Celeste Saulo, set to be the first female Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, talks climate action and leadership

( The Third Pole ) – A smile on her face, Celeste Saulo lapped up a rapturous ovation from the audience, packed in with barely space left to stand. Waving back to the crowd, she received even more applause.

Saulo already held the distinction of being the first woman to serve as director of Argentina’s National Meteorological Service (SMN), a role she has held since 2014. In 2018, she became the first woman to hold the post of second vice-president at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and rose to become its first vice-president only a year later – once more being the first woman in the position.

On 1 June, Saulo received this ovation as she made yet more history, becoming the first woman to be elected Secretary-General of the WMO, a role she will take up in January 2024, overseeing a United Nations agency that has in recent years become an ever more necessary and authoritative voice on the state of the atmosphere and climate change.

Born in Argentina and trained in meteorology and atmospheric sciences, during a long career Saulo has conducted important research into the South American monsoon system, as well as meteorological issues in energy production, agriculture and early warning systems. In conversation with Diálogo Chino, she discussed her goals for the WMO, the changes needed to make a greater contribution to climate action and the importance of having more women in leadership roles in the context of climate crisis.

Diálogo Chino: How do you feel after your appointment to lead the WMO?

Celeste Saulo: Extremely honoured, flattered, grateful and, obviously, an enormous responsibility. It was a huge shock – I had worked for it, but it was still something that surprised me. Part one was being chosen, then comes the most important part: working and implementing what you set out to do. The challenge is enormous, but I am very happy and proud.

Why do you think it took so long for a woman to become a leader of the WMO?

The reality is that there are far fewer opportunities for women, because to be “known” at the WMO, you have to be a director of a [national] meteorological service. So it depends on countries having the will to elect women for there to be more women on the WMO stage. During this campaign, I came across women being elected as directors of meteorological services for the first time in their history. I came across very different parts of the world where they said to me “I am the first woman” – and that was fabulous.

What will be your main objectives at the helm of the organisation?

Argentine meteorologist Celeste Saulo hopes to boost collaboration on climate action between UN agencies when she takes office as the World Meteorological Organization’s new Secretary-General in 2024 (Image: Argentina National Meteorological Service)

Firstly, to implement the agenda voted for by members at the recent WMO congress. Priorities include the implementation of the Early Warnings For All Initiative: although launched a year ago, it still has a long way to go. In addition, the strengthening of meteorological information-gathering networks in countries, for which extra-budgetary resources must be sought. The other objective is to broaden the scope of observation networks to include the monitoring of greenhouse gases and the cryosphere.

Saulo is the first woman to be elected Secretary-General of the WMO, but believes that there are still many barriers for women to achieve leading roles in meteorological organisations (Image: World Meteorological Organization)

What will you contribute to this existing agenda that has already been voted on?

If I were to add a personal touch, it would be to work closely with the members. An early warning system is not just a technical thing that you put in place as if it were nothing. Cultural values, risk perception and vulnerabilities are so varied across the planet that it would be naïve and unprofessional of me not to acknowledge that this requires work in each territory. It requires work with each member. An early warning system for a population in Jujuy [northern Argentina] is not the same as for a population in Patagonia [in the country’s south]. It is not the same for an urban population as for a rural one.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has set a target for all the world’s inhabitants to be protected by early warning systems by the end of 2027. What opportunities and challenges do you see in this?

The huge opportunity comes from a call from someone with a high level of impact, telling the world that early warning is important as a climate change adaptation tool. Countries need to understand that this translates into strengthening their meteorological and hydrological services – this link is not always made, and that is the part that falls to WMO. Here, I see an opportunity to work to strengthen meteorological and hydrological services, not because they need to be strengthened per se, but because they play a key role in the adaptation to climate change of countries, their populations and productive systems.

This is a huge opportunity for a positive feedback loop but, at the same time, a huge challenge, because we know that the level of development of meteorological services is completely uneven. The WMO has the challenge of trying to narrow the gaps between the most and least developed services.

How do you see the Latin American region responding to the increasingly intense impacts of climate change?

On average, as a region, I see it doing well, of course with enormous room for improvement. I would separate the island states that have a different set of problems.  We have an advantage that few regions have: we speak the same language or almost the same language. That is a strength, in my opinion, that is underexploited.

Hurricane Matthew hits the Cuban coast in 2016. According to Saulo, island states ‘have a different set of problems’ compared to other countries in Latin America (Image: Danier Ernesto González / World Meteorological Organization, CC BY-NC-ND)

It’s now 73 years since the WMO was created, and the first UN climate change conference was held in 1995. How do you see climate action today? Have we made enough progress, and if not, why?

Science and technology have come a long way. When there are decisions that are sensitive to economies and economic interests, that is where the issue becomes very complex. I regret that, as scientists, we have not been able to convince decision-makers how urgent it is that they take the relevant action. I am talking about states, but it is also necessary to talk about global companies that are larger in size than some states. What responsibility are we demanding from these players? It is not entirely clear to me. What is clear is that it is insufficient. That is where we are failing, and it worries me.

On the one hand, we have science and technology with its advancement and intention to improve, to do what needs to be done. On the other hand, there are the decision-makers who, driven by economic interests, do not manage to bring about the strong actions to make changes happen.

How could the WMO contribute better or differently to climate action?

I hope to be able to work better in coordinating with other UN agencies, in order to make my voice as strong as possible. In Argentina, I tried to move the meteorological service out of the limited space it had, to get it to talk to ministries and agencies, and I think the same should be done with WMO, as its space can be a bit narrow given the importance of the subject it deals with. There is complementarity here – it’s not that we have to take over the agenda of other agencies, but that we have to be able to work better collaboratively. I also hope to involve more actors, such as companies and non-governmental organisations. We must join forces, not in a disorganised way but with a purpose, to drive climate action.

Why is it necessary to have more women in leadership positions in the context of the climate crisis?

Because we bring a different perspective. Any crisis must be addressed with the understanding that there are diversities. If it is dealt with in a patriarchal way, only part of these needs will be met. If we broaden the perspective to include a gender perspective, concern for children and older people, and people with disabilities, we will have a much more comprehensive reaction to the climate crisis that can incorporate all those who exist, not just men. If we can’t think like that, it’s not going to work. Women have – or at least, I think I have myself – a broader view that is able to capture this diversity.

What message would you give to young women who may be inspired by your success?

Listen to your instinct, passion and taste, and follow it. Never do it alone. Networks of any kind are important: family, friends, institutions. If you choose to start a family, don’t panic. In my case, for several years my family was far above my career, but I didn’t abandon my professional development, I continued. I went into a kind of plateau where I kept going. Then I picked it up again with more energy.

Dear  Chief Justice Roberts.  Let me give you a hanky.  All those nasty critics of “your” court, including those three hectoring female justices hanging off the edge of it, I’m sorry you’re so disturbed.

Well, C.J. Roberts, let me help.  I’ll  give you a little lesson in Judicial Process 101, which they don’t teach in law school.  For example, what is a “court” anyway?  Does Russia have a real court system?  China?  Did the Nazis?  The answer is, no. Judges in those systems knew or know very well what to decide.  They follow the party line or they get canned, killed or exiled. They have no independence, and would be frightened of asserting any such thing.

