Sunday 13th July 2025
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Review: War Dogs

Thomas Player
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Review: War Dogs

I wasn’t really sure what to expect as I sat down to watch War Dogs (Dir. Todd Philips). All I knew of it so far was by the description of a particularly verbose Wikipedia editor, as a “biographical crime war comedy-drama”. I was curious to what this entailed.

The film is based on a Rolling Stone article about two high-school friends who become international arms dealers, landing a massive Pentagon contract to equip troops in Afghanistan.

Miles Teller and Jonah Hill play the two leads. David Packouz, played by Teller, is an everyman masseur from Miami on the brink of last resort – having ploughed his life savings into a failing business. Contrastingly, Efraim Diveroli, taken on by Hill, is his long-lost best friend who has just rolled back from L.A looking for someone to join his lucrative gun-running endeavour.

The films is set during the Iraq War when all military equipment orders had been placed on a public website for anyone to fulfil. With the aid of contextual timing, the motivations of these two characters – one desperation and the other quick-business – set off the action of the film. David and Efraim set out to seek the ‘little’ arms orders, overlooked by the ‘big businesses’ despite their million-dollar-making capacity and, soon – sure enough – they’re raking in the big dollar. The plot twists and turns around the obstacle that David and his girlfriend are strong objectors to the war. Soon enough, the increasingly risky and illegal lengths to which David and Efraim go to fill their (increasingly large) contracts place a strain on David’s comfortingly safe home life.

However, although alluded to, the moral conflict of the film is never really at its forefront; it’s more “Look at what crazy things these guys did!” rather than “Should they have done them at all?”. Plenty of bark – not so much bite. This moral vacuity has garnered plenty of criticism, but I found the detached way in which the events are presented refreshing. They allow us to make our own minds up about these dubious anti-heroes and their actions.

This open-ended approach to the interpretation of the ethics surrounding the films content also serves to stimulate questions on who exactly is to blame when it comes to such business. Was David and Efraim’s shady business acumen responsible for their considerable back-handed success, or should more blame be placed at the door of the US government who supply the demand for such business to be successful in such a way?

To my mind, however, those are not really the questions to be asked to grasp the point of the film. What this film represents is a fascinating insight more generally into how ambition and greed brings individuals to find themselves caught in a rising bubble that’s bound to pop eventually. It’s merit also comes from the fact it’s really funny. Although, some would say it’s not really the best topic for comedy and that the film ignores the darker side of the trade these men exploited, that doesn’t change the fact that there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments to be had.

Jonah Hill deserves special mention for his love-to-hate portrayal of Efraim. His high-pitched fluttering laugh steals every scene it’s in. Minor roles were also filled and directed successfully. Bradley Cooper (as high-rolling dealer Henry Girard) was particularly memorable, if sparingly used, and showed us another facet of his impressive versatility. The film carries artistic successes on its production side as well; the score is brilliantly appropriate throughout. The mix of pop songs is exquisitely fitting (if not always particularly original) and on several occasions the lyrics provide the moral judgement the film perhaps – lacks.

My only real criticism would be that this film never really settles into a compelling rhythm – it may be absorbing in its action-packedness but not in its story. You come away feeling flat and empty rather than shocked but enthused. Largely, because it is hard to engage properly with the film when you’re never quite sure whose side you’re on. Of course, that is what real life is like…it’s just not like the movies we’re used to. Yet, I feel this film was intended to be far more dry, satirical and thought-provoking than it has been received. Leonard Cohen convinced me of this further as his voice draws the credits to a close – “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, everybody knows that the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost”. Who the good guys are – well, that’s up to you decide.

“No one wants to join” Bullingdon Club

Cherwell News
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“No one wants to join” Bullingdon Club

The Bullingdon Club may be on the verge of extinction with as few as two members left, according to Oxford sources published in the Daily Telegraph today. It is understood that even close friends of last year’s president did not want to join, and that the club’s reputation is deterring potential members.

A variety of students and recent graduates have claimed that the club is struggling to replenish its membership as incoming students turn down offers because of the club’s reputation. One source claimed that “Every reasonable person thinks it is a joke. People think it is elitist and exclusionary and if anyone is ever mentioned as being in the Bullingdon the instant reaction of everyone hearing it is, ‘what a loser’.”

It was also suggested that the rise of social media has deterred prospective members, with the same source stating, “People are worried that it is too much scandal and then their name will be in a student paper. No one used to care about that but now because it all goes online, all it takes is a Google and everyone is quite scared about that. It’s definitely a big fear.”

One Oxford graduate interviewed by the Daily Telegraph claimed to know “at least one person who has turned down the Bullingdon this year”, and said, “If you knew who was in it, you would see them around but you would never see them as a group smashing stuff up. They were just normal people in a pub, never in their tailcoats smashing up a pub.”

Typically formed of twelve members, the Bullingdon Club has known periods of unpopularity before. In 2009, Cherwell reported that the club had rebounded to have twenty members, after having only four in 2006.

