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The dangers from rapid loss of oil revenue — “traumatic decarbonization” — as well as the varied possible outcomes emerge in four case studies within the new research (with studies on Venezuela and Ecuador forthcoming).

South Sudan. From 2005 to 2012, South Sudan’s rival elites bought the loyalty of armed men with oil money. The collapse of those rents in 2013 triggered civil war. The competing factions shifted their patronage system from oil revenues to the distribution of profitable government offices and “licenses.” Some licenses were literal contracts; others were de facto agreements letting armed groups tax, loot and raid the populations under their control. This shift from oil to predation as the revenue source has intensified inequality and misery among South Sudanese while enabling continued domination by the small elite groups. This change may well prove durable as well as brutal.

Popular unrest continues to grow across Russian territory. Citizens are increasingly unhappy with their economic situation and repeated waves of press-gang conscription. Protests and social unrest grow inside Russia as a result of continued conscription, high casualty numbers, economic stagnation, and domestic instability feeding on each other.

Russia’s military and state apparatus collapse, leading to large ungoverned spaces and the rise of Russian warlords with access to stolen Russian weaponry and little concern for international norms. Russian oil and gas facilities, despite their degraded status, become the prize in the growing civil war among rival Russian warlords.10 There is the very real possibility that facilities will be collateral damage in such fights, if not targeted to keep them out of the hands of rival factions, with tremendous economic and environmental harm should facilities be damaged or destroyed.

Historically, most scenarios of leadership change have necessitated military or paramilitary force. Therefore, leadership change in Moscow will potentially require one or more security forces switching loyalties to sideline smaller factions and counter the risk of the incumbent leader fighting back or of a conspiracy being detected early. That dynamic would make a violent form of removal more likely than nonviolent forms (such as resignation). The current leadership’s suppression of internal criticism and systematic promotion of misinformation—including about the strength of its own regime—can also lead to a misinterpretation of signals and violent overreactions.

On the surface, Putin’s regime appears stable. The docility of the elite, the persistence of vast financial reserves and oil rents, and the state’s adeptness in shaping public opinion all make Putin seem invincible. But his system is “not collapsing” in the same way that the late Soviet Union was “not collapsing.” And as with the Soviet Union, the structure of Putin’s regime makes it far more fragile than it appears.

Consider that, just a year ago, hardly anyone could have envisioned Prigozhin’s mercenaries marching hundreds of miles toward Moscow and meeting hardly any resistance along the way, or an anti-Semitic mob storming a Russian international airport. Similar unpredictability is likely to mark future crises of the Russian regime. Even a minor incident, whether a setback in Ukraine, elite infighting, or new domestic unrest, could trigger a political avalanche if accelerated by the authorities’ inaction or policies based on Putin’s delusions. It is not the gravity of Russia’s problems but how the Kremlin deals with them that has positioned the regime permanently on the brink of collapse.

Meanwhile, an aging President Putin disengages from the day-to-day management of Russia’s affairs. State functions remain divided among elite camps, but the Kremlin ceases to coordinate and deconflict. The Federal Security Service now occupies a privileged position within decisionmaking, since it enjoys both the physical resources of state power and the trust of Vladimir Putin himself. The security services begin to operate with greater independence from the center, quelling the loudest expressions of public dissent through violence and intimidation but also ensuring the “loyalty” of oligarchs, Russian business leaders, and the technocratic class to a personalist autocracy that now lacks a leader. With little oversight from a central authority, this enforcement becomes arbitrary and opportunistic, resulting in more arrests of business figures and state seizures of private or partially private assets. As a result, investor enthusiasm in Russia, already severely weakened as a result of its aggressive actions in Europe, plummets further. Technocrats in government mostly stay out of the fray, but tension between Russia’s oligarchic class and the security services reaches new levels, with the former relying more on private militias to protect its assets and guarantee personal safety.

Compounding this tension is a growing divide along Russia’s center-region vector, as regional governors refuse to take the flak for falling living standards and the mismanagement of climate impacts while receiving precious little support from Moscow. A center-region divide also exacerbates tension between the ruling United Russia party and “systemic” opposition—the Just Russia, New People, Communist, and LDPR parties—the latter of which have higher representation in Siberia and the Far East and benefit politically from regional antipathy toward Moscow. No longer willing to toe the Kremlin’s line and seeing opportunities to advance their own standing at the expense of the regime, these opposition parties begin to operate more independently and draw attention to the mismanagement and corruption of the ruling United Russia party. They are also more nationalistic than United Russia. A climate of internal repression brews, and the influence of ultra-nationalists grows among the military and security services. The regime’s brittleness, enduring hostility to Euro-Atlantic institutions, and nationalistic rhetoric begin to worry the international community about Russia’s control of its nuclear forces. The regime itself begins to destabilize.

