#but what’s unambiguous is that imperial influence

[psychotrenny]

It’s fucking insane to me how normal Yankee Liberals are about Hawaii. As in like the way they just treat it as an unremarkable fact that their nation controls the island. Like the annexation of Hawaii wasn’t just any old example of Settler-Colonialism, the subjugation of a decentralised non-urbanised people that could be just dismissed as mere “tribes” or what have you. Not to say that such forms of “typical” Settler Colonialism are any less abhorrent or disgusting, just easier to justify from a Liberal point of view. Easier to claim that they weren’t *really* using the land properly or that they were an hopelessly and eternally backwards who only really benefitted from their conquest or that they were doomed and dying anyway and their fate was a mere tragic inevitability not worth dwelling on or… Point is all these arguments are all wrong and stupid and cruel but they can serve well enough to downplay or justify such atrocities in the eyes of Imperial Core Liberals.

But like with Hawaii you don’t have that. The Kingdom of Hawai’i was a sovereign state that was internationally recognised as such by the Great Powers of Europe even at the very height of Western Imperialism. Literacy rates were high and compulsory education was introduced in 1841 (pre-dating the US by 77 years), healthcare was given to all Hawai’ian subjects free of charge, Christianity was dominant (so even the most ardent Imperialist couldn’t claim that the people were in the thrall of some “barbaric superstition” that necessitated the “civilising influence” of empire) and it had a well-developed Capitalist economy dominated by Sugar production.  Like even if we take the Western model of statehood as the be all end all of what separates the civilised from the savage (to be clear hear you really fucking shouldn’t, but many people do so for a second that’s the frame of reference we’ll employ) then Hawai’i was very much unambiguously the former.  But that didn’t stop the US from shamelessly interfering it’s politics Indeed those aformentioned markers of Western-Style “civilisation” and “development” came with the price of allow US missionaries and investors to settler in the islands and become very wealthy and influential. For decades the US used the threat of force to influence the policy decisions of the kingdom, going as far as to regularly send warships in a classic display of “gunboat diplomacy”. In 1887 a US settler militia called the First Honolulu Rifles staged a coup where they forced Kalākaua to accept a new Constitution that heavily favoured the interests of USamerican settlers who had grown very wealthy through their investment in sugar production on the island.  It stripped the Monarchy of much of its power and introducing requirements for voting that heavily favoured US settlers; re-introducing wealth/property requirements that were now higher than even, allowing resident aliens to vote and just outright banning any Asian immigrants from voting (which at that point had as much to do with plain racial hatred as it did to any acting threat they might have posed). This wasn’t enough for the Yanks and 6 years later a group of 13 US settlers known as the “Committee of Safety” outright overthrew the newly crowned Queen Liliʻuokalani when she refused to co-operate. It existed briefly as an “Independent” USamerican dominated republic before the US government decided to official annex it in 1898 (similar to what you saw with Texas or California).

While incredibly controversial at the time due to both strategic concerns with the annexation of ultramarine territories and some level of outrage at the shameless take-over of a sovereign nation (hence the time gap between the coup and the actual annexation), nowadays Yanks enjoy their control over the island without the slightest care in the world. They even turned it into a tourist destination, a heavily romanticised one that not only receives many millions of visitors every year but is constantly mentioned in the popular culture the US then proceeds to export all over the world, literally revelling in their land that is by literally any definition (even the most nakedly pro-imperialist) stolen. The land itself is severely exploited to the point of significant ecological damage, the indigenous peoples too are exploited as many of them live in poverty while US investors grow wealthy from their land and labour. Even their very culture is stolen and monetised, the most marketable parts bastardised into cheap kitsch and the rest of it left to rot, only kept alive through over a century of continued resistance from the indigenous peoples. It’s a very common story of course, but I think it stands out with how utterly ghoulish it is even under the most Liberal of consistently applied worldviews. It would be like if in say 2007 someone set up Disneyland in Bagdad. And yet by the vast majority of the US (and by extension the vassals states whose view of the situation is filtered through the lens of US media and propaganda) it isn’t seen that way. Hawaii is just the 50th state, the only state outside North America and in the tropics (hahaha ain’t that a neat little fact. Geography is so fun J), an island paradise perfect to visit with the whole family and yet still as American as Apple Pie. Even many self-described “progressives” talk about it in this way, at most mentioning the plight of the indigenous Hawaiians with minimal though as to how this situation came about. Like while the story of Hawaii is far from unique; even in terms of the US doing colonialism to Westernised peoples you examples such as the ethnic cleansing of the Five Civilised Tribes from the Eastern USA, it still stands out to me with the sheer level of international recognition and Western-style development that the Kingdom of Hawai’i possessed. Like it’s just such an obvious example of the naked greed at the heart of the USamerican empire, and how utterly bullshit talk of a “civilising mission” and “spreading democracy” is. No matter what they may claim, no matter what excuses they may trot out, Imperialist rapacity has no limits.

[panicroomsammy]

Analysis of s15e6 because one of my mutuals wanted polisci analysis of Supernatural and the nuclear family and this episode crawled inside my brain.

The b plot of the episode is Cass investigating a series of deaths in a small town he’s been hiding out in since his fight with Dean. He goes to the sheriff’s office and the sheriff is dismissive, telling Cass that since it is a small town people don’t go missing there, if they do it’s never locals, and that the woman who is complaining about her son going missing complains about there being a Fourth of July parade as a way of discrediting her. There is so much to unpack in this scene. That locals never go missing and it is always outsiders who go missing has a sinister undertone with the implication that the town takes care of their own, perhaps to the extent of killing meddling outsiders. The sheriff Others tourists, not caring if they die and implying that they deserve it while there is a subtextual implication that the townspeople or the sheriff may be active participants in purging themselves of such Others. When he attempts to discredit the mother of the missing boy by saying that she complains about the Fourth of July parade, he attempts to Other her to Cass by saying “look, she isn’t one of us she criticizes patriotism/the nation, so she must be an outsider.” This was simultaneously so extremely on the nose and blink and you’ll miss it. The woman has anti-imperial/anti-colonial political views, so we shouldn’t care if her child dies. It is later revealed that the sheriff is the monster and Cass calls him out, saying “It’s always you selfish little men in positions of authority. You take what you want, who you want. You believe your power will protect you.” This is, again, shockingly on the nose. Supernatural rarely makes those in positions of authority the monsters. I can recall of the top of my head dozens of episodes where the sheriff helps and no other episodes where the sheriff is unambiguously the monster. Cass’ use of the word “always” applies more to real life than to the world within the show. It is also important to note that the victims who Cass helps are nonwhite and moved to the town from a city. These factors combined make the episode almost seem to serve as a critique of social institutions such as the police, except for two things, the first being that by making the sheriff a literal monster they Other him from his community, displacing the blame for real life corruption onto him and away from his human counterparts. Even when someone inside the community is the monster, they are still a monster rather than a person. And on the rare occasion that the “monster” is a person they are poor and rural (The Benders, Family Remains) rather than a wealthy white man in a position of power.

The second is the a plot of the episode. Sam is captured by a mother witch and her daughter who are working to bring the other daughter back to life. The younger sister tells Sam that her older sister tormented her all her life, and Sam offers to help her escape her family, but instead of taking him up on this she chooses to stay devoted to them and dies with them. This is a much more conventional Supernatural episode plot: the choice of the nuclear family over all else - even when family is hell.

The show does not have a political message - it was created to be an artistic expression of feelings - both positive and negative - about family and to be a story about stories. The form that those stories take - urban legends that revolve around suburban fears about the nuclear family - make it fascinating to analyze, but for an understanding of subconscious influences upon the writers that in turn recreate those biases in viewers, not for a purposeful political message.

[professor-tammi]

Edelgard and Unification

Why does Edelgard start a war? What is her goal? Edelgard never tells anyone this outright; the speech she makes in her war declaration is little more than propaganda. Most fans would say she’s primarily motivated by her desire to dismantle the nobility and to erase the Slithers, but she also wants something else: unification.

(If you’re not convinced this is a key goal of her character, I recommend taking a quick look at this little compilation. Houses is a little more ambiguous about it, but Hopes is not!)

But why?

Isn’t this goal at odds with her character being painted as, otherwise, rather progressive? I’ll admit this had me stumped for some time. In Hopes, we know she’s allowed to enact her reforms without resistance from the Church. Why the need for conquest, then?

When you first meet Edelgard in Three Houses and choose the dialogue option she favors, she’ll make an off-hand remark about the Kingdom and Alliance being mere offshoots of the glorious Adrestian Empire. It’s not something that comes up often -- but she clearly takes pride in her Empire. Given this, it’s easy to argue that Edelgard’s quest for unification is imperialist in nature, and I think there’s a grain of truth to that; but it’s also not the whole story.

To my surprise, Hopes actually gives us a more clear-cut answer to this in a base camp dialogue with Lysithea on SB:

Shez: If their [TWSITD’s] aim is to throw Fodlan into chaos, then the best way to stop that would be...

Dialogue option: To unify Fodlan.

Shez: To unify Fodlan, right?

Lysithea: Yes, and also to reform our systems of power so that peace is sustainable. That’s the only way to ensure they won’t meddle with us again, and that the same tragedies aren’t repeated.

I wrote a post some time back on the Koei influences on Edelgard’s character, and said this at the end:

Edelgard’s goal of uniting Fodlan comes across as wholly imperialistic and seems at odds with her otherwise anti-traditionalist character, but the likely root of this motivation lies in the settings of DW and SW: in DW, peace comes from uniting the three kingdoms; in SW, peace comes from the unification of Japan. (These are also the goals of both Cao Cao and Nobunaga, though they die before achieving them in most routes.) “Unification” is symbolic of “lasting peace” for Koei’s writers.

Hopes confirms that this is the case, and this is why it’s not enough for her to implement her reforms. She also doesn’t particularly care about getting revenge on the Slithers. Dimitri is the lord who wants that!

But Edelgard? Edelgard believes that Fodlan will never know a lasting peace until it is unified; unification, to her, is what is truly necessary to eradicate the Slithers. Cooperating with the Kingdom, the Alliance, and -- above all -- the Church was never really an option to her, and that’s why she starts a war.

I’ll address a few quick things readers might wonder about:

Can Lysithea’s take on things be trusted? I think the answer is a definite yes. This isn’t the first time Lysithea has been shown to understand Edelgard in a way other characters don’t -- in CF, she is also the only character to realize that Edelgard is making the Church take the fall for the machinations of the Slithers. She sees through her when other characters take her words at face value.

Do you think Edelgard is in the right? No. While I love her as a fictional character, I, personally, don’t think her war is remotely justified. This post is just me conveying what I believe to be the writers’ intentions.

Do the writers think Edelgard is in the right? I don’t know. I can very much see why this topic might make people very uncomfortable; Japan has a history of imperialism, and Edelgard’s justifications for conquest are troubling in that light. (I’ve seen it argued that FE3H is unambiguously pro-imperialist, which I can’t say I agree with!)

For what it’s worth, I think both CF and SB are portrayed as anti-villain routes, and interviews suggest this was the intent. Yes, Edelgard is portrayed very sympathetically, but we are clearly meant to feel that her goals are noble, while her methods are not. I’ve been saying unification is a goal, but you can just as well interpret it as a means to an end (that end being peace). Still, it’s unclear what the writers themselves think.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

Comparing ATLA’s Jet to Cowboy Bebop’s Spike

(this is so late, but. Happy birthday @the-hot-zone​, hope you had an amazing day) 

In my opinion, Cowboy Bebop is one of the greatest shows ever created. It hits a lot of my personal favorite attributes in a TV show: cowboys, fantastic music, absolutely spectacular animation, really deep themes and characters with rich inner lives, worldbuilding that’s thought out. Simply put, it’s a masterpiece. 

I started watching Bebop this summer, at the height of the ATLA Renaissance, and the first thing I noticed about protagonist Spike Spiegel is that he looked a hell of a lot like Jet from ATLA. And it wasn’t just the looks either: like Jet, Spike is the leader of a ragtag group of misfits living on the fringes of society. Like Jet, Spike is a smooth talker. Like Jet, Spike is compassionate and cares for other people, and like Jet, the world has hardened Spike to the point where his virtues can still lead him down the wrong path. And while Jet isn’t named for Spike, there’s a character in Bebop named Jet (he sort of plays the right hand person role that Smellerbee plays for Jet in ATLA.) They’re not completely similar--Spike isn’t fighting for anybody’s liberation, whereas for Jet that’s a core aspect of his character--but it was enough to make me wonder about how Jet was designed and how much influence Bebop had on his character design and on ATLA as a whole, and whether looking at Spike can illuminate some of the conversations we’ve been having about Jet. 

