I Watch Them So You Don't Have To

Greetings, gentle readers. 
I've been housebound and bed-ridden invalid for months and I would be remiss as my duty as a gimp if I were to fail to share my experiences with the world at large.  In this case, I've had the opportunity to watch all of the under-marketed and under-distributed films of the recent decade or so.  I can thus try to enlighten and educate people at large as to which films on late-night cable or on whatever streaming service to which they subscribe, are worthy of a 90+ minute investment.
I'm going to have to do this in installments, so I've decided to go through films in order of genre.

I've never heard of that film...

Biographies

• Borg v. McEnroe (2018) - Shia LeBoeuf does a credible job as John "The Brat" McEnroe, but this film is really about how Björn Rune Borg was almost as crazy-bonkers.  Honestly.  The tennis sequences are not terribly interesting, and adult-Borg is not as interesting as child-Borg.  A boring watch unless you're a Swede who believes that your ethnicity bestows a hidden and latent Viking ferocity that expresses itself in oppressively monotonous press conferences.  Two jellybeans.
• Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) - If you didn't know that Wonder Woman was constructed on the basis of BDSM fantasy, then please feel free to crawl back under your rock.  She has a rope that compels bound victims to tell the truth, she has constrictive jewellery that repels bullets, and she wears the closest thing to a corset-bikini permissible by the United States censors.  Unpopular viewing for those unwilling to see "female empowerment" reduced to "male bondage fantasy." Kinky, but basically a tepid rebellion against 1950s moral censorship. Two jellybeans.
• Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) - Domhnall Gleeson makes the character of A.A. Milne rarely rise above the emotional level of an animated corpse and even then only in the absence of Margot Robbie.  An oddly-edited film that gives the impression it was cobbled together from anecdotes given by conflicting witnesses.  If you want to watch a film that wonders aloud what makes a delightful high society wit and playwright into a drab and sullen recluse, or why a woman can flap between meaningless histrionics and doting melodramatic maternal feelings for no other reason than a decades-long post-partum thing... go ahead.  But any insights hidden in the film are broken by the disjointed display of third-party-observed tableaux, rather than any elucidation by any of the participants.  One jellybean.
• Rebel In The Rye (2017) - This film disappeared in part because Kevin Spacey was publicly unmasked as a sexual predator who claimed amnesty because of mitigating homosexuality.  It also disappeared for good reason because J.D. Salinger is a ridiculously difficult subject for a film, and Salinger himself helped to perpetuate his own obscurity.  For lack of primary source material, this film falls into the same trap as "Goodbye Christopher Robin" in that it appears to be a pastiche of anecdotes contrived to form a narrative with a thematic agenda.  Nicholas "About a Boy" Hoult tries to show Salinger as an earnest, but PTSD-afflicted misanthrope, but in the final analysis, we are not given any insights into the universal appeal of Salinger's works, the literary techniques he employs, or the underlying philosophy embodied in his fictitious literary Glass family.  In fact, Salinger's work, with the exception of "Catcher in the Rye" is largely ignored in favour of meandering scenes of angst that try to depict the author as the titular "Rebel" when in fact there is very little rebellion on display. The film is not awful, but will leave Salinger aficionados unsatisfied, and the literary uninitiated puzzled.  One and a half jellybeans. 
• Jeremiah Tower:  The Last Magnificent (2016) - a sad film by any stretch, but an interesting one for anyone interested in the business side of running a restaurant.  An interesting elucidation on the intersection of celebrity, cuisine, and finance.  Particularly poignant is the story of homosexual backlash against Jeremiah in San Francisco during the heated days of perceived AIDS/HIV discrimination, and just how that ridiculous situation intersected with the earthquake in the 1980s.  Three and half jellybeans.
• A Futile and Stupid and Gesture (2018) - As much as Domhnall Gleeson made A. A. Milne feel like an emotionless automaton in "Goodbye Christopher Robin", he was at least a humourous homunculus in this film - and the only real avenue for a viewer to gain access to the story of Douglas Kenney.  Harvard Lampoon and National Lampoon were institutions founded in juvenile pranks and hysterical spoofs, and yet the film only wants to see the protagonist as a substance-abuser with an overwhelming desire to make his father proud.  The laughs and hijinks are muted so that the psychological narrative can be firmly stamped all over Will Forte's anguished face.  Gleeson deadpans the only witty and acerbic lines in the film, while Forte plays the doomed antihero to a slow and pedantic conclusion.  After watching this film, a neophyte would wonder how "Animal House" made any money at the box office.  One jellybean.
• Chappaquiddick (2018) - A film with a lot of content, but resonates with as much authenticity as a tin drum.  Jason Clarke plays a Ted Kennedy as a perpetually befuddled and confused child with an overwhelming family burden to succeed in the footsteps of his two assassinated brothers.  That's the angle.  Everything else is basically a recitation of evidence admitted in court with a few details chipped in by minor participants.  Large questions are left unanswered, and Kennedy is basically portrayed as an incompetent victim, despite suspicions that he may actually have been a murderous coward.  Even though Ted has been dead for almost a decade, there is still some sort of reverent hesitation that makes this film feel restrained and inauthentic.  Clancy Brown's depiction of Robert McNamara earns this film an extra half jellybean.  One and a half jellybeans.
• Anthropoid (2016) - Ordinarily, historical films involving Nazis are pretty straightforward - guys in the jackboots with the lightning bolts on their lapels are bad, and people in leather jackets and berets are good.  Can't go wrong.  Somehow this film does.  Reynhard Heydrich was a truly awful human being - so inhuman as to be categorized as anthropoid (man-like).  He was so awful that the rest of the Third Reich didn't know how to get rid of him without angering Hitler himself.  We thus reach a point in history where a pack of heroic Czechs, led by Cilian Murphy try to assassinate the evil bastard at the same time as the German High Command tries to shuffle him somewhere where he can do less harm.  With a narrow window of opportunity, the freedom fighters botch the assassination, allowing the wounded Heydrich to decree all manner of horrid reprisals before he dies under attendance of his own medical staff.  Their degree of medical participation in his demise is unknown.  The new German occupation then spend the remaining forty minutes of the film trying not to kill the partisans before finally surrendering to fate and putting them (and the plot) out of its misery.  One jellybean.
• Battle of the Sexes (2017) - One would think that the landmark match between Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King in 1973 could have used a number of angles.  Billie Jean King was fighting for some degree of pay equity between genders, so there's the feminist angle.  Riggs had previously beaten women's number one Margaret Court handily, so there is a technical sporting angle of the tactics and athleticism required in tennis at that time.  The film could have focused on King herself (played by a bored-looking Emma Stone), who was just coming to terms with her sexual orientation.  It could have focused on Riggs, who was battling a gambling addiction as well as his female opponents.  In the end, there is no real focus.  King is portrayed as rather dull person whose personal life could never be as interesting as her net play, despite infidelity and lesbianism.  The matches are only shown as tantalising snapshot tableaux, and Riggs (played capably by Steve Carell) seems to get far more screen time than one might expect, considering the rather linear progression of his character.  Deeply unsatisfying, and unfair to the subjects of its source material.  One jellybean.
• Death of Stalin (2017) - A truly strange film about some truly strange events.  Totalitarian states lend themselves to parody because so much of their machinations seem absurd to the casual observer.  Thus, when Stalin is found facedown in his office, the Communist political apparatus finds itself paralyzed, since all decisions were made by the insensate leader.  The confusion only grows in magnitude when it is eventually determined that he has, at some point, actually died.  The fact that the events are based on historical fact somehow makes the whole scenario even more darkly humourous.  Steve Buscemi does a remarkable job of portraying Nikita Khruschev, the bald bureaucrat who somehow manages to navigate the corridors of power without alienating too many of the lurking psychopaths, but Jason Isaacs positively steals the show as Georgy Zhukov.  The bombastic field marshal steals every scene as some sort of Nazi-stomping Yorkshire gangster with a direct approach to every situation in direct contradiction of all of the political weasels in the Kremlin.  Michael Palin is great as old Vyacheslav Molotov, and even has a couple of tear-jerking scenes in stark relief to his hysterical performances as a member of Monty Python.  A remarkably substantial film, and definitely worth a watch.  Four jellybeans.
• The Disaster Artist (2017) - The problem with making a meta-production of a film about the making of an existing film is that it becomes terribly easy to fill screen time with that of the topic film rather than the action of that film's production.  In this regard, "The Disaster Artist" manages to tread a fine line.  Once one gets past the gormless and pathetic gurning of Dave Franco, his elder brother James actually turns in a notable performance as quirky nutjob Tommy Wiseau, though some of the best scenes in the film are found when James Franco's scenery-chewing grandstanding is tempered with colleague Seth Rogen's cynical interjections as Sandy Schklair.  Entertaining without being enlightening, it's an amusing detour into Franco's thespian self-indulgence.  Three jellybeans.
• The Founder (2016) - This is a fantastic exploration of the McDonald's corporate phenomenon.  The story makes so much sense in hindsight that one wonders how it came down to a schmuck like Ray Kroc to create a lucrative multibillion-dollar empire using simple first principles.  Michael Keaton has a difficult row to hoe, making a conniving swindler like Kroc palatable as a protagonist, and yet manages to do so commendably.  Any other actor playing an character that ditches a wife played by Laura Dern and cheats aw-shucks good guys played by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch would face ostracism by proxy, but Keaton somehow manages to imbue his greed with a Gordon Gecko-esque charm.  Not the glossiest production, but earnest and candid.  Four Jellybeans.

