This essay is part of a (hopefully) weekly feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.
Togo's military-imposed leader Faure Gnassingbé, who I'll call Gnassingbé II, announced a few days ago that he was stepping down as de facto head of state. This was in the wake of harsh international criticism and African Union sanctions against the country after its military having installed Gnassingbé II to succeed his late father Gen. Gnassinbgé Eyadema. Gen. Eyadema had been the world's second longest serving leader.
The son will be replaced by Parliament Speaker Abass Bonfoh, who will serve as interim president while elections are conducted. Gnassingbé II will be the presidential candidate of the ruling party.
A spokesman for Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo, who chairs the African Union, called the decision a 'victory for democracy.'
Lydia Polgreen joined in the Halleujah Chorus.
But the African response to the Togolese military's actions were taken out of a new playbook, one in which the old insistence on "African solutions to African problems," is no longer what it once seemed - a euphemism for African leaders looking the other way while despots and corrupt governments rampaged, she wrote in The New York Times.
Mr. Gnassingbé's departure has been hailed as a huge success for African diplomacy... The swift reversal was one result of a new phenomenon: African leaders and institutions showing stiff resolve and complete unity,... [the West African regional grouping] Ecowas and the African Union were quick and merciless in their condemnation, and worked from the first day of Mr. Gnassingbé's rule to push him from power.
Jonathan, over at The Head Heeb, warns against premature celebration at the apparent demise of the Gnassingbé dynasty.
I wouldn't read too much into this. Gnassingbe will be the ruling Rally of the Togolese People [RPT] party's candidate in the upcoming election, and Bonfoh - a long-time RPT apparatchik who vocally defended the coup in its early days (despite the fact that Bonfoh was the legitimate constitutional successor) - is clearly warming his chair. The RPT is strongly backed by the security forces and controls almost 90 percent of parliament against a weak opposition, so it will have virtually free rein to administer the campaign and voting process. The battle against the coup isn't won yet; continued regional pressure and lots of international observers are still needed to make sure the election is fair.
The opposition is weak largely because of consistent repression during the 37 year Eyadema regime. But it is fairly weak nonetheless. Opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio is the only opposition candidate with sufficient support to challenge the dynasty. And many see him as an outsider since he's lived out of the country for so long due to harassment by the regime (Gen. Eyadema led a military coup that overthrew Olympio's father, who'd been Togo's first president; by all accounts, Eyadema personally murdered the elder Olympio himself).
But as I opined earlier, the military establishment that appointed Gnassingbé II isn't likely to make things easy.
In reality, this 'power vacuum' bemoaned by the military [the pretext used by the army to appoint Gnassingbé II] was created in no small part by the military itself. As a pretext, one can safely assume, to appoint to the throne Eyadéma's son, a man who would surely know which side his bread was buttered on, I noted.
This report from the UN's IRIN service echoes my observations.
Gnassingbé II's father, General Gnassingbe Eyadema, ruled Togo with an iron hand for almost four decades, putting people from his northern Kabiye tribe in key government and military posts, it stated. Eyadema’s sudden death on 5 February left Gnassingbe [II] as the best bet the extended family business had of clinging on to the perks of power, diplomats and analysts say.
“These guys have not been accountable for 38 years, and they want someone who can protect their interests,” one Western diplomat in Lome told IRIN.
The actions take by the African Union and ECOWAS are a welcome change from the longstanding tradition of African regional and continental bodies (government groupings) being silent in the face of outrage.
The AU did what it was supposed to do in this case and that's laudable. Though it will be interesting to see if it shows the same resolve if a comparable situation were to occur in a much more powerful or economically significant country such as Nigeria or Egypt.
But caution is the order of the day. For 37 years, the army had a privileged position in Togolese society. It's not going to give up control without a fight.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Children at war
This essay is part of a regular feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.
The use of child soldiers has exploded in the last 15 years, making it probably the most sickening new phenomenon to emerge in "modern" conflicts.
Child soldiers are not a new development, but in the past, they were the exception. In many conflicts, such as Northern Uganda, Sri Lanka and the former (hopefully) civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, they were in fact the rule. Indicted war criminal Charles Taylor's Liberian rebel army infamously had entities called SBUs: small boys' units. And we're not talking boys of 16 or 17 here, but boys of 10 and 12 specifically recruited for the purpose.
And in conflicts that employ child soldiers, 'recruited' is often a euphemism for 'compelled' or 'kidnapped.' Some new conscripts are even forced to kill their families; this has the dual purpose of both proving their loyalty to the rebels as well as diminishing the likelihood of desertion.
A new book, Children at War, examines this troubling development. It points out the oft-noted reality that children tend to make the deadliest soldiers. Malicious commanders exploit kids' natural fearlessness. Many give the kids hallucogenic drugs to increase their sense of invulnerability. When you read of atrocious crimes from these war zones, like whimsical amputation of hands and arms, remember that these are most likely done not by rational but sadistic men with a method to their madness, but by drugged up teens or pre-teens.
