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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Did The Dark Knight Really Influence the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

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In 2008, there were two seismic events in the superhero movie genre so close together that you’d be forgiven for thinking they signaled the same thing. Over the span of a few months, Marvel Studios launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) via Iron Man, and director Christopher Nolan changed the perception of how seriously to take these movies with The Dark Knight. Both are credited as watershed moments for how audiences and (more importantly) the industry approached such stories; and The Dark Knight is specifically singled out as the gold standard by which all other masked crimefighter films are measured.

However, was Nolan’s haunting vision—one in which a lone avenger is the last, best hope for a major American city on the verge of collapse—really that influential on its genre? The Dark Knight certainly had a monumental impact on the culture, then and now. You saw it when Heath Ledger’s searing interpretation of the Joker made him only the second actor to win a posthumous Oscar, as well as when the film’s exclusion from the Best Picture race changed the way the Academy Awards handled its top prize. And just last year, The Dark Knight became only the second superhero movie inducted into the National Film Registry.

Yet when a friend watching last week’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premiere told me Marvel was returning to the “realistic” approach of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and by extension The Dark Knight, I couldn’t help but disagree. The new Disney+ series may have a slightly more grounded aesthetic than the last time we saw these characters (back when they were fighting space aliens over magic stones in Avengers: Endgame), but the medium-blending existence of the series belies the idea that Marvel took anything significant from the insular and self-contained Dark Knight Trilogy.

The Dark Knight vs. Iron Man

It’s interesting to look back at just those 2008 films since at face value they bore minor similarities. They both were focused on fantastically wealthy billionaires using their fortunes to fight wrongdoing on a potentially global scale; each movie was directed by filmmakers with indie cred thanks to Nolan helming Memento (2000) and Jon Favreau writing and starring in Swingers (1996); and each starred unexpected casting choices with Ledger as the Joker and Robert Downey Jr. jumpstarting a career comeback as Tony Stark.

But their goals and approaches were worlds apart. The obvious thing to note, besides The Dark Knight being a sequel to Batman Begins (2005) and Iron Man being an origin movie, is that Iron Man had an slyly hilarious sensibility, and The Dark Knight fancied itself an allegory about post-9/11 America. The former’s success was engineered in large part by Downey’s gift for comedic improvisation and freestyle. Indeed, co-star Jeff Bridges said in 2009 that he, Downey, and Favreau were essentially improvising their scenes from scratch every day during primitive rehearsals. “They had no script, man,” Bridges lightly complained with his Dude diction.

By contrast, The Dark Knight appears at a glance to be an exercise in self-seriousness and lofty ambition. Every scene, written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan, appears like a chess move, and each character a pawn or knight who’s been positioned to put contemporary audiences in a state of pure anxiety with War on Terror imagery and dialogue. Of course this clocklike presentation is itself another Nolan illusion, as smaller players like Michael Jai White, who portrayed gangster Gambol in the movie, have been quite candid about. As with almost every film, there is still a level of fluidity and workshopping on Nolan’s set.

Ultimately, the bigger difference between the Nolan and eventual Marvel approach is what each is hoping to accomplish with the film they’re currently making. More than just offering a “realistic” vision of Batman, The Dark Knight attempted to tell a sweeping crime drama epic that would stand alone, separate from its status as a Batman Begins sequel. Rather than being “the next chapter,” The Dark Knight was meant to be a cinematic distillation of Batman and Joker’s primal appeals writ large. With this approach, the film also broke away from the superhero movie template Batman Begins followed three years earlier, and which nearly all superhero films still walk through the paces of.

In essence, The Dark Knight showed that superhero movies could be dark and mature, yes, but they can also be subversive, unexpected, and genuinely surprising. Nolan’s previous superhero movie, as good as it is, followed the beats set down by Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie nearly 30 years earlier. They’re the same beats trod by Iron Man and pretty much every other superhero origin movie, including a large bulk of Marvel Studios’ output. The Dark Knight, by contrast, reached for a cinematic vernacular separate from its specific genre. The movie’s not subtle about it either. The opening scene of Nolan’s epic wears its homages to Michael Mann’s Heat on its sleeves, and the story’s structure has more to do with Jaws than Jor-El.

The approach shook audiences in 2008 after they’d come to expect a certain type of movie from masked do-gooders. In The Dark Knight, superhero conventions could be subverted or obliterated when love interest Rachel Dawes is brutally killed off mid-sentence, or stalwart Batman is forced to claim a pyrrhic victory over the villain by entering into a criminal conspiracy and cover-up with the cops. The thrill of novelty was as breathtaking as the movie’s allegorical elements about a society on edge.

And even with The Dark Knight’s open-ended finale, it stood as a singular cinematic experience, complete with then-groundbreaking emphasis on IMAX photography. Nolan was so adamant about making this as self-contained an experience as possible that he jettisoned his co-story creator David Goyer’s idea of setting up Harvey Dent’s fall from grace for a third movie. Dent’s fate, as that of everyone else’s, would be tied strictly to the events of the movie you’re now watching.

“We Have a Hulk”

In Iron Man, and then more forcefully in Iron Man 2 (2010) and the rest of its “Phase One” era, Marvel Studios demonstrated a wholly different set of priorities. Similar to how Batman Begins paved the way for Nolan to do what he really wanted with that material, Iron Man 2 came to encapsulate Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige’s grander designs for the type of movies he was making. Where The Dark Knight was singular, unconventional, and two steps closer to our world than its comic book origins, Iron Man 2 was episodic, entirely crafted around audience expectations for a sequel, and even more like a comic book world than our own.

In other words, the first Iron Man gently submerged audiences into the fantasy by beginning with contemporary images of Tony Stark in a Middle Eastern desert; Iron Man 2 then made sweeping strides in defining what that MCU fantasy is as quickly as possible: Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is introduced solely to establish the superspy who will be vital to The Avengers two years down the road, and the central narrative about Tony Stark fighting an old rival is put on pause to reintroduce the character Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) as a supporting, and superfluous, side character. The post-credit scene even arbitrarily introduces literal magic with a glowing hammer that has absolutely nothing to do with the story you just watched. Still, it’s a hell of a teaser for Thor which was due in theaters a year later.

With the release of Iron Man 2, Marvel Studios’ emphasis became diametrically opposed to the driving concept behind The Dark Knight Trilogy. Rather than each film being an insulated, standalone cinematic experience like the Hollywood epics of old, Marvel’s movies would be interconnected episodes in an ongoing narrative saga that spanned multiple franchises and countless sequels. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unlike Nolan after The Dark Knight, Feige and his stable of writers always know where the next movie (or five) is going, and have a better idea of what the overall vision is than any single director working within this system. Ironically, this returns power to the studio and producer as the seeming authorial voice of each movie. Like in the Golden Age of Hollywood, directors are more often hired hands than influential auteurs.

However, this means the aspects Nolan really valued on The Dark Knight beyond a gritty “realism”—elements like spontaneity, subversion, and a distancing from superhero tropes—became antithetical to the type of movies produced by the MCU. For at least the first decade of its existence, the Marvel Cinematic Universe flourished by creating a formula and house style that is as predictable for audiences as the contents in a Big Mac.