My first four books were studies about court systems around that world. In order for courts  to be considered “legitimate”,  they need be considered  by the legal system and the general public to be impartial and objective arbiters of disputes. I was one of the first new wave of political scientists / lawyers to define and explore the concept of “judicial role,” essential for any judge to play in real life empirical courts, in real courts that routinely pass relatively neutral judgments.  That is why you have life or long fixed terms to make you independent of politics in making such key decisions.

So, what characterizes this judicial role that allows a man or woman to be a legitimate impartial arbiter in any dispute?  It is this, Sir.  In order for a judge to be the chief decider in a genuine court, he or she must be bound by the law, by constitutions, statutes or established judicial precedent.  That’s why we have to stand when you enter the courtroom.

American politicians say that “the rule of law” applies to everyone and is essential to “democracy”.  No one is “above the law.” That surely includes judges.  In the American system of jurisprudence and politics, the court is distinguished from other branches of government because judges are not supposed to let their political party, ideology, or economic or political interests get the better of them in deciding cases.  In the Anglo-American system, judges are bound by an ancient and stringent doctrine called, in Latin: stare decisis . . . which means “let the previous decisions stand.”

Further, judges must simply apply existing law.  They do not have the power to change the law according to their political and economic theories and personal prejudices. To do so is bias and means that the judge is really not a judge at all but a policy maker and a political actor.  Exhibiting extreme partiality of the sort that the Roberts court has repeatedly shown demonstrates that the justice or judge is not objective and therefore undermines any claim of the tribunal judging the merits of a case to being a court at all.  It has become, instead, a political tribunal, and should now be demoted to that status by the other branches of government. That’s you and your ‘Court”, Sir.   You are not “Your Honor.”

In America, Congress and the President can change the very structure of a Supreme Court that devolves into just another political institution.  When SCOTUS does this habitually, it must be neutered, since it is not neutral.

It is not always wrong to overturn a precedent, if the precedent was clearly unconstitutional. The Warren Court most famously did this by overruling Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) by Brown v. Board of Education (1954).  The Plessy case legitimized Jim Crow Apartheid that ruled the latent Confederacy of the South for nearly six decades .  The Brown case changed that and recognized the Fourteenth Amendment the real law of the land again. 

In the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, whereby you overruled Roe v. Wade, however, you cited no constitutional right that had been denied to women by Roe. Indeed, despite Justice William O. Douglas’s correct finding that the Constitution creates “zones of privacy, such as the First Amendment right of association, the Third Amendment prohibition against quartering soldiers in a home, the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in one’s person, house, papers and effects, the Fifth Amendment right to not surrender anything to one’s detriment, and the Ninth Amendment right to not deny or disparage any right retained by the people,” you began whittling away at our right to privacy.

Perhaps this new Trump Court thinks it can toss even the Brown case striking down “separate but equal” racial facilities into the garbage can as well?  Give it a try, C. J. Roberts, and see what happens.  We all know you can be trusted to overrule any precedent.  You proved that in Citizens United which gave monopolies and Big Wealth (the new Billionaire Class) almost complete control over all federal elections in the U.S.A.  Despite your sworn testimony at your Senate confirmation hearings, you have no respect for your predecessor Supreme Courts and you are but a loose political cannon hidden by a black shroud.

Reform the court?  How can anyone do that when SCOTUS is obviously a political panther?  It must first be caged . . . because with its unbridled power it is, by far, as one Judicial Politics scholar said recently, “the most dangerous branch of American government.” 

The Founders believed that in order to insure judicial independence, SCOTUS justices need to feel free from political pressure.  But life terms?  Ridiculous and dangerous. Surely 8-10 year terms are sufficient to grant that independence.  The best reform for defanging this political supervisor of the Constitution and laws of the land, would be to require that any ruling that a law is unconstitutional would have to be made by a unanimous vote (9-0).  The same requirement should be there for overruling executive orders, Congressional statutes, and administrative decisions.  Implementing such a requirement will take time. 

It is possible, Justice Roberts, that your SCOTUS, created by the Federalist Society, is consistent with the ideals of that 18^th century American political scene, which is to say, it is woefully outmoded. Your resurrected Federalist Party has been from the start proudly anti-democratic and strongly favored a national government designed to be ruled by rich white men only. That outcome clearly violates 21^st century American values, and if the Constitution is to survive it must be flexible enough to encompass contemporary mores.  Your runaway political institution that is above the law, and which is attempting to make the Constitution brittle and hated, must be corralled ASAP.

In the meantime, excuse me, you need to be impeached for perjury, since you swore before Congress that abortion rights were settled law. Moreover, two of your political henchmen need to be impeached for clearcut violations of governmental ethics. Not only is your court no longer a court, it is now a pay-to-play abomination.   

Based on videos of protests, and interviews with witnesses and a security force member, Human Rights Watch documented numerous incidents of security forces unlawfully using excessive or lethal force against protesters in 13 cities across Iran. Videos showed security forces using shotguns, assault rifles, and handguns against protesters in largely peaceful and often crowded settings, altogether killing and injuring hundreds. In some cases, they shot at people who were running away.

“The Iranian authorities’ brutal response to protests across many cities indicates concerted action by the government to crush dissent with cruel disregard for life,” said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The security forces’ widespread shooting of protesters only serves to fuel anger against a corrupt and autocratic government.”

Protests began on September 16, 2022, after 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini’s death in the custody of Iran’s abusive “morality police”. Concerned governments should cooperate to increase pressure on Iran and undertake a United Nations-led independent inquiry into serious abuses committed during the protests and recommend avenues for holding those responsible to account.

Human Rights Watch verified 16 videos posted on social media that depict protests from September 17 to 22. The videos show police and other security forces using excessive and lethal force against protesters in Tehran, the capital, and the cities of Divandarreh, Garmsar, Hamedan, Kerman, Mashhad, Mehrshahr, Rasht, and Shiraz. They include instances of security forces using firearms, such as handguns and Kalashnikov-pattern assault rifles. Human Rights Watch also interviewed five witnesses to the crackdowns in Sanandaj, Marivan, Saghez, and Mashhad, and a security forces member.

Human Rights Watch also analyzed photos and videos showing grievous, and sometimes lethal, injuries to demonstrators. This research did not include the deadly crackdown by security forces in Zahedan on September 30, nor subsequent attacks against protesters, including on Sharif University Campus in Tehran on October 2.

Human Rights Watch compiled the names of 47 individuals whom human rights groups or credible media outlets documented as having been killed, most by bullets. These included at least nine children, two of them girls, and six women. As of September 31, Iranian state media-affiliated outlets reported the death toll to be around 60 and also announced the death of 10 security forces members. The death toll of protesters is likely significantly higher. Iranian authorities continue to heavily disrupt internet access in large parts of the country and block messaging applications, making documentation and verification more difficult.

“We had gathered to chant, [when] security forces on motorcycles came toward us,” said a 35-year-old year woman from Sanandaj city about a protest that took place near the Gendarmerie (Palestine) intersection on September 17. “We ran toward the alley as they followed us and started throwing teargas and some started shooting bullets. A man behind us was shot in the leg and fell on the ground. People dragged him into another alley and inside someone’s home. […] His wound was bleeding very heavily and was very deep.”

