Voyager
18 minutes ago
Tuesday 6 July 2010
William S. Burroughs: The Revised Boy Scout Manual
REVOLUTIONARY WEAPONS AND TACTICS
Since World War I, revolutionary weapons and tactics have undergone a biologic mutation to survive the invention of heavy weapons. Anyone can make a sword, a spear, a bow and arrow in his basement or spare room workshop. He can make the approximation of a small arm. He cannot make automatic weapons, tanks, bombers, fighter planes, destroyers, artillery. These heavy weapons are in the hands of reactionary forces, which give them an overwhelming advantage in direct combat. With heavy weapons five percent of the population can hold down ninety-five percent by sheer force. This advantage, which did not exist before heavy weapons, must now be taken into account.
A belated development to be sure. the stupidity of the military mind is unbelievable. Toward the end of the Civil War in the United States, a crude machine gun and a crude tank were rejected by President Lincoln's military advisors as impractical. Now these weapons were primitive to be sure, but quite usable, and all the elements were there. In World War II, General Gamelin thought that tanks were unimportant until they poured around the end of his Maginot Line. General Gamelin did not like tanks.
So, plinking around the streets with a Barretta .25 is little to the purpose. And still less a Colt Army .45, a handgun so inaccurate it is more dangerous to friend than enemy - your friends being closer to it. It is a very myopic handgun. Bombs, in the post office and the police stations - what is this, the IRA in 1916? Blow up the Statue of Liberty would you? Have you any idea how much good gelginite it would take to explode that old beast? The same explosive material, discreetly placed, could bring down the economic system of the West. The Boy Scout Manual will show you how...
The extent to which revolutionary theory and tactics is disadvantageously shaped by opposition is something few revolutionaries like to think about, being for the most part as bigoted and impervious to facts as those whom they think they oppose. In 1848, a worldwide liberal movement was ruthlessly crushed in Europe and vitiated in South America. Consider how present day revolutionaries are being Che Guevara'd back into the nineteenth century to repeat the mistakes of Garibaldi and Bolivar. Bolivar liberated a large section of South America from Spain. He left intact the Christian calendar, the Spanish language, the Catholic church, the Spanish bureaucracy. He left Spanish families holding the wealth and the land.
He must have loved the conquistadores in some corner of his being to treat them with such exemplary consideration. It is a familiar pattern: the oppressed love the oppressors and cannot wait to follow their example. Morocco, independent from France, takes over the inefficient French bureaucracy. Arab countries liberated from England retain the barbarous English method of execution. Cannot a revolution make a clean sweep of all this old garbage.
To achieve independence from alien domination and to consolidate revolutionary gains, five steps are necessary:
1) PROCLAIM A NEW ERA AND SET UP A NEW CALENDAR,
2) REPLACE ALIEN LANGUAGE,
3) DESTROY OR NEUTRALIZE ALIEN GODS,
4) DESTROY ALIEN MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL,
5) TAKE LAND AND WEALTH FROM INDIVIDUAL ALIENS.
Suppose that Bolivar had followed this program:
1) He sets up a new calendar with no reference to A.D./B.C.. No saints days, no Christian holidays, no more Semana Santa.
2) There are thirty-five mutually incomprehensible Indian dialects in Peru alone. South America constitutes a Tower of Babel. Unifying language is essential but not the colonial languages Spanish and Portuguese. Bolivar decides that the language of South America will be Chinese. Several considerations dictate this choice. He has been impressed by the equanimity of the Chinese, their quiet self-possession in the dreariest and most forbidding places.
There is a town in the high Andes, a gloomy windy pass. Thin air like death in the throat. From the low sod huts with no chimneys the sullen bestial inhabitants peer out, eyes red with smoke. No trees, windswept grass, little terraced fields above which the mountains tower to stone and snow. The proprietor of the one general store, an old Chinese. He has been there many years you can tell. Unmarried and old, he fills the order for provisions. All places are alike to him. This quiet possession of his own space can only be attributed to the structure of the Chinese language.
There are also aesthetic considerations. A river town in coastal Ecuador malarial faces like dirty gray paper. Down the mud street steps a girl naked to the waist black as ebony with fine Mongoloid features straight hair. Negro and Chinese full calves zowie! Chinese characters look better on signs or on a printed page. His main consideration is to build up the economy by attracting the frugal and industrious Chinese settlers. Chinese will be taught in all schools. Place and street names will be Chinese.
3. It is not necessary to track whiskey priests through the brush. Lands and property of the church confiscated. No religious instructions in schools. Simply make it disadvantageous and unattractive to be a Catholic.
4. The Spanish bureaucracy, which starts with one incompetent, lazy, dishonest, superfluous bastard who then fills an office with all his incompetent relatives all filling out senseless forms, must be attacked at its roots. All forms and records to be destroyed.
5. Land and property of resident Spaniards confiscated. Those who choose to remain must integrate into the working community. Their children will not speak Spanish or kneel in any Christian church.
So the face of history has changed. To return in this illustrative fantasy, consider the weapons and tactics available to present-day revolutionaries in the West: small arms and similar weapons. Most useful all around hand gun is the pig .38 Special. Anyone with reasonable coordination can be taught in twelve rounds to hit a foot-square target at thirty feet. And that's practical pistol shooting! the lightweight models with two-inch barrels are quite accurate, which makes this gun one of the lightest and most compact of all powerful handguns.
Handguns can be traced. Possession is a crime and serves as a provocation. Homemade weapons are useful and every good scout will be tinkering with crossbows and rubber band guns, homemade flame throwers and laser guns, cyanide injectors and blowguns. Matchlock and flintlock pistols shooting a load of crushed glass and cyanide crystals are quite effective at six feet. The simplest cyanide injector has a large plunger that can be grasped in the whole hand. You shove the needle in and push the plunger home in the same thrust.
A more sophisticated model looks like a toy pistol. Needle is unscrewed from end of barrel, the pistol cocked by drawing back spring attached to plunger. A sponge soaked in cyanide solution is inserted in the barrel, the needle and cap screwed back into place. When trigger releases the spring, a massive dose of cyanide solution is squeezed into the flesh causing instant death. When not in use, needle is capped by a Buck Rogers death ray. If you can catch the target, with mouth open, you can jet it in from ten feet like a spitting cobra. This is not hard to do. They are always ranting on about permissiveness, marijuana, anarchy, ill-bred attacks on Her majesty, bring back hanging, bring back flogging, heavier penalties for drug offenses, ban smut, etc. And of course the injector is at home in bars and restaurants. Instead of canard a l'orange he gets a mouthful of prussic acid.
A bolo made from a bicycle chain with lead weights at each end...knives with a blade that flies off propelled by a power charge or a powerful spring in the handle...and vibrating knives with a vibrator in the handle. A double-edged knife on a spring that can be whipped back and forth. Ingenuity will turn up many novel designs. Crossbows...rubber band guns powered by a powerful rubber band can shoot a lead slug with considerable force and accuracy up to twenty yards...long-range blowguns, etc. These weapons are useful for individual assassination.
ASSASSINATION BY LIST (ABL)
So who do you assassinate by list? Not the obvious targets the politicians narcs and pigs. They are servants who obey orders. So the targets are not the front men but the higher-ups behind the scene. You announce that you have a list of these secret controllers and that they will be killed one after the other. The list is guesswork of course but the real higher-ups will soon expose themselves. So for a start we assassinate a Swiss banker never wrong on that. Just get a list of high Swiss bankers and pull his name out of a hat. This is Assassination By List (ABL.) The rich and powerful cower behind guards and electric fences.
RANDOM ASSASSINATION (RA)
Ingenious concept of random assassination has been proposed by Brion Gysin. Five people a day in five districts of the city are killed. Category of person and district are determined by lot. One way would be to shuffle a pack of cards listing various categories housewife bowler-hat-and-umbrella nun meth-drinker lavatory attendant anyone driving or riding in a Bentley etc. The shuffle another pack of city areas arranged into districts that do not correspond to the actual boroughs or wards. Since the choice is completely random there is no pattern and the assassinations cannot be predicted or anticipated. Exempt from this daily lottery are the police and the military. The reason: they are accorded this position of privilege to stir resentment in the populace and so set the stage for a subsequent accusation that rightist plotters carried out RA to create an emergency and seize power.
RA applied to group units could paralyze the economy of the West and this brings us too...
BOMBS AND EXPLOSIVE DEVICES
Post offices, public buildings and monuments are quite useless targets in most cases. With less risk and less outlay of material you could paralyze the whole communications system.
Like this: two Israeli passenger planes recently exploded, probably as a result of bombs planted in freight of luggage by terrorists. Already these lines are banned and nobody will fly on the planes. Now suppose you plant five bombs a day at random. How long before no one flies or ships freight by air? And you won't have to do it all yourself...you will find anonymous little helpers who will start planting bombs on planes just for jolly - wouldn't you after reading all about it? They know it's the thing to do. And every device intercepted increases the terror. Then you hit trains and ships, buses and subways inside the cities. You make truck driving the most dangerous profession, with special attention to food trucks. Then you can hit the power stations and water reservoirs.
CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
For random terror attacks, gas bombs are often more effective than explosives. They're also cheaper and easier to make. A container of sulfuric acid concealed in package or briefcase. You press down a plunger which drops sodium cyanide into the acid and leave your package in the subway at the rush hour or in a theater or political rally or revival meeting. Chemical and biological weapons could be made in the basement lab if you know how.
In The Wild Boys I proposed to transfer desirable species of plants, animals, fish and birds from present distribution to other areas where conditions are sufficiently similar to insure growth and reproduction. Look at the map and always remember your subjects may be more adaptable than you realize.
Consider the walleyed pike, which is not a pike. The species is a perch and undoubtedly one of the greatest freshwater pan fish. Found in the lakes of Minnesota and Canada and in the clear clod streams down into Missouri and Arkansas. And consider the small-mouthed black bass of similar distribution. Both species would live in cold water anywhere. They would thrive in the lakes and rivers of England and Scotland and Northern Europe. The large-mouth black bass tolerates quite warm water and could be extended to the vast waterways of the Amazon basin to the lakes of Africa and Southeast Asia.