When you go to a Marvel movie, you more or less you’ll get: an ironic, self-deprecating tone, a story that often revolves around a CG MacGuffin that must be taken from the villain, and a narrative in which disparate heroic characters come together after some amusing, disagreeable banter. In fact, more than Iron Man, it was Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012) which refined the Marvel formula into what it is today.

There are of course exceptions to this rule. Black Panther became the first Marvel movie since Iron Man to arguably tackle themes significant to the real world, in this case specifically the legacy of African diaspora. It also became the first superhero film nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture as a result; James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies might follow the narrative formula of most MCU movies, but they’re embedded with a cheeky and idiosyncratic personality that is distinctly Gunn’s; and in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Captain America: Civil War (2016), directors Joe and Anthony Russo, as well as screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, attempted to inject a little bit of that “realistic” aesthetic from The Dark Knight. But only to a point.

Particularly in the 2014 effort, there was a push by the Russos to rely on in-camera special effects and cultivate what they often described in the press as a “1970s spy thriller” style. Ostensibly, the hope may have been to make The Winter Soldier as much a spy thriller as The Dark Knight was a crime epic. In this vein, there were even attempts to graft onto the story very timely concerns about the overreach of a government surveillance state, which had only grown in the decade since the U.S. PATRIOT Act was passed, despite a change in White House administrations. However, all of these ambitions had an invisible ceiling hovering above them.

Despite having overtones about the danger of reactionary if well-intentioned government leaders, like the kind personified by Robert Redford’s SHIELD director in the movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier couldn’t become too focused on the espionage elements or too far removed from the Marvel house style. The story still needed to interconnect with other Marvel films, hence Redford’s character turning out to be a secret HYDRA double agent, and it still needed to give audiences what they expected from a Marvel movie. Thus how this “1970s spy thriller” ends in a giant CGI battle with citywide destruction as Captain America inserts MacGuffins into machines that will blow up HYDRA’s latest weapon for world domination.

It’s easy to wonder if the movie was developed a little longer, and didn’t have to play by a certain set of rules and expectations, that instead of backpedaling into comic book motivations, Redford’s character would’ve been a well-intentioned patriot amassing power “to keep us safe,” and in the process destabilized the institutions he claimed to revere.

Movies

What Did Batman Do Between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises?

By David Crow

WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series

By Gavin Jasper

A Universe Without End

The Marvel method breeds a heavy need for familiarity and comfortable predictability, as opposed to disorientation and discomfort. Yet both methods are valid. While Nolan achieved near universal praise for The Dark Knight, his attempt to replicate it with the even more ambitious The Dark Knight Rises—an unabashed David Lean-inspired epic that took more from A Tale of Two Cities and Doctor Zhivago than DC Comics—left fans divided. It also was a narrative dead end for the corporate/fanbase need of an ongoing franchise. Nolan instead reached a final, artistic, and emphatic period for his cinematic interpretation of Batman mythology. By comparison, Marvel Studios has created a new cinematic vernacular that only ever uses dashes, semicolons, and commas. There is always more to tell.

Nolan reflected on these changing circumstances for superhero movies in 2017 when he said, “That’s a privilege and a luxury that filmmakers aren’t afforded anymore. I think it was the last time that anyone was able to say to a studio, ‘I might do another one, but it will be four years.’ There’s too much pressure on release schedules to let people do that now, but creatively it’s a huge advantage.”

This lines up with what Jeff Bridges said about the evolution of the Marvel method way back in ’09 after the first Iron Man: “You would think with a $200 million movie you’d have the shit together, but it was just the opposite. And the reason for that is because they get ahead of themselves. They have a release date before the script [and they think], ‘Oh, we’ll have the script before that time,’ and they don’t have their shit together.”

Bridges’ unhappiness with the new process notwithstanding, Marvel was rewriting the playbook about how these types of movies were made. Nolan’s approach of one at a time and years-long development processes created three distinctly different and relatively standalone Batman movies. But Marvel has shifted the idea of not just what a franchise can be, but also what cinematic storytelling means.

Instead of three movies, their rules and structures have generated dozens of well-received and adored entertainments, that when combined can produce experiences as unique as Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019): two movies that were more like a two-part season finale on TV than individual stories. And the latter became the highest grossing film of all time.

The success of this approach is further underlined when one considers competitors that tried to emulate both Marvel and Nolan’s approaches, relying on a lone auteur to build a shared cinematic universe—while also arguably taking the wrong lessons from the “dark” in The Dark Knight title. In the case of the DC Extended Universe, that approach collapsed on itself after three movies, leaving the interconnected “shared” part of its universe in tatters, and fans and studio hands alike divided on how to proceed with the franchise.The Marvel Cinematic Universe took a narrower road than that of The Dark Knight. But it turned out to be a lot smoother and much, much longer.

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ill-will-editions · 4 years

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AUTONOMY AND COUNTER-POWER: RETHINKING THE QUESTION OF ORGANIZATION AFTER THE YELLOW VESTS MOVEMENT (2020)

First published in ACTA, January 6th, 2020.

Translated by J.R. and Ill Will Editions.

This text stems from a talk given by the French journal ACTA during an international congress organized by the Catalan magazine Catarsi in Barcelona last December. Now in its third iteration, the congress facilitates the exchange of intellectual reflection and militant experience between different countries, touching on themes such as unionism, urban struggles, the realities of fascism today, and the stakes of political communication in the digital age.

We take this opportunity to develop a report on the sequence of struggles in France and across the globe in recent months, considering both its novel characteristics and its strategic impasses. Our aim here is to place the question of organization back on the table, while also proposing a rough sketch of what the seemingly-obscure concept of victory might look like today. -ACTA

The year 2019 witnessed a new wave of uprisings on a planetary scale. Dozens of countries around the world watched as their cities erupted into violence, their economies were paralyzed, and the legitimacy of their governments was challenged in the streets. Despite obvious differences in context, the majority were popular mobilizations centering around common issues: worsening precarity, social regression and fiscal austerity – the result of several decades of unchecked liberalism. Added to this was the corruption of elites, the disrepute of the political class, and the authoritarianism of the State.

A common element in a majority of these cases is the collapse of institutional mediations. Many of these movements formed at arm's length from parties and unions — when they were not openly hostile toward them. In France, the skepticism of the Yellow Vests toward any form of representation is evident to anyone, while the more recent movement against the proposed pension reforms has crystallized a tendency among the more combative union bases of acting autonomously from their bureaucratic leadership. We see this at several levels: for instance, in their decisive insistence on December 5th as a strike date, in their will to take control of how the strike will be handled (i.e. a “renewable” rather than a “pearled,” or slowdown, strike), in their experimentation with more conflictual forms of action, and in their refusal to obey calls for a truce (even when they emanate from trade federations themselves).

The Yellow Vests phenomenon casts a stark light upon a basic feature of our time, namely, that traditional representative bodies are no longer in a position to capture the energy of protest, let alone direct it. From here on out, those who face down the State are on their own. From Paris to Santiago, by way of Beirut, popular revolt is shattering the recognized frameworks of struggle, fleeing in every direction. At a planetary level, its principal weapons are the blockade and the riot.

While this reduction of the antagonism to two terms may in some cases safeguard the people against the betrayals and intrigues of politicians and the various other apparatuses, it is no less problematic when one considers its long-term consistency and its possible outcomes — we will return to this later.

