Another Wargaming Post

Tonight I've posted up three new posts as I'm probably not going to be able to post anything for almost a week.

On Sunday I went to my first wargames tournament in ages at Games Workshop Wakefields Events Centre. It was a doubles Lord of the Rings tournament. In typical fashion for me, I painted my army in the week before the competition, and thus hadn't ever played with it before as a whole. I came ninth overall, which considering I hadn't played a full on battle of Lord of the Rings for a long time, and the person I was playing with hadn't for a year wasn't bad really. Also I chose the whole army, and looking back I think the Gondorian cavalry was a mistake as it was so small that a decent group of archers could wipe it out in the first few turns of a game. Plus I had the most atrocious luck with my archers. But it was fairly fun though. Below are some pictures (the cavalry pictures don't want to come from my camera to my computer for some reason?) and my army list - including a bit of background text nonsense to attempt to justify the army.

Various Rangers of Arnor

Various Warriors of Gondor

Faramir on Horse (note Orc being trampled)

The Alliance of the Kingdoms of Men

An unexpected meeting of two bands of fighters from the kingdom of Gondor and the former kingdom of Arnor brought this force into being towards the end of the third age. For days Halbarad and his band of rangers had been tracking a party of Orcs drawn by the call of their master, the Dark Lord Sauron himself who was reassembling his forces in Mordor. Faramir, on the other hand, was on his way to inspect a garrison in North Ithilien, when he came across Halbarad and his men. The two joined forces and set off in pursuit of the Orcs.

Faramir’s Escort – (300pts)

Faramir, Captain of Gondor – In heavy armour on horseback – 85pts
Captain of Minas Tirith – Shield – 55pts

4 Knights of Minas Tirith – Shield – 56pts
8 Warriors of Minas Tirith – Spear and shield – 72pts
4 Warriors of Minas Tirith – Shield – 32pts

Halbarad’s Hunters (298pts)

Halbarad Dunádan – 65pts
3 Rangers of the North – 75pts
Dúnedain – 24pts

6 Rangers of Arnor – Spear – 54pts
10 Rangers of Arnor – 80 pts

Review – Their Morals & Ours by Leon Trotsky

This is a semi-comment/semi-review article really, but the point I make I feel is rather important.

Their Morals and Ours is an effective exposition of the class basis of morality. In it Trotsky attacks socialists and other lefts who claim to adhere to a universal morality, exposing that anything that is supposed to remain constant for all time can only emanate from some sort of ‘god’. Marxists on the other hand have a dialectical understanding of society, noting that society changes and that all ideas (including Marxism) are interlinked with the material conditions in a given stage of society.
But it is the discussion of ‘means and ends’ that I found the most interesting. Here Trotsky discusses the famous statement that ‘the ends justify the means’. He explains that for Marxists that these are interdependent, that only the means that genuinely serve the ends of the liberation of humanity from capitalism are justified. Thus they must unite the working class, strengthen its party (both internally and externally) etc. Thus such things as individual terrorism fail such a test as they tend to weaken the working class and divide it rather than strengthen it.
The context of such actions is also important. It is one thing to shoot someone in the street in cold blood, it is a different thing when one is on the front line of a war. Thus the same action can be justified or not depending on the context. The relevance of such a recognition is very useful for developing a Marxist critique of criminology.

Anti-racism stall in Wrexham

This is from The Socialist from two weeks ago, I simply hadn't got around to posting it.

A Socialist Party stall with the slogans 'jobs, homes and services not racism' and 'youth against racism' was set up in a prominent shopping area in Wrexham town centre. Overall our key demands were welcomed and amongst those who stopped to talk, one man highlighted how the Labour Party he once knew no longer existed and said that he doesn't believe anything New Labour say.
Groups of young people signed the petitions and took leaflets, returning later in the day with more of their mates to sign. A couple of OAPs congratulated us on still flying the red flag. Some people gave their names to be contacted regarding future activities. Hopefully this shows the beginning of building the Socialist Party in North East Wales.

Profits Before Plan to Stop Binge Drinking

Drinks companies have torn up a voluntary agreement banning happy-hours and other aggressive drinks promotions, which will affect over half the country’s pubs. The agreements covered a ban on incentives that encourage people to consume massive amounts of alcohol in a short time and have been dropped the trade body, the British Beer and Pub Association, say that they have legal opinion that such an agreement contradicts European competition laws. This has led even the Association of Chief Police Officers to call for action to be taken against the free market in the form of government legislation!