And to quickly recap my last random musical songlisting in the hope that the universe is speaking through me through my iPod, here are the last tracks that were given to me during my last shower.

• Pig Bad, by Bad Manners
• Fishes on the Line, by Lightning Seeds
• Sail on Sailor, by Matthew Sweet and Darius Rucker
• Star Baby, by The Guess Who
• ElectroFunk 21, by DJ John
• San Jacinto, by Peter Gabriel

And that's all for now.  When next we meet, I will continue my movie reviews.  I'm probably going to call the next genre Drama just to simplify such categorizations as Noir, Thriller, Psychological Whatnot, or Mystery.  After that, I reckon I can have Action subsume such categories as Adventure, Sci-Fi, Crime, and Horror.
Until then, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Stare Decisis

Greetings, gentle readers.
Another day, and yet another bleak and awful vista yawns forth before us.  The most recent impetus for sticking one's head in a gas oven like a baked potato or Sylvia Plath is the retirement of Supreme Court of the United States Justice Anthony Kennedy.  Considering that a Supreme Court Justice serves for life (or whenever he or she pleases), Justice Kennedy's replacement could very well determine the course of the American judicial system for generations.
President Trump's nominee, subject to confirmation by the Senate, is a judge by the name of Brett Kavanaugh.  If confirmed, he would hold the "swing vote" previously held by Justice Kennedy.  This means that there are four conservative-leaning justices and four progressive-leaning justices, and he can tip the balance either way when deciding matters involving critically divisive social issues.  For example, the 2015 decision of Obergefell v. Hodges required that all fifty states treat same-sex marriages with the exact same legal conditions and mechanisms as opposite-sex marriages.  Had Justice Kennedy been replaced with a conservative judge in that case, the United States would not have marriage equality today.
I see three main issues where Justice Kavanaugh's vote will impact American society directly:  net neutrality, political finance law, and abortion.  Other issues like the death penalty, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights are also important, but the court of public opinion has already been set down pretty firmly on those fronts, making any reversal profoundly unpopular and politically disastrous for any administration. But here's where things may change:

Net Neutrality

Hard as it may be to believe, Justice Kavanaugh's previous decisions indicate that he opposes net neutrality.  Follow me on this: he has ruled that Internet Service Providers can throttle, prioritize, or charge different rates for different sites or services.  In other words, if Crave TV wants to take over the market from Netflix, they can convince Shaw, TELUS, ComCast, or whomever else is providing internet access to the public to charge more for Netflix, or slow down Netflix traffic so that the programming lags, loses sound, etc.
That sounds stupid.  If Microsoft gives enough money to enough ISPs, they could throttle Google bandwidth to a trickle and force people to either use Bing as their search engine or pay ridiculously high 'premium access' fees.  Why would a judge allow what amounts to censorship of information access?  Answer:  because he has ruled that any government neutrality regulations would contravene the free speech rights of the companies that distribute bandwidth.  Yup.  The rights of the corporations are more constitutionally important than the rights of citizens.

We've already seen evidence that the American government has been tending toward corporate syndicalism for years, most recently evidenced by the fiasco in the United Nations recently when the United States bullied and threatened a stunned World Health Assembly in an attempt to prevent a resolution advocating the health benefits of breast milk.  (For more information, click HERE)  Why would the United States brandish economic sanctions and aid withdrawal against countries like Ecuador over breast milk?  Answer:  because the companies that manufacture infant formula are part of a $70 billion industry, and they don't want babies to be breast-fed, despite all medical evidence indicating it is the healthiest option for a child.  Breast-feeding eats into their profits, and the U.S. government is willing to use its foreign policy to defend those profits.
Speaking of the American government and its financial relationship with big business, how about:

Citizens United

In 2010, The Supreme Court of the United States decided in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that financial contributions are a form of expression of opinion and therefore protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of United States.  In short, any individual or corporation acting as an individual can throw as much money as it wishes at a political action committee (PAC) representing a candidate or campaign.  Hypothetically, that means a corporation that manufactures baby formula could spend loads of cash on any political candidate that promises to endorse any policy that villainizes breastfeeding.  In a two-party system, that would mean only bribing... erm... endorsing two candidates per political jurisdiction could ensure that a corporation's agenda will become public policy.
Should a case arise that might call for the Citizens United decision to be reviewed, how will Justice Kavanaugh treat this condition of unfettered "rent-a-politician" electoral finances?  In his presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders made it clear that his first and foremost criterion for a Supreme Court Justice nominee is that candidate's professed willingness to reverse the Citizens United decision.  Striking down Citizens United would be a direct slap in the face to all of the multinational corporations that are currently directing governmental activity. It would take a brave justice to try and stop the free-flow of corporate profits into politicians' pockets in exchange for more defence spending and fewer industrial health and safety regulations.  Is Kavanaugh that brave?  Possible, but unlikely.  It would seem more likely that the current state of corruption is very satisfying to most of the people within the District of Columbia beltway, leaving Kavanaugh unmotivated to change the status quo.
Above all, Kavanaugh is seen as a pro-business justice, meaning that his verdicts tend to favour corporations rather than employees, environmental concerns, anti-trust legislation, and health and safety regulations.  Overall, it seems likely that Citizens United will remain the law of the land in the face of any movement to repeal it.
And then there's the social conservative hot box:

Roe v. Wade

Ever since 1973, people who have identified as conservative have been trying to make abortion the biggest issue facing the American populace.  The logic here can only be seen as manipulative and duplicitous.  Conservatism generally involves "small government."  The answers to socio-economic problems are supposed to be solved by the free markets, economically and intellectually.  The government is not supposed to legislate or regulate the behaviour of business or people, but instead focus on service sectors of the public good.
The government may not infringe on the rights of the individual to free speech, peaceable assembly, bear arms, protection from malicious prosecution and double jeopardy, etc.  Conservatives are supposed to hold dear the civil rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.  Until it comes to women's reproductive organs.  At that point, the government is encouraged to use all of its power to restrict and coerce a woman's actions regarding her own body.  In the various points of conflict between the individual and the state, conservatives treasure the rights of the individual, except when it comes to abortion.
This particular conflict is so mind-numbingly stupid that it can only be seen as an artificial topic designed to force voters to conflate religious evangelism with political affiliation.  In cases such as that of U.S. Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania (HERE) and U.S. Representative Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee (HERE), lofty and pious-sounding speeches in Congress about the sanctity of life and other such tripe are shown to be bald-faced hypocrisy.  Abortion is fine for their mistresses and girlfriends, but not for their constituents in general as they build their political platforms on moral rather than policy bases.
The right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy is one of the principal cornerstones of female empowerment, and female empowerment is the greatest possible measure of the advancement of a civilization.  Any society that systematically disenfranchises half of its people on the basis of gender is obviously inhibiting its own potential.  Depriving a woman of control over her own uterus essentially makes women incubators operating under government supervision.
No-one likes abortion.  No one wants one.  It's not fun, and nobody is gratified or even satisfied with the completion of such a surgical procedure.  But sometimes, it becomes a necessity for any of a host of ugly and unhappy reasons.  Usually, cases of rape, incest, paedophiliac interference, ectopic pregnancy, foetal inviability, or maternal endangerment are presented as cases extreme enough to warrant justification for terminating a pregnancy.  Other cases include children with Tay-Sachs disease (HERE) or mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS - HERE).  The point is that this is not a binary issue - this is complicated on moral, ethical, medical, psychological, and philosophical levels and cannot be reduced to a "forbid or allow" legal decision.
That being said, abortion has become a political lever.  Many elections in the bible belt have been won or lost on the basis of whichever candidate can behave the most convincingly as though they will work to repeal Roe v. Wade and make it universally illegal for a woman to terminate a pregnancy.  This means that Justice Kennedy's retirement opens the door for Congresspeople and Senators alike to make good on all of their promises to bring their bizarre and thoroughly fascist-fantasy idea of Jesus to the judiciary.
In this case, there may be room for hope.  While we may all be justified in cringing in a corner and bemoaning the loss of environmental protections, labour relations, and integrity in politics, there is hope that Justice Kavanaugh, if confirmed, may not be 100% dedicated to turning women into government-regulated birth functionaries.