In one video, filmed in Shahre-Rey city, south of Tehran, a security force member wearing camouflage clothing and surrounded by others in riot gear is seen aiming and firing twice with a Kalashnikov-pattern assault rifle at targets that are not visible. In another, filmed in the city of Rasht, a police officer leading a team of riot police is firing a handgun.

Human Rights Watch also reviewed and verified four videos of security forces firing at crowds of protesters, some fleeing. At least four videos showed security forces using shotguns, which can be loaded with ammunition containing multiple rubber or metal pellets. A security force member confirmed that police forces “typically use Winchester shotguns with different ammunition – rubber or metal pellets.”

A woman from Sanandaj city said that on September 21, security forces there directly shot at her upper chest using so-called “less lethal” ammunition, causing superficial injuries, when she asked them not to detain a teenager.

“[Security forces] ran toward a 13-year-old boy who was standing among the crowd,” she said. “He was so delicate and small that he didn’t even resist. He was on the grass protecting his head while they were beating him. I yelled ‘Leave him alone!’ and walked towards them. They fired in the air and people started fleeing while they dragged the boy across the street. While I was running, I kept yelling ‘He is my brother!’, thinking that was going to provoke their mercy. I saw an officer turning, sitting down, and aiming at me. I saw the fire from his weapon. I got scared and ran away. I had a burning sensation until I got home and realized that I was hit in my chest.”

The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms prohibit the use of firearms except in cases of imminent threat of death or serious injury. The UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has stated that “Firearms are not an appropriate tool for the policing of assemblies, and must never be used simply to disperse an assembly.… [A]ny use of firearms by law enforcement officials in the context of assemblies must be limited to targeted individuals in circumstances in which it is strictly necessary to confront an imminent threat of death or serious injury.”

The 2020 UN guidance on “less-lethal weapons” in law enforcement says, “Multiple projectiles fired at the same time are inaccurate and, in general, their use cannot comply with the principles of necessity and proportionality. Metal pellets, such as those fired from shotguns, should never be used.”

A woman in Saghez city, in Kurdistan province, said that on September 18, the second day of the protests in the city, security forces shot at their group of protesters when her friend started filming security personnel striking their batons at a house’s metal door, forcing them to seek refuge inside a nearby house. She said: “After some time when we felt that it was safe, we left the house, but security forces were hiding behind the trees at the end of the street and started shooting at us from behind as we were running away.”

Human Rights Watch examined two photos that Rohini Haar, an independent medical analyst, said showed protesters with serious injuries that are “diagnostic” of those sustained by metal pellets.

In two videos, one of them graphic, verified to have been filmed in the city of Kerman, demonstrators can be seen carrying away an unconscious woman bleeding from the head while a large crowd runs away.

Videos also show police officers and other security forces members, including plainclothes agents, operating side-by-side with the police, punching, kicking, and beating peaceful protesters and bystanders with batons. Police forces also used less-lethal weapons, including pepper ball launchers and riot guns.

The 35-year-old woman said that on October 1, she saw security forces attacking a group of women peacefully protesting in Sanandaj with metal cables and batons. She said that in response, “we also started protesting. They rushed towards us and the rest of the crowd. … A person in plain clothes started hitting a woman. I went forward, I cursed him, I told him not to. He came back toward me and started hitting me with a metal tow cable. One of them grabbed my neck when I was leaving and the other two came and hit me one or two times.” She shared photos of hematomas on her back, arm, and abdomen that she said resulted from the beatings.

Human Rights Watch found that most protesters were peaceful, but some threw rocks and other objects. In some cases, protesters assaulted security forces. The use of violence by protesters does not justify the excessive use of force by security forces, Human Rights Watch said.

In Garmsar, graphic videos show security forces responding with automatic weapons fire to protesters attacking a police station with rocks and other projectiles. In one graphic video, a protester who appeared to present no imminent risk to security forces collapses immediately after gunfire is heard. A later graphic video shows the protester dead with a catastrophic injury to the head.

Since September 16, Iranian security agencies have also arrested hundreds of activists, journalists, and human rights defenders outside the protests. These include Niloufar Hamedi, a reporter of the Shargh Daily paper, and Elaheh Mohammadi, a reporter with Hammihan daily paper, both of whom reported on the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini. Amini’s family requested the presence of independent medical reviewers to determine the cause of her death.

Under Iranian law, women who appear without “proper” hijab in public, based on the judgment of the country’s abusive “morality police,” can be fined or sentenced from between 10 days to two months in prison. Iran’s morality police regularly arrest women in public places. Over the past five years, authorities have prosecuted several activists, including the prominent lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh as well as Yasman Ariani, Saba Kordafshari, Monireh Arabshahi, Mojgan Keshavarz and Farhad Meysami for their peaceful opposition to compulsory hijab laws.

Since the outbreak of the protests, Iranian authorities have heavily disrupted internet access across the country. They have blocked several social media platforms, including WhatsApp messaging application and Instagram, since September 21 by an order of Iran’s National Security Council. Over the past four years, Iranian authorities have used partial or total internet shutdowns during widespread protests to restrict access to information and prohibit dissemination of information, in particular videos of the protests, Human Rights Watch said.

Internet shutdowns violate multiple rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and access to information, and the rights to peaceful assembly and association. Under international human rights law, Iran has an obligation to ensure that internet-based restrictions are provided by law and are a necessary and proportionate response to a specific security concern. Officials should not use broad, indiscriminate shutdowns to curtail the flow of information, nor to harm civilians’ ability to freely assemble and express political views.

Over the past four years, Iran has experienced several waves of widespread protests. Authorities have responded to these widespread protests across the country with excessive and lethal force and the arbitrary arrests of thousands of protesters. In one of the most brutal crackdowns, in November 2019, security forces unlawfully used excessive and unlawful lethal force against massive protests across the country. Amnesty International estimated that at least 340 people were killed during the 2019 protests. Iranian authorities have failed to conduct any credible and transparent investigations into the security forces’ serious abuses.

“People in Iran are protesting because they do not see the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini and the authorities’ crackdown as an isolated event, but rather the latest example of the government’s systematic repression of its own people,” Sepehri Far said.

Via Human Rights Watch

The same day, actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya spoke at the public funeral in the Iranian capital without a headscarf.

On September 27, a video emerged of a woman without a hijab marching on a road in Tehran holding a placard that read, “Women, life, freedom.”

A powerful solo protest in the Iranian capital: a woman is walking hijabless with a sign that says: Woman, life, freedom.” #Mahsa_Amini #مهسا_امینی

pic.twitter.com/Z9692Fvtxs

— Golnaz Esfandiari (@GEsfandiari) September 27, 2022

Such acts of civil disobedience have increased in Iran, where the country’s “hijab and chastity” law requires women and girls over the age of 9 to wear a headscarf in public, since the death of a young woman in the custody of the morality police on September 16.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini has triggered over two weeks of angry protests in dozens of Iranian cities. During the ongoing rallies, some women protesters have removed and burned their headscarves, in a direct challenge to the clerical regime.

The protests have provoked a deadly state crackdown, with law enforcement and security forces killing scores of demonstrators, according to human rights groups.

While the protests appear to be waning, women’s resistance to the hijab is likely to increase, analysts say. The mandatory hijab, a symbol of the state’s repression of women, has been one of the key pillars of the Islamic republic.

