Under Heavy Manners

This may be where I part company with Adam Curtis. Yes, espionage and counter-espionage is a game of shadows. Sometimes there may not be anything lurking there at all. There undoubtedly was a group of hard right paranoiacs in Mi5 who lost the plot in 1970s; I suspect they never really understood the Soviet Union very well.

But in Ireland (and against the left and the trade unions) the security services were not chasing anyone's tail. They understood the 'threat' all too well, and had it under surveillance, infiltrated, and neutralized by the late-1980s. And many people - guilty, compromised or innocent - were killed.

Shooting of Bernadette Devlin

Surveillance operations in South Armagh

 

Early Adopters

What a great song.

"We've taken too much for granted
And all the time it had grown
From techno seeds we first planted
Evolved a mind of it's own"

A completely inexplicable reference in a song that seems to echo a few early techno concerns, a dystopian futurism. I know it's probably not in reference to anything going on in Detroit, but still.

And also a prefiguring of acceleraionist technofascistwank. It's also basically the plot to Terminator as well.

"From off I've seen my perfection
Where we could do as we please
In secrecy this infection
Was spreading like a disease"

Rob Halford - prophetic visionary?

Quick to reject

Simon Reynolds on Anthony Burgess' 1985