The Trump Angle

A lot of supporters of the current president might be disappointed that poor people might still have legal access to abortion services, despite the practical economic barriers that they encounter now.  But first of all, they have already forgiven any transgressions made by the president and his administration (adultery, bearing false witness, coveting, stealing tuition, etc.).  Second of all, they don't understand what they are voting for anyway, as long as it has something to do with blaming immigrants.  This is proven by looking at how they vote against their own interest. If you didn't click on the previous link, here it is again.  Finally, the president doesn't give a pig's burp about any of the potential social impacts of his SCOTUS nominations.
The real reason that Kavanaugh is being nominated is because of the enormous amount of written pages he has dedicated to a constitutional analysis of indicting a sitting president.  Corporate control of politics and the internet, and even abortion is relatively meaningless when it comes to the President trying to stack the deck against his own impeachment and conviction.
And that's really what it's all about - there are no secret agenda or deep political intrigues, or even an impending dissolution of the separation of church and state involved here.  Just the myopic, self-serving scramblings of a petty criminal.
And so it has come to pass that I come to the conclusion of my ramblings for the nonce.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS

Sundowner Speculations

Greetings, gentle readers.
Sometimes I wonder if most social conversations are taking a few things for granted as being true or unquestionable. 
I saw one of those Extreme Home Makeover shows the other day.  The mother, a caretaker nurse for the severely handicapped, had a young daughter, and as soon as that daughter reached the age of six and started to care for herself - feeding, potty training, etc. - the mother suddenly became pregnant with twins that were so ridiculously handicapped with a rare genetic disorder that they required round-the-clock attention.
Suspicious scents about the case notwithstanding, the mother was asked what she wanted for her genetically disadvantaged children, since there was absolutely no medical hope of them ever becoming self-sufficient.  Her response shocked me.
"I can see them maybe working in a coffee shop, being useful."(or words to that effect) she blubbered.
That, I thought, was the root of a lot of misguided conversations. 
She didn't want her sons to fall in love, or write a poem, or sing a song, or inspire a young child to explore and learn.  She wanted them to WORK.  And since she was setting her sights low, she wanted them to work in a coffee shop.  For, one assumes, minimum wage.

JOBS

When a politician yowls out "Jobs!" like a scalded cat, it is meant to be a clarion call.   Jobs in this case meaning gainful employment so that people can get their hands on money that they can then use to climb the social ladder towards capitalist success, and by incidence, feed their families.
But wait - what if the whole structure is out of date?  What if one really clever person can build a robot that will mine as much coal as a hundred humans, and not die of black lung after 30 years of active service?  Is that one person worth 100 jobs?  What if what politicians ought to be offering is not just jobs, but fulfilling occupations?
American capitalists, for all of their other shortcomings, do not realize that they are preaching Karl Marx's gospel every day.  Those that seem to think that the death of the coal and other natural-resource-harvesting industries means the death of honest labour are the ones that are arguing for an archaic philosophy. 
Industry, for the most part, involves pulling stuff out of the environment (ground, air, water), doing something to it, selling it, consuming it, and disposing of it.  What Marx and the weirdly-nostalgic conservatives don't seem to get is that there are jobs at all five phases, not just the feudal-subsistence-level first element.  This is the basic structure of the industrial labour-force:

Level One - Harvesting

Generally, the dirtiest part of manufacturing is getting the raw materials.  This means the miners that dig coal seams or chisel platinum deposits or yank huge yellow boulders of sulphur out of volcanic craters.  It also means the dirt farmers that plant seeds and reap the various photosynthetic and other products of natural metabolic processes.  This is the basic level of employment - hunting, trapping, farming, and digging.

Level Two - Refining

Just after stuff is raised, grown, tapped, dug, or whatever, someone needs to process the stuff to make it useful.  Wheat grain needs to be milled in order to make flour.  Bauxite ore needs to be refined to make aluminium.  Iron ore needs to be smelted with carbon, tungsten, and other metals to make steel.  Essentially, this means a slightly higher level of training and industrialization in terms of employment, which might be accomplished by a rudimentary guild or syndicate.

Level Three - Sales and Distribution

Once you have a marketable product, you need to move it and get people to trade you something of value for it.  For this, you need information (how much is it worth and to whom), communication (where and when are things going), and transportation (how quickly and by what means will it get there).  By this point, one requires literacy, mathematics, and education and we have moved to a point where the labour force must be trained and compensated to a certain extent, requiring grammar schools, colleges, and universities.

Level Four - Consumption

Why drink one type of soda over another?  Why eat black truffles at $600/oz. instead of pink peppercorns at $10/lb.?  Why buy a Hyundai rather than a Honda?  Directing a population to use its purchasing power towards one terminus of a supply chain rather than another requires even more sophisticated understanding of language, media, and social conventions.  Again, the training for such a job requires years of investment in education and culture.

Level Five - Elimination

The final stage of industrial economics is disposal.  In earlier times, people like fullers and night soil farmers were a tad more commonplace than in today's world.  They used direct refuse to create their products, making them, in essence part of level one.  As a result of developments in hygiene and other health-related discoveries, those occupations have ceased to be.  However, now that people have put a monetary value (are willing to pay) on the environmental impact of commodity consumption, there is value in recycling or removing material from the ecosystem.  A tremendous amount of value is yet to be exploited by reducing the impact of used packaging and distribution elements, or transforming them into other constituent components in the creation of other components.

SO?

Why (if) did you bother to read all of the above?  Answer:  because "JOBS!" could mean employment in any of those five stages.  In other words, a politician that promises more jobs, but does not tell you what kind of jobs are being offered, is being ingenuous. 
In short, "first-world countries" like the United States should not be trying to create level one jobs.  The governments of such countries should not be expending its efforts trying to give more citizens black lung and other occupational hazards from whale-hunting or dustbowl wheat starvation.  It ought to be trying to create jobs based on higher-level education and information-based technology.
The point of free-trade agreements like NAFTA, then, is to try and fit the workforces of each country to the level of industrial sophistication. 
Thus:  any politician can create jobs.  The problem is wages.  A post-doctoral graduate with a ridiculous student debt burden cannot accept an Appalachian mining gig.  Given the wages, she could not realistically be expected to pay back any significant portion of her debt before dying of one of the many factors in that position that has been proven to lower life expectancy.  An increase in job openings without a corresponding relationship to the cost of living is worthless.
It's a pity that the United States lives in such a poisonous and divisive atmosphere right now.  If only they realized that their problem is not and has never been immigration.
The answer has been there all along; through history.
They lost in Vietnam.
They have been in Afghanistan for seventeen years now, and they are losing.
Bombs keep dropping on Iraq, Niger, Yemen, and Pakistan.
The enemy of the U.S. taxpayer is not these foreign lands of targets. 
The enemy was described by President Dwight D. Eisenhower HERE.
Why not invest some of that money into social services, health care, education, and infrastructure?  A higher-educated workforce is one that commands a higher value. 
Eventually, an economy develops from stage one through five until it reaches a zenith.  At that point, industrial economics ceases to have an impact and a post-industrial, information-based society takes over.  Production value becomes based on knowledge, wisdom, and artistic or scientific thought, not material goods.

Conclusion

When a government does not invest in its own people, it enables the disparity of wealth between the classes.  The United States has now become the poster child (*see infant mortality) for the United Nations recent study on wealth inequality.   I am not an American, but if I were, I would use my constitutional voting rights to try and do something - anything. 
Everything in the United States seems awful to me.  Educational vouchers?  Awful.  The amount of "freedoms" that are used to repress others is nauseating.  The conservative family values somehow being equated to separating and confining children below the age of 10?  Ridiculous.  I don't even want to get to the point where government of a country can use its legal powers to force a woman to carry a child to term beyond her own wishes.  Can it then impregnate her and use her as a surrogate incubator for party leaders?  If women are nothing more than reproduction machines, then what have we been doing for the past 350 years?  Thinking about the joys of 5th century BC oligarchism?

Discussion and Discourse

I don't get the debate.  Somehow, every single major political debate in North America devolves down into some kind of immigration, environmental, or health care discussion.  Education is routinely discarded, since no-one cares.
Basically -

We're afraid of the other

This is used to fight minority, LGBTQ, and anything other than Jerry Falwell's flock.  Conservatives think that the Bible (the quasi-literary-historical source of recorded genocide, rape, and murdering unborn children) supports their positions, holds aloft some sort of moral superiority over their opponents.

Scientists are lying

There is some kind of conspiracy to make oil companies make less money.  Strict Biblical followers can choose whatever scientific evidence supports their arguments, and dismiss the rest.  Supporters of a "Young Earth" are baffled when the family dog does not decompose into oil sands after 15 minutes of being pronounced deceased.