How widespread is the child soldier scourge?
Sixty percent of the nonstate armed forces today use child soldiers; 23 percent use child soldiers 15 and younger; as many as 300,000 children "are currently fighting in wars or have recently been demobilized", notes this review of Children at War in The Christian Science Monitor.
Solutions? One possibility is restrictions on the international trade in small arms, which makes young children physically viable as soldiers. But since powerful governments won't let that happen, author P.W. Singer advocates putting teeth in the international treaties outlawing the use of soldiers under the age of 18. When the world's nonstate military leaders - who give little heed to international treaties and UN resolutions - realize they could be punished (and perhaps have assets seized) by the International Criminal Court, they may rethink their dependence on young, fearless, and impressionable warriors.
"The use of children as a weapon of war would be made like the use of chemical or biological weapons - simply unacceptable to the entire world, under any circumstances," he proposes.
***
OTHER RESOURCES
-Amazon.com listing of Children at War.
-War Child, a network of independent organisations working across the world to help children affected by war. It aims
*To alleviate the suffering of children by bringing material aid into war zones
*To support those children who have been evacuated into refugee camps.
* To initiate rehabilitation programmes once children return safely to their homes.
*To be instrumental in healing the psychological damage caused to children by their experiences of war.
The use of child soldiers has exploded in the last 15 years, making it probably the most sickening new phenomenon to emerge in "modern" conflicts.
Child soldiers are not a new development, but in the past, they were the exception. In many conflicts, such as Northern Uganda, Sri Lanka and the former (hopefully) civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, they were in fact the rule. Indicted war criminal Charles Taylor's Liberian rebel army infamously had entities called SBUs: small boys' units. And we're not talking boys of 16 or 17 here, but boys of 10 and 12 specifically recruited for the purpose.
And in conflicts that employ child soldiers, 'recruited' is often a euphemism for 'compelled' or 'kidnapped.' Some new conscripts are even forced to kill their families; this has the dual purpose of both proving their loyalty to the rebels as well as diminishing the likelihood of desertion.
A new book, Children at War, examines this troubling development. It points out the oft-noted reality that children tend to make the deadliest soldiers. Malicious commanders exploit kids' natural fearlessness. Many give the kids hallucogenic drugs to increase their sense of invulnerability. When you read of atrocious crimes from these war zones, like whimsical amputation of hands and arms, remember that these are most likely done not by rational but sadistic men with a method to their madness, but by drugged up teens or pre-teens.
How widespread is the child soldier scourge?
Sixty percent of the nonstate armed forces today use child soldiers; 23 percent use child soldiers 15 and younger; as many as 300,000 children "are currently fighting in wars or have recently been demobilized", notes this review of Children at War in The Christian Science Monitor.
Solutions? One possibility is restrictions on the international trade in small arms, which makes young children physically viable as soldiers. But since powerful governments won't let that happen, author P.W. Singer advocates putting teeth in the international treaties outlawing the use of soldiers under the age of 18. When the world's nonstate military leaders - who give little heed to international treaties and UN resolutions - realize they could be punished (and perhaps have assets seized) by the International Criminal Court, they may rethink their dependence on young, fearless, and impressionable warriors.
"The use of children as a weapon of war would be made like the use of chemical or biological weapons - simply unacceptable to the entire world, under any circumstances," he proposes.
***
OTHER RESOURCES
-Amazon.com listing of Children at War.
-War Child, a network of independent organisations working across the world to help children affected by war. It aims
*To alleviate the suffering of children by bringing material aid into war zones
*To support those children who have been evacuated into refugee camps.
* To initiate rehabilitation programmes once children return safely to their homes.
*To be instrumental in healing the psychological damage caused to children by their experiences of war.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Down with obscene programming! Down with decent programming!
Sometimes you have to believe that the gods must appreciate irony. Take the juxtaposition of these two news stories...
-US House sets half-million dollar penalties for on-air obscenity
and
-Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS
Conservatives object to obscenity and trash on television, but one of the main TV targets of their ire: the one network that never airs obscenity or trash... even at the risk of being labeled by some as staid and boring.
I get the feeling that some people would like to eliminate television altogether... except for Fox News Channel..
-US House sets half-million dollar penalties for on-air obscenity
and
-Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS
Conservatives object to obscenity and trash on television, but one of the main TV targets of their ire: the one network that never airs obscenity or trash... even at the risk of being labeled by some as staid and boring.
I get the feeling that some people would like to eliminate television altogether... except for Fox News Channel..
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
"Science without conscience will be the ruin of man."
The science and technology show Découvete, which airs on the Radio-Canada (French-language) television network, is going to air a show on Feb. 27 entitled: The Boy Without a Penis. Tell me if there's not something you find ethically disturbing about this.
