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Baghdad Monopoly Niagara Falls Topography April 20, 2009
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Secure Enough to Sin, Baghdad Revists Old Ways by Rod Nordland April 18, 2009 BAGHDAD
V
ice is making a comeback in this city once famous for 1,001 varieties of it.
A liquor store in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad. The stores were tolerated by Saddam Hussein but shut by militiamen after his ouster in 2003. Gone, for the most part, are nighttime curfews, religious extremists and prowling kidnappers. So, inevitably, some people are turning to illicit pleasures, or at least slightly dubious ones. Nightclubs have reopened, and in many of them, prostitutes troll for clients. Liquor stores, once shut down by fundamentalist militiamen, have proliferated; on one block of busy Saddoun Street, there are more than 10 of them. Abu Nawas Park, previously deserted for fear of suicide bombers seeking vulnerable crowds, has now become a place for assignations between young people so inclined. It is not that there are hiding places in the park, where trees are pretty sparse; the couples just pretend they cannot be seen, and passers-by go along with the pretense. It is a long way from Sodom and Gomorrah, but perhaps part way back to the old Baghdad. The Baathists who ruled here from the 1960s until the American invasion in 2003 were secular, and more than a little sinful. Baghdad under Saddam Hussein was a pretty lively place, with street cafes open until 2 or 3 a.m., and prostitutes plying their trade even in the bowling alley of Al Rashid Hotel.
“Everything is going back to its natural way,” said Ahmed Assadee, a screenwriter who works on a soap opera. Men gather in cafes to smoke a hookah and gamble on dice and domino games. On weekends, the Mustansiriya Coffee Shop’s back room is crammed with low bleachers set up around a clandestine cockfighting ring. On one recent day, the 100 or so spectators were raucous while watching the bloody spectacle, but they placed their bets discreetly.
At the Ahalan Wasahalan Club on Al Nidhal Street one recent night, the owner, Tiba Jamal, was holding court, as she usually does, on the dais at the front of a room with a mostly empty dance floor and lots of tables. Ms. Jamal calls herself the Sheikha, or a female sheik, an honorific title she has apparently adopted. She dresses in a head-to-toe, skin-tight black chador, and she is adorned with several pounds of solid gold bracelets, pendants, necklaces, earrings and rings, her response to the financial crisis.
Gambling, after all, is illegal. Walid Brahim, 25, a bomb disposal expert with the Iraqi Army, and his brother Farat, 20, an electrician, recently sat side by side at a table in the Nights of Abu Musa bar, on an alley off Saddoun Street, working their way through a bucket of ice and a bottle of Mr. Chavez Whiskey, an Iraqi-made hooch. “This is great,” Walid Brahim said. “We used to buy alcohol and just drink secretly in our house.” The bar is men-only, as pretty much all respectable taverns are, but the brothers look forward to an even brighter future. “If this security continues,” Farat Brahim said, “within a year all the waiters will be girls.” The local police, weary of years of dodging assassins and cleaning up after car bombings, are blasé about a little vice. “Today we are dealing with more normal things. All the world is facing such problems,” said Col. Abdel Jaber Qassim Sadir, assistant police chief in Karada, a central Baghdad neighborhood. “Prostitution, this kind of behavior cannot be stopped,” Colonel Sadir said. “It’s very hard to find it in public; it goes on in secret, isolated places.” Actually, not so secret. There are a half-dozen night spots in Karada now where the entry fee is $50. With $150 a week considered a good wage, customers would not pay that much merely for the privilege of drinking.
The female workers in the nightclub wore rather less clothing, but nothing that would be considered risqué on a street in Europe — in August. At one point in the evening they outnumbered the men, as they sat in a big group until being summoned to one of the men’s tables. “It’s nice to see people having fun again,” Ms. Jamal said. One regular customer said, “You can have any of those girls to spend the night with you later, only $100.” First, though, patrons are expected to spend a few hours buying $20 beers or even more costly whiskey. A young woman who said she was 28 but looked 18 sat smoking, and downing soft drinks while her “date” drank Scotch. A university student, she would give her name only as Baida, but she was frank about her nighttime profession. Had something happened to force her into this? “No,” she said. “I go out with men so I can get money.” To support her family? She seemed stunned by the question. “No, for myself.”
Baghdad Gambling Soccer Economy
PROSTITUTION
“I don’t see how people can view this as exploitation. I could go out and work three jobs and still go to school and probably make decent grades, but is that really what I want to do? I make more money this way, and I have a lot more fun because I get to go out to concerts, go shopping, see movies and make money off of it. If instead of this I was just dating a rich guy, it’d be almost the same thing, and society wouldn’t look down on that. You know with a sugar daddy that they’re spending a lot of money on you and they clearly want something in return, but is that really any different than how it is with a boyfriend?” -MERCEDES a junior who pays her own tuition at a Georgia University. She has had six sugar daddies in the past year to supplement her wages busing tables and washing dishes at a bar.
One police detective said he would not dream of enforcing the law against prostitutes. “They’re the best sources we have,” said the detective, whose name is being withheld for his safety. “They know everything about JAM and Al Qaeda members,” he said, using the acronym for Jaish al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia.
