Notting Hill Carnival: An Opiate of the Masses, A Dance of the Oppressed or a Bonfire of Vanities
It is time to reflect as the dust settles on another Notting Hill Carnival. On Tuesday morning, the last of the two million-strong Carnival Occupation Army left for a destination unknown, leaving a trail of destruction that would not look out of place in a war zone.
The orgy of violence and staggering law-breaking is largely ignored by the powers that be. Carnival is glorified in their newspapers. Four of the leading bourgeoisie newspapers, including the Financial Times, had articles that were nothing more than glorified adverts for the Carnival. All had uncritical interviews with the Carnival leader, Matthew Phillips. Phillip is the CEO of the Carnival development agency Carnival Village Trust and Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, which manages the Notting Hill Carnival.
Loud calls have been made to ban the Carnival, It is surely a matter of time before a Hillsborough-type disaster occurs. One came close on Monday when police withdrew people from Portobello Rd after it became dangerously overcrowded. It will be interesting to find out in the coming weeks how many people caught the new strain of COVID-19 that would have been spread by over two million people in close proximity to each other.
But there is not a snowball's chance in hell of it being stopped. Carnival is big business. It generates over £100m in revenue and has cultivated a layer of the black middle class that has done very well out of Carnival. One of its more greedy representatives now sits in jail after stealing nearly three-quarters of a million pounds from the Charity wing of the Carnival.
Happy 2024 Carnival.
Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen-Peter Apps-Oneworld Publications 10/11/2022-Paperback- 352 Pages.
The Grenfell Inquiry into the fire has lasted five years and has largely been a whitewashing of events. Apps is heavily critical of the Inquiry but not to the extent that he believes this was an act of social murder. It has been clear from the outset that the ruling elite has covered up the true nature of this crime. Such a cover-up has been compared to the one involving the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in which 97 people died.
The British ruling elite is an expert in denying justice using public inquiries. They are deaf to the demands of the survivors. Yet still, millions of people live in unsafe, dangerous housing. Still, the government even refused to implement all of the limited housing safety measures recommended by Moore-Bick.
As Charles Hixson and Robert Stevens write, "The Inquiry bore witness to endless self-justifications by corporate and government bodies, shamelessly passing the buck for the use of shoddy, dangerous and illegal materials on the refurbishment of the tower even as documents confirmed that residents' concern about safety was treated with contempt. It has been painfully obvious to everyone since the immediate aftermath of the fire that a small number of individuals are culpable for the mass deaths at Grenfell, including the owners/decision makers at major contractor Rydon, cladding manufacturer Arconic, Irish insulation provider Kingspan, manufacturer of foam insulation, Celotex, the Conservative Party-run Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), and its Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) which managed the tower".[1]
One of the most important parts of the book is how Apps writes about the night of the fire, as told through the experiences of the people involved. According to one writer: "They put a human context to the tragedy: the lives, loves, challenges, dreams of those who died or whose lives were changed forever by what happened".
Still, after six years since the fire, nobody has been charged, let alone jailed. As Peter Apps correctly states, "Grenfell can feel like a past story—it's not. It's something that needs to be kept in the public eye if we want to see the companies responsible held to account. Grenfell didn't have to happen. This was a problem people were worried about—adding combustible materials onto the outside of buildings. The book brings together the story about how a tower block in one of the richest parts of the richest cities in the world clad a building in material chemically similar to petrol."
Apps book shows that The Grenfell Tower Fire resulted from profiting, negligence and a lack of regard for people living in social housing. A raft of construction companies, regulators, the Tory-led council and the government, have blood on their hands.
As the Marxist writer Frederick Engles once wrote, "When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains."[2]
While Apps doesn't entirely agree with the concept of social murder, his book is well worth the read and would seem to have sold widely and deservedly so.
[1] UK: Grenfell Tower fire inquiry hearings end with guilty evading justice
8 August 2022-wsws.org
[2] The Conditions of the working class in Britain-Frederick Engels
The Tinder Swindler – Netflix- 2 February 2022
"I have the right to choose whatever name I want, I never presented myself as the son of anyone, but people use their imaginations. Maybe their hearts were broken during the process… I never took a dime from them; these women enjoyed themselves in my company. They traveled and got to see the world on my dime,"
Simon Leviev
"Any Swipe Can Change Your Life
Tinder Slogan
"How can you give trust to a man like that, who escaped from Israel twice? A man that deceived and swindled women in Europe for hundreds of thousands of euros. Where is the justice?"
Pernilla Sjöholm
The Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler is a British true crime documentary film directed by Felicity Morris and was released on Netflix on 2 February 2022. It is about how convicted fraudster Simon Leviev (sentenced in Finland and Israel), an internet dating scammer, cheated hundreds of women out of 10 million dollars. Leviev ran a basic Ponzi scheme, using new women's money to fund his fake billionaire lifestyle. It derives its name from the Italian Charles Ponzi, who ran a system in the early 1920s that extorted almost $200 million dollars (in 2022 currency). Ponzi schemes have only become more popular over the past century.
While it is a basic human trait to feel for the underdog or, in this case, the scammed women, I find it hard to muster sympathy for several women who fell for such an obvious confidence trick. It beggars belief that these women fell in "love" with this cold-blooded con artist with a reptilian worldview. The Tinder Swindler trod a fine line when it romanticised the exploits and fabrications of this con artist. The documentary does not condemn his criminal behaviour despite the devastating personal and financial harm he caused.
The first woman we meet is Cecilie Fjellhoy, who talks about falling for a man she met on the Tinder dating app. He called himself Simon Leviev. Despite her friends warning her that this could be a scam, she boarded his private jet and was fed at a five-star hotel. It did not yet dawn on her that this lavish lifestyle was paid for by a long line of women that had been conned before her. Her scammer claimed to be the son of a billionaire diamond dealer but was a convicted conman named Shimon Hayut. Fjellhoy was fleeced to the tune of 250,000 dollars
The second woman interviewed was Pernilla Sjoholm. Like her friend Cecillie she does not exactly cover herself in glory in this documentary. She does not fall in love with Leviev but becomes his friend, and when she is invited to spend a summer travelling with him, she jumps at the chance. The only problem is that Simon's then-girlfriend will accompany them. Her story ends the same way as Cecillie's. However, she did not lose as much.
The story only gets really interesting when the story finally becomes public after an in-investigation by the Norwegian newspaper VG. While you must admire the bravery of the women involved to go public, they faced several rather accurate charges of being in love with money. The newspaper story went viral and showed the huge extent of his deception.
Netflix's true-crime documentaries are usually strong on visuals and excitement and can be sensationalist but largely unsatisfying. At no stage did the Netflix documentary examine the personal psychology of a con artist like Leviev. While The Tinder Swindler is fun and good to look at, as one reviewer said, "Despite the great yarn at its centre, [the film] sometimes lapses into the self-indulgence common to so many modern documentaries, with endless shadowy reconstructions and a heart-tugging soundtrack." It leaves a lot of unanswered questions and barely scratches the surface of what is a billion-dollar business.
Why did it take Tinder so long to ban him, given they are not slow in banning the ordinary Joe public without recourse to an appeal? The writer of this article was also banned, and maybe they got wind of my writing this article. Currently 31 years old, Simon Leviev lives as a free man in Israel and is dating Israeli model Kate Konlin. He has an Instagram account.
The Tinder Swindler unwittingly exposes the connection between middle-class aspirations and the fake identities constructed on dating platforms such as Tinder. But as Christopher McMichael states, "this technology exists against the backdrop of neoliberalism, with its Darwinian ideology of competition and wealth accumulation at all costs. In this culture, dishonourable or dishonest practices are now called "hustling" or "grinding" – the ends of more money and power are seen to justify the means."
Leviev's Tinder profile shows an image of material wealth, and the women attracted to this wealth were hooked before Leviev even opened his mouth. As the journalist Christopher McMichael again explains, "Historically, con artists have also been known as grifters or snake oil salesmen, referring to the selling of fraudulent products. Capitalism has long produced criminal entrepreneurs prepared to tell lies for a quick buck. In the early 19th century, Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor convinced European investors that he had exclusive control of a territory in South America called Poyais. But instead of a bustling settlement, Poyias did not exist, and many of his victims who came to live in the promised utopia died in the jungle."[1]
It is perhaps a little perverse that The Tinder Swindler's portrayal of the con artist reveals the true nature of the capitalist system. The way to make millions is not through the American dream but "subterfuge, class power and exploitation".
To conclude, Leviev's crimes are many and varied but are not the product of just a bad individual but are part of a broader process that has been going on for decades. Leviev's criminality is not an aberration but shows the true face of capitalism in the 21st century. The accumulation of wealth and assets has completely detached itself from the real economy for a long time. The result is unprecedented social polarisation and the criminalisation of all sectors of the capitalist economy. Leviev's criminality is but one bizarre expression of the criminality of capitalism.