Here's the (translated) description:
Sexual identity, is it innate or acquired? A fundamental question which was the object of a human experiment in Canada in the 60s. This week on Découverte, we tell you the troubling story of David Reimer, a Canadian from Winnipeg who, at 7 months, had his penis burnt off during a surgerical procedure...
This alone should answer the answer the question about ethics. But it gets worse...
and of John Money, the psychologist who treated him. This psychologist advocated one of the most celebrated hypotheses in modern psychology: any boy could be raised as a girl. During the first 14 years of his life, David Reimer was raised as a girl and, unfortunately, the experiment turned badly.
When I was in Guinea, a good friend of mine who was a biology/chemistry teacher, often said, "La science sans conscience sera la ruine de l'homme."
"Science without conscience will be the ruin of man."
How can a modest middle school teacher from a tiny African village continue to be so much more right than the world's smartest minds? I guess it goes to show yet again the difference between wisdom and intelligence.
Here's the (translated) description:
Sexual identity, is it innate or acquired? A fundamental question which was the object of a human experiment in Canada in the 60s. This week on Découverte, we tell you the troubling story of David Reimer, a Canadian from Winnipeg who, at 7 months, had his penis burnt off during a surgerical procedure...
This alone should answer the answer the question about ethics. But it gets worse...
and of John Money, the psychologist who treated him. This psychologist advocated one of the most celebrated hypotheses in modern psychology: any boy could be raised as a girl. During the first 14 years of his life, David Reimer was raised as a girl and, unfortunately, the experiment turned badly.
When I was in Guinea, a good friend of mine who was a biology/chemistry teacher, often said, "La science sans conscience sera la ruine de l'homme."
"Science without conscience will be the ruin of man."
How can a modest middle school teacher from a tiny African village continue to be so much more right than the world's smartest minds? I guess it goes to show yet again the difference between wisdom and intelligence.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Let the excuses begin
New York has not had an on time state budget in two decades. Some Republicans are already conceding defeat in this year's battle. Last Tuesday, the GOP controlled state Senate passed a contigency budget... despite the fact that the budget isn't due until 1 April.
For once the beneficiary of a public relations blunder, the Democratic Assembly speaker denounced the Senate's move. As well he should. Senators should get busy preventing a late budget in the first place, rather than laying the groundwork for excuses.
For once the beneficiary of a public relations blunder, the Democratic Assembly speaker denounced the Senate's move. As well he should. Senators should get busy preventing a late budget in the first place, rather than laying the groundwork for excuses.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Our man in Tegucigulpa
Last week, President Bush nominated John Negroponte as director of national intelligence. The newly created office will take some powers away from the CIA.
Negroponte, the current ambassador in Iraq, was also Bush's envoy to the UN and was a diplomat in Honduras in the early 80s during the first Reagan term.
Even Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller gushed over Negroponte's appointment on the BBC. It seems highly improbable that Negroponte's appointment will face any trouble. But in the absence of any questioning from the perhaps overly loyal "opposition," you'll probably have to look outside the mainstream media to find any serious analysis of Negroponte's long career in the diplomatic service and how it pertains to his new job. The corporate media generally takes its cues from the opposition party (regardless of who's in the White House) to determine what to make into a controversy.
Certainly, fake journalists planted in the White House press corps by the administration (something hardly out of character for them) won't be asking the questions.
This fascinating article from The New York Review of Books has a significantly less sympathetic portrayal of Negroponte than Sen. Rockefeller's hagiography.
For example, the article notes: In Honduras Negroponte exercised US power in ways that still reverberate throughout that small country. His most striking legacy, though, is the Honduras of his imagination. Most people who lived or worked in Honduras during the 1980s saw a nation spiraling into violence and infested by paramilitary gangs that kidnapped and killed with impunity. Negroponte would not acknowledge this. He realized that the Reagan policy in Central America would lose support if truths about Honduras were known, so he refused to accept them.
The piece was published three and a half years ago but is even more pertinent given Negroponte's likely new post. A man who sees things and knows things but refuses to acknowledge unpleasant realities, is that really an appropriate quality for a chief of intelligence?
Perhaps not, but time and time again, it's been shown to be the perfect quality to serve in the Bush administration.
Negroponte, the current ambassador in Iraq, was also Bush's envoy to the UN and was a diplomat in Honduras in the early 80s during the first Reagan term.
Even Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller gushed over Negroponte's appointment on the BBC. It seems highly improbable that Negroponte's appointment will face any trouble. But in the absence of any questioning from the perhaps overly loyal "opposition," you'll probably have to look outside the mainstream media to find any serious analysis of Negroponte's long career in the diplomatic service and how it pertains to his new job. The corporate media generally takes its cues from the opposition party (regardless of who's in the White House) to determine what to make into a controversy.
