Monthly Archives: September 2021

Heroin smuggling continues unabated in Assam despite the state govts war on drugs – Prag News

Posted: September 20, 2021 at 8:23 am

GUWAHATI: Acting on a tip-off, a joint team of Kamrup (M) and Kamrup police on Sunday seized a huge consignment of heroin from Sijubari under Hatigaon police station here.

The contraband drugs seized from a vehicle have been valued at Rs 3.5 crore in the grey market.

However, the drug peddlers, carrying the heroin, managed to escape even though the police opened fire to stop them.

According to the police, the heroin weighing 500 grams, originated in Manipur and was to be delivered in Kamrup district.

The recovery of the drugs was linked to a previous haul.

It needs mention that Guwahati has become a hotbed of smuggling of narcotic drugs. Narcotic drugs and other contraband items are often smuggled to other parts of the country through the city, which is often referred to as the gateway to the northeast.

Also Read: Assam on way to becoming another Kashmir, say media reports; Himanta dismisses

On August 29, Guwahati police had seized 1.75 kg of heroin from two different places and arrested six drug peddlers. The seized heroin was valued at Rs 14 crore in the grey market.

On September 2, the city police had arrested two drug dealers and seized over 2.5 kg of heroin, valued at Rs 17.5 crore, from their possession.

The Assam government led by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, has launched a war on drugs, to free the state from its menace.

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Cocaine, the yuppie drug? Not now, say experts its lure is crossing all classes – The Guardian

Posted: at 8:23 am

Police had more than a passing interest in the Kahu when they pinpointed the former navy patrol boat floating off south Devon 10 days ago.

It was escorted into Plymouth, and officers found more than 2,000kg of cocaine hidden within its 37-metre hull. For investigators, its cargo confirmed a troubling trend.

Until relatively recently, such enormous seizures were considered almost unthinkable by the National Crime Agency (NCA). Yet the Kahus illicit freight is not even its biggest cocaine find this year.

Lawrence Gibbons, drug threat lead for the NCA and an investigator who has monitored the shifting dynamics of the global narcotics trade for the past 40 years, said the haul underlined a tendency for increased risk-taking by organised crime groups (OCGs), an impulse that meant the size of single cocaine shipments has steadily grown. What you dont read about these days is our 100, 200, 300kg seizures because theyre almost run of the mill, said Gibbons.

Ten years ago, Id have been over the moon if I was the SIO [senior investigating officer] for a 200kg job. In fact, I was the SIO for a 230kg find about a decade ago and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

The Kahus illegal consignment may have ramifications far beyond the six men charged over the 160m haul. Experts say the seizure should preempt a more honest discourse on the UKs war on drugs. In particular, they point to a recent announcement by the home secretary, Priti Patel, in which she urges police forces to make an example out of middle-class cocaine users by naming and shaming them.

Policy analysts say Patels promised middle-class crackdown is facile, ignoring the reality of what the size of the Kahu haul tells us. Cocaine, they say, is not a middle-class drug. Every stratum of British society frequently uses cocaine.

Jan Gerber, who runs the Paracelsus Recovery addiction clinics in London and Zurich, has closely observed how cocaine has become normalised in all societal groupings. Its moved down the socio-economic scale. A demographic of people who, in the past, wouldnt have been associated with cocaine use are regular users, he said.

Gerber added: Cocaines become very normal, people are less afraid they will be judged or criminally implicated by offering it.

Ian Hamilton, a senior lecturer in addiction and mental health at the University of York, goes further, believing that cocaine can be categorised as a working-class narcotic. Anecdotally, I hear of all sorts of people using it; builders, plumbers, joiners, whoever.

Cocaine, he says, has undergone a radical brand transformation that the government is choosing to overlook. Im old enough to remember yuppies in the 1980s that image stayed with cocaine for a while. Newer generations dont have that baggage, or perception. Also, they havent experienced crack cocaine in the same way as people did in the 80s and 90s.

Its so widely used that its now no longer seen as risky. The way its framed for most people is that its a bit of a treat.

A cursory scan of newspaper stories from the past week confirms cocaines reach. Convictions include a Lancashire tree surgeon, a former footballer in the Scottish Highlands and, 500 miles south in Oxfordshire, a semi-professional player caught storing cocaine in his grandmothers house. Elsewhere, a mother from Sunderland was found carrying a bag of cocaine and, in the same city, a 34-year-old quality control manager was caught with the substance following disorder in a pub.

Even the nations troops are unable to resist. On Wednesday, it emerged that 1,700 military personnel have tested positive for the class-A drug over the past three years.

For many, the realisation that cocaine is a drug of the masses arrived during Julys Euro 2020 final at Wembley. Numerous social media clips showed supporters snorting white powder on trains, outside the stadium and in its seats. Police said the images reflected cocaines growing use in wider society.

Elsewhere, officers like Gibbons have observed how South Americas supply chain has responded to domestic demand. The NCAs latest strategic threat assessment estimates the cocaine market across England, Scotland and Wales is worth more than 25.7m daily. Consumption is believed to be 117 tonnes per year, an increase of at least 290% in the past decade.