Goddam baby-killing commies

Whatever colour for whom a person votes, (Blue/Red) represents "saving" or "preserving" the American way.  Equally for a person who votes contrarily, the other side has somehow developed a way to thoroughly destroy it.  Roe v. Wade has proven to be a shibboleth to determine your enemy.
Women who would prefer that their uteri not be federal property are not allowed to argue, because their gender is predisposed to hysteria and irrational thinking.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

After looking at all of the argumentation and strife, one is tempted to ask why one would let arguments about abstract concepts create scenarios that would not only allow, but encourage a neighbour to distrust and despise his or her neighbour.  Techniques to disperse dissenting ideas have been around since antiquity, and it seems that their efficiency have not dimmed, despite the evolution of media.

The Bottom Line

Democracy as North America knows it is under siege.  American forces are militarily occupying foreign countries, and American troops are suppressing free expression and religion.  The principle of democracy is not being upheld in any American military operation
The longer they occupy foreign countries and dictate their policies, the more they expose themselves as hypocrites.
The American government decides that it can exempt itself from prosecution following specific, not generalized inadherence to the codes of conduct becoming civilized nations, forgetting that the My Lai massacre did, and does not allow it that sort of exemption.
The really huge philosophical problem here is this:  Democracy is not the only solution.
2500 years ago, the Chinese derived a system of governance that relied on merit, not on bloodline or preference.

Alternatives

Autocracy works in the People's Republic of China.  In fact, it's been outstripping the U.S. in terms of net economic growth for decades straight.  The horror for most American governmental officials is that such a system can make people happier and provide more household wealth.  Imagine the terror of having to explain literally shooting dissenting voices to suppress unions, when the technology they use to communicate the message is made by the peasant labour of Chinese factory workers with longer life-expectancies.  In China, poverty has been on the decline for years; the opposite is true of the United States of America.  Many statistics are available, and some pretty charts can be found HERE.
Many stories are made of over-worked Chinese/Burmese/Malayan/etc. factory workers flinging themselves from windows because they could not meet the production quotas of the factories.  What happens if the same media attention is drawn to American corporate sponsorship of such economic colonialism?  Do Wall Street shareholders feel obligated to donate their multinational dividends and earnings to the worker providing the shareholder value?

End

In conclusion, American capitalists have created more drooling, obedient slaves worldwide than the small-fry Communist regimes that it feared in the 1950s and 60s.  The conflicts in South-East Asia illustrated that Americans were actually waged by next-generation colonialists and oligarchists prepared to lose as many American troops as necessary to make a profit.  American troops now are sent overseas to protest imperialist interests and are discarded as damaged goods when their usefulness has been expended.  Veterans receive scant better benefits than stray animals, and their society receives negligible benefits from their service in oppressing third-world populations.

Song Randomizer

So what popped up in my random musical playlist today, and is there some sort of meaning that can be derived, like that of bird entrails or a handful of stones or bones cast by a shaman?  Here goes:

• Secret, by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
• Turn Turn Turn, by The Byrds
• Dear Mr. Fantasy, by Big Sugar
• Fresh Feeling, by Eels
• Ride Like Hell (acoustic), by Big Sugar
• Sniper, by Harry Chapin
• African Sky Blue, by Juluka

And that's all from me for now.  I'll be back soon with my movie reviews from the past year - all the films that I saw so that you didn't have to.  Being an invalid, I've seen more than my fair share of limited release, B-grade, and grindhouse films over the past couple of years.  As such, I can give some brusque and straightforward evaluations of films in the same way that 42nd Street Pete used to.
Back in the day, these recommendations would help you on your trip to the video store.  Now, they probably just inform your selections on Netflix or whatever other cable/interweb provider you have.
Until I can summon up the stamina to attack my list, it's good night England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Canada Day Eve 2018

Greetings, gentle readers.
Well, I'm in the middle of an awful stomach flux, so I'm in no mood to mutter either incomprehensibly nor terminally today.  Quick and simple it is, then.

Warum, Jögi?

Almost exactly one year ago, Germany's National Men's Football Team (Die Mannschaft) won the Confederations Cup in Saint Petersburg, Russia.  Timo Werner won the Golden Boot with three goals and two assists, topping Silver Boot winners Leon Goretzka and Lars Stindl, also from Germany, and also with three goals each.
What happened to the team that routed Mexico 4-1 in Sochi on 29 June 2017?
I offer three possible factors.  The impact or net effect of each is up to each individual to determine, but ultimately Joachim Löw is the final arbiter of what actually happened.

1.  The Effenberg Effect

Do you remember when Germany didn't win the World Cup in 1998?  One point of curiosity was the absence of Stefan Effenberg from the roster.  He pissed off manager Berti Vogts in the U.S.A. in the 1994 World Cup and was essentially banished from the team thereafter.  Why?  The guy went on to win the Bundesliga championship in the next three consecutive years, including a domestic treble in '99, a league and league cup double in '00, and a big double by winning the UEFA Champions League in '01.  The man was the UEFA Club Footballer of the year for that monstrous 2001 season.
What might Germany have accomplished with that midfield powerhouse in their lineup in either France 1998 or in Japan/Korea 2002?
Looking at the squads as they lined up, a couple of names leap out.
The first is Leroy Sané.  He was named to the Confederations Cup roster, but was withdrawn due to injury.  He didn't even make the squad for the World Cup.  That's interesting.
The second name is that of Emre Can.  If one watches Germany's undefeated performance in the Confederations Cup, Can should stand out as the defending midfielder who shielded the back four and performed a largely unsung role in beginning transitions from defence to attack.  In a team already stacked with offensive midfielders like Mesut Özil, Toni Kroos, Ilkay Gündoğan, Sami Khedira, Thomas Müller, Julian Brandt, and Julian Draxler, Can performed all of the unfashionable, gritty, and uncelebrated tasks that are sadly needed in a balanced team.  To be fair, Leon Goretzka could be counted on to perform some of those duties, but he never saw the pitch in the 2018 World Cup until the third game.
So what happens when two of your country's more influential midfielders are not even listed on your roster?  Likely, something is not happy between players and management.  Germany, historically a tournament team with resiliency and efficiency based on its locker-room solidarity must have suffered to some degree.

2.  Replacing Retiring Pieces

Whenever a team is going through a personnel rebuilding phase due to the age of some players, there are going to be some growing pains, both literally and figuratively.  Three names stand out in this regard - Miroslav Klose, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm.  All three players announced their retirement from international football prior to qualifications for the 2018 World Cup - Klose and Lahm bowed out after winning the 2014 World Cup, Schweinsteiger played his last match for Die Mannschaft shortly after the 2016 European Championships.
Who replaced these team ever-presents?  The captaincy fell to the talented and athletic goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, but he spent the better part of a year recovering from injuries.
Schweinsteiger's midfield role was to be filled by Toni Kroos.  His many laudable performances for Réal Madrid theoretically make him a good candidate for a distributing central midfielder.
Lahm's right-back role was to be filled by Joshua Kimmich, the 23-year-old who also took Lahm's place in Bayern Munich's back four.
Klose's centre-forward position was to be covered by Timo Werner, a capable young lad who grabbed the Golden Boot at the 2017 Confederations Cup, auguring well.
The problem here is that the replacements are not like-for like.  Kroos can't defend or tackle back with the tenacity of a Schweinsteiger.  Kimmich doesn't have the positional or tactical awareness of a Lahm.  Werner is literally smaller than Klose and cannot physically perform some of the leaping aerial manouevres that the elder player could.
The bottom line here is that the players changed, but the system didn't.  Löw's failure to compensate may have been a contributory factor to Germany's failure.  His pre-tournament announcement that "...we must reinvent ourselves" seems to have been more shine-ola than substance.

3.  Die Fröliche Wissenschaft

One of the hallmarks of a successful team is the joy, zest, or verve they display when playing together.  Too often, Die Mannschaft looked like they were performing an onerous task or a distasteful chore.  They plugged away with workmanlike dedication, but there was no delight nor sparkle in their play.  In contrast, look at Russia.  When their towering centre-forward Artem Dzyuba scores a goal, he bursts into an enormous grin and practically tosses teammates a foot shorter than himself into the air.  The smaller and nimbler midfielders that work to provide him service, like Denis Cheryshev and Aleksandr Golovin, run to the big guy and hug him tearfully every time the ball hits the back of the net, and they celebrate together whilst raising their arms and gazes to the adoring home crowds.
The German team never shared such boisterous cameraderie.  They all seemed to be weighed down with purpose and responsibility, and tangible frustration when confronted with ill fortune or a particular obstacle.  When facing a Mexican team determined to thwart their ball movement on the ground toward a crossing position on one side of the field, Germany did not try to spread the play, bring more players into the action, distribute the workload, or share the responsibility - they doubled down and kept stubbornly attacking the same point of resistance, as though that challenge was a particular affront that had to be surmounted before they could continue.  It was a hard and unyielding force of will that pushed them onto the field together, and they doggedly but soullessly tried to grind their way through the game.
They didn't have fun playing, and it was no fun for anyone to watch.  Perhaps it is better that they lost and learned that the game is better played with heart and spirit than with precise skill and grim athleticism.