Drug abuse, at least, is one problem that has not shown up much, or has stayed well underground, the police say. “The only problems we see are some illegal pills occasionally,” Colonel Sadir said.
The detective added that the only problem his men had was that neighbors got the wrong idea when detectives visited the houses where prostitutes were known to live. They really do just want to talk, he said.
Most people have had enough excitement these past six years just staying home.
Not surprisingly, the Baghdadis’ drug of choice is Valium, the colonel said.
Riyadh Mohammed, Suadad al-Salhy and Muhammed al-Obaidi contributed reporting.
“If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more,” the detective said. “At least they’re not sectarian.” Others are uncomfortable with the prostitutes’ presence. “It is terrible to see prostitution increased like this,” said Hanaa Edwar, secretary general of the Iraqi human rights group Al-Amal. “These are women from displaced families, poor people, people who have to sell themselves to get money for their families and children.” She was incensed after she raised the subject before the Iraqi Parliament. “They were shocked and didn’t agree to open discussion on this issue,” she said. The shock, she said, was that she dared to mention the problem. Al Amal commissioned a report last year that surveyed prostitutes working on the streets in Baghdad. One was a 15-year-old girl who had been thrown out of school for dressing inappropriately, then took to prostitution, the report said. Another was an 18-year-old forced to become the second wife of an older man; she ran away and had no other way to support herself. One girl was 12. Certainly, vice often has an ugly side. During a recent undercover operation in Karada aimed at a human trafficking ring, a pimp offered a plainclothes officer an opportunity to buy a young woman to take to Syria, according to a detective, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the sting.
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Baghdad Gambling Soccer Economy
IRAQ 101 A QUICK GUIDE TO WHERE WE’RE AT As 2009 opened, the war in Iraq had entered a phase the Brookings Institution described as “a kind of violent semi-peace.” That the phrase was promptly denounced as Orwellian underscored how deeply controversial the conflict remains, with almost every event, and even facts, subject to dispute or distrust. Violence had dropped precipitously, but only from the worst levels. Killings and bombings still occurred at nearly the rate they did in the first months after the American invasion in 2003, which was by no means a peaceful time. There was no question, however, that the nature of the war was changing. So was Iraq itself. President George W. Bush, the architect of the war, left office, though not before signing new security agreements that have given far greater authority to Iraq’s political leaders, even over military operations, than ever before. The agreements, though vague in places, also explicitly require the withdrawal of all American forces by the end of 2011, signaling the end, at least in theory. President Obama, who campaigned on a promise to end the war, entered office in January indicating that he did not intend to waver from his goal, though he did not immediately order military commanders to fulfill a campaign pledge of withdrawing all American combat forces within 16 months. On his first full day in office he did tell Pentagon officials and military commanders “to engage in additional planning necessary to execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq.'' A month later, he announced a plan to withdraw all combat troops by August 2010 and all remaining troops by December 2011. While the timetable was slightly longer than he had pledged during the campaign, Mr. Obama’s promised withdrawal will put American policy on a path toward a clear end of the war, although the path is strewn with obstacles and potential flashpoints, like planned elections and referendums that could make Iraq stronger and more democratic — or reignite ethnic and sectarian divisions, sending it plunging back into civil war.
Preparation and Invasion 1
Chaos and Insurgency
Almost immediately after ousting the Taliban from power in Afghanistan following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – some argue, even before – Mr. Bush began to press the case for an American-led invasion of Iraq. He cited the possibility that Saddam Hussein still sought nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in defiance of United Nations restrictions and sanctions. Mr. Bush and other senior American officials also sought to link Iraq to Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Both claims have since been largely discredited, though some officials and analysts continue to argue otherwise, saying that Mr. Hussein’s Iraq posed a real and imminent threat to the region and to the United States.
The fall of Iraq’s brutal, powerful dictator unleashed a wave of celebration, then chaos, looting, violence and ultimately insurgency. Rather than quickly return power to the Iraqis, including political and religious leaders returning from exile, the United States created an occupation authority that took steps widely blamed for alienating many Iraqis and igniting Sunni-led resistance. They included disbanding the Iraqi Army and purging members of the former ruling Baath Party from government and public life. On May 1, 2003 Mr. Bush appeared on an American aircraft carrier that carried a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished,” a theatrical touch that even the president later – very much later – acknowledged sent the wrong message.
In his State of the Union address in 2002, Mr. Bush lumped Iraq in with Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil.’’ In his 2003 address, Mr. Bush made it clear the United States would use force to disarm Mr. Hussein, despite the continuing work of United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq, and despite growing international protests, even from some allies. A week later Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made the administration’s case before the United Nations Security Council with photographs, intercepted messages and other props, including a vial that, he said, could hold enough anthrax to shut down the United States Senate. In March, with a “coalition of the willing” and disputed legal authority, the United States led a multinational invasion from Kuwait that quickly toppled Mr. Hussein’s government, despite fierce fighting by some paramilitary groups. The Iraqi leader himself reportedly narrowly avoided being killed in the war’s first air strikes. The Army’s Third Infantry Division entered Baghdad on April 5, seizing what was once called Saddam Hussein International Airport. On April 9, a statue of Mr. Hussein in Firdos Square was pulled down with the help of the Marines. That effectively sealed the capture of Baghdad, but began a new war.