To be sure, several of the recent movements have succeeded in winning tactical victories: the abandonment of the new taxes at the root of the revolts in France and Lebanon, the suspension of the public transport fare hikes and the promise of a constitutional referendum in Chile, the abandonment of the austerity plan in Ecuador, the withdrawal of the extradition bill in Hong Kong, the resignation of Bouteflika in Algeria, etc.

States everywhere have bowed to popular pressure. Yet, with the exception of a few, the movements have kept going beyond these tactical achievements, and still continue today. In fact, it is this continuation, precisely, which reveals a major difficulty that cuts across every struggle in the current period: we have no shared conception today of what a victory might be, at either a tactical or a strategic level. (Insofar as a victory, in our view, is always the inscription in history of a point of irreversibility.)

We cannot see clearly what victory looks like. For us, the concept of victory is obscure.

By contrast, the twentieth century had at its disposal a relatively clear understanding of victory, one widely accepted by revolutionaries throughout the world. To be victorious meant to seize State power. This was to be done either by classic electoral means or else through an armed insurrection. Those “progressive” formations that came to power by respecting the rules of bourgeois democracy wound up either abandoning any prospect of social transformation, under the weight of institutional constraints or because of the intrinsic corruption of state structures, or else they found themselves vulnerable and powerless in the face of the reaction of the propertied classes and their imperialist allies. As for the revolutionary seizure of state power, historical experience has shown that, by itself, it in no way guarantees a general advance toward communism and that, consequently, a successful insurrection alone cannot define the concept of victory. (In other words, we cannot remain satisfied with a strictly “military” definition of victory.)

But we have not yet been able to put forward a new concept of victory adequate to the novelty of the movements that have shaken the world in recent years and which have everywhere run up against the same strategic impasses.

The question of victory is directly related to the question of organization. The determination of this or that hypothesis of victory leads us to adopt a certain type of organization adapted to the success of this hypothesis. Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party (endowed with military discipline and committed to the objective of taking state power) issues directly from his analysis of the failures of the revolutionary uprisings of the nineteenth century—foremost among them being the Paris Commune. Thus was he led to delineate a new type of political organization capable at last of leading the proletariat to victory. And if the Leninist party-form imposed itself as the canonical form of revolutionary organization during most of the 20th century, it is largely owing to the prestige derived from their 1917 victory. The hypothesis had, in a way, proven itself.

Designed for seizing state power, the Leninist party certainly showed its formidable insurrectional efficacy; however, it proved to be radically deficient in the exercise of this power when it came to the post-revolutionary phase and the achievement of the strategic objectives of communism. As Alain Badiou wrote, “The Leninist party is incommensurable to the tasks of the transition to communism, despite the fact that it is appropriate to those of a victorious insurrection.”

Throughout the 1970s, French Maoists and Italian autonomists had (among other things) counted the overcoming of the traditional Leninist paradigm among the essential tasks of the politics of emancipation. It is this problem that we have inherited today.

We cannot help but notice the general disorientation that runs through the whole of our camp on this issue. Whereas some have decided to sweep away the motif of organization completely, on the pretext that it is, in and of itself, synonymous with a mortifying alienation, others have been content to carry on with the ossified model of the avant-garde party. The former glorify the movement, and perhaps even pure movement itself, reducing their political practice to following each of its new figures. Although they often display remarkable tactical activism during sequences of acute conflictuality, their fetishization of an affinity-driven approach condemns them to retreating during non-movement periods. As for the latter, they remain rigidly loyal to obsolete organisational models, and this prevents them from truly entering into and becoming internal to the movements in question, leading to a growing disconnect with the new dynamics of struggle.

We believe that the problem of organization is once again an open question, one that demands to be taken up anew by revolutionaries. The Yellow Vests movement has been a formidable testing ground for the relationship between mass movement and organized subjectivity. For us, one of the essential lessons of this sequence is that activists must be in the movement “like fish in the water.” They must be truly internal, that is, actually in the movement. This means participating in its basic assemblies, establishing connections with its local groups, carrying out investigations, upholding its main deadlines, and allowing the novelty of its forms of struggle to “contaminate” them—in short, putting themselves in the school of the masses. They cannot remain content with a posture of exteriority, or even worse, of scorn, which was something too many leftists fell into at the onset of the 2018 winter uprising. As Marx put it in the Manifesto: “Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order.” That being said, however, the position of revolutionary militants cannot be purely one of tailing or following along [suivisme], for it is not merely a question of accompanying the movement, or even of disappearing into it, but of intervening in it politically.

This brings us to the fundamental point: political intervention always leads to a division. What unites a movement, especially at the beginning, has a negative dimension: different sections of the people come together in common opposition to a particular government, a particular bill, a particular aspect of the dominant order. The follower mentality treats this unity as something to be preserved at all costs and regards any effort to introduce political divisions as tending to weaken the movement itself. On the contrary, we believe that the negative unity of a movement always covers up important (sometimes even antagonistic) contradictions and that it is precisely the role of revolutionaries to intervene where these contradictions exist—and thus, to accept the division. For it is only through this work of division that true, affirmative unity can be built.

This kind of work has been undertaken within the Yellow Vests movement, for example around the question of antifascism. There is no doubt that the presence of the extreme right, whether in terms of diffuse reactionary opinion or the violent activism of small groups, was notable at the beginning of the movement. Nationalist, neo-fascist, or Pétainist formations felt comfortable enough to unfurl their banners at the Étoile roundabout, to strut down the Champs-Élysées, to beat up leftist activists—until the brutal attack on an NPA contingent on 26 January 2019. The organization of an explicit antifascist response made it possible to rout these nationalist groupuscules, which were de facto excluded from the marches. At a deeper level, the early construction of an antiracist front bringing together organizations based in working-class neighborhoods such as the Adama Committee, local Yellow Vests groups, and various autonomous collectives allowed the contradictions of the movement to be worked on politically, helping to develop its watchwords and thereby gradually marginalizing its reactionary component.

It is also clear that the movement’s political maturation process was accelerated by an early collective experience of police and judicial repression (that is, of State authoritarianism) at levels that had previously been reserved exclusively for the racialized populations of working-class neighborhoods—yet which have now become the default mode of repression meted out to the entire social movement.

We argue that the task of organized militants during a movement is not only to provide tactical support for mass action but also to carry out a properly political intervention within the movement, which in most cases will entail a deepening of a certain number of its internal contradictions.

But if the organized must be sensitive to the irruptions of events (rather than obsessing over the maintenance and reproduction of their own organized process), getting organized does bring with it a duration proper to revolts by crystallizing their most advanced political contents. This other sense of time is what allows organized revolutionaries to continue the political work even in sequences of low conflictuality. They get organized by taking root in a territory; by opening and running accessible, public spaces; by establishing durable structures, spaces for self-education, and tools for propaganda and debate; and by deepening theoretical elaborations—in short, by practicing a militant program.

As Marx observed, since they capable of imagining the next stage of the political process, communists are not satisfied with following the pure present of revolts. In particular, they cannot be satisfied with a succession of tactical gestures (however spectacular) lacking any strategic interrelation. Here again we have detected a recurring weakness: although we, in France, have been living in a period of exceptional and almost uninterrupted social conflictuality since 2016, we have observed the fragmentation and the inconsistency of revolutionary organizations. A short-sighted “movement-ism” seems to be preventing any long-term recomposition.