Musical Interlude

And so, having abandoned my quest to map and chart every minute of every game in this World Cup, I turned instead to the task of fixing the paralyzing cramps in my abdomen that threatened to be appendicitis.  Once I was able to stand upright without doubling over in searing agony, I took a shower, and here is what my sound device decided to play for me.

• Owner of a Lonely Heart, by Yes
• And We Danced, by The Hooters
• Are You Gonna Go My Way, by Lenny Kravitz
• Don't Let Me Go, by Melanie Chisholm
• Where Do You Get Love? by Matthew Sweet
• All My Life, by Echo and the Bunnymen
• I Can't Stand the Rain, by The Commitments
• This Sullen Welsh Heart, by Manic Street Preachers (with Lucy Rose)

If there is some sort of coherent theme, it's probably a fairly sad one.

So, only a few weeks left until my next MRI, and then we'll see what we can do about patching up my dodgy spine.  Until then, chins up.  Literally.
My apologies for gamely using a self-conscious repetition device, but it represents a certain amount of exhaustion and weariness on my part when searching for a conclusion.
Until next time, good night England, and the colonies.
—mARKUS

The European Champions' Cup Final, 2018

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'm going to spend the majority of time in this post talking about Liverpool FC's participation in the European Cup Final of 2018.  There's a whiff of conspiracy and some photographic evidence, so if you enjoy that sort of thing, it might be worth a read.  If you don't, I've got a random list of songs that might have some sort of prognosticatory value.  I'll lead off with that, so that the athletophobes can just skip the remainder.  Cheers.

Random Track List

• Bitterblue, by Cat Stevens
• Carry Me Carrie, by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
• Gabriel's Mother's Highway Ballad #16 Blues, by Arlo Guthrie
• Mr. Blue Sky, by the Electric Light Orchestra

Konfusion in Kyiv

I'm going to be as uncharacteristically sparse in my descriptions as possible here to spare my readers' time and cut straight to the chase.  Liverpool lost the world's biggest football club game on 26 May by a score of three goals to one.  There were some bits of controversy, particularly since two of the goals scored by their opponents were due to spectacular Liverpudlian goaltending failures.  Here's a quick summary of the game.
The game starts brightly, with Liverpool playing a pressing game versus Real Madrid's tiki-taka tactics.  This means that the Spanish club was playing to keep possession, and hope to move the ball forward into promising attacking positions through accurate passing and positional distribution.  Liverpool's plan was to allow Madrid to have possession, but to harry any Madrid players with the ball into making a mistake and creating an interception.
The game was fast-paced and exciting to watch in terms of athleticism and rapidity of movement, but for all of their energy and enthusiasm, LFC were unable to turn several promising opportunities into goals.  Then, in the 26th minute, this happened:

 Sergio Ramos (Number 4, wearing the captain's armband) uses his left arm to lock Mohamed Salah's right arm at the elbow, and then throws his left leg in front of Salah, tripping him.  As thew two fall to the ground, Ramos twists his body so that their combined weight falls on Salah's extended and locked right shoulder, snapping it.  Liverpool's top goal scorer for the year is injured and has to leave the game.

 By the 37th minute, Liverpool have clearly been in the ascendency, having forced two corners and taken nine shots on the Madrid net, but they are now without their most prolific attacker, and have been forced to substitute on Adam Lallana, recently recovered from long-term injuries.

 Click on the image above to see the video of what happened just a few minutes after the game restarted, following halftime.  Madrid had earned a corner.  As the corner was taken, Sergio Ramos gave a ringing great elbow to the side of Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius' head.  On the following sequence, Karius receives the ball, and immediately throws it at Madrid forward Karim Benzema.  The ball hits Benzema's foot and rolls into the Liverpool net.  One - nil  to the Spanish team.

 Karius is shown here looking a bit blank following the goal.  Just four minutes later, Liverpool centre-back Dejan Lovren outjumps Ramos (again) at a corner and nods to ball down to winger Sadio Mane.  The Senegalese winger pokes the ball past Madrid 'keeper Jesus Navas, and the game is tied at one.

 Here we can see Karius' reaction to his team equalizing the score.  Fewer than ten minutes later, however, Madrid substitute Gareth Bale unleashes an unstoppable overhead kick that screams into the top corner of the Liverpool net.  Karius has no chance, and the Spaniards lead the game by a score of two goals to one.

 Karius again seems somewhat phlegmatic about having surrendered two goals in a European Cup Final.

Again, you may want to click on the image to see what happens with fewer than eight minutes remaining in the game.  Gareth Bale collects the ball on the right wing and hits a speculative, long-distance drive towards the net.  Karius extends his arms and allows the ball to hit him in the hands... whereupon they deflect the ball at a strange 135° angle and into the net.  Final score:  Real Madrid 3 - 1 Liverpool FC.
It is a fairly simple premise to suggest that the two catastrophic goalkeeping mistakes made by Loris Karius should never be made by a professional at this level.  In fact, they should not be made by a 12-year-old Victorian-era orphan with malnutrition, rickets, and consumption.  A 24 year-old pro that makes either of these mistakes has just ended his career and will now have to find another source of income for his family, as well as endure the enmity, scorn, and suspicion of the entire community surrounding the sport.  So why commit professional suicide?

Theory One - Concussion

The elbow that Sergio Ramos delivered to Karius' ear in the 48th minute is now suspected to have caused a concussion that adversely affected his performance thereafter.  This LINK reports that the Massachusetts General Hospital has diagnosed the head injury and the potential results.  A more detailed report can be found HERE.
If the man had a bruised brain, it would certainly go a long way to explain why he essentially scored two goals into his own net.  His neutral emotional responses to the goals would therefore be less phlegmatic and more dazed in nature.

Theory Two - Crooked Business

For those who enjoy a good conspiracy theory, this one goes something along these lines:

• Some sort of gambling concern or conglomerate has an interest in Real Madrid winning the game within 90 minutes; no extra time, no penalty shootout.
• Something fishy goes on with Ramos, as he rampages about and knocks Liverpool's premier goal-scorer out of the game with no disciplinary action - no free kick, no yellow card, not even a glance from the referee.
• At half-time, Salah is gone, but the game is still tied and hangs in the balance.  A lot of money is at stake, and some phone calls/texts are exchanged during the interval.  More intervention is required.
• Ramos bangs Karius, another foul without any notice from the officials.  
• Karius scores on himself by banking the ball off Karim Benzema.  Is he concussed?  Is there a gun pointed at the head of his dachshund? Either way, something is off.
• Liverpool equalize, but Karius is either too woozy to understand what's going on, or he realizes that he will have to concede more goals for Madrid to win.
• Bale scores a beautiful overhead bicycle kick, meaning that the scoreline is now safe for those betting on Madrid.  Karius seems relieved.
• With time ticking down, Liverpool start to throw everything forward in a desperate attack.  Given the explosive pace of Sadio Mane and the diabolical trickery of Roberto Firmino, it was a serious possibility that Liverpool could grab an equalizer and send the game into extra-time.  With single-digits of minutes left on the clock, Gareth Bale hits a speculative ball at the Liverpool net from 40 yards out.  Does Karius deliberately fluff it into his own net?  Is he unable to focus his eyes?  Either way, the result is made safe and the clock runs out to end the game.
• In the weeks after the game, rather than celebrating and gloating, Madrid begins to disintegrate.  Zinedine Zidane resigns as the team's manager, game-winning-goal-scorer Gareth Bale begins complaining loudly in the press that he does not receive adequate recognition or respect from the team, and superstar Cristiano Ronaldo joins the Portuguese national World Cup squad amidst new speculation that he is looking for an exit.  (See HERE)  Not exactly a happy family proud of a well-earned accomplishment.

In any event, the primary motivation in any conspiracy would be money.  If there is any advancement in this sort of theory, it would be from bookmakers who lost considerable sums on remarkably similar wagers of huge value.

I have started to publish some of my exhaustively lengthy book reviews on GoodReads.  In future, I'll try and balance that sort of work with these sorts of posts.  Until then, good reading and good evening.
Goodnight England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS

Where's the Precipice?