Train trips

Vivian Darkbloom
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Train trips

Amtrak trains have tracks that stretch across America’s West Coast all the way from Seattle to San Diego. Views of pristine coast and wild, beautiful places slide by out of the windows – but I’d booked the train from LA to San Francisco because it was cheaper than flying, and all I knew was that I had twelve hours of sitting to get through. I brought books. I bought salad and gum at a train station convenience store. I hoped there would be wifi. What I got instead is a seat next to a guy in his mid-twenties who offers me a crash course in how to buy cocaine on the deep web and a sketchy connection to his phone hotspot. Also candied edibles. Welcome to California, I think, and chew. I don’t catch his name.

It hits when I’m halfway through my beer. Suddenly the words on the page I’m reading begin to shatter backwards through the paper as their edges light up, gold-rimmed. The first time I’d gotten seriously high, it had felt like there were flies in my forehead – little popping feet tapping around in there. I’m past the flies this time: everything slows and disconnects, as though I’m a sticker that has been removed from a book and put down in a slightly different place. Sounds echo, and so do my thoughts, spewing a debris of noise and spawning further thoughts in their wake. My hand feels like it’s cutting through putty as I raise it to my face. My face doesn’t feel like my face; it’s too cold and too smooth. All of these thoughts crash and reverberate around my head with searing speed, leaving jagged coloured patterns that take a while to fade.

I look outside, but all of the cacti outside the window have turned into fractals with white, accented edges and they won’t turn back. It’s too bright, and suddenly the sun isn’t hot any more. I look down. The words pulse on the page in front of me, and their blurry backwards squirming makes me feel sick. Moving through jelly, I shut the book and try to put it away. I see the guy next to me raise his hand and hear the disconnected sound of chips being crunched in his mouth. Thoughts begin to crowd in way too fast, as though I see a chain of thought appear all at once; paint splattered over canvas, and I know the answer to every question I pose, and that’s terrifying, and suddenly it’s very cold, and how do I know that what this man sitting next to me gave me was edibles candy? I’ve just taken drugs from a stranger on a train in a country where I know nobody. But the more insidious, paralysing thought slides in with a chill: I can’t get back from this weird echoey world.

My mouth begins to taste like iron; a coca-cola twang in my jaw that adds to the alien colours and sounds around me. As everything slides further out of focus I try to control my voice:

‘I’m panicking right now. This is too strong.’ I couldn’t focus on the guy’s face.

‘Nobody ever died from weed, dude,’ he reminds me.

‘How long will this last?’ 

‘Three, four hours max. Don’t sweat it.’

By the time he finishes his half-baked reassurance I’ve already asked – and answered – this question:

‘What does hell look like?’

Hell looks like being trapped somewhere cold and dark with a window. You can see out of the window, but everyone around you is a stranger. It wouldn’t even matter if someone you knew was there to hug you, because you wouldn’t be able to feel it. It would just be you and your thoughts, knowing the answer to everything at the same time as you ask yourself the question, smearing your thoughts across the walls loudly and forever. That is what hell would be, and being trapped in it for any length of time is an unbearable thought; no opt-out, no purgatory. Taut agitation passing through me in cold, sharp spikes of emotion, I hold my phone tight on my lap and my bag between my legs, and I try to shut my eyes and pretend I’m asleep. The man in the seat next to me has slid out of his skin and is hovering just beside me, but I can’t let him know I’ve noticed.

I phase in and out of something like sleep. I lose my hearing and then I lose my sight, weaving in and out between jagged dream-worlds and shattered sunlight. I might be hallucinating, or the images might be what was actually going on in the train around me – I’d lost the ability to tell the difference. Voices filter through weirdly sometimes, and the same with colours or light. The blurred form next to me, alternately a man and a disembodied hovering, chews and chews endlessly; train conductors announce in garbled train-language; they announce, chitter, their laughter is spikes of sound their voices are puzzle pieces not fitting the grating the seats are grey cells in a beehive and the water outside has blended with the sky I can’t touch any of it even my own face my jaw is cement my heart is mallet-tapping soon it will trip and stop beating but at least that will stop the thoughts that hide the windows like leaves in a thick jungle. And I learn that hell is something else too; it’s complete disembodiment; it’s a lack of touch, of physical reference-points.

Two things stand out to me from that train ride. I can remember clearly the moment when I realised the world looked like geometry; cactus-fractals, blazing white and shifting against a blue Californian sky – and the feel of the shower water against my skin the next morning, just as soon as the cacti had begun to look normal again. I turn the nozzle too far, and for a moment the heat stings my skin – but I quickly push it back to warm again as the steam curls upwards to touch my cheek.

Reflecting on 9/11: a promise

Daniel Kodsi
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Reflecting on 9/11: a promise

I have a fuzzy memory of September 11, 2001. There was smoke, I think. And running and school was let out early and a man offered to give me and my mom gas masks. And it was scary and there was a woman who was crying. I don’t remember much more. I was only three.

There is September 11, 2001 and there is 9/11. The event itself and our memory of it. The nation, it is said, is a place of shared memory – we live and we breathe and we rejoice and we grieve and every little cultural moment builds up into one, great, big society. Downtown Manhattan has recovered. The city bustles, surges to new heights, and the new One World Trade Center gleams and shimmers a mile high. September 11, 2001 has passed – but 9/11 lives on, a time for reflection, for national mourning.

