The West's Withdrawal From Afghanistan Is A Shameful Betrayal And An Act Of Catastrophic Self-Harm

As Western troops withdraw from Afghanistan, follwing the lead of US President Biden, the country is on the verge of falling back under the control of the Taliban. Biden's decision, a rare instance of him maintaining the policy of his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, appears popular among the American populace. The 2001 War In Afghanistan, which has seen a significant, if dimishing, presence of US and international troops in the country and vast expense poured into what has often appeared a black hole of corruption and directionless nation-building initiatives, has been a source of understandable frustration and embarrassment for the American people in particular at the myriad failures of reactionary post-9/11 policy.

Biden perhaps views the US withdrawal as a win-win. He can present himself as making a decisive, popular move while severing the sunk cost fallacy that the American presence in Afghanistan appears to be. Biden, for better or worse depending on your politics, is determined to build a new America. Departing Afghanistan, in all but a token presence, can be presented as his administration taking the nation forward, freed from its past mistakes. The decision to withdraw the troops by 9/11 is one of those garish pieces of useless symbolism which plays well in the part of the American psyche so constructed around sloganeered storytelling. Unfortunately, in common with so many decisions made since the West invaded Afghanistan two decades ago, a decision based on short-termist illusions of success, seemingly legitimised by domestic popularity, is likely to have destructive consequences not only for the people of Afghanistan, but the stability and moral authority of the West as well.

The Difference Between Condemning Booing And Condemning The Right To Boo

England's national football team this weekend returned from their campaign in the Euros, having fallen in characteristic fashion to a penalty shoot-out. Unfortunately, the ugly streak of national team support which previously burnt an effigy of David Beckham for his getting sent off in the 1998 World Cup reappared through racist abuse directed at the black players who missed England's penalties, and the defacing a mural of Marcus Rashford in Manchester. This prompted the UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to condemn the abuse, only for Tyrone Mings, an England player, to accuse her of having stoked such abuse through her prior position of criticising the players' kick-off stance of kneeling against racism, and her stated belief that it was the fans' right to decide whether to boo it themselves.

As cynical as Patel and this UK government in general are, in that specific instance she was correct that fans are as entitled to boo players making a statement as players were to make that statement in the first place. Irrespective of whether one agrees with the message or the medium in either direction, it should be self-evident that allowing one group of people (players, staff) to communicate their beliefs while denying that right to another group (fans) - particularly when, for the national team, those players are supposed to represent the nation as a whole - is wrong. If the right to boo should have been denied, and possibly punished, then those who cheered ought to have been subject to the same treatment. If the players had decided to stand behind a message that 'All Lives Matter', would the fans have been wrong to boo that as well?

The European Super League Could Save Football

Update: Chelsea and every other English club which had signed up to the Super League have now, thankfully and somewhat inevitably, rescinded their membership. Unfortunately, the Champions League reforms, which include their own anti-competitive protections for big clubs, have received little attention and are yet to be addressed. Nevertheless, in celebration of the Super League crumbling at least, I've added a few photos to the article from the protest I attended yesterday outside Chelsea's stadium.

For those who don't follow football - or soccer, if you're Stateside - the five biggest clubs in England, and Tottenham, plus the three biggest from Italy and Spain respectively, announced plans to break away from the major European club competition, the Champions League, in order to form their own, where they, the 'founding members', would be guaranteed participants. It is a cynical attempt to consolidate their power, increase and secure their already vast income streams, and mitigate the financial and symbolic risk of failing to qualify for the top table event in any given year. To put it bluntly, it is an entirely contemptible enterprise. It is so disgraceful that recent reforms to the existing Champions League, which themselves add measures to consolidate qualification for big clubs, have been largely ignored, despite being appalling in their own right.

That several European big clubs (putting aside the strangeness that half the founding clubs of an ostensibly European league are from a country which recently departed the European Union, but I digress) feel emboldened to do this speaks to how far football has strayed from its core purpose of being a working class sport driven by fans rather than corporate interests. In principle, I find it utterly reprehensible. However, I've argued before about how seemingly negative outcomes can produce unexpectedly constructive results, and how bad things can be an opportunity to change the status quo for the better. In that spirit, I'd like to present an alternate interpretation to the current consensus that the proposed Super League will mark the end of football, when it might present the opportunity to save it.

