Obama v. Putin: Maintaining credibility in international politics

In the ongoing competition between the United States and
Russia to maintain international power, many say Obama
has thrown in the towel.

The recent diplomatic maneuvers over Syria’s long-running and bloody civil war have raised, yet again, the question of how much diplomacy is about state policy and how much is about leaders and their pride.

On Sept. 11, 2013, The New York Times 

published an op-ed piece written by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin directly addressed the people and the political leaders of the United States and warned against any military action against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders,” Putin wrote. “A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism.”

Putin’s letter was a direct response to a speech given by President Obama the day before in which the American leader outlined why military force was necessary.

 “This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad’s capabilities,” Obama said, adding that he would not deploy American troops on the ground in Syria, nor pursue a prolonged bombing campaign.

In an August 2012 news conference Obama outlined when the U.S. would see it necessary to get involved in the Syrian war, saying, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”

Now the U.S. is caught between its threat of a red line and Russian efforts to negotiate a non-military end to this chemical weapons issue.

At the United Nations this week President Obama said the U.S. has no plans to invade Syria (even though inspectors have found clear evidence Syria used chemical weapons against its own people last month) but will continue to pursue diplomatic pressure.

Some have been quick to criticize Obama for his flip-flopping and the this puts special pressure on the American president, said Abhishek Chatterjee, an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Montana.

Chatterjee said that political leaders often make decisions based off of the desire to maintain credibility.

One method of maintaining credibility in international politics, especially as a powerful country like the U.S., is by setting an example. Chatterjee said it comes down to being a bit of a mob boss.

When a mafia boss wants to get money from a shopkeeper who fails to pay, the mafia boss sends a couple people to break legs.

“He doesn’t want to break the legs because he’s proud, he wants it to set an example to everybody who is even thinking about not paying,” Chatterjee said, adding credibility has nothing to do with ego.

Chatterjee said that the United States’ embargo against Cuba is a 50-year-old example of this approach.

“If you’re in our backyard, you can’t be independent,” Chatterjee said. “By this logic, you don’t get to act like a super power if you are quiet and peaceful and not pushing around other countries… That’s how the world unfortunately works in the realm of great power politics.”

As a world leader, the U.S. depends on maintaining this credibility in order to keep its position. When Obama backed down from his initial plan of initiating a military strike against Syria, some saw this as weakness.

Putin’s letter in the New York Times made it personal. Many of these arguments have been focused more on the personalities of the two leaders rather than the geopolitics behind the actual issue.

Various publications have compared the situation between Obama and Putin to some type of game. Garry Kasparov contributed an article to Time on Sept. 18 titled “Putin’s Pawn: Forget Chess or Checkers – Obama Forfeited.” Israeli news outlet Haaretz published an article by Asaf Ronel with the title “In the poker game with Obama on Syria, Putin plays the Israel card.” Both articles depict Putin as the bully and Obama as a pushover.

Many people believe that Obama handing Putin the power to remove Syria’s chemical weapons has left Russia with the upper hand. Some think that Obama was too accommodating, given Russia’s “desire to limit American influence in the world and putting an end to what it sees as arrogance of bringing democracy by force to oppressive countries,” Ronel said in his article.

But there is another possibility, said International Relations & Comparative Politics Professor Terry Weidner.

Putin’s letter may have allowed Obama to avoid the perils of a hasty military attack. Weidner pointed to the actions of former President George W. Bush when he refused to wait and confirm that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before invading Iraq.

“There’s a lesson there,” Weidner said. “We went into this long and horrible war where you can argue we did almost no good and a lot of harm for the very same thing we would criticize Obama for. And that is simply waiting to get a viable alternative to military action.”

Still, Weidner wonders about American standing in the world.

“You can’t talk about democracy and invade people – you can’t talk about democracy being an efficient system when you have total gridlock, and people are acting like they hate each other’s guts,” he said. “Under those circumstances it is really difficult to say that we stand for something greater because people don’t believe us anymore.” 

A risky game: Concussions and college football

Tyler Hegel stood on the line of scrimmage, anticipating the snap.  The ball flew and so did Hegel; racing down the field until he found his target. Then it went dark.

“Next thing I knew, I was getting walked to the sideline by the coaches,” Hegel said.