I went to high school a handful of blocks from where the Twin Towers were hit, where the Twin Towers collapsed and thousands lost their lives. Where fifteen years ago, there was no more than a pile of rubble and debris and buried souls. But it’s funny: Now, a friend once told me, he orients himself by One World Trade Center. He is lost until he sees the skyscraper, at which point he is found.

Two wars wind down in the Middle East. It feels like a thousand more have erupted. It feels like we’re less safe now than ever, and that our nation is splintering, fragmenting, and that our place in the world is slipping away, our lives no longer under our own control. On the fifteenth anniversary of a national tragedy, a major party candidate pays tribute to the lives lost – and catches heatstroke, or maybe is ill, and…

Bam! Headline! Witness the politicization of grief, the weaponization of terror. The stronger the emotion – the anger, fear, horror, and panic – the better it can be used (By whom? By all.) to manipulate and control. The shared memory becomes a tool for division. What once brought us together risks tearing us further apart.

But we won’t let it.

Oxford’s Olympic Medallists: Andrew Triggs-Hodge and Constantine Louloudis

Daniel Sutton
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Oxford’s Olympic Medallists: Andrew Triggs-Hodge and Constantine Louloudis

Andrew Triggs-Hodge is a three-time Olympic gold medallist, including the men’s eight in Rio, and is formerly of St Catherine’s College. Constantine Louloudis is a two-time Olympic medallist, including a gold in the coxless four in Rio, and used to go to Trinity College. Both spoke exclusively to Cherwell about their student days, rowing at the highest level, and even had some wise words for anyone thinking about taking to the water.

How did you first get involved in rowing?

Constantine Louloudis: When I was at school, I was a decent swimmer and a decent-ish rugby player, but I’d never really excelled at anything. I got involved in rowing, and initially I kind of thought it was ok, a bit of fun in the summer; then I realised that it was something that if you worked hard at, you could be good at. I really enjoyed being part of a team and doing well and excelling, and seeing the fruits of my labour, seeing that if I worked hard I got better and better. I did it for my last three years at school, and it was a real no-brainer to carry it on when I came to Oxford: it’s such a part of the place, and it’s a really sociable thing to do as well. I got more and more out of it, and just never stopped.

Andrew Triggs-Hodge: I used to play rugby, and enjoyed playing for a club up in Yorkshire: great club, great atmosphere, run by volunteers and well organised. When I went to university, the rugby was just a fun thing for the students, nothing particularly well organised, and I wanted to keep improving my fitness. So I asked a friend after my first year what I should do, and she suggested I rowed, so I went down after Freshers’ Fair and there was a guy there who was enormously enthusiastic. He captivated my imagination about what I could achieve, and the rest is history.

Do you have any favourite memories of university rowing and the early mornings?

CL: The ones that stick out the most are winning the boat races, and they were fantastic. The best thing was that there was a new cohort each year, and so I made a new set of friends each year; I walk away now having done four years at OUBC and having four sets of life-long friends who I’ll meet up with certainly every year for a reunion back at the boat race. Apart from that, there were a lot of hard times as well, but training and sharing the experiences of friends was great.

I’m not really a morning person, but I sort of had to make myself one! In a way it was good for me, because otherwise I might have been one of those people who just languished in bed until ten or eleven and didn’t really get much done, so it was good to get myself out of bed early and get the training done and then get on with work. I didn’t enjoy the morning training, I just had to get it done, but you sort of get accustomed to having the routine and not thinking about it. Having the companionship, having friends doing it with you, that makes it a lot easier.

ATH: I started rowing at Staffordshire University before moving to Oxford, and there we had really early starts, because we used to train about thirty-forty minutes away from where we lived; we used to have to get the minibus over, and that was a real pain. We trained from this tiny little boathouse, which we shared with a local club in North Staffordshire, and them being old gentleman and us being students, we didn’t always see eye-to-eye. But we made the best of what we had, and that was the start of my introduction into club rowing, also the politics, but also the enjoyment of making not very much go a long way. If I could go back there I would!

Oxford was a different kettle of fish completely. It’s a high-performance programme, and it bears the same attitude as the rest of the faculties at Oxford, which are there to deliver the goods. That was a great example of how to build a programme to mould you as a team, and so I got a flavour of a very different angle to the sport. I loved every minute of it, especially the camaraderie. As students, you really buy into it and can find a freedom around it, so whereas we had our professional coaches and brand-new boats, there was still a free attitude about it: what can we make of this, how good can we get it? It was a really nice balance to have, and formed some of my best memories.

Any rowing disasters?

CL: I can’t think of any… maybe one or two in a single, which was probably my fault, because I wasn’t looking. I did crash into a crewmate and got a scar in my back, but nothing major.
ATH: We had a lot of fun, but nothing I can remember where it went particularly wrong. There must be something… I’m just an optimist, all those negative memories leave my mind!

What was it like to transition from university to national rowing?