The collapse in oil prices has created a bleak outlook for a number of companies and also could lead to dire political consequences for governments in the Middle East and Russia, whose budgets are already strained and who depend on fossil fuel revenue, say Western diplomats and political analysts.

If oil prices do not recover soon, analysts warn, even strong central powers risk destabilization.

Amid the dizzying acceleration of headlines and debate about the vital global transition to renewable energy, new research shows how that change could destabilize dozens of fragile states that depend heavily on oil exports. The new study underscores that governments and international institutions will need to guard against risks that the shift away from carbon-heavy fuels will inadvertently upset political balances and potentially ignite violent conflicts in a swath of nations from Venezuela to Nigeria to Iraq and beyond. Above all, the research suggests, the world must avoid an unplanned “traumatic decarbonization” of these economies.

The U.S. recommitment to the Paris climate accords — plus summit conferences called by the Biden administration, the G7 nations and NATO — reflect the reality that countries are moving to cut their oil consumption in hope of constraining the planet’s warming. Politicians in the world’s more comfortably developed nations focus on managing this transition to serve their own economies and polities, meeting costs and generating jobs, with an eye toward winning the next election.

Oil prices rose in early trade on Monday as investors keep a lookout for signs of a rate-cut cycle expected to begin as soon as September. Brent crude prices were up 48 cents, or 0.57%, at $83.10 a barrel by 0035 GMT, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 42 cents, or 0.52%, to $80.55. "Since the June FOMC meeting, inflation and labour market data have signalled that disinflation and labour market rebalancing are in place, which we expect will allow the Fed to begin its interest rate cutting cycle in September," ANZ Research said in a note. The U.S. Federal Reserve will next hold a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on interest rates on July 30-31, at which investors expect the Fed to keep the rates unchanged, while looking for any signal of a cut coming later in the year. On the political front, U.S. President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid on Sunday under pressure from fellow Democrats and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's candidate to face Republican Donald Trump in November. Slower-than-expected economic growth of 4.7% for China in the second quarter sparked concerns last week over the country's demand for oil and continues to weigh on prices.

With Putin now gravely weakened, the Russian state again appears unstable. But there is no guarantee that such an effort could be repeated. A nuclear black market could spread weapons, material and scientists to the far corners of the globe.

The final terror was that an insane [unstable] Putin might explode the weapons in revenge. If the coup succeeded and he was going down, would he take the nation down with him? Or worse? A nuclear version of Hitler in the bunker asking “Is Paris burning?”

The Kremlin has grown confident that its risk-taking usually achieves favorable results, leading it to adopt a more confrontational stance with the West to achieve its strategic aims. That attitude of risk tolerance rests on a perception that Russia and the current regime do not face any imminent existential threats, despite fevered statements from top officials about the dangers posed by NATO enlargement and Ukraine’s cooperation with Euro-Atlantic partners. In reality, the most likely threats to regime survival are likely to come from within and not from the West. A genuine political crisis emerges that threatens the regime politically—for instance, the emergence of a nationwide protest movement calling for new leadership over poor economic conditions and endemic corruption, an excessively violent crackdown on public protests that ignites outrage, or the emergence of a grassroots anti-war movement as Russian soldiers are killed and wounded while enforcing Russia’s claims to a sphere of influence—could induce the Kremlin to move toward extreme risk acceptance as it hopes to deflect emerging discontent by mobilizing the country against external threats.

Economy

Amid the dizzying acceleration of headlines and debate about the vital global transition to renewable energy, new research shows how that change could destabilize dozens of fragile states that depend heavily on oil exports. The new study underscores that governments and international institutions will need to guard against risks that the shift away from carbon-heavy fuels will inadvertently upset political balances and potentially ignite violent conflicts in a swath of nations from Venezuela to Nigeria to Iraq and beyond. Above all, the research suggests, the world must avoid an unplanned “traumatic decarbonization” of these economies.

The U.S. recommitment to the Paris climate accords — plus summit conferences called by the Biden administration, the G7 nations and NATO — reflect the reality that countries are moving to cut their oil consumption in hope of constraining the planet’s warming. Politicians in the world’s more comfortably developed nations focus on managing this transition to serve their own economies and polities, meeting costs and generating jobs, with an eye toward winning the next election.