A little about the inspiration and process of ATLA: Bryan and Michael were working on shows like Family Guy when they decided they wanted to make something more sincere and more cinematic. They were both really inspired by anime. Bryan said “Back in the late '90s I was getting pretty disillusioned with working on sitcoms -- then I saw Princess Mononoke and I was emboldened. My heart was so much closer to that kind of story, those kinds of characters and that type of tone. After that, Cowboy Bebop really inspired us in terms of being a great example of an epic series that had a wide breadth of tones. Then FLCL came along and rewrote the rules for everything, as far as I'm concerned!” I haven’t seen FLCL, I’ll admit, but having seen both Bebop and Princess Mononoke--yeah, I get that. Both are incredible pieces of art that, for me personally, make me want to push myself as an artist, and I cannot recommend both enough if you haven’t seen them already. 

So, Bryan and Michael decide they want to make something inspired by shows like Bebop and movies like Princess Mononoke, they get a pilot order from Nickelodeon and, as is custom at the time, they start reaching out to East Asian animation studios to help them with the animation. This video is a great source for how ATLA in particular interacted in this environment, but suffice to say that Bryan built a relationship with the studio that did a lot of work for ATLA, JM Animation, and gave them a lot of creative freedom in making the visuals of the show. This included designing Jet and the rest of the Freedom Fighters. 

[ID: An image of Jet from ATLA from the shoulders up against a sky background fading from blue at the top to white at the bottom. He had dark skin, shaggy black hair, black eyes, eyebrows turned way up, a smirk on his face, and some wheat in his mouth. He is wearing a red jacket with a gray popped collar. End ID] 

[ID: An image of Spike from Cowboy Bebop from the shoulders up against a sky blue background with trees behind him. He has shaggy dark brown hair that has a slight bit more curl in it than Jet’s, dark brown eyes, light skin, and a closed mouth smile on his face. He is wearing a blue suit with a yellow shirt that has a popped collar, and a skinny black tie/ End ID] 

So, let’s look at the character design. Both Spike and Jet have these long, angular faces, shaggy dark hair, long necks, broad shoulders, dark eyes, some popped collar element to their attire, etc. While both characters are pretty tall and lanky, Spike’s height is more immediately obvious than Jet’s--in fact, I wouldn’t think of Jet as a tall character had I not seen some fandom height comparisons. The most obvious and immediate differences between how the characters physically look are their clothes, which are very different (likely due to the setting--ATLA is set in a proto-industrial war-torn society and Jet in particular has had to scavenge his clothes from Fire Nation troops, while Bebop is a space epic set in the far future), the lack of mouth wheat for Spike, Spike’s incredibly normal looking eyebrows versus Jet’s adorable long division eyebrows, and, of course, their skin tones. Colorism is something that people bring up a lot when talking about Jet’s character, and I have to wonder why Jet, a character that was so clearly inspired by this light-skinned character who was morally ambiguous in Bebop, was made darker-skinned when explicitly coded as a “villain” in ATLA. 

In fact, colorism is a super important aspect of how Jet and Spike’s stories are told. To its credit, ATLA has two MCs (Sokka and Katara) with dark skin (not that the fanartists who whitewash them notice) while Bebop has just one (Ed). However, it’s important to note that Sokka and Katara are each portrayed in ways that Aang or other lighter-skinned characters in the show simply aren’t. For example, despite both characters being literal teenagers, they are sexualized within the text of the show. Another example of the colorism in ATLA is, of course, Jet, a Brown boy leading a resistance against oppressive colonialist imperialist forces, being so unambiguously vilified. Yes, within the text, Jet has some sense of complexity, especially in Book 2, but even that is undermined by his death at the hands of the Dai Li. Jet is never given the subjectivity of a character like Zuko. In fact, it’s pretty clear that Jet’s redemption and subsequent death happens when it does to demonstrate what Zuko is capable of if he makes the right choice. Whether or not this is a good decision writing-wise is another discussion, but the fact of the matter is that in using Jet to further Zuko’s arc, bryke used a Brown teenage boy/victim of imperialist violence to prop up the narrative of a light-skinned prince/perpetrator of imperial violence. This is not to say that Zuko shouldn’t have been redeemed or that Jet shouldn’t have died or that the narrative shouldn’t have dedicated time and attention to Zuko’s story, but it is to say that ultimately, the writers of the show decided that Jet’s subjectivity was a tool to further Zuko’s actualization. 

Contrast this to Spike. Bebop is about a lot of things, but a core part of it is exploring Spike’s backstory and way of looking at the world. It’s part of what makes the show the show. It’s the thing that keeps you liking the guy even when he says or does something absolutely unconscionable. Nothing in the show is more important than Spike’s subjectivity. The show may have individual episodes that focus on the other main characters, but it’s pretty clear that it’s really *about* Spike. Where does Spike come from? What is his obsession with the past? Why do all these people want to kill him? Who is Julia? These are all prescient questions that I had as a viewer of Bebop, and these were questions that were not only important to understanding Spike Spiegel, but to understanding the narrative that the writers, director, and animators are telling. Bebop is nothing without Spike’s subjectivity, and the people behind the show invest in his narrative even though he does some pretty horrible things! (kills many people, is part of a crime syndicate at one point, says some pretty misogynistic crap, hell, the whole concept of the show is that he and his buddies hunt people down for money.) As I said before, Spike is morally ambiguous, an antihero, and the people behind Bebop run with that, because that is an integral part of the story that they’re telling. 

You could certainly argue that ATLA, being a show for children, needs clear heroes and villains, to be unambiguous in its depiction of right and wrong. And to an extent that would be correct. But let’s not forget that ATLA is not shy in its depiction of morally ambiguous characters. That’s an integral part of what the show is. Characters like Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee are beloved despite (or perhaps because of) their complex moral frameworks. Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee in particular move between designations of villain, victim, and hero pretty fluidly (Iroh and Azula are two other conversations in themselves.) I personally am okay, and in fact delighted, to have Zuko, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in the show because I think their stories and the ways that they move between evil, good, and morally gray are incredibly compelling. We know why they act the way they do, and we can condemn or validate their actions while always knowing exactly where they’re coming from. 

But then I see Jet. Jet, whose village was burned down by the Fire Nation. Jet, who survived by himself and helped 5 other people survive along the way, while leading an organized resistance against the Fire Nation on wits alone. Jet, who somehow ended up in Ba Sing Se, his new family cut in half, wanting to start over. So much of him is a blank slate. Where Spike in Bebop, or Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in ATLA, get fleshed out, have the writers convey specific information that helps the audience understand their actions and motivations, even if they’re wrong, Jet never gets that sort of care in his narrative. Jet never gets to be the center of ATLA, even for a moment, even in his own death. There’s always something more pressing, something more meaningful, than Jet. You could argue (I certainly would) that the show would be better if we spent more time with him, if the writers cared to understand him, but unlike Bebop and Spike, the show doesn’t revolve around the audience understanding Jet. The story is coherent without him. In book 3, despite the fact that Jet sacrificed his life for them, the Gaang only brings up Jet once, and that’s to condemn him. Jet’s story is a tragedy, an important one, but only insofar as it props up other pieces of the narrative. And that’s the most tragic part of it. 

[meikuree]

the topography of pieck’s grey morality

at first glance there is a sort of tragic, damning irony in the way that Pieck is cognizant of the terrible system she and everyone in marley participates in, and yet still continues to have quite a prominent hand in maintaining it. every warrior is inflected by this irony in spades, and all of them face the common bind of having to make terrible choices in conditions that are structurally abject from the get-go, but what distinguishes Pieck from the others is her approach for responding, or her stance towards the world and all the misfortunes it brings.

unlike Annie who literally cordons herself off from being appropriated by wider forces or Bertolt and Reiner who have relatively explicitly articulated moments of outburst and struggle with marley’s tentacular influence and ideology, any resistance Pieck can be said to have is quieter and more attenuated. she jokes, she uses sarcasm, she renders quotidian comfort and benevolence to people she’s bonded with, and she makes observations in quiet about people who might not have her or her allies’ interests at heart. but just as true at the same time is the way she participates in marley’s various imperialist strikes (e.g. in the middle east war) and unambiguously is both directly and indirectly responsible for many deaths; she does not necessarily rebel against marley in the material and practical where it counts.

of course, it’s difficult for any of the warriors to do so, and she’s hardly unique in this aspect, but alongside her mode of response it makes her a morally grey character in ways others aren’t. she has her declaration of dissent in 116, but it is overshadowed by the realities of the situation at hand: she is part of a mission that will bring her even further away from her ideals of eldian liberation if it succeeds. it is also possibly undermined, depending on how you read the scene, by the fact that they were made for the purpose of deception: she spun her statements specifically to ingratiate the enemy long enough to lead them where marley needed them (i.e. they had some grain of truth to them, but she was definitely leaving out nuances/complexities in that moment for the sake of more instrumental objectives at hand).

her approach of going along with a regime that has none of her interests at heart is probably just informed by practicality (to ask her to go against marley in that moment would’ve been a tall order), as well as coercion and the sheer absence of any tenable alternative. but I think it also builds into her characterization as someone who rebels not through loud antagonism but through banal moments of care for others. she tries to work in the system and carve out small pockets of prefigurative care and hope, that won’t contest the system at large but might be able to alleviate life within it.

what makes this morally grey in the eyes of some readers is the question of how far this is distinguishable from rolling along unthinkingly with the system. she ideologically opposes everything marley does but the total effect is the same regardless of whether she does so: her actions still amount to the maintenance of marley’s imperialism.

(i suspect one reason some people chafe at the widespread adoration for her is that the tenor of that adoration overlooks how, in some respects, pieck has very much been capable of indirect moral cruelty and direct, obvious forms of physical harm against innocents such as those caught in the crossfire of the middle east war. she’s not all sunshine and wholesomeness.)

this is only one reading however. it is a tempting one, but also potentially superficial, and elides the fact that the game for pieck and the others was already rigged from the start. no matter how she responds, any decision will have untoward costs. if she defects, her father likely gets it. it’s impossible for her to speculate about some hypothetical benefit that will accrue to her if she defects, and thus to judge whether the benefits outweigh the price of more explicit, resistant dissent.

this reading would also ignore the fact that her acts of everyday survival have significance of their own beyond their power to contest the system. pieck, in trying to cultivate optimism/relief within the unremarkable margins of her and the warriors’ lives, is also trying to dwell as well as she can in the boundaries of the life marley has circumscribed for her. she could very easily not do all the nice things she is known for: to be bitter, be more excessively cruel, be impersonal. but in making the attempt at all, it is as if she is saying that there is potential to resist in quieter, more unremarkable ways. as if it is worthwhile nonetheless to sustain the tolerability of life until a day when more overt revolution will be feasible. quiet, everyday resistance-- a la James Scott’s “weapons of the weak” idea if you will-- still matters on its own terms, especially for extending the resilience of those living in unfeasible conditions, and even if it’s not as demonstrative or effective as outright resistance. canon doesn’t exactly frame it as a big resistance vs. small resistance debate. but given how canon consistently depicts her comforting others and dedicates valuable panel space to their significance (see: pieck squeezing gabi’s hand!) and the manga’s themes of trying to rise above predetermination and the hand given to you by fate, it’s possible to say that these are far from useless choices of acts. whether unintentionally or not, the manga seems to be making statements about the meaning of these acts.

pieck overall appears to be the walking embodiment of the “beauty in cruelty” message for some people. for others, trying to find beauty in a system of cruelty without doing anything to oppose it is a morally grey act or even... downright condemnable. i think that reading can have value for some, but my take is that: pieck’s character isn’t so much about “finding beauty in cruelty” as “beauty coexists alongside cruelty” (because pieck very much has the capacity for some cruelty) and also “precisely because beauty coexists with cruelty within people, and you can be responsible for both at any one time, it is an active choice to uphold that beauty and try to nurture what is good for other people, and the agency committed in that choice must not be understated; the choice to cultivate beauty also could be read as a refusal to give in to a system that does not encourage kindness and encourages lots of cruelty”.

[thewreckkelly]

THE BEST OF TIMES – THE WORST OF TIMES

(I recently read that a single COVID 19 is 10,000 times smaller than a grain of sand – which may or may not be precise but certainly helps put this ‘invisible enemy’ into perspective.)

Colin and Alison Cameron are the parents of a very dear friend. They live in the Royal Burgh of Irvine – a smallish town on the west coast of Scotland, around 25 miles south of Glasgow with an indigenous population of about 35,000 souls. As a couple they have been married 63 years and find themselves in good health, all things considered, while approaching four score and eight years on this verdant planet – their birthdays are eleven days apart with Colin in the role of ‘Toy Boy’.

The loss of freedom’s privilege experienced by all involved in the Second World War – during which these two stalwart growing Scots entered adolescence surrounded by propaganda, fear, heroism, rationing and loss – developed a sense of survival and optimism (most prominent) among the young that would reach mature relevance in the 1950’s, resulting in an innate desire with the many to re-build a better and more egalitarian world.