CL: It was kind of gradual, because I’d done juniors, and then at the end of my first summer in Oxford that I made the senior team. I went along to the world championships in 2011 and started to become part of the team, and in 2012 I became full-time and took a year out. That was quite hard, because I didn’t know the team that well. I was also younger than everyone else and the training load was greater, or at least the intensity was higher, and so I got quite a lot of injuries. I didn’t enjoy that first full year at all, but after that baptism by fire it’s been great. I came out for the summers of 2014 and 2015, then went full-time in 2016 again, and by then I was much stronger physically and I know the guys much better, fitted in much better – that was much plainer sailing.

ATH: It is a very different set-up: the coaches at university understood that they’re basically dealing with students, so they had to make compromises around the programme so we can go to lectures, and they had to make some compromises because we were a bit younger, and therefore had a different angle on the sport. If I look at myself now, as a thirty-seven year old, and what some of my peers were like when they started rowing, the GB team is a lot more focused. It’s not a day job, there’s still a lot of passion involved, but it’s a little bit drier, whereas as students, we thrived on the idea of beating our opposition into the ground, being very vocal and passionate about it all.

What was it like rowing in Rio?

CL: The water could be really rough, and the schedule of racing was changing every day; that was actually really off-putting, because it meant that six out of seven days we woke up thinking we were going to race. That’s pretty mentally draining, because you’ve got to get yourself up for it when it’s race day, and it affects your sleep the night before. It’s also pretty hard rowing in such rough conditions, and it can have quite a mental effect, because you build up this day in your mind – it’s an Olympic final, it’s all going to be really smooth, and then it ends up being a bit of a s***-show. We dealt with it well, though, and everyone was in the same position; you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt. It’s worth saying that it was a beautiful venue; it was also right in the heart of the city, where rowing can often be on the outskirts, so I think it was worth the trade-off.

What advice would you give to freshers?

CL: It depends what your ambitions are. If you just want to have fun, then go out with friends and do it as long as you’re enjoying it. Ok, the early mornings out on the river are not always fun in and of themselves, but as a thing to do with friends, look back on and have the odd race, it’s really rewarding whatever level you do it at. I would really encourage people to give it two or three weeks, then assess whether it’s something you really want to do. If you want to be high-performance, try to go to one of the university boat clubs or anything like that, then I’d say be prepared to work hard, and don’t fixate on short-term goals.

Strong criticism from OUSU after University confirms fee rise

Katherine Pye
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Strong criticism from OUSU after University confirms fee rise

Oxford University has announced that for UK and EU students undertaking their first undergraduate degrees, 2017 tuition fees will be £9,250 and rise in line with inflation.  Similar to previous years, UK students can still access loans from the government for the full tuition fee amount, however government maintenance grants are no longer available.

Oxford University Press Office claimed the rise was necessary and the extra fees would fund additional admissions work. A spokesperson told Cherwell, “Oxford University’s decision to increase fees in line with inflation was taken after full discussion in Council. University fees in the UK were previously linked to inflation but have been frozen for the past four years. Like many other institutions, Oxford faces increasing costs to deliver our pre-eminent tutorial system of education. The increase in fee income will also go to fund our essential admissions outreach work. We already spend more additional fee income on this than almost any other university in the country and we are committed to increasing and extending it to give ever more students the best possible chance of an Oxford education.”

These changes follow approval by Parliament of plans from higher education minister Jo Johnson that universities meeting expectations under the new teaching excellence framework (TEF) would be able to raise them from September 2017.

Johnson argued in July this year, “The £9,000 tuition fee introduced in 2012 has already fallen in value to £8,500 in real terms. If we leave it unchanged, it will be worth £8,000 by the end of this parliament. We want to ensure that our universities have the funding they need and that every student receives a high-quality experience during their time in higher education.”

The increase is linked to the inflation measure known as RPIX – the ‘retail price index excluding mortgage interest payments’, which reached 2.8% in January 2014.

Oxford University Student Union condemned the rise, claiming it would discourage students from poorer backgrounds to apply to Oxford. They told Cherwell, “At OUSU we are exceptionally disappointed by the University’s decision to increase fees. We participated in discussions about whether or not fees should rise at University Council (the University’s highest decision-making body) and strongly opposed this move. However, the decision was made by Council to raise fees despite student concerns.

“All existing evidence focusing on access to Higher Education highlights that debt aversion disproportionately affects prospective students from the least socio-economically privileged backgrounds alongside other underrepresented groups when applying to university.”

“Though only a small consolation, we would like students, and particularly those most concerned about finances, to know that we are working with the University to ensure the least detrimental implementation of this policy possible,” the statement continues. In particular, we have been reassured that better bursary support will be available to students in financial need and we have been working hard to represent students on these matters to secure the best possible packages. From our involvement, we feel confident that the Student Fees and Funding department are at least working to make the application process for hardship funds more accessible.”

Oxford University rejects May’s grammar school policy

Katherine Pye
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Oxford University rejects May’s grammar school policy

Along with Teach First, King’s College London and others, Oxford University has warned that the government’s grammar school plans would abandon many secondary school students to a “second rate” education.

The announcement comes just days after the release of Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to create new grammar schools while allowing comprehensive schools to apply for a permit to begin merit-based admission. Under current law, it is impossible to create new grammar schools, but May claims reversing this would improve social mobility and help the “hidden” hardworking families that were “just getting by”.