Oil prices rose in early trade on Monday as investors keep a lookout for signs of a rate-cut cycle expected to begin as soon as September. Brent crude prices were up 48 cents, or 0.57%, at $83.10 a barrel by 0035 GMT, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 42 cents, or 0.52%, to $80.55. "Since the June FOMC meeting, inflation and labour market data have signalled that disinflation and labour market rebalancing are in place, which we expect will allow the Fed to begin its interest rate cutting cycle in September," ANZ Research said in a note. The U.S. Federal Reserve will next hold a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on interest rates on July 30-31, at which investors expect the Fed to keep the rates unchanged, while looking for any signal of a cut coming later in the year. On the political front, U.S. President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid on Sunday under pressure from fellow Democrats and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's candidate to face Republican Donald Trump in November. Slower-than-expected economic growth of 4.7% for China in the second quarter sparked concerns last week over the country's demand for oil and continues to weigh on prices.

It really disgusts me to think about how capitalism has turned musicians into products. When I think about marketing and branding of major musicians, it's often to sell the general public a product. Often times, its hard to not compare these practices to that of chattel slavery within the US, the same way JAY-Z did in “What’s Free’. Instead of empowering musicians to be independent and trust in their artistic direction these corporations want to limit artists and churn out popular hits. But not every Black artist is interested in creating music to be popular, but instead to partake in their own personal cultural production. I imagine cultural progress is where we see this shift from music labels dominating the industry to independent artists equally taking up space. IP scholars are empowering people through this acknowledgement of what needs to shift for there to be a progressive future. Our current copyright legislation fails to provide equitable access for marginalized American musicians and entrepreneurs. Due to how hard it is to turn a profit as an independent artist, many musicians are encouraged to sign to music corporations to share and monetize their music. The truth is, there needs to be more options beyond independence or signing to a label. This illusion of personal responsibility for taking on the financial burden of independence is exactly why we need more community based initiatives that are focused on educating marginalized creators and musicians about their intellectual property rights. IIPSJ is directly targeting Black and brown musicians, some of the most trailblazing groups in the music industry. There needs to be a major shift in how we imagine the groups of people responsible for providing us with the most original musical content. What happens when Black people begin to protest by not releasing music for the sake of gaining back their power as creators. Would we see a major decrease in the rate of new ideas in our music. It’s no secret that African Americans are musical trailblazers. If there was a way for all Black musicians to come together and speak out about the lack of access and inclusivity around intellectual property, maybe there could be a major shift in the institution as a whole. Owning the copyright is extremely important if you want to protect the music and I don’t think we should get rid of the concept of copyright. I think there needs to be more access and education to copyright within Black communities, where original music is being produced at an extremely fast rate. IIPSJ is bringing together this community starting with the Black lawyers that can provide the knowledge and building out from there. If the power in the music industry changes from the major corporations to the individual creators, and pulls away from the sole prioritization of economic gain, it’s possible that we could actually see more original art being produced. Who knows exactly how much music has never seen the light of day because the music label thought it didn’t fit the sound or image they were looking for. And truthfully Black people thrive when they stand out, not when they stand in. By empowering Black musicians and entrepreneurs, IIPSJ is working towards a larger shift in these industries for everyone, not just Black people. If you can empower the most oppressed group by taking away financial burdens and providing necessary education, you change the game for everyone. If our legislators truly want copyright to be neutral and equal for everyone it needs to be free and it needs to be known.

In a landmark victory for songwriters, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a new rule on July 10 that ensures songwriters who reclaim their works from their publishers will also receive streaming royalties for those works through The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. spoke on the ruling: "After years of engagement and activism on this issue, the Academy applauds the Copyright Office for protecting the rights of songwriters and affirming their ability to receive appropriate compensation after reclaiming their copyrights. We also thank our friends in the music community for their partnership and collaboration as we fought for this important victory." Songwriters often sign over the copyright to their music to publishers who then promote, license, and monetize their work. By law, songwriters have "termination rights" which allow them to end their publisher agreement and regain their copyrights after a period of time under certain conditions. However, the MLC — which administers a blanket license for streaming platforms to use songs — initially determined that royalties generated from streams would continue to go to the license holder at the time a song is uploaded to a streaming service rather than to the current copyright owner at the time a song is streamed. Starting back in 2020, the Recording Academy, along with other songwriter groups, opposed this practice as it undermined the purpose of termination rights, which exist to level the playing field for songwriters and other creators who may have entered into unfavorable deals. Since 2020, the Recording Academy held multiple ex parte meetings with the Copyright Office to discuss the impacts of the MLC's determination, and submitted formal comments and reply comments throughout the Office's rulemaking proceedings. In stating its position, the Academy argued its belief that termination rights are among the most important protections that songwriters, artists, and other creators have for their work. The Academy also urged the USCO to avoid weakening or infringing on these protections. The U.S. Copyright Office has since agreed with the Recording Academy and deemed the MLC's decision an "erroneous" rule, stating that if a songwriter reclaims the copyright to their music, they should receive the royalties. And after multiple years of rulemaking, the Copyright Office published a final rule last week directing the MLC to distribute royalty payments in accordance with the Copyright Act. The rule: Directs the MLC to make future royalty payments to the copyright holder at the time a stream is played. Directs the MLC to engage in a "corrective adjustment" process to address any overpayments made due to the erroneous rule. The Recording Academy is proud to champion ownership rights for songwriters and to amplify the voices of small creators. For more information about the new rule, visit here. Watch: House Judiciary Subcommittee Holds "Radio, Music And Copyrights: 100 Years Of Inequity For Recording Artists" Hearing