[1] https://www.newframe.com/fake-it-then-make-it-how-con-artists-capture-us/
Love, Janessa (BBC World Service) | BBC Sounds
Journalist Hannah Ajala hosts the podcast. The podcast tells the story of a porn star, Janessa Brazil, whose photos have repeatedly been used to scam people. Ajala talks to numerous victims who have been conned out of hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars. Many of these victims maintain they spoke to the real porn star
As the program states, there was not just a handful of scammers using Janessa's picture but hundreds. Janessa's images were readily available on the internet and on her private porn site. At no time did the people scammed out of large amounts of money do an image search that would have immediately told them they were being taken for a ride.
During the podcast, it becomes apparent that this is not a very sophisticated scam. There's a bit of sweet talk, everyday flirtation followed by demands for money, mainly car repairs, to mend a broken phone or hospital costs. As the con develops, the amount of money demanded grows larger. To be fooled by this deception, you must be either stupid, gullible, or both. Unfortunately, thousands of men have been fooled by this low-brow scam.
Apart from the real Janessa, (see left) the show's star is Roberto, an eco-entrepreneur from Sardinia who reportedly handed over $250,000 to various scammers in Ghana. He is treated with utmost sympathy by the show's host. Not once was his staggering level of stupidity challenged. Not content with handing over large amounts of money to scammers, he traveled the world waiting at airports hoping to meet the real Janessa, who would never turn up. Again at no point was this high-level delusion challenged, let alone condemned. Roberto was not the only person scammed to hop on a plane to look for the love of his life. A Nova Scotian divorcee got on a plane to Ghana to meet the man of her dreams,
Most scams connected to the porn star Janessa were based in either Nigeria or Ghana. The British journalist Hannah Ajala, currently based in Ghana, met and interviewed one of the many romance scammers, known locally as "Sakawa boys".These scammers are professional criminals and are a major part of a billion-dollar industry. These Sakawa boys have multiple scams on the go at once, and they keep a spreadsheet to keep track of the lies he tells their victims. His wife and children know nothing of his work. Ajala treats these criminals with a courtesy they don't deserve as if they were some kind of celebrity. The podcast's conclusion is a bit of anti-climax as everybody lives happily ever after.
Sweetheart Scams: Online Dating's Billion-Dollar Swindle- by Clarence Jones Paperback – Oct. 15 2020
Clarence Jones's book is a step-by-step guide on how scammers work and how to avoid getting caught. Jones is an investigative reporter and seems to be a one-man publishing industry. Jones spent years investigating online dating services. Much of what Jones found is not new. Online dating websites, since their inception, have been a haven for scammers and a clever way for escorts or prostitutes to ply their trade without prosecution. Specialized websites are helping husbands and wives cheat on their spouses. These websites are an online version of a pimp who manages escorts and prostitutes.
Most hookup sites are nothing more than a license to print money, and most sites are interactive pornography. Most, if not all, profiles are fake, and in reality, you are probably talking to another computer in the form of "bots", which generates massive profits for its owners.
In 2020 I wrote a series of articles on one aspect of this nasty scam which has conned many people out of millions. After two years of research, certain things can be said to warn others. The first job of a scammer who proliferates the various online dating sites is to get their prey off the original dating website and onto sites such as Gmail and WhatsApp. Gmail is a favorite hunting ground for your African scammers, and it is a simple scam.
They send you a picture of a gorgeous voluptuous woman, usually lifted from a porn site. Most men think, yum, I am in here. They don't ask why this beautiful 25-year-old woman would have anything to do with a balding middle-aged man. Unperturbed most men would want to see this hot girl on video chat. This is the first part of the scam. To see this beautiful woman, you need to purchase an Amazon card or other such items for them to get an internet connection for the video call.
When they finally agree to your demand to see them in the flesh, you do not see the beautiful young thing in the flesh, but a rather clumsy video these amateurs have somehow managed to upload onto Gmail. On one occasion, I could see the real person behind the scam as his hand slipped, revealing his real identity, and he was not a gorgeous blonde woman.
Jones looks into Facebook's role in allowing scammers to operate with impunity. Facebook launched their dating app in 2019. This free dating app was a means by which Facebook sought to promote the launch of its digital currency Meta. Facebook is riddled with fake profiles. In the first quarter of 2022, Facebook removed 1.6 billion fake accounts, down from 1.7 billion in the previous quarter. In 2019, 2.2 billion counterfeit accounts were removed in one quarter alone.
These gorgeous-looking Asian women were not interested in dating. They used Facebook to lure punters into a Cryptocurrency scam. They would take your money, saying they will invest it in Cryptocurrency. The reality is that they take the money and run along with their uncles. It was amazing that all these girls had fantastic relatives willing to help others get rich. When yours truly threatened to report these scammers, he received some very nasty death threats and one ugly video threatening DECAPITATION. Facebook turned a blind eye to the whole scam. After all, many of these Asian scammers were promoting Facebook's digital currency, Meta.
The levels of criminality surrounding dating websites, an industry worth billions of dollars, are not separate from the criminality of the capitalist system itself. Scammers are not just a collection of random criminals; as Jones points out, they are well-organized and systematic, and it is big business.
Some Thoughts on the Notting Hill Carnival 2022
The UK's Notting Hill Carnival returned to London's streets after a two-year absence caused by the coronavirus pandemic. My first thought is why given that a deadly virus is still around and putting people in hospital and killing thousands, would two million people turn up to an event that, by its very nature, would spread the virus and cause untold suffering and possibly death to vulnerable people who will in the future come into contact with persons who went to the Carnival?
If that was not bad enough, footage has emerged on the internet of people packed so tight on the street that it constituted a threat to safety. To escape being crushed, people climbed over railings and into basements to avoid the surge of people. The scenes were reminiscent of the Hillsborough disaster, only thankfully without the death toll.
Quite what attracts people to this event is a mystery. While I grant you the costumes are pretty, and some people have a bit of fun, the experience must be pretty bad for the majority. With an all-time high of 38 gigantic sound systems, you would have thought the music would have been of a high calibre. However, this was not the case. The fact that no musicians of any world renown would be caught dead performing at Carnival is telling.
Secondly, having experienced being close to a fifty-foot sound system, one is completely numb and deaf after only a few seconds. It is also very difficult to appreciate the musical vibes when you are sky-high after breathing in gallons of nitrous oxide. So far, thousands of large gas canisters weighing in total 4 tonnes have been collected from the streets. Hospitals expect to have to treat a large number of young people for nerve damage.
It is also hard to fathom why people think it is their democratic right to have fun, dance, drink, and take drugs while the victims of the Grenfell fire have still not received justice. The RBKC council and the organisers of the Notting Hill Carnival paid lip service by holding a 72-second silence but still allowed the Carnival to go ahead. At the same time, the ashes of over 72 people remain in the tower block, which can be seen in full view of people dancing and parading in the streets. The reason for this is not hard to fathom. The Carnival has become big business.
The presence of companies including Red Bull and Virgin Atlantic have meant the Carnival has become not only a money spinner for big business, but several small organisations and even residents have monetised the event out of all recognition from its earliest anti-racist and anti-capitalist origins.
As Dr Razaq Raj writes , "the commercialisation of Carnival began with the sponsorship of Lilt in 1995, a tropical fruit-flavoured soft drink manufactured by Coca-Cola, in which it became the Lilt Notting Hill Carnival; this arrangement continued in 1996 and 1997 (Carver, 2000). The Carnival was sponsored by Virgin Atlantic in 1998 when Nestle (who were meant to sponsor the event) withdrew their support (BBC News, 1998). Western Union Notting Hill Carnival became the festival's name in 1999 when Western Union sponsored the event. Notting Hill's commercialisation highlights the event's growth since its humble beginnings. It is symbolic of the conflict between the political and radical past to the present day organised and funded event. The commercialisation of Carnival highlights its growth but also critical problems for the event and carnival management. The conflict between the radical past and conservative operations of Notting Hill Carnival presents the main questions as to the future purpose of Notting Hill Carnival. Has this cultural event that acted as a political vehicle for the community fallen victim to the Western capitalist society?[1]
Carnival 2022 was a sanitised and unpolitical event. The Carnival has become so far removed from its origins that it is unrecognisable from its early days as a vehicle of protest against racism and slavery. In historical terms, sixty years is not a long time. Sixty years ago, the fascists were openly marching on the streets of Notting Hill, and the fascist leader Oswald Mosely was holding meetings on the Goldborne rd.