The Fair Education Alliance, made up of 70 education advocacy groups and universities including Oxford, has called on the public to sign a petition against May’s plan.

“This is the right ambition, but the wrong policy”, the group said in an online statement. “We share the government’s ambition and passion for social mobility but experts are unanimous that an expansion of grammar schools would lead to worse outcomes for the majority of children, especially the poorest.

“Grammar schools select only a tiny proportion of children for the best education, leaving others with a second-rate choice”, it continued. “Even with quotas, poorer children will have a harder job of getting into these schools. And for the overwhelming majority of children who don’t get in, the evidence is clear that they get worse grades and a worse education.”

May defended her policy in a public statement on Friday.

“It is not a proposal to go back to the 1950s, but to look to the future, and that future I believe is an exciting one…It is a future in which every child should have access to a good school place”, the PM said. “And a future in which Britain’s education system shifts decisively to support ordinary working-class families.”

Grammar school students do not account for a massive percentage of students at Oxford. Only 89 of the 1,404 UK acceptances to Oxford University from state schools came from grammar schools in 2015, according to Oxford University Press Office.

 

Keep off the Grass: Clubbing in Oxford

Michael Venables
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Keep off the Grass: Clubbing in Oxford

Clubbing is seen by many as an integral part of student life, and this is no exception in Oxford, as we love to club as much as anyone else! There is a wide variety of clubs situated in different areas of the city, with different vibes, sizes and musical genres; regardless of what you might have heard of Oxford’s nightlife, they all have the potential to be the location of a great night out with your friends. Each place appeals to different people, so if clubbing is your thing, do try and experience as many of the clubs as possible to get the real experience of Oxford’s clubbing scene.

Lola Lo’s

Lola’s night is Tuesday. This Hawaiian-themed club appeals to people by having a different themed night each week, and serving extremely cheap drinks. Beyond that, the Hawaiian décor doesn’t really add to the experience and the club has a lot of inconveniently-located steps which you can easily trip down if you’re not paying careful attention. Lola’s is well worth checking out if the theme of the night is something that you’d be up for, but otherwise don’t expect too much from the crowded dance floor and gloomy lighting. It seems that many keen first years visit in freshers week, and are hesitant to return once they’ve seen what else is on offer.

Park End

It may be called “Atik” on the outside, but Oxford’s biggest club will always be known as “Park End”, after the street it is on. Located near the station along with the other major Oxford clubs, Bridge and Wahoo, Park End is the one which caters to as many tastes as possible. Downstairs is the Cheese Room, and upstairs, there are two rooms; a large main room playing electronic music and a smaller, underrated, RnB room playing predominantly hip-hop and urban tunes. With a further VIP area and a small bar and lounge, most people find somewhere in Park End which they can enjoy.

The club’s main night is Wednesday. It is the first big clubbing night of the week and also Oxford’s sports night so expect to see the university sports teams, especially the blues, turn up together, often dressed in their blazers unaware of how ridiculous they look to everyone else. As with most of the clubs in Oxford, the drinks are cheap and most people there end up with a couple of VKs in each hand as they enjoy Oxford’s least-grotty club. Avoid if you hate being crushed by people as, especially on the Cheese Floor – it can get very packed very quickly. Although much the same can be said about any of Oxford’s clubs.

Bridge

Thursday night’s main event is Bridge, a club which polarizes opinion: for some people it’s an
institution which they seldom ever miss out on, while others refuse to set foot in the place after they’ve been just the once. It consists of two main floors: the downstairs floor features amusingly bad music transitions and a regular crush of people as groups try to get from one end of the floor to the other; while the main dancefloor upstairs feature loads of flashing lights, electronic music and a struggle to find your friends.

Bridge is different to Oxford clubs in that it has clear strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the cheese floor is more of a wide corridor than a floor; the toilets can make you feel sick at even the thought of them; and the music often has no coherent genre or style as they sometimes attempt to accommodate everyone’s different tastes. On the other hand, their guest DJs can be fantastic, and there is plenty of room outside to enjoy a hot dog, introduce yourself to people who catch your eye or just chat with your friends whilst taking some time out from the busyness of a club.

Wahoo

Friday night is Wahoo night in Oxford, the most popular night of the week in some colleges but one that doesn’t even get considered as a real night in others. Wahoo is a club next door to Bridge, both just out of town over towards the station, and in the daytime and on other nights often masquerades as a sports bar or an American grill. But on Friday nights the two floors are open for clubbing, with both floors playing remixed chart music. Downstairs is slightly larger, with a bar and, bizarrely, a small platform for people to go up if they prefer dancing once they’ve gone up a few steps. Wahoo’s upstairs room has no real distinguishing features except for a bar, a rather low ceiling and a few flashing lights and artificial smoke. As a club, Wahoo neither stands out nor disappoints but has the potential to serve up a great time if you have a good group of your friends going out with you. Unfortunately, 2016’s fresher cohort only have until the end of Michaelmas to enjoy Wahoo – make the most of it!

Plush

The Plush Lounge, located beyond Bridge and Wahoo near the train station, is Oxford’s biggest dedicated LGBT+ club and hosts LGBT+ nights every Saturday and Tuesday that are among the most popular nights in Oxford for all students. Plush has the reputation of being one of the best clubs in Oxford, and given that it’s got a podium and a pole, plays non-stop “camp club classics” and has some of the cheapest drinks in Oxford, are you surprised?