“More and more women are likely to remove their headscarves in public and resist the compulsory hijab law,” Paris-based, Iranian-French sociologist Azadeh Kian told RFE/RL. “Until now, they didn’t dare to walk bareheaded in public. Today, they have found the courage.”

WATCH: Fewer protest videos have appeared on social media after authorities restricted Internet access and launched the crackdown.

Kian adds that the authorities could be forced to loosen their strict enforcement of the hijab law. “Without changing the hijab law, they could become more lax towards women violating it, but they will pay a price because more women will be encouraged to follow suit,” she said.

A woman in Tehran who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution told RFE/RL that “things won’t go back to the way they were.”

“I used to remove my headscarf in some restaurants where I knew the owners,” she said. “I’m now determined to do it more often in public, it’s the least I can do after the death of Amini and the [state] violence,” she said.

The Financial Times reported on September 28 that in recent days the white and green vans of the morality police have disappeared from the streets of Tehran, although there is still a strong security presence in the city.

Flouting The Hijab Law

The hijab became compulsory in 1981, two years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The move triggered protests that were swiftly crushed by the new authorities.

Many women have flouted the rule over the years and pushed the boundaries of what officials say is acceptable clothing.

Women have also launched campaigns against the discriminatory law, although many have been pressured by the state and forced to leave the country.

In 2014, exiled activist Masih Alinejad launched a Facebook page where scores of women posted their photos without hijabs. She also later encouraged women to document the harassment they suffered by the morality police and vigilantes.

Three years later, a young woman identified as Vida Movahed stood on a utility box in Tehran and waved her headscarf on a stick in an unprecedented act of defiance against the hijab law. Photos of her protest went viral and inspired other women to stage similar protests.

More than 30 women were arrested, and several were prosecuted in the following months. Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who defended them, was herself sentenced to prison.

The acts of civil disobedience prompted a debate about the hijab law, which had been a taboo topic for years.

Under former President Hassan Rohani, who served from 2013 to 2021, the enforcement of the hijab law was loosened. But since hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi came to power in August 2021, the authorities have launched a crackdown on women who violate the law.

A July 5 order by Raisi to enforce the hijab law resulted in a new list of restrictions on how women can dress.

In recent months, women judged not to have respected the “complete hijab” have been banned from government offices, banks, and public transportation. The notorious Guidance Patrols, or morality police, have become increasingly active and violent. Videos have emerged on social media appearing to show officers detaining women, forcing them into vans, and whisking them away.

On September 13, the morality police in Tehran detained Amini for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly. Three days later, she was declared dead in a hospital. Activists and relatives say she was killed as a result of blows to the head sustained in detention. The authorities claim that she died of a heart attack.

Since her death, Amini’s name has become a rallying cry against the decades of state violence against women, prompting protesters to call for an end to the Islamic republic. Amateur videos and footage posted online in the aftermath of her death showed unveiled women standing up to security forces while others were seen walking defiantly unveiled in the streets of Tehran and other cities.

Tehran last night: women waving their veils and chanting: “Woman, life, freedom” in the busy Vali Asr street #MahsaAmini #مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/VWUpBSPdpa

— Golnaz Esfandiari (@GEsfandiari) September 25, 2022

Several actresses also posted images of themselves on social media without a hijab. One of them, Katayoun Riahi, appeared in an interview with a Saudi-funded TV channel without her headscarf.

Security forces reportedly raided Riahi’s house on the evening of September 28. She was reported to have fled before they managed to arrest her. Her whereabouts are currently unknown. A post by the administrator of her Instagram page warned on September 29 that her life was “in danger.”

Days earlier, Culture Minister Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili said that actresses who removed their veils in public would no longer be allowed to work inside the country.

Via RFE/ RL

( Tomdispatch.com) – In the United States during 16 months in 2020 and 2021, vehicles rammed into groups of protesters at least 139 times, according to a Boston Globe analysis. Three victims died and at least 100 were injured. Consider that a new level of all-American barbarity, thanks to the growing toxicity of right-wing politics, empowered by its embrace of ever-larger, more menacing vehicles being cranked out by the auto industry.

And keep this in mind: attacks on street protests are just the most recent development in fossil-fuelized aggression. Especially in the red states of America, MAGA motorists have been driving our quality of life into the ground for years. My spouse Priti Gulati Cox and I live half a block south of Crawford Street, the central east-west artery in Salina, Kansas. Starting in the early Trump years, and ever more regularly during the pandemic, we’ve been plagued by the brain-rattling roar of diesel-powered pickup trucks as they peel out of side streets onto Crawford, spewing black exhaust and aiming to go from zero to sixty before reaching the traffic light at Broadway. By 2020, many of these drivers were regularly festooning their pickups, ISIS-style, with giant flags bearing slogans like “Trump 2020” and “Don’t Tread on Me,” as well as Confederate battle flags. Some still display them, often with “F*** Biden” flags as well.

If you live in flyover country as we do, you come to expect such performances. And don’t think that I’m just expressing my own personal annoyance about an aesthetic affront either. Fueled by diesel or gasoline, and supercharged by what political scientist Cara Daggett has labeled “petro-masculinity,” those men in big, loud vehicles serve as the shock troops for a white-right authoritarian movement that threatens to seize control of our political system. Recall the “Trump caravan” that tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road in Texas just before Election Day 2020. Or the “Trump Trains” of pickups carrying men with paintball guns, one of which attacked Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon.

Long forgotten now by most of us, those hapless North American truck convoys, some of which converged on Washington, D.C., last spring, might as well have been scripted by the writers of Seinfeld. To all appearances, they were protests about nothing — other than a vague sense of grievance personified (or truckified). Still, the drivers did manage to cause serious mayhem, assaulting the residents of two capitals, Ottawa and Washington, with diesel fumes, daylong horn blasting, and bellicose conduct. They paralyzed downtown Ottawa for almost a month (and cost the government there more than $36 million). Some drivers in the cross-country U.S. convoys physically assaulted counter-protesters, cyclists, and motorists. There was one bright spot, though: one day, a man on a cargo bike got in front of a line of semi-cabs and pickups and slow-pedaled through Washington’s narrow side streets, leaving the invaders no alternative but to creep along behind him for what seemed like forever and a day.

The convoy truckers, however, paid little price for the havoc they caused. Indeed, vehicular aggression and violence increasingly goes unpunished. On June 24th in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a man aimed his pickup truck at a group of women protesting that morning’s Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade. When his vehicle first came into contact with them, the women stood fast, and grabbed its bull bar — the steel armoring designed to protect the grille against livestock, but used more often these days to intimidate humans. With a yell, he plowed ahead, driving over one woman’s ankle and giving another a concussion. When the police arrived, they interviewed the driver, but they have yet to charge him or even identify him publicly. He was probably shielded by a law the Iowa legislature passed in 2020 immunizing drivers who run into or over protesters, if they simply claim to have been fleeing in fear. Ominously enough, Florida and Oklahoma have passed similar laws essentially encouraging such acts.

Are You What You Drive?