The Yellow Vests movement has confirmed this: any politics of emancipation is today practiced at a distance from the State and its institutions. As a result, any organized process committed to emancipation can only be autonomous. The Yellow Vests have learned to rely on their own forces, they did not need any trade union or any political party to bring about a level of social antagonism unseen for over half a century. To borrow from Negri in his 1977 text, Capitalist Domination and Working Class Sabotage, it could be said that they combined a political destabilization of the regime (through the Saturday insurrectional riots) with the material destructuring of the system (through logistic blockades, the occupation of roundabouts and their territorial spread). Albeit in a fragmentary and incomplete way, they practiced larval forms of a popular counter-power.

This brings us back to the strategic considerations set out above. What do we mean by “counter-power?” Counter-power is the preliminary form of autonomy: it is both “liberated space,” a field of experimentation prefigurative of all other social relations, and “conflict zone,” a particular point where the reproduction of social command is blocked. Here positivity cannot be dissociated from negativity, nor creation from antagonism. For “the latencies of the future contained in the present are not limited to existing in ideological representations and political programs. On the contrary, they already manifest themselves in the eruption of the revolutionary process, externalizing themselves in the most surprising and unexpected configurations made possible by the successive puncturing of the dominant forms of relations,” as Curcio and Franceschini wrote in their 1982 text, Drops of Sunlight in the City of Specters.

To the extent that we must do away with the idea that nothing is possible prior to the conquest of central power; to the extent that the decline of the State must become not only an historical horizon but a principle visible in the present through political action itself—to this extent, counter-power is today the elementary reality of any emancipation process.

(France dotted with “yellow communes”—those occupied roundabouts and other innumerable pockets of self-organization which, in addition to the metropolitan riots, allowed thousands of proletarians to rediscover the meaning of fraternity while also laying the material conditions for a mass economic blockade—the France of last winter was undoubtedly a life-size approximation of this process of constituting, from below, an other power, a popular power that sets up its own institutions).

Whether one looks to the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, or to the Yellow Vests themselves, recent experience shows that any dynamic of counter-power must confront the problem of self-defense and of protecting this counter-power. This issue is all the more pressing in the context of an authoritarian turn by the State whose repressive methods have become increasingly unhinged. We must likewise consider the possible forms in which a strategic (and not only tactical) negativity might be exercised—one committed to the destruction of bourgeois law, that foundation of the dominant order, a destruction that the capillary expansion of counter-power alone cannot ensure.

What then are the stakes of putting the question of organization back on the agenda? It is clear that only historical practice will allow us to make real progress on this issue. And that theoretical elaboration can only serve—but this is already a lot—to formulate problems.

We must get organized in the field of self-defense, which likewise determines offensive capacity. In this sense, to borrow an intuition from Tronti, it is a tactical function of mass antagonism. For, as we have said, the accumulation of popular power necessarily runs up against the “prohibitive power” of the State. Once it reaches a certain threshold of strength and temporal consistency, every emancipatory experiment confronts this “prohibitive power” that puts its very survival at stake. To envisage this as a linear process would be the height of naivety. Here is precisely where the role of organized political subjectivity lies: to “remove the obstacles” that oppose the growth of popular power, to break up the enemy’s command structure: “to strip capitalist domination of its hope, its possibility of a future,” as Scalzone put it in 1978. It is unclear, otherwise, how the emancipatory elements that developed “in the womb of the old society” could ever in fact be actualized, ratified, and generalized.

But this function alone does not exhaust the issue. Another essential aspect of any organizational process is its multiplicity. It cannot be “one dimensional.” This was, moreover, the principal error of the fighting formations in the 1970s cycle: the military function ended up absorbing all the others, reducing the specter of political practice to this one partial dimension. On the contrary, the organized must seek to combine and articulate different forms of struggle, different terrains, and different modes of intervention. As one agent of the Imaginary Party pointed out, “People forget, but the party has always been both legal and illegal, visible and invisible, public and conspiratorial.” Its richness and potentiality reside in this plurality.

Organization must therefore also take on the role of political recomposition. Today, there are a variety of trajectories of struggle in the movement that act on specific terrains and claim relative autonomy. This is the case, for example, of feminist and antiracist movements (which are themselves traversed by major fault lines). The question of organization, at present, is therefore just as much a question of organizations. Hence the motif of the front that has been circulating recently, which is one possible form that this recomposition could take. What would be at issue is a space necessarily open to internal contradictions, within which revolutionary militants would have the task of working toward a determinate programmatic synthesis: to foster connections between centers of struggle and different social subjectivities, to thwart the risk of paralysis or fragmentation by affirming a communist projectuality as an evaluative criterion for real situations.

Since 2016, and more intensely in recent months, egalitarian alliances have been formed between combative union chapters, autonomous collectives, local Yellow Vests groups, working-class neighborhood organizations, radicalized ecological militants, and high school bases — our task today is to ensure that these alliances survive beyond mere movement temporalities, that is, to build a space of organization and coordination that might create the bases for a new type of popular unity.

[Photo credits: Maxwell Aurélien James, for the Collectif ŒIL]

#France #giletsjaunes #YellowVests #Revolt #Organization #Theory

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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Aston Villa: Boyhood fan Dean Smith proves perfect fit as manager

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Aston Villa: Boyhood fan Dean Smith proves perfect fit as manager

Aston Villa manager Dean Smith (second from right) celebrating with captain Jack Grealish (second from left) and goalscorers John McGinn (left) and Anwar El-Ghazi (right)

Aston Villa went for one of their own when Dean Smith was appointed as manager in October. Now the man who used to stand on the Holte End has led them out of the wilderness and into the Premier League.

The 48-year-old landed the job on the back of impressive work at Walsall and Brentford, but this was a well-respected figure destined to return to Villa, the club that coursed through his veins as a lifelong supporter of the club where his father Ron used to be a steward.

Villa’s 2-1 win over Derby County at Wembley on Monday returned them to the top flight after three years.

Their departure from the Premier League in 2016 was confirmed after a season of total ignominy when they finished bottom with only three victories and 17 points from 38 games, 17 points adrift of the next closest side Norwich City.

Villa promoted back to Premier League

How did you rate the Villa-Derby players?

Promotion completed the remarkable transformation fashioned by Smith.

He had all the appearances of the perfect fit for a proud club that had fallen on hard times and so it has proved.

It was a victory that received the royal seal of approval as Villa fan Prince William was awash with emotion at the final whistle.

Prince William’s emotional Wembley rollercoaster

But this was all about the work of Smith, who delivered a team from 13th when he took over from Steve Bruce – sacked after one win in nine league games – to promotion.

The speed of Villa’s rejuvenation under Smith was probably even beyond the expectations of those who brought him back to his spiritual football home, and it would have given him an extra layer of pleasure to share the scenes of elation with supporters at the final whistle at Wembley.

Villa’s joy was in stark contrast to Derby after they lost a third play-off final and now face an uncertain future, with manager Frank Lampard talked about as a potential target for Chelsea and key loan stars such as Liverpool’s Harry Wilson and Chelsea pair Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori by no means certain to be at Pride Park next season.