Of the 1,716 OCGs involved in UK drug supply, most receive cocaine via shipping container, although yachts like the Kahu remain a persistent threat.

Several key elements are driving powdered cocaines popularity. The first is affordability. The drugs street price has largely remained stable for years as wholesale prices per kilo have fallen. Its become more affordable; relative to income, its a very good value drug, said Hamilton.

The second factor is quality. Purity has soared over the past decade, attracting a new generation of users. Gibbons led Operation Kitley, which ironically helped improve the quality of cocaine after it criminalised the import of cutting agents, such as benzocaine, in 2015.

Previously, a two-tier market existed, with poor quality cocaine its purity was as low as between 3-9% sold at a cheaper price. That competed against a more expensive product with higher purity of around 30%.

Gibbons says that street cocaine is now uniformly around 60% purity. More people will buy a better product. And, like any business model, demand generates supply, said the investigator. Gerber says that dealers brag about offering cocaine with high purity levels to secure word-of-mouth referrals.

Another variable is accessibility. Cocaine is ordered and delivered like pizza these days, usually by moped with transactions arranged through end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp.

Andrew Noor, head of trends and analysis at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, said: Its more readily available. The fact is, you cant take the drug if its not available. His agency found that more young adults in Britain took cocaine in 2018 than anywhere else in Europe, according to the latest data available.

There are also cultural reasons why the UK has embraced cocaine so readily. Something that gets lost a little bit is how well cocaine and alcohol go together. Cocaine as a stimulant facilitates longer drinking, and alcohol is well embedded in our society, so you get word-of-mouth recommendations, which is really how cocaine popularity is spread, said Hamilton. But, of course, there is a dark side. Reports of addiction referrals are up, with cocaine deaths increasing for the eighth year running. The rate of cocaine-related deaths among women has increased by more than 800% in the last 10 years, data reveals.

On top of this, Gibbons says, there is the unrelenting knife crime and county lines violence associated with cocaine, along with the misery, brutality and extortion within the South American source countries.

Fifty years after US president Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, many British experts despair that the UK government remains fixated on middle-class cocaine use.

Laura Garius, policy lead for Release, the national centre of expertise on drugs and UK drugs law, said: The governments plan is not going to work. Firstly, we know that cocaine use is not confined to a particular socio-economic group and, secondly, we know that the criminalisation of people who use drugs has no real deterrent effect on use.

This tired tough on drugs rhetoric is a distraction from the failings of current drug policy, added Garius.

In the immediate future, most observers expect current drug policy to result in ever greater cocaine consumption. Release added that supply-chain issues with cocaines party drug rival MDMA had left cocaine in an even stronger position.

Since the second national lockdown, we have seen an increase in the popularity of cocaine purchasing, and with disruptions to the MDMA market, we might expect to see this increase continue, said Garius.

Hamilton says: During the pandemic, stimulant use went down but, as things are opening back up, theres likely to be a surge, he said.

Away from the nightclubs and bars, Gibbons and his fellow investigators will continue to scan the UKs shipping channels. Theres no doubt another cocaine-carrying yacht like the Kahu will soon be on its way. The only question is when.

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The US government’s comic approach to information warfare – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Posted: at 8:22 am

Internet feeds swarm with cats and bots and trolls. Malicious posts, disguised on behalf of foreign agents trying to sow political and social chaos, compete for attention in comment threads, social media ads, and sophisticated Big Data-assisted influence campaigns. It can be challenging to connect with others through the noise. It can be even harder if youre a government agency.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA, part of the Department of Homeland Security) is trying to grapple with that dystopian information landscape as the self-styled nations risk advisor. The agency team tasked with countering mis-, dis-, and malinformation is helpfully called the Mis-, Dis-, Malinformation team (or MDM). Its mission is to build resilience against malicious information activities, which it labels an existential threat to the United States, our democratic way of life, and the infrastructure on which it relies.

With the disruptions of 2016 still echoing in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, the agency wanted a new way to engage more people, especially young people, to arm them against disinformation: graphic novels.

The result is CISAs Resilience Series, fictional stories that are inspired by real-world events. The two titles released so far take up topics du jour like Russian troll farms, deep fake videos, and COVID-19 conspiracy theories to highlight the importance of media literacy.

Graphic novels are now a billion dollar industry in the United States. Theres certainly an audience for new visual books, including non-fiction. But is there one for government public service messages?

To find out, CISA turned to Clint Wattsa former FBI agent turned information warfare consultant who testified to Senate committees about Russias 2016 election interferenceto write the books. A British firm, Erly Stage Studios, designed and produced them. The firm publishes graphic novels and online games with a focus on global history and social issues, including a very graphic history of germ warfareauthored by Max Brooks for the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.