The yage vine could grow in the jungles of Southeastern Asia, in Africa and probably in Louisiana, Florida and Texas. The delicate lemurs of Madagascar, shy little wood spirits, would enhance any rain forest. Certainly the enchanting flying fox deserves wider circulation.
Look at the map again. Introduction of a new species into an area where they were hitherto unknown can have far-reaching consequences. This aspect of biologic warfare has been neglected.
Here is the bushmaster from Panama south through the Amazon basin. He may reach a length of fourteen feet and attack a human, twisting about his thighs while he strikes at the chest and throat walking his great fangs that can shoot half a glass of venom. No amount of anti-venom can save him - there isn't time for it to act.
Florida, East Texas, Louisiana, jungles of Africa, Southeast Asia, the East Indes and back along the same trade routes...the Black Mamba of Africa that will also attack unprovoked, sliding down from trees. Leopards and tigers released in South America would soon be driven to man-eating by the scarcity of game, and they would eat the CIA men first since they are bigger and slower.The good gray lard they call it, licking the blood off of each other's faces. Plentiful, helpless, no fur - the ideal food animal.
The fresh water shark of Nicaragua and the piranha fish would do well in the lakes and rivers of Africa in the southern United States and in Southeast Asia. For arid regions, the desert cobra, the rattler and the gilla monsters, and the incomparable tiger snake of Australia. And Wolverines for Siberia - they are a perfect curse, known to trappers as "the little fiend." And microscopic and sub-microscopic life of course, which brings us back to...
BIOLOGIC WARFARE PROPER
The deadly Naga virus is up for grabs. Nobody knows how it is transmitted, and that gives the virus an advantage which any virus knows well how to take. You immunize your own boys and turn the virus loose. Then another...another...until you make the world safe for men of your caliber. No, you don't have to dream up anything from science fiction - the old standbys will go a long way...cholera, typhoid, hepatitis. It was General Hepatitis who stopped Rommel in North Africa in World War II. There are cartoons depicting General Mud and General Mountains. General Mud, if I remember correctly, was supposed to stop Hitler in Poland, but his performance was not impressive.
Consignments of ticks carrying Rocky mountain spotted fever, typhus lice, and of course you go on looking for the big one - Australian smallpox which thrives on vaccination. Or, suppose you could speed up the time of the process. Instead of symptoms spread over a week they are compressed into hours. People swell up with cancer and rot with galloping leprosy on commuter trains...
And now, introducing two promising newcomers that deserve your attention...easily and cheaply assembled...readily available materials: Infrasound for Infrasound, and DOR - opportunity knocks.
INFRASOUND
This weapon is fully described in The Job, published by Grove Press of New York. So much for the commercial. Infrasound is sound at a frequency below the level of human hearing which sets up vibrations in any solid obstruction including the human body. Professor Gavreau who discovered this novel weapon says that his installation which resembles a vast police whistle eighteen feet long, can kill up to five miles in any direction...knock down walls and break windows, and set off burglar alarms for miles around. his device is patented and anybody can obtain a copy of the plans on payment of two hundred francs at the patent office. So why be a small-time sniper?
DEADLY ORGONE RADIATION (DOR)
...Produced when any fissionable material is placed in an orgone accumulator. An orgone accumulator is constructed by lining any container with sheet iron or steel wool. The container must be full of organic material, and for full concentration many alternative layers can be used. For full description see the collected works of Dr. Willhelm Reich. In the chapter entitled "Orgone Physics" Reich says "There is no protection whatsoever against DOR since it penetrates everything, including lead or brick or stone walls of any thickness."
A criminal hater of mankind or a political enemy, if he knew about this, and if the USA did not know about it or did not study these effects, could easily drop activated orgone devices looking simply like metal lined boxes. These could infest a whole region if not a whole continent. Each person falling ill would react to his or her specific disease or disposition to disease, driving the symptoms to high acuity and then curing them if properly and conscientiously applied. However, if used with malignant intent, such infestation of the atmosphere would surely kill or at least immobilize many people. Exposure on a gradient scale gives immunity.
Be prepared!
WEAPONS OF DISRUPTION, AGITATION AND SUBVERSION
A French revolutionary sets forth a method by which one man with an unlimited expense account can bring down a government. He invents an underground, planting stickers and slogans. Acts of sabotage at widely separated locations give an impression that the underground is widespread and well-organized. All disturbances, strikes, accidents, are claimed by the mythical underground. This method might work in an old-style dictatorship like Spain, Greece, Santa Domingo, Haiti. For the compels set-up in America and Western Europe, you need a whole script and eventually a whole film set.
NOTES ON WRITING WORLD REVOLUTION
(written March 25, 1970, Paris, France)
GENERAL PLAN:
1) An independent republican or reform party of exemplary behavior and moderation, staying always within the law. Personnel must be at all times above reproach, at least in the initial stages of the operation.
2) A terrorist underground complete with detailed personnel and methods of operation. Post films of underground drilling can be leaked to press. The police can be allowed to capture extensive files taken from a telephone book, and while they drag bewildered citizens from their beds, the underground which consists of a small group of expert saboteurs, can strike somewhere else.
3) A terrorist reich complete with personnel. Any outrage can be attributed to these characters. You can see how this works in present-time Brazil where any murder of underworld figures can be laid to the terrorist police organization. The script is different for every country or area of operation, but its always a one-two-three...
Here's the schema for the United Kingdom...
1) An English Republican Party (ERP). Offices in Bedford Square. Visible personnel must be above reproach. Appeal is rational, stressing economic factors. The monarchy is simply out of keeping with the realities of modern life. Time to forget a dead empire and build a living republic. Stabilize economy, cut expenses, especially defense. Let the Yanks and NATO carry that ball - it's to heavy for us. Build up tourist trade by giving them someplace to eat and room service 'round the clock and food fit to eat. Start bringing England into the twentieth century. Attract foreign capital, stabilize population by setting up liaison communities to facilitate immigration from the U.K. to South America, the only under populated country. Smooth patter, discreet lunches at Rules and Simpsons. Scrupulously abstain from any personal attack on the royal family.
2) We prepare a pamphlet with obscene cartoons covering the royal family with vile abuse. We send it out to members of all the best clubs, conservative M.P.'s, officers and gentlemen on Her Majesty's Service. The first wave takes a heavy toll in heart attacks and apoplexy in the halls of drafty clubs...muttering imprecations at yellowing tusks on the wall...walking down country lanes swinging umbrellas and sticks in the air. England is in ferment like a vast vat of bitters.
3) This vile attack on Her Majesty
Put an end to permissiveness
Bring back hangings
Bring back floggings
The piper plays "Bring Back My Bonnie To Me" on a tin flute down Kings Road.
1)ERP deplores pamphlets as sophomoric and calls on the invisible author to desist, which he does of course. The right hand sees what the left hand is doing. A lull, during which ERP consolidates gains. ERP ERP ERP ghoul expert patter belching it out all over England. After all why all this fuss about something left over from the Middle Ages? Just a question of getting people used to it like a new ten-shilling piece. I mean, when we can cut rates and give decent housing they'll forget all about it...the new generation never heard of such a thing. Turn Buckingham Palace into a luxury hotel, one of a chain...and that's where your firm comes in. The Royal family is to be absorbed into the diplomatic service which is also due for cutbacks and drastic overhaul. Old style diplomacy dates back to the eighteenth century. We want to see less goodwill tours and handshaking ad more understanding on basic exchange of goods and services. Yes the whole structure needs overhauling. Why not bring England into the twentieth century? Scrap the licensing laws - food and service 'round the clock. Good middle-priced restaurants like Horn & Hardest.
ERP ERP ERP. Skinheads? Street gangs? We'll give them something better to do than Paki-bashing and fighting each other. There's useful work for these boys to do...
2) Infiltrate street gangs as first move toward taking over the streets. We send our boys trained in every technique of hand-to-hand fighting, the use of weapons and demolition procedures. Jimmy the doctor with a scalpel up his sleeve. Electric Kris ready in his boot. These boys assume leadership of street gangs. Why fight each other? Why not fight the bastards who keep you here in your cold gritty dank slums? I said, "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and anybody doesn't like it just step forward and say so.
These boys have a double mission: first, to put street fighters in the street when we give the word...riots burning cars broken windows. That is the work of the rank and file. Second, they will sift street gangs for the smartest, hardest boys to forge the SS, the Palace Guard of the ERP. The boys will be exhaustively trained in all fighting techniques, in psychological warfare, in crown control. At the right time they will be provided with uniforms, motorcycles, armored cars and automatic weapons. There is useful work for these boys to do.
START ASSASSINATION BY LIST
We drop quite a few red herrings of course...always leave the door open to blame it all on rightist plotters. Besides, enigmatic assassinations are more upsetting, somehow. We have a tentative list of the real higher-ups in England. As we start working through it, other higher-ups will betray themselves to the trained observer, so the list keeps growing. We will need that list when the time rolls around for mass murder, mass assassination (MA), and we turn our boys loose.
Now we need a scenario for the rightist plot. Officers and gentlemen, they call themselves (OG). Using American techniques of thought control they will make the Queen a goddess. Her power is absolute. Every citizen must display at all times on his lapel, hat band, shirt or other garment where it can be plainly seen, the Queen's Rating. QR determines position in her society...at all times. Her favorites all have "Top Rating." They can walk into any restaurant and the manager has to provide a table. They can walk into any hotel and ask for a suite and the manager has to move somebody out. Intolerable little Cockney faggot in eighteenth century costume with a powered blue wig and snuff box full of cocaine: "Get this low rate riffraff out of my suite!" And so it goes on down the scale to the dreaded pariah rating (PR) which is tattooed in red ink on the forehead like the brand of Cain. Anyone can refuse to serve food, grant lodging, or take in any public transport a PR. And so her loyal and loyalist subjects think twice about incurring her serene displeasure. And it is well to remember that her favor is not to be taken for granted but must be earned anew each day. Actually the Queen is simply a holograph symbol of subservience manipulated by American know-how. Vulgar chaps, by and large, but they do have the technology...