2
In the security and political vacuum that followed the invasion, violence erupted against the American-led occupation forces and against the United Nations headquarters, which was bombed in August 2003, killing the body’s special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 – the former leader was found unshaven and disheveled in a spider hole north of Baghdad – did nothing to halt the bloodshed. In January 2005, the Americans orchestrated Iraq’s first multi-party elections in five decades, a moment symbolized by Iraqis waving fingers marked in purple ink after they voted. The elections for a Transitional National Assembly reversed the historic political domination of the Sunnis, who had largely boycotted the vote. A Shiite coalition cobbled together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric, won a plurality, and put Shiites in power, along with the Kurds. Saddam Hussein stood trial, remaining defiant and unrepentant as he faced charges of massacring Shiites in Dujail in 1982. A new constitution followed by the end of the year, and new elections in January 2006 cemented the new balance of power, but also exposed simmering sectarian tensions. Arab and Kurdish tensions also ran high. In Mosul, a disputed city in the north, Sunni militants attacked Kurdish and Christian enclaves. The fate of Kirkuk, populated by Arabs, Kurds and smaller minority groups, remains disputed territory, punctured routinely by killings and bombings. After a political impasse that reflected the chaos in the country, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a little-known Shiite politician previously known as Jawad al-Maliki, became Iraq’s first permanent prime minister in April 2006.
At Home
Iraq Today 3
The messy aftermath of a swift military victory made the war in Iraq increasingly unpopular at home, but not enough to derail Mr. Bush’s reelection in November 2004. Almost immediately afterwards, though, his approval rating dropped as the war dragged on. It never recovered. By 2006, Democrats regained control in Congress. Their victory rested in large part on the growing sentiment against the war, which rose with the toll of American deaths, which reached 3,000 by the end of the year, and its ever spiraling costs. Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death just before the Congressional elections, and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld resigned the day after the vote, widely blamed for having mismanaged the war. In the face of rising unpopularity and against the advice of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan group of prominent Americans, Mr. Bush ordered a large increase in American forces, then totaling roughly 130,000 troops. He decided to do so after meeting with his advisors over the New Year’s holiday weekend, even as Mr. Hussein was hanged in a gruesome execution surreptitiously filmed with a cell phone. The “surge,” as the increase became known, eventually raised the number of troops to more than 170,000. It coincided with a new counterinsurgency strategy that had been introduced by a new American commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the flowering of a once-unlikely alliance with Sunnis in Anbar province and elsewhere. Moktada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric, whose followers in the Mahdi Army militia had been responsible for some of the worst brutality in Baghdad, declared a cease-fire in September. These factors came together in the fall of 2007 to produce a sharp decline in violence. Political progress and ethnic reconciliation were halting, though, fueling calls by Democrats to begin a withdrawal of American forces, though they lacked sufficient votes in Congress to force one. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, an early opponent of the war, rose to prominence in the Democratic race for the nomination in large part by capitalizing on the war’s unpopularity. But by the time Mr. Obama defeated Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the nomination in 2008 and faced the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, Iraq hardly loomed as an issue as it once had, both because of the drop in violence there and because of the rising economic turmoil in the United States and later the world.
4 At the end of 2007, Mr. Bush and General Petraeus had succeeded in maintaining the level of American forces in Iraq above what it was before the “surge” began. Today, more than 140,000 remain there, though in its last months the Bush administration announced gradual reductions scheduled to continue this year. Prime Minister Maliki’s government, increasingly confident of its growing military might, expanded operations against insurgents and other militants that had once been the exclusive fight of the Americans. The militias loyal to Mr. Sadr, who had gone into exile, were routed in a government-led offensive in southern Iraq, though significant assistance from American forces and firepower was needed for the Iraqis to succeed. By May, the offensive extended to Sadr City in Baghdad, a densely populated neighborhood that had been largely outside of the government’s control. American and Iraqi officials spent most of 2008 negotiating a new security agreement to replace the United Nations mandate authorizing the presence of foreign troops. Negotiations proceeded haltingly for months, but Mr. Bush, who for years railed against those calling for timetables for withdrawal, agreed in July 2008 to a “general time horizon.” That ultimately became a firm pledge to remove all American combat forces from Iraqi cities by the end of June 2009 and from the whole country by 2011. He also agreed to give Iraq significant control over combat operations, detentions of prisoners and even prosecutions of American soldiers for grave crimes, though with enough caveats to make charges unlikely. According to political advisers, Mr. Maliki is intent on changing the nature of Baghdad’s relationship with Washington, shifting Iraq’s role from a client state to a more equal partner. During a visit in February 2009 by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Mr. Maliki signaled a desire to gradually diminish American power over Iraqi politics and increase ties to other Western powers. He has also contended that his government had fixed the missteps of the Americans after the invasion, like the American decision to dismantle the pre-war Iraqi Army.