Greetings, gentle readers.
As the United States caroms from one constitutional crisis to another, I'm reminded of a series of science fiction novels written in the late 80s and early 90s of last century by an author named David Gerrold.  I hope. I read a tremendous amount of material that was being consumed at the time by a friend of mine working as a security guard, and I'm fervently wishing that I'm not confusing this SF literary franchise with another.  Any road...
Take away the wonderfully fantastic alien elements and world-creation efforts, and you are left with some occasionally good writing and an alarmingly good premise.
After the aliens invade using ecological tactics and humanity responds, we are told in flashback of the state of the world after World War Three.  As it turns out, the United States had made itself something of an international pariah and bully and eventually pushed world affairs to the state where it involved a nuclear confrontation between itself and everyone else.  Bottom line:  rather than exterminate all life on the planet, the brinkmanship negotiations cause the U.S.A. to capitulate and submit to Treaty of Versailles-like conditions:  demilitarization, political and economic reorganization, educational reform, and the same sorts of thing the IMF pushes on debtor-nations worldwide today.
Why discuss this sort of Hard-SF Lit now?  There are a couple of lessons buried in all of the red alien worm infestation and flame-thrower combat sequences. 
One is that the present-day United States cannot continue on its current course of regime-changer and arms-dealer to the developing world.  In the seventies, Americans finally forced their government to abandon a perpetual war in Vietnam, only for the Carter administration to begin a new policy of systematic destabilization and insurgency throughout the Middle-East, Africa, and both South and Central America.  Today Americans find themselves stuck with both horrible policies.  American troops of occupation are being slowly bled to death in Afghanistan and Iraq, American tomahawk missiles intermittently sprinkle over Syria, while American drone bombers rain devastation on Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and others.  Augmenting these overt efforts are special ground forces in Mali, Honduras, and another dozen or so developing nations.
Take the current murderously awful foreign policy agenda and combine it with a regime that suddenly has every student in the country googling "emoluments" and constitutional experts worldwide shaking their heads in astonishment.  It may mark the point where American exceptionalism becomes ostracism and the greedy nature of the American military-industrial complex overwhelms the rest of the world's ability to sustain it.
Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Accords and the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are actions indicative of an isolationist, xenophobic, and protectionist ideology.  Continued scrutiny of arms sales to countries and agents with sketchy human rights records and terrorist actions is starting to impede American arms sales overseas.
Are we reaching a point where the international community needs to behave as they did at the Treaty of Versailles and forcibly intervene in American internal affairs in the higher interests of all humanity?  Will the American people reach a breaking point where they suddenly demand a reform of their own governmental system?  I hope for the latter. 
Here's why.
We have all met American citizens.  They are friends, relatives, and colleagues.  Almost to a single individual, and almost to a fault, they are good people.  They are gracious hosts and generous contributors to communal endeavours.  In times of disaster and crisis, Americans are often the first to offer assistance.  According to data acquired by the Gallup World Poll and published by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans are consistently near the top of the World Giving Index, only being outdone in generosity by citizens of Myanmar in 2015.  Odd, considering the Rohingya crisis, but we'll wait on the revised standings of that Index.  Meanwhile, Americans continue to do as they have done:  give until it hurts, as the saying goes.
In short, Americans are the global citizens that donate time, money, and effort to help strangers and charities.  So at what point do Americans lose that caring and sharing feeling?  Surely the preamble to the American Constitution has enshrined that compassionate feeling in their government when it says in its preamble,
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (Emphasis mine)
So where is the disconnect?  When did people stop seeing taxation as a way of helping fellow citizens? 

• The people of Flint, Michigan are still dealing with a poisonous water supply and now proceeding with legal proceedings against the people that poisoned it.  
• The people of Puerto Rico still haven't recovered from last year's hurricane damage, and are bracing for a new year of increasingly violent weather.  
• The federal government still hasn't recognized universal health care as a human right, leaving the poor and uninsured to perish in the face of rising medical and pharmaceutical costs.

Why are American citizens suffering and dying in the world's most compassionate country?  I'm reminded of Stephen Colbert's Showtime election night special when he openly lamented "How did our politics get so poisonous?"  If you haven't seen it, or don't remember it, it's worth a watch HERE.
Somewhere, there is a specific point where people have become suspicious of giving taxation money to their government because they believe it will be put to nefarious purposes, like the Republicans who campaigned against JFK in 1961 because they thought that a Roman Catholic president would turn over the government to the pope.  Or the Democrats who campaigned against Ronald Reagan in 1979 because they feared he would usher in a new era of "cowboy-style" international interventionism. 
There is a point where the good-natured spirit of helping becomes a paranoid hoarder that lashes out like some sort of Gollum whenever asked to contribute to the public well-being.  I'd like to think that if we look carefully, we can track the whole philosophical trail where people can discover where their moral paths diverge.

• I am prepared to sacrifice something important to help a neighbour or friend in need. (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to sacrifice time with my family to help strangers in life-threatening situations (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to put my life and well-being at risk to assist families of other ethnicities or religions (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to donate funds and items to a centrally-administered agency to help with disaster relief. (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to pay my tax dollars with confidence that the officials I helped elect will distribute that money equitably to benefit all citizens. (Yes/No)

I'd like to think that we can identify that point where the consensus of compassion begins to dissolve, and we can start to build a solution from that point.  This is the spot where major problems like immigration, school shootings, health care, and education should find their root sources.  People often forget or obscure that point of reference.
When Americans realize that their social contract should be forged in goodwill and compassion, and not in mutually assured destruction, perhaps they can renegotiate their relationship with their own government so that transparency and accountability become the watchwords of the new covenant.  Perhaps that is the legacy of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and her staff at the Democratic National Committee who decided that their charter explicitly allowed them to ignore the democratic wishes of their constituents - that the politically active and aware voters they spurned will create a revolution to overturn the self-destructive status quo.
And that's about all I can muster at the current time.
Looking forward at another assault at the keyboard in the future.
Cheers, and goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

False Flags Flying

Greetings, gentle readers.
First off, I would like to recommend the film "Last Flag Flying."  If nothing else, the ensemble acting talent and charisma of Laurence Fishburne, Bryan Cranston, and Steve Carell should pique some interest.  Amidst some charming and humorous scenarios are some very profound insights into American foreign policy today as viewed by Vietnam War veterans.
The bottom line is that the war in Vietnam should have acted as an object lesson.  When Nixon and Kissinger ordered the withdrawal and cessation of hostilities, that should have been the wake-up call that George Orwell's warning from 1984 was real.  The war was unwinnable.  In fact, the Pentagon Papers proved that not only was there no achievable victory condition, but that both American policy makers and military authorities were fully aware that they were feeding young men and women into an interminable meat-grinder.  The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower described in his 1961 speech (transcript here) was in full effect - politicians use the government's foreign policy to justify purchasing bombs and bullets from manufacturers, who employ voters.  The more bombs and bullets expended, the more employment, and thus, more electable officials.
The fact that the recent missile strikes on Syria did no damage to any military targets is irrelevant to the point of those strikes.  The stock value of Raytheon, the manufacturer of those missiles, rose by almost $5 billion as those five dozen missiles crashed into suburbs and fields south of Damascus.
This leads to the real point of this particular set of ramblings:  Syria.

Syria

For years now, media and journalists have been attacked as being biased manipulators of opinion.  Social media has also been drawn into the fray, as Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms are accused of shaping popular interpretations of events.  Every entity with an agenda has tried to shape the narrative of the conflict in Syria to their own ends.  Russia wants a friendly, warm-water naval base, the Americans want an ally that borders Iraq, Europe wants a stable, secular state that can deal with the regional refugee crisis, Israel needs to balance Sunni and Shiite factions against one another while drawing international attention away from their own ethnic occupation and settlement issues.
Here's the bottom line:  Syria is a mess, but there are no easy answers.  There are no good guys and bad guys.  There are lots of weapons and loads of despicable people, and millions of innocent people trapped in a hellish sea of destruction with them.
Americans don't quite understand this.  At all. 
First of all, their entire society has been browbeaten into polarizing everything, particularly politics.  If you are a Republican, you must be a racist believer in waging war on women's reproductive rights while you imprison the homeless, and if you're a Democrat, you're a godless baby-killer who wants to give away money to crack-whore parasites.  Second, American exceptionalism means that every international problem has a uniquely American solution that foreigners haven't considered because they weren't introduced to the Founding Fathers, Liberty, Freedom, Patriotism, etc. as infants.
Third and finally, as the world's largest and most heavily funded military, Americans feel obligated to be the world's policeman in a very patronizing and condescending way.
So in a quick-bullet form, here's how we end up with the awful mess in Syria today.