Recent experiments with rhesus monkeys have demonstrated that fear, rage, excretory processes and sexual response can be brought under push-button control. The Chinese delegate screams his rage and shits in his pants on TV...the Soviet delegate masturbates uncontrollably...early answer to use on anyone considering to interfere. We set it all up with top secret documents, statements from a former CIA man who must for his own safety reasons remain anonymous. And we out our rumor boys into the streets with tape recorders.
1)England is taking orders from the CIA and the American narcotics department like a Central American banana republic. Wouldn't surprise me to see the marines land. Look at this drug problem they've dumped into our lap. Go after the pushers - you arrest one pusher and ten more will take his place. The one man the narcotics industry cannot do without is the addict on the street who buys it. Treat the addict in the street and you will put the pusher out of business. The apomorphine treatment started in England - why not give it a chance in England?
And let's give these kids something better to do. Why not reverse the braindrain? It isn't just more money that takes our best research brains to America - its better equipment and opportunities for more advanced research. The new work in autonomic shaping carried out in America by Drs. Bernard Engel, Joe Kamiya, Neal Miller and Peter Lang. They are teaching subjects to control brain waves, rate of heartbeat, blood pressure, digestive processes and sexual response. This could lead to trips without drugs and solve the drug problem. Is England picking up? Is similar research being carried out?...the Bristol Neurological Foundation by Professor Grey Walter? If so we haven't heard about it. Is England afraid of any research that could turn up something basically new? Is England muddling through or simply muddling steadily downhill? Is the mismanagement we see here part of a deliberate plot? It's beginning to look that way.
2) Riots and demonstrations by street gangs are stepped up. Start random assassination. Five citizens every day in London but never a police officer or serviceman. Patrols in the street shooting the wrong people. Curfews. England is rapidly drifting toward anarchy.
3) We send out our best agents to contact army officers and organize a rightist coup. We put rightist gangs into it like the Royal Crowns and the Royal Cavailers in the street. 1. Time for ERP! 2. Come Out in The Open!
The trouble in England is: it is run by old women of both sexes. we have a list of these people. We will not allow them to use the army to overthrow constitutional government and impose a dictatorship under pretense of controlling the disorders which they themselves have caused. It is time for young England to strike, and to strike hard.
We turn our palace guard loose. An armored car draws up in front of Claridge's. Youths with tommy guns jump out and block off the street. A TV crew unloads. The whole scene goes out live on TV.
Steps through the silent dining room...stop by a table. A burst of machine gun fire. A woman screams.
"Shut up you whore! And now, will you all please stand up - that's right. Now all of you sing God Save The Queen. Boys, walk around the dining room. You there - louder...more soul!"
The car stops in front of the best club of them all. It's not White's, I'm told, but we'll be around to White's later. They'll be waiting...the old gentlemen in their armchairs muttering about permissiveness...in the writing room writing letters toward the restoration if hanging and flogging. The boys leap out in their natty blue uniforms with the skull-and-crossbones at the lapel that glows in the dark.
"Are you a member, sir?" The boy shoots him coldly in the stomach with a P-38 (it's nice for city wear, so much more elegant that a revolver). Quick purposeful young steps down drafty halls. Tussle over the wall...the improbable hyphenated names. The members are frozen.
"What is this outrage? When a gentleman is reading his Times?" They expect the club steward to come in and throw the bouncers out perhaps it is even a case for the bobbies. The steps stop in front of an armchair.
"Are you Lord Stansfield?"
"I am."
"He is the most intelligent person in the room. Intelligent enough to know that this is serious." The boy is very elegant and disengaged. Lord Stansfield decides to try a paternal approach.
"Son..." The boy gives him a short burst across the chest. Diving bell from the nineteenth century shattered by a boy's bullets. The members are numb from the shock wave. TV camera, floodlights, the boy paces around the vast lounge looking at the pictures. He points the gun at a steward's stomach.
"You there, bring champagne."
"Champagne, sir?"
"Yes, champagne. And glasses for all the officers and gentlemen, the servants as well, and don't be forgetting the military." The trembling steward passes around the clicking glasses.
"You there! Pick it up!"
Now the boy stands in front of the Queen's picture. He raises his glass. "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" He throws the empty glass at the picture, shards of glass sticking into the Queen's face. The members are frozen. The boy unslings the tommy gun and shoots down five members in a random sequence pivoting from the hip. He picks up another glass. "And now all you officers and gentlemen, gather 'round here. That's right. I want to hear it, I want to hear it good and loud."
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
All over England, the elite guard carry the message of death. They have some natty uniforms with trick gadgets: a skull-and-crossbones in the lapel and a helmet that winks on and off, and blue revolving skull lights on the cars. And some frantic faggots get themselves up in skeleton suits of course. Sweeping down country roads thirty boys on motorcycles draw up in front of a stately home.
"Yes sir?"
"Where's the old bitch?"
The butler's face does not change. "Mrs. Charington is in the garden sir." And there she is, in her trowels and slacks, digging away at her roses.
"What do you want, young man?" She thinks he will quail before a good woman's gaze. He doesn't.
"Lebenstraum, you old hag. You poison the air we breath."
Mrs. Charington bleeds into her roses. The butler is busy with the wall safe...
They sweep up to a baronial estate.
"You'll have to wait, constable, the family is at dinner."
"Good, we'll join them." He jabs the butler in the stomach with his tommy gun. The lord and lady die in the seats, faces in the grouse. the children, a boy of eighteen and a girl of sixteen, sit there, faces blank with shock. Slowly the boy's face glows and sharpens with calculation. his lips part and his eyes shine. "Due truths are told as happy preludes to the swelling act. And now for my unfortunate brother."
Lead boy calls in two footmen. "Bring mattresses. You, and you, go along and see that they don't get lost.
Television cameras set up. the mattresses brought in and dropped on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Next scene shows the other boys gang-fucking the girl while the new boy tries on his uniform.
All over England under the searching guns pubs echo with "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" Taken up by junkies, meth heads, hippies...played back on recorders...live on TV.
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!" rises to the pale English sky. Whole regiments scream it out.
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and murder their officers straightway.
Boy packs with tommy guns march down the street and blast every shop window that bears the hated placard, "By Appointment to Her majesty the Queen." And everyone they meet had better scream it out loud...
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
They march into offices, schools, factories, department stores.
"All right, all of you, stick your head out of the window and show some respect."
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
All over England heads pop out of windows screaming,
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
Languid young officers on flower floats through the streets as the delirious populace chants,
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
"Bugger the Queen!" is now the national greeting..
ERP occupies Buckingham Palace to protect and advise the Royal family. Decimated by assassination and deprived of psychic support, the army falters. The Queen abdicates, while the elite guard languidly polish their nails on skull lapels. And who is that...a very natty tailor-made uniform?
...I think there is a residue of fair-minded people in England who will read it as it is intended: as an empirical sociological observation. If an image or symbol is widely venerated in a population segment, the desecration and shattering of that image or symbol will shatter the social structure insofar as that structure is based on the image or symbol. It's a very old rule: shatter the idols and you shatter the social structure. The idols are not often as easy to find. "Bugger Nixon" just doesn't do it at all. No shock value there.
The cut-ups date from the Dadaist movement and Tristan Tzara pulling a poem out of a hat. So you will see, this is actually a repetition of "Burn the Louvre!" And everybody says, "So who cares?" You don't have a basically important symbol. The tactic must shock and enrage, preferably to the point of madness. that is what this tactic is all about: desecration, madness.
"No it was not a difficult decision to issue these licenses for rape and murder. Nothing more ominous than a difficult decision in the Pentagon. And nobody does more harm than he who feels bad about doing it. Sad poison, nice guy more poison than nice wept when he saw the Hiroshima pictures. What a drag. When we murder somebody we want to have fun doing it.."
This license was dictated by a consideration taken into account by prudent commanders throughout history. You have to pay the boys off. Even the noble Brutus did it: "The town is yours boys." Tacitus describes a typical scene: "If a young girl or good-looking boy fell into their hands they were torn to pieces in the struggle for possession. And the survivors were left to cut each other's throats." Well there is no need for it to be that messy - why waste a good-looking boy? Mother-loving American army run by old women, many of them religious my god hanging American soldiers for raping and murdering civilians.
"WHAT THE FUCKING BLOODY HELL ARE CIVILIANS FOR?"
Old Sarge bellows from here to eternity: "Soldiers pay!"
The CO stands there and smiles. Just ahead is a Middle Western American town about 200,000. Pretty town on a river, plenty of trees. The CO points, "He's all yours boys! Every man, woman and child of it. Anything in it, living or dead."
"Now just a minute boys. Listen to Old Sarge. Why make the usual stupid scene kicking in liquor stores grabbing anything in sight. You wake up with a hangover in an alley, your prick tore from fucking dry cunts and assholes, your eye gouged out by a broken beer bottle when you and your buddy wanted the same one - no fun in that. Why not leave it like it is? They go about their daily tasks and we just take what we want when we want it, cool and easy, and make them like it. You see what I mean? Five thousand of us, two hundred thousand of them."
The young lieutenant in camouflage sees what he means. Boys - school showers and swimming pools full of them...
So we lay it on the line. "There's no cause for alarm, folks, proceed about your daily tasks. But one thing is clearly understood - your lives, your bodies, your properties belong to us whenever and wherever we choose to take them." So, we weed out the undesirables and turn the place into a paradise...getting' it steady year after year...
(End of tape one, side B)
A transcript from The Revised Boy Scout Manual, a novel in the form of three one-hour cassettes.
William S. Burroughs (1970)
RE/SEARCH #4/5
1982
A belated development to be sure. the stupidity of the military mind is unbelievable. Toward the end of the Civil War in the United States, a crude machine gun and a crude tank were rejected by President Lincoln's military advisors as impractical. Now these weapons were primitive to be sure, but quite usable, and all the elements were there. In World War II, General Gamelin thought that tanks were unimportant until they poured around the end of his Maginot Line. General Gamelin did not like tanks.