This was no play-off classic apart from a tense final phase, but for Villa it was all about exorcising the demons of last season’s Wembley loss to Fulham, whom they will pass on the way back up as the Cottagers reflect on more than £100m spent on taking themselves back into the Championship.

Villa’s defeat a year ago caused chaos as financial issues came to light, the club missing a £4m tax payment in June with then owner Dr Tony Xia believed to have cash-flow difficulties because of strict rules about money leaving his native China.

But billionaire businessmen Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris produced significant investment in a £50m majority takeover – and, most crucially of all, brought in Smith.

Smith, who watched last year’s play-off on his laptop on holiday in North Carolina, has proved an inspired selection and overcame a rocky start to take Villa into the play-off in a surge of outstanding form before completing the job at Wembley.

John McGinn was voted club player of the season and Jack Grealish has proved to be an inspirational captain

He had a vital connection with Villa’s support, acted as a unifying force and got a struggling team playing pacy, attacking football led by the midfield creation of Jack Grealish and John McGinn bolted on to the threat of striker Tammy Abraham.

The hard work will start once the deserved celebrations die down but Villa can now look forward to keeping another boyhood fan in Grealish, the beating heart of this side who would surely have been picked off by a Premier League club had they not gone up.

And with the estimated £170m riches afforded by this promotion, they can look to keep Abraham and build from a position of strength and optimism.

Abraham still has to prove himself as a Premier League striker but his numbers this season are impressive while even Grealish must show he can be as outstanding in elite company as he has been in the Championship.

Smith, however, can build on his superb achievements so far at a club with a huge fan base and renewed sense of purpose on and off the pitch – back where they and their supporters believe they belong.

Villa potential massive – Smith

Frank Lampard’s Derby County team finished sixth in the Championship, 20 points behind champions Norwich

Lampard speculation will continue

Derby will now be plunged into uncertainty after falling agonisingly short again – and much speculation will surround Lampard.

He has impressed with his measured style in his first season in management, even though his achievements must be placed in perspective. Derby finished 15 points away from the automatic promotion places and nine points behind Leeds United in third place.

Lampard has been mentioned as a potential successor to Maurizio Sarri should Chelsea decide to make a change, but for all the romantic notions of a return to Stamford Bridge, where he attained legendary status as the club’s all-time record scorer with 211 goals, it would still rate as a serious gamble by owner Roman Abramovich.

Lampard clearly has great potential but one season in the Championship which ended short of promotion is not a guarantee at one of the Premier League’s powerhouses, despite all the signs that he is a top-class manager of the future and a character with aura and charisma.

Owner Mel Morris is seeking investment in Derby to restore former glories, but the reality is that it is much easier to attract this vital commodity with the Premier League as your home rather than the Championship.

Villa have no such problems as they celebrate a return to the Premier League’s promised land – their course plotted by the man who lived four miles from the stadium that will once more play host to top-flight football next season.

#manager #perfect

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whittlebaggett8 · 5 years

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Narendra Modi’s greatest triumph | Kashmir Reader

BJP wins overwhelmingly bulk in Parliament, additional than 50% preferred vote

New Delhi: Key Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday wheeled Bharatiya Janata Bash to a landslide victory for a next phrase in office, as his concept of nationalism and Hindu delight was overwhelmingly embraced by folks across India.

The partial vote depend produced by the Election Commission confirmed that BJP will not only surpass its 2014 effectiveness but also cross the 300-seat mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha. These kinds of was the force of the BJP wave that even Congress president Rahul Gandhi missing in his bastion of Amethi to Smriti Irani, but in consolation received the Wayanad seat in Kerala. The euphoria of the victory was capped by a sombre speech by Modi in which he promised to commit “every moment of my everyday living and each fibre of my body” to the welfare of the country. He also vowed that he will never do everything with sick-intention, nor will he do anything to enrich himself. “Whenever you choose me, choose me on these a few parameters. If I drop small on these, curse me. But I assure my countrymen that what I have reported in community I will do my most effective to fulfil,” he reported. Putting a conciliatory political tone, he also reached out to his rivals, urging everyone to set the rancour of the bitter and frequently awful campaign guiding them. What’s earlier is previous, he said. “We have to move forward. We have to consider anyone with us, even our opponents. We have to perform for the advantage of the region,” he explained. “You have loaded this fakir’s bag with a great deal of hope. All your hopes, goals, ambitions are dependent on it,” he said. Right until 9pm, the BJP had won 115 seats and was top in 188 of the 542 Lok Sabha seats that went to polls in seven phases in April and May. This has set it on training course to possible profitable 303 seats, greater than the 282 it won in 2014. With the help of allies in the National Democratic Alliance, the coalition could have some 344 seats. The victory margin still left the merged opposition in the dust, with the Congress stuck at 27 verified victories and a lead in 24 seats. Modi very easily gained his seat in Varanasi with a margin of over 4.5 lakh votes while occasion president Amit Shah took Gandhinagar in Gujarat by over 5.5 lakh votes. Modi and Shah arrived at the occasion headquarters in New Delhi to a rapturous welcome by supporters. Modi waved victory indicators with both of those arms in the air as rose petals were being showered on the duo. He then proceeded to garland the statues of BJP idealogue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Minutes afterwards, a gigantic garland in BJP colours of saffron and green was held all over Modi by other dignitaries. In nearly all the states wherever BJP received, its vote share was far more than 50 percent. The benefits have elevated thoughts about Rahul Gandhi’s management and his party’s foreseeable future. At a press convention, Gandhi refused to deal with that difficulty, expressing the occasion will hold a assembly on Friday to talk about the potential. “The folks of India have made the decision that Narendra Modi will be the PM yet again and I absolutely respect it,” Gandhi informed reporters. He also congratulated Modi and BJP. The benefits had been a ringing endorsement of Modi’s reputation, his government’s achievements in the past 5 a long time and his campaign, which centred close to countrywide stability following the Balakot air strikes, nationalism and Hindutva. He also relentlessly attacked the Congress for what he referred to as its dynastic legacy, and blamed it for the country’s woes, which includes endemic corruption. The opposition experienced criticised the BJP marketing campaign as divisive and polarising. However, the results show that the Modi wave and the party’s outstanding election administration swept throughout geographies, caste strains, age, gender and financial standing. In the politically significant condition of Uttar Pradesh, wherever the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Social gathering mix experienced posed a rigid challenge, the BJP is envisioned to win 62 of the 80 seats at stake. Even though the BJP had gained 71 seats in the past elections, the general performance is significantly far better than the 30-40 seats several exit polls had forecast. The BJP point out headquarters in Lucknow was drenched in saffron hue with jubilant celebration staff carrying saffron stoles, adorning ‘genda’ bouquets around their necks and keeping lotus slice-outs. They also burst crackers and danced to drum beats as girls supporters wore saffron attire and painted their nails in the identical hue. In stark contrast, Congress, BSP and SP offices wore a forlorn look. Under the scorching solar, even store proprietors marketing campaign product outside the house the SP office environment sat in shocked silence as those people collected all-around the tea kiosks talked in hushed tones. The Modi wave not only swept through the Hindi heartland and Gujarat, as was predicted, but also bulldozed by means of West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Only Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh appeared untouched. Even in Telangana, exactly where it was expected to fare improperly, the BJP is expected to win 4 seats, whilst the Telangana Rashtra Samiti will get 9. However, Andhra Pradesh threw up a shock in the Assembly polls, which have been held simultaneously, voting out of electrical power the Telugu Desam Party of Chandrababu Naidu and electing Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress. Just after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Modi is the third prime minister of the region – and the to start with non-Congress a single – who has been ready to keep electric power for a next term with full bulk in Lok Sabha. The benefits have been staggering for BJP in the Hindi-talking states, including these in which Congress had gained in the modern Assembly elections: it swept all but one particular of the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh, 24 out of 25 in Rajasthan, and nine out of 11 in Chhattisgarh. Similar was the story in Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Delhi and notably Karnataka, in which it is expected to win 25 out of 28 seats. Among the major-identify casualties were Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge who missing his Kalburgi seat in Karnataka and Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh. The Congress received not a one seat in 13 states. The BJP also manufactured large gains in Odisha, West Bengal and Telangana In Odisha, the BJP was in advance in 8 of the 21 seats, up from a person very last time. In West Bengal, it was envisioned to get 18 seats, up from two in 2014, all at the price of the Left. In Telangana, it was set to earn four. Congress ally DMK was ahead in 20 seats in Tamil Nadu while in Kerala, the Congress-led UDF was forward in 19 out of 20 seats. The voting was staggered involving April 11 and Could 19 in which about 67 for each cent of the practically 900 million eligible folks exercised their franchise to elect 542 associates of the Lok Sabha from a full of 8,049 contestants. Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were being held in 542 constituencies as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency on the ground of excessive use of dollars electricity. PTI