Hegel suffered a concussion, one of 1,364 reported each year to collegiate officials.

Hegel played in the secondary and on special teams at Dickenson State University. He prided himself on being able to take punishment But after this hit it was different.

“I figured a concussion would hurt,” Hegel said. “But it’s one of those things you don’t know until you have one.”

Hegel thought about going back in after the trainers cleared him, but he decided to sit out the rest of the game. He would end up sitting the next couple games after learning he had actually sustained a mild concussion. 

“After I found out how bad it was to have one and keep playing, I was glad I stayed out,” Hegel said.

NCAA estimates suggest that 1.6 million concussions occur in college sports every year. 

Hegel considers himself lucky, but wonders if the coaches and trainers did enough to keep him from potentially more devastating injuries if he had returned sooner to the game. This is one instance of an alarming trend of coaches inadequately dealing with concussions in college football. According to CBS Sports, three former college football players are suing the NCAA for not sufficiently educating players on the risks and effects associated with concussions.

With the NFL’s recent settlement of a lawsuit over its handling of concussions – to the tune of $765 million with over 4000 former players -- it seemed only a matter of time before the problem emerged in the college ranks.

But how to handle a concussion or other head injury is not always clear cut, said those on the front lines.

“Head injuries are a funny business,” said Troy Bowman, who has worked as a trainer for 15 years.

“There have been times when I’ve got to the kid and he’s ready to get up and get back out there,” Bowman said. “I’ve also seen kids walk away from playing the game after a concussion though.”

Still, Bowman said the seriousness of head injuries aren’t always taken as seriously as they should be.

“The research is out there,” Bowman said. “You look at what happened to Seau and its not just happening at the professional level.”

Junior Seau spent 20 years in the NFL playing linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots.  On May 2, 2012, Seau shot himself in the chest at his home.  He was 43.

Prior to his death, Seau suffered from bouts of depression and insomnia.  These symptoms indicated a possibility of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE.  The results came back positive.

Kristen Morgan, program director for the Brain Injury Alliance of Montana, said those with CTE deal with a myriad of problems.

“CTE has a degenerative effect on the brain,” Morgan said. “This leads to all sorts of issues.”

Morgan listed a range of long-term effects of repeated head traumas associated with CTE and head injuries: short and long-term memory loss; difficulties multi-tasking; emotional instability; depression; anxiety; bouts with insomnia and chronic fatigue.

Morgan says that head trauma doesn’t have to progress to the level of CTE in order to be debilitating.

“People with the average concussion can have these kinds of symptoms for the rest of their life,” Morgan said. “It takes a lot of courage to realize ‘I’ve got a problem’ and to get help to make sure it doesn’t get worse.”

Dr. Justin Buls has seen what can happen when head trauma is left untreated.

“It’s like Alzheimer’s,” Buls said. “I’ve seen patients in their thirties whose mind is in worse shape than patients with dementia.”

Buls graduated with a degree in sports medicine from the University of North Dakota in 2009. Over the course of his time as a physician, he has seen patients try and brush off the effects of head trauma.  He stressed that sufferers of head injuries stay vigilant in dealing with their injury.

“Many people try to hide their symptoms from friends and family,” Buls said. “It only turns a bad situation worse.”

Hegel quit playing football at Dickinson State after his freshman season.  He moved back to Montana where he studies accounting and finance.

Hegel’s concussion hasn’t caused any lingering symptoms, but Hegel remains cautious when playing sports.

“The last thing I want is another one,” Hegel said. “I don’t want to end up later regretting doing what I love.”

Failure finding festival guide leads to . . .

Hello all. Well today’s BLOG is about searching the internet For Jam-Base like web sites. Jambase.com is a website to search for concerts and festivals across the county. I think it has actually been around for almost twenty years because I've been using it for at least fifteen. The main key to this site was it's festival guide. There are plenty of web sites out there that tell when the concerts are, of specific artist, and yes they play festivals so you can find them that way. But there are very few websites that will tell you where different festivals are across the country. I used this site to plan my tour cross country for summer 2003. The trip failed half way through, but that's a different story. Through this site, I found festivals across the country and even on the cliffs of Mexico. And you would think after all this time, that some one else would create a site that might get more notoriety. I don't think a lot of people know about Jambase, but maybe. Plus, it would be cool if there was something better out there that I had yet to discover.