We have to find new ways to engage with people through mediums that use soft power and creative messaging, rather than being seen to preach, Erly Stage Studios CEO Farid Haque told Forbes when the first entry in the Resilience Series, Real Fake, was released. That book came out in October 2020, just before the November presidential election when fears about foreign (and domestic) disruptions of democracy were peaking.

Real Fake is the story of Rachel, a gamer, patriot disturbed by the proliferation of deep fakes and trolls online. So she enlists some friends and her mysteriously powerful uncle, the Chairman, to track down their source. Real Fake is one long speech bubble detailing the complicated and decentralized global infrastructure of troll farms, spoken by the youthful protagonists and the Chairmans secretive justice-seeking outfit called Symous. That sounds like it could be a fun comic with informative accounts of real-world threats weaved in, but it never really gets there. Real Fake serves up a lot of dense information (including a 10-page primer on deep fakes and a bibliography) at the expense of character development and visual thrills. The pacing often feels uneven and rushed, jumping from one idea or location just as it is beginning to be explored, with few visual cues to help the reader along.

There are other missed opportunities to embrace the hero genre and the graphic novel format itself. Take this intriguing panel, in which self-described journalists at a Western Europe troll farm naively discuss how best to promote a deep fake video they evidently think is real:

Whats intriguing is why the authors chose to write an aside about A/B tests (perhaps meant to show the banality of evil?) rather than actually depict sample disinformation posts, with all the color afforded by the medium. There are, in fact, very few examples in Real Fake of the actual content CISA is trying to warn readers about. Many of the panels consist of people sitting or standing around tables and planes explaining general concepts (or the plot) to each other. The story throws a lot of ideas at the reader, with the confusing takeaway that misinformation is a very complex problem that anyone empowered by media literacy can thwart but maybe only if you can also fly on a private jet to Moscow and infiltrate an active troll farm operation.

The authors made some welcome adjustments with the second issue in the series, Bug Bytes. Released in April this year, it adds a lot more excitement and character to a more coherent and (somewhat) believable narrative. This time our hero, Ava, is a journalism student. A few pages in, Avas father, a cell-tower technician, is beaten by crazed anti-5G hoodlums. While her father recovers, Ava goes on a quest to understand the attack, leading to some dramatic encounters and a lot of tutelage.

Conspiracy theories about the health impacts of 5G towers and their connection to COVID-19 and vaccines have led to real-world assaults, along with the burning of 5G towers, particularly in the UK. (For more coverage of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, check out the Bulletins Infodemic Monitor series.)

This seems like the result of a malicious cyber campaign! Ava swiftly deduces about the fictional attacks in Bug Bytes, before stumbling into the orbit of Symous, the same shadowy and well-funded cyber-intelligence group that underwrites the action in Real Fake.

From there the story gradually picks up steam into another tale of citizens qua vigilantes, though with significantly improved use of of the graphic format. Unfortunately, the unlikely heroics of the protagonists still muddles the messagethis time, when you reach the end of Bug Bytes, you find out the real champion is wait for it independent journalism. As a journalist, I confess to appreciating the flattery contained in that storyline, which clearly emphasizes the value of vigilance about facts. But who are these graphic novelettesfor, really?

CISAs graphic novels arent the first time in recent memory that government agencies have used comics to combat threats. A decade ago, the CDC went all in with a zombie apocalypse comic to encourage emergency preparedness. And in 2018, the US Army Cyber Institute worked with researchers at Arizona States Threatcasting Lab on a set of graphic novels to help West Point cadets learn about 21st-century dangers like drones and hackers. (CISA itself previously tried other fictional methods to raise awareness of information threats, like its 2019 infographic and social media campaign detailing foreign interference in the War on Pineapple. At the time the agency said it had no evidence of Russia (or any nation) actively carrying out information operations against pizza toppings.)

CISAs Resilience Series is unusual, though, in that it seems to put the onus on individualsjust civic-minded citizensto confront the danger of mis-, dis-, and malinformation. Perhaps unexpectedly for a publication coming out of the Department of Homeland Security, the running thread in both books ends up being about the triumph of non-government actors (albeit with resources comparable to those of Marvels S.H.I.E.L.D.).

In fact, the responsibility of powerful governments or corporations in both stories seems peripheral at best, and in some cases even presented as morally ambiguous (like when a hapless employee at a social media content farm in West Africa is thrown in jail for writing stories on assignment).

These are not disguised brochures for CISA. The overall message of vigilance is an important one, even if it sometimes functionslike poorly hidden vegetables in a toddlers mac and cheese.

But the Resilience Series still conjures a certain jingoism peculiar to government publications that can mimic the very threat being addressed.You cannot use scientific rationality and numbers to win this war, a media studies professor tells Ava in one of the many didactic moments in Bug Bytes. You need to win their hearts and minds first and then show them the truth! It takes 49 pages of instruction with pictures to get to hearts and minds, but it gets there.

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The US government's comic approach to information warfare - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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Juju, polygamy and coups: In Guinea, its back to the old ways roots – The East African

Posted: at 8:21 am

By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO

Guineas recent coup leader Col Mamady Doumbouya, who is now setting himself as the countrys strongman, offered a twist to his story.