Certainly, fake journalists planted in the White House press corps by the administration (something hardly out of character for them) won't be asking the questions.
This fascinating article from The New York Review of Books has a significantly less sympathetic portrayal of Negroponte than Sen. Rockefeller's hagiography.
For example, the article notes: In Honduras Negroponte exercised US power in ways that still reverberate throughout that small country. His most striking legacy, though, is the Honduras of his imagination. Most people who lived or worked in Honduras during the 1980s saw a nation spiraling into violence and infested by paramilitary gangs that kidnapped and killed with impunity. Negroponte would not acknowledge this. He realized that the Reagan policy in Central America would lose support if truths about Honduras were known, so he refused to accept them.
The piece was published three and a half years ago but is even more pertinent given Negroponte's likely new post. A man who sees things and knows things but refuses to acknowledge unpleasant realities, is that really an appropriate quality for a chief of intelligence?
Perhaps not, but time and time again, it's been shown to be the perfect quality to serve in the Bush administration.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Insert Python quote
Update: The NHL and its players' union have reportedly agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement.
I, like most fans, remain skeptical. And even if true, they've jerked the fans around so much, I'm not going to be that ecstatic anyways.
As my brother noted: Does the Monty Python line, "I'm not dead yet" come to
mind?
I, like most fans, remain skeptical. And even if true, they've jerked the fans around so much, I'm not going to be that ecstatic anyways.
As my brother noted: Does the Monty Python line, "I'm not dead yet" come to
mind?
Good bye NHL. We hardly knew ya.
A few days ago, the National Hockey League officially cancelled its 2004-2005 season, becoming the first major sport to cancel an entire season. Whether it will still be a major sport if they ever resume playing is an open question.
The season was trashed after about five months of a lockout, which is the term used when employees want to work but management refuses to let them.
The key issue is this. Owners say they are losing money. There doesn't seem to be a lot of dispute about this, though I don't know if the owners opened their books to the players or not.
The owners' solution was to demand a league wide salary cap. This means that no team could spend more than a fixed amount of money on all player salaries. The players objected to this because it would obviously artifcially reduce their earning potential.
I was often asked who I supported: the players or the owners. I am a hockey fan. I enjoy watching hockey. The fact that the two sides could not reach an agreement and prevented NHL hockey from being played meant that I couldn't actually support either. Though the fact that the owners were the ones who imposed the lockout and thus were the direct cause of the stoppage made me somewhat less sympathetic to them.
In reality, the people I sympathized with were neither the players or owners. It was everyone else associated with hockey. The people I sympathize with are the people who earned money by selling food or programs at the rinks. The people I sympathize with are the people who run restaurants and bars and souvenir shops near the arenas. They didn't have large salaries to build up some savings. They didn't have huge "war chests" to fall back on.
So don't ask me if I support the owners or players. A more pertinent question might be whose POSITION I support.
Intellectually, I have to support the players' position, if only because the owners' position so violate the basic tenet of 'give me a break.'
The simple fact is this. No owner needs an externally-imposed salary cap in order to make money. In order to make a profit, all you need to do is take in more money than you spend. If you are losing money, there are two ways you can change that into a profit: spend less money or take in more money.
In the NHL's structure, increasing revenues is a lot hard to do for individual teams. Revenues can increase a lot faster due to decisions made centrally, most notably when it comes to national television contracts in Canada and the US.
Yet, spending less money is easier for individual teams to do. All it requires is discipline from management. It requires them to say, "No, I am not going to pay $5 million a year to a slug who can barely skate." No one, not even the much demonized players' union, puts a gun to an owner's head and forces him to pay ludicrous salaries to mediocre players.
So naturally, the owners demand the centralized solution that's unnecessary.
Some teams don't spend bucketloads of money. Some offer reasonable salaries and develop younger players from scratch to build a team rather than trying to buy championships through the free agent market. Two of those teams that did not spend bucketloads of money (relatively speaking) last year were the Calgary Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning. Those were the two teams who qualified for the Stanley Cup Finals.
Here's what any owner can do without externally-imposed salary caps. a) Figure out how much revenue he projects his team will take in, b) Spend no more than that amount (if he wants to not lose money) or spend less than that amount (if he wants to make a profit). A 12-year old running a lemonade stand could probably figure that out.
Fans can complain all they want about overpaid players and how they cause high ticket prices. This is ironic since while most people complain about the high cost of movie ticket prices, hardly anyone complains about overpaid actors.
But at the end of the day, you can't blame the players for being overpaid. Players sign a contact. A contract is a mutual agreement between the player and a particular club. If the employee is overpaid, he is so not simply because he wants x amount of money, but also because the employer AGREED TO PAY HIM x amount of money. If a team agrees to pay a player x dollars, it is because the team thinks his services to the club are somehow worth the investment of x dollars. That's a judgement of the club, which should not be overrided by a centralized authority.