I searched in Google and Yahoo and am reluctant to say, I didn't find much. There are a couple sites out there that will track an artist for you like Songkick.com. There they say, “We built Songkick so we’d have one place to track our favorite bands so we’d never miss them live. We want to take the hassle out of finding out when your favorite bands are coming to your city.” But this still doesn't tell us about festivals.

I found a few people trying to make money off of merchandising but that's to be expected. Some of the cooler ones were sights like Wolfgangsvault.com and Nugs.net. Wolfgang himself is an old rock and roll promoter that saved tons of concert paraphernalia over the last 50 or so years. So now he has opened a museum in New York displaying some of his best stuff. His website previously mentioned, sells posters and live videos of concerts. Mostly older stuff as far as I can tell though. Nugs is a little different. They sell and give away live audio streams of concerts by your favorite band and show. Yes, the Gourds that played Missoula a couple of weeks ago is already there for those that can't remember it, and this one is free. It looks pretty sweet.

The only sites that I found that even closely resemble the search capabilities that Jambase had were Pollstar.com and a site made by some concert townies in love called Oh/My/Rockness at ohmyrockness.com.

For those that don't know Pollstar is an organization that tracks venues sales, profit, and attendance/capacity. It crunches all this data to use as a tool that people in the industry can use. They also have a magazine with articles on the industry and a yearly award ceremony. They are big. Oh my Rockness is not that. They have a calendar of smaller venues from a few major metropolitan area's across the country. None around here though.

The very coolest site I found was called iclips.net. Because of the name, I get the feeling the they are based around Apple, but these guys live stream festivals. It even looks like they do it well. They have quite the impressive band and festival list for people using their service. 

“Featuring performances by: Umphrey's McGee • moe. • Primus • STS9 • Gov't Mule • Gogol Bordello • Shpongle • Lotus • Leftover Salmon • Michael Franti & Spearhead • Yonder Mountain String Band ...and A LOT more!,” is listed on their site. 

And all this only cost 60 dollars for the whole summer of festivals. The show themselves usually costing hundreds a piece. Well anyway, I know this went on too long but I wanted to express my disappointment and delight over the thing I did not find and the cool new things I did. I hope you enjoyed. I'm out.

The Internet Generation Fails

Honestly, when a professor gives you an assignment to “research anything you want to” for your first grade in the class, I am usually beyond excited. The Internet is full of so much information! I would learn anything and everything there is to know about whatever my little heart desires. Oh, how little did I know that tricky professor is actually trying to get me to learn something about the fact that he knows more about the Internet than me at age 40! How can that be!? I, a product of the complex computer and Internet generation, have been outsmarted at our own game.

After some consideration, I have decided the thing I need to research is my roommates. I want to discover what I could find about them on the Internet and if this information is actually relevant in any way. So I unfriend and unfollow them on each social network, and let the stalking begin.

After hours and hours of researching, I uncover what athletics and clubs my roommates were in during high school. I learn about the towns they grew up in, and if they were involved in anything that could make the paper. Facebook tells me some of their “likes” including “waking up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy” and “Why Learn Algebra? Finding X is only useful if you’re a pirate!”. 

I discovered a few Pinterest accounts, which include a further look into each person’s more style and hobbies. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Photobucket and Google images allow me to actually see what they look like: either blonde hair blues eyes or brown eyes with brunette hair. I also found their height and ages. Safe to say, if I hadn’t known them before I could pick them out of a line up now.

This is an overwhelming amount of information. But in all reality, how relevant is any of this to looking for a roommate? I don’t really need to know every event they placed in throughout their high school athletic career or if they attended a school board meeting in 2012. In addition, the facts I obtain from Facebook could be entirely fabricated.

While this information is entertaining, it’s not essential. These facts don’t tell me that one my roommates got caught stealing from the University Bookstore, or that another got a Minor In Possession charge last fall. Or that one lost their mom at a young age, another lost their sister and another lost a cousin due a shooting. Just like when searching other people, you tend to only get a taste of the information you need or essential to their life. 

We, as the Internet generation, should be aware of these gaps and become less reliant on a search engine. Or, at least, try to figure out its loopholes. So then the next time my professor tries to outsmart me in regards of the Internet, maybe I’ll be a bit more prepared for it.