He appeared in a photograph, wearing a matching white robe with his wives. But his being a polygamist, in this Africa of ours, is neither here nor there. What got the goat of some African patriots who commented on the photograph online, is that both women are white; one is French, the other German.

On one of the websites that carried the photograph, some chap mourned in halting English that an African man who is a polygamist, with both his wives being white and doesnt see any black African woman native to marry too hasproblem and is cursed.

In other words, Doumbouya can marry a white, Asian, or any other woman he wishes, but once he went for a second one, he had an obligation to marry a daughter of the soil.

His opponents could soon argue that if you are a polygamist and you think the country cannot provide you wife material, then you dont deserve to lead it. It would be ironic if Doumbouyas first problem with his people were to come from his choice of wives. He might just have to take a third wife with credible Guinean roots, to deal with this problem.

The Guineans, otherwise, have welcomed this coup with glee. The scenes of them dancing with and taking selfies with the putschist soldiers show people visibly excited about the ouster of Alpha Conde. It seemed to confirm what the opposition and people who took to the streets last year alleging he had stolen the election, were right.

African coups, though, notoriously end in tears and heartbreak. It might not be long before the Guineans are crying again.

In the meantime, the contradictions from the coup continue to fascinate. Doumbouya is 41, thats half the age of Conde, who is 83. We would have expected that it would be Conde, not Doumbouya, who would be more traditionalist and a polygamist.

Hours after the September 5 coup, several photographs of Doumbouya and his comrades emerged. In one of them, there was a witchdoctor. Apparently, when they went to attack the presidential palace, they carried along their own juju man, just in case Conde had his own presidential shaman.

Again, one would have expected that youthful soldiers, more exposed to the world, would be more scientific. Their leader, after all, has been all over the world, with a 15-year military career that has seen him serve in missions in Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Central African Republic and do other work in Israel, Cyprus, the UK and Guinea.

He was in the French foreign legion, and trained severally before Conde called him back to lead his Praetorian guard, the elite Special Forces Group (GFS) in 2018. After all that, they still needed to sprinkle chicken blood, feathers on the state house fence, and blow ash in the air to ward off possible Conde spells.

Yet, it might not be a contradiction. Observers see Doumbouya and his comrades as representing a strong, not yet fully acknowledged, trend in Africa today; a return to the roots, to the old ways.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the Wall of Great Africans. [emailprotected]

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Juju, polygamy and coups: In Guinea, its back to the old ways roots - The East African

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Is Monogamy Right For You? Here’s How To Tell + Other Options To Consider – mindbodygreen.com

Posted: at 8:21 am

Monogamy is the practice of forming romantic relationships with only one partner at a time, as opposed to having multiple partners at once. A monogamous relationship is a relationship where two people date and have sex with each other exclusively, and they don't share this type of connection with anyone else outside the couple. There is romantic, sexual, and emotional exclusivity between them.

Today, monogamy is the most mainstream approach to relationships across many societies, though it's by no means universal. Various cultures across the world practice polygamy (marriage between more than two people), and historically the majority of preindustrial societies engaged in polygamy of some sort, typically in the form of polygyny (two or more women sharing a husband). Monogamy is also a rarity among other mammals, with just 3% of mammals engaging in monogamy according to one recent analysis.

"Most of us have learned that monogamy is the 'normal' or even the 'traditional' relationship style and that nonmonogamy is an alternative, when, in fact, nonmonogamous relationships like polyandry, polygyny, [and] polygamy have been around for centuries," Jayda Shuavarnnasri, M.A., a sex and love educator who teaches about nonmonogamy and supports people exploring nonmonogamous relationships, tells mbg.

While there are many theories as to why human societies transitioned from primarily polygamous to primarily monogamous, what we do know is that monogamy as the social norm is a relatively recent development in the scope of human history.

That said, in many societies today, monogamy is often treated as the default way of being in relationships. The common understanding of the way relationships formfrom initial meeting, to becoming exclusive, to confessions of love, to moving in together, to eventually getting married and having kidsare all tied to the concept of monogamy, as are popular conceptions of romantic love such as finding "the one" or meeting "my other half."

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Is Monogamy Right For You? Here's How To Tell + Other Options To Consider - mindbodygreen.com

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Is that Musa Mseleku crying? Viewers react to uThando Nesthembu – The Citizen

Posted: at 8:21 am

The popular Mzansi Magic reality TV show, uThando Nesthembu is back on our screens for a fifth season, and viewers cannot get enough of the polygamous relationships and dramatic personalities that Musa Mselekus wives have.

uThando Nesthembu is set around the life of successful businessman and polygamist Mseleku, who has taken four different women as his brides.

Each episode shows us how Mseleku and his wives try to navigate life, their different family dynamics, sisterhood and traditions within their isithembu in the modern world.

The first episode of the new season begins with Mseleku seated in front of the cameras and then being joined separately by his four wives who are dressed to impress.