So, plinking around the streets with a Barretta .25 is little to the purpose. And still less a Colt Army .45, a handgun so inaccurate it is more dangerous to friend than enemy - your friends being closer to it. It is a very myopic handgun. Bombs, in the post office and the police stations - what is this, the IRA in 1916? Blow up the Statue of Liberty would you? Have you any idea how much good gelginite it would take to explode that old beast? The same explosive material, discreetly placed, could bring down the economic system of the West. The Boy Scout Manual will show you how...
The extent to which revolutionary theory and tactics is disadvantageously shaped by opposition is something few revolutionaries like to think about, being for the most part as bigoted and impervious to facts as those whom they think they oppose. In 1848, a worldwide liberal movement was ruthlessly crushed in Europe and vitiated in South America. Consider how present day revolutionaries are being Che Guevara'd back into the nineteenth century to repeat the mistakes of Garibaldi and Bolivar. Bolivar liberated a large section of South America from Spain. He left intact the Christian calendar, the Spanish language, the Catholic church, the Spanish bureaucracy. He left Spanish families holding the wealth and the land.
He must have loved the conquistadores in some corner of his being to treat them with such exemplary consideration. It is a familiar pattern: the oppressed love the oppressors and cannot wait to follow their example. Morocco, independent from France, takes over the inefficient French bureaucracy. Arab countries liberated from England retain the barbarous English method of execution. Cannot a revolution make a clean sweep of all this old garbage.
To achieve independence from alien domination and to consolidate revolutionary gains, five steps are necessary:
1) PROCLAIM A NEW ERA AND SET UP A NEW CALENDAR,
2) REPLACE ALIEN LANGUAGE,
3) DESTROY OR NEUTRALIZE ALIEN GODS,
4) DESTROY ALIEN MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL,
5) TAKE LAND AND WEALTH FROM INDIVIDUAL ALIENS.
Suppose that Bolivar had followed this program:
1) He sets up a new calendar with no reference to A.D./B.C.. No saints days, no Christian holidays, no more Semana Santa.
2) There are thirty-five mutually incomprehensible Indian dialects in Peru alone. South America constitutes a Tower of Babel. Unifying language is essential but not the colonial languages Spanish and Portuguese. Bolivar decides that the language of South America will be Chinese. Several considerations dictate this choice. He has been impressed by the equanimity of the Chinese, their quiet self-possession in the dreariest and most forbidding places.
There is a town in the high Andes, a gloomy windy pass. Thin air like death in the throat. From the low sod huts with no chimneys the sullen bestial inhabitants peer out, eyes red with smoke. No trees, windswept grass, little terraced fields above which the mountains tower to stone and snow. The proprietor of the one general store, an old Chinese. He has been there many years you can tell. Unmarried and old, he fills the order for provisions. All places are alike to him. This quiet possession of his own space can only be attributed to the structure of the Chinese language.
There are also aesthetic considerations. A river town in coastal Ecuador malarial faces like dirty gray paper. Down the mud street steps a girl naked to the waist black as ebony with fine Mongoloid features straight hair. Negro and Chinese full calves zowie! Chinese characters look better on signs or on a printed page. His main consideration is to build up the economy by attracting the frugal and industrious Chinese settlers. Chinese will be taught in all schools. Place and street names will be Chinese.
3. It is not necessary to track whiskey priests through the brush. Lands and property of the church confiscated. No religious instructions in schools. Simply make it disadvantageous and unattractive to be a Catholic.
4. The Spanish bureaucracy, which starts with one incompetent, lazy, dishonest, superfluous bastard who then fills an office with all his incompetent relatives all filling out senseless forms, must be attacked at its roots. All forms and records to be destroyed.
5. Land and property of resident Spaniards confiscated. Those who choose to remain must integrate into the working community. Their children will not speak Spanish or kneel in any Christian church.
So the face of history has changed. To return in this illustrative fantasy, consider the weapons and tactics available to present-day revolutionaries in the West: small arms and similar weapons. Most useful all around hand gun is the pig .38 Special. Anyone with reasonable coordination can be taught in twelve rounds to hit a foot-square target at thirty feet. And that's practical pistol shooting! the lightweight models with two-inch barrels are quite accurate, which makes this gun one of the lightest and most compact of all powerful handguns.
Handguns can be traced. Possession is a crime and serves as a provocation. Homemade weapons are useful and every good scout will be tinkering with crossbows and rubber band guns, homemade flame throwers and laser guns, cyanide injectors and blowguns. Matchlock and flintlock pistols shooting a load of crushed glass and cyanide crystals are quite effective at six feet. The simplest cyanide injector has a large plunger that can be grasped in the whole hand. You shove the needle in and push the plunger home in the same thrust.
A more sophisticated model looks like a toy pistol. Needle is unscrewed from end of barrel, the pistol cocked by drawing back spring attached to plunger. A sponge soaked in cyanide solution is inserted in the barrel, the needle and cap screwed back into place. When trigger releases the spring, a massive dose of cyanide solution is squeezed into the flesh causing instant death. When not in use, needle is capped by a Buck Rogers death ray. If you can catch the target, with mouth open, you can jet it in from ten feet like a spitting cobra. This is not hard to do. They are always ranting on about permissiveness, marijuana, anarchy, ill-bred attacks on Her majesty, bring back hanging, bring back flogging, heavier penalties for drug offenses, ban smut, etc. And of course the injector is at home in bars and restaurants. Instead of canard a l'orange he gets a mouthful of prussic acid.
A bolo made from a bicycle chain with lead weights at each end...knives with a blade that flies off propelled by a power charge or a powerful spring in the handle...and vibrating knives with a vibrator in the handle. A double-edged knife on a spring that can be whipped back and forth. Ingenuity will turn up many novel designs. Crossbows...rubber band guns powered by a powerful rubber band can shoot a lead slug with considerable force and accuracy up to twenty yards...long-range blowguns, etc. These weapons are useful for individual assassination.
ASSASSINATION BY LIST (ABL)
So who do you assassinate by list? Not the obvious targets the politicians narcs and pigs. They are servants who obey orders. So the targets are not the front men but the higher-ups behind the scene. You announce that you have a list of these secret controllers and that they will be killed one after the other. The list is guesswork of course but the real higher-ups will soon expose themselves. So for a start we assassinate a Swiss banker never wrong on that. Just get a list of high Swiss bankers and pull his name out of a hat. This is Assassination By List (ABL.) The rich and powerful cower behind guards and electric fences.
RANDOM ASSASSINATION (RA)
Ingenious concept of random assassination has been proposed by Brion Gysin. Five people a day in five districts of the city are killed. Category of person and district are determined by lot. One way would be to shuffle a pack of cards listing various categories housewife bowler-hat-and-umbrella nun meth-drinker lavatory attendant anyone driving or riding in a Bentley etc. The shuffle another pack of city areas arranged into districts that do not correspond to the actual boroughs or wards. Since the choice is completely random there is no pattern and the assassinations cannot be predicted or anticipated. Exempt from this daily lottery are the police and the military. The reason: they are accorded this position of privilege to stir resentment in the populace and so set the stage for a subsequent accusation that rightist plotters carried out RA to create an emergency and seize power.
RA applied to group units could paralyze the economy of the West and this brings us too...
BOMBS AND EXPLOSIVE DEVICES
Post offices, public buildings and monuments are quite useless targets in most cases. With less risk and less outlay of material you could paralyze the whole communications system.
Like this: two Israeli passenger planes recently exploded, probably as a result of bombs planted in freight of luggage by terrorists. Already these lines are banned and nobody will fly on the planes. Now suppose you plant five bombs a day at random. How long before no one flies or ships freight by air? And you won't have to do it all yourself...you will find anonymous little helpers who will start planting bombs on planes just for jolly - wouldn't you after reading all about it? They know it's the thing to do. And every device intercepted increases the terror. Then you hit trains and ships, buses and subways inside the cities. You make truck driving the most dangerous profession, with special attention to food trucks. Then you can hit the power stations and water reservoirs.
CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
For random terror attacks, gas bombs are often more effective than explosives. They're also cheaper and easier to make. A container of sulfuric acid concealed in package or briefcase. You press down a plunger which drops sodium cyanide into the acid and leave your package in the subway at the rush hour or in a theater or political rally or revival meeting. Chemical and biological weapons could be made in the basement lab if you know how.
In The Wild Boys I proposed to transfer desirable species of plants, animals, fish and birds from present distribution to other areas where conditions are sufficiently similar to insure growth and reproduction. Look at the map and always remember your subjects may be more adaptable than you realize.
Consider the walleyed pike, which is not a pike. The species is a perch and undoubtedly one of the greatest freshwater pan fish. Found in the lakes of Minnesota and Canada and in the clear clod streams down into Missouri and Arkansas. And consider the small-mouthed black bass of similar distribution. Both species would live in cold water anywhere. They would thrive in the lakes and rivers of England and Scotland and Northern Europe. The large-mouth black bass tolerates quite warm water and could be extended to the vast waterways of the Amazon basin to the lakes of Africa and Southeast Asia.
The yage vine could grow in the jungles of Southeastern Asia, in Africa and probably in Louisiana, Florida and Texas. The delicate lemurs of Madagascar, shy little wood spirits, would enhance any rain forest. Certainly the enchanting flying fox deserves wider circulation.
Look at the map again. Introduction of a new species into an area where they were hitherto unknown can have far-reaching consequences. This aspect of biologic warfare has been neglected.
Here is the bushmaster from Panama south through the Amazon basin. He may reach a length of fourteen feet and attack a human, twisting about his thighs while he strikes at the chest and throat walking his great fangs that can shoot half a glass of venom. No amount of anti-venom can save him - there isn't time for it to act.
Florida, East Texas, Louisiana, jungles of Africa, Southeast Asia, the East Indes and back along the same trade routes...the Black Mamba of Africa that will also attack unprovoked, sliding down from trees. Leopards and tigers released in South America would soon be driven to man-eating by the scarcity of game, and they would eat the CIA men first since they are bigger and slower.The good gray lard they call it, licking the blood off of each other's faces. Plentiful, helpless, no fur - the ideal food animal.
The fresh water shark of Nicaragua and the piranha fish would do well in the lakes and rivers of Africa in the southern United States and in Southeast Asia. For arid regions, the desert cobra, the rattler and the gilla monsters, and the incomparable tiger snake of Australia. And Wolverines for Siberia - they are a perfect curse, known to trappers as "the little fiend." And microscopic and sub-microscopic life of course, which brings us back to...