Alison and Colin proved to be true pioneers of this ‘Golden Generation’

Educated and married within the environs of an aspiring middle-class suburb of Caledonia’s biggest city, (a part of Greater Glasgow, this town is on the north side of the River Clyde with the somewhat uninspiring name; ‘Uddingston’), they were pierced by Cupid’s arrow at school and have been together ever since.

In 1957, almost immediately following their legal betrothal, the couple hardly had time to enjoy a honeymoon before finding themselves on a six week boat journey to the landlocked East African country of Malawi – 118, 000 square kilometres of land and fresh water previously known as Nyasaland which was colonised by the British in 1891.

Colin – who was by then a graduate lawyer in Glasgow - had been offered and accepted a position at a law firm in Malawi’s district of Blantyre – home to the country’s second largest city, (also the commercial / industrial / financial centre), that unambiguously bore its Scots roots in a very un-Bantu name.

At the time Alison had recently qualified as a midwife and, as part of her consideration to a seismic change in geography and social circumstances, (as proposed by her now husband), replied to Colin’s enigmatic question of;

‘How do ye feel about delivering black babies?’ with a statement question; ‘Children are children, what’s colour got to do with it?’

This answer formed the basis of an ideal they both carried through their time in South East Africa and into the rest of life’s adventures – which turned out to be many and varied.

A seven year rollercoaster ride followed with Alison establishing herself first in a mission hospital and then in a Government medical facility while at the same time raising her profile to a level that caused the redoubtable leader of the country – Doctor Hastings Banda – to recognise her influence and importance as a care-giver to his country through inviting her to be his platonic consort at the high table for the Independence Commission celebration, (Colin was also in attendance as a Member of the Malawian Parliament and an effectual combatant to the unfair vagaries of British colonial and local law).

The reality of any country achieving its freedom from an imperial power tends to be coated in turmoil and disagreement. Colin and Alison proved to be among the victims of the chaos that surrounded Malawi’s departure from the body British.

The detail they describe regarding being given 24 hours to be out of the country or be fed to the crocodiles is fascinating in its, now, stoic retelling but one can only imagine the sense of terror this mother and father of, then, three young children must have experienced in a deplorable version of; ‘Hobson’s Choice’.

Their expulsion emanated from Colin’s unrelenting legal and moral pursuit of honesty and justice which Doctor Banda somehow found to be unacceptable in the creation and establishment of his new regime and personal pursuit of power. The fact the two men had had a cordial and friendly relationship for many years appeared to make no difference to the leader of this ‘new’ country.

(If you’re lucky enough to share a coffee, whiskey or brandy with Colin and Alison then I would recommend you sit back and take in the background to this banishment and the desperation of the resultant flight while being prepared to experience an appropriate sense of awe and shock from the narrative.)

-o-

With little or nothing by way of material or financial assets, due to the sudden and forced removal from the country of their African adventure, a return to Glasgow was the singular option. The displaced couple and their young family benefited from parental assistance in re-establishing their lives to some form of normality - lives that found a home in Irvine and a level of prosperity based on a protestant work ethic and a sense of belonging.

Over time Colin established a successful local legal practice – within which Alison worked alongside him – and, in company with the many ups and downs this world has to offer, they watched their four children grow while preparing them for the slings and arrows of life as is incumbent on all loving parents. In the midst of this nuclear family ideal and the relative success of their commercial endeavours, a holiday casa was purchased on Spain’s Southern Coast in the idyllic Padron of Mijas.

-o-

Roll the tape forward to 1989 and set the scene with a backdrop of a glistening Mediterranean viewed through sundrenched tropical foliage from the picture windows dominating a veranda of a southern facing villa set on a small hill to the western side of Mijas on the Costa del Sol.

Colin and Alison are talking and the subject is their future and the disabling nature of boredom. They have reached that disparate age of nearly six years past a half century where slowing down in life is a serious consideration for many. The conversation ends with a pact to travel and work. Industry is applied to applying for overseas positions with any number of governments, charitable and/or philanthropic agencies seeking the assistance of experience and dedication.

In 1598 the Spanish explorer Alvero de Mendana was the first European to properly navigate the seas of Oceania and in doing he came upon a group of islands to the east of the coast of Papua New Guinea – whereupon he exercised the discoverers right and named the archipelago after a wealthy biblical King - as it was, in his view, a world of abundance.

1n 1989 Alison and Colin became the latest working guests of The Solomon Islands. For two years they ploughed away at what they were good at and any lingering feeling of declining relevance and apathy dissipated like thin smoke upon the wind.

With their return to Scotland Colin found a new vigour for the cause of Scottish independence and began an activism that remains to this day. Both their hearts still held accommodation for Malawi and both have been formally recognised by the progressive generations of leaders for the roles they played and what they achieved during those seven tumultuous years leading up to that country’s venture into independence.

But home had its own political fight and was in need of ground forces with a sense of history, fairness and a way to achieve it. Colin stood twice for election as SNP candidate, when it was neither popular nor profitable, while stamping his ideology on a town that would eventually mould Nicola Sturgeon into a leader of the SNP and the country.

-o-

Today the couple live in a small house in Irvine. Time has eroded the capacity for physical vigour to a certain degree - as it has a habit of doing to us all - but time is a slower master in controlling and diminishing thought and the facility to express.

I spoke via a Whatsapp video call to Alison and Colin on Saturday night of last week. While I cannot boast of knowing either of them well we have had a number of socially polite telephone conversations over the past ten months and on one occasion – in December 2019 - I listened to the most erudite of speeches given by Colin at the occasion of the sixtieth birthday his daughter, (and my confidant), Shona, (a surprise party organised by their granddaughter Michelle in a pub on the Costa and attended pre-COVID by a ridiculous number of happy people).

The subject of our conversation was primarily to be around the effect of the pandemic on their lives given they fell into the age bracket of being the most under threat from this ‘Invisible Enemy’. I had attempted to have the conversation the previous evening but Colin exercised his attorney privilege to prepare – seeking an adjournment on behalf of himself and his fellow witness Alison.

After a number of false starts – it was a WiFi thing – we managed to have a conversation over about an hour or so. Most of what you have read above was provided initially by Alison in considered timeline and factual background. Much of the detail came from Colin with intermittent interruptions from his wife to steer and correct.

Alison was philosophical and accepting in respect of the impact of enforced isolation, social distancing and the wearing of masks. Her medical and scientific background gave emphasis to listening to the experts and the exercising of patience. She has a controlled temperament when asked a direct or leading question and only really showed a level of distaste when the subject of Boris Johnson arose – a civil and polite distaste but distaste all the same.

Colin was prepared with a series of bullet point observations that he checked as he enunciated with care and lucidity.

The recklessness of people, (with particular reference to youth), in respect of the early days of being told to socially distance and wear a mask alongside the very real dangers to people over the age of 75.

The ensuing acceptance of restrictions by a majority following the first wave and at the commencement of the second wave - from which he took a degree of encouragement if not satisfaction.

The potential and existent desperate financial implications for so many and an almost guilty admission on his own part for how their domestic costs had reduced significantly while their income remained constant and was even about to rise due to a mandated increase in the government pension.

The loss of immediate human contact – particularly with their grandchildren – and the consequences related to any society deprived of distraction and interest from daily social intercourse.

The potential optimism for the effects of a vaccine with a caveat on the absolute necessity of political and commercial leadership to ensure a development of trust for medical science alongside an efficient distribution of the vaccine in a fair and orderly manner for there to be any hope of a return to relative normalcy

The effect of a creeping apathy towards preoccupation during lockdown – his home office still awaited much self promised attention in the way of, tidying, filing and editing the dictation of a book him and Alison were putting together about their time in Malawi.

I listened while he pronounced and understood this was a man used to addressing problems with a systematic consideration for cause and cure. His calculated expression of the situation held a passion but, I thought, was cloaked in almost professional brevity. I broached the subject of fears caused by the world being turned upside down through the spreading of a miniscule thing that made a grain of sand look like a giant.

Colin paused, as if deciding how much he could reveal of his inner self to this friend of his daughter and stranger of an Irishman. Decision made, he moved into a field of humanity made whole by an honesty found rarely and with a profundity in content.

He spoke of real concerns for himself and Alison, of how the thing we call Corona Virus was effectively a death sentence to them should they be infected and how his greatest terror lay in those who display any level of nonchalance to its dangers in the environment of people of his age and station.

His words weren’t delivered as a particularly emotional expression of his views and fears until he ended with telling me he was gone to bed every night for the last ten months with such a worry never far from his mind.

All of which served to remind me these two people had been through thick and thin together for more than 63 years, contributed what they could to society, stooped and built it up with worn out tools on multiple occasions, maintained a spirit and love that endured through the best of times and the worst of times and came through it all with a sense of national identity, familial devotion and the ideology of hope.

If that’s not a stupendous endorsement of the institution of marriage and the gift of love then I have no idea what is!

I ended the video call by eliciting a promise that when they had been inoculated and the potential to travel to Spain returned, they would grant me some hours of their company to, debate, argue, rectify and laugh at the problems of this planet while sipping something old and distilled.

-o-

(Tonight – Monday 25 January – is Burns Night – and I will raise a glass to two people in Irvine while digesting haggis, (the literal belly of the beast), and voice a salute that’s entirely Scottish: Slàinte Mhath Alison & Colin)

[aluoka]

People's History Museum

”From violent protest to attic safety: The Vietnam War and a Hampstead Labour Party banner.What does the banner show? Working in the galleries you develop favourite objects, and in PHM’s current banner exhibition the one I return to again and again is the Hampstead Labour Party banner, on display in Main Gallery One. Dating from the early part of the 20th century, it is a stunning and unusual image, made all the more dramatic by being unfinished. In its unfinished state the main figure and the surrounding details give the impression of almost emerging into focus in glorious shining gold, bronze, blue, green and purple. The contrast between the vibrant colours and the stained backing cloth intensifies the banner’s impacts The banner shows a barefooted woman, walking across a ploughed field, sowing corn from a basket. She is accompanied by a cockerel and the main image is framed by a border of fruit and bunches of corn.Left to right, details of the Hampstead Labour Party banner's borders, showing the corn unfinished and Hampstead Labour Party Banner, around 1920 at People's History Museum How was the banner made? What artistic style was used?Although the banner was probably homemade, whoever stitched it must have been very skilled at needlework. The backing cloth is simple cream woven linen, showing water staining, and the border is made from blue linen. The images and text are exquisitely embroidered with silk threads.The composition and style were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. Reacting to the dehumanising effects of industrialisation, the movement was established in 1887 to promote traditional artistic techniques and skills such as woodworking, embroidery and calligraphy. Its members looked back to an idealised medieval world of greater simplicity and the main figure on the banner clearly shows this influence. She is dressed like a traditional peasant and is sowing the corn in a way that was already long out of date in the early 20th century. The text, picked out in red and green silk, uses a medieval style of calligraphy, found in the work of textile designer and writer William Morris. The movement’s first president was Walter Crane, the Manchester based socialist artist whose self portrait hangs close to the banner.What do the images on the banner mean?Political banners were a form of visual propaganda, intended to be carried and seen, and they were designed with specific messages in mind. The different images used by the artists of this banner show their skill, and also a deep understanding of the symbols and their political resonance.The most direct message is in the text towards the top of the banner, an unambiguous political slogan – ‘The Earth For All Not For The Few’. The focus of our attention is the woman, confidently walking across the field, scattering golden corn. The pleats of her skirt, outlined in gold and blue, give a sense of movement, not unlike that found in ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, and this classical theme is continued in the laurel wreath of victory that surrounds her head like a halo. Even her facial expression gives the impression of a classical goddess. In her actions she is symbolically planting the seeds of the new world, a point reinforced by the shining sun behind her head. The radiance of the new day is further shown by her companion, the cockerel – with his head tilted back in song he is literally announcing the dawn. The detailed embroidery on the cockerel is remarkable, the overlapping feathers of its tail showing great artistry. The woman also embodies ideas of fertility, both as a woman and through planting and producing food – the fruit and bunched corn in the borders, the rich produce of the earth; suggest plentiful food ‘for all not for the few’.Detail, Hampstead Labour Party banner, around 1920 ”

” People's History Museum given the date of the banner, and some other details of the woman’s representation, the imagery may also have a further hidden message. (She is wearing a cap of liberty) 😀I suppose to be Mithras

”The mysterious cult of Mithras first appeared in Rome in the 1st century AD. It spread across the Empire over the next 300 years, predominantly attracting merchants, soldiers and imperial administrators. Meeting in temples which were often constructed below ground, these were private, dark and windowless spaces. The mythological scene of Mithras killing a bull within a cave, the ‘tauroctony’ is at the heart of the cult, and its full meaning is subject of much speculationn ”

https://www.londonmithraeum.com/about/

”The term "Mithraism" is of course a modern coinage: In antiquity the cult was known as "the mysteries of Mithras"; alternatively, as "the mysteries of the Persians". ... The Mithraists, who were manifestly not Persians in any ethnic sense, thought of themselves as cultic "Persians". ... the ancient Roman Mithraists themselves were convinced that their cult was founded by none other than Zoroaster, who "dedicated to Mithras, the creator and father of all, a cave in the mountains bordering Persia", an idyllic setting "abounding in flowers and springs of water". (Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs, 6)[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithrais

”Based on dedicatory inscriptions for altars,the name of the figure is conjectured to be Arimanius, a Latinized form of the name Ahriman – a demonic figure in the Zoroastrian pantheon. ”

The original Greek word daimon does not carry negative connotations.[1] The Ancient Greek word δαίμων daimōn denotes a spirit or divine power, much like the Latin genius or numen.[2] The Greek conception of a daimōn notably appears in the works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates.