BJP, India politics, Kashmir difficulty, Lok Sabha elections, Modi Govt

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advisorshares · 6 years

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The Partnervest Monthly Global Outlook

By David Young, chief investment of officer of Partnervest Advisory Services, the portfolio manager of the AdvisorShares STAR Global Buy-Write ETF (Ticker: VEGA)

The U.S. economy continued to expand thanks in part to ever-solid payroll growth, a revival of consumer spending, buoyant sentiment surveys and advanced purchases of items marked for tariffs should trade skirmishes assume more destructive escalations. Despite warnings by the International Monetary Fund that a trade war could cost the global economy some $430 billion, U.S. companies continued to report robust earnings reports even as European economies and markets extended their retrenchment. China turned to currency devaluation to warm over its economy as well as to protect its flank should it find itself in a serious confrontation with Washington over trade.

Markets

In the wake of the Fed’s July Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Morgan Stanley anticipated an additional hike in September followed by a pause in December “as policy hits neutral territory and concerns over financial conditions grow.” It also forecast a more hawkish posture next year with three additional hikes in response to low unemployment rate and above-potential GDP. The Fed expressed a bias toward “continued gradually raising the target range for the federal funds rate to a setting … above their estimates of its longer-run level by 2019 or 2020,” according to Morgan Stanley.

The New York and Atlanta Feds reported that its Underlying Inflation Gauge (UIG) is diverging significantly from traditional indexes this year. According to the UIG’s most recent measure, broad inflation came in at a sizzling 3.27%, the highest reading since September 2005. That compares with just 2.8% annual inflation, according to the Labor Department’s CPI, and the more modest 2.0% as measured by the preferred Personal Consumption Expenditure gauge of Fed policy makers.

Stocks held up well in July amid a robust earnings season and despite a rout of tech shares late in the month. FactSet reported that enough S&P companies were poised to log positive EPS to constitute the largest percentage on a quarterly basis since the data house began tracking this metric in Q3 2008. Overall, companies beat robust analyst estimates by an average of 2.5% and nearly three-quarters of listed companies reported sales above estimates. Meanwhile, profit margins among S&P companies for the quarter, at nearly 12.0%, tied net profit margin growth for the previous three-month period, itself the highest net profit margin for the S&P since FactSet began tracking this data in Q3 2008.

A FactSet industry analyst concluded that the S&P 500 would rise by 13.0% in price over the next 12 months – in stark contrast to Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd’s July 10 Twitter declaration that “Markets are crazy to ignore the risks and consequences of a trade war,” adding “the stock rally is the last hurrah!” His warning followed a similar Cassandra cry by Morgan Stanley strategist Michael Zezas. Asserting that Trump administration standoffs are not bluffs but an expression of policy, Zezas disparaged what he wrote was the opening salvo of “an escalatory cycle of protectionist actions, that shouldn’t be ignored.”

Morgan Stanley forecasts a significant market correction. “The bottom line for us is that we think the selling has just begun and this correction will be the biggest since the one we experienced in February,” the investment bank wrote to clients July 30. The investment bank also predicted the yield curve will invert by the middle of next year, though it stopped short of forecasting a recession, MarketWatch reported.

Investors and policy makers watched with trepidation in mid-June as the Treasury yield curve from 5 to 30 years flattened to levels last seen in August 2007. The New York Times, citing research from the San Francisco Fed, noted that every recession of the past 60 years has been preceded by an inverted yield curve.

Undaunted, Fed officials committed themselves to four interest rate increases in 2018, up one from their March outlook. Investors took it in stride, scooping up some $14 billion worth of 30-month bonds at a yield of 3.10%. As ZeroHedge put it, “Overall, a quick and relatively painless sale in just 48 hours, to a market which despite rising rates, continues to be quite receptive to all the issuance the US government can throw at it.”

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch however, this may be the calm before the storm. The market, it argued in a note, is still in an orderly “intermediate phase” as interest rates, credit spreads and volatility pivot to reflect a tighter credit environment. “If quantitative easing created an era of lower interest rates, tighter credit spreads and suppressed volatility, the bank warned, quantitative tightening … will lead to the opposite – i.e. higher interest rates, wider credit spreads and very volatile market conditions.” The bank added that global QE has rapidly declined on a year-over-year basis, a trend accelerated by a strong dollar it regards as “destructive to asset values that thrive on liquidity expansion.”

Speaking of trade, The Wall Street Journal implied that U.S. small-cap stocks, having over-performed for months on the strength of perceived insulation from trade tensions, may have peaked. Having sucked up $4 billion in investment capital in May and June, the sector has recently been cited for overstretched valuations and unearthed negative exposure to trade.

Bloomberg noted that the CBOE Skew Index, which tracks the cost of tail-risk equity protection, has jumped to the highest level since October. The rise signals that options traders are growing wary of wild swings, just as the International Monetary Fund warned that financial markets seem complacent to mounting risks in the global economy.

Inspired by a dramatic sell-off of tech stocks led by Facebook, Zero Hedge published the most memorable financial-press headline so far this year: TECH WRECK PUKES $350 BILLION IN 3 DAYS AS FANGOVER BITES.

U.S. Economy

The economy grew at a robust 4.1% rate in the second quarter, the fastest pace in almost four years, while first-quarter growth was revised upward, to 2.2% from 2.0%. Economists cited the continued stimulative impact of tax cuts, as well as forward purchases of goods considered exposed to tariffs in the event of a trade war.

According to the WSJ, U.S. laborers are choosing to leave their jobs at the fastest rate since the internet boom 17 years ago and are getting rewarded for it with higher salaries and/or more satisfying work. The WSJ reported workers have been made more confident by a strong economy and historically low unemployment, currently at 3.8% in May, the lowest since 2000.