Here in the heartland, white nationalism feeds on gas, gunpowder, oil, and testosterone. Ranchers, wheat-growers, oilfield roughnecks, firefighters, loggers, hunters — in short, the very kinds of guys who populate today’s ads for pickup trucks — are widely viewed as the real Americans. Most pickups today, however, are found not out on the range but on city streets and Interstate highways, sporting empty beds and clean tires, with their drivers settled into cushy captain’s seats. For many of them, big pickups are no more than a non-utilitarian cultural statement and, in today’s culture, that means a political statement, too. (With so many luxury options on offer, a new truck can also be an extravagant statement, since their average price now exceeds $60,000.)

Buy the Book

When I was reading High and Mighty, Keith Bradsher’s classic book on SUVs, in the early 2000s, there was as yet no correlation between the supersizing of personal vehicles and political preferences. It was mostly about armoring up against crashes and crime. A few years later, when even more bloated trucks and SUVs with abundant creature comforts started being advertised as “living rooms on wheels,” they still had no strong political associations. Over the past few years, however, manufacturers have begun capitalizing on MAGA-world belligerence by pumping up the road-ruling mystique of those vehicles. On this topic, I won’t even try to match the bracing prose of Angie Schmitt, the author of Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America, who wrote for Bloomberg News last year:

“Pickup truck front ends have warped into scowling brick walls, billboards for outwardly directed hostility… [T]he height of the truck’s front end may reach a grown man’s shoulders or neck… That aesthetic can be detected not only in the raised ‘militarized’ grille height of pickup trucks, but also the popularity of aftermarket modifications like blacked-out windows and ‘bull bars’ affixed to the front end.”

Some pickups and full-size SUVs now approach the dimensions of World War II-era tanks and are advertised accordingly. Ford used the term “military-grade, aluminum-alloy” five times in a single press release for its F-150 pickup. This supersizing, as well as armoring, has had predictable results. For example, in another article, Schmitt observed that

“passenger and driver deaths have remained mostly stable over the past decade while pedestrian fatalities have risen by about 50 percent. From 2019 to 2020, pedestrian deaths per vehicle miles traveled increased a record 21 percent, for a total of 6,721 fatalities. This astonishing death toll has multiple causes, but the scale of the front end of many pickup trucks and SUVs is part of the problem, and that’s been obvious for quite a while.”

The politicization of big-box personal vehicles is now almost complete. By the 2020 election campaign season, few drivers, left or right, needed bumper stickers to tell the world which candidates they supported. A month before the election, Forbes summarized survey data illustrating the relationship between party affiliation and vehicle ownership. Of the models most disproportionately preferred by Democrats, liberals, and progressives, 14 were sedans or crossovers, three were trucks or full-size SUVs, and two were hybrid or electric vehicles. The Honda Civic sedan topped the list.

I’m sure at this point you won’t be surprised to learn that the vehicle preferences for Republicans and other conservatives were almost exactly the reverse of that. Of their top model preferences, 14 were trucks or full-size SUVs while only three were sedans or crossovers. None were hybrids or electric vehicles. Those with the strongest Republican/conservative associations were the Ford F-250 and Ram 2500 pickups, both weighing in at more than 6,000 pounds.

“Pollution Porn”

A couple of weeks before the 2020 election, Priti and I were cruising south along Santa Fe Avenue, the main street in downtown Salina. As we approached Crawford, we saw that a long, noisy Trump train was passing through the intersection, headed west. Decked out with flags, balloons, and other regalia, the parade of trucks stretched out of sight in both directions. When a temporary gap opened in the queue, we took a right turn toward home. In this way, our 2006 Civic hybrid (I know — too trite) involuntarily joined the procession. With a huge, flag-bedecked tailgate towering over our windshield, a five-foot-high bull bar looming in the rearview mirror, and a cacophony of horns drowning out our laughter, we crept home, where we bailed out of the parade. Though we faced no hostility ourselves, that was probably because the drivers on either side of us could barely see us.

Compared with many of the 2020 Trump trains, Salina’s version proved remarkably mild-mannered. But all such white-right parades, including the farcical “Boaters for Trump” regattas, also manage to do a remarkable job of making a relatively small number of Americans seem like a big crowd. There were far more people in Salina’s 2020 Black Lives Matter march than in that truck parade. But when you surround a modest number of people with tons of steel and aluminum propelled by loud internal-combustion engines, you’ve got an impressive spectacle in an ominous sort of way. The forests of flags only add to the fascist aura that surrounds the political use of such hulking vehicles.

Until James Alex Fields, Jr., drove his Dodge Challenger into a non-violent group of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, killing Heather Heyer, the tactic of crashing into crowds was best known as a terror tool used by Islamic State sympathizers, primarily in Europe. At the time, the means of aggression preferred by American pick-up drivers was something called “rollin’ coal.” It involved modifying a truck’s fuel system so that the driver could blast large clouds of thick, black diesel smoke from its tailpipes or smokestacks.

Often, coal-rollin’ was pure performance, a display of rebellion against anything in the culture that smacked of concern for climate change. It was, as Vocativ labeled it in 2014, “pollution porn.” But even then, under the surface was the potential for so much worse. In recent years, more aggressive drivers have taken that stunt to its logical conclusion by engulfing pedestrians, cyclists, electric vehicle or hybrid drivers, and other perceived enemies in toxic black clouds.

As Cara Daggett put it:

“A lot of things are attached to fossil fuel culture because they are symbolically a part of a certain way of life or an identity. It’s no longer possible to operate in the world and not understand that fossil fuels are violent. [Rollin’ coal is] a kind of spectacular performance of power.”

Psychology professor Joshua Nelson suggests that such an extravagant, showy combustion of fuel represents an attempt by white male drivers in particular to compensate for two new realities – that men like them can no longer feel they’re part of an all-powerful American clan and that what awaits us all, however hard it may be to express, however much they may want to repress the very idea, is impending doom from fossil fuels destroying this planet. As Nelson puts it: “There is nothing more possibly traumatizing (and requiring psychologically defensive operations) than potential global destruction and annihilation, especially when one is forced to consider [his] own role in this impending apocalyptic disaster.” Whether such “psychologically defensive operations” grow out of a sense of guilt, inadequacy, or something else entirely, they play out the same way — as aggression against the rest of us.

Standing Up to the Men in Trucks

One characteristic news photo from the violent conflicts of recent times — whether in Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, Syria, or elsewhere — has been of pickup trucks loaded with armed men. The U.S. hasn’t made it there — not yet anyway. But it’s hard to doubt that (thank you, Donald Trump!) ever since January 6, 2021, when so many right-wing militia members broke into the Capitol, some of them armed, we’ve been living through an attempted takeover of our country by members of one of the two major parties. And in 2022, it will hardly surprise you to know that its supporters own more guns and trucks than the rest of us.

This fits with trends pointed out by Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She’s studied the use of violence by a growing number of political parties in a wide range of countries and is now tracking America’s upsurge in militia activity, too. She recently wrote, “Even if Trump passes from the scene, the embrace of violence and intimidation as a political tactic by a faction of the GOP will cause violence of all types to rise — against all Americans.”

Ultra-MAGA elements in legislatures and the courts are already gutting our right to preserve a livable climate, ensure reproductive rights, and vote, even as they create new rights to own weapons of war and put them to deadly use. Usually, those weapons are AR-15s or other firearms, but they can also be tank-scale personal vehicles wrapped in military-grade alloy, with an armored front end.