In Life And In Death, Prince Philip Embodied The Value Of The British Monarchy

The past few years have been turbulent for the British Royal Family. A slew of controversies, from the links between Prince Andrew and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, to the departure of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and their subsequent accusations of experiencing racism within the 'Firm', have led to increased questioning among the young in particular about what the monarchy is for and why it exists in an age of democracy and representation. The death of Prince Philip yesterday, the man who dutifully stood two paces behind the Queen for over seventy years and did more than anyone to make the monarchs visible and accessible to the public, will plausibly only galvanise such questions once the mourning period has faded.

Though many monarchists may recoil at the question being asked at all, it serves an important purpose not only in testing the resilience of the nation's institutions, but the clarity of people's understanding of their usefulness. The Royal Family is not elected or directly accountable to its people, nor should it be, but it cannot persist unless the people feel proud to be represented by them and that the values they embody are the right ones. In this, the allegations surrounding Prince Andrew's close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the Palace seemingly closing ranks to protect him, have been particularly corrosive. If the public is unsure why the monarchy remains important in spite of any controversies surrounding it, either the people in charge of maintaining our institutions, or the institutions themselves, are not doing their job. In this respect, while the death of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, may be the first step in a period of transition for the monarchy, the remembrance of his remarkable life may also serve to remind the British people of its immense value to the nation and the world.

Uncertainty As The Path To Resurrection In Dante's Commedia

The Christian holidays have become largely divorced from their original meanings. In some ways this is helpful, allowing them to be days of universal celebration rather than exclusively serving a single section of our theologically diverse societies. Christmas is these days about giving, gratitude, and reuniting with loved ones, rather than specifically a celebration of Christ's birth. Christ's story encompasses those qualities, but what is celebrated are the shared values rather than the event itself. Though most are aware of Christmas' religious origins - it's right there in the name - the connection is not necessarily made between those origins and the values it now represents. This inevitably leads to the hackneyed complaint that Christmas is just about 'capitalism', which says more about the complainer's inability to understand the value of giving than they might have wished.

Easter is further divorced from the reasons for its Christian celebration than Christmas. In part, this is because the name does not tie in so obviously. According to the Venerable Bede, a seventh-century monk known as the 'Father of English history' for his ecumenical writings, the month of Christ's resurrection was called Eostremonath in Old English, named for the goddess Eostre. The association between the two stuck even after the name of the month changed. Aside from the loose symbolism of eggs to birth, the idea of resurrection has been lost in how we celebrate Easter today. In search of that original meaning and how it relates to our contemporary lives, we should look to one of the great works of the global literary canon, whose narrative not coincidentally begins on Maundy Thursday, just before Easter Weekend: Dante Alighieri's epic poem, the Commedia.

The Datafication Of The Human Being

Datafication is a term invented in 2013 by Victor Mayer-Schoenberger and Kenneth Culkier to describe the process of digitally mapping human activity and interactions into data and how it is fed back into the real world by businesses and governments to optimise their services based on the information gathered. This manifests in ways both seemingly benign, such businesses and cities changing the allocation of their resources to suit the activities of their customers and citizens, and more concerning, such as employers and banks using an individual's data to determine their employability or assess an application for a loan.

This trend carries enormous implications for privacy and freedom, particularly when it comes to systems either being faulty, such as facial recognition systems used by law enforcement struggling to differentiate between black faces, or outright abused, as in China's use of mass surveillance to monitor and control every aspect of its citizens' lives. As enormous as these issues are, the focus of this piece is not on how datafication has changed how data presents us, but rather how we have allowed datafication to change the way we perceive ourselves.

Adam Curtis' Nostalgia For Radicalism Paints A Bleak Picture Of A World Changing For The Better

Adam Curtis released his latest documentary series, 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head', last week. All six episodes are currently available for UK viewers to watch on the BBC's iPlayer, while worldwide viewers can watch it here. As one might expect from Curtis, it is an expertly made visual collage with a superlative soundtrack, telling the stories of some fascinating figures largely forgotten to history, which Curtis ties together as part of his overall mission statement. This time, he is telling an 'emotional history' of how Western society embraced individualism to compensate for how the radicals of the past failed the change the world for the better, eventually leading to the rise of conspiracy theories and populism.