ALSO READ: Marriage proposal to a cheating girlfriend: Viewers react to Uyajola 9/9

As each wife approaches to join her husband, Mseleku is pleased to see how stunning each of them look, letting them know that they are all beautiful.

The next scene shows the children of the businessman and his four wives seated on a couch. One of Musas sons begins to discuss polygamy and tells his siblings that men who would like to get into polygamous relationships should be sure that they have the money to sustain their relationships.

If you want to be a polygamist then youd better have deep pockets, he says.

He then says that when he is older and gets into a polygamous relationship, he will not have separate homes in which the different wives live in, but will have one big yard where all his wives and children will live.

When I become a polygamist, I wont be like my father who has wives who live separately. I will have a massive yard, says the son.

The episode also shows Mseleku spending some time communicating with his ancestors, and taking one of his wives out on a romantic date to clear her head, and to cheer her up after the passing of her mother.

On the episode, Mseleku revealed not only does he have four wives, but he also has girlfriends outside of his polygamous marriage because he is simply a loveable man.

I am loved. Im a loveable man. I have wives and girlfriends, he says.

Towards the end of the episode, Macele called all the other wives together over dinner to discuss their husbands forthcoming birthday as she feels that they all need to celebrate his big day together as a family.

The dinner goes well and all the other wives agree to celebrating Mselekus birthday together, but there is some backlash from MaYeni who feels that their husband will not be happy about the event they have planned, because he has once made it clear that he does not like to celebrate his birthday.

Viewers were delighted to see their favourite wives back on their screens, and most were disappointed by how short the episode was, wishing that each episode could be an hour long.

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Is that Musa Mseleku crying? Viewers react to uThando Nesthembu - The Citizen

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Suzanne Harrington: The Taliban are propelling women and girls back to the Dark Ages – Irish Examiner

Posted: at 8:21 am

If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and four US presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, posted some wag on Facebook, which I have shamelessly nicked for its neat summation.

It would be funny if it werent so utterly bloody awful; a whole generation of women and girls being forcibly propelled back to the Dark Ages, as countries like the US and UK bicker and capitulate.

In a study that will surprise no one, researchers at a Texas University compiled a list of practices associated with what the Economist tactfully calls pre-modern attitudes to women and links them to violence and instability. No shit.

As Hillary Clinton put it before the US elected an unhinged man rather than allowing someone with a vagina to be in charge The subjugation of women is a threat to the common security of our world.

It should not take actual research from an actual university to join the dots between such pre-modernism sexist family law, lack of education for girls, forced and/or underage marriage for girls, lack of reproductive rights, lack of property rights, lack of inheritance rights, polygamy, dowries, killing female babies in preference for sons, lack of legal consequence for male violence and rape and failed states.

(That the research came from Texas, itself in the grips of its very own legislative Taliban, gun-totin Republicans banging on about foetal heartbeat, is the kind of irony that would make you want to run amok with garden shears).

You dont need to be a sociologist, anthropologist, or any other kind of ologist to work out that skewed sex ratios result in grave social imbalance. That misogynist cultural practices passed off as traditional like marrying your daughters off when still children do nobody any favours, as they perpetuate cycles of ignorance, violence, poverty. Like Malala says, what most frightens extremists is a girl with a book; extremists across the globe prefer instead to keep girls pregnant, cowed, voiceless, isolated.

Yet this myopic misogyny does not serve anyone. Not the men, not the women, not the children of states who continue to exclude and oppress half of their citizenship. During global peace talks between 1992 and 2019, women made up just 6% of signatories and 13% of negotiators. Never mind ideas like culture or tradition what about pragmatism? Peace talks that involve women last longer. Countries, where women are part of the organisational structure, are less violent. These are facts, not opinions.

Listening to the former Afghan Minister for Women, Hasina Safi on BBC radio the other day shed fled for her life as the Taliban abolished her ministry was heartbreaking. Why do we still allow the routine trashing of half of humanity in so many places? How can this still be happening?

And what can we do about it, without involving more bombs? Because if humanity is to ever survive its own death wish, we need women at the table. End of.

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Suzanne Harrington: The Taliban are propelling women and girls back to the Dark Ages - Irish Examiner

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Ask Allison: ‘My husband told me he had sorted his gambling issues, but now he’s blown money I had saved to fix the house. Can I trust him again?’ -…

Posted: at 8:21 am

Q: I am really struggling with my emotions at the moment. I have a six-month-old baby with my husband of three years. He had issues with gambling in the past but he assured me that it was all firmly behind him. We have plans to do some work on the house and I had a lump sum from a redundancy and some savings to do the work. But now my husband has told me that the money is gone he gambled it. He swears that he will get help but I wonder if I should give him another chance? I had no idea he was lying to me. Will he ever stop gambling? How can I ever trust him again?