The people who are experts in the law and also believe in maintaining its fundamental principles are consistently talking about how to make the system work better for small creators. In fact, I don’t know a single pro-copyright authority (and I know quite a few) who does not think the system could use some tinkering in a few places to better serve individual authors. But tinkering. Not dissolution of the whole system and starting with a blank slate as FFTF decrees in its new campaign. Here are just a few recent examples off the top of my head: Terrica Carrington, VP Legal Policy and Copyright Counsel at Copyright Alliance, recently blogged about the intersection of copyright and cultural misappropriation of choreography, explaining what the #blacktiktokstrike is all about. “Cultural misappropriation is an ethical concern that is not always rooted in the law,” writes Carrington, “but in some instances, these ethical concerns overlap with the law in such a way that makes the offense not only morally wrong, but illegal. That is the situation Black creators on TikTok are being confronted with: misappropriation of culturally relevant dances that may also be copyright infringement.” The American Music Fairness Act is backed by copyright advocates great and small because this legislation finally proposes to overturn the status quo whereby U.S. terrestrial radio broadcasters have been exempted from royalty payments to musical artists. This law directly mandates that a very big industry finally pay fair rates to individual creators, which is just one reason my friend Blake Morgan (an archetypal indie artist) was standing on Capitol Hill the day lawmakers announced the bill this past June 24th. Did FFTF back this bill? Nah. Steven Tepp, copyright consultant and former senior counsel at the Copyright Office, recently spoke with me on the IOM podcast about some of the formalities in copyright registration and enforcement that, with even modest changes, could make copyright work better for the independent author. For example, Tepp specifically recommends making the designation “published” optional on registration applications because the uncertainty in the law as to the meaning of “published” puts small creators at a disadvantage when it comes to enforcing their rights. I know that’s wonky and arcane, but that’s what actual, sober policy reform looks like. Prof. Lateef Mtima, founder and director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, spoke extensively on the IOM podcast about how essential it is to not throw out the IP baby with the bathwater. “One of the problems with some of those perspectives,” Mtima said, “is that it basically accepts a premise that the system can only be utilized for social evil and corporate benefit. As I said in the beginning [of the podcast], I fundamentally don’t think that way, but as a practical matter, that’s not particularly helpful.” Copyright Alliance, whose key members include several of the big media companies FFTF is complaining about, has filed pro-copyright amicus briefs in cases that have major implications for small creators. Allen v. Cooper, Unicolors v. H&M, Canada Hockey LLC v. Texas A&M University, Brammer v. ViolentHues Productions, Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com, VHT v. Zillow, to name a few. Oh, and what was that law that passed at the end of 2020 that FFTF and its sister organizations tried so hard to kill? The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claim Enforcement (CASE) Act? Arguably, this is the most significant amendment to U.S. copyright law ever written with the sole purpose of helping independent creators, and FFTF, EFF, PublicKnowledge, et al opposed it. And worse, they lied about CASE being a big media bill, which is absurd on its face because big media doesn’t need a small claim option. Specifically, on the subject of music, the good folks at FFTF should be ashamed of themselves for citing Spotify as a predator that pays songwriters pennies. I mean Spotify is a predator that pays songwriters pennies, but where was FFTF when the songwriters started mentioning this problem about ten minutes after the platform launched in 2011?* I know! They were being founded. Coincidentally at the very same time the Internet Association was established, the anti-piracy bills SOPA/PIPA were being hammered by Silicon Valley, and Google increased its lobbying expenditures from negligible to the top five. One might almost get the idea that FFTF was forged in a crucible of tech money for the purpose of weakening copyright law. With Friends Like FFTF? Independent artists already know the difficulties when it comes to protecting their work and enforcing their rights. I interact with some of these creators almost every day. And not once have I seen a writer, musician, photographer, etc. say, “Wow, I’m struggling because Disney is too big.” Why they usually say is, “Some clown just posted my work on his website or used it in his commercial or in a YouTube video, etc. without permission.” Or quite commonly, “A foreign counterfeiter is selling my stuff on Amazon or eBay.” These are the kind of problems copyright advocates discuss all the time. Policy changes are hard. Look how long it takes to get infrastructure legislation passed when everybody mostly agrees! Fight for the Future has a lot of nerve declaring that a system as complex as copyright law is “broken” just because they say it is and then presuming to declare that we must scrap it and “reimagine” the whole thing for the 21st century. What this really means is that they want to reimagine some of your money into their donation coffers while they spin tales about agendas they are never going to achieve. And neither should they.