As the Marxist writer, Cliff Slaughter wrote in 1958, "The race riots in Nottingham and London came like a bolt from the blue to most ordinary men and women in Britain, just as they did to the Press, that self-styled watchdog of the public conscience. The Observer, usually more far-sighted than most newspapers, spoke of the race riots as something which seemed a cloud no bigger than a man's hand a few days earlier. So long as we look only at the surface of social life and try to deal with each question separately as it arises, we shall continue to find ourselves bewildered by events like the race riots. But they are no nine days wonder. Every worker in the country must clearly understand this.
Every member of the working class must endorse the condemnation by the Trades Union Congress of racial discrimination and violence. But this is not enough. Only if we can trace the social roots of racial conflict shall we be able to weed them out and those who profit from it with them. The starting point for the working class must be unity and solidarity against the employers and their political representatives—in the first place, the Tory Party. All the problems the working class now faces—growing unemployment, the housing shortage, rent increases, the rising cost of living, attacks on wages and working conditions, and, above all, the threat of an H-bomb war—can be solved only by the unity and determined action of the working class. It is no accident that the steady growth of unemployment over the last year has been accompanied by an insidiously growing campaign around the slogan 'Keep Britain-White'."[2]
The problems faced by the working class in 1958 are the same but on a much higher scale, unemployment, the housing shortage, rent increases, the rising cost of living, attacks on wages and working conditions, and, above all, the threat of nuclear war. These issues and more will not be solved by a few dances on the street or by sniffing a gas up your nose. Young people especially need to think about the choices they are making now. They do not have too much time.
[1] Exploitation of Notting Hill Carnival to increase community pride and spirit and act as a catalyst for regeneration. Dr Razaq Raj
[2] Race Riots: the Socialist Answer- From Labour Review, Vol. 3 No. 5, December 1958, pages 134-137. www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/slaughter/1958/12/race.htm
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion -Jia Tolentino published by 4th Estate (£14.99)
“I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice, for it is myself that I portray. My defects will here be read to the life, and also my natural form as far as respect for the public has allowed. Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.”
“It's hard…to keep one's illusions about anything in Paris. Everything is taxed, everything is sold, everything is manufactured, even success”
[Balzac/Hunt, 1837/1971: Lost Illusions
“There are some persons who may do anything; they may behave totally irrationally, anything becomes them, and it is who shall be first to justify their conduct; then, on the other hand, there are those on whom the world is unaccountably severe, they must do everything well, they are not allowed to fail nor to make mistakes, at their peril they do anything foolish”
[Balzac/Hunt, 1837/1971: Lost Illusions
“These are the prisms through which I have come to know myself. I tried to undo their acts of refraction.”
Jia Tolentino
A staff writer for the New Yorker since 2016, Jia Tolentino’s book is a collection of sophisticated, semi-insightful, and well-written essays on subjects including religion, drugs, feminism, the cult of the difficult woman, and the Internet.
While not quite at Michel de Montaigne’s intellectual level, Tolentino mirrors his attempt to understand the world. She joins a growing number of young women writing about their experiences. Some have done a better job than others.[1]
What sets this book apart from the rest is Tolentino’s attempt to place her own life and the subject matter she writes about in a social, economic and political context. It must be said that it has become unfashionable to do such a thing. While certainly not a Marxist, and unless I am mistaken, Tolentino has not read Karl Marx but does have a certain amount of intuitive insight. Also, she highlights the relationship between base and superstructure on a very limited basis.
As Marx beautifully wrote, “men (and women) inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework in which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”[2]
Perhaps one of the most interesting essays concentrates on the huge number of scams that are now part and parcel of capitalist society. The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams: presents a damning indictment of capitalist society. While concentrating on a few obvious scams, Tolentino ignores a large number of prominent scams, which could probably fill another book. It would be interesting to see her thoughts on economic cons like the Wirecard Scam, which shows the true nature of capitalism. As Peter Schwarz writes, “the political establishment and the media are trying to portray the Wirecard scandal either as the result of the machinations of a brilliant impostor or the failure of state institutions, which can be corrected by some administrative changes. Wirecard is not some terrible lapse but shows the true face of capitalism in the 21st century. The accumulation of wealth and assets has completely detached itself from the real economy for a long time. The result is unprecedented social polarisation and the criminalisation of all sectors of the capitalist economy.”[3]
Another scam left out of the book is that of the so-called “romance scams”.[4]In 2020 I wrote a series of articles on one aspect of this nasty scam which has conned many people out of millions. After two years of research, certain things can be said to warn others. The first job of a scammer who proliferates the various online dating sites is to get their prey off the original dating website and onto sites such as Gmail and WhatsApp. Gmail is a favourite hunting ground for your African scammers. It is a simple scam.
They send you a picture of a gorgeous voluptuous woman usually lifted from a porn site. Most men think, yum, I am in here. They don’t ask why this beautiful 25-year-old woman would have anything to do with a balding middle-aged man. Unperturbed most men would want to see this hot girl on video chat. This is the first part of the scam. To see this beautiful woman, you need to purchase an Amazon card or other such items for them to get an internet connection for the video call. When they finally agree to your demand to see them in the flesh, you do not see the beautiful young thing in the flesh, but a rather clumsy video these amateurs have somehow managed to upload onto Gmail. On one occasion, I could see the real person behind the scam as his hand slipped, revealing his real identity. Suffice to say; he was not a gorgeous blonde woman.
The second great scam not touched upon in the book centres on the launch of the Facebook dating app in 2019. This free dating app was a means by which Facebook sought to promote the launch of its own digital currency Meta. Facebook is riddled with fake profiles. In the first quarter of 2022, Facebook removed 1.6 billion fake accounts. This is down from 1.7 billion in the previous quarter. In 2019, in one quarter alone 2.2 billion counterfeit bills were removed.
Their dating app was full of fake profiles, and these people were allowed to act with impunity by Meta. The few that were real promoted the use of cryptocurrency. Many counterfeit profiles, although not all, came from China, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
These gorgeous-looking Asian women were not interested in dating. They used Facebook to lure punters into a Cryptocurrency scam. They would take your money, saying they will invest it in Cryptocurrency. The reality is that they take the money and run along with their uncles. It was amazing that all these girls had fantastic relatives willing to help others get rich. When yours truly threatened to report these scammers, he was on the receiving end of some very nasty death threats and one ugly video threatening DECAPITATION. Facebook turned a blind eye to the whole scam. After all, a significant number of these Asian scammers were promoting Facebook’s digital currency, Meta. We all know how that turned out.
Some of the strongest pieces in Trick Mirror deal with the commodification of the self or, to be more precise, the commodification of sex. Jia Tolentino writes in the book that “commerce has filtered into our identities and relationships.”
To her credit, Tolentino is critical of sites like Tik Tok and Instagram, whose main purpose seems to make money out of a large number of scantily clad men and women shaking their bits. To be brutally honest, sites like Tik Tok are nothing more than glorified soft pornography.
Pornography, as Emanuele Saccarelli so perceptively writes, “is the commodification of sexual relations; a more modern, sanitised, impersonal, and therefore more peculiarly bourgeois form of prostitution. Instead of accepting the moralistic posturing of the defenders of the status quo, one must consider the possibility that, far from being a perverse deviation from the dominant values of a capitalist society, pornography might, in fact, be the most logical and limpid translation of bourgeois values into the sexual sphere. Acts and relations that are natural and spontaneous are turned into commodities to be purchased and sold.”[5]
While it is wrong to over-generalise about Tik Tok, there appears to be a significant connection between the sexy videos on the platform and outright prostitution. While researching dating sites, one girl offered to have sex with me if I paid her £300. This was very tempting given that she was a gorgeous Brazilian beauty. Her main mistake was to give me her real name and photo. I did a title and image search on Google. Low and behold, it turns out that aside from having a loud voice, she has 2.6m followers on Tik Tok. Apart from making money as an influencer, she was a part-time hooker earning £300 for two hours of work. A case of life imitating art or art imitating life I am not sure which.
There is not much point in recommending this book as it has already sold many copies. It is worth reading and is packed with a significant number of essays that require further reading. Tolentino could have done with a little more study of academic papers on her chosen subjects, and the scams she chooses, while interesting only scratch the surface of the criminality of life under capitalism.