Big trucks, aggressively driven, straddle the borderline between a democracy in crisis and a country (and world) facing a climate emergency of the first order. They guzzle fuel, spew pollution, and degrade our quality of life. With the paramilitary wing of the anti-democracy, anti-Earth GOP at the wheel, such vehicles portend even worse environmental harm to come. If the far right prevails, its politicos will choke off any state or federal efforts to phase out fossil fuels. If, using means legal or not, they consolidate their power over the Supreme Court, Congress in 2022, and the White House in 2024, they will be spewing the political version of rollin’ coal and are guaranteed to smother the possibility of climate action, probably long enough to make runaway global heating inevitable.

Keeping the anti-democracy party out of power will require massive get-out-the-vote efforts in 2022 and 2024, and record-breaking turnouts in the streets will undoubtedly be needed as well. In truth, there are many more of us than of the fascist wannabes in this country. Like the brave women in Cedar Rapids, we must neither surrender the public square to the extremists nor allow them to bestow rights on vehicles and fossil fuels while revoking rights that belong to us and to the rest of nature.

Copyright 2022 Stan Cox

Via Tomdispatch.com

Welcome back to The Farda Briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter that tracks the key issues in Iran and explains why they matter.

I’m Mehrdad Mirdamadi, a senior editor and journalist at RFE/RL’s Radio Farda. Here’s what I’ve been following and what I’m watching out for in the days ahead.

The Big Issue

A new crackdown by Iranian authorities on women who violate the country’s “hijab and chastity” law has been widely criticized, even by figures within the clerical establishment.

Iran’s notorious morality police have become increasingly violent in enforcing the mandatory hijab. In response, women have become increasingly defiant.

Abdolhadi Mar’ashi, an influential cleric in the holy city of Mashhad, resigned from his provincial post to protest the misconduct of the Guidance Patrols, or morality police. In his resignation letter, Mar’ashi said “our understanding of what is right and what is wrong under Islam has been limited only to the hijab.”

Instead of fixating on the enforcement of the hijab law, Mar’ashi suggested that authorities should prioritize other key issues like “government corruption, social justice, economic security, class disparity, drug addiction, national poverty, [and] freedom of expression.”

Jalal Rashidi Koochi, a lawmaker who is the head of a parliamentary committee for domestic affairs, said the morality police “haven’t made anyone observe the hijab,” suggesting the use of force had backfired.

Why It Matters: The new enforcement of the hijab law has exposed divisions in the Islamic republic, pitting citizens against supporters of the clerical regime. Confrontations have occurred in the streets of many cities in Iran.

Significantly for the establishment, the hijab issue has revealed splits among the clergy, its main support base. More criticism from senior religious figures will mean more defiance on the streets.

With many Iranians already hit by record inflation and rising unemployment, the government’s handling of the hijab issue has given citizens another reason to show their discontent.

What’s Next: The authorities have used force, imprisonment, and intimidation to enforce the hijab law. Even so, the public has remained defiant, as has been the case for the past 40 years. This defiance is set to continue even if the authorities continue or double down on their enforcement of the hijab law, which requires women and girls over the age of 9 to wear a head scarf in public. If the establishment does not soften its stance, there is likely to be more street protests and acts of social disobedience.

Stories You Might Have Missed

• Iran’s Ministry of Guidance has told advertising agencies that women are now prohibited from appearing in advertisements. The ministry sent a letter to the agencies over the weekend following the release of a promotional video by the Domino ice cream company that featured a female actress wearing a sweater who continues to put on further layers of clothing while images of an ice cream bar flash across the screen. At the end of the ad, the actress is wearing a parka and winter hat while taking a bite of the ice cream bar.

A government agency subsequently called the ad “a crime” and condemned the use of a female actress saying such ads lead to the “promotion of immorality” in the society.

• Relatives of Nazanin Bahrami say the Iranian actress has been arrested by undercover police in central Tehran. Bahrami was one of some 800 women to recently sign a statement denouncing the “systematic” sexual harassment and violence against women in the Iranian film industry and had called for a mechanism to ensure those responsible were dealt with.

Her relatives said Bahrami was returning home in the capital from work when she was surrounded by plainclothes police and taken into custody. Her whereabouts are not known, and officials have not commented on the situation.

RFE/RL

Copyright (c)2020 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

The Chronicle quotes Roy’s interview at Fox News: “Congress needs to man up, stand up and fight for the American people — and that means don’t fund a government that is tyrannically forcing people to get a vaccine that they don’t want to get.” So it is tyranny for the government interfere in the personal privacy of the body. Then the Chronicle quotes Ted “Cancun” Cruz as saying that he backs “using every tool we have to protect the rights of Americans. . . I think we should use the leverage we have to fight against what are illegal, unconstitutional and abusive mandates.”

These same Republicans, and the Republican Party throughout the United States, have waged a decades-long struggle to impose an anti-abortion mandate on American women. The party has finally succeeded in packing the Supreme Court with anti-abortion ideologues chosen by the secretive Federalist Society far right wing cabal. They have mounted a wide ranging assault on the liberties Americans gained with the Civil Rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The Roberts court gutted the Voting Rights Act, permitting southern states once again to implement schemes to prevent Black people from voting. And now it is coming for a woman’s right to choose.

The Republican Party of the 1960s and 1970s was not anti-abortion. It represented the rich, and rich women want control of their bodies. The successful evangelical take-over of the party in recent decades, however, made it impossible for most pro-choice Republican politicians to remain viable. The few who have, such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, have nevertheless fully cooperated with the roll-back of Roe v. Wade and Casey by supporting anti-abortion justices such as Brett Kavanaugh, knowing that otherwise they risk being primaried. The strange bedfellows (so to speak) of Wall Street billionaires with Alabama evangelicals is made necessary by the electoral needs of both. The very wealthy who are served by the GOP don’t have the votes to swing elections. In at least some states, evangelicals do. So the wealthy Republicans went along with evangelical sensibilities so as to win elections where lower middle class white Protestants predominated. Rich women can after all fly off to New York or Canada for abortions if they need to.

The resistance of the Republican Party to Covid vaccine mandates, however, illustrates a bizarre set of contradictions in the party’s current ideology. It poses as the party that stands against the encroachments of the federal government. They won’t say so out loud, but the federal encroachment the white nationalists in the party most mind was ending segregation (or, who knows, slavery) and empowering African-Americans in politics. So the anti-government stance is to reject a federal vaccine mandate, even though all Republican-led states mandate vaccines against polio, small pox, and other deadly diseases. No GOP politician has been able to explain why mandates are right for other deadly diseases but not for COVID, which is on the way to killing a million Americans.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

The other contradiction is that the Republican Supreme Court is about to impose a pregnancy mandate on about half of American women, forcing them to carry a pregnancy to term. The current Texas law, which it turns out may be upheld, makes no provision for women who are the victims of rape or incest, which I have pointed out is more restrictive than the laws in most Muslim countries.

Of this contradiction, Minneapolis author Molly Priddy tweeted, “But goddamn it you have that baby or else!”

It might be argued that in the case of abortion, there are two parties, the woman and the fetus, and that a pregnancy mandate guards the interests of the fetus. That argument assumes that a cytoblast is a person with rights that override those of an adult female human being. Nearly two-thirds of Americans don’t see it that way, believing in a woman’s right to choose up until the time the baby turns into a baby, i.e. is viable outside her body.