BIOLOGIC WARFARE PROPER
The deadly Naga virus is up for grabs. Nobody knows how it is transmitted, and that gives the virus an advantage which any virus knows well how to take. You immunize your own boys and turn the virus loose. Then another...another...until you make the world safe for men of your caliber. No, you don't have to dream up anything from science fiction - the old standbys will go a long way...cholera, typhoid, hepatitis. It was General Hepatitis who stopped Rommel in North Africa in World War II. There are cartoons depicting General Mud and General Mountains. General Mud, if I remember correctly, was supposed to stop Hitler in Poland, but his performance was not impressive.
Consignments of ticks carrying Rocky mountain spotted fever, typhus lice, and of course you go on looking for the big one - Australian smallpox which thrives on vaccination. Or, suppose you could speed up the time of the process. Instead of symptoms spread over a week they are compressed into hours. People swell up with cancer and rot with galloping leprosy on commuter trains...
And now, introducing two promising newcomers that deserve your attention...easily and cheaply assembled...readily available materials: Infrasound for Infrasound, and DOR - opportunity knocks.
INFRASOUND
This weapon is fully described in The Job, published by Grove Press of New York. So much for the commercial. Infrasound is sound at a frequency below the level of human hearing which sets up vibrations in any solid obstruction including the human body. Professor Gavreau who discovered this novel weapon says that his installation which resembles a vast police whistle eighteen feet long, can kill up to five miles in any direction...knock down walls and break windows, and set off burglar alarms for miles around. his device is patented and anybody can obtain a copy of the plans on payment of two hundred francs at the patent office. So why be a small-time sniper?
DEADLY ORGONE RADIATION (DOR)
...Produced when any fissionable material is placed in an orgone accumulator. An orgone accumulator is constructed by lining any container with sheet iron or steel wool. The container must be full of organic material, and for full concentration many alternative layers can be used. For full description see the collected works of Dr. Willhelm Reich. In the chapter entitled "Orgone Physics" Reich says "There is no protection whatsoever against DOR since it penetrates everything, including lead or brick or stone walls of any thickness."
A criminal hater of mankind or a political enemy, if he knew about this, and if the USA did not know about it or did not study these effects, could easily drop activated orgone devices looking simply like metal lined boxes. These could infest a whole region if not a whole continent. Each person falling ill would react to his or her specific disease or disposition to disease, driving the symptoms to high acuity and then curing them if properly and conscientiously applied. However, if used with malignant intent, such infestation of the atmosphere would surely kill or at least immobilize many people. Exposure on a gradient scale gives immunity.
Be prepared!
WEAPONS OF DISRUPTION, AGITATION AND SUBVERSION
A French revolutionary sets forth a method by which one man with an unlimited expense account can bring down a government. He invents an underground, planting stickers and slogans. Acts of sabotage at widely separated locations give an impression that the underground is widespread and well-organized. All disturbances, strikes, accidents, are claimed by the mythical underground. This method might work in an old-style dictatorship like Spain, Greece, Santa Domingo, Haiti. For the compels set-up in America and Western Europe, you need a whole script and eventually a whole film set.
NOTES ON WRITING WORLD REVOLUTION
(written March 25, 1970, Paris, France)
GENERAL PLAN:
1) An independent republican or reform party of exemplary behavior and moderation, staying always within the law. Personnel must be at all times above reproach, at least in the initial stages of the operation.
2) A terrorist underground complete with detailed personnel and methods of operation. Post films of underground drilling can be leaked to press. The police can be allowed to capture extensive files taken from a telephone book, and while they drag bewildered citizens from their beds, the underground which consists of a small group of expert saboteurs, can strike somewhere else.
3) A terrorist reich complete with personnel. Any outrage can be attributed to these characters. You can see how this works in present-time Brazil where any murder of underworld figures can be laid to the terrorist police organization. The script is different for every country or area of operation, but its always a one-two-three...
Here's the schema for the United Kingdom...
1) An English Republican Party (ERP). Offices in Bedford Square. Visible personnel must be above reproach. Appeal is rational, stressing economic factors. The monarchy is simply out of keeping with the realities of modern life. Time to forget a dead empire and build a living republic. Stabilize economy, cut expenses, especially defense. Let the Yanks and NATO carry that ball - it's to heavy for us. Build up tourist trade by giving them someplace to eat and room service 'round the clock and food fit to eat. Start bringing England into the twentieth century. Attract foreign capital, stabilize population by setting up liaison communities to facilitate immigration from the U.K. to South America, the only under populated country. Smooth patter, discreet lunches at Rules and Simpsons. Scrupulously abstain from any personal attack on the royal family.
2) We prepare a pamphlet with obscene cartoons covering the royal family with vile abuse. We send it out to members of all the best clubs, conservative M.P.'s, officers and gentlemen on Her Majesty's Service. The first wave takes a heavy toll in heart attacks and apoplexy in the halls of drafty clubs...muttering imprecations at yellowing tusks on the wall...walking down country lanes swinging umbrellas and sticks in the air. England is in ferment like a vast vat of bitters.
3) This vile attack on Her Majesty
Put an end to permissiveness
Bring back hangings
Bring back floggings
The piper plays "Bring Back My Bonnie To Me" on a tin flute down Kings Road.
1)ERP deplores pamphlets as sophomoric and calls on the invisible author to desist, which he does of course. The right hand sees what the left hand is doing. A lull, during which ERP consolidates gains. ERP ERP ERP ghoul expert patter belching it out all over England. After all why all this fuss about something left over from the Middle Ages? Just a question of getting people used to it like a new ten-shilling piece. I mean, when we can cut rates and give decent housing they'll forget all about it...the new generation never heard of such a thing. Turn Buckingham Palace into a luxury hotel, one of a chain...and that's where your firm comes in. The Royal family is to be absorbed into the diplomatic service which is also due for cutbacks and drastic overhaul. Old style diplomacy dates back to the eighteenth century. We want to see less goodwill tours and handshaking ad more understanding on basic exchange of goods and services. Yes the whole structure needs overhauling. Why not bring England into the twentieth century? Scrap the licensing laws - food and service 'round the clock. Good middle-priced restaurants like Horn & Hardest.
ERP ERP ERP. Skinheads? Street gangs? We'll give them something better to do than Paki-bashing and fighting each other. There's useful work for these boys to do...
2) Infiltrate street gangs as first move toward taking over the streets. We send our boys trained in every technique of hand-to-hand fighting, the use of weapons and demolition procedures. Jimmy the doctor with a scalpel up his sleeve. Electric Kris ready in his boot. These boys assume leadership of street gangs. Why fight each other? Why not fight the bastards who keep you here in your cold gritty dank slums? I said, "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and anybody doesn't like it just step forward and say so.
These boys have a double mission: first, to put street fighters in the street when we give the word...riots burning cars broken windows. That is the work of the rank and file. Second, they will sift street gangs for the smartest, hardest boys to forge the SS, the Palace Guard of the ERP. The boys will be exhaustively trained in all fighting techniques, in psychological warfare, in crown control. At the right time they will be provided with uniforms, motorcycles, armored cars and automatic weapons. There is useful work for these boys to do.
START ASSASSINATION BY LIST
We drop quite a few red herrings of course...always leave the door open to blame it all on rightist plotters. Besides, enigmatic assassinations are more upsetting, somehow. We have a tentative list of the real higher-ups in England. As we start working through it, other higher-ups will betray themselves to the trained observer, so the list keeps growing. We will need that list when the time rolls around for mass murder, mass assassination (MA), and we turn our boys loose.
Now we need a scenario for the rightist plot. Officers and gentlemen, they call themselves (OG). Using American techniques of thought control they will make the Queen a goddess. Her power is absolute. Every citizen must display at all times on his lapel, hat band, shirt or other garment where it can be plainly seen, the Queen's Rating. QR determines position in her society...at all times. Her favorites all have "Top Rating." They can walk into any restaurant and the manager has to provide a table. They can walk into any hotel and ask for a suite and the manager has to move somebody out. Intolerable little Cockney faggot in eighteenth century costume with a powered blue wig and snuff box full of cocaine: "Get this low rate riffraff out of my suite!" And so it goes on down the scale to the dreaded pariah rating (PR) which is tattooed in red ink on the forehead like the brand of Cain. Anyone can refuse to serve food, grant lodging, or take in any public transport a PR. And so her loyal and loyalist subjects think twice about incurring her serene displeasure. And it is well to remember that her favor is not to be taken for granted but must be earned anew each day. Actually the Queen is simply a holograph symbol of subservience manipulated by American know-how. Vulgar chaps, by and large, but they do have the technology...
Recent experiments with rhesus monkeys have demonstrated that fear, rage, excretory processes and sexual response can be brought under push-button control. The Chinese delegate screams his rage and shits in his pants on TV...the Soviet delegate masturbates uncontrollably...early answer to use on anyone considering to interfere. We set it all up with top secret documents, statements from a former CIA man who must for his own safety reasons remain anonymous. And we out our rumor boys into the streets with tape recorders.
1)England is taking orders from the CIA and the American narcotics department like a Central American banana republic. Wouldn't surprise me to see the marines land. Look at this drug problem they've dumped into our lap. Go after the pushers - you arrest one pusher and ten more will take his place. The one man the narcotics industry cannot do without is the addict on the street who buys it. Treat the addict in the street and you will put the pusher out of business. The apomorphine treatment started in England - why not give it a chance in England?
And let's give these kids something better to do. Why not reverse the braindrain? It isn't just more money that takes our best research brains to America - its better equipment and opportunities for more advanced research. The new work in autonomic shaping carried out in America by Drs. Bernard Engel, Joe Kamiya, Neal Miller and Peter Lang. They are teaching subjects to control brain waves, rate of heartbeat, blood pressure, digestive processes and sexual response. This could lead to trips without drugs and solve the drug problem. Is England picking up? Is similar research being carried out?...the Bristol Neurological Foundation by Professor Grey Walter? If so we haven't heard about it. Is England afraid of any research that could turn up something basically new? Is England muddling through or simply muddling steadily downhill? Is the mismanagement we see here part of a deliberate plot? It's beginning to look that way.