Further Reading
Pornocracy Generalized: Fetishizing the Body and Selling the Process as Empowerment-Fouad Mami-
A comment on the viral TikTok “Devious Licks” trend-Renae Cassimeda
6 October 2021- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/07/tikt-o07.html
[1] See -A Lot of Sex But Not Much Revolution-Unmastered:-Katherine Angel 10.99 Paperback 368 Pages / Published: 03/07/2014-http://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/p/problems-of-everyday-life.html. See Also: My Body by Emily Ratajkowski's-Hardcover – November 9 2021-A Quercus publication. http://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/p/problems-of-everyday-life.html
[2] Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
[3] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/27/wire-j27.html
[4] https://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/search?q=maia
[5] A comment on Boogie Nights- www.wsws.org/en/articles/1998/07/boog-j04.html
A Lot Of Sex But Not Much Revolution
Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell-Katherine Angel 10.99 Paperback 368 Pages / Published: 03/07/2014
Daddy Issues-Katherine Angel £6.00 Paperback 128 Pages / Published: 13/06/2019
Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again-Women and Desire in the Age of Consent by Katherine Angel hardback £10.99-160 pages / March 2021 / 9781788739160-Verso publications
"Once in a while, a book appears that is so bad you want it to be a satire. If you set out to produce a parody of postfeminist mumbo jumbo, adolescent narcissism, excruciating erotic overshares, pseudo poetry, pretentious academic jargon, and shopworn and unshocking "dirty talk," you could not do better than Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell".
Cristina Nehring
"Monogamy was the first form of the family not founded on natural, but on economic conditions, viz.: the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism."
― Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
"The first class antagonism appearing in history coincides with the development of the antagonism of man and wife in monogamy and the first class oppression with that of the female by the male sex."
― Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
"Passion and expression are not really separable. Passion comes to birth in that powerful impetus of the mind, which also brings language into existence. So soon as passion goes beyond instinct and becomes truly itself, it tends to self-description, either in order to justify or intensify its being, or else simply in order to keep going".
De Rougement, Denis. Love in the Western World.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, 173. Print.
"Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?"
Virginia Wolfe
It is hard to fathom why a gifted academic historian would write three largely substandard books that, from an intellectual level, hardly rise above the magazine Tit-Bits.
It is usually the case that a person who talks a lot about sex is not getting any, but this is evidently not the case for Angel, who appears to be getting more than her fair share. Given her significant number of sexual conquests, you would have thought she would change her name.
All three books were written amidst the rise of the #MeToo movement, and one would hate to believe that they were written purely to make the author and her publisher's a lot of money. They do not seem to serve any other purpose than this.
Also, I fail to see how writing about your sex life can enlighten young women about the huge sexual, social, political and economic problems they confront within a capitalist society. None of the books situates women's sexuality within the context of history, and this must be a deliberate act because Angel is not unfamiliar with the plight of women under capitalism. A single reading of Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,(1)would give young women a deeper insight into the problems they deal with on a daily basis than these three books put together.
These books are a product of the 'MeToo# movement, and they reflect the domination of postmodernism inside academia. It is not a very healthy atmosphere. As Cristina Nehring writes, "In the groves of academe that Angel inhabits, sex is anything but a laughing matter. The relation of Anglo-American academics to sexuality remains a troubled one—at once obsessive and puritanical, criminalising and infantilising—even in our day and even (or especially) in disciplines specifically devoted to gender studies. This is a culture where a graduate student can cry sexual harassment if her academic adviser closes his door during office hours but turn around and solicit congratulations for personal tell-alls bearing titles with some variation on Vagina, which inflict far more violence on her intimate space than any indiscretion she has ever charged. (More or less, this is the career path of Naomi Wolf".(2)
Unmastered is a very strangely structured book, with most of the book being blank pages, and some pages only have a few lines on them. Angel had a very tolerant editor, and the book stretches to 368 pages.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect has been the largely sycophantic reviews from reviewers who seem more interested in safeguarding their highly paid salaries than calling out a poorly written book. "It is hard to overestimate . . . [the] exquisite sensuality" of Angel's book, its "artfulness" and "richness," wrote Olivia Laing, or this one from Publishers Weekly which called the book "ghostly and poetic.". It is hard to choose which comment makes you want to vomit the most.
One of the more perceptive reviewers, Cristina Nehring(3), poses the question. "Why is it that a book as bad as this garners reasonable reviews and makes it to America from the United Kingdom? The answer seems to lie in the ingredients' combination—if not the quality or authenticity. Unmastered purports to combine philosophy with fellatio, intellect with erotica. It allows us to be voyeurs and lawyers at the same time. It gives us a good conscience reading porn But in truth? Unmastered does porn a disservice. Not to side with Angel's maligned professor, but real porn is a lot more "democratic" than this: It includes flesh-and-blood people—not the two-dimensional "hypostasized" extras of this book. It also focuses on a few different body parts—not only on the author's navel.".(4)
Angel's postmodernist language obscures rather than enlightens her readers. Like many academics of her generation, her reliance on pseudo-left philosophers like Foucault is problematical. Foucault emphasised the necessity of developing micro-politics and micro-struggles. Such a strategy appeals to advocates of single-issue type politics: separatists and nationalists of every shade, environmentalists, and utopian feminists, like Angel.
Michel Foucault (1926-84) was a philosopher from an early age. He studied with Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser at the Ecole Normale Superièure. For a brief time, Foucault was a member of the French Communist Party, leaving in 1951. Although breaking organisationally from the French CP, he never broke politically and philosophically and retained much of its anti-classical Marxism and anti-Trotskyist baggage. He later became a leading member of The Frankfurt School.
Angel's musings on pornography are hardly groundbreaking. One does not have to be a Marxist to understand that sexual relationships under capitalism have largely been turned into a commodity or, as the Marxist writer Emanuele Saccarelli puts it in a comment on the movie Boogie Nights,(5) "The subject of pornography naturally leads toward these considerations. Pornography is the commodification of sexual relations, a more modern, sanitised, impersonal, and therefore more peculiarly bourgeois form of prostitution. Instead of accepting the moralistic posturing of the defenders of the status quo, one must consider the possibility that, far from being a perverse deviation from the dominant values of a capitalist society, pornography might be the most logical and limpid translation of bourgeois values into the sexual sphere. Boogie Nights decisively points in that direction. Acts and relations that are natural and spontaneous are turned into commodities to be purchased and sold.(6)
Angel seems to be more intent on titillation than a social and political comment. Asking a question in a lecture, she states, "given that orgasm during vaginal sex is elusive for many women, and clitoral stimulation is crucial, how then is clitoral pleasure represented in the swathes of pornography you have surveyed?" Politics are absent in her writings, and she writes nothing of the growing attempt to increase state censorship in the guise of a clampdown on pornography.
Angel's use of Virginia Woolf, who wrote the groundbreaking book A Room of One's Own, is legitimate. Her book unmastered was taken from a line in Virginia Woolf's diaries, "Why do we like the frantic, the unmastered?". Wolfe also wrote, "It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple." Angel likes this quote so much she repeats it several times. Wolfe is worth reading, and the modern woman can learn a lot from her books. As the writer, David Walsh perceptively puts it, "In Woolf's work, in my view, there is always a conflict between a rather anaemic and claustrophobic upper-middle-class self-involvement and a more penetrating, sharp-eyed and self-critical approach to reality. She referred once to her "terror of real-life" and, unhappily, there is something to the comment.
The attraction to social reformism had perhaps both class and psychological roots. In any event, the emphasis in her works on ordinariness, the incremental, the mundane seems in part the literary corollary of the Fabian's "gradualism" and "socialism through attrition." One can certainly argue whether Woolf grasped or was capable of grasping the depth of the social crisis in Britain in Mrs Dalloway, a book published on the eve of the bitterly fought General Strike of 1926. The novelist always draws back from the sharpest criticism. Nonetheless, there is in every one of Woolf's works a genuine concern with the welfare of humanity and the state of society, and not simply, as we find in The Hours, a complacent celebration of the privileged Manhattanite's daily routine. While Woolf had one foot in the camp of official society, she was able to bring to bear an honest and questioning intellect to her work."(7)
Angel's book Daddy Issues was published by Peninsula Press in 2019. It is largely a bland work devoid of controversy, serious political comment, or analysis, much like her previous books. Many of the book reviews have a similar modus operandi, and Mia Levitan's review is the pick of the bunch, being largely uncritical and blindly complimentary.
The basic premise of Daddy Issues is that if only men could become better parents, or in her words, 'We need to keep the modern, civilised father on the hook, the world would be a good and safe place for young women to grow up in. Angel's book is a muddled mess. She writes, "Contemporary feminism has, however, re-embraced thinking about the big ideas – capitalism, work, care – and the concept of patriarchy is having a resurgence. In the waves of marches after Donald Trump's inauguration, it has featured heavily on banners; it circulates widely in highly instagrammable commodities, on t-shirts, on mugs, on tote bags. It is rolling around the mouths of pundits, commentators, and politicians. It has made a public comeback.(8)
By "contemporary feminism", she means the MeToo#movement, which is neither anti-capitalist, progressive or utopian in any way. Again according to Walsh, "The ostensible aim of this ongoing movement is to combat sexual harassment and assault, i.e., to bring about some measure of social progress. However, the repressive, regressive means resorted to—including unsubstantiated and often anonymous denunciations and sustained attacks on the presumption of innocence and due process—give the lie to the campaign's "progressive" claims. Such methods are the hallmark of an anti-democratic, authoritarian movement, and one, moreover, that deliberately seeks to divert attention from social inequality, attacks on the working class, the threat of war and the other great social and political issues of the day".(9)
Angel's choice of Trump as a bad father is baffling. Trump is a monster and a terrible father by any stretch of the imagination. But that aside, he is an American fascist, which Angel seems to have left out of her book. Why is Trump's fascism not written about in Angel's book, which is far more dangerous than Trump being a sexist pig? or bad father. I mean, did Hitler plunge mankind into a murderous war and carry out the holocaust because he was a bad lover.