Last month, Black creators across TikTok started the #BlackTikTokStrike, protesting what many would describe as the cultural misappropriation of Black art by white social media influencers. Specifically, Black dancers and choreographers participating in the strike are opting not to create and post choreography on the platform in response to wholesale copying of those dances, without permission, attribution, or compensation. This narrative—the exploitation and erasure of Black creators, and whitewashing of Black cultural output—is not a new one. And it is as much a relevant social justice issue as anything else that further exploits and marginalizes communities that are already at a significant disadvantage. Cultural misappropriation is an ethical concern that is not always rooted in the law, but in some instances, these ethical concerns overlap with the law in such a way that makes the offense not only morally wrong, but illegal. That is the situation Black creators on TikTok are being confronted with: misappropriation of culturally relevant dances that may also be copyright infringement. But many of these young creators don’t seem to realize that choreography—like music, books, movies, drawings, etc.—is intellectual property. Protection of choreography has been a facet of U.S. copyright law since the 1909 Act (although it wasn’t until the 1976 Act that choreography was expressly recognized as its own category of copyrightable expression).” In granting protection to choreography, Congress extended protection to “those more intricate dances, such as ballets, devised for execution by skilled performers for the enjoyment of an audience” but not to simple dance steps, “such as the steps of a ballroom or other social dance, devised primarily for the enjoyment of the dancers themselves.” While important, this distinction may be both unclear and unhelpful to Black choreographers who—against the backdrop of Black culture, where performative dance is a deeply ingrained social and spiritual expression once key to our very survival in America—create intricate sequences that require a level of skill (certainly more skill than a waltz) and are clearly devised for enjoyment by an audience, but that are also inherently social. In Black culture, a dance being socialized does not necessarily detract from its intricacy, the level of creativity required to create it, or the fact that it is also created to be performed by skilled dancers before an audience. Often, all of those are true at once. The dances that go viral on TikTok are a perfect example. So, the #BlackTikTokStrike is not about preventing TikTok users from learning and performing popular choreograpxhy in social settings. In fact, that’s probably the last thing any of these creators want. Many of them make significant investments on the frontend in hopes that their content will go viral, some even moving into collab houses where they live and create social media content fulltime in collaboration with other housemates. This strike is about the exploitation of Black labor and Black creativity. It’s about digital Blackface. It’s about Black creators having to raise this issue again and again in different contexts. It’s about the fact that Black creators have made significant contributions to American culture and creativity, yet continue to be excluded when it comes time to reap the benefits of those contributions. For example, earlier this year, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon received backlash after inviting TikTok influencer Addison Rae Easterling to perform a series of viral TikTok dances on the show. Many of the dances were the work of Black creators, but they were not featured, credited or compensated. Easterling’s reported net worth is $5 million. In another instance, an influencer named Charli D’Amelio “became popular for her dancing and choreography, most notably to the song ‘Renegade.’”She became so popular, in fact, that she is ranked as the no. 1 influencer on TikTok, and has reportedly amassed $4 million since joining the platform just two years ago. The problem? D’Amelio is not the choreographer of the Renegade dance, and for a long time, the actual choreographer, a Black girl named Jalaiah Harmon, received zero recognition or credit, much less compensation (for comparison’s sake, Harmon’s estimated net worth today is between $60,000 and $100,000). It’s a tale we’ve heard a million times: white creators with large followings perform and “popularize” (read: whitewash) the work of Black creators, and in turn reap all of the benefits. And while credit and attribution are important, copyright law empowers many of these creators to demand more in exchange for their work. In fact, it’s time that Black creators demand more, and that is what the #BlackTikTokStrike is all about—Black creators recognizing the value of their work and refusing to be exploited. …[Cut last section]