Was the ancient cult something like that? or it was due to the fact that people then saw the world this way and, therefore, if they saw the world this way, then we see the world differently. We don't quite see it in the same vivid way, Living Bible to dead flat metaphors that we no longer recognize as metaphors. And this or feeling tragic that this is what, in parallel with the change of Consciousness and this is how I got interested, because it also speaks of the evolution of Consciousness, like this, influential in the spread of ideas

[marxistduboisist]

Comments on “Where’s the Winter Palace”

I have two main critiques of this interesting but, I argue, ultimately unpersuasive essay on the Marxist-Leninist movement in the US. This note grew out of a Facebook comment, and it presumes familiarity with the general subject as well as the essay linked above. I left aside several other critiques which were made by other people on the thread, so this is an incomplete critique.

First, I found the critique of line-centrism (laid out in "Dogmatism and 'Line'") less than persuasive; I thought it misidentified the cause of the NCM’s failing in the first place (here I disagree with Max Elbaum who is the original source for this claim); applies with far less force to the Marxist-Leninist movement at present than it did to the NCM; and, finally, is unrealistic in the sense that it takes an unfortunate truth about large group organization, Marxist-Leninist or otherwise (that the determination of some kind of a minimal line and the holding of it is crucially necessary to effective politics and will also never satisfy every individual party member entirely) and makes it an avoidable, volitional failure borne of dogmatism (whereas I think it is just a feature of doing politics as such); I also think that the argument that certain issues are simply not ones on which lines should be tightly drawn (e.g., imperialist wars of aggression) is unpersuasive.

Second, I thought that the attempted historicization of Marxism-Leninism (i.e., the reading of it as an analysis which was true “then” but is now “outdated Cold War politics”) was also unpersuasive. I don’t think that the authors really argued for this point with as much evidence as such a strong claim merits; I do take up, in detail, what evidence they do provide at the end of “The Sect System”, and I argue that this evidence does not provide a foundation for their claims. I also address some of their specific study suggestions for Marxist-Leninists, which I argue are inconsistent and, in some cases, difficult or impossible to reconcile with Lenin’s work or the Third International tradition generally. 

To the first point. I’ll set aside the first sub-point (about the NCM) since that’s something of a different topic. On the second point, I think, viewed historically, the three organizations which the authors are talking about are far less strict about adherence to lines on every conceivable issue than during the NCM, less strict than the Trotskyist movement (from its inception to present), and, to some degree, less strict than the official CP movement; the movement in all of those subsections of the left and on the left, generally, during the 1930s-1980s was substantially larger in the US than it is now. So, I think this provides some prima facie evidence that adherence to a strict line is, at the very least, not a huge brake on the size and influence of the left, all else equal. The NCM failed, for sure, and its genuinely ouroboros-character with regard to line-struggle clearly contributed to that (although again, I think the emphasis on that is overstated); but, the fact that line-struggle is now far less heated and that the movement is smaller means that this can’t be the only, or primary, cause (WWP goes far out of its way to avoid polemics against other groups, e.g.—one would never see from WWP the kind of personalization of politics that was common during the NCM, such as the adoption of hyper-specific name-based epithets or condemning the line of fellow leaders of tiny groups, by name, in print, as, quite literally, “evil”). I can't speak for all the groups in question, but certainly the ones I'm most familiar with have no restrictions on members disagreeing with assessments of other members on a great variety of questions—it's just disagreements which would threaten unity of action which are prohibited (I think it's perfectly reasonable to prohibit people from publicly saying things like "I fundamentally think this strike that we're supporting as a group is wrong"—there just isn’t a point in having a political organization that can’t agree on some baseline goals and strategies, in my view). For some groups, that could well reasonably include discussions about China; if one believes that the particular method of organizing socialist revolution in China ineluctably led to a counterrevolution or ineluctably led to a socialist-developmental state, then it would be good to avoid or pursue those methods (or at least learn the lessons that can be learned from them and apply them to a different context)—that actually would be a question of great importance (and, in a way, the author sare implicitly entering into that debate without intending to by arguing that the experience of those countries is probably irrelevant—that is “a position” in that debate, in my view). [I should acknowledge that this last point is also laid out in a comment on the original post concerning Cuba, made by one Daniel Sullivan].

To the third sub-point of the first point: the policy of presenting a united front on questions of great import seems to me to be a pretty standard organizational practice of most political orgs., small communist ones and large liberal ones; in the absence of this kind of minimal discipline, the group can and almost certainly would simply cease to reproduce itself as a group (or turn into an inert federation). Even the DSA draws lines somewhere (and I think the only reason that they can be so lax about what lines they do draw is that they don't actually get much done, conditional on their size). Where the lines of disagreement should be drawn is a good and open question, in my view, and I think it would be better to be more specific about which kinds of lines of disagreement are wise and which aren't; I think it overstates the question to say that groups are too fixated on the proper line as such, since surely nearly everyone would agree that lines need be drawn somewhere—the more specific question of what kinds of lines are or aren’t relevant is much harder to answer at the level of principle. The conclusion to the essay and the “further reading” includes a number of suggestions which are actually adequate to the level of generality posed by this argument—in other words, the fact that this critique could apply to almost an effective organization—by simply advocating very loose organizations, the DSA among them. It is fine to make this argument, of course, but I think it’s wrong; those types of groups are, as a rule, typically not productive ones (I think this is pretty well-established by social movements sociology; I don’t have much time here to elaborate on that, but the empirical question is kind of moot—I would imagine that a pre-condition of being a Marxist or even simply a social democrat, as opposed to an anarchist, would mean holding that view as a precept). 

I’d like to end my commentary on this point by suggesting the great relevance of such line struggles on the specific question of Syria since the authors specifically raise this point: they suggest that positions on Syria are basically of little relevance to the left (presumably they mean the left outside of Syria) because of the negligible practical outcomes of those positions: "[i]f you don’t 'uphold' Bashar al-Assad, you’re 'no better than the State Department', despite the fact that 'uphold' in this context means little more than voicing support". By contrast, it seems to me that the relevance of one's position on Syria is very clear: if one doesn't think that Assad is a leading a national-bourgeois war of liberation but instead is prosecuting an imperialist war of conquest, then there would be a far less clear imperative for the workers' movement to oppose the war. In fact, if it were true that Syria (and Russia) were after all imperialist powers, socialists here would need to be careful to not demand an antiwar politics with such fervor that they reduced the ability of the United States to genuinely defend itself against larger imperialist powers (and it would imply a need to coordinate very closely with workers in Syria and Russia, closer than is possible at present thanks to the degeneration of the left in Russia and the US, to ensure that neither wing of the communist movement inadvertently assisted one imperialist power over another). The urgent need to unilaterally call off the war on Syria and the strategy that has developed around that (which is not dissimilar in many ways to the strategy that developed around the war on Vietnam for instance) flows/flowed from a Leninist analysis of the situation. A different analysis could lead to an entirely different political strategy. Even more fundamentally than that, an analysis which says that this question just isn’t that relevant to the first world left—because it can’t do anything about the war—is an analysis which leads us to a position that we shouldn’t do anything about the war (the position “the war shouldn’t matter to us that much” implies a position of “we shouldn’t do much about it”, which compounds the problem of “we can’t do much about it”, which further fuels the position “the war shouldn’t matter much to us”—it’s a classic vicious cycle).

My second point is that I don't find the near-relegation of Marxism-Leninism to the dustbin of history as unambiguous as the authors seem to argue. They imply in the introduction that Leninism is "outdated Cold War politics" (or at least, that appears to be the meaning from the context, although it's not explicit). Later they expand on this claim, and though they do argue that “the world is still in the era of imperialism as Lenin defined it”, they then append a long list of changing historical conditions and ask rhetorically whether we are “in the same period that Stalin speaks of”; they don’t answer in completely unequivocal terms, but since the sub-section is titled “can Marxism-Leninism be salvaged” and since they reply to their rhetorical question with “certainly a lot has changed”, it seems to me that they are, without saying so outright, arguing that at the very least its relevance has been severely weakened. So, I’d like to look at the evidence they offer. Their list of changed conditions is as follows: “the Eastern Bloc has collapsed, formal colonialism has largely been replaced with neo-colonialism, Keynesianism has been replaced with neo-liberalism, and the United States has emerged as the dominant imperialist power”.

It seems to me that it would be better to be clear about the exact stakes of each of these historical changes and how exactly they render Lenin's analysis outdated or not. It's easy, as the authors say, to list changes, but it's equally easy to list continuities: we still live in a capitalist world; most of the African continent, Latin America, and the Arab world are under the heel of “Western” powers; the threat of inter-imperialist wars has returned to the horizon; the continued slide towards the full restoration of capitalism in China and the destruction from within of the USSR mean that we actually have a world which looks much more like the world just before 1914 than the world of 1975 did; and so on. Without a more detailed and clearer explication, this kind of list-making practice doesn’t tell us all that much, in my opinion. And to the implicit claim that simply being old makes the practice of Leninism outdate, I would counter that the dominant political practices of the imperialist countries (right-liberalism and conservative modernization politics) are virtually as old as capitalism itself (and of course, Marx is also older than Lenin, and the democratic socialist politics which the authors end by halfway-advocating are roughly as old).

Looking specifically at the examples here, I would suggest that the relevance of these examples is left unstated and that each example seems to me to be less-than-sufficient to invalidate a Leninist analysis. The Eastern Bloc didn't even exist when Stalin provided that definition (1924), so the relevance of that point is indeterminate, in my view; formal colonialism was also more or less conquered by the workers movement just a few years after the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, and so it, too, has not existed in most of the world for long after Marxism-Leninism seems to have clearly been a relevant analytical framework (and I also don't think that Lenin or other leading Third International politicians assumed that the existence or not of formal colonialism was of life-or-death relevance to their analysis of imperialism); I think it's probably premature to say that Keynesianism has replaced neoliberalism—that seems, to me, to be an outcome of the class struggle (and it's also unclear whether Keynesianism was ever "dominant" or what the exact content of neoliberalism is)—and, in the first place, the relevance of this point is unclear; and, finally, it seems highly uncertain in what precise sense the United States is the dominant imperialist power, how long this conjuncture will continue to last, and how exactly that would invalidate Lenin's analysis of imperialism (there is a great text by a guy called Alec Abbott which can be found here; in pretty fine detail it goes over, from a Leninist perspective, the question of whether we really are in an epoch of ultra-imperialism thanks to the US' primus inter pares status). 

I now want to address the authors’ argument that the “M-L canon” is too often presented out-of-context and with minimal updates, demonstrating that the canon is of conjunctural, historical relevance but not of great relevance to the present day. I should begin by saying that I do think that the lack of context given for older texts in that one, specific study guide on Reddit is bad pedagogy, but I also think that this online study guide is probably not broadly representative of the internal education policy of these groups (I know that it isn't for at least one), where older members and people who know this history can often supply that crucial background knowledge; it would be a major publishing undertaking to provide that kind of annotated study guide, although it’s something that I have finally begun myself for a specific subset of the M-L “canon”). I agree with the authors that the exclusion from the one specific Reddit canon of newer writers like Samir Amin is lamentable (again, setting aside that this does not characterize very adequately, in my view, the attitude of actual *parties* to newer analysis), but I again think they’d do better to argue exactly why authors should be included (such as Etienne Balibar who is a philosopher and, aside from his interesting work on global racism with Immanuel Wallerstein, seems like he doesn’t have much to say which is of direct relevance to the US communist left). To argue for a more expansive canon sounds intuitively appealing when pitched at a high level of abstraction, but for the critique to really have teeth, I think a specific critique should argue for adding certain people for certain reasons (I do think the arguments for adding Ho or Gramsci or Luxemburg are fairly self-evident, although it should be noted that Luxemburg sharply disagreed with the Bolsheviks on a number of questions and that Gramsci, though a consistent Leninist, is simply difficult to read in a way that Ho, who I know for a fact appears on one of the candidacy reading lists of one of the parties mentioned, is not—I don’t think this means that people should ignore Gramsci or Luxemburg, but it does mean that it is not a great crime, in my view, to set them aside in some contexts). Let me also note that the critique of the line-centrism made earlier is to some degree in tension with the argument that organizers in M-L parties unduly restrict their canon or are movementists in the sense that they do not reflect adequately on their strategies—to add more and more authors to the canon is to add more and more things to debate lines on (if we are to take seriously the suggestion that we add, for instance, two people who think exactly-opposite things to the canon).