Retail sales surged ahead in June, by 0.5%, while sales in May were revised higher to 1.3%, the largest monthly advance since September 2017. In another indicator of buoyant consumption, the Freight Transportation Services Index rose by 6.4%, its third new high in the past four months.

The American Association of Individual Investors weighed in with a widely positive sentiment survey, notching individual investor sentiment up 15% percentage points to 43.1%. The survey results followed the near-record high in the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Optimism Index as well as the University of Michigan Sentiment Index, which posted a record high among pre-financial crisis readings.

The home-construction market continued to disappoint as the number of new permits in June dropped by 2.2% on a month-to-month and housing starts continued to slide, by 12.3% MoM. It was the 3rd month of declining permits in a row and biggest drop in starts since November 2016 as increasing interest rates impact markets

In a note, Investing Haven suggested that commodity prices are being influenced by a strong dollar – a process that could hasten inflation rates – though it allowed that it may be too early to regard this as a trend. “There are attempts of the USD to break out but there is also rejection at breakout,” according to its research. It is wise to wait for a confirmation of the next trend in the dollar.”

Reuters reported that U.S. loan funds in July posted outflows for the first time in nearly five months. The reversal of some $184 million was attributed to market volatility triggered by tensions in global trade that reduced investors’ appetite for risk assets, Reuters said.

International

The International Monetary Fund warned that rising trade tensions between the United States and many of its commercial partners could cost the global economy $430 billion with America “especially vulnerable” to an escalating tariff war. The Washington-based organization said the current threats made by the U.S. and its trading partners risked lowering global growth by as much as 0.5% by 2020, or about $430 billion in lost GDP worldwide.

On the data front, European PMIs were mixed, with the flash composite reading for July coming lighter than expected at 54.3. “Although the rate of growth remained relatively robust in July,” Markit noted, “weakened new order inflows and reduced business expectations of future activity added to the downbeat picture.” Meanwhile, retail sales in Europe were unchanged in May at 0.1%, while sales were up 1.4% on a year-over-year basis. According to Eurostat, the highest gains by country were Portugal (+4.7%), Latvia (+3.4%) and Slovenia (3.1%).

In a media call, European Central Banker head Mario Draghi turned sharply dovish, according to Zero Hedge, acknowledging that the European Union headline inflation, now hovering at around 2.0%, may not be sustained. “If you look at inflation excluding oil and food, it’s now 0.9% from 1.1% last time. And the underlying inflation remains muted. So we are seeing encouraging signs here and there [but] it’s very early to call victory.” Both the euro and Bund yields tumbled in response.

Viktor Shvets, head of Asia strategy at Macquarie Commodities and Global Markets, expressed solidarity with troubled emerging markets in the face of the Fed’s Quantitative Easing. Shvets told Bloomberg TV the Fed’s program to reduce its debt stocks “is destroying money, destroying roughly $50 billion every month.” The Fed will ultimately back down, said Shvets, “because the global economy cannot withstand monetary tightening, and will in coming months force a halt to the campaign.”

Cantor Fitzgerald warned of a slide in the Chinese Yuan – “like a sword in the tariff fight” – as it can handily offset the impact of any tariffs imposed. Dismissing market talk China would hold the line at 6.70, Cantor admonished investors to “think back to 2015, when the Yuan was at the center of a storm of global market volatility into early 2016” as a reminder of Beijing’s staying power when it comes to currency depreciation.

The information, statements, views and opinions included in this publication are based on sources (both internal and external sources) considered to be reliable, but not representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to their accuracy, completeness or correctness. Such information, statements, views and opinions are expressed as of the date of publication, are subject to change without further notice and do not constitute a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any investment referenced in the publication.

The Partnervest Monthly Global Outlook was originally published on AlphaBaskets

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dragnews · 6 years

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Is time running out for Venus?

LONDON (Reuters) – When Venus Williams declared on Friday that she had simply run “out of time”, she was referring to her third-round Wimbledon loss to Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens.

Tennis – Wimbledon – All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London, Britain – July 6, 2018 Venus Williams of the U.S. in action during the third round match against Netherlands’ Kiki Bertens REUTERS/Andrew Boyers

But the statement might well be relating to her career.

At 38, she has already made a mockery of her father Richard’s 1990s prediction that his daughter’s career would be done and dusted by the time she turned 25.

But after Friday’s 6-2 6-7(5) 8-6 defeat followed first- round losses at the Australian and French Opens – to Belinda Bencic and Wang Qiang respectively – one cannot help but wonder if the sun is finally setting on one of the most storied careers in tennis.

Whereas going through lean spells is nothing new for Williams, her 2018 struggles seem to be in stark contrast to her joyous runs to the 2017 Australian Open and Wimbledon finals.

Those one-arm raised victory twirls were a welcome sight as she won six successive matches at Melbourne Park, with the only rival denying her that final hurrah being her sister Serena in the final.

Six months later she again raised the possibility of becoming the oldest women’s grand slam champion when she was back contesting a ninth Wimbledon showpiece – only to fall to Spaniard Garbine Muguruza.

But 12 months on and she seems to have lost her on-court mojo.

On Friday, she appeared to be moving in ultra-slow-mo between points during the first set against Bertens.

Her fearsome serve had gone AWOL and the stinging winners were also in short supply as she held serve only once during the one-sided first set.

But a woman who built a career on overcoming every obstacle fate can throw at her — be it a long-term illness or a childhood spent dodging bullets during practice sessions in Compton, California — was determined not to give up her pursuit of a sixth Wimbledon title.

Her game suddenly sparked into life when she stood two points from defeat at 4-5 down in the second set, but having also fought back from one set down in her two previous matches, there was only so much her aging limbs could do and on Friday it simply was not enough to carry her over the finishing line.

When the American had previously gone through such barren phases – there had always seemed to be a plausible explanation.

Slideshow (2 Images)

Between 2012 and 2014, she also failed to clear the third round at any of the majors but that slump coincided with Williams being diagnosed with the autoimmune illness Sjogrens Syndrome – which causes fatigue and muscle and joint pain.

On Friday, Williams’ monosyllabic and contradictory answers during her post-match news conference at Wimbledon seemed to suggest it was not just her body that had had enough.

Did she have any thoughts on what she plans to do next or whether she would be back here next year?

“No,” came back the response.

So will fans get to see her here next year?

“Yeah,” she offered seconds later.

On Friday, no one knew which statement would turn out to be true come Wimbledon 2019.

Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by Ed Osmond

The post Is time running out for Venus? appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2IYKHlK via Today News

#Daily News #Daily World News #Daily Business News #Daily Sports News #World The News

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newestbalance · 6 years

Text

Is time running out for Venus?

LONDON (Reuters) – When Venus Williams declared on Friday that she had simply run “out of time”, she was referring to her third-round Wimbledon loss to Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens.

But the statement might well be relating to her career.

At 38, she has already made a mockery of her father Richard’s 1990s prediction that his daughter’s career would be done and dusted by the time she turned 25.

Whereas going through lean spells is nothing new for Williams, her 2018 struggles seem to be in stark contrast to her joyous runs to the 2017 Australian Open and Wimbledon finals.