Allison replies: Trust, once broken, is hard to fix. Lets imagine trust is like glass, pottery, and a rubber ball. Drop a rubber ball and you can bounce back from it; these are the normal life stressors and disagreements that can be brought to the fore, resolved, or accepted. But when you drop glass it shatters, this can happen with addiction when the trust has been broken too many times.

Perhaps you are at the pottery stage where the trust is broken, but if we think of the Japanese art of kintsugi or golden joinery, they fix broken pottery with gold to show where the vulnerabilities and breaks were with the intent that it can still become something else and develop.

I love this idea, as no one is perfect or without flaw. Everyone makes mistakes and it is possible to change. However, we cant underestimate what it takes to change and that unfortunately is completely out of your control and addiction is never a quick fix.

Sitting with this for a moment, lets bring back what you can control and bring some space back to you. How are you doing? That must have been an awful shock for you. Six months into having a baby is when the weight of the pure exhaustion and continuous lack of sleep or disrupted sleep makes its presence loudly known along with everything else. Post-partum can be a vulnerable time physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and becoming a mum for the first time is life changing. The sense of love and responsibility is on a whole new level.

There are many new fears and worries, and post-partum anxiety can be present and yet less openly discussed than the more commonly known post-natal depression. Add in the rug being pulled from underneath you and I imagine you feel blindsided by this financial infidelity, and it would be only normal to feel angry and betrayed. You had your hopes and dreams for your new future as a family.

As you land in motherhood it can make your head spin as you try to find your feet in a foreign terrain, with many mothers expressing doubt in themselves, their confidence and decision-making.

When you add having a partner who has a gambling problem into the mix, this is when you need to reach out and get the support that you need. You can contact Gam-Anon of Gamblers Anonymous Ireland, which provides support to family members and partners as they live with someone who is gambling. At present, they are providing one-to-one phone support until further changes with Covid. Check out their website for more details gamblersanonymous.ie.

A gambling addiction, or compulsive gambling, is a progressive illness and the compulsion to get pulled back in is so easy even after long periods of not gambling. From your perspective, even though it may feel out of the blue, it might be helpful to look back and see if there are any patterns that lead to periods of gambling.

Does it occur at times of stress or change, are there any other addiction issues with alcohol, drugs, or sex? Have you noticed any changes in his mood or behaviour? At times of gambling is he more distant, not present, or preoccupied? Are there major mood changes in terms of highs or lows of noticeable irritability?

The difficult truth about addiction is that it is up to your husband to get help and that is so hard. He may go and get help now, but until he is ready, the change wont come. That can be so upsetting to everyone, and the frustration can be immense for you and your husband.

One red flag word is that he says he will get help, this is future based, there is no quick one-step solution or answer to your question. Keep the focus on what you can control and create boundaries about what you wont accept.

Seek support and help, but help yourself first. Set out your non-negotiables separate them into financial, emotional and what you wont accept going forward. Wishing you the best of luck.

Helplink has joined forces with the Gambling Awareness Trust to provide a national gambling addiction/gambling dependency counselling service that is available for free; seven days a week and out of hours. For a minimum of six free counselling sessions contact gamblingsupport@helplink.ie or call 0818 99 88 80.

Allison regrets that she cannot enter into correspondence. If you have a query you would like addressed in this column email allisonk@independent.ie

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Ask Allison: 'My husband told me he had sorted his gambling issues, but now he's blown money I had saved to fix the house. Can I trust him again?' -...

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Paul Merson: Gambling is a horrible addiction. Your career passes you by – The Guardian

Posted: at 8:21 am

A few minutes before Paul Merson tells the surreal story which makes him cry, in a beautiful but broken memory, he looks at me intently. Its been 36 years of pure madness, Merson says as he reflects on the gambling disorder which, coupled with alcoholism and a brief but ruinous addiction to cocaine, has scarred his life.

Merson won two league titles and three cups with Arsenal, while playing some visionary football which he produced again for Aston Villa. He won 21 caps for England, played in the 1998 World Cup and, now, at the age of 53, he is a much-loved, or often cruelly mocked, member of Sky Sports Saturday Soccer panel alongside his close friend Jeff Stelling.

But, as Merson makes plain in his endearingly candid way, he has an illness above all else. He has lost more than 7m to betting companies but, as he stresses, the real cost has nothing to do with money. If someone lived in my head they would think: How did you even get through those 36 years? People go: Oh, you lost all that money. But the money is irrelevant. You lose time. Time just goes and that breaks my heart more than anything.

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People ask: What was it like when you won so much at Arsenal and played for England? I dont know. All I remember was winning the league at Portsmouth. I wasnt drinking, I wasnt gambling too much and I sucked it in. I remember one game we played Millwall away [in March 2003]. Portsmouth and Millwall dont like each other and so none of our fans were allowed in. I also remember having 30 grand, in cash, to give to someone after the game.

Even if this was one of his less wasteful years, Merson was still so lost in his gambling maze that paying off 30,000 in bad debts remained a routine problem. Harry Redknapp, his manager at Portsmouth, was taken aback. When they couldnt lock the away dressing room at Millwall, Redknapp had to look after Mersons possessions. Harry said: What is it, Merse? A watch? I said: No, Ive got some money. Harry shoved 30 grand down his big, baggy tracksuit bottoms.