Much of their critique feels sort of formalistic and procedural in this specific sense: the authors advocate for more diversity in terms of what kind of analysis and strategy communist activists should consider, and that’s desirable in the abstract, but they bring together under that heading a jumble of examples of other traditions which are either already well-covered by the expansive vision of Marxism-Leninism that characterizes WWP, PSL, and FRSO, or ones which are, at the end of the day, not compatible with one another because the traditions in question are directly opposed on key questions: “autonomism & operaismo, Marxist-feminism, [and] pre-war social democracy”. I’ve never encountered a single person claiming to advocate Leninism, in roughly eight years of being around people who call themselves that, who thought that Marxist-feminism was anything but of the highest importance, and of course, it’s almost impossible to study Lenin without simultaneously studying pre-war social democracy; anyone who’s read Lenin has, in a partial sense, studied the shortcomings and successes of pre-war social democracy (also, surely if M-L is conjuncturally dated, so, too, is the pre-war SPD). And, finally, it’s something of a contradiction in terms to ask Marxist-Leninists to study operaismo since one of the foundational analyses of Leninism as a political practice and analysis is that approaches such as operaismo are ultimately premised on mistaken analyses (Lenin didn’t live to see this tendency but he was very familiar with some of its precursors). That doesn’t mean it’s without merit—I recommend Bologna’s work on Marx as a crisis theorist and the electoral base of fascism to many people, for instance. But to say that communists must take an interest, necessarily, in this long-dead variant of the workers’ movement (which did not prove to be any kind of silver bullet—of course, its major theorist Tronti ultimately rejoined the PCI and has since become an open defeatist); we simply don’t have the time to study every last possible strategic analysis that exists. I again think that it would be far preferable for the authors to advocate the specific reasons why this analysis is important and how communists can learn from it even though the authors also advocate learning from Lenin, some of whose key precepts are actually, in a way, pre-emptive critiques of the very basis of operaismo (I agree that it would be good for Marxist-Leninist parties to have some people around who study or know this historical material, but it seems unduly onerous for all cadre to know this material). I think it’s good to study everything that we can, but at the end of the day, either Lenin was right or the autonomists were right—we simply have to draw lines, even if “drawing lines” just means “pursuing this strategy and not another”. There is no way to believe A and ¬A, dialectics aside. As I said earlier, I think their recommendations here are formalistic: it’s good and well to advocate greater diversity in an abstract sense, and we of course all agree on the maximum diversity possible in terms of our “canon”, but the devil really is in the details of what is “possible”. Some of their suggestions in this regard seem aimed to ask Marxist-Leninists to simply not be Marxist-Leninists (but their post doesn’t exactly offer a general or comprehensive critique of Marxism-Leninism, which I believe would have made for a more consistent essay). 

While the essay offers an interesting historical overview of the Marxist-Leninist movement at present, it is ultimately premised on what I think is a very formal and, to put a finer point on it, simply vague criticism. The authors close their essay by arguing that “in the U.S. in 2018, the truly important theoretical tasks have not been solved” but what these tasks are is left unstated as far as I can tell, let alone what kinds of answers might need to be supplied. Even just a rough sketch of the type of question to which this pronouncement refers would have made it easier for people to engage the essay in a more nuanced fashion, I think. As I noted above, it would have been better to simply argue clearly and directly against Leninism as a theory of the epoch of imperialism outright (the essay comes close to being, but is not, that); instead, the argument is often couched in procedural terms (the form of organization is wrong, the willingness to draw lines is wrong, the selective reading of texts and general seeking of a correct analysis rather than as many analyses as possible is wrong) rather than in concrete, substantial terms. I think the essay would have benefited from simply being more precise on these questions: why exactly does the non-existence of the Eastern Bloc, which didn’t exist when Lenin lived, matter? How, precisely? Why is it that it actually does not matter whether people in the imperialist countries argue against the war on Syria and spread antiwar propaganda? What, then, should communists do? How is it that Draper’s quasi-Bolshevik advice, which is recapitulated on the last page, can be reconciled with a DSA whose merits, in the opinion of the authors, are that it is has no effective national unity or consistency among locals? Despite some points about concrete strategy and political practice throughout the essay which are worth taking seriously, ultimately the essay aims for a very general case against Leninism (and, I would argue, communism and Marxism, given what the authors write about the dictatorship of the proletariat, although I don’t think the authors would agree with this reading) but fails to make that coherent case beyond highly impressionistic sketches of history.

J. Seratsky, 12 Mar 2018.

[solivar]

Since I couldn’t find my original post on this topic...

....Seriously, Tumblr, I hoped your finding stuff features would be better than this...

My Thinky Thoughts On The Shimada-gumi (With A Special Emphasis On Hanzo and Genji’s Mum)

Things I Have Learned While Doing Research About the Yakuza:

Firstly, the Yakuza, as a whole, is an extremely male subculture – not much different from the dominant culture in any significant way, to be perfectly honest. One can literally count the number of women who have held significant positions of authority within any Yakuza sub-organization on the fingers of one hand. (Notable instance: when Fumiko Taoka, the widow of the Yamaguchi-gumi’s late kumicho stepped into the power vacuum created when both her husband and his chosen successor died within a few months of each other and held the clan together while the rest of the elders selected a new kumicho.)

Secondly, the Yakuza as a whole tends to be rigidly hierarchical and, bizarrely, socially conservative to the point of being outright reactionary in many ways. The Yakuza is not a friend of democracy or democratic institutions. The Yakuza is, for all practical purposes, medieval in its internal structure, its social rules and customs, and the manner in which its sub-organizations interact with one another and the rest of the culture at large. In fact, it romanticizes Japan’s lengthy medieval period to point of occasionally claiming legitimacy as the final bastion of Japanese culture untainted by outside (i.e., western) interference.

Thirdly, most popular history and depictions of the Yakuza tends to gloss over the extent of their involvement in the ultranationalist right wing organizations that drove Japan’s swift modernization and militarization in the years preceding World War II, favoring instead the colorful/tragic gangster/gambler with or without a heart of gold narrative when it comes to pop culture. This tends to neatly elide their ongoing support for and involvement with reactionary right wing political organizations, and through those organizations their influence on Japanese domestic and foreign policy to this day.

Fourthly, the Yakuza was as strongly impacted as the rest of the country by Japan’s domestic economic issues, to the point that traditional Yakuza “industries” and their subsequent organizational financial stability were deleteriously effected. This has caused a spike in internecine friction among the various Yakuza subgroups where expansionist efforts to secure new sources of income among several parties encroached on one another’s territory, setting off actual gang warfare in several instances. The ultimate result of domestic economic instability among the Yakuza has been an outward expansion into the Asian mainland and the Americas, with lesser penetration into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In short, the ultranationalists started going transnational for the sake of economic survival. Many Yakuza organizations run, in addition to the expected criminal enterprises, multiple legitimate businesses, for purposes of both money laundering and providing stable income streams for their members.

 My Not Entirely Organized Thoughts About the Shimada-gumi

Point the First: Canon is silent on the topic of how much and how badly Japan was impacted by the Omnic Crisis. Korea was severely impacted and is still regularly impacted, though whether any of this spills across the Sea of Japan is debatable.

My Personal Supposition: Japan was less physically impacted by the Crisis than it was by the global economic downswing/New Great Depression that hit when the Omnica Corporation collapsed. (Is there any canonical information on where the Omnica Corporation was headquartered or who actually owned it? Even international corporate conglomerates have a headquarters, a CEO, boards of directors.) Canon implies that a great many territorial governments and private individuals invested heavily in Omnica’s promise of a world of post-scarcity profit-for-all built on the back of omnic slave labor and when Omnica imploded under the weight of its own inability to deliver, it blasted the sort of hole in the global economy that causes whole governments to resign in disgrace and extremist factions on all sides of the political spectrum to seize the advantages to be found in chaos.

Point the Second: The Shimada-gumi is, canonically, clearly intended to be read as a Yakuza organization though it is never explicitly referred to as such, being called a “criminal empire” instead. But, yeah, they’re totally Yakuza with all the baggage that this suggests.

My Personal Supposition: The Shimada-gumi was one of the organizations that seized the day in the aftermath of the Omnica Corporation’s collapse – primarily because they were among those who presciently declined to involve themselves with it, through either investment in the corporation itself or by employing its technologies in their plethora of legitimate financial endeavors. While many of their compatriots/competitors were going down in flames, they were positioned to snap up assets at fire sale prices, seize territory they desired through coercion (I’ll bet they absorbed the useful remnants of more than one organization that completely dissolved in the midst of economic and political upheaval) or judiciously applied violence, and insert political operatives beholden to them and their largesse into the reorganized Japanese government (those laws specifically targeting gang-related activity are such an impediment to the nation’s economic recovery). This campaign of ruthless acquisition and consolidation of power was the brainchild of [Papa Shimada], who emerged as a thoroughly competent and capable lieutenant from one of the cadet branches of the House of Shimada (because the Shimadas are one of the organizations whose innermost core of power is, in fact, built around an actual clan of blood relations – achieving access to it requires marriage or formal adoption), and who ascended to the rank of kumicho after the death of the previous head...and his marriage to the late kumicho’s daughter.

Point the Third: The Shimada-gumi is also pretty obviously not just a Yakuza clan because, seriously, we’ve got ninjas and dragons and unambiguously supernatural shenanigans going on here. Hereditary supernatural shenanigans.

My Personal Supposition: The Shimada are far, far older than their involvement with the Yakuza, dating all the way back to the Heian period, where they served as onmyoji to the imperial court, being part warrior, part kannushi, and weighing far more heavily at the Shinto end of the spectrum. They persisted, part civil servants, part quasi-noble retainers with the castle to prove it, until the 19th century – when the practice of onmyodo was outlawed as superstition and their grip on power evaporated completely, reducing them to the same marginal social status as the tekiya and bakuto “clans” that made up the nucleus of the proto-Yakuza, into which they were eventually absorbed.

This is my way of saying that not only are the Shimada-gumi hugely old school, they are also hardcore social conservatives who resent the entire twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the intrusion of western values into Japanese culture, and the diminuation of everything they once were in the face of modernity. It’s a good thing the Omnic Crisis came along when it did and offered them the chance to assist in the reconstruction of their country into what it always should have been and should always be.

Point the Fourth and My Personal Supposition: [Mama Shimada] is the Shimada of Shimadas. She is the daughter of the kumicho of the House of Shimada – only daughter, and only child, bearer of a dragon, who took one of her own distant cousins to husband to secure the legitimate bloodline of the clan. She is the embodiment of all the traditional Japanese feminine virtues: wisdom, loyalty, modesty, and, above all else, loyalty to her family – its needs, its goals, its mission – even to the detriment of her own heart, more than once. Highly educated, it was she who advised her somewhat younger husband when he came to the leadership of the Shimada-gumi after the death of her father, her skill at determining which alliances to accept and which to spurn, which resources to fight to claim and where to reserve the clan’s strength for later conflicts, which politicians were sympathetic to the cause of purifying the government of corrupting outside influences and which were too deeply compromised to be worth the effort was uncanny nearly to the point of being supernatural. (It is definitely supernatural. She and her dragon are old hands at the magic of knowing, of reading stars and omens and the movements of the seasons.) Deeply committed to the cause of restoring both her family and her nation to the pre-eminence she feels they both deserve, she bore her husband two sons and did her best to raise them to value all the things that she valued, as well as to perpetuate and expand what was, indeed, rapidly becoming an empire-within-an-empire, eclipsing its rivals within the Yakuza, building itself into a hidden pillar of the post-Crisis government of Japan.

She succeeded, for the most part, with one of them. Hanzo was everything she wanted in a son – fortunate, because he was the heir and could never be anything else until his father died and passed the rulership of the Shimada-gumi to him, dutiful, devoted, obedient in word and deed. He worked so hard, did her Hanzo, to master the skills she required of him – not only the rigorous practical education in contemporary academic matters but also the more refined physical and mental arts that were the true heritage of the House of Shimada and his perseverance was rewarded. He was the first Shimada in generations whose summons was answered by more than one dragon, though she harbored a fear that it was because he would, in the end, need more than one protector.