Emporium

Emporium is Saturday night’s club, located down St Ebbe’s Street just to the south of the town centre, right across the road from Pembroke.The host of the official afterparty for all of the Oxford events that take place on a Saturday throughout a year (normally Varsity or rowing-related), on those nights the club gets packed and can be host to a great night! However, on a normal Saturday night, Emporium often can be a little empty as most students prefer to go clubbing throughout the week and, by Saturday, have exhausted their clubbing stamina. Despite that, with a couple of floors and a unique circular layout, Emporium can still be a great place to take some friends from home who’ve come to visit for the weekend and want to sample something of Oxford’s nightlife!

Cellar

The clue is in the name: this independent venue is little more than an underground room, fitted with the bare minimum to make it a club, a bar and a small dance floor. Cellar has no specific night each week, but hosts different special events throughout the year: rarely does a week go past without an event at Cellar. Each event has a different style and approach to it, but Cellar has built up a reputation as being a place for the many fans of Garage and UK Grime. Cellar itself, despite being the sweatiest and most cramped place in Oxford, as well as discriminating against anyone over 6’ 4” due to the height of the ceiling, is one of Oxford’s most popular clubbing spots and is the source of many a great night! It’s located just off Cornmarket, Oxford’s busiest shopping street, and so if you’re out and about Oxford’s city centre at 1am, chances are you’ll see the people spilling out of Cellar out onto Cornmarket.

Other venues

Down Cowley Road is the O2 Academy, a dedicated music venue for concerts and gigs by recognised artists; chances are that during your time at Oxford there’ll be concerts there which you’ll want to check out and enjoy! Just down the road from the O2 Academy is the Bullingdon, a club which hosts different events throughout the term and is especially popular among students who live outside their college. Purple Turtle is a dingy underground club next to Cellar that is owned by the Oxford Union; its only main draw is the fact that it has a different shot for each Oxford college. JT’s Cocktail Bar, formally known as Rappongi’s, is a small underground room that is popular due to just how ridiculous it actually is to go there; Thirst is a small bar with a dance floor right opposite Park End, where people go if they get turned away from Park End; Babylove is an LGBT+ club that changed location a year ago and has not been anywhere near as popular since. Maxwells’ is an American diner that becomes a club at night and is popular among postgrad students.

Italy’s alternative constitution: The state-Mafia treaty

Charlotte Tosti
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Italy’s alternative constitution: The state-Mafia treaty

“Italians have little trust in the state because they live in one that doesn’t deserve their trust.”

***

Driving a moped in Naples is particularly dangerous – and not just due to Italy’s notoriously daring drivers. An unwritten code, devised by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, overrides the official law obliging motorcyclists to wear a helmet. The Camorra asks that people do not wear helmets on mopeds in Naples; headwear is reserved not for the safety of riders, but for mobsters on call. Helmets are thus rarely seen: to wear one is to give the impression that you are part of the Camorra, and risks provoking violence against you.

Today the Italian Mafia does not manifest itself as flamboyantly as it did in the late stages of the 20th century; many “big bosses” are now imprisoned and reaching old-age. It is a far cry from the commonplace and unsurprising stings and massacres. However, the submission of politicians to organised crime is largely responsible for the detachment many Italians feel towards the state. Organised crime continues to be an active force in the economy, and the so-called “treaty” between the state and the mafia remains a force of corruption.

Giuseppe Pipitone, a Sicilian investigative journalist who specialises in organised crime, is very well versed on the power of the Mafia. We discuss the history of this unique relationship between the Mafia and the Italian state. Pipitone explains that organised crime pervades the state from small bribes taken by policemen up to government ministers actively undermining the ’41 Bis’ (a law that condemns individuals for activities related to organized crime) by granting “an unofficial immunity” to certain Mafiosi for various prosecutions. He concludes that “Italy is a state that concedes sovereignty to a criminal organisation under threats.”.

According to Pipitone, January 30th 1992 is the most significant event in the history of the state-Mafia complex. That day, the Judiciary, led by attorneys Giovanni Falcone and Paulo Borsellino, broke an existing “pact” of immunity between Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia) and the state. They confirmed the sentences of the ‘Maxi Trial’ (the greatest criminal trial against the Mafia) and gave life sentences to the notorious Cosa Nostra bosses, Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore Riina. This prompted an unofficial “war” between the state and the Mafia, culminating in a series of bombings designed to force the state into submission. They were successful. Falcone and Borsellino had been murdered by the summer. A new pact was formed between Cosa Nostra and Marcello Dell’Utri, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s senior adviser and co-founder of his party, Forza Italia. This move in reverse was marked by countless corruption scandals: the Naples Waste Management Crisis in 2008; Berlusconi’s Prostitution Scandal in 2014; the ‘Mafia Capitale’ scandal in 2015, where funds dedicated to city services in Rome were misappropriated to organised crime, are just a few examples.