2) Riots and demonstrations by street gangs are stepped up. Start random assassination. Five citizens every day in London but never a police officer or serviceman. Patrols in the street shooting the wrong people. Curfews. England is rapidly drifting toward anarchy.
3) We send out our best agents to contact army officers and organize a rightist coup. We put rightist gangs into it like the Royal Crowns and the Royal Cavailers in the street. 1. Time for ERP! 2. Come Out in The Open!
The trouble in England is: it is run by old women of both sexes. we have a list of these people. We will not allow them to use the army to overthrow constitutional government and impose a dictatorship under pretense of controlling the disorders which they themselves have caused. It is time for young England to strike, and to strike hard.
We turn our palace guard loose. An armored car draws up in front of Claridge's. Youths with tommy guns jump out and block off the street. A TV crew unloads. The whole scene goes out live on TV.
Steps through the silent dining room...stop by a table. A burst of machine gun fire. A woman screams.
"Shut up you whore! And now, will you all please stand up - that's right. Now all of you sing God Save The Queen. Boys, walk around the dining room. You there - louder...more soul!"
The car stops in front of the best club of them all. It's not White's, I'm told, but we'll be around to White's later. They'll be waiting...the old gentlemen in their armchairs muttering about permissiveness...in the writing room writing letters toward the restoration if hanging and flogging. The boys leap out in their natty blue uniforms with the skull-and-crossbones at the lapel that glows in the dark.
"Are you a member, sir?" The boy shoots him coldly in the stomach with a P-38 (it's nice for city wear, so much more elegant that a revolver). Quick purposeful young steps down drafty halls. Tussle over the wall...the improbable hyphenated names. The members are frozen.
"What is this outrage? When a gentleman is reading his Times?" They expect the club steward to come in and throw the bouncers out perhaps it is even a case for the bobbies. The steps stop in front of an armchair.
"Are you Lord Stansfield?"
"I am."
"He is the most intelligent person in the room. Intelligent enough to know that this is serious." The boy is very elegant and disengaged. Lord Stansfield decides to try a paternal approach.
"Son..." The boy gives him a short burst across the chest. Diving bell from the nineteenth century shattered by a boy's bullets. The members are numb from the shock wave. TV camera, floodlights, the boy paces around the vast lounge looking at the pictures. He points the gun at a steward's stomach.
"You there, bring champagne."
"Champagne, sir?"
"Yes, champagne. And glasses for all the officers and gentlemen, the servants as well, and don't be forgetting the military." The trembling steward passes around the clicking glasses.
"You there! Pick it up!"
Now the boy stands in front of the Queen's picture. He raises his glass. "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" He throws the empty glass at the picture, shards of glass sticking into the Queen's face. The members are frozen. The boy unslings the tommy gun and shoots down five members in a random sequence pivoting from the hip. He picks up another glass. "And now all you officers and gentlemen, gather 'round here. That's right. I want to hear it, I want to hear it good and loud."
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
All over England, the elite guard carry the message of death. They have some natty uniforms with trick gadgets: a skull-and-crossbones in the lapel and a helmet that winks on and off, and blue revolving skull lights on the cars. And some frantic faggots get themselves up in skeleton suits of course. Sweeping down country roads thirty boys on motorcycles draw up in front of a stately home.
"Yes sir?"
"Where's the old bitch?"
The butler's face does not change. "Mrs. Charington is in the garden sir." And there she is, in her trowels and slacks, digging away at her roses.
"What do you want, young man?" She thinks he will quail before a good woman's gaze. He doesn't.
"Lebenstraum, you old hag. You poison the air we breath."
Mrs. Charington bleeds into her roses. The butler is busy with the wall safe...
They sweep up to a baronial estate.
"You'll have to wait, constable, the family is at dinner."
"Good, we'll join them." He jabs the butler in the stomach with his tommy gun. The lord and lady die in the seats, faces in the grouse. the children, a boy of eighteen and a girl of sixteen, sit there, faces blank with shock. Slowly the boy's face glows and sharpens with calculation. his lips part and his eyes shine. "Due truths are told as happy preludes to the swelling act. And now for my unfortunate brother."
Lead boy calls in two footmen. "Bring mattresses. You, and you, go along and see that they don't get lost.
Television cameras set up. the mattresses brought in and dropped on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Next scene shows the other boys gang-fucking the girl while the new boy tries on his uniform.
All over England under the searching guns pubs echo with "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" Taken up by junkies, meth heads, hippies...played back on recorders...live on TV.
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!" rises to the pale English sky. Whole regiments scream it out.
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and murder their officers straightway.
Boy packs with tommy guns march down the street and blast every shop window that bears the hated placard, "By Appointment to Her majesty the Queen." And everyone they meet had better scream it out loud...
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
They march into offices, schools, factories, department stores.
"All right, all of you, stick your head out of the window and show some respect."
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
All over England heads pop out of windows screaming,
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
Languid young officers on flower floats through the streets as the delirious populace chants,
"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"
"Bugger the Queen!" is now the national greeting..
ERP occupies Buckingham Palace to protect and advise the Royal family. Decimated by assassination and deprived of psychic support, the army falters. The Queen abdicates, while the elite guard languidly polish their nails on skull lapels. And who is that...a very natty tailor-made uniform?
...I think there is a residue of fair-minded people in England who will read it as it is intended: as an empirical sociological observation. If an image or symbol is widely venerated in a population segment, the desecration and shattering of that image or symbol will shatter the social structure insofar as that structure is based on the image or symbol. It's a very old rule: shatter the idols and you shatter the social structure. The idols are not often as easy to find. "Bugger Nixon" just doesn't do it at all. No shock value there.
The cut-ups date from the Dadaist movement and Tristan Tzara pulling a poem out of a hat. So you will see, this is actually a repetition of "Burn the Louvre!" And everybody says, "So who cares?" You don't have a basically important symbol. The tactic must shock and enrage, preferably to the point of madness. that is what this tactic is all about: desecration, madness.
"No it was not a difficult decision to issue these licenses for rape and murder. Nothing more ominous than a difficult decision in the Pentagon. And nobody does more harm than he who feels bad about doing it. Sad poison, nice guy more poison than nice wept when he saw the Hiroshima pictures. What a drag. When we murder somebody we want to have fun doing it.."
This license was dictated by a consideration taken into account by prudent commanders throughout history. You have to pay the boys off. Even the noble Brutus did it: "The town is yours boys." Tacitus describes a typical scene: "If a young girl or good-looking boy fell into their hands they were torn to pieces in the struggle for possession. And the survivors were left to cut each other's throats." Well there is no need for it to be that messy - why waste a good-looking boy? Mother-loving American army run by old women, many of them religious my god hanging American soldiers for raping and murdering civilians.
"WHAT THE FUCKING BLOODY HELL ARE CIVILIANS FOR?"
Old Sarge bellows from here to eternity: "Soldiers pay!"
The CO stands there and smiles. Just ahead is a Middle Western American town about 200,000. Pretty town on a river, plenty of trees. The CO points, "He's all yours boys! Every man, woman and child of it. Anything in it, living or dead."
"Now just a minute boys. Listen to Old Sarge. Why make the usual stupid scene kicking in liquor stores grabbing anything in sight. You wake up with a hangover in an alley, your prick tore from fucking dry cunts and assholes, your eye gouged out by a broken beer bottle when you and your buddy wanted the same one - no fun in that. Why not leave it like it is? They go about their daily tasks and we just take what we want when we want it, cool and easy, and make them like it. You see what I mean? Five thousand of us, two hundred thousand of them."
The young lieutenant in camouflage sees what he means. Boys - school showers and swimming pools full of them...
So we lay it on the line. "There's no cause for alarm, folks, proceed about your daily tasks. But one thing is clearly understood - your lives, your bodies, your properties belong to us whenever and wherever we choose to take them." So, we weed out the undesirables and turn the place into a paradise...getting' it steady year after year...
(End of tape one, side B)
A transcript from The Revised Boy Scout Manual, a novel in the form of three one-hour cassettes.
William S. Burroughs (1970)
RE/SEARCH #4/5
1982
Conor Oberst writes open letter for Zack de la Rocha's Sound Strike boycott of Arizona
Bright Eyes' mainman Conor Oberst has been an outspoken advocate for Zack de la Rocha's Sound Strike effort, joining fellow musicians and artists in a campaign to compel the state of Arizona to repeal its controversial immigration law. Ry Cooder, Nine Inch Nails, and comedian Chris Rock, Maroon 5, Gogol Bordello, My Morning Jacket, Ben Harper and Pitbull are among the dozens of artists that recently announced their support for the Sound Strike effort and have pledged to boycott Arizona, refusing to perform in the state until the law is repealed. Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Anti-Flag, Throwing Muses, State Radio, Aztlan Underground and DJ Spooky also announced support for the effort in a posting on thesoundstrike.net.
Charlie Levy, the owner of Stateside Presents, an independent concert-promotion company based in Phoenix that produces over 200 events a year in clubs and theaters throughout Arizona and New Mexico, published an open letter to the the artists involved in the Sound Strike, asking for them to reconsider the boycott and to use Arizona performances to register opposition to the law.
Below, Oberst responds to Levy with an open letter of his own.
Dear Charlie,
I read your letter and I do understand where you are coming from. You bring up valid points. I personally regret any of the collateral damage the boycott is causing you, other like-minded arts promoters and the fans in Arizona. A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike. I agree with you in part, and the radio host you quoted, that the authors and supporters of SB1070 could give a shit whether or not my band, or any other Artist, ever plays Arizona again. The only thing, clearly, that these people care about is Money and Power, that and the creation and preservation of an Anglo-Centric Police State where every Immigrant and Non-White citizen is considered subhuman. They want them stripped of their basic human rights and reduced to slaves for Corporate America and the White Race. They are engaged in blatant class warfare. It is evil, pure and simple.