The phonetic reduction found in Mumble Rap is rarely ever considered within the larger context of the phonetic reduction found in general language use or other forms of hip-hop. This hypocrisy maintains when acknowledging the parallels of the stigmatization of Mumble Rap by the hip-hop community and the stigmatization of AAVE by the mainstream English speaking community; due to the existing stigma against the beliefs and practices of a target group, the group's vocal production became considered falsely equivalent manifestations of the original stigma. Just as the hate and criticism toward African-Americans and their culture extended to criticism toward their language, the criticism toward this new generation of rappers and their ideologies extends toward their manner of vocal production. Consider the notion of a variant or dialect being considered incorrect. Such a value judgement implies the existence of a correct or accepted dialect: the aforementioned mainstream and standard dialects, often times dubbed Mainstream American English (MAE). It is the very nature of not complying with the institutionalized norms of MAE that appears to forge stigma. In other words, the state of being different from what is considered the norm is reason enough for stigmatization. This reactionary hatred toward the foreign is not one that is exclusive to language and vocal production, but rather one that is present in society itself [20]. Stigma originates and is placed on speakers of a variant before it is placed on the actual variant production itself. Historically, language has been used as a divisive tool, creating barriers in distinctions such as class, sex, gender, and race [18][20]. Those with the power and influence are able to maintain and affect those that lack in societal standing [18][20]. In the context of AAVE, many modern speakers have roots in the struggle for equality that they found in living in the United States. In America, from the onslaught of slavery to modern societal conflicts, speakers of AAVE have been considered secondary in society. Their culture and practices have been criticized, all the while being held in comparison to those of the dominant group, white Americans. The societal treatment of AAVE speakers is unfounded, as is the criticism of AAVE as incorrect. As the stigma against AAVE developed from the pre-existing stigma on AAVE speakers and their practices, the stigma against mumbling may have arisen from the existing stigma against young hip-hop artists and their practices. In this language stigmatization model, the dominant group's stigmatization of a minority group based on behavior and practice eventually causes the stigmatization of that minority group's language. At any given point there has existed 20 an old guard of hip-hop that does not understand the behaviors of the new guard, suggesting a power dynamic between the existing and rising artists. The old guard's disapproval of the new guard's actions may manifest in the criticism of vocal production with the disparaging label of Mumble Rap, just as the stigmatization of AAVE speakers manifests in the intolerance of AAVE and variants.

In its current context, the term Mumble Rap does not prove useful in defining any style of rapping. Rather, the term is used to disparage artists of a new generation who do not fit into the traditional roles of hip-hop. The term has little basis in actual vocal production and does not seem to refer to any linguistic characteristic shared by the artists the term tries to define. As such, the term Mumble Rap fails as a descriptor. Furthermore, the various alleged shortcomings of the new generation are the result of ideological disconnects with the old guard. Many claims of the old guard, such as the decline of lyricism and lack of intelligence, are misguided in that the newer artists have taken these traditional practices and adapted them to their fitting in the modern climate. Notions of lyricism, meaning attribution, and complexity with regard to lyrics have changed over the years due to a multitude of contextual factors. And, as shown, these shortcomings are not suffered solely by the new generation of hip-hop artists, but hip-hop artists of years past as well. The stigmatization of the contemporary mainstream hip-hop artist follows the pattern in which minority dialects and variants are stigmatized by mainstream language speakers; since the ideologies and practices of the modern hip-hop artist do not fit into those of traditional hip-hop, the old guard's existing stigma against these new artists manifests as the stigmatization of the new artists' vocal productions. With the rapidly evolving climate of modern hip-hop in the Information Age comes changes in cultural thought and behavior. These new artists dubbed as Mumble Rappers are the result of corporate capitalist interests in hip-hop and have been shown to adapt the art form of rap within the confines of a post-meaning world. Hip-hop has historically struggled with welcoming the next era of ideas and practice, as evidenced by changes in technology and data 33 distribution methods, and while these newer artists may be alleged to be indecipherable, it must be remembered that there has always existed artists who "mumble".