Pipitone enlightens me on the state of the treaty in 2016. “The  “military” guise of the Mafia no longer exists – the Judiciary dismantled the power structures behind the terrorist attacks of 1994. The Mafia is no longer simply a force that “controls turf”. Furthermore, we find a level of state corruption that might be less tangible, but is truly superior to the times of the First Republic. Today’s Mafia is revitalised as soon as the state grants the opportunity.” He quotes Palermo’s Chief Attorney, Roberto Scarpinato, who theorises that it’s a network of ‘occult’ powers that offer illegal services in response to high demand. To Pipitone, “that’s where the mafia becomes important to the state.”

It seems to be easy for Italians to lose faith in a state so fraught with corruption. Pipitone agrees almost instantly: “Italians have little trust in the state because they live in one that doesn’t deserve their trust. And it is essentially the state’s ignorance that allows the Mafia to flourish. Cosa Nostra proliferated in Sicily for 150 years because Sicily was effectively devoid of a state. In this case, the state had simply delegated control of the territory to organised crime.” Yet with an “occult” Mafia that is far more elusive in comparison to the aristocratic Mafia that dominated the First Republic, I ask whether such a clear relationship between state and Mafia is still valid. Pipitone corroborates immediately with the superlative: “Validissimo”.  

Pipitone recounts how even the former President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, an individual who is supposed to be politically neutral, and the person responsible for safeguarding the constitution, dabbled freely in organised crime. Napolitano successfully destroyed four intercepted phone calls between himself and Nicola Mancino, a Senator who asked for his ‘protection’ during an inquiry on relations between the state and Mafia in 2012.Was the Italian media not outraged? I raise the Panama Papers Leak, and recount how David Cameron, under considerable pressure from the British press, eventually conceded to publish his tax summary.

Pipitone sighs: “You can’t compare the UK to Italy. Such scandals are the norm. During Marcello Dell’ Utri’s trial (for complicity with the Mafia in 2004), it emerged that Berlusconi had paid Cosa Nostra for its services in the seventies and employed Vittorio Mangano as a ‘gardener’, at his villa in Arcore – needless to say, Mafia member Mangano wasn’t employed for his green fingered ability. Dell’ Utri and Berlusconi then created a political party, Forza Italia, which won the majority vote in Italy for twenty years.”.

If corruption on this level can occur without much outcry, is it possible to cut the chord that ties the Mafia to the state? “Nothing is impossible”, Pipitone responds with a suddenly ardent tone. “In any democratic system there exists one resource, the vote, that can bring about progression.”

His answer doesn’t convince me. The incumbent centre-left party, the Partito Democratico, was recently involved with the ‘Ndrangtheta (the Calabrian mafia) where PD candidates in the North of Italy struck deals with the criminals in exchange for votes If parties across the spectrum have been complicit in collaborating with organised crime, it seems unlikely that the symbiotic state-Mafia relationship can be undermined by political parties. Pipitone admits that the solution “is not so clear-cut. You can’t vote for any party purely on the basis of addressing the Mafia. The ‘antimafia’ is more of a professional, or a legal, affair than a partisan one. But if you vote for a party that tackles issues of economic inequality and redevelops deprived areas, you can undermine the Mafia in those ways.”

Investigative journalism in Italy is said to work well in exposing organised crime and motivating communities to take action against mafiosi. The celebrated author Roberto Saviano achieved recognition from his eloquent exposure of the Camorra in his book Gomorrah (2008), which sold millions internationally and was critical in prompting the arrest of key bosses in the Neapolitan Casalesi clan. Yet Saviano paid the price by living with an armed guard and travel between secret locations for the rest of his life. The two editors of Pipitone’s paper, Marco Travaglio and Peter Gomez, and the journalists Michele Santoro and Gianni Barbacetto, are also significant in exposing state-Mafia ties in a field dominated by Berlusconi’s media empire, which purports to be comfortably ignorant of the issue. They received a written death threat in 2011, containing four bullets – one for each journalist.

Nevertheless Piptone appears to be drawn to his career precisely because it is dangerous.  “Investigative journalism has changed a lot and can still do a lot more. I wouldn’t even say that the risk of death threats is a drawback.” However, Pipitone underlines that aside from investigative journalism and judicial action, what is needed to counteract Italian crime will be found on a more personal level. “You need a prise de conscience, a widespread burgeoning of awareness. I think that’s been developing in the past twenty years. Note that now, Cosa Nostra’s bosses are all over seventy and in prison. The new bosses are old.”

In spite of the disgust and horror felt towards mafiosi, there remains a certain Godfather fascination. Mafiosi still achieve a curious celebrity status; in April 2016, the son of Salvatore Riina, the Cosa Nostra boss who engineered a brutal bombing campaign in the 1990s, appeared on a popular talkshow, Porta a Porta, to discuss a new book and defend his father. Pipitone agrees with the atmosphere of cult celebrity: “There’s still a lot to do [to raise awareness of the problems]. But it isn’t your average Italian that gives into the Mafia in this way. The Mafia is most powerful where there is poverty and ignorance; no awareness of one’s own civil rights; no culture. It’s always been like this.”

We return to discussing Naples and the Camorra’s ‘ban’ on wearing helmets on mopeds. The state-Mafia relationship is effectively an alternative constitution. To repudiate it, Pipitone believes “an army of teachers is far more useful than an army of police.”