Those one-arm raised victory twirls were a welcome sight as she won six successive matches at Melbourne Park, with the only rival denying her that final hurrah being her sister Serena in the final.

But 12 months on and she seems to have lost her on-court mojo.

On Friday, she appeared to be moving in ultra-slow-mo between points during the first set against Bertens.

Her fearsome serve had gone AWOL and the stinging winners were also in short supply as she held serve only once during the one-sided first set.

When the American had previously gone through such barren phases – there had always seemed to be a plausible explanation.

Slideshow (2 Images)

On Friday, Williams’ monosyllabic and contradictory answers during her post-match news conference at Wimbledon seemed to suggest it was not just her body that had had enough.

Did she have any thoughts on what she plans to do next or whether she would be back here next year?

“No,” came back the response.

So will fans get to see her here next year?

“Yeah,” she offered seconds later.

On Friday, no one knew which statement would turn out to be true come Wimbledon 2019.

Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by Ed Osmond

The post Is time running out for Venus? appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2IYKHlK via Everyday News

#News #Online News #World News #Today news #health News #Social News #Forex News #World The News

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topsolarpanels · 7 years

Text

New energy outlooks appear good for Elon Musk, but depict trouble for Trump and coal industry

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors Inc ., talks about the Model X vehicle at the company’s headquarters, in Fremont, Calif .

Image: Jose Sanchez/ AP/ REX/ Shutterstock

President Donald Trump can forget reviving America’s fossil fuel sector, because the future belongs to renewable energy titans like Tesla’s Elon Musk. According to a new report, there may not be any growth in petroleum and coal employ worldwide after the year 2020.

This contrasts with Trump’s vision of a revived coal, oil and gas sector in the U.S ., which was central to his electoral victory in states such as Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia.

SEE ALSO: How 21 kids could maintain climate websites from going totally dark

The report, co-authored by the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and the Carbon Tracker Initiative, found that solar and wind power plus electric vehicles will each experience explosive growth in the next decade, to the point where electric vehicles alone could slash global petroleum employ per day by 2 million barrels by 2025. This may rise to 25 million barrels per day by 2050, the report states.

Like others before it, the analysis offers a warn to fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, whose former CEO, Rex Tillerson, is now Trump’s secretary of state, that they are underestimating advances in low-carbon energy technologies and may lose billions due to this miscalculation.

Steam rises from the brown coal-fired power plant Niederaussem operated by RWE in Bergheim, Germany, Jan. 13, 2017.

Image: STEINBACH/ EPA/ REX/ Shutterstock

Such companies are instead planning for a future in which petroleum demand continues to grow. They’re constructing major infrastructure and investment decisions on such a gamble, and if it turns out to be wrong, as the new report suggests, then these companies could find themselves to be the owners of so-called “stranded assets.” Such assets in this case would be petroleum, coal and gas reserves that won’t be burned, and therefore won’t make them any money.

The new report, which was produced using computer modeling, use a different starting point for its forecast that includes the recent declines in solar prices and increased access to electric vehicles.

“Electric vehicles and solar power are game-changers that the fossil fuel industry consistently underestimates, ” told Luke Sussams, senior researcher at Carbon Tracker in London, in a statement.

Trump should be taking note of this report, too, Sussams told. Like many energy experts, he doesn’t suppose the Trump White House can do much to jump start the fossil fuel sector given the huge drops in prices for renewables.

However, Trump has already promised to bolster the U.S. coal sector, open up more federal lands to oil and gas drilling and swiftly approve the controversial Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, among other policies.

It wasnt really policy that killed off the U.S. coal industry, it was actually just on a pure economics basis that natural gas and renewable energy served to outcompete coal, ” he said in an interview.

Once an energy source becomes the cheapest alternative, Sussams said, Policy isnt the thing driving it anymore, just the pure economics.”

A key point in this report is that “business as usual” projections should be discarded, since they don’t include the steep cost reductions in solar panels and electric vehicles, along with emissions reductions cuts countries committed to under the Paris Climate Agreement.

A coal train is loaded and waits to move in Williamson, West Virginia on Nov. 11, 2016.

Image: Steve Helber/ AP/ REX/ Shutterstock

For example, the cost of solar photolvoltaics has plummeted by 85 percentage during the last seven years alone, research reports notes, to move to rapid growth in residential and commercial solar installations.

Using updated information that includes these recent changes, the research team found that solar power could render about 30 percentage of global electric power by 2050, with coal phasing out completely and natural gas left with a measly 1 percent global market share.

Outlook for road transport by fuel type, showing significant growth in electric vehicles( EVs) during the next few decades.

Image: carbon tracker initiative/ grantham institute

Exxon insures a far different future ahead, with all renewables providing simply 11 percentage of global power generation by 2040.

As for electric cars, the report projects that they could comprise up to a third of the road transport marketplace by 2035, and grab more than two-thirds of the shares by 2050. This prediction stands in stark contrast to a recent projection from the oil and gas giant BP, which found that electric vehicles would comprise merely 6 percent of the global market in 2035.

These projections, if they are born out, would be good news for the climate, given that burning oil and gas for energy emits planet-warming greenhouse gases. And there is reason to think that this report could be born out in reality, considering that, as Sussams points out, it’s extremely difficult to predict the rate at which new technologies will enter the mainstream, with a long history of famous underestimates, from mobile phones to personal computing.

The scenario envisioned in the report would limit global warming to between 2.4 to 2.7 degrees Celsius, or 4.32 to 4.86 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100.

This still would violate the commitment that world leaders built in the Paris agreement, which was to limit global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels through 2100.

Many scientists doubt that we will be able to limit global warming to the 2-degree target even with stringent emissions cuts and considerable technological progress. With 2016 ranking as the warmest year on record for countries around the world, temperatures are already flirting with the 1.5 -degree Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above the preindustrial average.

A study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change found that in order for the world to gratify the 2-degree temperature target, the annual growth in total energy use would need to stay stable or deterioration while renewables continue to grow. That is not likely to happen, given population growth and aspirations for higher living criteria in the developing world.

Coal use in the United States plunged by one one-quarter in the last two years and by almost half over the past decades, told survey co-author Robert Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, said in a statement. Natural gas and renewables are taking its place, and there is little … the present Trump administration can do to stop it.

The rapid deployment of breeze and solar is starting to have an effect globally, and in leading player such as China, the U.S ., and the E.U ., said Glen Peters, a scientist at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo( CICERO ). Peters, who also co-wrote the Nature analyze, said breeze and solar power alone won’t be enough for the world to meet its Paris agreement targets.

For that to happen, we need a way to capture and permanently store carbon from burning fossil fuel and bioenergy. Such technology is known as carbon capture and storage, and it is still in its infancy when it comes to deploying it in an affordable and effective manner.

However, scenarios that would limit global warming to the Paris agreement’s temperature target would require tens of thousands of facilities that have carbon capture and storage technologies deployed by 2030, and so far there are nowhere near that many in development.

We are already at a stage where we have effectively emitted too much carbon dioxide, and the only feasible pathway to keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius is to physically remove carbon from the ambiance, said Peters in a statement.

The rapid and continued deployment of breeze and solar is greet, but the real challenge required is to develop technologies and behaviours that change the entire global energy system to be carbon neutral by mid-century.

BONUS: The world’s largest solar tower is being built in Israel

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