But internally, the transition from insurgency to politics to governance — a key to stabilizing the country after six years of war — was proving to be anything but steady and sure. Iraq’s provincial elections on Jan. 31 passed with strikingly little mayhem, raising hopes that democracy might take hold. The Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was the overwhelming winner, but the party fell short of being able to operate without coalition-building. Over all, the results remained divided along sectarian lines, with Shiite-majority provinces choosing Shiite parties and Sunni-majority provinces choosing Sunni parties. The election outcome conveyed a dual message: many Iraqis want a strong central government, rather than one where regions hold more power than the center, but they do not want all the power in the hands of one party. On the ground in the provinces, however, what happened in the months after the election was something all too familiar to Iraqis: threats, intrigue, back-room deal-making, protests, political paralysis and, increasingly, popular discontent. Two and a half months after the elections, the 14 provinces that voted have only now begun forming provincial councils, the equivalent of state legislatures in the United States. Five provinces, including Babil, Najaf and Basra, still have no functioning governments, despite a deadline that passed in early April, as party leaders squabble over the selection of governors, council chairmen and their deputies. Elections that were supposed to strengthen Iraq's democracy, unite its ethnic and sectarian factions, and begin to improve sorely needed basic services - water, electricity, roads - have instead exposed the fault lines that still threaten the country's stability. The disarray reflects the anxious jockeying before national elections expected this winter, contests that could inflame tensions and disrupt President Obama's plan to withdraw American combat forces in 2010.
“Let me say this as plainly as I can, by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.” -President Obama
Baghdad Gambling Soccer Economy
SPORTS Web Site Puts Focus on The Fix in Sports Bets by Joe Drape May 25, 2008 LONDON
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ith Internet gambling predicted to surpass $20 billion in 2008, and with illegal wagering accounting for $150 billion in the United States, by some estimates, the temptation for those seeking to influence the outcome of games has never been greater. Now, a raft of gambling scandals in sports, from cricket to soccer and most recently tennis, has raised an uncomfortable question: Are the games we watch fixed? Last Monday, a report commissioned by the major tennis governing bodies recommended that 45 matches played in the last five years be investigated because betting patterns gave a “strong indication” that gamblers were profiting from inside information. And those matches, the report said, may be only the tip of the iceberg. The match fixing might never have been discovered had it not been detected by Betfair, which has revolutionized online wagering since its Web site started in June 2000. At any moment, Betfair’s customers have $360 million on account and are at their keyboards, matching odds with fellow bettors in 80 countries. It is eBay for gamblers, with wagers being made in real time, usually after the matches have begun. Betfair has become a focal point for the growing list of match-fixing scandals. Over the past seven years, it has alerted dozens of sports about suspicious betting activity, leading to investigations in horse racing, soccer and now tennis. “You’re at risk of being victimized by inside information if you’re playing these markets,” said David Forrest, an economics professor at the University of Salford in England. “While Internet gambling has offered transparency, it has offered temptation as well. There’s greater liquidity for the cheats, and new forms of wagering and more money than ever. There are more incentives for athletes or officials to manipulate or fix a game.”
The most prominent scandal has involved the tennis player Nikolay Davydenko, ranked fourth in the world and seeded fourth in the French Open, which begins Sunday. At a tournament in Sopot, Poland, in August, Mr. Davydenko went from being a heavy favorite against 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina to being a significant underdog during the match. Mr. Davydenko’s odds got longer, and more money came in for Mr. Vassallo Arguello, even after Mr. Davydenko won the first set. Mr. Davydenko retired because of an injury with Mr. Vassallo Arguello ahead, 2-6, 6-3, 2-1. During the match, Betfair notified the ATP, the men’s professional tennis association, that its security team had recognized irregular betting patterns. After the match, Betfair voided $7 million in bets, the first time in its history that it had taken such a measure. It turned over all of its data to the ATP. Mr. Davydenko has denied wrongdoing. He has refused a request from ATP investigators for the cellphone records of his wife and his brother. The incident, along with the fact that at least a dozen ranked players told members of the news media that they had been asked to throw matches or had heard of similar approaches made to other players, prompted the 66-page report, “Environmental Review of Integrity in Professional Tennis.” Now many in professional tennis are calling for a global anticorruption body for sport, to run along the lines of the World Anti-Doping Agency. The idea has been embraced by most major sports in Europe. “Insider trading is a bigger deal in sports than in the financial markets,” said Justin Wolfers, a professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, who studies gambling. “We have the Securities and Exchange Commission here. Why not the same for what is a multibillion-dollar sports gambling market?” From its office above the Thames, Betfair has been the de facto watchdog for sports. Computers glow 24 hours a day, and televisions beam in snooker, basketball, soccer and horse racing, among the sports on which Betfair offers 4,000 kinds of bets a week.
“...it exists, we’re just showing what’s already been there.”