I went out and had the best game of my career. We were 5-0 up and I got a standing ovation from Millwall fans with five minutes to go. Then, in the car park, this 75-year-old geezer comes up to me: I just want to say, Merson, Ive been coming to the Den 60-odd years and Ive never seen what I seen today. Weve never had a standing ovation for an opposition player.

Merson pauses as he begins to cry. He shakes his head. It was The words are choked by his tears. He tries again. It was His mouth crumples, and I apologise. No, dont worry, Merson manages to say.

It sounds like he played beautiful football that afternoon? Yeah, he says, wiping his eyes. But the addiction kills you. There should have been more of them good times. I live quite a nice life now but I wouldnt wish this on anybody in the whole world. Its a horrible addiction. Even your footballing career, no matter how great it was, passes you by.

Ive only got some memories of the really good times. I remember another standing ovation I got at Maine Road with Villa with five minutes to go. But at the time, Im walking off the pitch like: God, lets get changed, lets fucking get going. I want a bet now or a drink. It takes over your life. Its a hard and draining illness. Football offered Merson a refuge. The only time I lived in the moment, he says, was playing football.

In Mersons raw and sometimes harrowing new book, which is also full of pathos, he describes how he saw space and clarity on the pitch. He compares this ability to a chess prodigy plotting a strategy four or five moves ahead. But in real life he saw little but blurring chaos. He suggests that his brain is wired differently. It helped me on the pitch. Ask the lads at Arsenal, or anywhere I played. It drove them up the wall. They would complain I was always aiming for the glory ball. It was like my gambling, my drinking, my drugging. It was risk-taking. I didnt see fear. I could do it and I kept on doing it.

People talk about being brave on the football pitch. Being brave and clever for me is getting the ball and putting your head up and trying to open up the game. Glenn Hoddle always said: See the picture. Some players have all the skill in the world, but they cant see that picture. I could. Im not saying it happened all the time. I had some shocking games. But I was so much better in football than life.

His certainty that he is wired differently has re-emerged. They want me to see someone now to get diagnosed with ADHD. Im 53. This could have been nipped in the bud before, surely? So that scares and frustrates me.

Merson stresses that his gambling disorder is by far the worst of the three addictions spread across nearly four decades of his life. He was only 16 when he had his first bet as a Youth Training Scheme [YTS] apprentice with Arsenal in 1984.

I was picking my first wages up on a Friday afternoon. 100. Just finished training, cleaning the boots, the toilets and the bath. Id never seen a hundred quid in my life. I was counting it and thinking: Oh my God. I said to my mate, Wes Reid, who went on to play for Millwall; What are we doing now, Wes? I thought hed say wed go shopping on Bond Street. He went: Im going across the road to the betting shop. We walked in and it was like stepping onto a spaceship. People roaring and shouting. I lost all my money in no time.

It was like: Oh God, what do I tell mum and dad? I had 21 stops on the tube to think about it. I got to the estate and scraped my face against the wall. I ran in and told my mum Id been mugged on the train. She gave me her digs money. Merson scrunches up his face. Every gambler becomes such a good liar. If lying was in the Olympics, gamblers would represent every country.

There were disturbing times when he considered breaking his fingers with a hammer or slamming a door shut on them so he would no longer be able to call the betting companies. I was with Villa and we played Charlton away in a night game. I hated night games because I sat in the hotel room all afternoon and gambled. I was constantly ringing up, putting bets on. And then it come into my brain: Break your fingers. If you break your fingers, you cant pick the phone up. People who dont understand would think that is madness. But this addiction grips you and doesnt let you go.

Merson has not had a bet in more than a year but, he says: This is with me forever. Im doing all I can to arrest it, one day at a time. But it aint going away. If I got to 75 and I still aint had a bet, I bet you bottom dollar, if I started betting again it would be worse than last time around.

He is an amiable and even cheerful man, despite the bleak topic, but Merson feels anger when he considers the gambling industry, Theres a betting company I used and I looked through my accounts with them. I gave them 135,000 in four months. I rang them up, I emailed them. I said: You let me down. I know you understand Im a compulsive gambler and you did nothing to stop me. They said: No, weve looked through the rules and we did nothing wrong. But I know hundreds of people have had their accounts shut because theyve won big.

I was like a cash machine to them. I was placing a hundred bets a day. All these companies do nothing to stop people with this illness. It hurts me now at the time it didnt because I used to hate myself. I saw it as punishment I deserved. But they took full advantage of me and that disgusts me. They fobbed me off: Youre a piece of shit. Youve gone. Weve got loads of new ones coming through. Its a conveyor belt of people being destroyed.

Merson highlights the way gambling advertising is so pervasive especially around football on television. Its so in your face now. People are virtually telling you on the telly you cant watch football without gambling. Imagine what it triggers in me? Even when Im driving in the car at seven in the morning and an advert comes on for the prices of a football match in 13 hours time, thats a major trigger. Theyll give the odds on Man United and something in my brain goes: That aint bad.

Last year, during the first lockdown, Merson spent all his and his wife Kates savings in a desolate spree. At the time I was reading and watching the news a lot and my brain started telling me: Were not getting out of this. I need to get a future for my wife and three little kids. We had a deposit [for a house] and my brain said: Youre not going to be working, theres not going to be any money coming in. Youve got to use that money to gamble to make it better. I lost everything.

He has not had a bet since then but he received another jolt last August when his good friends Phil Thompson, Charlie Nicholas and Matt Le Tissier were all axed from Soccer Saturday. Merson and Stelling were retained but they felt the loss deeply. Its scary. You think youve got this job as long as you dont do something amazingly silly or get in trouble. I love my job. Ask Kate. Saturday mornings, Im as happy as Larry. Its a massive part of my life. I like structure, I like to know what Im doing. Them lads helped me massively so that was a hard wake-up call.

The old Soccer Saturday gang had made Merson very comfortable, being dyslexic, on telly. Some footballer names are so long they cant even get around the shirt. I struggle to say the name and they used to laugh and make me feel at ease. I mess up the names now and everybody goes quiet and it makes me feel thick. Id rather they were laughing at me in a relaxing way.

Im so conscious now that if I mess up a name I think; Oh, you thick because no ones taking the power out of it by having a laugh. But its getting better and I get on so well with new lads like Clinton Morrison. Im doing OK. So many people worry about yesterday or tomorrow. They miss out on today. Im trying to live every day and thats why having a barbecue, going to Homebase, are ordinary things I love. I never did any of that before now.

About two months ago Im sitting on the sofa. Kate said: Whats wrong? I went: Its boring. Im not used to this flat life where everything stays the same. Ive been on a rollercoaster so long. She said: Is this better than down there at the very bottom? I said: A hundred times better.

Mersons eyes are gleaming again, with light rather than tears. Ive never been able to sit with my feelings until now. I used to push them down with a bet, with whatever. No one ever sat around a table before dinner and asked: How do you feel? But now I say to [his young son] Freddie: How do you feel? I know he gets a little nervous before playing football. But I say: Its not a problem. Remember last week? You had them feelings and they passed. Same with me, I might get jealous, insecure, sad. Thats my addiction waiting. Its out there doing press-ups. But I keep myself around people who love me and I keep talking about it. If I keep doing that I can keep it away. I can stay quiet and happy.

Hooked by Paul Merson is published by Headline

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. For more information visit http://www.samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at http://www.befrienders.org

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Opinion | The N.F.L. Bets on Betting – The New York Times

Posted: at 8:21 am

Wingo told me, At the end of the day, once the Supreme Court ruling happened, the N.F.L. was really good at three things. One, they put out a product you just cant get enough of. Two, they know how to market the hell out of it. Three, they know how to make money. And once this thing came open, they knew that there was money to be made. And the NFL is a moneymaking machine.

Wingo himself recently joined Caesars Sportsbook as chief trends officer and brand ambassador. He told me that he sees his job as having changed little from his work with ESPN. Hes still the why guy, explaining to an audience on his podcast and on YouTube how a players stats and performance might influence how they do on any given Sunday (or Thursday or Monday). But with respect to gambling, he said: We can talk about it now. Its a little more open.

A historical aside: Gambling was part of the N.F.L. at its inception. Its rumored that the Steelers founder Art Rooney kept the team afloat through the 1930s with gambling winnings, and the Giants founder Tim Mara was a successful bookmaker. Even basic aspects of the games operations like the weekly injury report teams are required to submit to the league are arguably done for the benefit of Vegas casinos looking to set the lines and determine which teams they think will win and by how much.

But despite the games betting origins, gambling on the N.F.L., if it took place at all, was heavily discouraged by the league, meaning that it was largely kept an open secret, an activity only for mobsters and the very sad.

Some with close ties to the league arent happy about the changes in recent years. In a conference call with reporters, the former Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy said that he didnt support the N.F.L.s new stance on betting. I dont think we should encourage people who are watching the N.F.L. to gamble, especially young people, he said. Ive got boys, and I want them to enjoy the game for what it is, the headiness of it and those kinds of things.

There are two main concerns about legalized sports betting and the N.F.L.: first, that the game itself could be corrupted if players, coaches or referees fix games to help gamblers, and second, that users may risk developing gambling addictions with the prevalence of so many options for betting.

Wingo told me that he hoped that legalized sports betting would actually help stop players (or coaches) from intentionally trying to score fewer points or lose games. He gave me the example of a 2007 tennis match held in Europe, where in-game betting is far more common than it is in the United States. After noticing suspicious activity namely, a lot of money coming in favoring a player who was already losing the sports book Betfair halted all transactions and notified the A.T.P. of its concerns.

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Opinion | The N.F.L. Bets on Betting - The New York Times

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