As Fredric Jameson reminds us, the university depends upon “Enlightenment- type critiques and demystification of belief and committed ideology, in order to clear the ground for unobstructed planning and ‘development.’” This is the weakness of the university, the lapse in its homeland security. It needs labor power for this “enlightenment type critique,” but, somehow, labor always escapes. The premature subjects of the undercommons took the call seriously, or had to be serious about the call. They were not clear about planning, too mystical, too full of belief. And yet this labor force cannot reproduce itself, it must be reproduced. The university works for the day when it will be able to rid itself, like capital in general, of the trouble of labor. It will then be able to reproduce a labor force that understands itself as not only unnecessary but dangerous to the development of capitalism. Much pedagogy and scholarship is already dedicated in this direction. Students must come to see themselves as the problem, which, counter to the complaints of restorationist critics of the university, is precisely what it means to be a customer, to take on the burden of realisation and always necessarily be inadequate to it. Later, these students will be able to see themselves properly as obstacles to society, or perhaps, with lifelong learning, students will return having successfully diagnosed themselves as the problem. Still, the dream of an undifferentiated labor that knows itself as superfluous is interrupted precisely by the labor of clearing away the burning roadblocks of ideology. While it is better that this police function be in the hands of the few, it still raises labor as difference, labor as the development of other labor, and therefore labor as a source of wealth. And although the enlightenment-type critique, as we suggest below, informs on, kisses the cheek of, any autonomous development as a result of this difference in labor, there is a break in the wall here, a shallow place in the river, a place to land under the rocks. The university still needs this clandestine labor to prepare this undifferentiated labor force, whose increasing specialisation and managerialist tendencies, again contra the restorationists, represent precisely the successful integration of the division of labor with the universe of exchange that commands restorationist loyalty. Introducing this labor upon labor, and providing the space for its development, creates risks. Like the colonial police force recruited unwittingly from guerrilla neighborhoods, university labor may harbor refugees, fugitives, renegades, and castaways. But there are good reasons for the university to be confident that such elements will be exposed or forced underground. Precautions have been taken, book lists have been drawn up, teaching observations conducted, invitations to contribute made. Yet against these precautions stands the immanence of transcendence, the necessary deregulation and the possibilities of criminality and fugitivity that labor upon labor requires. Maroon communities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer management professors, state college ethnic studies departments, closed-down film programs, visaexpired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically black college sociologists, and feminist engineers. And what will the university say of them? It will say they are unprofessional. This is not an arbitrary charge. It is the charge against the more than professional. How do those who exceed the profession, who exceed and by exceeding escape, how do those maroons problematize themselves, problematize the university, force the university to consider them a problem, a danger? The undercommons is not, in short, the kind of fanciful communities of whimsy invoked by Bill Readings at the end of his book. The undercommons, its maroons, are always at war, always in hiding.