If that sounds familiar to Curtis' fans, it should: the documentary acts as something of a greatest hits of his previous concerns, ending up feeling almost as much of a retreat into Curtis' own history as that of the world. His signature phrases, '...And then something strange happened' and 'So they went back, into the passed' are trotted out in key moments much as how Marvel deploys beloved characters at unexpected moments for maximum fan excitement. It's as exciting, electric and eclectic as the best of his work to date. But then something strange happened: in going back, into his past, Curtis became infected with the very nostalgia-driven nihilism he attributed to others. In repeating his familiar refrains about our failures to improve the world, he missed how the world has been steadily improving in a different way to how he was expecting.

Do You Want To Build A Snowman? The Importance Of Small, Spontaneous Joys

It snowed in London yesterday, so I took the opportunity to walk to my local park. I stopped at one of my favourite spots, a small bridge overlooking a pond with a tree growing out of an islet in the middle and a small waterfall rippling in the background. The pond was partially frozen over and trails had been cut through the thin ice by ducks swimming to and fro from the shore. The bare branches of the tree were dusted with snow which was lightly shaken away whenever a bird landed or departed from them. At one point, geese flew overhead, migrating from the pond on the other side of the bridge for a change of scenery and to take advantage of an elderly woman throwing crumbs from a bag to the ducks in the water.

I've walked across that bridge countless time before, sometimes stopping to enjoy the moment before moving on, but rarely has the simple sense of life in and around it been so noticeable. I've written before about my walks around the park and my enjoyment of the small details which are so easily overlooked. This time, the half an hour I spent looking out across the little pond made me aware of how much the lockdowns of the past year have deprived so many of us of the experience of watching life innocuously unfold around us, whether in trails through an icy surface or snow displaced from a tree branch. It has also deprived us of the human contribution to that tapestry, the traces of our existence we leave behind not only as part of our own stories, but as additions to the stories of others. Specifically, in this case, a tiny snowman.

Donald Trump's Twitter Ban Is A Justified Action Which Sets A Terrible Precedent

Donald Trump's incitement of an attack on the Capitol in Washington DC represented the tipping point for social media companies to do what it felt as though they had been equivocating over for a long time and banned the outgoing President of the United States from communicating on their platforms. That it has taken them so long to do so demonstrates the seriousness of the action taken: his missives have been marked and limited, but never fully banned until now.

Many will say that it was a long time coming and few outside the President's most ardent cadre would deny that he has used the platforms as a means of spreading misinformation in the most cynical, self-serving way. There are many reasons to deny Trump access to such platforms, especially after his (and Rudy Giuliani's) direct role in inciting a mob to storm the heart of American democracy. In the here and now, it is an understandable decision to take. In the bigger picture, it sets a potentially catastrophic precedent in allowing private companies free reign to decide which voices to permit or shut down based on nothing more than their subjective criteria.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service Is The Great Unrecognised Christmas Movie

UPDATE (23.04.21): For those interested, I've recorded a podcast with further discussion of Bond and OHMSS.

While online forum clever-than-thous are busy, yet again, trying to convince everyone that Die Hard is a Christmas movie rather than just a movie which happens to take place during Christmas, Bond fans have long rested merrily on the knowledge that the finest and most under-appreciated seasonal actioner of all rests within their favoured canon: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

It's worth acknowledging, however, that while OHMSS is a great Christmas movie, the best Bond movie to watch at Christmas is undoubtedly Octopussy, a perfect post-lunch confection big on stunts, scenery and silliness, where any ten minutes are sufficiently entertaining in their own right that you can drift off for half-an-hour of turkey-induced slumber only to reawaken and slot right back into the fun, barely encumbered by a plot which, let's be honest, nobody has ever paid the slightest bit of attention to anyway. That many wrongly think it's one of the worst Bonds due to the title alone makes it even more of a pleasant surprise. Nevertheless, while Octopussy fits the circumstances, it's On Her Majesty's which captures the spirit and themes of the yuletide season.

Emily In Paris' Gender Confusion Makes Brigitte Macron Look Un Peu Ridicule

I've been watching Emily In Paris! Only two months late, but it takes time to run out of literally anything else to watch on the internet. It's amusing enough in its cliché-drenched way and every bit as feather-light and disposable as Lilly Collins' entire filmography to date. The series can't seem to decide whether the eponymous Emily is a well-intentioned imbécile or a secret marketing genius à la Don Draper. Emily's ignorance-as-secret-genius makes its first major appearance in the second episode, 'Masculin/Féminin', in which our heroine realises that the French word for vagina, le vagin, is gendered masculin. This sets off her American outrage alarm and naturally, she solves this perceived injustice by posting about it on Instagram.