Essentially, owners are asking to be saved from themselves, to be saved from their own recklessness. This is why I can't support their position. I advocate personal responsibility. Any individual owner who wants to make a profit can do so by restricting expenses to an amount less than revenues.
There is no rational reason why an owner in Detroit or Toronto should be limited in how much he can offer a potential employee simply because an owner in Anaheim or Miami can't manage his money responsibly.
If the players want to accept a salary cap as part of a broader collective bargaining agreement, that's certainly their prerogative. But I can't blame their long time refusal to be obligated to save the owners from themselves.
At the end of the day, the players did accept a salary cap so it ended up being a question of numbers.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman rejected the players' offer of a $49 million per team limit on salaries. "If every team spent to the $49 million ... total player compensation would exceed what we spent last season," he said.
This is a great example of faulty logic bordering on the disingenuous.
The cap would not have REQUIRED each team to spend $49 million, contrary to the doomsday scenario implied by Bettman. A $49 million cap would merely have LIMITED each team to a MAXIMUM of that amount. Surely, a man as smart as Bettman knows the difference.
But this is in line with the owners' consistent position throughout: "we owners don't trust ourselves to manage our own finances in a sane way so we need externally-imposed forces to do it for us. And we expect the players as a whole to sacrifice for our own inability to say no."
A responsible parent sometimes has to say no, or perhaps give the child less than he wants, even though it might displease the child. A responsible parent manages the family's finances in a sane way. A responsible parent doesn't expect the government or some other central authority to arbitrarily limit their spending; responsible parents can do that themselves.
The owners' position is that of an immature parent. The parent who can't say no. The parent who can't control his impulses and expects others to bail him out when that happens. The parent who is more concerned with keeping up with appearances than building a solid family. The immature parent thinks, "If I can't have a BMW, then no one in my neighborhood should have one either."
Ultimately, the NHL (and most North American sports leagues) is a restrictive cartel, much like OPEC. And the NHL is trying to manipulate the overall market like OPEC too.
The NHL contains 30 different businesses. They are competitors, yet they are linked as well. If 10 teams go bankrupt and fold, it does affect the other 20. Perhaps this isn't a terrible thing, though. If South Florida or Southern California aren't viable markets for NHL level hockey because too few people there care about ice hockey, is it the worst thing in the world if those franchises move or cease to exist? (Sorry Panthers and Ducks fans)
Maybe this whole situation begs a re-examination of the cartel structure of North American sports. Look at the setup of soccer in "socialist Europe," a setup which is far closer to Darwinistic capitalism that Americans usually prefer.
Take England, for example, There are 92 teams in the country's professional football (soccer) leagues. 20 in the top level, known as the Premiership. 24 in each of the other three levels, known as The Championship, League One and League Two.
In each division, three teams are promoted and three teams are relegated. Except no one is promoted from the Premiership because it's the top league. And the bottom clubs in League Two get relegated I believe to the amateur level.
In other words, the three best teams this year in The Championship (top two teams in the regular season and the third as decided in a playoff involving #3-6 regular season teams) will be promoted to the Premiership next year. The three worst teams in The Championship will play in League One next year..
I like this because it's a very meritocratic way of doing things. You can't be like the LA Clippers and have crappy seasons for 20 years in a row and still be allowed to call yourself a 'top flight team.' If you stink, you're punished. If you are good, you're rewarded.
There is no salary cap in English soccer.
Yet the structure punishes fiscal irresponsibility. A few years ago, the club Leeds United were in the Premiership and even in the semifinals of the pan-European Champions League. However, in order to do this, the club had to spend like a drunken sailor and racked up enormous debts. As with most debts, they had to be re-paid. With the club spending more and more on paying the debt (and their credit worthiness ruined), they had less and less to spend on players. The level of the team dropped as the best players were sold off. And last year, the team was relegated from the Premiership into The Championship. The demotion will cost them further revenue as they will get less TV money and play less glamorous opponents thus attracting fewer fans. Other clubs were more fiscally responsible. They didn't reach the romantic heights of European glory, but they're still playing top-flight soccer. Leeds were reckless in their spending and got punished. Leeds supporters aside, is that really such a horrible thing?
Yes, it makes for less parity. NFL(the American gridiron football league) is generally acknowledged as the best run of the American sports leagues and is the most popular team sports league in the country. It also has a salary cap, which I'm sure some people will be quick to point out. Parity is the patron saint of the NFL. Nearly any team can win the NFL's Super Bowl in any given year. And this is the be all and end all of sports. Or so we are told.
Any good story needs a villain. Baseball fans hate the New York Yankees. English soccer fans hate the Yankees' Siamese twin, Manchester United. A lot of fans will say something like this: I have two favorite baseball teams. [My team] and whoever's playing the Yankees. They are vilains and it makes their games and rivalries that much more exciting.