Genji…was his father’s son from the moment he took his first breath, to his mother’s never-ending despair. Younger, much less inflexibly conservative and traditional in his outlook that she herself, her husband took their second son in hand and very simply ruined him. Oh, Genji was well-trained – Genji was gifted, enormously so, everything that Hanzo had to work for came easily to him – and immensely skilled but he lacked discipline, the inner core of strength built around loyalty and duty, and he was permitted to spend entirely too much time with unsuitable companions, unsuitable pass-times, to become a child of the debased and unsuitable age in which they were forced to live. Her husband protected him from the consequences of his actions, against her advice, to the frustration of the senior members of the clan, again and again, and so he learned nothing.

Point the Fifth: The Yakuza does not, as a general rule, hand down a death sentence for the crime of being a feckless playboy. That’s what fingertips are for. Death is generally reserved for serious breaches of trust like, you know, betraying your family/organization to its enemies. Like another Yakuza clan. Or to law enforcement.

My Personal Supposition: Genji was up to way more damaging shenanigans than being a premeditatedly unreliable spendthrift with green hair. That alone would not be worth expending the sort of effort that went into training him in the first place, not to mention that fact that he is a legit dragon-carrying supernatural being/heir to supernatural heritage himself. Death is a high price to pay because it’s messy and not particularly possible to undo – which is why it’s reserved for seriously unforgivable crimes, like actual treachery.

This is my way of saying that I seriously doubt it was coincidental that Overwatch happened to have a team handy to scrape up what was left of Genji and whisk him off to cybernetic rescue.

Point the Sixth and My Personal Supposition: [Mama Shimada] knew the score with her fractious younger child, even if she didn’t know the precise details, and moved to neutralize him for the good of the family. Her husband, too? Maybe. Hanzo was young and strong and, as far as she knew, completely devoted to both the family and its goals – coming to power in his youth would finish the process of forging him into a kumicho capable of bearing the weight of what circumstances would ask of him, and that would be solidifying the power of the Shimada-gumi into something that could not be broken or dislodged without breaking far more than them.

Executing judgment on Genji was, in essence, her last test of will for Hanzo and, ultimately, he failed it. He did what needed to be done but it broke him and she was forced to confront the fact that she had honed her best weapon to too sharp an edge. She had not done enough to wedge them apart, had not weakened the bond between them to the point that it would fray under the weight of what Genji was doing.

And then Overwatch dropped on them anyway.

Now? She has had to start all over again with a greatly reduced base of power, a greatly reduced quality of tool – the only thing she still possesses in its entirety is her own power, which is still considerable, and disregarded only by the foolish. She managed to talk the rest of the clan’s elders into not sending any more cousins after Hanzo because, even if they aren’t dragon-bearers themselves, they are still Shimada by blood and their children could be what they are not. She has not entirely given up hope on Hanzo, even though it would take genuinely supernatural effort to reinstall him as kumicho after all he’s done – because he has, after all, retained what she taught him, even if he hates himself for it. If nothing else, she hopes he will one day give the Shimada-gumi an heir of her blood.

She has no idea that Genji is still alive.

[janjanbaloch-blog]

(Pullen kharan News Occoupied Balochistn )

Independent Balochistan is key to peace in Afghanistan and in the region: Hyrbyair Marri

LONDON: Baloch pro-freedom leader Hyrbyair Marri said in a statement that the Pakistan is a constant threat to world peace and to its neighbouring nations and its expansionist designs have jeopardized the peace of the region.

Expressing his views on the possible impact of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Baloch patriot leader said that it was an open fact that Pakistan has always nurtured the terrorists and declared them as its strategic depth by providing safe havens and sanctuary to them. “Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad and Pakistan’s clear and unambiguous support for Haqqani network are clear examples of Pakistan’s collusion with fundamentalist groups,” Mr Marri said.

He said seeing US forces withdrawal [as an opportunity] Pakistan once again wants to re-establish its influence in Afghanistan and its proxy fundamentalist groups have increased the incidents of terrorism on Afghan soil. He said the recent wave of terrorism in Afghanistan is evidence of the fact that Pakistan’s strategic assets are once again active at the expense of Afghanistan’s peace. “Such actions are strongly deplorable and in these circumstances the US aid and support is providing more succour to Pakistan’s expansionist ambitions,” he said adding that the civilized world should think before giving aid to Pakistan because their aid is not being used for the prevention of terrorism but to nurture it. The US aid is also being used to continue the genocide of Baloch and Sindhi people and to strengthen illegal occupation of Pakistan in Sindh and Balochistan.

He said that Pakistan has always claimed that it gained independence from British imperialism after enormous sacrifices and long struggle but in fact Punjabi elite and Pakistan’s Punjabi dominated army used their military force, which they inherited from the British, to attack Baloch nation and occupy their country. He said according to Pakistan’s claims it gained independence from British imperialism and occupation, but the fact is that Pakistan itself has become an imperialist and occupied Balochistan, Pakistan is committing same barbarism and savagery in Balochistan what it did in Bangladesh [in 1970s].

He said the Sindhis on South and the Afghans in the North are also victims of Pakistan’s aggression and they have been forced to become unnatural part of Pakistan without their consent. Mr Marri said on one hand India was tolerating Pakistan aggression and on the other hand Pakistan was the biggest obstacle to Afghanistan’s peace and prosperity. He said Pakistan has never recognised Afghanistan as an independent country in real terms and to fulfill its evil designs Pakistan considers the bloodshed, interventions, destroying the peace and interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs its legitimate right.

Hyrbyair Marri said that the Pakistanis themselves have openly expressed their support for Taliban. Pakistani General Nasirullah Babar said the Taliban are children of Pakistan whereas General Aslam Beg and Hameed Gul consider these terrorists a strategic asset and people like General Musharraf and Sartaj Aziz have openly said on media that intervention in Afghanistan in their right. He said against the backdrop of Pakistan’s ambitions it won’t be wrong to say that after the US withdrawal in Afghanistan, Pakistan will once again accelerate its bloodshed in Afghanistan.

The Baloch pro-liberation leader said that if the ISAF forces withdraw from Afghanistan without containing Pakistan’s terrorist army and their assets then Pakistan will make this region a safe haven for terrorists which will have terrible consequences for the entire world and it will be very difficult to control them. He said it is clear that without recognising the independence of occupied Baloch nation and limiting Pakistani army to their original boundary in Punjab it is difficult eradicate terrorism in the region and fulfil the dream of world peace. “The key to peace in Afghanistan and the region is independent Balochistan, Pakistan occupied Baloch land at gunpoint and now it is busy looting Baloch natural resources to strengthen its terrorist army. Due to the strategic importance of occupied Balochistan Pakistan is becoming a threat to Baloch nation’s historical ally Afghanistan, India and other nations,” Mr Marri said.

Hyrbyar Marri said Pakistan, for its own interests, has allowed Iran to take military action in Eastern occupied Balochistan which is wrong and deplorable. “If Pakistan permitted Iran then under the same pretext Afghanistan and India should have the right to take action in Punjab.” He said all the effected nations and countries must now jointly struggle to prevent Pakistan’s threats to the regional and world peace and stability.

[uniteordie-usa]

Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’

http://uniteordiemedia.com/pentagon-study-declares-american-empire-is-collapsing/ https://uniteordiemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/bird-of-prey-Grunge-300x300.png Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’ By Nafeez Ahmed An extraordinary new Pentagon study has concluded that the U.S.-backed international order established after World War 2 is “fraying” and may even be “collapsing”, leading the United States to lose its position of “primacy” in world affairs. The solution proposed to protect...

By Nafeez Ahmed

An extraordinary new Pentagon study has concluded that the U.S.-backed international order established after World War 2 is “fraying” and may even be “collapsing”, leading the United States to lose its position of “primacy” in world affairs.

The solution proposed to protect U.S. power in this new “post-primacy” environment is, however, more of the same: more surveillance, more propaganda (“strategic manipulation of perceptions”) and more military expansionism.

The document concludes that the world has entered a fundamentally new phase of transformation in which U.S. power is in decline, international order is unravelling, and the authority of governments everywhere is crumbling.

Having lost its past status of “pre-eminence”, the U.S. now inhabits a dangerous, unpredictable “post-primacy” world, whose defining feature is “resistance to authority”.

Danger comes not just from great power rivals like Russia and China, both portrayed as rapidly growing threats to American interests, but also from the increasing risk of “Arab Spring”-style events. These will erupt not just in the Middle East, but all over the world, potentially undermining trust in incumbent governments for the foreseeable future.

The report, based on a year-long intensive research process involving consultation with key agencies across the Department of Defense and U.S. Army, calls for the U.S. government to invest in more surveillance, better propaganda through “strategic manipulation” of public opinion, and a “wider and more flexible” U.S. military.

The report was published in June by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute to evaluate the DoD’s approach to risk assessment at all levels of Pentagon policy planning. The study was supported and sponsored by the U.S. Army’s Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate; the Joint Staff, J5 (Strategy and Policy Branch); the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Develop­ment; and the Army Study Program Management Office.

Collapse

“While the United States remains a global political, economic, and military giant, it no longer enjoys an unassailable position versus state competitors,” the report laments.

“In brief, the sta­tus quo that was hatched and nurtured by U.S. strategists after World War II and has for decades been the principal ‘beat’ for DoD is not merely fraying but may, in fact, be collapsing.”

The study describes the essentially imperial nature of this order as being underpinned by American dominance, with the U.S. and its allies literally “dictating” its terms to further their own interests:

“The order and its constituent parts, first emerged from World War II, were transformed to a unipolar sys­tem with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and have by-and-large been dominated by the United States and its major Western and Asian allies since. Status quo forces collectively are comfortable with their dominant role in dictating the terms of international security outcomes and resist the emergence of rival centers of power and authority.”

But this era when the U.S. and its allies could simply get their way is over. Observing that U.S. officials “naturally feel an obligation to preserve the U.S. global position within a favorable international order,” the report concludes that this “rules-based global order that the United States built and sustained for 7 decades is under enormous stress.”

The report provides a detailed breakdown of how the DoD perceives this order to be rapidly unravelling, with the Pentagon being increasingly outpaced by world events. Warning that “global events will happen faster than DoD is currently equipped to handle”, the study concludes that the U.S. “can no longer count on the unassailable position of dominance, supremacy, or pre-eminence it enjoyed for the 20-plus years after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

So weakened is U.S. power, that it can no longer even “automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range.”

It’s not just U.S. power that is in decline. The U.S. Army War College study concludes that:

“[A]ll states and traditional political authority structures are under increasing pressure from endogenous and exogenous forces… The fracturing of the post-Cold War global system is accompanied by the in­ternal fraying in the political, social, and economic fabric of practically all states.”

But, the document says, this should not be seen as defeatism, but rather a “wakeup call”. If nothing is done to adapt to this “post-primacy” environment, the complexity and speed of world events will “increasingly defy [DoD’s] current strategy, planning, and risk assessment conventions and biases.”

Defending the “status quo”

Top on the list of forces that have knocked the U.S. off its position of global “pre-eminence”, says the report, are the role of competing powers — major rivals like Russia and China, as well as smaller players like Iran and North Korea.

The document is particularly candid in setting out why the U.S. sees these countries as threats — not so much because of tangible military or security issues, but mainly because their pursuit of their own legitimate national interests is, in itself, seen as undermining American dominance.

Russia and China are described as “revisionist forces” who benefit from the U.S.-dominated international order, but who dare to “seek a new distribution of power and authority commensurate with their emergence as legitimate rivals to U.S. dominance.” Russia and China, the analysts say, “are engaged in a deliberate program to demonstrate the limits of U.S. authority, will, reach, influence, and impact.”

The premise of this conclusion is that the U.S.-backed “status quo” international order is fundamentally “favorable” for the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Any effort to make global order also work “favorably” for anyone else is automatically seen as a threat to U.S. power and interests.

Thus, Russia and China “seek to reorder their position in the existing status quo in ways that — at a minimum — create more favorable circumstances for pursuit of their core objectives.” At first glance there seems nothing particularly wrong about this. So the analysts emphasize that “a more maximalist perspective sees them pursuing advantage at the direct expense of the United States and its principal Western and Asian allies.”

Most conspicuous of all, there is little substantiation in the document of how Russia and China pose a meaningful threat to American national security.

The chief challenge is that they “are bent on revising the contemporary status quo” through the use of “gray zone” techniques, involving “means and methods falling far short of unambiguous or open provocation and conflict”.

Such “murkier, less obvious forms of state-based aggression”, despite falling short of actual violence, are condemned — but then, losing any sense of moral high-ground, the Pentagon study advocates that the U.S. itself should “go gray or go home” to ensure U.S. influence.