Betfair’s founders, Andrew Black and Edward Wray, whose backgrounds are in the stock market and investment banking, say they have built a better mousetrap. More than a million customers of the Web site, Betfair.com, wager against each other, setting their own odds and paying a fraction of what traditional bookmakers charge. As Internet gambling has boomed from a $6 billion industry in 2003 to the more than $20 billion expected this year, according to the Maine-based research firm Christiansen Capital Advisors, Betfair’s revenue has grown to $372 million, from $64 million in 2003. Last year, by taking 2 percent to 5 percent commissions on winning bets, Betfair posted profits of $64 million, according to its annual report. Its founders wanted to transplant the fundamentals of investment banking to sports. Now, Betfair handles 15 million transactions a day, or more than all of the European stock exchanges combined. Sports betting is legal in Britain; 8,000 betting shops are licensed and regulated by the government, as are the Internet gambling sites based here. Betfair offers betting on major sports based in the United States, like the N.F.L., the N.B.A. and Major League Baseball. But it does not take any wagers from the United States or China, Japan, Hong Kong or India, places where online gambling is illegal. The men’s singles competition at the United States Open was the most popular tennis event on Betfair in 2007, with $307 million bet. What Betfair brought to gambling was transparency. It has agreements with 32 sports governing bodies and is seeking more, promising to share in real time any unusual betting activity. “We can tell you every single bet ever placed and who made it, from what funds and where those funds are going,” said Mark Davies, a Betfair managing director and a former bond trader. “It is a complete audit trail, and we want to share it with the governing bodies of sport.” But many sports governing bodies have refused Betfair’s offer, Mr. Davies said, including the International Olympic Committee. During the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Betfair matched $80 million in wagers on Olympic events. A spokeswoman for the I.O.C., Emmanuelle Moreau, said that the committee had taken proactive measures to address gambling threats. She also said it expected to have a system in place to be alerted to irregular betting before the Beijing Games in August.
“I have been told by one sport that they did not want to sign an agreement because they did not want to know the level of corruption that existed,” Mr. Davies said. “But it exists, and we’re just showing what has always been there.” Still, others say that Betfair’s “in-running bets,” which may not necessarily affect the final outcome, are ripe for manipulation.
“It is a greater incentive for an athlete or official to participate in this type of manipulation,” Mr. Forrest said. “It is within their control, and they do not have to lose the match.” Jenny Williams, the chief executive of the Gambling Commission, which regulates Britain’s gaming industry, said her agency was gathering information about in-running betting and its pitfalls.
This month, for example, the British Horseracing Authority charged nine people, including a prominent trainer, Paul Blockley, and a jockey, Dean McKeown, with corruption, saying they shared inside information that their horses were not going to run well. The bettors, including five racehorse owners, had put money on horses to lose, which Betfair permits.
“The jury is still out,” Ms. Williams said. “You can produce a theoretical risk, but we need to determine if it is going on.”
“Betting corruption existed before Betfair,” said Paul Scotney, the director of integrity services and licensing for the British Horseracing Authority, which has disciplined more than a dozen jockeys, as well as trainers and owners, with the help of Betfair’s data. “But Betfair offers other, and more, ways of cheating.”
The United States is hardly immune. On May 16, federal prosecutors asserted that the N.B.A. referee Tim Donaghy admitted to betting or providing inside information to gamblers on more than 100 games, many of them that he had officiated. The league said Mr. Donaghy was a rogue referee, but there are enough instances of gambling scandals in the world to suggest that match-fixing is also part of the American landscape.
More worrisome for Mr. Forrest, the economist and co-author of a recent study, “Risks to the Integrity of Sport From Betting Corruption,” are sports like tennis, in which a player can deliberately lose the first set against an inferior opponent so that the odds rise, then go on to win.
How many of the world’s sporting events are fixed? By virtue of the fact that match-fixing is a crime and most gambling is illegal, most economists and sports officials hesitate to guess.
In fact, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s gambling survey of 21,000 athletes released in 2005 found that 35 percent of male athletes and 10 percent of female athletes said they had bet on college sports in the previous year. Of the 2,132 Division I football players surveyed, 1.1 percent (23) reported accepting money for playing poorly in a game. Of the 388 Division I men’s basketball players surveyed, 0.5 percent (2) reported such conduct. A total of 2.3 percent of the Division I football players and 2.1 percent of the Division I men’s basketball players surveyed said they had been asked to influence the outcome of a game because of gambling debts, and 1.4 percent of the football players and 1 percent of the basketball players acknowledged actually affecting the outcome. Mr. Wolfers said there was more to worry about in American sports, on which more money was bet illegally and without regulation. “There is a greater potential for corruption,” he said. “Bad guys are going to get away with more stuff unless we channel it into a legitimate economy.”
In 2006, for example, Mr. Wolfers, the Wharton professor, after reviewing 16 years of college basketball results, found that point shaving had occurred in about 1 percent of the games. A Stanford economics student, Jonathan Gibbs, suggested in an undergraduate thesis that similar forces may be at work in the N.B.A.