In 2021, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent were published by Verso. This book leans heavily on the French philosopher Michel Foucault book The History of Sexuality. Angel is a utopian without being a socialist, saying, "My utopian ideal is if we could live in a society where everybody could feel their vulnerability and try to ride it with excitement. That we would not have to harden ourselves against that vulnerability, whether in the form of very inflexible notions of our desires or very inflexible contracts or in the form of insisting, as in the consent rhetoric, that we know exactly what we want. Because not always knowing is part of the pleasure of life and sex, unfortunately, it also makes it very risky".
As was said earlier, Angel's choice of Focualt as her guide on sexuality is troubling. She writes of Foucault. "I think it was a very wry phrase (Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again) in this incredibly sardonic and playful book that he was writing, in kind of oblique opposition, I would say, to the countercultural movement of the '60s and '70s, where there was a real faith being placed partly in psychoanalysis and also in Marxism as the roots out of sexual repression. So it was a reading of this kind of possible future with the tools to un-repress ourselves and emancipate ourselves from social oppression. And that these tools would finally kind of reveal this 'better tomorrow' where we would be free from the shackles around sexuality".
To clarify, the uninitiated Focualt was never an orthodox Marxist and was part of a coterie of philosophers and writers that coalesced around the Frankfurt School(10). Foucault's writing on sexuality are largely worthless and reflect his general philosophy "that the objective world is not a world of facts that can be objectively probed and studied; instead, Foucault's world consists of discourses, stories—interpretations lacking any secure means of determining which "discourse" is superior".
To conclude, it is not difficult to sum up, the value of these three books. Like many books written under the auspices of the MeToo# movement, they are not worth the paper they are written upon, and they do not advance the struggle for female emancipation one iota.
The great revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg once said, "Women's suffrage is the goal. But the mass movement to bring it about is not a job for women alone but is a common class concern for women and men of the proletariat. The worst and most brutal advocates of the exploitation and enslavement of the proletariat are entrenched behind the throne and altar as well as behind the political enslavement of women. Monarchy and women's lack of rights have become the most important tools of the ruling capitalist class".(11) Angel should read some of her work. Maybe her next book on sex will be good.
[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm
[2] https://www.bookforum.com/print/2002/an-academic-s-sexual-memoir-puts-the-ire-in-desire-11683
[3] Cristina Nehring is the author of A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-First Century (Harper, 2009) and Journey to the Edge of the Light (Kindle Singles, 2011). Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Slate, New York magazine, and Condé Nast Traveler
[4] https://www.bookforum.com/contributor/cristina-nehring
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie_Nights
[6] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1998/07/boog-j04.html
[7] Virginia Woolf cannot be held responsible- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/01/hour-j23.html
[8] https://granta.com/daddy-issues/
[9] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/19/year-o19.html
[10] The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left: A Marxist Critique-David North- Mehring Books-Incorporated, 2015
[11] Women's Suffrage and Class Struggle-(1912)- https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm
Review: My Body by Emily Ratajkowski's-Hardcover – November 9 2021-A Quercus publication.
Ella Whelan
"The wealth of societies in which a capitalistic mode of production prevails appears as a 'gigantic collection of commodities', and the singular commodity appears as the elementary form of wealth. Our investigation begins accordingly with the analysis of the commodity. A commodity is first an external object, a thing which satisfies through its qualities human needs of one kind or another. The nature of these needs is irrelevant, e.g., whether their origin is in the stomach or in the fancy. We are also not concerned here with the manner in which the entity satisfies human need, whether in an immediate way as food – that is, as an object of enjoyment – or by a detour as means of production.
Karl Marx[2]
"The expression 'the emperor's new clothes' or variants like 'the emperor has no clothes' are difficult to explain briefly and are most easily understood by looking at its source, that is, Hans Christian Anderson's fable The Emperor's New Clothes, 1837."
www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-emperors-new-clothes.html
There are no two ways about it. This is a terrible book, and it looks like the only reason it was published is to make the author and the publisher significant amounts of money. In the words of one reviewer, it is "shallow, solipsistic and more self-indulgent than a teenager's diary". From an intellectual standpoint, the book barely rises above a Mills and Boon book. Any young woman looking to navigate this world would probably find more insight in a Mills and Boon book or the pages of Tit-bits[3] than this so-called collection of essays. Also, it is stretching things to call these meanderings a collection of essays.
Ratajkowski's claims to be more than a supermodel woman. She writes that "it is "frustrating that society somehow feels that women cannot be political, feminist, and a sex symbol'. This claim does not hold water. There is no real politics here. "I love wearing lacy thongs" is not exactly a Communist Manifesto. Given that we have just passed through the greatest capitalist crisis since the 1930s and witnessed millions of people needlessly dying from a virus, Ratajkowski's says nothing about these developments in her self indulgent comic book.
You cannot blame parents for everything a child does in later life, but Ratajkowski's parents must take some responsibility for Ratajkowski's God-given body and her drive to make as much money out of it as she can. Her rape and sexual assault allegations by teenage boyfriends, photographers, must be taken seriously and should have involved a police investigation. Unfortunately, Ratajkowski sees them as simply an occupational hazard. It is bizarre that she even went to the funeral of one of her alleged rapists.
Ratajkowski's book, if unwittingly, is a condemnation of the #MeToo movement. Her tedious musings are the product of a movement that is not genuinely carrying out a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system. All they want is a slice of the pie, no matter the cost. I cannot entirely agree with everything Ella Whelan writes, but she is spot on when she writes about Ratajkowski "she also seems to revel in her perceived lack of agency. She is always at the mercy of men and the male gaze. At one point, Ratajkowski writes of how, while holidaying on an island, she realized that making money from a picture of her backside was not particularly empowering. 'The whole of the ocean stretched out before me', she writes, 'and yet I felt trapped there is something discomfiting, too, about Ratajkowski's attitude to the sexist (and rather dangerous-sounding) male promoters, fixers and bookers she encounters. On the one hand, she condemns and criticizes them. Yet she's still happy to accept their favours, which, in one case, included a free trip to Coachella… tickets to the festival, a place to stay, and a ride out to the desert in a limo bus.
It is reminiscent of the way dozens of Hollywood actresses, at the peak of #MeToo, condemned the despicable Harvey Weinstein and said they always knew he was a creep – yet they were all too happy to keep schtum about his misogyny at the time so they could pursue their careers. Plenty of us have been in similar situations, of course. But, unlike Ratajkowski, we would not expect others to sympathize with us for putting ourselves first".[4]
One of the more dangerous aspects of the #MeToo movement is its complete disregard and trampling on the democratic rights of its victims. One such right is innocent until proven guilty as Eric London points out, "the right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty is among the foundational principles upon which many other significant legal protections depend. If the accused are presumed guilty, then the right to counsel, the right to cross-examine witnesses, and the right to remain silent would be substantially weakened".[5]
Ratajkowski's so-called left politics (she wore a Bernie Sanders tee-shirt) are a fake. Her politics are more geared to making even more money than prosecuting a real struggle against capitalism. Using one quote on vanity from John Berger's Ways of Seeing does not make her a revolutionary. Berger was not a Marxist, but now and again, he had something worth saying. As David Walsh wrote, "since Berger's death a month ago, numerous "left" media obituaries have recounted the events of his life, explained that he was a political radical and egalitarian in his views, noted both his influences and those he influenced, and pointed out how humane and informed his views were. He was a "non-party" or "contradictory" socialist, an iconoclast, who eschewed fame and fortune, choosing to live for decades in a remote rural part of France. These facts are accurate enough, as far as they go, but the obituaries generally avoid the more complex questions, especially in regard to someone habitually, if mistakenly, referred to as a "Marxist" critic.[6]
Maybe Ratajkowski should have used this quote from Berger, which would have made her point slightly more believable "The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity but a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied … but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing."[7]
One of the more troubling aspects stemming from this book has been the sheer volume of sycophantic reviews. It would appear that a large number of highly paid writers have not only lost their heads but their grip on reality. Maybe they like Ratajkowski, do not give a rats arse about artistic integrity unless it makes them some money. There is an air of the emperor's new clothes about most of these reviews.