This brainless posturing from Emily is realistic enough as a sequence of events until the episode's final scene, where none other than Brigitte Macron posts her approval, sending Emily's post into the viral stratosphere. While the show's writers probably intended to depict Macron as trendy and au fait with American declarative activism, their ignorance about the origins and meaning of grammatical gender paint her, a former teacher, in a less than complimentary light.

William Blake & The Mythology Of Imagination

William Blake is best known to many through 'Songs of Innocence And Of Experience', his collection of poems taught in schools. In these poems, Blake contrasts two states of human existence: innocence, or the state of childhood, in which one sees the world with open eyes and an open mind, and experience, in which one's perception has been shaped and restricted by social forces and one's own inhibitions. The two states do not exist independently of each other and most of the poems in one book have a counterpart in the other, reflecting how innocence must grow to survive in the world of experience, and how only through experience do the best parts of innocence become valued.

These themes reflect concerns which echo throughout Blake's wider body of work in various forms. Blake was enraptured by interdependent dualisms, particularly the Biblical mythology which captured the imagination with stories of man's fall and rise, and organised religion's manipulation of those stories to maintain power and subjugate the masses both spiritually and sexually. Though sadly little known these days, Blake authored a prophetic mythology of his own, one of the great unrecognised works of the English literary canon, imagining how man could rise out of the subjugation of religion, education and rationalism and enter a state of pure imagination

Following The Science Is Scientifically Illiterate

'Science' has become the latest in a long line of words to have its fundamental meaning stripped away in aid of the dogmatic obsession with proving oneself 'right', or 'on the right side'. This latest act of liguistic repurposing was started by Extinction Rebellion, who have repeatedly claimed to be following the science while making demonstrably ludicrous statements such as suggesting that climate change will imminently cause billions of deaths, that deaths from weather-related disasters are on the increase, or that rising sea levels pose a threat to the existence of nations: all claims eviscerated by Andrew Neil last year in an interview with an Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman - who, to her credit, has since changed her mind and resigned.

The hypocrisy of making ludicrous, politically-motivated claims under the guise of science is, of course, nothing new for either political aisle. The left makes self-evidently ludicrous claims about imminent climate-caused human extinction, among others, just as readily as conspiracy theorists on the right try to pass off anti-vaccine myths (such as the MMR jab causing widespread autism in children) as 'scientifically' justified. What's telling is that the very idea of 'following the science' is itself profoundly unscientific.

Positive/Negative - Two Interpretations Of Freedom Which Divide The Political Left And Right

In 1958, philosopher Isaiah Berlin delivered to the University of Oxford a lecture entitled 'Two Concepts Of Liberty'. In this lecture, he laid out two competing interpretations of the concept of liberty. Negative liberty, most easily remembered as 'freedom from', is defined by the absence of obstacles to achieve your desires, short of those desires conflicting with the freedom of others. Positive liberty, most easily remembered as 'freedom to', is defined by the ability to act in such a way as to become the best version of yourself.

Though the distance between these definitions appears small, borderline intangible, in general terms, the nuances differentiating them is as clear an example as there has ever been of the difference in outlook between those on the right of politics and those on the left.

I Want Your Love & I Want Your Revenge: No More Heroes Game Analysis

In honour of the first two No More Heroes games being ported to the Nintendo Switch this week, it seemed as good a time as any to reissue an analysis I wrote up many years ago of a game series inspired by such diverse sources as Alejandro Jodorowsky's abstract Western El Topo and the Brit Punk music movement of the '80s, filtered through the lens of geek and video game culture. No More Heroes is a satirical and often surreal gaming extravaganza which I urge everyone who hasn't already taken a trip to the superbly named town of Santa Destroy to pick up as soon as possible.

Until developer Goichi Suda makes a concrete statements on the matter (which he won't – Japanese modesty prevents it), no-one can say for certain what ideas were suplexing around in that brain of his during the creation of the No More Heroes series. Everything from here on in is speculation, but hopefully speculation informed enough to offer a new perspective on the games and enhance your enjoyment. I will deal with the themes running through both games, so be warned that SPOILERS abound.

   

Do We Really Want To Go Back To Normal?