I have on many occasions spoken my mind from stage. I have offered organizations table space by the merch booth. I have donated a dollar-a-ticket, or the entire guarantee, to different causes. I have registered voters. I have played on behalf of political candidates. Sadly, this time, I fear none of that is enough. If I return to Arizona to pay lip service to a roomful of kids at the Marquee it will do absolutely no good for anyone. What I can do is to help organize, and play my small part in, what I hope is the largest and most effective boycott this country has seen in a long time. To work it will have to involve members from all sectors of society. The Sports Industry, the Entertainment Industry, the Tourism and Convention Industry, other State and City governments, private businesses and individuals from around the country and the world---all of whom, by the way, are already participating in the boycott. Much of the Artist end of the boycott is symbolic, I acknowledge, and no real threat to the economics of the State. But it is an important part none-the-less for awareness and messaging. The Boycott has to be so widespread and devastating that the Arizona State Legislature and Governor have no choice but to repeal their unconstitutional, immoral and hateful law. It has to hurt them in the only place they feel any pain, their pocketbooks.
What I would encourage you to do, if you haven't already started, is to organize with all the local businesses you can to put as much pressure as possible on your State Government until the Law is repealed. An economic death rattle is the only cry of outrage they will hear.
I realize that the people of Arizona did not vote on SB1070 and I empathize with the anger and frustration you all must feel. I applaud what you are doing with Viva Arizona and do wonder if there might be a way to reconcile both our efforts while maintaining the integrity of each. After all, we are trying to achieve the same thing. But just as you may feel the boycott is an empty gesture, I fear that if we return to business as usual (under the guise of some civic movement) that this will all devolve into the typical grandstanding that is political activism in music. It might make us feel better but won't do a damn thing to change the minds of the radical, racist minority that seem to have controlled Arizona politics for decades. In short, it will lose its teeth.
Just this past week, the little town of Fremont Nebraska passed a very similar, almost more radical, city ordinance. It was co-authored and championed by Kris Kobach of Kansas who helped write SB1070. I was outraged, saddened and embarrassed for their town and my state. I am already in the process of organizing a fund-raiser for the NE chapter of the ACLU who is suing the town of Fremont. Our situation requires immediate legal action and a campaign for public awareness (there has been very little press on this). Charlie, I promise you, if this Fremont law had been passed Statewide instead of in a rural town of 25,000 people, I would be the first to call for a boycott of my home state. This way of thinking and legislating is so dangerous, and such a threat to our basic ideals as Americans and Humans, that we cannot stand by and do nothing. We cannot play on as if nothing is wrong. This is not just about Arizona. I am not just skipping a tour date. This is not going to be easy for anyone.
Charlie, I consider you a friend and you have always been great to my bands and me. I have played for you many times and I hope to do so again soon in New Mexico or anywhere else. I sincerely look forward to the day when I can return to Arizona and this will all seem like a bad dream. But I can't come back now. I'm sorry. I hope you will understand.
Your friend,
Conor Oberst
Charlie Levy, the owner of Stateside Presents, an independent concert-promotion company based in Phoenix that produces over 200 events a year in clubs and theaters throughout Arizona and New Mexico, published an open letter to the the artists involved in the Sound Strike, asking for them to reconsider the boycott and to use Arizona performances to register opposition to the law.
Below, Oberst responds to Levy with an open letter of his own.
Dear Charlie,
I read your letter and I do understand where you are coming from. You bring up valid points. I personally regret any of the collateral damage the boycott is causing you, other like-minded arts promoters and the fans in Arizona. A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike. I agree with you in part, and the radio host you quoted, that the authors and supporters of SB1070 could give a shit whether or not my band, or any other Artist, ever plays Arizona again. The only thing, clearly, that these people care about is Money and Power, that and the creation and preservation of an Anglo-Centric Police State where every Immigrant and Non-White citizen is considered subhuman. They want them stripped of their basic human rights and reduced to slaves for Corporate America and the White Race. They are engaged in blatant class warfare. It is evil, pure and simple.
I have on many occasions spoken my mind from stage. I have offered organizations table space by the merch booth. I have donated a dollar-a-ticket, or the entire guarantee, to different causes. I have registered voters. I have played on behalf of political candidates. Sadly, this time, I fear none of that is enough. If I return to Arizona to pay lip service to a roomful of kids at the Marquee it will do absolutely no good for anyone. What I can do is to help organize, and play my small part in, what I hope is the largest and most effective boycott this country has seen in a long time. To work it will have to involve members from all sectors of society. The Sports Industry, the Entertainment Industry, the Tourism and Convention Industry, other State and City governments, private businesses and individuals from around the country and the world---all of whom, by the way, are already participating in the boycott. Much of the Artist end of the boycott is symbolic, I acknowledge, and no real threat to the economics of the State. But it is an important part none-the-less for awareness and messaging. The Boycott has to be so widespread and devastating that the Arizona State Legislature and Governor have no choice but to repeal their unconstitutional, immoral and hateful law. It has to hurt them in the only place they feel any pain, their pocketbooks.
What I would encourage you to do, if you haven't already started, is to organize with all the local businesses you can to put as much pressure as possible on your State Government until the Law is repealed. An economic death rattle is the only cry of outrage they will hear.
I realize that the people of Arizona did not vote on SB1070 and I empathize with the anger and frustration you all must feel. I applaud what you are doing with Viva Arizona and do wonder if there might be a way to reconcile both our efforts while maintaining the integrity of each. After all, we are trying to achieve the same thing. But just as you may feel the boycott is an empty gesture, I fear that if we return to business as usual (under the guise of some civic movement) that this will all devolve into the typical grandstanding that is political activism in music. It might make us feel better but won't do a damn thing to change the minds of the radical, racist minority that seem to have controlled Arizona politics for decades. In short, it will lose its teeth.
Just this past week, the little town of Fremont Nebraska passed a very similar, almost more radical, city ordinance. It was co-authored and championed by Kris Kobach of Kansas who helped write SB1070. I was outraged, saddened and embarrassed for their town and my state. I am already in the process of organizing a fund-raiser for the NE chapter of the ACLU who is suing the town of Fremont. Our situation requires immediate legal action and a campaign for public awareness (there has been very little press on this). Charlie, I promise you, if this Fremont law had been passed Statewide instead of in a rural town of 25,000 people, I would be the first to call for a boycott of my home state. This way of thinking and legislating is so dangerous, and such a threat to our basic ideals as Americans and Humans, that we cannot stand by and do nothing. We cannot play on as if nothing is wrong. This is not just about Arizona. I am not just skipping a tour date. This is not going to be easy for anyone.
Charlie, I consider you a friend and you have always been great to my bands and me. I have played for you many times and I hope to do so again soon in New Mexico or anywhere else. I sincerely look forward to the day when I can return to Arizona and this will all seem like a bad dream. But I can't come back now. I'm sorry. I hope you will understand.
Your friend,
Conor Oberst
Slavoj Žižek - the world’s hippest philosopher
Flapping his elbows and lathered in sweat, Slavoj Žižek looks like a man in the final throes of radiation sickness doing the birdy dance. But the world’s hippest philosopher is actually miming what he imagines it would feel like to be trapped inside an all-body condom.
“I saw this thing in an American store!” he explodes, lurching towards me in the quiet conservatory of a Bloomsbury hotel. “A total mask for the body! The ultimate in safe sex! So obscene! My God! But I do believe that by analysing this sort of phenomena you learn a lot about where we are. We want coffee without caffeine! Cake without sugar! And this is decaffeinated sex!”
In the hour we talk topics include his “growing admiration for the works of Agatha Christie — she worked through every formula!” and his condemnation of the 3D blockbuster Avatar as “racist”. He locates “a wandering Jew” at the centre of Wagner’s work and hears a beautiful, minimalist communism in the music of Eric Satie. He points out that the “close doors” button in a lift doesn’t speed the closing of the doors, it is just there to give the user the illusion of action. Voting in a modern Western democracy, he feels, is much the same. He pauses to pant, sigh and throw up his palms. But he is not pausing now. A provocateur whose work inhabits the place where Lacanian psychoanalysis meets Marxist philosophy is going to have something to say about sex.
And it is to alert us that “something weird is going on in Hollywood. Did you see the film of Dan Brown’s novel, Angels and Demons? There is sex in the book. They erased it from the movie! What is going on? It used to be the other way around. Hollywood inserted the sex. This is something, no? I agree with [French philosopher] Alain Badiou, who has a nice theory that with all this internet dating we are returning to premodern procedures of arranged marriage. He found in France a dating agency advertisement which promised 'We will enable you to be in love sans tomber — without falling’. It is a wonderful metaphor. Because this is love, no? A dramatic, traumatic, moment. But this is too dangerous for us now. We are too narcissistic to risk any kind of accidental trip or fall. Even into love!”
Such passion, in a man whose work forms a shaky, cartoon rope-bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding enquiring minds around the world. Žižek (pronounced Gee-gek, with two soft g’s, as in “regime”) has now written more than 50 books and seen his work translated into 20 languages. His lectures rack up hundreds of thousands of YouTube views.
A master of counterintuitive thinking and a man in thrall to paradox, he has been attacked for being a crypto-Stalinist defending terror and for spreading bourgeois lies about communism, for being both anti-Semitic and spreading Zionist lies. He is both a serious revolutionary and an absurdist prankster. An atheist who has made a spirited case for Christianity. His work has been published in serious Leftist journals and in a catalogue for US fashion retailers Abercrombie & Fitch.
Although he tells me “I hate students. They want to ask a question? ---- off!”, he holds two academic posts – as president of the Society for Theoretical Analysis of Ljubljana and as international director of the Birkbeck Institute of Humanities in London – and has starred in two documentaries: Žižek! (2005) and The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema (2006).
But Žižek dismisses those who dub him “The Elvis of Philosophy” with a brisk: “To the gulag! All of them!” And he hasn’t seen either film. “It is too traumatic for me to see myself. Whenever I see such a thing, my reaction is to ask: 'Would a woman allow me to take her daughter to the cinema?’ My God! Of course not! I don’t want to deal with myself. I don’t want to exist. I just want to think.”
But whether he wanted to or not, Slavoj Žižek came into independent existence in March 1949, in the then-Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. His father was an economist and civil servant and his mother was an accountant.