Committing crimes to get money to gamble Feeling restless or irritable when trying to cut back or quit gambling
The American Psychiatric Association defines pathological gambling as having five or more of the following symptoms:
Gambling larger amounts of money to try to make back previous losses
Gambling to escape problems or feelings of sadness or anxiety
Having had many unsuccessful attempts to cut back or quit gambling Losing a job, relationship, or educational or career opportunity due to gambling Lying about the amount of time or money spent gambling Needing to borrow money to get by due to gambling losses Needing to gamble larger amounts of money in order to feel excitement Spending a lot of time thinking about gambling, such as past experiences Spending a lot of time thinking of ways to get more money with which to gamble
health guide
PATHOLOGICAL GAMBLING
Baghdad Gambling Soccer Economy
re than half a dozen soccer players M refused to join the professional team o
in this border city, where so many tortured and beheaded bodies put fear in visitors and locals alike. Those who do play for the team live in gated areas, with high walls and fences topped with razor wire, to protect them from the turf war between the drug cartels that has left nearly 2,000 people dead over the past 14 months. Despite the forbidding environment, the team, Indios, advanced last May to the top division in the Mexican League. It soldiers on this season, and so do the team’s fans. On Sunday, even as the police announced the discovery of nine bodies buried outside this border city, the mood for a match at Olimpico Benito Juárez Stadium was one of celebration, not apprehension. Indios operates in a kind of neutral zone, which takes a lot to maintain. From 250 to 400 municipal police and security guards provide crowd control for each game. Some players said they left home only for training and games and to buy necessary items, sticking to main roads during daylight, restricting travel at night. Their wives are encouraged to travel in groups when taking their children to school. “I avoid TV news,” Javier Saavedra, a newly acquired defender, said through an interpreter. “It makes me feel more secure.” But the lurid headlines, the murder of the deputy police chief and the threats to decapitate the mayor have not deterred soccer fans, at least on game days. The stadium, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, regularly fills to its capacity of about 22,000. Parents feel safe enough to bring their children. Mayor José Reyes Ferriz attended Sunday’s match, along with a top official of the surrounding state of Chihuahua. Even the bishop of Juárez is occasionally spotted in the grandstand. “We are a little afraid, but we still have to live our lives,” said Omar Gurrola, a hotel bus driver who brought his 5-year-old son to the stadium.
On Sunday, the gates opened at 9 a.m., two hours before kickoff. Mariachi music played as fans arrived in jerseys, bandannas and masks borrowed from Mexico’s flamboyant tradition of professional wrestling. Dancers gyrated in halter tops and Spandex chaps. “This is our escape from reality, from the violence and the bad news,” said Miguel Carbajal, president of the largest Indios fan club, who wore a team scarf and a rosary for good luck. Last May, when Indios won a playoff to reach the top division after the team’s third year of existence, tens of thousands of fans defiantly ignored a viral e-mail warning that the weekend would be the “bloodiest and deadliest” in Juárez’s history. Instead of cowering indoors, fans took to the streets, standing on cars and the roofs of houses, stopping traffic and rejoicing as the returning players were bused from the airport to the Church of San Lorenzo to give thanks for their triumph. “We recovered part of the city that we were missing,” said Victor Valencia de los Santos, the highest-ranking state official in Juárez, Chihuahua’s largest city with a population of 1.3 million. “We were afraid of everybody, everything,” Mr. Valencia said. “Thanks to the euphoria Indios brought to the city, we started to recover. We still have problems, but people feel they can go outside and be good neighbors and have a drink with somebody they don’t know because he is wearing an Indios jersey or cap.” Not even soccer, though, has been fully immune to the fear of violence. Concerns over narco-danger and the slumping economy have delayed plans for a 37,000-seat stadium. It has become more difficult to attract corporate sponsors and to sign players. Andrés Chitiva, a native of Colombia, was released in December, partly because he played poorly, partly because he was shaken by a menacing phone call, team officials said.
“He got scared,” said Francisco Ibarra Molina, the team president. “They wanted money or they would kidnap his kids.” Two other Indios players, Ezequiel Maggiolo and Juan Ramón Curbelo, sent their families home to Argentina and Uruguay after the violence escalated earlier this year. Mr. Ibarra said he would soon send his three youngest children to school in El Paso, where it was safer. “I’m a little worried,” said Mr. Ibarra, whose family owns a prominent construction firm. “I was born in Juárez and I have been here for 46 years. I hope to die in the city, but not with a bullet.” Unlike many professional athletes in the United States who carry licensed guns for protection, Mexican athletes are prohibited by more restrictive laws, team officials said. Still, Indios players said they did not feel particularly threatened. Security is unobtrusive during training sessions, and players come and go without bodyguards. Apart from that ominous phone call to Mr. Chitiva, players said they had experienced nothing more damaging than a single stolen car, a relatively minor nuisance given the circumstances. After a bloody February, killings here are down from an average of 10 a day to about one a day as 2,000 federal police officers and 5,000 soldiers stream into Juárez, Mayor Reyes said. “Probably some drug dealers come to the games, but if they do, it’s to have fun, not to do bad to anyone,” said Jesus Rodriguez, a sociologist and journalist in Juárez. “Soccer is neutral, like a treaty between the good and the bad.” Before Sunday’s game, three candles were lit in the locker room at shrines to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a revered 16th century depiction of the Virgin Mary. The players gathered in a circle as a priest led a prayer, then began to hug one another and shout, “Let’s go.”