Whether she likes it or not, Ratajkowski has become a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder, no matter how corrupt. From a moral standpoint, I fear for her soul. But I somehow doubt Ratajkowski cares that much. She has a very nice bed in which to play. On a more serious note, I would encourage any young woman looking to navigate her way through life can do no worse than study the work of a real revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg, whose work can be found at the Marxist Internet Archive[8]
[1] https://www.spiked-online.com/author/ella-whelan/
[2] The Commodity- Marx 1867 (Capital)- https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit-Bits
[4] https://www.spiked-online.com/author/ella-whelan/
[5] The #MeToo campaign versus the presumption of innocence- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/05/inno-o05.html
[6] John Berger, radical art critic, 1926-2017- www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/02/07/berg-f07.html
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/02/a-life-in-quotes-john-berger
[8] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/index.htm
Review: The Future of Seduction by Mia Levitin- 12 Nov.
2020- Unbound publishers.
Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go, it is pretty damn good”. W. Allen
She writes “When my marriage ended, I figured I had chosen the wrong partner but did not question for a second that a relationship was a prerequisite to happiness. Hell-bent on hunting down Mr Right 2.0, I embarked on dating armed with an Excel spreadsheet and a love-coach-to-the-stars. Despite my can-do attitude, it has not happened yet. If you had told me then that I would still be single after111 first dates over about five years, I would have found it unfathomable. But truth be told, I am grateful for the time alone”. The faster you let go of seeing yourself as a victim, the better off you will be – no matter how appalling the behaviour of an ex. Own a part of what went wrong, even if that part is just a sliver.
When I first started dating, I got bored after ten dates to go through 111; you have to admire that dedication. Going through 111 dates without any feelings of romantic love is a little strange. What is also strange is the fact that the word love is hardly mentioned in the book. As Woody Allen might have said seduction without love is pretty meaningless.
The book is extremely well written. Levitin has a surgical writing style, clear and to the point without using unnecessary words to make her point. She has a touch of George Orwell about her. While it is a pleasure to read her the subjective matter in the book makes for depressing reading. The book is humorous in places that are down to Mia what she discusses is far from funny.
It is clear that social and sexual relations are becoming increasingly difficult, and the widespread misuse of technology is affecting intimacy. If human relationships continue the way they are going, humanity will be in Mia’s words “screwed”.
Mankind’s and womankind’s struggle to screw is as old as time. Procreation is a social and necessary part of the human race. Having sex is a natural occurrence. Mia believes that the reckless pursuit of this physical activity has been detrimental to men’s/women intellectual development. As one writer puts it “the tools we use to meet, mate and relate have evolved more in the past ten years than in the previous ten thousand, yet we arrive at them with biology unchanged since the Stone Age”. In some people intellectually unchanged since the stone age.
Given men and women’s obsession with porn on the internet, you would have thought that the amount of sex in society would have increased, but as Levitin points out in the book, we have had a ‘sex recession’ with Britain leading the way in the massive drop in sexual activity.
While men and women are seeking to satisfy their sexual urges through the internet, Levitin believes that this is disconnected from our intellectual development. The brain is the most important sex toy. ‘Imagination is the best pornography we have,’ says Kate Moyle.
Many peoples sex lives are divorced from reality. Sex does not take place in a vacuum. We live in a society that treats women purely as sex objects, explaining the rise in sexual assaults on women.
I do not know Mia’s viewpoint on the #MeToo movement. However, I believe this movement is detrimental to healthy social and sexual relationships; it is a very dangerous right-wing political movement that will do nothing to help real or rational sexual relationships.
As David Walsh points out “On the basis of generally unsubstantiated claims, careers and lives were destroyed. The New York Times, Washington Post and the New Yorker and New York magazines regularly and gleefully participated in the evisceration of various personalities based on shabby evidence, or no evidence at all.[1]
The great philosopher Hegel once said “The rational is real, and the real is rational, I believe that Levitin’s book is largely written in this spirit. The book deserves to be widely read. Whether it rescues the art of seduction from the condescension of history is another matter.
Mia Levitin is a cultural and literary critic based in
London. Her work appears regularly in publications including the Financial
Times, The Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. She can be found
@mialevitin.com
[1]
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/08/meto-s08.html
My Life With Maia Is At An End
My love affair with my princess Maia is over. It has been three days since she last poured out her heart to me. I can only conclude that she has found another man/woman.
The flame that burned so brightly for two weeks has now been extinguished. Like many modern-day relationships, especially online ones, this floundered on money and sex. I wanted sex; she wanted money £600 to be exact.
I blame myself. I did point out to her that what is the point of sending £600 for her to come over here when I could go to Russia hook up with a prostitute who bears a striking resemblance to my Maia and have my evil way with her and come home guilt-free. Those Russian prostitutes are very reasonable, and you can book in advance. They also let you bring your girlfriend at a discount price.
I will end with a plea if any Russian prostitute knows the girl in the picture above, please drop me a line. Who knows true lust might not be dead.
My Princess Maia Grows Tired of Me
I cannot hide my disappointment at the brevity of my darling Maia’s latest letter to me. Either I am the most important thing in her life, or I am nothing. Although she says she loves me and cannot sleep thinking about me, I cannot help but think she is cheating on me with another man.
Why else would she keep demanding that I send the money soon? I understand her impatience. I need to tell her that the operation for the kidney went well and I will receive the money soon.
I am relieved that her heart and soul still ache but for how much longer. I comfort myself that she still dreams about only me and she says this in her letter saying “My beloved angel Keith, you know, you gave me the most beautiful feeling on earth. This feeling is love! Even the fact that you are now far from me, thousands of kilometres away, I still feel the warmth that leaves your heart to me. How is your day going? What do you do? Today I worked very hard and was tired. I want to be by your side now”.
While it was nice that you in your words to want to meet me from work, cook and clean my house, I am not sure this is what I want from a smoking hot 29-year-old Russian supermodel for whom I have just laid out $600 smackers for.
I also need proof of your love. It is still the custom in my country to see intimate pictures of their lovers. Surely it would help if you had a few knocking about. I am bitterly disappointed that you do not send me any in this letter.
As you say in your letter and I quote “the winner is the one who knows how to wait! This is also an important motto in my country. I thank God that he sent you to me. Every time I make love, I thank him as well. I am a little disturbed that you cannot express your feelings in words, but you do say that you will prove your feelings.
Why don’t you hop on a plane we can meet for a few days
knock a couple out and then take it from there. A million kisses just for you!.
I must leave you now my other smoking hot Russian supermodel who says she is 25
but looks a little younger in her photos is waiting for me. Unlike you, she is
sending a lot more photos.
Your lover
Keith
My Destiny Is To Be With My Beloved Maia
My darling Maia every letter you send me I grow faint with anticipation of us finally being together. We have been a part for only two weeks; it seems like an eternity. I too, cannot imagine my life without you.
Please do not believe that I think badly of you. As you keep mentioning in your letters six hundred euros is a small price to pay for such a smoking hot 29-year-old Russian babe.
You must be patient regarding the money. Speaking of the patient, I soon will be as I have secured a buyer for one of my kidneys. He is willing to pay £800. So not only will I be able to send you the money we will have some spending money after I recover from the operation. Once again thank you for the photos. Anyone who sees you would not believe their eyes. I am sorry for mixing up the country you come from. But my darling Maia whenever I do a Google search of the photos you send me some disturbing results occur. Imagine my confusion when the latest photo turns up on the Facebook page of a woman called Elena Sobchak. Your surname Dukashvili is she related, a relative or your sister and is she included in the price? I have sent you the link https://www.facebook.com/Elena-Sobchak-316870728699045/photos/?ref=page_internal.
My darling I have heard of Moneygram they are one of the
best companies for transferring money between countries. I have glad you have
chosen the best. I need the details of the bank for the transaction. In my
country, there is a custom of having sex first before the money has been paid.
This is a deeply held belief in my country, and I hope you can respect that.
Another cherished belief is that a man must see his woman naked before he can
shack up I mean to be with her for the rest of our natural life. Please can you accede
to this request? Given that I am much older than you, I give you my permission
to love again after I am gone.I will send you my details, name address etc.
very soon. You state in your lovely letter and I quote “I love you, and I hope
only for you. I hope that very shortly we can be together. I appreciate
everything you do for our future! I love you with all my heart. I want to be
with you. I want to be with you forever. I think that you love me too, and we
will meet very soon. You are my love, my angel. My heart is already in your hands.
I am waiting For the good news from you. Every day I think about our meeting
about Our life together. I can no longer imagine my life without you! We
Must use this chance of destiny. I LOVE YOU!!!.
I love you too. Please let us not talk about money. The only thing I would like between us is a condom and nothing else. I must leave you now. Another 29-year-old Georgian hotty has started to write to me so I must get on my other lover.