But there are two parties in a Covid mandate, as well. There is the unvaccinated individual and there are the other people they might infect, even kill, by not being vaccinated.

In fact, unvaccinated people spreading around COVID have killed fetuses. A CDC study of Mississippi found that “During March 1, 2020–October 6, 2021, a total of 1,637 SARS-CoV-2 infections during pregnancy were reported, and 15 COVID-19–associated deaths occurred (nine deaths per 1,000 SARS-CoV-2 infections).” As of late September, 120,000 pregnant women had contracted COVID. The CDC calculation suggests that the some 1,080 of those women died, which is 1,080 dead fetuses. One’s heart goes out to them. Since June 30, almost all of them have been unvaccinated, one can have some empathy with their hesitancy, however unwise, it was. Still, the vaccine is clearly safe for pregnant women, and much, much safer than getting sick with Covid.

In any case, all of the fetuses killed by Covid since June 30 have been killed by unvaccinated people circulating and catching the disease.

To repeat, unvaccinated people, by enabling the spread of this deadly disease, are now killing 9 of every 1,000 fetuses whose mothers contract the disease.

So if protecting the interests of the fetus is a priority, then vaccine mandates ought to be seen as legitimate, right?

One way to explain these contradictions in Republican ideology is sexism. Right wing ideology is about male power and men controlling women, including controlling the bodies of women. So it is all right if Republicans impose state-mandated pregnancy on women, since the state in that instance is simply acting as the instrument of the white male in subordinating women’s bodies. It is not all right for the male body to be disciplined by the state, since that would erode male privilege. Hence there is no contradiction if the underlying principle of misogyny is taken into account.

—–

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

MSNBC: “Center For Reproductive Rights President: Supreme Court Overturning Roe Would Spark ‘Crisis'”

Back in the 19th century, Texas was awash in vigilante groups. In those dark years, various self-appointed “law enforcers” modeled after the Texas Rangers embarked on a decades-long campaign of ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples in the western territory.

Thanks to the Supreme Court, the state is now unleashing another wave of newly minted bounty hunters — this time on women.

The Supreme Court has let stand the Lone Star State’s latest attack on women — a law that criminalizes abortion after six weeks, before most women realize they are pregnant, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

But it goes further than that. It also deputizes ordinary citizens to hunt down and sue anyone who helps a woman defy the ban (e.g. clinic staff, taxi drivers, someone who provided money for the procedure) with a minimum payoff of $10,000 if they’re successful.

Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, abortion has been legal in the U.S. up to the time of viability, meaning when the fetus can survive on its own outside of the womb (approximately six months into the pregnancy). After that, the ruling allows states to prohibit abortions.

To gin up public sentiment, the “Texas Heartbeat Act” was so named to evoke the image of a beating heart in a fully formed human. According to medical experts, that terminology is inaccurate. At six weeks, there is neither a fully developed heart nor a so-called “heartbeat.” There is merely a collection of embryonic cells that will develop into a heart months later (still well short of viability) if the pregnancy continues.

The Texas statute is a clear violation of Roe and would probably be declared unconstitutional if the state were the entity hunting down women and preventing them from getting abortions. But the law skirts the problem by delegating that job to the new vigilantes, who will be the enforcers.

Citizens are authorized to bring frivolous lawsuits and the threat of $10,000 fines to those caught “aiding and abetting” abortions for women past the six week mark. The bounty hunters don’t even have to be Texans — anybody in the U.S. can bring such a suit.

To be clear, the Court’s action in letting the Texas statute stand for now was not a final ruling. What the justices did was refuse to stop enforcement because abortion providers trying to block the law didn’t properly address “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions.” The Supremes said they could try again with “procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law.”

There is a slim chance that it could be found unconstitutional in a future ruling, but a timetable is unknown. If and until that happens, the de facto overturning of Roe v.Wade remains in place, and anti-choice zealots in states like Florida and South Carolina are already working on ways to copy the Texas strategy.

In 1989, when the Supreme Court first opened the way for state restrictions on abortion in the Webster v. Reproductive Health Services case, Justice Harry Blackmun warned: “For today, the women of the Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows.”

In its next term, which starts in October, the Supreme Court is set to decide whether Roe should be overruled in a Mississippi case — a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks currently blocked by lower courts.

Back in Texas, a bill defining all abortions as murder punishable by death has already been debated once in the legislature. It didn’t pass, but there’s no reason to think it’s off the table. And for now, vigilantes appear eager to start their work.

A chill wind indeed.

Martha Burk

Martha Burk (@MarthaBurk) is the director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO). This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Via Otherwords.org

—-

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CBS DFW: “Texas Doctor Dr. Alan Braid Sued After Defying State’s Abortion Ban”

If the American political class were interested in electing a decent president, perhaps even one with moral courage, personal dignity, and an inspirational vision, they would be concentrating on the character, philosophy, and background of the candidates, right? But since those in the political arena, at least brand Republican, are mostly concerned with donor dollars, expanding that base, and the charisma of their macho leader, many of them are all too ready to follow a big, loud, glad-handing figure eager to lead us deep into crises that he — and yes, it is a “he” — will claim only he can bulldoze through.

We’re talking, in other words, about the presidential version of a football head coach, as sports leads the way into… maybe not just the end zone, but The End. Examples of such men are abundantly in the news right now, since the college football season has ended and pro football has reached its orgiastic holy day, the Super Bowl, this Sunday. College and pro teams are scrambling to hire new head coaches, predominantly white men, of course, who score high (as does Donald Trump) in the five main criteria for the job.

1. The Head Coach must offer purpose and meaning to people who feel powerless by offering them membership in something bigger than themselves: the tribe of a team that will be “great again.” To wear the orange or crimson or purple, to be part of a crowd screaming for the Tigers or Raiders or Redskins (or The Donald), is to dream that tomorrow will be so much better because the new head coach, manager, skipper, top dog can deliver. The aura that he brings is invariably short-lived, but it can linger as hope, before it dwindles into immortal nostalgia.

In football, there have been plenty of incredible shrinking coaches. In politics, think John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama, all of whom still make their fans breathless with possibilities unrealized.

The prototype head coach was undoubtedly the Norwegian-born Knute Rockne, who actually delivered on many of the possibilities he promised. A showman as well as a football savant — he popularized the forward pass in the 1920s — he leveraged publicity from winning games to turn Notre Dame into a nationally recognized university with a cultish following. In the process, he became rich and famous before dying in 1931, at age 43, in a plane crash en route to Hollywood to appear as himself in a movie.

Among the myths he invented along the way was winning “one for the Gipper” — George Gipp, one of his young stars who died of pneumonia in his senior year in college. In 1940, actor Ronald Reagan played the Gipper onscreen, creating the basis for his own future head-coach presidency.

The most iconic National Football League head coach was Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers, who came to fame in the early days of the pro football boom. He’s best known for the quote, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Lombardi was too smart to have said that and too smart to deny it once it burnished his legend. Too bad, since that sentiment is so often the defense of bad behavior in political life — from future president Lyndon Johnson stealing his first election to the Senate to President Trump betraying the Kurds, among other crimes and misdemeanors.