• Bashar al-Assad is an awful person.  No question.  Secret police, torture dungeons, censorship, repression, the lot.  His regime is nasty and not particularly concerned with human rights.
• 2011 sees a large populist surge through the Middle East as predominantly democratic and liberal causes unite to protest and challenge the ruling governments of Tunisia, then later Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and... Syria. 
• President Barack Obama's State Department sees an opportunity to use protesting students, nurses, journalists, et aliter to further their objectives.  
• Under the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and following the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", U.S. security agencies begin to start supporting and funding insurgencies.
• Guns, bullets, missiles, armoured vehicles and other pieces of military hardware flood the region:  rebellious forces need to get some, and repressive governments need more to reinforce their dictatorial and autocratic rule.

Long story short - with the exception of Tunisia, the corrupt dictatorships win.  They have bigger and better armies with more training, better leadership, and lots more guns.  But now there are tons of rebel pockets and enclaves armed to the teeth with modern weapons and feverish religious purpose.
In Syria, the rebels became allies with, and in many cases, joined forces dedicating to creating "The Islamic State."  ISIS, ISIL, or whatever other names you can append to them, are the assorted sweepings of Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and other militant Muslim fundamentalist sects that have networked, found geographic areas to pool and store resources, and have created avenues and pipelines for selling petroleum products to create revenue.
The unhappy innocent civilians who were previously being oppressed and denied civil and human rights are now being slaughtered by the thousands as the various factions fire bombs, missiles, artillery shells, and other destructive munitions at one another.  Countries such as the United States that acted as arms suppliers to the region are now denying refugee status to those trying to escape the ubiquitous carnage wreaking havoc there.
Right.  On to more harmless things.

Random Musical Hit-List

• Walk on Water, by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Ghost Riders in the Sky, by The Blues Brothers Band
• Top of the World, by Chumbawamba
• You Bet Your Life, by Lightning Seeds
• I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, by Duane Eddy
• Before You Accuse Me, by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Cigarettes and Lies, by Lightning Seeds

Aside from the weird case of double-repetition of artists, there doesn't seem to be a clear unifying theme.  There is some sort of nebulous feeling of something legal or judicial involving accusations, proof, obfuscations, authority, and punishment, but that might just be me projecting some sort of subconscious summary of late-night television chat-show monologues.
I've been feeling weird recently due to some changes in the pharmaceutical regimen, but I'll try to get back to more regular submissions to this area as well as my book reviews, including that of Trevor Noah's recently released memoir.
Until then, good night England, and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Jiminy Crickets

Greetings, gentle readers.
In contrast to some of my more recent contributions, this particular missal should be particularly fluffy and insubstantial.  For those sick of political commentary and philosophical critiques of contemporary society, this may be a welcome change of pace.   Let's start off with my random song mix of the day.

Showertime Song Mix

• Behind Blue Eyes by The Who
• The Last Saskatchewan River Pirate, performed by Captain Tractor
• Water by Melanie Chisholm
• Missionary Man by the Eurythmics
• This Flight Tonight, performed by Nazareth
• I Grieve, by Peter Gabriel
• America, by Bree Sharp
• Fortunate Son, by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Again, any thematic unity that can be found in this list would be welcomed.

Cricket

Yes, it's that time of the year again.  The Indian T20 Premier League of Cricket is on, and the next six weeks will be filled with the sound of me tormenting my flatmates (and anyone else within earshot) with endless gabbling about googlies, boundaries, cow corners, and yorkers.
We are now five games into the competition, and some alarming things have been made evident.  First, I should probably have done more than ten minutes of research before selecting my online fantasy team.  Second, my coaching advice to teams in the IPL is almost identical to the advice that I gave to the Philadelphia Eagles early in the NFL playoffs - if you play using boring, defensive, safe, cynical, and pragmatic strategies, you will always be losers regardless of the score.  If you succeed on the scoreboard but alienate your supporters, players, and sponsors, you do not understand sports.
Here are the facts - boiled down so as to make the conclusions blindingly obvious.

• There have been five matches, each one starting with a coin toss.
• In all five games, the team that wins the toss has chosen to bowl first.
• In all five games, the team that bowled first and batted second has won the game.

Logically, the team that wins the toss wins the game.  Why?  I'm reminded of the joke of the two campers that spot a bear.  The punchline is simple:  "I don't need to be faster than the bear.  I just need to be faster than YOU."
The team that bats first sets the pace.  The second team doesn't need to play their best; they just need to be better than the first team.  In a couple of notable cases, if the first team plays it safe and tries to defend their wickets instead of scoring runs, the second team doesn't need to work very hard to surpass the score and go home early.  In fact, in the fourth match between the Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad, the Royals played such a cautious and pedestrian game that Sunrisers were able to win by NINE WICKETS. 
Let me break it down.

• Rajasthan failed to hit a single ball for six.  Imagine a baseball team that never hit a home run.  Didn't even try.
• No Rajasthan player hit for fifty or more runs.  This is a multi-million dollar accumulation of international superstars, and none of them managed to average two runs per ball. 
• Sunrisers only needed three batters to win the game.  That means that after they finished fielding, more than two-thirds of the team had the rest of the night off.  
• The commentators were joking that they could go down early and start handing out man of the match awards after the 15th over.  It was not an exaggeration.  
• In a game with 120 deliveries (pitches), Sunrisers were done after 97.  No need to play the rest.

In short, Rajasthan fans had little occasion to rise to their feet and/or cheer.  Their team quietly plugged away and basically scored one point per delivery, ending with 125 runs on 120 balls.  Their opposition laughingly disposed of them and went home early, leaving home fans, sponsors, and investors alike feeling ripped off and disappointed.
All five games have followed the same story arc, with different variations on the theme, but the bottom line is the same one that ought to have been driven into everyone's psyche after the final game of last season's competition - aggression, daring, and risk reward those who employ them. 
When bowling, an aggressive and attacking player will try and get the ball around or through a batsman in order to knock the wickets.  That risks a batsman knocking the ball and scoring multiple runs, but might yield an out.  Ten outs, and your opposition is done.  A defensive bowler tries to throw as many balls as possible that skirt the boundary of legality in an effort to run up the cricket equivalent of a pitch count.  120 balls, and your opponents are done.
When batting, a defensive player blocks the ball down to the ground with his bat.  No possibility of the ball knocking a wicket or a fielder catching a fly ball.  Basically, a baseball bunt where the batter is not forced to run to first.  It's safe, and it works in conventional cricket, where matches can go on for three to five days.  In T20 cricket, every time you don't treat a ball as an opportunity to score points, it's an opportunity lost.  And you're boring the pants off your fans for no good reason whatsoever.
So in conclusion, when I cursed the Philadelphia Eagles for cowards and lackwits after their first playoff game in the NFL, I did so with the best intentions, and the sea-change in their philosophy justified my rancor.  They won the Super Bowl after changing their strategy to accommodate 4th-down gambles, QB sneak plays, 2-point touchdown conversions, and balancing aerial and ground-based offensive plays - the stuff that is precluded by a defensive mindset.
Using the same logic, the first team that will bat first AND win an IPL T20 match this season will do so by throwing caution to the wind, by swinging for the fences, scoring centuries, and never taking their proverbial foot from the accelerator pedal.  The more I see teams hedging their bets, choosing the safe option, or taking the easy way out, the more I'm convinced that the boring and conservative mindset of test cricket is infecting the explosive and improvisational nature of twenty-over cricket.
Until next time, I'm changing my fantasy team so that all of my Rajasthan Royals players are replaced by Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Daredevils.
Oh, and I did fairly well in choosing a bunch of Chennai Super Kings players, but they have now been riddled with injuries and will be unlikely to continue their good run of form (including a win involving a last-ditch hit by a man with a torn hamstring).
Right, I'll soon be back detailing the injustices and wrongs of the world around us, but until then, good night England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Ray Wilkins, R.I.P.

Greetings gentle readers.
In light of the recent announcement of the death of Ray Wilkins, former English football player and manager, I thought that I would repost an interview with the man from January, 1997.  It was originally published in the magazine "Total Football" and since the publication is now defunct, I have no contact for copyright information.  I doubt that anyone would want to persecute me for it in any event.
Here is the text of the article:

Ray Wilkins is... The King of Calm

Ivor Baddiel attempts to annoy Ray Wilkins but discovers a man of great patience and tranquillity. Damn.

