Industrialized warfare began with trenches and no-man’s-lands; football has lines of scrimmage and a neutral zone. The terminology of a Superbowl is infected with martial language: bomb, formation, attack, etc. If you’ve attended both two-a-days and basic training it hits home how similar they are. The physical side of coaching is different in effect, but there is a similar mental training: players have to be aggressive to tackle and soldiers have to be aggressive to shoot.

So not only does the sport embody the economic and social ethos of the progressive era in which it was born, it consciously imitates the dominant historical experiences of the liberal age. American football is THE representative sport of our nation’s 20th Century, which was characterized (until the 1980s, anyway) by mass conscription armies and the social leveling they provided.

The Civil Rights Era began with African American veterans demanding a social status equal to their sacrifice. This coincided with, and was strengthened by, the integration of the armed forces. In a similar way, Paul Bear Bryant’s 1971 refusal to continue coaching an all-white team killed official segregation across the South. Within a year, the entire Southeastern Conference was integrated — and in ten years, George Wallace would win the governor’s mansion with 90% of the black vote.

George Will, who hates football, agrees on this topic, calling the game “a mistake” that combines the two worst aspects of our previous century: violence and committee meetings. But the white and black and brown kids holding hands in the huddle with seconds on the clock on a Friday night are the best argument that we should keep the game forever, and to me the Superbowl is merely a national celebration of this.

Update the 1st. You have to read the full resolution to really appreciate the evil at work in Russia and China’s veto, because it doesn’t exactly give Obama permission to set the war machine on Syria:

3. Condemns all violence, irrespective of where it comes from, and in this regard demands that all parties in Syria, including armed groups, immediately stop all violence or reprisals, including attacks against State institutions, in accordance with the League of Arab States’ initiative;

[...]

9. Calls upon the Syrian authorities, in the event of a resumption of the observer mission, to cooperate fully with the League of Arab States’ observer mission, in accordance with the League of Arabs States’ Protocol of 19 December 2011, including through granting full and unhindered access and freedom of movement to the observers, facilitating the entry of technical equipment necessary for the mission, guaranteeing the mission’s right to interview, freely or in private, any individual and guaranteeing also not to punish, harass, or retaliate against, any person who has cooperated with the mission;

Not exactly “send the Marines,” is it? What have China and Russia got against Syrians, I wonder?

Also: are Russian and Chinese embassies going to see unrest? Seven Syrian embassies were hit last night. The expat community is solidly against Assad, which is not surprising in the least.

Update the second: betcha Assad can torture more Syrians than Libyans can torture Libyans.

Update the third: oh look, non-intervention doesn’t deter people from fighting! Who could have predicted the breaking of the levees?

The commander of a force of rebel Syrian soldiers says they have no choice now but to fight to free the country of President Bashar Assad’s regime after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution aimed at resolving the crisis.

Col. Riad al-Asaad, commander of the Free Syrian Army, tells The Associated Press that “there is no other road” except military action by his fighters to topple Assad.

And Putin seems to be making a domestic political gamble:

The price Russia will have to pay in international condemnation of its action clearly doesn’t seem excessive to the Russian leaders. In fact, the Kremlin even may hope to reap some dividends both at home and abroad by coming to Assad’s defense.

With Russia’s presidential election just a month away, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, seeking to return to the Kremlin, appears eager to stand up to the United States by protecting a longtime ally. Putin already has given his campaign a distinct anti-American flavor, accusing the U.S. of trying to thwart his bid to reclaim the presidency, so bickering with Washington over Syria would give him an extra chance to consolidate his support among nationalists.

Ron Paul is still pushing this line today, and his biggest “progressive” fan is totally okay with it because FREEDOM! and NO WARS! In fact, Glenn Greenwald wrote a column yesterday to explain the ACLU’s lawsuit against the Obama administration’s “assassination secrecy,” and it might just as well have been penned by Ron Paul about the Civil War:

From a certain perspective, there’s really only one point worth making about all of this: if you think about it, it is warped beyond belief that the ACLU has to sue the U.S. Government in order to force it to disclose its claimed legal and factual bases for assassinating U.S. citizens without charges, trial or due process of any kind.

He needs another point, because this one is stupid. What is warped beyond belief is that Glenn Greenwald thinks wars should be managed by judges and grand jury indictments. The idea that a score of American soldiers should perhaps be killed — and themselves kill perhaps hundreds of civilians! — attempting to arrest Anwar al-Awlaki Blackhawk Down-style is warped beyond belief. At the very least, it is not preferable to a drone strike.