The idea of promotion and relegation adds one other benefit: rendering late season games meaningful. Even in the parity-laced NFL, a late season game between two bad teams is going to spark little interest, even from fans of those teams. Promotion-relegation makes these games just as important as a game between the two top teams. Whichever of the bad teams lose is that much closer to relegation, and all the bad things that implies. In soccer, these 'relegation battles' are matches which have all the passion and committment (if not skill) as any clash of titans. In North American sports, they are yawn fests played with second string players in half empty venues.
All of the above is what I believe intellectually.
Emotionally, I want to give the whole NHL lot of them the finger and offer them a great variety of expletive deleteds. Ultimately, the hockey players and owners are vastly overestimating the NHL's importance to North America's sporting landscape.
The NHL is the fourth major team sport in the United States, and might even be surpassed by MLS soccer if this nuclear labor war goes on a lot longer. It is not important enough to have this kind of catastrophe.
In 1994, Major League Baseball cancelled the World Series. It took 5 years before interest in baseball to be revived... and that was with the help of great stories like Cal Ripken's streak and the Mark McGuire/Sammy Sosa home run derby. The NHL is in nowhere near as strong a position in the US now as MLB was back then.
Even in Canada, the ancestral home of the sport, there are concerns. Ken Dryden, who was both a legendary player in Montreal and general manager in Toronto, recently opined, "I think that there are a number of fans in this country [Canada] who have sensed over the last number of months that actually, maybe, it was more habit than it was passion."
And ultimately, this is the NHL's biggest danger. Their main concern should not be fans who are furious, like the blogger Bobochan. Their biggest concern is fans who simply stop caring.
Anger subsidies over time.
Apathy usually does not.
Even me, I was not crushed by the season cancellation. I accepted in late-November that there wouldn't be any NHL this season. Even in past years, I didn't really follow the NHL much until April. Because the Stanley Cup playoffs are the most exciting tournament in any professional sport I've ever seen. (Only the 3rd round of the English soccer FA Cup comes close and that's only one round) But I stopped following the NHL regular season a long time ago. Simply put, the regular season really doesn't mean much. As long as you win about as many games as you lose, you'll probably make the playoffs. And the playoffs is when the real hockey is played.
Another downside is that simply put, the NHL isn't as exciting as it was 10 years ago. Watch an NHL game from last year (or a minor league game this year) and notice how much hooking and holding and interference you see. Notice how much time is spent by players stuck in the corners grinding away for the puck. See if you can stay awake long enough to follow it.
Then watch a game on ESPN Classics from the mid-80s through, say, 1994. Notice how much stickhandling you see. Notice how much skating. Notice how much faster the game was, how much more flow there was, how much time you spend on the edge of your seat. See if you dare change the channel.
Last spring, the NHL had its most breathtaking Stanley Cup finals since 1994. It was a final dominated by skaters and scorers and exciting players, rather than defenders, goaltenders and the neutral zone trap (for you soccer fans, the trap is ice hockey's equivalent of catennacio). After the '94 finals, the NHL ruined this momentum by having a labor dispute cancel half the season. After last year's finals, they ruined it again.
Except this time promises to be even most devastating.
Good bye NHL. We hardly knew ya.
The season was trashed after about five months of a lockout, which is the term used when employees want to work but management refuses to let them.
The key issue is this. Owners say they are losing money. There doesn't seem to be a lot of dispute about this, though I don't know if the owners opened their books to the players or not.
The owners' solution was to demand a league wide salary cap. This means that no team could spend more than a fixed amount of money on all player salaries. The players objected to this because it would obviously artifcially reduce their earning potential.
I was often asked who I supported: the players or the owners. I am a hockey fan. I enjoy watching hockey. The fact that the two sides could not reach an agreement and prevented NHL hockey from being played meant that I couldn't actually support either. Though the fact that the owners were the ones who imposed the lockout and thus were the direct cause of the stoppage made me somewhat less sympathetic to them.
In reality, the people I sympathized with were neither the players or owners. It was everyone else associated with hockey. The people I sympathize with are the people who earned money by selling food or programs at the rinks. The people I sympathize with are the people who run restaurants and bars and souvenir shops near the arenas. They didn't have large salaries to build up some savings. They didn't have huge "war chests" to fall back on.
So don't ask me if I support the owners or players. A more pertinent question might be whose POSITION I support.
Intellectually, I have to support the players' position, if only because the owners' position so violate the basic tenet of 'give me a break.'
The simple fact is this. No owner needs an externally-imposed salary cap in order to make money. In order to make a profit, all you need to do is take in more money than you spend. If you are losing money, there are two ways you can change that into a profit: spend less money or take in more money.