Ray Wilkins is the kind of bloke you want to be with in the event of an earthquake. As you're hurtling headlong down a bottomless pit, you can just hear him saying: "Yes Ivor, you're right, this is a difficult situation, but if we keep our heads, there's no need to panic."
The guy is football's James Bond. He can be shaken, but never stirred. His repertoire consists of relaxed, slightly bored, mildly amused and, on the odd occasion, concerned. But outrage, psychotic temper tantrums and losing his rag, he just doesn't do.
Witness the recent Eric Hall video, Monster Hits - ish! where Ray is set up to believe that he's on a panel with Eric and Gary Stevens on a TV show being beamed live to 40 million viewers in the US. Halfway through the 'show', Gary admits to having been offered money to throw matches on a number of occasions and, at one point in his career, actually accepted one of these bribes.
Ray's reaction on hearing this is to rub his right eye a number of times, play with his wedding ring and explain how flabbergasted he is. At no point does he betray any signs of deep discomfort and, at the end, when Eric, in true Jeremy Beadle fashion, lets Ray in on the joke, he doesn't chase Eric around the studio brandishing a kitchen knife or laugh hysterically till he's sick. He simply smiles a lot and looks ever so slightly relieved.
"They set it up so well," says Ray, "and Gary, well, he must have his equity card now, the way he played it. But I kept thinking: 'Why are they just putting my face up on the screen?' 'cos I could see it on a monitor, and it was only afterwards when they done me, I thought: 'That's where I should've spotted it.' I felt a right mug after when he'd done me like a kipper, but it's typical Eric, isn't it? It's just a laugh. I got caught out. It was a bit of harmless fun.
Clearly no burning cesspit of resentment there but when I met up with Ray recently, I'd loaded my interviewer's gun with a few tricky bullets and was ready to fire a couple at him to see if he'd flinch. He took the first, concerning his none-too-successful venture into management squarely on the chin without a wobble.
"I enjoyed management. I think probably one of the biggest problems I faced as a manager was that all the players were my friends. I'd only finished playing with them six months before, so consequently picking the team was difficult. I could only pick 11, so naturally on the Monday morning the door's being knocked down by five or six. But that's management and it was tough. If I go back into it, I'll make sure I don't know the players for a start, but I don't think I'll do too many things differently. I just wanted to be as honest as I could and the players to be as professional as they could, and that was basically my philosophy on it.'

His brow unfurrowed, I went for a little jab just below the belt and suggested that playing at Hibs with lads half his age must be a bit odd.
"Yes, it's a strange feeling to be honest. I'm probably old enough to be some of the players' dad, but I've never really looked on it like that. I feel very young in spirit, so I don't have hang ups about it. Some of them are a bit cheeky, but I like that, because they're not putting me somewhere I shouldn't be. They're just treating me as one of them, and as a player I'll take that all day. It's not a problem."
Obviously, it was time to turn the heat up a little and delve deeper into the murky waters of Ray's past. His time at Paris St. Germain, for instance, can't have been overly joyous.
"That was probably one of the hardest periods of my footballing career purely. simply because they had three foreigners there, myself, Susich and Calderon. We had a lot of trouble scoring goals and as they were two forward players, the manager preferred to play them instead of me, so I was actually playing in their reserve side in the French Third Division. Going from AC Milan's first team to that was a bit of a shock to the system, but I wouldn't change anything. Although it was a bad footballing experience, I think you have to have them to appreciate the good times."
How very philosophical.
By now I was the one feeling the strain, but I hadn't finished yet, not by a long chalk. Everyone has their breaking point and I reckoned a sneaky question about Ray only ever playing a square ball might just tip him over the edge. I was wrong.

"One of the biggest problems I faced as a manager was that all the players were my friends..."

"I've really no qualms about that at all. Those critics have been media people. If you look back over the years and the managers who have bought me, I think they've got far more knowledge of the game than any of those critics ever had. My philosophy on football is if you've got the ball you can do something with it. If you give it away easily, then it takes you 10 minutes to get it back, and also you can't get a goal.
"Some people think that's quite negative, but then I'm not too concerned about that. I would sooner see the ball passed to one of my team-mates than to someone else. I've never ever worried about what anybody thinks about the way I play."

Fine, Ray mate, I didn't want to do this. but the editor insisted I come back with pictures of you weeping or I was out of a job. So, what happened at the 1986 World Cup, then? Eh?
"It was one of those crazy things that footballers do. I'd been booked before for a fall on the half-way
line and I was in an advanced position on the left-hand side of the field, I'll never forget it, and the guy gave me offside.
Well, I was looking across the line and I couldn't see it personally, so I threw the ball on the floor, but
unfortunately on the first bounce, it skidded up and walloped the ref. He got slightly irate with me and I was off.
"The rest of the World Cup was just an absolute disaster. The worst feeling I had was when Bobby Robson had used his second substitute against Argentina in the Aztec. I knew then that if we didn't win that game I would take no further part, because I'd been suspended up until that game. When the final whistle went I just thought: 'Well Jesus Christ, what a nightmare to have missed that one.' it was the worst moment of my career, but even though it might sound silly, I wouldn't change it.
"I don't think any footballer can go through his career without a blemish. Football's a game of extreme emotions and you're going to get tied up in it, you've got to. If you love and care for it as much as that, every player must get involved at some stage."
Football might be a game of extreme emotions, but if he didn't start showing some of those off the pitch, it was the Job Centre for me. It was time to get personal and find out where the Butch nickname came from.
"My father called me Butch when I was a baby. Apparently I was big, fat and hairy. Where all that's gone I've no idea, but the name has stuck. I didn't like it at all. It's not very nice being called Butch. All my brothers and sisters called me it, and they still do. I accept it from them, but thankfully, from everybody else, it's disappeared."
If only he had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and threatened to put me in hospital if I ever mentioned it again, but, as he calmly signed more autographs - a group of kids had interrupted us on average about every five minutes and he couldn't have been more courteous to them - desperation turned to rudeness: "You're bald!" I blurted out.
"l suppose I do have a receding hairline. Ivor, but my philosophy on it is easy come, easy go. I get some stick for it, but at the end of the day I'm in pretty good shape for a 40-year-old, wouldn't you say?"
Yes, I would have agreed if I hadn't been crawling out of the restaurant, a broken wreck left to ponder the advantages of a stress free life. Ray, meanwhile, was happily signing more autographs for the youngsters.

—  from Ivor Baddiel in "Total Football" issue 17, January 1997.

Ray Wilkins, MBE.
14 September 1956 - 4 April 2018
R.I.P.

Back to Goodreads

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'll be back at length before long, never fear.  Until I am, here is one of the many book reviews that I intend to start publishing.
The Away Game: The Epic Search for Soccer's Next Superstars by Sebastian Abbot
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The premise of this book shows great promise. Everyone loves underdog, rags-to-riches anecdotes, and the narrative of third-world African children being whisked away from poverty and into the sparkling dream castle of a Qatari football academy sounds like Cinderella recast into a sports paradigm.
There are two stumbling blocks that inhibit any real joyful or life-affirming interpretations of the work - the style and the content.
I recall watching early North American broadcasts of English Football. The commentators seems at pains to use the entire and clearly-enunciated phrase "Barclays English Premier League" at least once during each passage of play, as in "That's the sort of passing play one has come to expect from the Barclays English Premier League," and "Many players find it difficult to make the transition from another league to the physical demands of the Barclays English Premier League." After a while, it ceased to sound sincere and instead just sounded like routine and contractually obligated product placement.
Somehow, the author of this book seems to think that dropping the name "Messi" every three paragraphs will keep reader attention or add some sort of credibility to the exposition of events. As a reader, I found it tedious and artificial.
As for the content [SPOILER ALERT], the largest problem with the entire framing of the historical situation is a sham. The real point of this story is not that there are some bright and talented blood-diamonds-in-the-rough waiting to be discovered in Africa, but that poverty and institutionalized corruption has made talented children into yet another resource to be exploited and trafficked. Everyone lies, cheats, bribes, and steals in order to get money - including the children themselves - making the whole story just a depressing voyage into cynicism.
A typical example would involve a young player showing tremendous promise, evaluated favourably by scouts and coaches, and then he suddenly runs off with the first agent that offers cash because the academy will shortly discover that he has been lying about his age. Then you realize that most of the kids have faked their birth date because that is how the system works. As soon as they are told that there is an MRI test that can scientifically verify their age, they suddenly grasp for the first handful of cash they can grab.
Even if they haven't lied about their age, many young athletes are governed by family members or other figures of authority that make decisions based on how much they stand to gain personally from the player's success.
In short, sympathy for 13-year-olds striving to transcend abject poverty starts to run dry when you discover that they are, in fact 16 years old, and the money that they have been wiring home to their destitute families has been appropriated by the local church or some belligerent coach or uncle.
Finally, you are left with a collection of sob stories of fraudulent and cheating failures blubbering about how much they love God and wish that God would give them another chance. That they betrayed the trust and faith of others in them seems to be an afterthought.
The one case of success presented in the book is a Senegalese boy who was born into a more middle-class family than his peers, and one who kept his head down, did as he was told, and played within the lines. Not exactly fairy-tale stuff.
The book is worth a read, but it only starts feeling authentic when the reader appreciates that the narrator is thematically untrustworthy. The language used is appropriated from a thousand inspirational posters and motivational speeches, but the bottom line is that poverty creates flaws in the human character that football cannot repair.


View all my reviews

Cheers,

—mARKUS