“My life is straightforward,” he says. “Nothing happened. At 15, I wanted to be a movie director. But I saw some really good European films and I accepted that I couldn’t do that. Then, at 17, I decided to become a philosopher.”
I try to suggest that all children are philosophers. That perhaps he was just one of those people who never got tired of asking “why?”. But he waves me away with a swift: “No, I don’t think so. It wasn’t any of this existential bullshit — it wasn’t that I felt that life has no sense and all that adolescent stuff. But in the former Yugoslavia philosophy had a certain dissident charm and I was intrigued by the beauty of the arguments. Our communism was a little more open than it was elsewhere. We could go to London, Paris and Berlin to buy books and so on. So we didn’t have any illusions about communism. We didn’t buy their bullshit. We were well located to see what was going on and had no illusions about the East or the West.”
Žižek started out as a Heideggerian, but changed his position as soon as he found a way to get more irritatingly under the skin of the authorities. “In Slovenia the 'official’ philosophy was a kind of Frankfurt School Marxism,” he explains. “Heideggerians were the dissidents. But in the late Sixties there was an explosion of so-called structuralism in France – Foucault, Lacan, you know? – and both the Heideggarians and the Frankfurt School Marxists brutally attacked it. Rejected it in the same terms. And this was the enigma to me. It is always interesting when old enemies unite. So I decided to become Lacanian.”
He had been in line for a professorship at Ljubljana University until there was “an Indian summer of communist oppression”. His masters thesis was rejected for being “non-Marxist” and he was thrown out in the cold.
“And this was a blessing in disguise. After a period of unemployment I got a post at an out-of-the-way university. I was able to survive and I had the freedom to develop my own ideas. Without that communist oppression I honestly believe I would be a stupid professor in Ljubljana. I am very lucky!”
The paradoxically freeing potential of such open oppression forms a key plank in Žižek’s philosophical rope bridge. It sends him spiralling back to the subject of sex.
“My psychoanalytical friends are always telling me that we once needed classical therapy to free us from internalised repression so we could do it. But today you feel guilty if you do not have wide-ranging sexual desire and experience. Once enjoyment becomes permitted it slides imperceptibly toward the obligatory. You have to do it and you have to enjoy it. Think about extremely hedonistic gay communities in America: life there is totally regimented. They eat the same food, take vitamins, watch the same films. We live in a permissive society but the price we pay is that there never was so much anxiety, depression, impotence and frigidity.”
Waving his pasty arms and tugging at increasingly soggy, proletarian grey T-shirt, Žižek tells me a favourite parable about “the falsity of permissivity”: “Say you are a little girl and I am a totalitarian father. It is Saturday afternoon. I say, 'I don’t care what you want to do, you have to visit your grandmother.’ You go but you secretly hate me and try to revolt and that is OK. That is good. But the monstrous permissive father will say: 'You know how much your grandmother loves you, but visit her only if you really want to.’ Beneath the appearance of a choice is a much more severe order. Not only must you visit grandma but you must want to and like it. I had such a father, which is why I hate him.”
Žižek has two sons (from different marriages — he is in the process of an “amicable divorce” from an Argentinian lingerie model 30 years his junior) aged 35 and 10. Is he stricter than his own dad? “I am worse! I am a catastrophe! I teach them all the dirty words. The only thing I insist is that they learn to work and don’t be evil to others.”
Suspicious of simplicity, Žižek believes in complicating the answers to even the most basic of questions. But it does seem that one aspect of his paternal ban on “evil” means he expects his boys to tolerate the beliefs and lifestyles of others to some extent. And yet he points out that the notion of tolerance in liberal democracies is a joke.
“One of my formative experiences occurred in Belgrade in the mid-Nineties. I was there secretly to see a friend who was dying and I happened to meet in a cafeteria some people who were murderers, ethnic cleansers. And they totally undermined the assumption that people like them would think that what was wrong with modern society was too many choices, the need for an order. No. For them modern society was too regimented. They said '---- it! In modern society I am not free to rape, to kill, to tell racist jokes.’” He turns this idea on me. “You are a feminist? Yes? Good. You don’t want your feminism to be only 'tolerated’, do you? No!”
It follows that 21st-century fundamentalists do not want their beliefs “tolerated” by a liberalism they want to destroy. “Can we even imagine the change in the Western 'collective psyche’ when (not if but precisely when) some 'rogue nation’ or group obtains a nuclear device, or powerful biological or chemical weapon, and declares its 'irrational’ readiness to risk all in using it?” he writes in Living in End Times. The premise of this wide-ranging, often revelatory, frequently bewildering work is that the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point.
“Its four riders,” he writes, “are comprised of the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.”
From the ashes, he argues, we should be able to build a new communism. “The standard liberal-conservative argument against communism is that, since it wants to impose on reality an impossible dream, it necessarily ends in terror. What, however, if one should nonetheless insist on taking the risk of enforcing the Impossible onto reality? Even if, in this way, we do not get what we wanted and/or expected, we none the less change the coordinates of what appears as 'possible’ and give birth to something genuinely new.”
But the book offers no clear idea of how its readers might begin to go about doing this. When I ask Zˇizˇek if there are any pointers I’ve missed, he explodes one final time: “I despise the kind of book which tells you how to live, how to make yourself happy! Philosophers have no good news for you at this level! I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep s--- you are in!”
Noting with relief that our hour is up, he tells me he must to get back to work on his “megabook” on Hegel. “Because time is running out. I am 61, I have diabetes.”
He holds out a slippery paw and shakes my hand with warmth and vigour. “This is all? My God! Good. Goodbye!”
Helen Brown @"The Telegraph'
Fact Mix 164: Pinch
Pinch, real name Rob Ellis, has been a significant presence in our musical lives since his brutalist debut 12″ ‘War Dub’, released via his own aptly named Tectonic label back in ’05. Ellis’s more reflective 2006 Planet Mu single ‘Qawwali’ – among the best and most distinctive dubstep records ever made – paved the way for Underwater Dancehall, his debut album of 2007. Featuring a number of wisely chosen guest vocalists, including Juakali and house diva Yolanda, Underwater Dancehall stands up as one of the most coherent, sophisticated and satisfying dancefloor-derived albums of the noughties, and, as far as dubstep LPs go, it’s perhaps second only to Burial’s brace in terms of vision, ambition and virtuoso execution.
In the three years that have elapsed since then, Pinch has continued to work his fingers to the bone as a DJ and producer, releasing singles not only through Tectonic but also Punch Drunk, Soul Jazz and most recently Dancing Demons. As a label-owner and A&R he’s shown incredible commitment and integrity, rigorously maintaining Tectonic’s dubstep core while being bold enough to signmore leftfield offerings such as Pursuit Groove’s recent Foxtrot Mannerisms EP. A roll-call of some of the producers who’ve released 12″s and LPs on Tectonic, or contributed productions to its Tectonic Plates compilations, says it all: 2562, Flying Lotus, Skream, Peverelist, Distance, Shed, Benga, RSD, Loefah…
Interestingly, Tectonic is but one arm of the musical empire over which Pinch presides. Formed in 2004, Multiverse is a creative studio and publishing company that acts as an umbrella to the Tectonic, Kapsize, Earwax, Caravan and Build labels, with a recording and production facility on Bristol’s Whiteladies Road. A new double-CD compilation, Dark Matter, celebrates five years of Multiverse, and ranges from the grotty industrial dubstep of Vex’d to the springy UKF-inflected house of Baobinga & ID, via the subtle techno variations of October and Emptyset and the super-saturated purple funk of Joker. More than just a collection of tasty tracks, Dark Matter enshrines a hugely important spasm of creativity in Bristol, one which has seen it shed its early noughties reputation as a d’n'b ghost-town to become, once again, the envy of the global underground. Dark Matter is out now; for more information and tracklist, click here, and buy your copy here.
To celebrate the release of Dark Matter, not to mention his new quarterly DJ residency at London’s Fabric, Pinch has put together a 100% vinyl and acetate mix for FACT that’s absolutely stuffed with as-yet-unreleased material. There are a bunch of new tracks from Skream (‘Amitystep’, ‘Phatty Druma’) and Mala (’2 Much Chat’ ‘Answer Me’), Peverelist & Appleblim’s take on Bass Clef’s ‘Promises’, Pinch remixed by Pangaea and remixing WAX (aka Shed) as well as repping with three originals of his own (‘The Boxer’, ‘Elements’ and ‘Swish’). There’s further dubplate action from Jack Sparrow, Redlight, Distance and Goth Trad. If you want to know where dubstep is in 2010, get downloading and listening.
Tracklist:
1. Bass Clef ‘Promises’ (Peverelist & Appleblim remix) (Dubplate)
2. Emika ‘Double Edge Sword’ (Pinch remix) (Ninja Tune)
3. Skream ‘Amitystep’ (Dubplate)
4. Mala ’2 Much Chat’ (Dubplate)
5. Jack Sparrow ‘The Cahse’ (Tectonic)
6. Pinch ‘Midnight Oil’ (Pangaea remix) (Dubplate)
7. Dubkasm ‘Hail Jah’ (Jakes Remix) (forthcoming on Sufferer’s Choice)
8. Jack Sparrow & Ruckspin ‘Dread’ (Dubplate)
9. WAX20002b (Pinch remix)
10. Jakes ‘Time Ends’ (Tectonic)
11. Mala ‘Eyes’ (DMZ)
12. Distance ‘Ill Kontent’ (forthcoming on Tectonic)
13. Jack Sparrow ‘Terminal’ (Tectonic)
14. Red Light ‘MDMA’ (Dubplate)
15. Joker ‘Output 1-2′ (Tectonic)
16. Skream ‘Phatty Druma’ (Dubplate)
17. Pinch ‘Elements’ (forthcoming on Swamp 81)
18. Goth Trad ‘Sublimination’ (Dubplate)
19. Distance ‘Reboot’ (Dubplate)
20. Pinch ‘The Boxer’ (forthcoming on Tectonic)
21. Pinch ‘Swish’ (Dubplate)
22. Mala & SGT Pokes ‘Answer Me’ (Dubplate) [Tease]
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