Awlaki was an al-Qaeda volunteer, actively promoting jihad and exhorting the murder of American citizens. That he was doing it in Yemen makes no difference. Had he been doing it in Japan during World War II, or in Mexico with Pancho Villa, his death would have been just as well-earned. I suppose Greenwald would have railed against the secrecy involved in those campaigns, too (every war in history has involved secrecy). But please, Mr. Greenwald, do go on:

It’s extraordinary enough that the Obama administration is secretly targeting citizens for execution-by-CIA; that they refuse even to account for what they are doing — even to the point of refusing to disclose their legal reasoning as to why they think the President possesses this power — is just mind-boggling. Truly: what more tyrannical power is there than for a government to target its own citizens for death — in total secrecy and with no checks — and then insist on the right to do so without even having to explain its legal and factual rationale for what it is doing? Could you even imagine what the U.S. Government and its media supporters would be saying about any other non-client-state country that asserted and exercised this power?

Actually, the president is operating under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). You’ll remember that Congress passed it in 2001, directing the president of the United States (whoever that might be) to

use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Greenwald makes much of the president’s statements on Awlaki and calls it a double standard. But we generally expect that presidents will come up with secret plans in wartime, order their fulfillment, and report successes to us. By Greenwald’s “logic,” Admiral Yamamoto was assassinated by a tyrannical president, and the cryptanalysts who broke the Japanese code should have been forced to testify about it in court.

I must add a personal note here. In 1987, I was so upset with Judge W. Brevard Hand’s decision to remove my high school history textbook from the classroom that I helped organize the first chapter of the ACLU in Alabama at the age of 15. I was a card-carrying member while I served in the US Army and in college. But I take exception to this lawsuit, as it has nothing to do with defending the Bill of Rights and everything to do with the psychological scars of the Bush years.

The Constitution makes Barack Obama commander-in-chief; Congress has authorized (directed) force against al-Qaeda. Greenwald rejects this constitutional system to substitute an inappropriate and completely incompatible one. People who volunteer for al-Qaeda, or who willingly inhabit the same space as someone who has, are accepting the risks of the war al-Qaeda started.

Whether the CIA or the Marines or the Coast Guard kills them is irrelevant. Whether they are killed with a musket or a Hellfire missile or a death-ray is irrelevant. Whether they are American citizens or not is irrelevant. They have put the bullseye on themselves, and no amount of due process will change that.

Remember, Greenwald also objects to the “assassination” of Osama bin Laden. He says that Obama is “exactly like Bush” for fulfilling the constitutional obligations that Bush ignored. Greenwald admits to giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt in Iraq until their lying and incompetence were all too clear; now, he overcompensates, giving President Obama no rhetorical space to perform his constitutional duty to defend the United States against an enemy in declared wartime.

And that is warped beyond belief.

On Monday’s show, Ed Schultz chose to concentrate on the unduly high level of open abuse various operatives of the Republican Party are heaping on the President now. His guests were Melissa Harris-Perry and James Peterson:-

Several points to be queried here:-

1. Why does every Chairman of the RNC inevitably look like a sex criminal? Mind you, Reince Priebus not only looks like one, his name sounds like a sexual disease.

2.I agree with Melissa Harris-Perry. Priebus shouldn’t apologise for likening the President to the perpertrator of a criminal act – in this case Captain Schettino, not only a criminal, but the ultimate coward, who abandoned his ship and its passengers in favour of his own safety. Such an analogy only serves to make the Republicans look like angry, sour-faced, cold-hearted bastards, with more than a smidgeon of racism thrown in.

3. I agree with James Peterson. Who the hell is Allen West? I’ll tell you: a coward. West is the prissy, little kid who stood behind the fence shouting insults at various people passing, but when confronted by someone challenging him, he would either walk back what he said or run. Peterson thinks West should be called out, invited to debate his points and be challenged. He won’t respond. What I would say to West is basically this: if you have a point to make, make it; and remember … you were supposed to be an officer and a gentleman, and now you’re an honourable gentleman, duly elected to serve your constituents, Republican and Democrat. Imagine how comfortable your Democratic constituents would feel having to contact you with a local problem? And as for the “gentleman” part of your job description, past and present, if your commanding officer never told you, if your daddy never told you, then your mamma sure as hell should have told you that you don’t slander a lady the way you’ve slandered Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And finally, if you reckon you’re the man to lead African-American Democrats off the DemocraTIC plantation, then stop trying to sound like a sassy slave talking to the white folk. Memo to Congressman West: Sarah Palin is not Miss Scarlett, and you are not Big Sam.

Later in Ed’s show, he hosted that old Professional Left nemesis Joan “I-Resent-Black-People” Walsh, who – just seven months ago – was reckoning that all vociferous supporters of the President were Republican trolls paid by Andrew Breitbart.