One does not need to seek employment with the Pentagon, take part in counterinsurgency, or work for the Human Terrain System in order to provide useful, even if involuntary, support for the national security, intelligence and military goals of the U.S., or any NATO state for that matter. In fact, one does not even need to be an American anthropologist in order to provide the U.S. military and intelligence with the information they seek. One needs to simply produce useful anthropology and not be mindful of the consequences of how it can be used by unintended audiences, now or in the future, to support agendas of which one may have limited awareness and even less desire to support. With this and much more in mind, my ambition is to seek the creation of a useless anthropology, and while some would say I was always on the right track for achieving that, I think more of us need to share a goal of producing useless research, to make worthless contributions, and by useless I mean useless to power, to empire, to domination, to regimes of scrutiny and inspection of the periphery. And not just useless, but even toxic and repulsive to the scientists of conquest – an anthropology of both withdrawal and resistance, free of false dilemmas that work to support business as usual, willing to set fire to the crops we planted if it stops them from being harvested by the tyrant, liberating ourselves from being our own best hostages. The idea is to refuse further engagement with the international traffic in information and knowledge that supports the workings of empire, capital, and the state. In this presentation I seek to make three main points. First, to indicate some of the ways that all of us can be even unwillingly useful in supporting U.S. military and intelligence interests. Second, to reflect on the meaning of useful anthropology. Third, to point the way to possible alternatives, that could entail unthinking anthropology as we know it. With reference to the first point, made the point that at this moment in history “there is no such thing as an innocent anthropology” (p. 43). We know now that the U.S. military and intelligence are looking for ways of incorporating scholars in producing a global surveillance net. One way is to bring social scientists on counterinsurgency and pacification missions. Another is to have them conduct analysis of stolen Iraqi documents (see and ), or to conduct fieldwork in areas of emerging or potential threat and describe the radicalization process and ways of counteracting it, as part of the Pentagon’s , managed in partnership with the . Another is to comb through electronic resources. And yet another is just to , by scanning, copying, seizing any or all electronic devices or written records from researchers as they enter the United States whether returning home to the U.S., or just traveling through, U.S. Border Patrol and Customs agents can: scan and hold laptops indefinitely; they can make electronic copies of hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, video and audio tapes; and, they can seize papers, documents, books, pamphlets, or even litter. This is also true of Canada and the . Open access publishing, and publishing in electronic formats that are thus amenable to automated harvesting, is a critically important way that ethnographic data can be used by the national security state without the willing participation of researchers. “Intelligence does not have to be secret to be valuable!” says the of the University of Military Intelligence, regarding open access resources, which takes us to Intelink-U, part of the U.S. Army’s , emerging from the Open Source Information System which serves the US intelligence community with open source intelligence. Among Intelink-U’s subscriptions is the University of New Mexico’s Latin America Database, as well as EbscoHost Databases. The Foreign Military Studies office is also in the process of creating the (WBIL), which promotes the concept of “” telling us that: “About 85% of requirements in the intelligence business can be met with open source, unclassified sources, and can be exploited by qualified military reservists working by telecommuting. The WBIL has remotely located reservists from all four branches of the service doing ‘virtual’ collection and production utilizing their home Personal Computers.” Also, the states that it has a “requirement to provide US Forces [in] Afghanistan…with the capability to collect, analyze, and disseminate open source (i.e. sociological or anthropological) information.” With reference to the second point of this presentation, the bases for a useful anthropology, let us note that useful, objective, neutral, and scientific, are once again the buzzwords for an anthropology aligned with power, in the service of the national security state, while rhetorically attempting to move the militarization of the academy beyond the sphere of “politics”. Criticism is political; support is scientific. If you oppose military objectives, you are biased; if you provide practical knowledge, you are objective, and objective is good, just like machines are good. On the other hand, military interest in anthropology is to a significant extent the perhaps unintended outcome of anthropology’s success in marketing itself. The compulsion in this discipline, from the time before its institutionalization in universities, has been to market itself to power as a useful science, with valuable contributions to make, later boasting of the vital importance of ethnography as anthropology’s unique contribution, so much so that are wrongly equated. We wanted the attention of elites, and now we’ve got it. The military is interested in both culture and ethnography. In an article in , we are told that “A deeper understanding of culture has become an official part of Marine Corps strategy.” Meanwhile, General William “KIP” Ward, Commander, United States Africa Command, about the Pentagon’s work in Africa: “A lot of activity goes on in the continent through our non-government organizations. Academia is involved. When I was in previous assignments, someone came to me and would talk about, well, ‘Ward, you need to get a cultural anthropologist on your team.’ I said, what! A cultural what? Anthropologist? To do what? Get out of here. Or, ‘Ward, you need to have someone to help you understand the human dimension. You need some human terrain analysis.’ I said, ‘what? Get out of here.’ But it’s important, and where do those skills, talents reside — academia.” But for more academics to be more useful, they need to get over certain twinges of moral compunction. In the minds of the state and military some of us have already reverted to being a tool of imperialism, assuming we were ever anything else. Not serving imperialism is routinely called “retreating from the world” by some. Montgomery McFate, the anthropology PhD who has been the most prominent spokesperson for the Human Terrain System, in a military journal that, “Over the past 30 years, as a result of anthropologists’ individual career choices and the tendency toward reflexive self-criticism contained within the discipline itself, the discipline has become hermetically sealed within its Ivory Tower….anthropologists still prefer to study the ‘exotic and useless,’ in the words of A.L. Kroeber….The retreat to the Ivory Tower is also a product of the deep isolationist tendencies within the discipline.” (p. 28) She doesn’t stop there, unfortunately, she notes that, “frequently backed up by self-reflexive neo-Marxism, anthropology began a brutal process of self-flagellation, to a degree almost unimaginable to anyone outside the discipline….The turn toward postmodernism within anthropology exacerbated the tendency toward self-flagellation….(also) This movement away from descriptive ethnography has produced some of the worst writing imaginable.” (p. 28) In this regard, she merely echoes some of the conservative and often overwrought backlash within the discipline over this trend that it imagined to be postmodern, whatever that is, apparently being self-critical is evil. With reference to the third and final point of this presentation, looking for alternatives and options to cooptation, for less useful anthropologies, I was inspired by Sider’s ideas about how a partisan anthropology, done “to help the victims of currently intensifying inequalities,” might begin, and it would begin in “the design of fieldwork and in the context of understanding struggle” (p. 44). He advocates against interviews, against asking questions of so-called informants, and against any form of recording data. Asking questions, he notes, is a seemingly simple act that opens our work to use by those who seek to dominate and control the people we study (p. 45). There are other ways we can work, he says, less open, but not impervious, to subsequent manipulation. Other options include choosing research projects that, in the eyes of the national security state, are entirely useless, and to write up the results in very esoteric language, with ample self-criticism. Another option is do to more “research at home” either collaborating with persons who are not the subject of either a moral panic or some hyperbolic national security hysteria, or, producing critiques of the way elites exercise power and enforce inequalities and injustices. Another option is done online, to collaborate with the producers of online information of ethnographic value, remixing it so that it becomes problematic to military examination. Not publishing in open access formats is another option, especially once the work is not funded by a public agency, the argument that “the public has a right to the research it funded” vanishes into irrelevance. We can also imagine experimenting with forms of research communication that defy easy understanding and conventional requirements of the military planner’s database, such as fictionalized ethnographies; ethnographic poetry; (see also); , and so forth. What we cannot do, however, and pretend to be innocent about it, is simply to leave here today and continue to conduct business as usual. Instead of trying to re-energize the public sphere, our alternative is to go off the grid. Becoming unintelligible is a more radical challenge to the historical formation of power.