What Lombardi probably said was something more like: “Winning isn’t everything. Trying to win is.” That’s the kind of self-help motto that fits a classic head coach’s larger message to both his players and the fans: Follow me. Do what I say. Only I know the way.

2. The Head Coach, college variety, must sell “the program,” the preferred term for the corporate-style athletic department of this era. He does it with a shape-shifting charm that can seduce both small-town working-class families and global financial wolves. In that way, the head coach should remind us of presidential hopefuls who can work both everyday Midwestern diners and waterfront East Hampton fund-raisers for the corporate elite.

In a living room with a talented teenager, he can convincingly promise mom and dad that he will act in loco parentis, not only by keeping junior outof trouble, but by giving him enough playing time to assure him either a pro career or a Wall Street job via successful alumni. At the least, he will make a man out of him.

In a banquet hall filled with those alumni with deep pockets, all the booster whales, he can convincingly promise winning seasons that will include them personally. As an irresistible perk in return for donations to the program (and perhaps a few no-show off-season jobs for athletes), there’s always the chance for donors to mingle in the locker room and to breakfast with the coach, to engage in team scuttlebutt and manly jock talk, not to mention all those photo ops. It’s like lunch at Mar-a-Lago with the president and some cabinet members. (Think: assistant coaches.)

That kind of salesmanship is critical because the salaries of head coaches are obscenely high and have to be justified. In most states, the head football coaches at public universities are also the highest-paid public employees. At the top of the heap right now is Clemson University’s hard-driving, God-promoting coach Dabo Swinney who has promised, for a mere $93 million over the next decade, to keep the Tigers great.

Indeed, his team did win the national championship the year before, but recently lost this year’s title game to Louisiana State University‘s Ed Orgeron whose salary is only 30th on the college coach list (at a paltry $4 million annually). President Trump earns one-tenth of that as president, a salary that he gives away. Little wonder that he needs to bolster his income with emoluments galore and constantly pump up his presidential powers. How else will he keep up with the jock elite?

3. The Head Coach is dedicated to winning by any means necessary. Cutting corners, bad behavior, even cheating is proof that he has true fire in his belly.

While his wealth, power, prestige, and the frequency of recruiting scandals have made the college football head coach a frequent target of media indignation, the leaders of other top sports are probably as culpable when it comes to cheating. As a group, they make a good case for the dark side of all our games as breeding grounds for Trumpism.

And that phenomenon, in turn, seems to have lowered our outrage about everything else in our American lives, including sports. Think of it as a kind of boomerang effect. Cheating has been normalized and, most of the time, we just shrug. Take, for example, the current Houston Astro sign-stealing scandal that helped win that team a World Series in 2017. Despite a few coach departures, compared to other scandals in major league baseball’s Hall of Shame, including the 1919 Black Sox attempt to fix an earlier world series, spitball use, and steroids, it’s made remarkably small waves.

Thanks to Donald Trump’s record of dishonor, it’s been hard to crank up anger over cheating to win at mere games. No wonder the New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick, despite the many accusations of wrongdoing lodged against him, is considered the greatest pro coach of all time based on his record six Super Bowl victories (in nine appearances) and a lifetime 304-137 record.

In short, every year it seems all the more as if the end zone justifies the means.

4. Alpha male that he is, the Head Coach has absolute control over the brutes. After all, in the locker-room and on the sidelines of the game, he’s the commander-in-chief, the beast-master of the raw young power he sends into battle.

For so many American men, there seems to be something thrilling in the head coach’s utter, unquestioned authority over the bodies and fates of the young players on his team. The fantasy of such dominance — for most, available only in video games — affects not only the fans, but the coaches themselves. They tend to believe in the righteousness of their power over those strong young men pledged to help them win, no matter what kind of bad actors they may prove to be in their lives out of uniform. (Similarly, by the way, our head coach of a president puts his faith in his control over his administration team, his legal team in those impeachment hearings, and those roaring fans at his rallies.)

Coaches, in fact, tend to love the dark wildness of bad boys, especially if they think that they alone have command over their pit-bull jocks. They love their bad boys so much that they’ll turn a blind eye when they act up and bail them out when they get in trouble for anything from being a bully in the hallway to assault with a deadly weapon or rape.

Among the most famous and successful of such beast-master coaches was Tom Osborne who headed the University of Nebraska’s football team for 25 years, overseeing stars like the psychopathic Lawrence Phillips who should have been in jail rather than lionized as a college hero.

Twenty-five years ago, at an awards banquet at which he was honored, I asked Osborne how he could justify any of this. He answered coldly and cynically, “Would you rather they were on my team or loose in your neighborhood?”

Later, as a three-term congressman, he received a lifetime rating of 83 from the American Conservative Union. Coming to feel that politics offered him so much less, however, he returned to Nebraska’s football team, his eternal place of power and glory.

Osborne’s example, hardly unique, offers insight into President Trump’s intervention in the case of disgraced Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, an out-of-control killer in Afghanistan where fellow Seals accused him of murdering civilians, among other crimes.

As Trump’s version of Lawrence Phillips, Chief Petty Officer Gallagher gave the president that head-coach patina of macho supremacy. He could handle the tough guys! Trump even invited him to Mar-a-Lago.

5. The Head Coach who can check off those first four criteria will be qualified to check off this one, too: ascension to the top ranks of million-dollar-plus power leaders. He will then be perceived as a Strong Man, sport’s version of the top dogs of global politics.

So how does the president match up with, say, three of the most famous and revered head coaches of his own lifetime?

There was Bear Bryant of the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, known for his harsh discipline and almost religious passion for “his” school. “If you want to walk the heavenly streets of gold, you gotta know the password, ‘Roll, Tide, Roll.'”

There was Woody Hayes of Ohio State who attacked an opposing player during a game and was fired the next day. A military history professor as well as a coach, he’s been quoted as saying that the soldiers involved in the My Lai massacre, a 1968 American slaughter of more than 500 Vietnamese civilians, killed men who deserved to die “and I wouldn’t be so sure those women were innocent. The children are obviously innocent — if they are less than five.”

Finally, there was Joe Paterno of Penn State, a much beloved philanthropist and father figure known as JoePa, whose legend was tarnished by the proven pederasty of one of his assistant coaches. Paterno had known enough, early enough, to stop the man and prevent further abuse. He was fired soon after his 409th victory, a record, and died several months later. His statue on campus was carted away.

And the current crop of top coaches has yet to prove itself any better. This is important because head coaches clearly serve as father figures, cult leaders, models of masculinity — perhaps particularly to the disaffected millions who see in Trump the strong man who can guide them, speak for them, protect them from everything that seems to be going wrong in their lives.

For those of us who don’t quite view him that way, perhaps the only saving grace of the head-coach connection at this moment of the 54th Super Bowl is how easily college and pro teams are willing to dump their coaches when they don’t fulfill expectations.

Alas, it doesn’t seem to work that way with presidential head coaches. So far.

Robert Lipsyte, a TomDispatch regular, was a sports and city columnist for the New York Times. He is the author, among other works, of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Copyright 2020 Robert Lipsyte

Via Tomdispatch.com

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CBS 17: “‘Four More Years’; President Trump cheered loudly at College Football National Championship”