If 2020 can be summed up in a question, that question would probably be: 'When can we get back to normal?' The problem is that 'normal' as is often imagined hasn't existed in a long time, if ever. The internet likes to declare the present year the worst ever and the COVID-19 pandemic alone has provided plenty of ammunition for that argument. The problem is that the issues of today make it easy to forget the issues of yesterday.

As devastating as the pandemic has been, it either subsumed or replaced much of what was complained about in 2019. To name but a few: the creeping ascendancy of the far-right in politics and far-left in culture; governmental incompetence in the UK and US; China using an extradition bill to crush the autonomy of Hong Kong; mass shootings in New Zealand and the United States, and a massacre of protesters in Khartoum. Just as every US election is declared the most important in US history (hint: it never is), so too does the freshness of recent disasters and controversies make it easy to convince ourselves that the present year is the worst ever and to long for a state of normality which exists only in our minds and disguises a refusal to seriously engage with the issues of the present.

James Bond's COVID-19 Delay Suggests It Could Be Cinema's Time To Die

James Bond has pulled a Lionel Hutz. With cinemas struggling to get customers through their doors on account of the COVID-19 crisis, the theatrical exhibition industry's hopes of survival were resting on the promise of a new Bond film to get them through a potentially fatal winter. The name, No Time To Die, was almost symbolic: cinemas would survive and James Bond would get them through it. With the movie having already been delayed numerous times since its original release date was set for October 2019, the marketing campaign kicked off again with the release of a new trailer, soundtrack listing, partner promotions... only for another delay to be swiftly announced, this time to April 2021.

It seems that Bond's promise to cinemas was not 'No Time To Die', but 'No, Time To Die!'

Is It Right To Hate Men?

French feminist Pauline Harmange (pictured) has defended her book, Moi les hommes, je les déteste (I Hate Men), and its contents after an advisor to the French equality ministry, Ralph Zurmély, demanded it be removed from publication on the grounds of incitement to hatred on the basis of sex. Predictably, sales of the hitherto little-known book have soared and required a reprint. The French, of course, have a term for this: Succès de scandale (success from scandal).

Harmange has defended her work not only on the basis that the equality ministry should have more important things to do than seeking the cancellation of niche ideological publications, but also that women have good reason to be distrustful, even hateful of men as a whole, whom she cites as the majority of perpetrators of violence against women. The real question: is she right?

On WAP, Porn & The Marketing Of Women's Sexuality

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's song, WAP, was released last week to predictable furore. The song, a loopy paean to female sexual arousal, divided listeners into the usual factions of the religious right outraged at the song's explicit lyrics and trashy aesthetic, and the left celebrating the song's sexuality as 'empowering' while being outraged at the outrage from the right. In short, another Groundhog Day of self-fulfilling internet shouting.

For all the fuss, 'WAP' doesn't offer much lyrically or aesthetically distinct from the long history of songs overtly about female sexuality. Christina Aguilera's 'Dirrty' released eighteen years ago and was more explicit and less comedic as a song and video. 'WAP' is firmly within the Nicki Minaj wheelhouse of playing its sexuality with pantomime humour. For my money, Minaj's 'Anaconda' is funnier and lyrically sharper: 'He toss my salad like his name Romaine' is a flat-out masterpiece of a line. For all the performed outrage on the left and right, 'WAP' is distinctly Widow Twankey in tone. That anyone could take such a deliberately silly song seriously enough to either get annoyed or celebrate its 'message' says more about the emptiness of the commenter's supposed values than the song itself.

Community Shows How Political Correctness And Diversity Can Be Turned Into Great TV

As a consequence of the Black Lives Matter protests, the discussion over representation and diversity in pop culture has become especially heated in recent months. Episodes of beloved television shows, sometimes shows in their entirety, are being removed from streaming platforms for perceived infractions of the current code of heightened racial sensitivity. Characters in cartoons are being recast because the skin colour of the voice actor does not match that of the person they were portraying.

The invasiveness of these actions has been criticised, even from some who align themselves with Black Lives Matter, as another example of politically correct overreach. The result of this has been a poisoning of the well for any productive discussion of the issues involved. Instead of arguing over whether political correctness is a good or bad thing, perhaps a better question is whether it has ever been achieved in art in a widely accepted way, embodying the positive intentions from which the concept sprung rather than the authoritarian culture with which it has become interlinked. To that end, I present a show which is a prime example of how to turn a political correct ethos into great TV, albeit one which has regrettably had one of its most celebrated episodes scrubbed: Community.