In the NHL's structure, increasing revenues is a lot hard to do for individual teams. Revenues can increase a lot faster due to decisions made centrally, most notably when it comes to national television contracts in Canada and the US.
Yet, spending less money is easier for individual teams to do. All it requires is discipline from management. It requires them to say, "No, I am not going to pay $5 million a year to a slug who can barely skate." No one, not even the much demonized players' union, puts a gun to an owner's head and forces him to pay ludicrous salaries to mediocre players.
So naturally, the owners demand the centralized solution that's unnecessary.
Some teams don't spend bucketloads of money. Some offer reasonable salaries and develop younger players from scratch to build a team rather than trying to buy championships through the free agent market. Two of those teams that did not spend bucketloads of money (relatively speaking) last year were the Calgary Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning. Those were the two teams who qualified for the Stanley Cup Finals.
Here's what any owner can do without externally-imposed salary caps. a) Figure out how much revenue he projects his team will take in, b) Spend no more than that amount (if he wants to not lose money) or spend less than that amount (if he wants to make a profit). A 12-year old running a lemonade stand could probably figure that out.
Fans can complain all they want about overpaid players and how they cause high ticket prices. This is ironic since while most people complain about the high cost of movie ticket prices, hardly anyone complains about overpaid actors.
But at the end of the day, you can't blame the players for being overpaid. Players sign a contact. A contract is a mutual agreement between the player and a particular club. If the employee is overpaid, he is so not simply because he wants x amount of money, but also because the employer AGREED TO PAY HIM x amount of money. If a team agrees to pay a player x dollars, it is because the team thinks his services to the club are somehow worth the investment of x dollars. That's a judgement of the club, which should not be overrided by a centralized authority.
Essentially, owners are asking to be saved from themselves, to be saved from their own recklessness. This is why I can't support their position. I advocate personal responsibility. Any individual owner who wants to make a profit can do so by restricting expenses to an amount less than revenues.
There is no rational reason why an owner in Detroit or Toronto should be limited in how much he can offer a potential employee simply because an owner in Anaheim or Miami can't manage his money responsibly.
If the players want to accept a salary cap as part of a broader collective bargaining agreement, that's certainly their prerogative. But I can't blame their long time refusal to be obligated to save the owners from themselves.
At the end of the day, the players did accept a salary cap so it ended up being a question of numbers.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman rejected the players' offer of a $49 million per team limit on salaries. "If every team spent to the $49 million ... total player compensation would exceed what we spent last season," he said.
This is a great example of faulty logic bordering on the disingenuous.
The cap would not have REQUIRED each team to spend $49 million, contrary to the doomsday scenario implied by Bettman. A $49 million cap would merely have LIMITED each team to a MAXIMUM of that amount. Surely, a man as smart as Bettman knows the difference.
But this is in line with the owners' consistent position throughout: "we owners don't trust ourselves to manage our own finances in a sane way so we need externally-imposed forces to do it for us. And we expect the players as a whole to sacrifice for our own inability to say no."
A responsible parent sometimes has to say no, or perhaps give the child less than he wants, even though it might displease the child. A responsible parent manages the family's finances in a sane way. A responsible parent doesn't expect the government or some other central authority to arbitrarily limit their spending; responsible parents can do that themselves.
The owners' position is that of an immature parent. The parent who can't say no. The parent who can't control his impulses and expects others to bail him out when that happens. The parent who is more concerned with keeping up with appearances than building a solid family. The immature parent thinks, "If I can't have a BMW, then no one in my neighborhood should have one either."
Ultimately, the NHL (and most North American sports leagues) is a restrictive cartel, much like OPEC. And the NHL is trying to manipulate the overall market like OPEC too.
The NHL contains 30 different businesses. They are competitors, yet they are linked as well. If 10 teams go bankrupt and fold, it does affect the other 20. Perhaps this isn't a terrible thing, though. If South Florida or Southern California aren't viable markets for NHL level hockey because too few people there care about ice hockey, is it the worst thing in the world if those franchises move or cease to exist? (Sorry Panthers and Ducks fans)
Maybe this whole situation begs a re-examination of the cartel structure of North American sports. Look at the setup of soccer in "socialist Europe," a setup which is far closer to Darwinistic capitalism that Americans usually prefer.
Take England, for example, There are 92 teams in the country's professional football (soccer) leagues. 20 in the top level, known as the Premiership. 24 in each of the other three levels, known as The Championship, League One and League Two.
In each division, three teams are promoted and three teams are relegated. Except no one is promoted from the Premiership because it's the top league. And the bottom clubs in League Two get relegated I believe to the amateur level.
In other words, the three best teams this year in The Championship (top two teams in the regular season and the third as decided in a playoff involving #3-6 regular season teams) will be promoted to the Premiership next year. The three worst teams in The Championship will play in League One next year..