A victory against Tigres of Monterrey was considered vital. Indios is seeking to avoid demotion from the 18-team division after its rookie season. The club could be worth $30 million in the top flight, but only $1 million in a lesser division after a loss of television money, sponsorships and prestige, Mr. Ibarra said. And there would be a psychic cost, too. “Indios is hope and celebration,” he said. To be demoted at season’s end in May “might bring an ugly depression.” No amount of prayer, though, seemed sufficient as Indios trailed, 2-0, by halftime. Spirits lifted considerably after a late rally rescued a 2-2 tie. It was not a victory, but it was also not a defeat. “The way we started, a tie is O.K.,” Mayor Reyes said. “The restaurants will be full. The merchants will be happy.” He left the stadium with six security guards, but stopped outside to shake hands and pose for pictures with relieved Indios fans. “Life is pretty normal,” he said. “There are threats and they are real. We have to be careful. But I’m going to go about my business. I won’t be a slave in my city.”
Soccer Is an Oasis From Mexico’s Drug War by Jere Longman, March 18, 2009 CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO
WHAT’S A SOCCER MOM ANYWAY? Neil Mac Farquhar October 20, 1996 Once upon a time, like about three months ago, a soccer mom was just that. She turned up where she was expected. Pacing the sidelines of her children’s games, she wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like ‘’I don’t have a life. My kids play soccer.’’ One soccer mom in Indiana died leaving a will asking that all memorial donations be made to her church league. A soccer mom at her most flashy might be found in a television commercial, peddling an improved brand of tuna fish. Then suddenly, some time around the Republican convention, the Soccer Mom became mythic. The hands that steered the mini-van were also deciding whether to turn left or right in the Presidential election. If Bob Dole did not find a way to appeal to such women, they might swing the election for Bill Clinton. In his closing statement during last week’s Presidential debate in San Diego, Mr. Dole even addressed soccer moms directly, saying he understood their problems. In Campaign ‘96, the Soccer Mom became oracle. But there is some question whether the mythic version actually exists. The Soccer Mom is either on the threshold of joining the Silent Majority and the Angry White Male of previous elections in the Swing Voters’ Hall of Fame, or of being banished back to the sidelines. Believers say the soccer mom embodies the concerns of a huge swath of suburban female voters. But doubters find the title too limiting or misleading and even soccer dads will tell you there just aren’t that many. ‘’It is one of the most overused terms in America,’’ said Pat Schroeder, the Democratic Congresswoman, who as a former soccer mom said she personally never found much difference between suburban mothers and fathers when it came to politics. ‘’Everyone is talking about soccer moms -- what they can do to move them. I keep wondering about the demographics -are the moms that different from the dads, and why?’’ Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, the Republicans’ soccer mom archetype, with both a son and daughter who played, is also skeptical of the term. ‘’It is unfair in the sense that there are soccer dads as well,’’ said Mrs. Whitman. ‘’I have a problem when you lump people into a group, because you lose a lot of people.’’ Certainly the soccer moms were not previously considered a distinct breed. A rough computer scan of major American newspapers found just eight references linking soccer moms and politics before 1996, when the number suddenly jumped well past 100. Continue reading the arcticle from the NY Times archives at: nytimes.com/1996/whatsasoccermomanyway
Probably some drug dealers come to the games, but if they do, it’s to have fun, not to do bad to anyone. Soccer is neutral, like a treaty between the good and the bad.
Baghdad Gambling Soccer Economy
recessions through the ages ’60
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’80
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1969 & 1973
1980 & 1981
John F. Kennedy was the first president to deliberately try Keynesian economics, using deficit spending in a recession to stimulate economic growth. But his tax cuts too too much time to take effect, convincing some economists that Keynesian policies were unrealistic.
Economists were caught by surprise in the late 1960s and early 1970s. No models predicted increases in inflation, but it kept rising, possibly because of military buildup. Although President Richard M. Nixon tried wage and price controls, fiscal policy was not key in getting out of the recession.
Both fiscal and monetary policy played major roles in the recessions of the early 1980s. President Jimmy Carter’s Fed chairman, Paul A. Volcker, raised the federal funds rate so much that it may have caused the 1981-82 recession. The increased spending and tax cuts under President Ronald Reagan - Keynesian in consequence, if not in design - let to economic recovery.
THE ‘BEST AND BRIGHTEST’ Jeff Frankel Harvard University
BROKEN MODELS Mark L. Gertler New York University
UNEXPECTED STIMULUS Jeff Frankel Harvard University
There is no official definition of recession, and no official body to decree that one has begun or ended. Indeed, a clear picture of the state of the economy usually comes months or even years later. Recessions are commonly described as two or more quarters of a declining gross domestic product.