The document also sets out the real reasons that the U.S. is hostile to “revolutionary forces” like Iran and North Korea: they pose fundamental obstacles to U.S. imperial influence in those regions. They are:

“… neither the products of, nor are they satisfied with, the contemporary order… At a minimum, they intend to destroy the reach of the U.S.-led order into what they perceive to be their legitimate sphere of influence. They are also resolved to replace that order locally with a new rule set dictated by them.”

Far from insisting, as the U.S. government does officially, that Iran and North Korea pose as nuclear threats, the document instead insists they are considered problematic for the expansion of the “U.S.-led order.”

Losing the propaganda war

Amidst the challenge posed by these competing powers, the Pentagon study emphasizes the threat from non-state forces undermining the “U.S.-led order” in different ways, primarily through information.

The “hyper-connectivity and weaponization of information, disinformation, and dis­affection”, the study team observes, is leading to the uncontrolled spread of information. The upshot is that the Pentagon faces the “inevitable elimination of secrecy and operational security”.

“Wide uncontrolled access to technology that most now take for granted is rapidly undermining prior advantages of discrete, secret, or covert intentions, actions, or operations… In the end, senior defense leaders should assume that all defense-related activity from minor tactical movements to major military operations would occur completely in the open from this point forward.”

This information revolution, in turn, is leading to the “generalized disintegra­tion of traditional authority structures… fueled, and/or accelerated by hyperconnectivity and the obvious decay and potential failure of the post-Cold War status quo.”

Civil unrest

Highlighting the threat posed by groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, the study also points to “leaderless instability (e.g., Arab Spring)” as a major driver of “a generalized erosion or dissolution of traditional authority structures.”

The document hints that such populist civil unrest is likely to become prominent in Western homelands, including inside the United States.

“To date, U.S. strategists have been fixated on this trend in the greater Middle East. However, the same forces at work there are similarly eroding the reach and authority of governments worldwide… it would be unwise not to recognize that they will mutate, metastasize, and manifest differently over time.”

The U.S. homeland is flagged-up as being especially vulnerable to the breakdown of “traditional authority structures”:

“The United States and its population are increasingly exposed to substantial harm and an erosion of security from individuals and small groups of motivated actors, leveraging the conflu­ence of hyperconnectivity, fear, and increased vulner­ability to sow disorder and uncertainty. This intensely disorienting and dislocating form of resistance to author­ity arrives via physical, virtual, and psychological vio­lence and can create effects that appear substantially out of proportion to the origin and physical size or scale of the proximate hazard or threat.”

There is little reflection, however, on the role of the US government itself in fomenting such endemic distrust, through its own policies.

Bad facts

Among the most dangerous drivers of this risk of civil unrest and mass destabilization, the document asserts, are different categories of fact. Apart from the obvious “fact-free”, defined as information that undermines “objective truth”, the other categories include actual truths that, however, are damaging to America’s global reputation.

“Fact-inconvenient” information consists of the exposure of “details that, by implication, un­dermine legitimate authority and erode the relationships between governments and the governed” — facts, for instance, that reveal how government policy is corrupt, incompetent or undemocratic.

“Fact-perilous” information refers basically to national security leaks from whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, “exposing highly clas­sified, sensitive, or proprietary information that can be used to accelerate a real loss of tactical, operational, or strategic advantage.”

“Fact-toxic” information pertains to actual truths which, the document complains, are “exposed in the absence of context”, and therefore poison “important political discourse.” Such information is seen as being most potent in triggering outbreaks of civil unrest, because it:

“… fatally weakens foundational security at an international, regional, national, or personal level. Indeed, fact-toxicexposures are those likeliest to trigger viral or contagious insecurity across or within borders and between or among peoples.”

In short, the U.S. Army War College study team believe that the spread of ‘facts’ challenging the legitimacy of American empire is a major driver of its decline: not the actual behavior of the empire which such facts point to.

Mass surveillance and psychological warfare

The Pentagon study therefore comes up with two solutions to the information threat.

The first is to make better use of U.S. mass surveillance capabilities, which are described as “the largest and most sophisticated and inte­grated intelligence complex in world.” The U.S. can “generate insight faster and more reliably than its competitors can, if it chooses to do so”. Combined with its “military forward presence and power projection”, the U.S. is in “an enviable position of strength.”

Supposedly, though, the problem is that the U.S. does not make full use of this potential strength:

“That strength, however, is only as durable as the United States’ willingness to see and employ it to its advantage. To the extent that the United States and its defense enterprise are seen to lead, others will follow…”

The document also criticizes U.S. strategies for focusing too much on trying to defend against foreign efforts to penetrate or disrupt U.S. intelligence, at the expense of “the purposeful exploitation of the same architecture for the strategic manipulation of perceptions and its attendant influence on political and security outcomes.”

Pentagon officials need to simply accept, therefore, that:

“… the U.S. homeland, individual American citizens, and U.S. public opinion and perceptions will increasingly become battlefields.”

Military supremacy

Having mourned the loss of U.S. primacy, the Pentagon report sees expanding the U.S. military as the only option.

The bipartisan consensus on military supremacism, however, is not enough. The document demands a military force so powerful it can preserve “maximum freedom of action”, and allow the U.S. to “dictate or hold significant sway over outcomes in international disputes.”

One would be hard-pressed to find a clearer statement of imperial intent in any U.S. Army document:

“While as a rule, U.S. leaders of both political parties have consistently committed to the maintenance of U.S. military superiority over all potential state rivals, the post-primacy reality demands a wider and more flexible military force that can generate ad­vantage and options across the broadest possible range of military demands. To U.S. political leadership, maintenance of military advantage preserves maximum freedom of action… Finally, it allows U.S. decision-makers the opportunity to dictate or hold significant sway over outcomes in international disputes in the shadow of significant U.S. military capability and the implied promise of unac­ceptable consequences in the event that capability is unleashed.”

Once again, military power is essentially depicted as a tool for the U.S. to force, threaten and cajole other countries into submission to U.S. demands.

The very concept of ‘defence’ is thus re-framed as the capacity to use overwhelming military might to get one’s way — anything which undermines this capacity ends up automatically appearing as a threat that deserves to be attacked.

Empire of capital

Accordingly, a core goal of this military expansionism is ensuring that the United States and its international partners have “unimpeded access to air, sea, space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum in order to underwrite their security and prosperity”.

This also means that the U.S. must retain the ability to physically access any region it wants, whenever it wants:

“Failure of or limitations on the ability of the United States to enter and operate within key regions of the world, for example, undermine both U.S. and partner security.”

The U.S. thus must try to minimize any “purposeful, malevolent, or incidental interruption of access to the commons, as well as critical regions, resources, and markets.”

Without ever referring directly to ‘capitalism’, the document eliminates any ambiguity about how the Pentagon sees this new era of “Persistent Conflict 2.0”:

“… some are fighting globalization and globalization is also actively fighting back. Combined, all of these forces are rending at the fabric of security and stable governance that all states aspire to and rely on for survival.”

This is a war, then, between US-led capitalist globalization, and anyone who resists it.

And to win it, the document puts forward a combination of strategies: consolidating the U.S. intelligence complex and using it more ruthlessly; intensifying mass surveillance and propaganda to manipulate popular opinion; expanding U.S. military clout to ensure access to “strategic regions, markets, and resources”.

Even so, the overarching goal is somewhat more modest — to prevent the U.S.-led order from collapsing further:

“…. while the favorable U.S.-dominated status quo is under significant internal and external pressure, adapted American power can help to forestall or even reverse outright failure in the most critical regions”.

The hope is that the U.S. will be able to fashion “a remodeled but nonetheless still favorable post-primacy international order.”

Narcissism

Like all U.S. Army War College publications, the document states that it does not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Army or DoD. While this caveat means that its findings cannot be taken to formally represent the U.S. government, the document does also admit that it represents “the collective wisdom” of the numerous officials consulted.

In that sense, the document is a uniquely insightful window into the mind of the Pentagon, and how embarrassingly limited its cognitive scope really is.

And this in turn reveals not only why the Pentagon’s approach is bound to make things worse, but also what an alternative more productive approach might look like.

Launched in June 2016 and completed in April 2017, the U.S. Army War College research project involved extensive consultation with officials across the Pentagon, including representatives of the joint and service staffs, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM); U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Intelligence Council, U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), and U.S. Army Pacific [US­ARPAC] and Pacific Fleet [PACFLT]).

The study team also consulted with a handful of American think-tanks of a somewhat neoconservative persuasion: the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for the Study of War.

No wonder, then, that its findings are so myopic.

But what else would you expect from a research process so deeply narcissistic, that it involves little more than talking to yourself? Is it any wonder that the solutions offered represent an echo chamber calling to amplify precisely the same policies that have contributed to the destabilization of U.S. power?

The research methodology manages to systematically ignore the most critical evidence surrounding the drivers undermining U.S. primacy: such as, the biophysical processes of climate, energy and food disruption behind the Arab Spring; the confluence of military violence, fossil fuel interests and geopolitical alliances behind the rise of ISIS; or the fundamental grievances that have driven a breakdown in trust with governments since the 2008 financial collapse and the ensuing ongoing period of neoliberal economic failure.

 A large body of data demonstrates that the escalating risks to U.S. power have come not from outside U.S. power, but from the very manner in which U.S. power has operated. The breakdown of the U.S.-led international order, from this perspective, is happening as a direct consequence of deep-seated flaws in the structure, values and vision of that order.

In this context, the study’s conclusions are less a reflection of the actual state of the world, than of the way the Pentagon sees itself and the world. Indeed, most telling of all is the document’s utter inability to recognize the role of the Pentagon itself in systematically pursuing a wide range of policies over the last several decades which have contributed directly to the very instability it now wants to defend against.

The Pentagon frames itself as existing outside the Hobbesian turmoil that it conveniently projects onto the world — the result is a monumental and convenient rejection of any sense of responsibility for what happens in the world.

In this sense, the document is a powerful illustration of the self-limiting failure of conventional risk-assessment approaches. What is needed instead is a systems-oriented approach based on evaluating not just the Pentagon’s internal beliefs about the drivers of risk — but engaging with independent scientific evidence about those drivers to test the extent to which those beliefs withstand rigorous scrutiny.

Such an approach could open the door to a very different scenario to the one recommended by this document — one based on a willingness to actually look in the mirror. And that in turn might open up the opportunity for Pentagon officials to imagine alternative policies with a real chance of actually working, rather than reinforcing the same stale failed strategies of the past.

It is no surprise then that even the Pentagon’s apparent conviction in the inexorable decline of U.S. power could well be overblown.

According to Dr Sean Starrs of MIT’s Center for International Studies, a true picture of U.S. power cannot be determined solely from national accounts. We have to look at the accounts of transnational corporations. Starrs shows that American transnational corporations are vastly more powerful than their competitors. His data suggests that American economic supremacism remains at an all-time high, and still unchallenged even by an economic powerhouse like China.

This does not necessarily discredit the Pentagon’s emerging recognition that U.S. imperial power faces a new era of decline and unprecedented volatility.

But it does suggest that the Pentagon’s sense of U.S. global pre-eminence is very much bound up with its capacity to project American capitalism globally.

As geopolitical rivals agitate against U.S. economic reach, and as new movements emerge hoping to undermine American “unimpeded access” to global resources and markets, what’s clear is that DoD officials see anything which competes with or undermines American capitalism as a clear and present danger.

But nothing put forward in this document will actually contribute to slowing the decline of U.S. power.

On the contrary, the Pentagon study’s recommendations call for an intensification of the very imperial policies that futurist Professor Johan Galtung, who accurately forecasted the demise of the USSR, predicts will accelerate the “collapse of the U.S. empire” by around 2020.

As we move deeper into the “post-primacy” era, the more meaningful question for people, governments, civil society and industry is this: as the empire falls, lashing out in its death throes, what comes after?

Read More: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/pentagon-study-declares-american-empire-is-collapsing-746754cdaebf

[romancatholicreflections]

22nd Oct >> ‘Rendering to Caesar’ ~ Daily Reflection on Today’s Gospel Reading for Roman Catholics on the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

No sooner did the fall of the Berlin Wall mark the end of the Cold War than another ominous divide came to split our world. This new division is between the Muslim world and what was once the Christian West. The Muslim world has experienced an extraordinary growth in fundamentalism. Many groups have imposed or are seeking to impose the Sharia law of the Koran as the law of the state. European countries feel threatened, particularly France, with its large Muslim population and close historical ties with Algeria. Muslims demands that their schoolgirls be allowed to wear the veil in French public schools. Strange how people so often adopt the attitudes and strategies of their adversaries. Muslim fundamentalism in Arab countries is soon matched by a noticeable "move to the right" in western countries. Now even the more moderate mainstream parties are calling for tighter immigration laws. The signs for the future are ominous, to say the least.