Fuelling Binge Drinking

The director of the world’s biggest drinks group Diageo was even quoted in the Guardian (28/7/08) as saying “There is no direct evidence that pricing affects consumption.” But then why would the drinks companies bother with pricing promotions if it wasn’t leading to increased sales? Even prior to this announcement, the UK’s biggest nightclub operator, Luminar, had begun introducing offers like 80p for all drinks.
Clearly, increased drinks sales, means increased alcohol consumption leading to a further increase in the binge drinking problem. Obviously there is massive health problems associated with binge drinking, in particular the fact that around a million admissions to accident and emergency wards are alcohol related.
But binge drinking is not just about the availability of cheap drinks, it is also related to the need for many people to escape from the daily stress that affects them in their everyday lives. Fundamentally, if we wish to tackle binge drinking, it is this that we also need to tackle.

Whoops!

When I changed the layout a few weeks back I tried to make sure everything that I had previously on the blog was still there. Well I forgot the stat counter code. It's not necessarily the most important thin, but i do like to see which posts are the most popular, so i know what people enjoy reading. (btw if you want more on anything let me know - maybe i should have a vote?) Anyway, its back now.

Which gives me time to welcome two new blogs to my listings

Firstly we have Leftwrites - which looks to me like an Ausralian Socialist Unity blog - but theres some interesting discussions on there.

Secondly, we have Infantile and Disorderly, written by a supporter of HOPI and as you might have imaged from this features posts on Iran and the various groups on the lefts attitudes towards this country.

Anyways, I'll post a proper post tonight.

Knock-Off Nigel

People reading this blog will probably know what the title of this post refers to, but for those who don't it is to the latest series of anti-film piracy adverts on British TV.

Basically the jist of the adverts is that people who buy or download pirated films are basically cheapskates that are hiding within our midst and the adverts end with a public humiliation of the now revealed pirate film user by a crowd calling him knock-off nigel. You can see one of them set in a pub here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TbqBPmInjQ) and another set in an office

The basic aim of the advert is to try and portray people using pirated films by... saying they will become moral degenerates because of it and become subject to public humiliation - this is supposed to stop them buying them.

For example the pub-based advert strings together the following traits of a knock-off nigel

1. they do things on the cheap


2. instead of buying gifts they give things they have acquired free of charge (in this case by finding items in the street)


3. they steal things from their relatives


4. they regualarly acquire favours/gifts of friends with nothing in return (in this case scrounging drinks)

Or the second office based advert which gives very similar things but with stealing from workmates and "being a real creep".

One of the first things that stands out is that these are characteristics thrown together at random as being supposedly 'morally wrong', I highly doubt that these characteristics of pirated film users.
Secondly what is so wrong with doing things on the cheap - as someone with a very limited income I have to by necessity do things on the cheap a lot of the time because of this (also doesn't this in essence imply that to be morally good you have to spend lots of money?). This doesn't mean that all the other traits apply to me. One of them does that of being bought drinks, but that stems from the fact that I'm poor and people tend to drink as a social activity and don't want me to be sat there without a drink when I can't afford it. But then when I've had money I've done the same for other people and that doesn't make them moral degenerates either! Also, it is a semi-custom for many people to buy drinks for their partners (particularly female ones) which when extended to them shows how stupid this generalisation is!
Thirdly, it completely rips why people buy these DVDs out of context. In the adverts 'nigel' is portrayed as someone who has the money to buy 'real' films but choose not to. Some people do not have this luxury, to be able to view all the films they wish to, that is before even discussing why DVDs costs so much. But more importantly this advert discussing it from only the angle of the buyer (although previous adverts have tried to tell us that all pirate DVD sellers are gangs using it for funding other criminal activities). This can also be examined at the level of individuals who copy DVDs too, but a discussion of how mainstream companies are complicit and can benefit from being involved in the trafficking of knock-off goods was discussed on Bent Society last week (see http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/last-week-i-graduated-and-found-ehell.html)

Now obviously you can't put all this in an advert, but an attempt to put the advert into its correct context would have been better at the very least. But we have also to question the motives behind such adverts and the whole question of pirated films/music etc. I'm hoping to write more on these issues over the next few weeks, but also I'd like to examine in further detail some of the question raised above, particularly the actual extent of film piracy and its composition. I would appreciate feedback and comments on this article very much.

Bankers' dirty tricks?