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percent change in G.D.P. 1990
AN ACTIVE CHAIRMAN R. Glenn Hubbard Columbia University The Persian Gulf War and rising inflation combined to cause the 1991 recession, which in turn caused a credit crunch. The federal government increase unemployment insurance benefits, but most of the recovery came from the Federal Reserve. Alan Greenspan cut the federal funds rate several times, which secured his reputation as a significant chairman.
2001
TAX CUTS, TERROR ATTACKS R. Glenn Hubbard Columbia University The 2001 recession was a result of the tech bubble’s bursting, which drained wealth around the country, and the Sept. 11 terror attacks. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts provided a stimulus, and the Fed cut the federal funds rate several times and provided discount lending to combat the recession. The low interest rates, however, may have contributed to asset bubbles.
NY TIMES ONLINE
for audio of each economist reflecting on past recessions, visit:
nytimes.com/2009 business/economy/recessions
Baghdad Gambling Soccer Economy
FREAKONOMICS Pirate Economics 101: A Q&A With Invisible Hook Author Peter Leeson by Ryan Hagen April 20, 2009 The crew of the Maersk Alabama, having survived an attack by pirates in Somalia last week, has returned home for a much-deserved rest. But with tensions ratcheting up between the U.S. and the rag-tag confederation of Somali pirates, it’s worth looking to the past for clues on how to tame the outlaw seas. Peter Leeson, an economist at George Mason University (and an occasional Freakonomics guest blogger), offers a brisk and fascinating look at old-school piracy in his new book The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Leeson agreed to sit down and answer some important piratical questions for us:
Q
The Invisible Hook is more than just a clever title. How is it different from Adam Smith’s invisible hand?
A
In Adam Smith, the idea is that each individual pursuing his own self-interest is led, as if by an invisible hand, to promote the interest of society. The idea of the invisible hook is that pirates, though they’re criminals, are still driven by their self-interest. So they were driven to build systems of government and social structures that allowed them to better pursue their criminal ends. They’re connected, but the big difference is that, for Adam Smith, self-interest results in cooperation that generates wealth and makes other people better off. For pirates, self-interest results in cooperation that destroys wealth by allowing pirates to plunder more effectively.
Q
In the book, you write that pirates had set up their own early versions of constitutional democracy, complete with separation of powers, decades before the American Revolution. Was that only possible because they were outlaws, operating entirely outside the control of any government?
A
That’s right. The pirates of the 18th century set up quite a thoroughgoing system of democracy. The reason that the criminality is driving these structures is because they can’t rely on the state to provide those structures for them. So pirates, more than anyone else, needed to figure out some system of law and order to make it possible for them to remain together long enough to be successful at stealing. So did these participatory, democratic systems give merchant sailors an incentive to join pirate crews, because it meant they were freer among pirates than on their own ships?
Q A
The sailors had more freedom and better pay as pirates than as merchantmen. But perhaps the most important thing was freedom from the arbitrariness of captains and the malicious abuses of power that merchant captains were known to inflict on their crews. In a pirate democracy, a crew could, and routinely did, depose their captain if he was abusing his power or was incompetent.
Q
A
There was a very particular type of reputation that pirates wanted to cultivate. It was a very delicate line to walk. They didn’t want to have a reputation for wanton brutality or complete madness. They wanted to be perceived as hair-trigger men, men on the edge, who if you pushed, if you resisted, they would snap and do something horrible to you. That way, the captives they took had an incentive to be very careful to comply with all of the pirates’ demands. At the same time, they wanted a reputation as being very brutal, as meting out these brutal, horrible tortures to captives who didn’t comply with their demands. Stories about those horrible tortures were relayed not only by word of mouth, but by early 18thcentury newspapers. When a former prisoner was released, he would oftentimes go to the media and provide an account of his capture. So when colonials read these accounts in the media, that helped institutionalize the idea of pirates as these men on the edge. That worked marvelously for pirates. It was a form of advertising performed by legitimate members of society that again helped pirates reduce their costs.
You write that pirates weren’t necessarily the bloodthirsty fiends we imagine them to have been. How does the invisible hook explain their behavior?
Q
A
A
The basic idea is, once we recognize pirates as economic actors, businessmen really, it becomes clear as to why they wouldn’t want to brutalize everyone they overtook. In order to encourage merchantmen to surrender, they needed to communicate the idea that, if you surrender to us, you’ll be treated well. That’s the incentive pirates give for sailors to surrender peacefully. If they wantonly abused their prisoners, as they’re often portrayed as having done, that would have actually undermined the incentive of merchant crews to surrender, which would have caused pirates to incur greater costs. They would have had to battle it out more often, because the merchants would have expected to be tortured indiscriminately if they were captured.
Q
You write about piracy as a brand. It’s quite a successful one, having lasted for hundreds of years after the pirates themselves were exterminated. What was the key to that success?
What kinds of lessons can we draw from The Invisible Hook in dealing with modern pirates? We have to recognize that pirates are rational economic actors and that piracy is an occupational choice. If we think of them as irrational, or as pursuing other ends, we’re liable to come up with solutions to the pirate problem that are ineffective. Since we know that pirates respond to costs and benefits, we should think of solutions that alter those costs and benefits to shape the incentives for pirates and to deter them from going into a life of piracy.