Now at virtually the eleventh hour, Joan – like a lot of others of her ilk – seem to be walking back a lot of their own Obama hatred, which got to be more than just a bit vitriolic, especially during the last two years. Of course, Joan had to blog about the treatment of the GOP’s treatment of the President (whom Joan now refers to as “a decent guy”).

I don’t agree with every move the president has made. But I think the more Republicans try to demonize him, the more most American voters will see the difference between the GOP caricature and the man they’ve come to know. I get more pro-Obama with each vicious anti-Obama attack. I’m sure the rest of his base does, too … Has there ever been a more decent, upstanding, all-American president, with his dog and his family and his Apollo Theatre song solos, treated more shamefully by his opponents? I’d be more horrified by the abuse if I wasn’t sure it was backfiring.

It’s 2012, an election year, and there’s a President who’s running for re-election who’s been vilified mercilessly by his own side as much as by the opposition; and whereas the opposition has been led cock-a-snoot by Fox News, our underminers have the Professional Left, who’ve suddenly awoken, smelled their designer coffee and realised that a lot of the pushback from people they’ve blocked from their blogs, twitterfeeds and Facebook pages is resonating -hence the new dance known as the Professional Left Moon Walk.

Lest you think we’ve forgotten, Joan and Ed (and, yes, Ed, you’ve done your fair share of undermining mischief too), we haven’t your words of wanton criticism, your dog whistles and your whining.

Here’s a tune by which to practice your Moon Walk dance. Enjoy:-

Cross-posted from Emilia Wahoo ]]> http://www.osborneink.com/2012/02/sex-lies-videotape-and-obama-derangement-syndrome.html/feed 0 http://www.osborneink.com/2012/02/morning-awful-alabamas-war-on-education.html http://www.osborneink.com/2012/02/morning-awful-alabamas-war-on-education.html#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:00:09 +0000 Matt Osborne http://www.osborneink.com/?p=18587 Continue reading →]]> Remember the 2007 pay raise that Republicans used to bludgeon Democrats at the voting booths in 2010 and take over the Alabama legislature for the first time in 136 years? Turns out it wasn’t such a terrible thing, after all — at least according to state Senator Shadrack McGill. At a prayer breakfast this week, he defended his pay raise and then proceeded to defend attacks on educators’ pay by saying that Jesus wouldn’t pay teachers a middle class salary:

“Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you’re paying education, you know what’s going to happen? I’ve heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education’s going to go up.’ That’s never proven to happen, guys.

“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach.

“To go in and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?

Of course he didn’t want to be a teacher in Alabama. Who would want the God-mandated crummy pay and benefits of a teacher’s salary when you can be a legislator instead and vote yourself a pay raise? Of course, I’m sure McGill felt “called” to run for office for altruistic reasons. He’s all about altruism, especially when it comes from teachers:

“And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ‘em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn’t matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

“If you don’t keep that in balance, you’re going to attract people who are not called, who don’t need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.”

Get that? If Alabama raised teacher salaries, educated and successful people might be tempted to teach instead of running for office. And if there’s one thing Alabama is good at, it’s removing temptation. If there’s another thing our state excels at, it’s destroying public education. Remember, one of the first things Republicans did with their new power was to destroy a pension program that kept veteran teachers in the classroom. And hilariously, they blamed greedy teachers for the program shortfall:

Osborne Ink webcomic Jesus Magic Love Hose is off today.

A Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) soldier stands in line during a rehearsal of the Independence Day ceremony in Juba, Sudan, on July 5, 2011.

The last king of France had blown his treasury on foreign wars, including the American Revolution. Logically, we might expect the people of France to have responded to this by completing their own revolution with a smaller, or at least less expensive, military that wouldn’t eat out their nation’s substance. Yet the opposite is true: France became more militarized, not less. The aristocratic values of the battlefield were swept away by a social leveling that advanced an obscure artillery captain to the throne of empire. The army was more popular than ever in France, as it still is today.

Among the most popular misconceptions about militaries is that national leaderships maintain them against the popular will, or by distracting the people with propaganda or ideology. This view of history isn’t just wrong, it’s actually harmful to our understanding of war and peace. World War I began with spontaneous, joyful, eager crowds in every European capitol. Volunteers swamped recruitment centers as the secession of America’s Southern States shifted from a political crisis to an armed conflict.

Today, the Confederacy has no army because the Union won. There is still a United States Army today for the same reason. Regimes may change, but as long as countries exist armies will, too — by popular demand. The ideologies of conflict actually follow the desires of the crowd, and not the other way around. Armies are never unpopular. Armies are not merely the power of the state; they represent the national and cultural identity of the people in that state, and always have.