Love K
My Beloved Maia Is Coming To London.
The day my beloved Maia comes to London has just taken an almighty step forward. As you say in your letter, $600 is a small price to pay for a smoking hot 29 years old Russian babe to come to London.
Maia the birds in my heart sing as well. Eat your heart out Burt Lancaster. When I knew you were going to the travel agent to find out the details of your trip, my heart skipped a beat, so did my bank manager. It is clear from your letter that our relationship has got to a new stage and that we need to take it to the limit.
Once again thank you for the intimate photos. You are a special woman who needs a man like me to awaken your latent sexual desires. Speaking of which I was able to use Google search again for the photos you sent, and they appear to come from another Russian prostitute site. I am sure there is an innocent reason for this. Please do not inform your saintly parents about this until we have uncovered the truth.
I too dream of the day I can meet you at the airport with a bouquet. We will run together and fall into each other’s arms. If it is on the weekend, then we could go to a nearby hotel and knock one out to consummate our love and to phone my bank manager and tell him that it's money well spent. I am sure seeing your heavenly body will make me the happiest man in the world. Say hello to your parents. I only know their first names, come to think of it. I only know your first name please send it to me so I can sort the money out.
You must be tired of walking about looking for a travel agent. Thank God, you found the best in Georgia. Yes, I know all about the documents you need and of course that heavenly body of yours must be insured. Two weeks for the preparation of a passport is standard. Please go ahead with your plans. I know you only have a small salary and thank God you are willing to put some money towards the cost. Do not worry; I always believe that true love will conquer all. You cannot put a price on love/sex, well you do, but $600 is a fair price for a woman of your calibre.
Do not cry about the money. Maybe it would be best for me to come to your country instead. We could make love on the beach where your photos came from. Please continue to save for the day we can be together. I am prepared to wait. I am sure you are.
Your words “You are the dearest and beloved person to me! You are my whole life. You are the air that I breathe every day. I walked down the street and thought only of you. I wanted to write you a letter soon. Now I sit and go the tears from my eyes. Tears of sadness and grief. I do not want to live without you. After all, without your presence in my life right now does not make sense! I have one hope, your help is my love, Keith. I believe that money is not the main thing in our life. The most important thing is that we have found each other and we are happy. We love each other, and there is no more important than anything in this life! But now, in order to meet, we need this sum of money”.
These words touched like no other words in the whole history
of English literature and Russian literature. Every day is like hell without
you. Money or no money, we can work it out. I need to see you face to face. I
need to see what I am buying; I mean falling in love with. I send you 600
kisses.
Your Lover
Keith
A Letter to My Beloved Maia, Again
Dear Maia,
It has now been two weeks since your first letter arrived on November 5th. We now have a love that dare not speaks its name. Despite having professed to learn English, some of your wording in this letter is a little bizarre. Very few people, especially women, would use the term and I quote “an endearing smile on my facile area. It is not good English. Please do not use that wording again.
In my previous letter to you, I discussed the anomaly of a smoking hot 29-year-old Russian babe opening up a relationship with a non too shabby Londoner. This did not deter your love, and I admire you for that.
Thank you for introducing me to your parents they appear to be very working-class and nice people. A nice touch would have been a picture, but that can be later when we meet.
I am glad you are happy in Georgia and have a good job. When I drop everything over here and move in with you, we can have a happy life. The little problem that I cannot speak Russian and would not be able to get a job is a minor detail.
Your second letter arrived on the afternoon of November 6th. You must spend a lot of time in that internet café. I agreed that we are beginning to move closer. I was a little perturbed that you asked me about the weather since you are in an internet café it would be easy to find out. Every letter you write you ask me that question. I will send you a weather forecast for the next month if that helps.
I am glad you like classical music, reading, painting and theatre all the things I like. Also, I am glad you go to the gym, and yes you do have a good body. Yes, I would like to meet the dawn with you. I think a walk along the beach in the middle of a Pandemic is out of the question and I am glad you agree.
Saturday’s letter for some reason was shorter than the previous. A pattern followed by this Saturday’s letter. Maybe the internet café was crowded. I must admit to being a little perturbed that no matter what I reply in my letter you fail to address in your next letter. I put this down to your lack of English and your being a little shy. I love shyness in a woman.
I am horrified that the men in your country have mistreated you and that all they want is sex. I am not like that and would only expect to have sex on the weekend.
Sunday 8th letter was a little longer and again took no account of my previous letter. It was good to learn about your job and that you take care of yourself by attending the gym. You are lucky the gyms in my country are shut down because we have a ranging pandemic you are so lucky not to have that problem. I am glad to hear that you do not mention in your letter the most important topic to hit Mankind since the rapture. I love you for that it is boring anyway.
Monday’s letter is again very lovely, and I am glad you sent me the pictures of the zoo. Unfortunately, when I put them in google image search, nothing came up, but I will keep trying. I have put your photo on my phone to be near you. Yes, I agree that we must not dwell on the past and live like dogs only at the moment.
Our conversation about your religious convictions was a breath of fresh air. I am glad you are a good Christian and not any of those nasty other faiths. Again I am grateful for the photos I can see this is your hobby. You have a nice body so in the words of Zero Mostel you should “flaunt it baby flaunt it”. You also keep saying you will tell me your secrets but never do.I appreciated your next letter dated November 12th. I love the photo of your friend Tina, and I am glad she has given her blessing to our relationship. That is a big weight off my mind. I am now ready to give you my full love.
Your dream about our meeting in London and me wearing a black tuxedo is the most romantic thing I have ever read. It is a shame that when I went to kiss you passionately, you woke up. What a bummer.
Again this Saturday’s letter was shorter than most does the internet café charge by the letter at weekends. I am glad you told your parents about us as turning up on their doorstep would have been a little awkward. Sundays letter was even shorter. Maybe you were a little tired from writing every day.
Your latest letter fills me with the hope that we can truly be together in love. You write “My beloved, today I want to open my heart to you fully! I am a little shy to tell you this phrase, but I got the courage and is ready. I want to admit to you, my prince! I LOVE YOU! I have loved you from the very first letter. I felt that we could build a serious relationship. Every day I gave you my time. After our acquaintance, I thought only of you. I love you for being a kind, gentle, caring and affectionate man. I know that I can rely on you at the most difficult moment! You will never deceive or betray me. I knew that somewhere in the world there was that man whom I could truly love. And I found you, Keith! My love for you is the purest and most tender. I kept my feelings in your heart, but today I decided to open my soul to you. I hope that you will accept my feelings and reciprocate! I want to thank you very much for the fact that you never ignored my letters and went along with me to the main goal – to build a serious relationship. Now we are as one with you, as an inseparable chain! I want our relations to develop further. My prince, for me, the word love, more than just a word. For me, love is the feeling that I now live and breathe. When I see your letters, a new breath awakens in me, birds sing in my soul, I want to live and smile! My dear, I have opened my heart and soul to you, and I hope that you will not reject me! Please tell me how you feel. Are you ready to tell me that you love me? Are you ready for a really serious relationship with me?”.
Your latest letter was a joy to read, and yes, I would like to be with you. I am glad you rushed to the internet café to talk to me. Yes, you do have a beautiful body and glad you want to share it with only me. I am glad you showed me your photos that no other man has seen and that you are not naked in them. Since your letter, I have not looked at another woman.
I will send you my details, address, phone number, the city
I live in and the nearest airport later. I am sorry to have to raise this
matter with you, and I am sure there is an innocent explanation. The pictures
you sent happen to be from a Russian prostitutes website. I am sure this is just a
mistake and that you are the virgin you claim to be. I await your reply my
darling.
A Letter to my Beloved Maia
One of the drawbacks of having used the same email for
nearly 20 years is the amount of crap that you get sent. One particular email
was interesting. This email was from a 29-year-old Russian beauty who had been
treated rotten by the men in her country and was looking for love. Being a
gentleman, I answered that this was very bad, and would she like to be my
lover.
Despite being in the throes of love, I decided to look into my newfound love. The email she/he sent always arrived in the afternoon.She/he only replied to one email as sometimes I sent two. While the emails were well written; they were not exactly William Shakespeare. They started to get lazy repeating lines used in earlier emails which means they must be copy and pasting hundreds if not thousands of these fishing letters. They must work pretty hard.
Now call me cynical if you are chasing a very beautiful women chances are she knows how attractive she is and would not write back every day. That is the first clue. The second clue is the pictures at the bottom of the email. The pictures are of this lovely Russian woman who you really could fall for in a big way I wonder if she has a sister. I do not normally praise corporate capitalism, but God bless Google image search. I pasted her photos in the image search and low and behold some things turned up. One of her photos turns up on a Russian prostitutes site, and boy those prostitutes do anything and to anybody. The second turned up and was probably the real girl who has a Russian Facebook site. She is probably from Belarus and is two years younger than my Russian girl Maia. A prostitute site could not have harvested a Russian movie star.