The clash between religion and the secular state is not new. The story of the Christian West is largely a history of this conflict. For the first few centuries of its existence, Christianity was fiercely persecuted by the state, leaving in its wake, a bloody trail of martyrs. All that changed with the conversion of the emperor Constantine. Soon Christianity became the state religion. Now the boot was on the other foot. The high point of the power of religion came at Canossa in the high Middle Ages when an excommunicated emperor knelt in the snow and humbly submitted to a pope to regain his imperial crown. In the Caesar-God contest, that round went decidedly to God. All throughout the Middle Ages the church extended its sphere of influence into the secular domain. With the break-up of Christianity in the sixteenth century the process began to reverse. The French Revolution marked a decisive turning point in favour of the state. Napoleon made the point dramatically, when he took the imperial crown from the pope and placed it himself on his own head. Ever since the state has been clawing back the ground once claimed by the church. And the church has ceded its former influence reluctantly. The boot has changed feet once more.

Today's famous directive from Jesus to "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's" is a particular challenge to our world right now. While its principle is unambiguous, its application in particular circumstances is quite another matter. The Catholic Church Catechism points out three circumstances where citizens are obliged in conscience to refuse obedience to the civil authorities. They are when the laws are "contrary to the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons and to the teachings of the gospel." The principle is clear; but how to apply it when there is an apparent clash of rights?

The complexity of this issue may render it unsuitable topic for the pulpit. What the preacher can and must do, is advise believers on the obligation of Christian behaviour in all circumstances. No matter how deeply they hold their convictions or how warmly they espouse their causes, they must never resort to violence to impose them. That would also extend to intimidation in all its forms. Military-backed crusades, whether modern or medieval, have no backing from the Gospel. The end never justifies the means. We live, even in Ireland, in a world of pluralism. There are others whose principles and beliefs differ radically from ours. The state must also take cognisance of them. Our only resort is persuasion. Persuasion is always a gentle art. We best persuade by living our Christian lives to the full, remembering always that "the anger of man works not the justice of God."

Liam Swords

[flauntpage]

English Soccer Has A Gambling Problem – Is It Time To Seek Help?

The creeping ubiquity of the gambling industry within the world of football is an issue that has been bubbling away for some time now, but three incidents in the space of a couple of months saw it suddenly boil to the surface.

It all began with a fat man eating a pie. In February of this year, as Arsenal were cantering to a routine FA Cup win over Sutton United, the non-league side's reserve goalkeeper Wayne Shaw made the seismic error of tucking into a pastry-based snack on the touchline. When he later admitted that he knew a gambling company had been taking bets on him doing so, a brief explosion of outrage followed, quickly resulting in Shaw handing in his resignation. Two months later, Joey Barton added another chapter to the most eventful run-of-the-mill career in football history when he was found to have placed 1,260 bets on matches — including at least five that he played in. He was banned from football for 18 months and, in effect, retired.

Two days after that, a flurry of six-figure bets from Asian markets predicted a late goal in an obscure League of Ireland First Division fixture between Longford Town and the Chinese-owned club Athlone Town. The goal duly arrived, involving considerable haplessness from a number of parties. UEFA informed the Irish FA that there is "clear and overwhelming evidence" of suspicious betting patterns, and an investigation is ongoing.

On the face of it, these are three isolated events that can be dealt with on their own terms. In two, a clear line has been crossed and punishment has been dealt accordingly; in the other, we can expect similarly harsh consequences if any wrongdoing is found. The boundaries in place are entirely clear.

Except things aren't clear at all.

The laws protecting the integrity of the game may be unambiguous, but the relationship between football and the betting industry is anything but, and the latter rather undermines the former. To put it another way: English football's clubs, leagues, governing bodies and broadcasters are all engaged in a spectacularly lucrative affair with the very industry that enables the type of events described above.

Joey Barton's ban effectively ends the 34-year-old's career // PA Images

Of the Premier League's 20 clubs, 11 played last season with the logo of a betting company emblazoned on their shirt (the collective value of the division's shirt deals has more than doubled over the past six years, to over £220m per year). All 20 have some form of 'official partnership' in place with at least one betting firm. Meanwhile, England's three Football League divisions are sponsored by Sky Bet (to the tune of £6m per year). The Scottish Professional Football League's four tiers, the Scottish Cup and the League Cup are all sponsored by betting companies (Ladbrokes, William Hill and Bet Fred respectively, for a combined £3.5m per year). And the FA themselves currently boast Ladbrokes as their "official betting partner" – a deal heralded by the company's CEO as putting them "at the beating heart of the beautiful game" – which follows a similar agreement with William Hill.

Then there are the adverts. In Britain in 2017, to tune into any live football game is to be subjected to a long and passionate treatise on the benefits of placing a cheeky bet. There are live odds, free bets and in-play markets. There's Ray Winstone, Chris Kamara and Jurgen Klopp. And the sloganeering is relentless. "Get yer mobile out" and "'Ave a bang on that". After all, "Do you want to be a spectator – or a player?"

READ MORE: Has Football Developed an Unhealthy Obsession with Grief?

These ads have risen steadily since 2005, when the Gambling Act legalised advertising on TV, and their ceaseless screen time is the result of ceaseless investment: over the four years until 2016, betting firms spent about half a billion pounds on TV spots, the outlay rising the whole time. This season has even seen the emergence of a new format: the half-screen cutaway during the pre-match handshakes — a breathless reminder for everyone with a smartphone and an online account that there are still valuable seconds left before kick-off.

Broadcasters are not football authorities, of course, but their influence on the sport, directly or otherwise, is imperious. This is especially true in England, where the Premier League's most recent TV deal was worth an eye-watering £5.14bn, a record-shattering sum that single-handedly inflated the transfer market across the continent and is a central reason why English clubs remain able to attract superstar players.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that gambling goes a long way to funding a sport that, in turn, strictly prohibits gambling among its participants, and whose integrity has been brought into serious question lately by events driven by gambling.

PA Images

On the one hand, we can perhaps be grateful that the antics of Shaw, Barton and co. have served to throw this uneasy relationship under the spotlight. On the other, it's tempting to see those issues as a red herring. Such events may indeed threaten football's 'competitive integrity', as the saying goes, but they also mask the fact that the gambling industry's most corrosive effects are not so much sporting, but rather human.

Consider again the TV adverts. They take various forms – the celebrity endorsement, the sub-Guy Ritchie fare, the bellowing disembodied head – but their core message remains the same: if you're young, male and you want the respect of the lads, having a flutter on the match should be little more than a happy obligation

READ MORE: What the Evolution of Kit Sponsors Tell Us About the Premier League

This gambling-as-lifestyle-choice missive is worth considering in tandem with the fact that the average online gambler in Britain has three betting accounts. The latest research from the Gambling Commission, the UK's regulatory body, shows that the number of people who identify themselves as problem gamblers has risen by 40% over the last three years – and among 16-24-year-olds it has almost doubled. Two-thirds of online gamblers in that age group believe they bet in direct response to advertising. The conclusion is simple and clear: the ads work, and work well.

"In today's world of accessibility, young people especially cannot avoid the deluge of betting advertising," Marc Etches, CEO of the charity Gamble Aware, told VICE Sports. "The fact is that we don't know what the effects will be in 10 or 15 years from now – there may be none at all – but it seems sensible that a precautionary principle should be applied. It is only right that commercial deals involving gambling products should be balanced with a sense of responsibility to remind people of the risks associated with gambling."

* * *

As anyone who's ever set foot in a bookie's will have quickly realised, gambling is an enterprise that disproportionately targets the poor (it has been found that the poorest quarter of England's population spend double the money on betting compared with the wealthiest) and does so with minimal self-restraint. Betting shops cluster overwhelmingly in deprived areas, their hugely controversial fixed-odds betting terminals – described by campaigners as "the crack cocaine of gambling" – taking around £20bn worth of bets each year (the government moved quickly to regulate these terminals, strictly limiting their maximum intake to £50 every 20 seconds).

Crucially, the mode of gambling overwhelmingly advertised at football fans takes things a step further. Betting through an app on your smartphone not only eliminates the need to walk to the bookie's, it stops you having to hand over any cash, too.

READ MORE: How Twitter Tipsters Are Profiting on Losing Bets

The industry has also pulled off the ingenious trick of holding a presence within its ostensibly oppositional bodies. One charity, the Young Gamblers Education Trust, counts two industry executives on its board of trustees. In January last year, the same man was simultaneously chair of the Responsible Gambling Trust charity and the Association of British Bookmakers, lobbying on behalf of the latter despite being the figurehead of the former. Gamble Aware, the UK's leading charity committed to minimising gambling-related harm, is funded entirely by donations from betting firms (as prescribed by the Gambling Commission).

Scottish football is equally awash with betting companies // PA Images

Some of the industry's employment practices are also deeply dubious: Ladbrokes' introduction in 2011 of a rule allowing their branches to be manned by a single, lone member helped them save £200m in five years. Since that change, unaccompanied shop attendants have been assaulted, raped and killed. Employees at Betfred, Stan James, Coral and Paddy Power are also asked to work alone on a frequent basis. All five are staples on the football's ad-break circuit, indirectly ploughing money in the direction of a sport that has spent two decades totting up ever-vaster broadcasting deals.

In the wake of his ban, Barton wrote: "Surely the FA need to accept there is a huge clash between their rules and the culture that surrounds the modern game, where anyone who watches follows [sic] football on TV or in the stadia is bombarded by marketing, advertising and sponsorship by betting companies. [This] is not an easy environment in which to try to stop gambling, or even to encourage people within the sport that betting is wrong."

The former Manchester City defender Martin Demichelis, when he was also found to have bet on football games a year ago, made a similar point. "I was just alleviating boredom by betting on some matches," he said. "What is incredible is that when you go to any stadium, there are lots of ads and opportunities to bet on games with lots of different companies."

Both players may have been making self-serving arguments, but neither was being disingenuous. Football's interests have become so entwined with those of the betting industry that it's hard not to see the FA meting out punishments to those two without detecting some degree of hypocrisy. Equally, it's not as though the FA does nothing to educate players in the risks and restrictions of gambling; both players breached clear rules.

READ MORE: How London's Economic Dominance is Strangling Football in the North-East

On a side note, Demichelis' point about boredom may be especially salient: studies have shown that the age of the smartphone has seen the average attention span fall by around a third, to eight seconds, while the second most popular location for online gambling – higher than workplaces, stadiums or pubs – is on a commute. The genius of betting apps is that they prey on these twin-addictions, to gambling and to smartphones, in a single swoop.

* * *

Perhaps, though, some disentangling of interests between football and the betting industry is not as unrealistic as many purport. The FA chairman, Greg Clarke, has commissioned a report into the appropriateness or otherwise of the governing body's existing sponsorship deals, betting partners foremost among them, which is expected soon. And while broadcasters are unlikely to exercise any such self-restraint regarding commercial deals, there are thoughts that an ongoing government review of the gambling industry, delayed for the election, may lead to a crackdown on advertising, as has just happened in Australia.

"The level of betting advertising should certainly be a matter for public concern and discussion – across all sports, but predominantly football," says Marc Etches of Gamble Aware. "Given the FA's recent moves, maybe we're reaching a tipping point and football will take a lead in recognising the responsibility of giving a balanced message."

He may be right regarding the latter point, though such moral issues carry a huge level of subjectivity: some people will see it as wrong that the FA take sponsorship money from Ladbrokes, while others won't. And the notion of self-regulation is at least as questionable as it is admirable: is an FA-commissioned report truly the best way to delve into the FA's possible missteps? Will the FA really prohibit themselves from accepting the next lucrative deal?

We'll soon find out. What's less ambiguous is the frequency with which these incidents are beginning to flare up. A fortnight ago, the FA launched an investigation via the Gambling Commission into John Terry's pre-planned substitution in the 26th minute of his final Chelsea game, which had the dual effect of undermining the competitiveness of the match and causing three remarkably prophetic punters to win big. And last month, eyebrows were raised at the dynamic that exists between Sky Sports News, who report breathlessly on major transfer stories – often with information gained via their infamous 'sources' – and their sister company Sky Bet, who take bets on which transfers will and won't happen.

It seems obvious that football's entanglement with the betting industry needs addressing; less obvious is precisely how, especially as these are wide-ranging issues that fall between the remits of various would-be regulators – the FA, the Gambling Commission, the Advertising Standards Authority – but no single one specifically.

Given that the Venn diagram representing the financial interests of England's broadcasters, betting firms and football clubs increasingly resembles one big circle, any change will surely need to be driven by outside influence. Whether there is the will, or even the scope, for such action is a question that will soon be impossible to ignore.

@A_Hess

English Soccer Has A Gambling Problem – Is It Time To Seek Help? published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv