Both before and since the election, commentators of the centre-left, including me, have pronounced the end of the culture wars that have dominated a large stream of Australian political commentary for the past fifteen years or so (for a further sample, here’s Polemica and LP). These pronouncements have not been well received. Rather, in the manner of this (according to family legend) distant relation of mine, those on the losing side have taken the view that news of their defeat is a deceitful ruse de guerre.
In a tactical sense, this is all to the good. With no share of political power anywhere in the country, the culture warriors can’t do any actual harm, except to the conservative side of politics. So, there’s an argument that they should be encouraged, rather than persuaded to give up the struggle. But it doesn’t seem like a good idea to encourage vitriolic debate about side issues, while letting the big questions be settled by default. In relation to climate change, for example, as long as the delusionist and do-nothingist culture warriors dominate one side of the debate, serious discussion about questions like how best to combine adaption and mitigation will be drowned out.
So, it seems like a good idea to survey the culture war and consider what can be done about it.
There are really two fronts in the culture wars. The first is the global battle of US Republicans, supported by an international ‘coalition of the willing’, against just about everyone else in the world, on just about every topic. The battle starts with the premise that the values and beliefs of the US ‘heartland’ are superior to all others, and should be imposed upon everyone else. The big battlefronts recently have included climate change, the Iraq war, gay marriage, pro-rich (but not particularly pro-market) economic policies, and creationism (aka intelligent design).
For anyone outside the US, this involves the kind of transplanted nationalism analysed by George Orwell in his Notes on Nationalism. In particular, it involves hostility to large elements of Australian culture (all of those wrapped up in the notion of the ‘fair go’, for example). Adherents of this foreign ideology frequently disguise their alienation from themselves with reference to the spurious notion of the ‘Anglosphere’.
From the end of the Cold War to 9/11 and the early days of the Bush Administration, the Republican culture warriors were convinced that they held the Mandate of Heaven. (For the ideological shock-troops, largely ex-Trotskyists, this was a simple shift from one form of dogmatic historicism to another). But, ever since the wheels came off the Iraq venture, they’ve been losing ground on one front after another. On climate change and a whole range of scientific issues, they’ve fought reality and lost. The alliance of fundamentalist Christianity and pro-Mammon economic policy is fracturing. And the spectacular incompetence of the Bush Administration has undermined faith across the board.
The second front is domestic and reflects the hangovers from disputes that took place late last century. The biggest source of fuel was Paul Keating’s brief and opportunistic embrace of a range of ‘progressive’ causes between 1993 and 1996, which only succeeded in attaching his immense personal unpopularity, derived from the ‘recession we had to have’, to these causes, including proposals for a republic and for reconciliation with indigenous Australians.
For the real hardcore, this is wrapped up with a range of resentments going back decades. In its final term, the Howard Cabinet put a lot of energy into ‘voluntary student unionism’, which essentially amounted to settling scores its members had racked up as student politicians in the 1970s. Then there’s the immense resentment against Phillip Adams, someone who’s parlayed a brief stint as a politically influential commentator a few decades ago, into a successful self-created legend, unmatched by any of the vitriol-throwers on the other side (PP McGuinness and Piers Akerman are obvious example). His entire contribution for many years has consisted of a mildly self-indulgent column in the back pages of the Oz, and a late-night radio chat show (quite a good one, but not exactly a bully pulpit) on a network with about 1 per cent market share, yet hostile references to “luvvies” abound among rightwing culture warriors.
The time-warp in which these guys are operating is even more evident in the persistence of terms like “latte leftist” and “chardonnay socialist”, referring, as if they were some sort of elite indulgence, to drinks that are now the subject of Kath & Kim skits. Looking at the current political scene, it’s virtually impossible to find anyone on the Labor side with any resemblance to these caricatures (hence the eagerness with which the warriors have gone after Peter Garrett who is at least a rock star).
As regards the policies themselves, the idea that Australians are brimming with conservative fervour, or any kind of fervour, on these topics is silly in most cases. Most people are vaguely in favour of a republic, but aren’t in any hurry. As regards legal recognition of gay relationships, only a handful of people are aware of the fine distinctions between civil unions and registered relationships, and even fewer care. On refugees, now that the Pacific solution is finally at an end, most people (and especially those panicked into voting for Howard over Tampa) would prefer to forget the entire sorry episode.
There are only three culture war issues where there is any real community concern. On two of them, climate change and the Iraq war, the culture warriors have been comprehensively discredited. The third is the problems of indigenous communities, to which no-one has a satisfactory answer, but which are clearly not helped by the kind of vitriolic pointscoring that characterises culture war rhetoric, on this as on all other issues.
All this doesn’t get us far as regards a settlement. But the best course is probably the one the Rudd government is taking. Get the big symbolic issues that have to be addressed (Kyoto, the Nauru camps, an apology to indigenous Australians) settled once and for all, and as soon as possible. Then try and move forward with substantive policies that will achieve better outcomes. This is pretty much the opposite of the approach taken by John Howard, for whom a resolute refusal to make symbolic gestures came to symbolise the fact that his supposed commitment to practical action was, in most cases, spurious.
John Quiggin 
Dammit, Prof Q – I suspect I’m falling for an obvious trap by quibbling thus, but RN’s overall ratings in our home town of Brisbane are 2.7%, and in the session when Adams’s show is broadcast (7pm to Midnight – LNL 10-11pm) it reaches the dizzying heights of 4.5%, on a par with commercial AM stations. So roughly 1 in 20 Brisbanites with the radio on at that time is listening to RN. Given that most RN programming is talk rather than music, it seems likely that this 1 in 20 is actually listening to the content rather than having it provide auditory wallpaper as background noise. So it’s arguable that Adams’s share of radio consumers actually listening to the progamming may be substantial.
That said, as anyone actually listening to Adams’s show could attest, all shades of opinion get an airing and all guests are treated at least with a genial civility conspicuously absent from much else that passes for interview-based radio on both public and commercial networks.
His regular commentators include the likes of Christian Kerr and Paul Bongiorno from the Canberra press gallery and his guests (40 minutes of each night’s 50 minute show) tend to be recently published authors but include partisans of just about every conceivable position in contemporary intellectual discourse.
I agree his columns are seldom worth reading, but his little radio show is a gem. Long may it continue.
On the general issue of culture wars, I’m hoping the Bolts, Hendersons, Flints, Akermans and Albrechtsens keep on keeping on. The most amusing element is that they don’t seem to realise the reading public has noticed their imperial nakedness, and their continued parading serves to emphasise their intellectual nakedness. Although I do retract this regarding Henderson, who as a commenter on another Blog noted, is like an intellectual version of J K Rowling’s Dementors: a being who sucks all the joy and life out of any discussion.
Oops. Second ‘nakedness’ should have read ‘humiliation’. Just what I’m doing to myself, really, by self-importantly posting this Jackanory-style.
Well that sums it up pretty well. It’s time to shoot the Alsations and arrange for the bodies to be properly burned. I do like Adams on the radio though. RN as a whole has really come to life with podcasting – Now that you no longer have to choose between the football and philosophy.
[…] the rest of the defeated culture warriors – we still need your voices in our national conversation! John Quiggin suggests: With no share of political power anywhere in the country, the culture warriors can’t do […]
The culture wars remind me of Kuhn’s ideas about the advance of science. Those with a vested interest in the old way of thinking never change their minds, but eventually they all die, leaving the new way uncontested. The debates about global warming (no, it’s not climate change, it’s global warming) are a good example.
Ratty spent most of his life trying to win his battles of the 50s, Abbott and Costello theirs of the 70s. In another 30 years, they will seem as quaint as debates about whether the colonies should federate. In another 30 years, there will be angry and resentful middle aged men saying that Landcruisers and speedboats are essential to democracy and civilisation.
The vitriol directed at Philip Adams is clearly envy. He gets to interview just about every important and seriously influential person on the world stage at some point or other. And don’t underestimate Late Night Live’s audience. It may be small, but its surely extremely high demographic and very influential. If LNL had ads they would be for Mercedes and Rolex’s.
Compare this with what Akerman and McGuinnes have been reduced to doing for a living. They write simple and practially disposable drivel for tabloid newspapers. The movers and shakers in the world are not hanging out for the latest writings of these two. Sadly, they are intelligent enough to know it.
On top of all this podcasting is allowing LNL’s audience to grow practically exponentially and reach anyone in the world with a broadband connection. Imagine how PP must feel knowing that there are now almost certainly influential people in Washington, Britain and Europe who now regularly listen to Philip Adams.
The culture wars have a fourth element – the denigration of women in general except if they are on the conservative side of politics and are therefore special.
The special treatment of single parents by the Liberals under the welfare to work policy targeted women. To determine that a woman who has just separated from her partner (often abusive) must look for work despite the needs for housing, new schools, emotional disturbance of the children, harassment by the ex etc was evidence enough of the failure to treat women with respect for the work that they do or their role in nurturing the next generation.
Janet Albrechtson is a particular warrior who is likely to demand why feminists are silent on this or that as if feminists have powers unknown to others.
Women have made a lot of gains in the last few years. They can now access child care and work. For many that has meant a huge load. However the culture warriors under the heading “best man for the job” have blamed women for not achieving higher, better, faster.
As Prof Q points out so well there is a blinkered view of the world where conformity to the conservative viewpoint is required to be respected by the cultural warriors. Anyone outside this mould is to be hounded, berated and ridiculed whether they question what is happening in Iraq, inaction on climate change, whether an army is the best way to tackle child abuse or whether women are held back from progress by the operation of a boys’ club.
The increasingly shrill cries of the cultural warriors shows how anxious they are about their relevance now that John Howard no longer rules. The conclusion to the above item sums it up – if there is no symbolism then the practical is either misrepresented or non existent.
I am somewhat of a cultural proponent myself, believing that cultural change, as it pertains to violence and war, would be a very good thing indeed, and there may be implications as to how climate change is addressed. Still for those of us, perhaps very few, who believe a new cultural paradigm would allow reality to be perceived and realized by being reframed, much can be learnt in a negative sense from the cultural warriors of the dying world.
“With no share of political power anywhere in the country, the culture warriors can’t do any actual harm,…”
You obviously haven’t used the BCC buses lately John.
Roll on the Lord Mayoral elections.
The Iemma NSW Labor Govt will continue to fight the culture wars by funding World Youth Day next year. This event is being used by the Catholic Church in Australia as a means of recruiting people into their faith.
Great post JQ.
I am not so sure that the bulk of the population could give a stuff about “culture wars”; results of the Australian Social Attitudes report indicate that Australians are not becoming conservative and that their views were not particularly influenced by the Howard years, that they are generally “economic pragmatists” rather than “neo liberals”
There is at least one element of the Culture Wars that JQ did not mention. That is the rise of evangelistic Christian sects in Australia. This form of populist protestantism has never been a feature of Australian cultural life in the past, even though, God knows, Australia has had its share of sectarianism.
These evangelical folks are counter-cultural in relation to several of the great social reforms arising from the Whitlam years. And many of their enthusiasms do not emerge organically from the Australian experience. On the contrary they are the conduit through which American pre-occupations, such as anti-evolution, and fixations on the personal morality of political figures, have entered the Australian debate.
It’s wrong to say that these folks are welded onto the conservatives. However, it would be over-optimistic to say that their marginal vote is up for grabs.
Interestingly, for conservative politics, populist protestants are very much a two-edged sword. Religious extremists are numerous and determined enough to have taken control of large parts of the NSW branch of the Liberal Party. Yet, on the other hand, their influence renders conservative politics very suspect in the eyes of marginal voters. Iemma can thank this factor for his remaining Premier of NSW, because if ever a Labor government deserved to fall, it was NSW’s.
So, for good or for ill, the religious factor is back in Australian politics for the first time since the demise of the DLP.
And on that matter, I’d take issue with Rog. There are some aspects of the Culture Wars about which many Australians care. The political scene in NSW is a powerful case in point.
the culture wars are here to stay, in some form. they are an expression of human psychology, the working-out of social relations through media and economic struggle.
much of this struggle would be better resolved if political means were in the hands of the electorate. [visit ‘direct democracy’ at google]
however, a lot can be achieved with faux ‘democracy’ if polling of social issues is organized by academe and widely publicized. social scientists* could do a valuable public service by making australia aware of majority opinion on contentious issues. some of this goes on now, but tends to be skewed by commercial or party political interests.
academics, of course, are clear-eyed searchers for, and reporters of, the truth.
*not real science of course, like astrophysics.
For online activsts, the most maddening aspect of these Culture Wars has surely been the sheer futility of trying to use logic and reason to counter a mindset which values neither. Ultimately, it has not been arguments from “our” side which have won these wars, but the steady process of unrelenting fact destroying unbending fantasy. One thinks continually of that US neocon quote about “creating our own realities” and the cursed arrogance of such a mindset, coupled with the astonishing levels of power these ideologues in Washington achieved. A million Iraqis dead, a devastated nation in chaos, half a century of international laws and treaties bleeding on the ropes, US global prestige flushed down the S-bend, and yet one still shudders to think how much worse it could have been.
Having said that, I am not sure the USA’s culture wars are as conclusively finished as the domestic version. The Bush cabal’s power came from a disparate coalition of self-interested parties including the Christian right, Big Oil, the pro-Zionist lobby, the MSM, etc. With Bush and his neocon friends now fading into the toxic Texan sunset, many of these groups are flailing about in the search for a new leader and a new direction. The people who supported Bush are not the kind to admit mistakes and change their ways. We can only hope that their grasp on power is coming to a long-overdue end.
One aspect of the culture war still going on is the continuing advance of corporate capitalism. They are more powerful than ever and the profit share of the economy is larger.
Endless (physical) growth capitalism is not going to work much longer. How do we get to a steady state capitalism on the physical front? Qualitative growth could still occur of course.
I’m not sure that people fall into such neat tribes that ideas can be divided into camps and the metapor of war meaningfully applied (in any case it is an over used metaphor). Doesn’t every generation and time throw up a series of great debates about what is real and what things mean? The fact that some ideas can be buried and put out of sight from the mainstream for a generation or two does not mean that some war has been won or done. It just means that times change.
In any case ideas themselves (or at least the labels they are attached to) change and then survive by doing so. Multiculturalism will no doubt survive but the meaning of multiculturalism is morphing. Suddenly it looks a lot more like assimilation. Although the meaning of assimilation has also been moving.
Nobody has a monopoly on culture and nobody should. Nobody should be declaring any victory in a war over culture. Culture can’t be bottled and won’t be.
One bit of the kulcha wars not mentioned until Terje was multiculturalism, immigration and muslims. The Liberal leafletting scandal may have taught some of them a solid lesson.
It bemuses me how some of the older men commentating from the right are so clearly out of touch, really still trying to fight the battles from their salad days, using terms and issues that few people under 40 would understand, and none care about. It’s a bit like my dear old mother making comments about catholics.
Katz, I think you overstate the novelty of evangelical Protestantism in Oz politics. Fred Nile got into NSW Parliament in 1981, and is still there. Christian conservatives also got into the ACT Assembly for a while, and I’m sure there are other examples. My guess is that there is about 5 per cent of the vote to be had from this group, given a good campaign and an appealing candidate, and that this proportion hasn’t changed much in recent decades.
Also, as you note, the right doesn’t have an automatic lock here. Nick Xenophon, for example, draws to on this support base in part.
Perhaps political protestant evangelism isn’t novel in NSW, JQ.
But here in Victoria it’s unheard of, at least at the state and federal level, until the accidental rise of Senator Fielding and Family First.
I would guess that Victoria is more typical in this regard than NSW.
Maybe the protestant evangelicals shouldn’t be too lightly dismissed. After all, it was a veritable act of God that got Steve Fielding elected from the hodgepodge of preference flows.
Also, I’d be doubtful that the ‘guaranteed’ vote from protestant evangelicals is at five percent. The last election results I saw put Family First at around 2% of the primary vote, and the Christian Democratic Party at under 1%. I think the evangelicals are able to make more noise that a lot of other Christians, but I don’t think they’re necessarily getting all that many votes.
But don’t forget, Alpaca, in NSW the Liberal Party is the major protestant evangelical party.
From jquiggin:
“The big battlefronts recently have included climate change, the Iraq war, gay marriage and creationism (aka intelligent design).”
I’d like to add the “Supply-Side� vodo economics to the list. It that finally seems to be under serious attack in the US ot A. Big tax cuts to the wealthy was a part of the Liberals economic policy for a few years now and the basis for such tax policies is now in the process for bring discredited. I notice a Review in last Friday’s Fin review of Jonathan Chait’s “The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by CrackpotEconomics�. I think the title say it all.
I am not sure that the so-called culture warriors were actually warriors but merely puffed up courtiers full of spite and malace. That spite and malace fed handsomely upon and fed the latent but virulent hostility endemic to those of various warped forms of religosity, any form of fundementalism (or ism). The puffed up francopuffery of post-modernism in its shallow and ill-disciplined meanderings merely fed the more virulent strains. We all suspended much needed critical faculties and rigorous questioning on the basis of it was all good, its all been solved, the golden age is here. All forms of whacko creeds or cults have flourished and nourished; environmental denialism, exonphobia,racism,retrospective gender isolationists, creationism, the dismantling of internal cooperation, war on Islam, war on drugs, war on just about everything when you think about it.
What were the culture wars about? the end of environmental controls, inclusiveness, community, rational science, feminism, international cooperation, any other religion but Judeo-Christianity, personal privacy and any other temperate, inclusive, democratic and logical human endeavour. Jefferson and others great fears for the outcome of the American Republic have been realised. The republic is no more its grand institutions vandalised by vested interests and a belief in the right to the untrammeled tyranny of the executive.
Fukayama was wrong it was not the end of history history was merely suspended in a time warp. Same for economics, the great economic problems were never solved but merely delayed. Now we have well and truly passed the boundaries of the production possibility curve (our planet and its systems)the more sobering aspects of the cultural damage we all have endured confront us. All the great questions are back like the four horseman of the apocolypse. The great cultural challenge is now as we face the sixth extinction will we actually solve them?
As Phillip would say, ’til next time dear gladyies’!
G’day Prof Q.
I reckon the kulta warriers got a bit carried away with themselves and bit off more than they could chew when they lined up against global warming science in the manner that they did. it was all a bit too reminiscent of the US utiopian project to mold the people rather than govern/administer with what you had.
the us govt has taken a similar line with AGW as it did with HIV. the oz approach to HIV is about as good as it gets in the marriage of science, medicine and govt. had such an approach been adopted at a similar stage in the climate debate we would definatly be in a better position now. Unfortunatly the us is still deaf and blind to the damage that their approach is causing and if this continues then the creeks will be full, but dry, at least we won’t need paddles.
ciao
Katz,
you are confused.
The problems in the NSW liberal party emante from Catholics not ‘evangelicals’
funny it is the ‘evangelcials’ that formed the British Labor party and were part of those forming the ALP.
Jill Rush
The culture wars have a fourth element – the denigration of women in general except if they are on the conservative side of politics and are therefore special.
What preposterous disingenuous tosh! Do you ever read the filth maniacally production-line produced bile against successful independent influential conservtaive media women over at Larvatus Prodeo, and right throughout The Luvviesphere by self-described “feminists?” Did you ever watch Monica Attard on MW? Ever read those dozey bints who “write” for The Age?
Please.
Huh? So it’s forbidden to criticise Janet Albrechtsen because she’s a woman or something? JG really exemplifies the culture wars writ small… stripped of the verbiage necessary to achieve the piecerate pay for an MSM column, you can see the illogic even more starkly.
Homer, just because David Clarke is in Opus Dei doesn’t mean that all the “problems” in the NSW Libs “emanate” from Catholics, whatever that means. Alex Hawke, for instance, is a Protestant, and I think you’ll find there are religious crazies from all necks of the woods involved.
Homer,
Far be it from me to adjudicate over the relative influence of diffeent branches of religious zealotry over the NSW Branch of the Liberal Party.
I’ll allow the sometimes warring, sometimes confederate, Opus Dei and the Snake Handlers in the NSW Branch of the Liberal Party to fight out between themselves their claims to have been the more prominent in driving John Brogden to a suicide attempt.
But let merely merely observe that there seems to be more than enough “credit” to share around, even among those who make absolute and warring claims on the possession of God’s Truth.
with the greatest respect it is the catholic push for want of an expression that is the major player here.
alleged protestants are merely bit players for the most.
From my new blog home:
There was an old woman named Janet
Who lived on a different planet.
She wrote total crap
Which deserved a good slap
But Rupert invariably ran it.
I posted a very similar limerick at Janet’s latest blog (what, no column, Janet?) but it was rejected by the Murdoch Newsbot. Funny that.
Surely it’s time that Murdoch himself paid the price for three decades or more of failed rightwing cheer-mongering?
Yes, and I notice that Opus Dei and Hillsong were both very active in the branch-stacking triumph of Alex Hawke over Alan Cadman in Mitchell.
gandhi
I just cannot believe you people actually read Janet Albrechtsen so obsessively and are so moved by her!
I dont think that branch stacking is a “culture war” more a factional war. But to say its religion doesnt stack up, pollies like Bruce Baird were hardly extremist or even hard right yet used to attend prayer meetings in govt. So being religious is not a legitimate descriptor of a “culture warrior”
Rog.
Attempting to turn the Liberal Party into a narrowly based morals party is the central front of the Culture Wars.
Make no mistake. Alan Cadman and Phillip Ruddock, among many prominent Liberals, know what is at stake in this struggle for the soul, coffers, and contributions list of the NSW Branch of the Liberal Party.
If ever these dudes won office in NSW, watch out!
JQ
How many MORE attempts are you going to have at “getting” the Culture Wars? Dude, you stick to the economics, and leave the Culture Wars to others who are bit more clued in. 😉
“Attempting to turn the Liberal Party into a narrowly based morals party is the central front of the Culture Wars”
The funny thing here is, of course, that back when Bob Menzies founded the Liberal Party they generally were more liberal than their Labor contemporaries on a range of issues including the status of women and immigration from continental Europe. (This isn’t so much a compliment to the Liberals as an indictment of old-time Labour.)
I’m still unclear on what the culture wars actually are. From what I can gather they are a war between things JQ likes and things he doesn’t like. Am I close?
Interesting column by Krugman at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/opinion/17krugman.html?ex=1355634000&en=07ae538b78887b68&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink, “Big Table Fantasies” in which he criticises Barack Obama’s belief that much caqn be achieved to improve his nation by gathering the players round a big table and talking issues through. He writes:
“At the opposite extreme, John Edwards blames the power of the wealthy and corporate interests for our problems, and says, in effect, that America needs another F.D.R. — a polarizing figure, the object of much hatred from the right, who nonetheless succeeded in making big changes.”
Rudd is seems to be more Obama-like than Edwards-like. Admittedly the political battlefield in the two nations is very different but will the time come when Rudd needs to do some polarising and endure some hatred?
Joseph, you’re not within cooee of spitting distance, but a few minutes with Google (try “culture wars” + Switzer) should set you straight.
JG, you’re part of the subject matter here, not one of the experts.
JQ
With all due respect, it is quite clear when compared to your obsessive, but so off-course, rantings about the “Culture Wars” I am indeed an expert.
There was recently an article in the Chicago Tribune about a dinosaur skeleton, allegedly some kind of prehistoric moo cow, dug up in Niger. The American part of the scientific team that dug it up had donated it to the National Geographic Museum. The several pages of comments on this article were entirely engaged with the issue of creationism versus evolution. I thought I’d chuck in a comment about modern-day American imperialists plundering the heritage of Niger. I kind of expected get at least one bite, but I didn’t. They rolled right on with their creationism point scoring. It’s a War all right and they won’t be distracted by irrelevant stuff about the rest of the world.
I’m still wondering why the dinosaur isn’t in a museum in Niamey. It seems quite an important issue.
I see the odd heretic is still popping his head above the parapet http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22938759-5013480,00.html
It’s true JQ,
when it comes to obsessive, but so off-course, rantings about the “Culture Wars� John Greenfield is indeed an expert.
Observa ; That article sums up the situation pretty well especially the last paragraph
“Concern about unsettling climatic events is natural, but we are not the problem. Better to abandon ill-founded panic, to keep building a strong economy and thus the adaptive capacity to deal with whatever catastrophes unaided nature may have in store for us. ”
Is it better to try and minimise hurricanes through running down the economy or to build better houses?
Mitigation vs Adaption
Chrisl and Observa Dear, oh dear
Can this really be the #1 opinion article at Teh Oz right now?
Is this abject surrender from the Murdoch Mobsters? Can Janet Albrechtsen’s resignation be far behind?
Probably Albrechtsen, like Murdoch, will simply adjust her tune a little.
All I said was-‘I see the odd heretic is still popping his head above the parapet’
and the Prophets of Doom be praised, I have no association with the infidel CIS whatsoever.