Taken from this weeks issue of The Socialist.

AFTER THE Office of Fair Trading (OFT) criticised excessive penalty and overdraft charges that make banks over £8.3 billion yearly, the British Bankers Association, representing the major banks, threatened to introduce fees for current account services.

Banking charges attracted scrutiny recently with revelations that customers paid on average £152 in charges, with over four million people paying over £200 in overdraft charges a year.

So when the OFT threatens this, what do the banks do? They draw up a list of currently free services and claim they will be 'forced' to introduce charges if the overdraft cash-cow dries up.

These include potential £5-£20 a month charges for a current account, and paying for ATM use, for direct debits and bank statements.

But they shouldn't charge for these. Most banks invest money from current accounts at high rates of interest, earning themselves a profit of £4.1 billion a year.

End this big business robbery of people's money.

Take the major banks into public ownership with compensation only paid on the basis of genuine need. Run the banks in the interest of the public and end charges.

Rights and Their Necessary Material Conditions

This piece looks at a chapter by Hector Gros Espiell from the book The Poverty of Rights (eds. Van Genugten & Perez-Bustillo, 2001). This book was the only book in my university library which attempted to deal with human rights in Latin America.

The fundamental thesis of this piece is that human rights can only be secured when there is an economic basis sufficient to sustain them. The second point flowing from this is that although many countries proclaim support for the idea of human rights, this means nothing if the above condition is not met. The author of this piece cites a wealth of human rights legislation that shows the official support for political, legal, cultural and social rights, but he notes that the actual existence of these rights is patchy in many areas of the world.
The author’s belief of how to achieve this is that the necessary material conditions is through the development of the capitalist state, saying that “…we have to recognise that law, that is to say the law of a democratic state committed to social justice, is the necessary but perhaps insufficient condition to promote the economic and social change necessary for rights to be realised” (pg.139)
But is this self-same capitalist state, which is in existence to represent the interests of the capitalists profits rather than the needs of the working masses, that keeps the present disequilibrium in society that presents such needs from being realised. Of course, this comment is in all likelihood also directed towards indicting the bureaucratic, totalitarian, Stalinist states, and it is fair to say that the spread of workers democracy in those countries would have led to being able to put in place the guaranteed rights that human rights activists crave. But then this is basically the same programme that is needed in the rest of the world to give workers the ability to control their own societies and give the material basis for full universal rights for all.

Review – Revolutionary History – Vol. 9 No. 4 – Pierre Broue

ps. you may also have noticed i've now provided a link to the Revolutionary History website in the Resources section (scroll down)

Several days ago I finished reading my way through the latest issue of Revolutionary History – which as you may guess from the title is dedicated to the French Trotskyist Historian Pierre Broue. But this wasn’t the reason why I got it (especially given that I hadn’t heard of him before). Instead I had had the obituary in the book for Ted Grant written by Tony Aitman recommended to me. And it is a rather good obituary too – looking at how Grant’s analysis of the post world war two world developed and traced out the antecedents of future developments in his thoughts. It is a pity that you have to buy to whole thing to get access to it.

Well, not that much of a pity. The main piece of the book is several translations of writings by Broue which particularly focus on the origins of the International Left Opposition and the Fourth International. After a rather long obituary for Broue, which has been translated as an introduction to his ideas (a much shorter piece would have been better). But his writings are really interesting – and after having read a few things published by others associated with this journal – I find they don’t suffer from what I think is a defect, that is a general tendency to analyse things separate from the circumstances they occurred in – Broue’s piece on the left opposition in Russia is a good example of this.

As for the other pieces in the journal, there are several obituaries for Sri Lankan Trotskyists – which have given be a desire to find out more about Trotskyism in that country. There are also several reviews at the end, but to an extent they suffer from the defect I described above (but not always – some were quite interesting).

Bangor: Bus protest

This comes from this weeks issue of the Socialist http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/main/The_Socialist

THE WESTERN Mail recently reported that Arriva buses would be buying seven buses from rival local operator KMP and paying them to stop running some of their services. That shocked many people in north-west Wales.

From 4 August it will cost more than twice as much to take the same journey as it does at present, with a service that will most likely be far less frequent.

Socialist Party members in Bangor (where all the routes affected run through) organised a stall in protest at the constant placing of corporate profits before public needs that results from the fragmented privatised transport system we have.

People came up to the stall explaining about the problems they face with public transport and agreeing with our call for renationalisation under democratic control.