I like this because it's a very meritocratic way of doing things. You can't be like the LA Clippers and have crappy seasons for 20 years in a row and still be allowed to call yourself a 'top flight team.' If you stink, you're punished. If you are good, you're rewarded.
There is no salary cap in English soccer.
Yet the structure punishes fiscal irresponsibility. A few years ago, the club Leeds United were in the Premiership and even in the semifinals of the pan-European Champions League. However, in order to do this, the club had to spend like a drunken sailor and racked up enormous debts. As with most debts, they had to be re-paid. With the club spending more and more on paying the debt (and their credit worthiness ruined), they had less and less to spend on players. The level of the team dropped as the best players were sold off. And last year, the team was relegated from the Premiership into The Championship. The demotion will cost them further revenue as they will get less TV money and play less glamorous opponents thus attracting fewer fans. Other clubs were more fiscally responsible. They didn't reach the romantic heights of European glory, but they're still playing top-flight soccer. Leeds were reckless in their spending and got punished. Leeds supporters aside, is that really such a horrible thing?
Yes, it makes for less parity. NFL(the American gridiron football league) is generally acknowledged as the best run of the American sports leagues and is the most popular team sports league in the country. It also has a salary cap, which I'm sure some people will be quick to point out. Parity is the patron saint of the NFL. Nearly any team can win the NFL's Super Bowl in any given year. And this is the be all and end all of sports. Or so we are told.
Any good story needs a villain. Baseball fans hate the New York Yankees. English soccer fans hate the Yankees' Siamese twin, Manchester United. A lot of fans will say something like this: I have two favorite baseball teams. [My team] and whoever's playing the Yankees. They are vilains and it makes their games and rivalries that much more exciting.
The idea of promotion and relegation adds one other benefit: rendering late season games meaningful. Even in the parity-laced NFL, a late season game between two bad teams is going to spark little interest, even from fans of those teams. Promotion-relegation makes these games just as important as a game between the two top teams. Whichever of the bad teams lose is that much closer to relegation, and all the bad things that implies. In soccer, these 'relegation battles' are matches which have all the passion and committment (if not skill) as any clash of titans. In North American sports, they are yawn fests played with second string players in half empty venues.
All of the above is what I believe intellectually.
Emotionally, I want to give the whole NHL lot of them the finger and offer them a great variety of expletive deleteds. Ultimately, the hockey players and owners are vastly overestimating the NHL's importance to North America's sporting landscape.
The NHL is the fourth major team sport in the United States, and might even be surpassed by MLS soccer if this nuclear labor war goes on a lot longer. It is not important enough to have this kind of catastrophe.
In 1994, Major League Baseball cancelled the World Series. It took 5 years before interest in baseball to be revived... and that was with the help of great stories like Cal Ripken's streak and the Mark McGuire/Sammy Sosa home run derby. The NHL is in nowhere near as strong a position in the US now as MLB was back then.
Even in Canada, the ancestral home of the sport, there are concerns. Ken Dryden, who was both a legendary player in Montreal and general manager in Toronto, recently opined, "I think that there are a number of fans in this country [Canada] who have sensed over the last number of months that actually, maybe, it was more habit than it was passion."
And ultimately, this is the NHL's biggest danger. Their main concern should not be fans who are furious, like the blogger Bobochan. Their biggest concern is fans who simply stop caring.
Anger subsidies over time.
Apathy usually does not.
Even me, I was not crushed by the season cancellation. I accepted in late-November that there wouldn't be any NHL this season. Even in past years, I didn't really follow the NHL much until April. Because the Stanley Cup playoffs are the most exciting tournament in any professional sport I've ever seen. (Only the 3rd round of the English soccer FA Cup comes close and that's only one round) But I stopped following the NHL regular season a long time ago. Simply put, the regular season really doesn't mean much. As long as you win about as many games as you lose, you'll probably make the playoffs. And the playoffs is when the real hockey is played.
Another downside is that simply put, the NHL isn't as exciting as it was 10 years ago. Watch an NHL game from last year (or a minor league game this year) and notice how much hooking and holding and interference you see. Notice how much time is spent by players stuck in the corners grinding away for the puck. See if you can stay awake long enough to follow it.
Then watch a game on ESPN Classics from the mid-80s through, say, 1994. Notice how much stickhandling you see. Notice how much skating. Notice how much faster the game was, how much more flow there was, how much time you spend on the edge of your seat. See if you dare change the channel.
Last spring, the NHL had its most breathtaking Stanley Cup finals since 1994. It was a final dominated by skaters and scorers and exciting players, rather than defenders, goaltenders and the neutral zone trap (for you soccer fans, the trap is ice hockey's equivalent of catennacio). After the '94 finals, the NHL ruined this momentum by having a labor dispute cancel half the season. After last year's finals, they ruined it again.
Except this time promises to be even most devastating.
Good bye NHL. We hardly knew ya.
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