rich, while the south of the globe gets the short end of the stick? Can we talk about a class-divided society without invoking the spectre of class warfare? One interesting thing about class is that people tend to claim, today, that it doesn’t matter in western societies.

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