If there is one thing fraying the chord between the state and the Mafia, it is simply talking about it. Education will tie a new one between the state and the Italian people.

US Election 2016: A Third Way?

Rory Goodson
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US Election 2016: A Third Way?

When observing the farce that is the 2016 US Election campaign,  I couldn’t help but be reminded of CS Lewis’ remarks in Mere Christianity:

“I feel a strong desire to tell you-and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me-which of these two errors is the worse. That is the Devil getting at us. He [the devil] always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them”.

As unsettling as it may be, the 2016 US Presidential Election will be contested between the two most reviled candidates in recent history. In the blue corner is a politician who has come to epitomise the untrustworthiness and cynical self-advancement that has incited record levels of public revulsion at modern politics. In the red corner, of course, is Donald Trump.

Recent surveys show that as many as 40% of Americans have a ‘highly unfavourable’ opinion of the Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, a figure topped only by the Donald himself (who scores a mighty impressive 44%) since World War II. Whichever of the two is elected on November 8th this year, America will most likely inaugurate the most hated President in its history.

It’s not hard to identify the source of such discontent. Trump’s maniacal ramblings require no introduction. Making Mexico pay for the wall; insulting the family of a deceased veteran; making lewd and somewhat sinister comments about the attractiveness of his daughter. Countless more examples exist. It seems Trump can’t manage to go a news cycle without blurting out something deeply offensive, deeply stupid, or deeply unhinged. No wonder Republican Congressmen and Senators are falling over themselves to distance themselves from him.

His opponent should, without question, be targeting a landslide victory of the scale that Reagan achieved in the 1984 and 1988 elections. Yet such an outcome this year seems highly unlikely. To put it simply, Americans don’t trust Hillary Clinton. Many believe she belongs in prison. Almost half of surveyed Americans believe that she willfully misled the families of the four Americans who died in the Benghazi massacre as to the precise facts whilst she was Secretary of State. She is increasingly viewed as personifying the kind of heartless and self-centered politics that has left Americans feeling worse off.

Selecting the least-worst option has become something of a theme of recent US elections (2008 being an exception before the rhetorical hysteria over Obama evaporated during his first term), and this should be a cause for considerable concern. Are these two characters really the best candidates a country of 330 million people can put forward for the most powerful job in the world?

Thankfully, there may be such a way between the two Clinton and Trump shaped errors. Loitering on the verge of the election hysteria that has engulfed the nation, Libertarian Gary Johnson has been quietly and calmly setting out an alternate vision for America, and has been gradually climbing in the polls as a result. Johnson needs to score 15% from the five certified polling agencies in order for the US Electoral Commission to allow him take part in the Presidential Debates, the first of which will air on 26th September. Currently he’s polling in the region of 8% and 12%. In April he was at less than 2%. Last week he secured the endorsement of the Richmond-Times Dispatch, Virginia’s staunchly Republican second most popular newspaper.

Johnson served as the Republican Governor of the traditionally Democrat state of New Mexico from 1995 till 2003, and scored the highest approval ratings of any Governor in office during this period (from both Republican and Democrat voters). He prides himself on a fiscally conservative and socially liberal platform. He wants to abolish the federal income tax, and he proposes the legalisation of marijuana and the creation of a path to citizenship for ‘undocumented workers’ (Johnson’s preferred term for illegal immigrants).

Indeed, his policies on almost all issues can be summarised by the following quote from his campaign website: ‘Governor Johnson’s approach to governing is based on a belief that individuals should be allowed to make their own choices in their personal lives’. This is reflected in his pro-choice policy on abortion, intention to abolish the death penalty, and belief in stronger Internet privacy protections from government. In international affairs, he describes his approach as ‘non-interventionist’.

In interviews he comes across as calm, considered and, astonishingly for a politician in the modern age, a genuinely honest and reasonable man. This makes a welcome change from the painful condescension Clinton aims at everybody bar the Wall Street banks, or the self-aggrandising megalomania that pervades any utterance ejaculated seemingly at random by the Donald. A couple of weeks ago Johnson was pictured playing chess on his campaign bus with his vice-Presidential candidate Bill Weld, a sign of a reassuring intellect and composure that seems totally absent from the candidates of the two main parties.

The Electoral Commission will determine in the next couple of weeks whether Johnson will be allowed into the debates. In fact, the polls that will determine his participation or lack thereof are most likely already in the field. It must be conceded that his hopes of crossing the 15% threshold are disappointingly slim. Even if he does manage to scrape into the debates of course, his hopes of actually winning on November 8th are almost miniscule.

Yet this writer for one will be rooting for him. Wouldn’t it be refreshing on 26th September to see up on that debate stage, along with the two candidates America has grown to so detest, a reasonable individual proposing a program of government in which he actually believes and is ideologically invested?

Johnson may not be a perfect candidate, but his commitment to individual liberty and thoroughly personable nature leave him head and shoulders above the gruesome twosome. Clinton and Trump, like the Devil’s errors in Lewis’ analogy, should be avoided at all costs. Here’s to hoping for a third pulpit on that stage later this month.

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