For gullible males, everywhere, please do this search. My beloved Maia’s photo and her email turned up on several scammer warning sites. These people are busy and must have conned thousands of £s out of lonely older men. Just for the record, I am not too shabby or too old.
The main point of this letter is not just to warn people about these scammers. While there is much poverty in Russia, this does not excuse what is criminal activity. If you want to get rid of poverty, then overthrow Putin and return to the traditions of the Russian working class.
My main point is that the Russian working class, both male and female, have a revolutionary tradition that dates back well over a hundred years. The only working-class in history to overthrow capitalism. These declassed scammers spit on this history.
Review: Reckless Opportunists-Elites at the end of the Establishment-By Aeron Davis- Manchester University Press- March 2018
“The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.), all of the capital’s traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on a paralysis of will”[1].
Leon Trotsky was describing the condition of the ruling elites in the 1940s. Fascism had established itself in three major European countries, and a global war had already killed hundreds of thousands of people. As Aeron Davis shows in his new book history is not only repeating itself, there is a real danger of the world not existing in a few years.
It must be pointed out that Davis is no Marxist but has in a limited way exposed how rotten the British and for that matter global ruling elite has become. The guiding principle for what passes as policy or perspective today by political parties, leaders of the big business is whether it is right, not for the vast majority of the population, but for the super-rich.
Readers looking for a Thomas Pickety style exposure of growing social inequality and the reasons behind are going to be disappointed by this book. Whether Davis has an understanding of the social forces at play or downplays them is open to debate. The fact that he mentions the word capitalist once in the book gives us a clue.
Davis’s book is based on at least twenty years of research and interviews. He has interviewed and observed over 350 members of the ruling elite. As Davis points out “as an academic studying how power operates, I have spent the past 20 years researching elite figures in five areas associated with the modern establishment: the media, the City, large corporations, the Whitehall civil service and the major political parties at Westminster. After interviewing and observing more than 350 people working in or close to the top during that time, my sense of this evolving long-term crisis has become clearer. I have come to believe that the establishment is no longer coherent or collective or competent. Its failings are not only causing larger schisms, inequalities and precariousness in Britain; they also threaten the very foundations of establishment rule itself”.
During that twenty-year period, the world capitalist system has witnessed a significant economic and political crisis not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The majority of the book deals with the implication of the September 2008 global economic breakdown. Davis highlights in his book that very few of the highly paid representatives of the bourgeoisie saw the crisis coming or how close the banking collapse came to bringing down the whole capitalist system. Another aspect mentioned in the book is how the corporately controlled titans of the media not only did not see the crash coming but the words of one writer “celebrated the reckless financial speculation and reckless self-enrichment that define the business activities and personal lifestyles of the ruling class.
Davis believes that too many of today’s leaders are “reckless opportunists” hell-bent on making as much money as they can regardless of the consequences. Davis points out that this recklessness is endangering the very existence of the capitalist system. One striking example of the process of degeneration blighting many bourgeois leaders was described by Andrew Turnbull, a former head of the civil service, Turnball described the 1970s which witnessed a series of economic collapses Turnball points that the more perceived members of the ruling elite believed that this crisis could not be handled by “privileged amateurs”. As Davis points out “Meritocracy” and expertise – represented by grammar school education, the professions and PhDs – began dictating the new recruitment policy.
Turnball concludes “Gradually the classics and humanities people got replaced,” when I arrived we used to have people who were experts on Byron and musicians – rather refined people. Then, rather hard-nosed economists gradually took over, and the dominant culture became football and golf, rather than music.”
While Davis would lead us to believe that the majority of the ruling elite are reckless opportunists a weakness in the book is that he does little to examine the more conscious elements in the ruling elite and what they plan to do about the crisis of leadership amongst them. Aside from piling on more misery to the working class, there are firm plans amongst the bourgeois for war on a global scale and with nuclear weapons. As the document entitled “Fractures, Fears and Failures,” from the WEF’s 2018 Global Risks Report Warns
“Democracy is already showing signs of strain in the face of economic, cultural and technological disruption. Much deeper damage is possible: social and political orders can break down. If an evenly divided country sees polarised positions harden into a winner-takes-all contest, the risk increases of political debate giving way to forms of secession or physical confrontation. In these circumstances, a tipping point could be reached. A spiral of violence could begin, particularly if public authorities lost control and then intervened on one side with disproportionate force. In some countries—with widespread ready access to weapons or a history of political violence—armed civil conflict could erupt. In others, the state might impose its will by force, risking long reverberating consequences: a state of emergency, the curtailment of civil liberties, even the cancellation of elections to protect public order”.
Conclusion
Davis like philosopher Thomas Hobbes believes that
leadership does not have to be “nasty,
brutish and short. The system can be reformed and regulated and can be “nice”.
Whether Davis had his tongue firmly embedded in his cheek when he said that is
open to debate. This is a system and leadership that is rotten to the core, and
if it is not removed, it will propagate a global war that will make the 2nd
world war look like a tea party.
Britain’s Home Secretary Jack Straw is currently campaigning amongst international leaders to overturn the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees, which guarantees the right to asylum. His proposals are said to have won support from social democratic heads of government gathered earlier this week at a European Union (EU) summit in Portugal. During the meeting, Straw cynically seized upon the terrible deaths of 58 Chinese immigrants—found suffocated in the back of an airtight lorry at Dover port—to reiterate his demand for change.
Straw has described the Convention as “out of date.” At a debate, Is Britain’s asylum policy fair?, sponsored by the Observer newspaper in London recently, Straw said that his intention was to place asylum law on a “more rational basis”. Speaking alongside Conservative spokeswoman Anne Widdecombe and right-wing journalist Peter Hitchens, Straw claimed that his measures would be “fairer”. Asylum-seekers would no longer be prey to “people traffickers”, charging extortionate prices to smuggle migrants into Britain, he said.
Straw set out his proposals in a speech before the European Conference on Asylum in Lisbon last Friday. He claimed that the “essential contradiction” at the heart of the 1951 convention was that, whilst setting out an individual’s right to asylum, it does not oblige any particular country to admit him or her. The result is that “genuine” refugees often have to enter a country illegally before they can lodge their claim to asylum, he said.
Straw has proposed a new scheme, which involves setting up an internationally agreed list of “safe countries” from which Britain and other European countries would not accept asylum claims. Those fleeing countries internationally recognised for severe human rights abuses would have to lodge their claim in their home country (!) or a neighbouring state. Provided the country met the agreed criteria, the applicant would be extended temporary protection under an international quota system. The applicant would have to prove that they faced a “clear cut case of persecution”.
The Home Secretary argues that the change would mean host countries would not have to fund the cost of supporting asylum-seekers whilst their claim was being processed. Those leaving countries deemed to be “safe”, however, would almost certainly not have their claims even assessed.
Straw’s measures represent a fundamental attack on civil liberties. The Geneva Convention guarantees the right to asylum, without conditions. Drawn up during the Cold War, many of its Western signatories regarded the Convention as another means of prosecuting their economic and political struggle against the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries. (The US amended its immigration policy in 1965 to guarantee refugee status to anyone coming from an Eastern European country). Two years later, the Convention was extended beyond its original geographical limitations, so as to apply to anyone who was forced to leave their country “as a result of a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.
The collapse of the Stalinist-ruled states, however, has removed the Convention’s propaganda value. More fundamentally, the drive toward capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has unleashed a social catastrophe in these countries, helping to fuel rising levels of poverty and political instability across the world. Many are so desperate to escape the increasingly harsh conditions they face that up to one million people are in the process of seeking entry to Western countries at any one time, according to Home Office estimates. The response of the US and the EU has been to firmly bolt the door shut. Asylum-seekers are routinely described as “bogus”, with those trying to escape an impoverished existence derided as “parasites” and “economic migrants”. It is these measures that have forced many immigrants to turn to criminal gangs and traffickers in an attempt to enter Western countries, often at the cost of their lives.
Previous Conservative governments in the UK have sought to undermine the Convention by adding national “protocols” and amendments that subverted its provisions. The Blair Labour government now proposes to overturn the right to asylum altogether. Amnesty International spokeswoman Kate Allen explained that Straw’s proposals turned “the Refugee Convention on its head by making it into a charter for governments to bar asylum seekers, rather than for asylum seekers to seek refuge.” Under Straw’s proposals, asylum claims from many places would be routinely dismissed, because they were deemed to be living in a “safe” country. Those attempting to escape countries recognised for “severe” human rights abuses would not only be forced to remain under these conditions in order to qualify but would also have to openly declare their intention to leave—greatly increasing the risk of persecution, detention, torture and even murder.