Readers may recall the surge in violence and anger at America’s occupation government for disbanding the Iraqi Army, which remained far more popular than Saddam. Even Iraq’s Shias took great pride in their nation’s army. It was another monumental misstep in a misbegotten conflict, and informs our understanding of the Arab Spring today.

For yesterday’s soccer riot in Egypt has brought fresh pressure on the interim government to step down over its failure to establish security in the country:

The viciousness of the incident shocked ordinary Egyptians, who expressed sympathy for the victims’ families and anger over the lack of security since the collapse of former President Hosni Mubarak’s police state. Wednesday night’s violence was the single deadliest incident since Mubarak’s resignation last year, and blame immediately was directed at the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and its transitional government.

The Egyptian Army has not lost its popularity; it is not receiving the blame today. Instead, the provisional government set up by that army is absorbing all the negative attention. Egyptians are not about to discard their military, even if Israel disappeared tomorrow, because it is a vessel of Egyptian identity and the guarantor of independence. Societies require a common defense, and always have. Palestinians did not have an army, and Arabs never forget it.

Wars that continue a long time, and at great cost in blood and treasure, may become unpopular, but this is actually more acute in the nation that is losing the war than one which senses imminent victory. The riots and strikes which brought down the Kaiser and the Czar in 1917-18 were not delayed reactions in protest of war’s outbreak, but rejections of wartime failures by both leaders.

Moreover, when a society’s army is destroyed in battle, the society always seeks to rebuild it. To not have an army is to be subjugated by foreign power. Neither WWI abdication resulted in a more peaceful country: Germany rearmed, and redoubled its militarization of daily life; the Bolsheviks had to fight for several years before securing their power over the Soviet nation, and immediately set about raising the world’s largest modern army.

Which brings us to Libya, where Gadaffi’s army was a patchwork affair of tribal units that shattered on city and town lines at the outbreak of civil conflict. Since the death of the former ruler, the Transitional National Council has not been able to replace the ad hoc militia units of the revolution with a coherent national army, or even a central command. The result is chaos:

Rival militias fought a two-hour gunbattle over a luxury beach house being used as a barracks in the Libyan capital Wednesday, underscoring how volatile the country is following the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

A Reuters reporter heard exchanges of both heavy and light weapons coming from the Tripoli district of El-Saadi beach, a stretch of Mediterranean coast overlooked by office skyscrapers and the Marriott Hotel.

Militias have carved up Tripoli and the rest of Libya into competing fiefdoms, each holding out for the share of power they say they are owed.

One of the hallmarks of the nation-state is its monopoly on the means of violence, and not because the state has designs to kill but because no state is possible when everyone is killing each other. Tripoli is an object lesson, and we may get another one in Syria. The rebellion there seems cohesive where Libya’s wasn’t, but the Syrian Army officer corps is dominated by Bashir al-Assad’s Alawite minority. Should Syrians succeed in overthrowing the regime, they will have to build a whole new army.

And they will, and not because of Israel but because Syria is a nation — and nations have armies. South Sudan has been a country for just seven months, but its army is older. The US Army celebrates its birthday going back to 1775, while the United States dates its birth to the following year. A nation without an army, on the other hand, is not a more peaceful or progressive one. Just look at Somalia.

Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity’s most pressing concerns. Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role. We are doing this in Saudi Arabia.

Al-Naimi excited greens by praising energy efficiency, solar power, and economic diversification, but he didn’t exactly endorse a movement to the post-oil economy:

The fact remains that oil will continue to play a major role in the overall energy mix for many decades. It is clear that a petroleum-free transportation system is decades away. And if you look at the vast range of products derived from crude oil, everything from lubricants to asphalt, medicines to plastics, it is clear petroleum is here to stay.

I see renewable energy sources as supplementing existing sources, helping to prolong our continued export of crude oil.

[...]

So let me reiterate my over-arching message here today: Saudi Arabia will continue to be a stable supplier of crude oil to world markets for many decades. We are continually investing in our oil and gas industry, as exemplified by our investment to increase production at our Manifa oil field. (Emphasis mine)

Get that? Saudi Arabia may have recognized that carbon culture begets climate change, but their ideal solution is not a shift to renewable energy. Instead, al-Naimi would have renewables prop up the continued extraction and burning of petroleum as Saudi Arabia passes peak oil production and uses up its reserves. This is not a recipe for enriching Saudi society, but a clinging to the same monoeconomy for another generation. The petro-oligarchy is trying to preserve itself.