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"Losing two fights in this sport is not an easy thing to handle, so I
took a good look and realized I'm not unstoppable and I need to work on
where I am stoppable." - Ramsey Nijem
If you were going to describe the personality of UFC lightweight prospect Ramsey Nijem, laid-back would often be the first thing to come to mind. But if it did, you've obviously never seen him cornering one of his teammates on fight night.
"I'm actually a pretty emotional guy as far as fighting," he laughs, with the latest manifestation of the other side of Ramsey showing up when he cornered Steven Siler in his November bout against Dennis Bermudez. Trying to almost will his teammate to win, Nijem was a no-nonsense motivator from start to finish, looking like he had been through a three round bout himself after the final bell sounded. "I always expect to win and expect my guys to win, so I get like that. I just try to keep all emotions in check when I'm actually out there fighting. I don't want to get emotional and get a little bit wild, but if I don't keep myself in check, that's what happens.
"I'm actually a really intense human being," Nijem continued. "A lot of people don't realize that because I'm joking around, but it's pretty extreme. I'm usually really relaxed, having fun and joking around, but that intensity switch will flip really fast. I gotta keep it focused."
To keep that focus, Nijem says that good breathing techniques and the realization that he put in the necessary work in the gym keeps him focused on fight night, and as he gets ready for his Wednesday matchup with former Ultimate Fighter cast mate Justin Edwards, he believes he's done the work and made the adjustments that will help him snap a two fight losing streak. One of those adjustments? Realizing that in the UFC, you can't rest on past laurels, and for Nijem, those laurels included a three fight winning streak.
"It really feeds your ego, and you're feeling like you're on top of the world," he said of the string that saw him beat Danny Downes, CJ Keith, and Joe Proctor before losing to Myles Jury and James Vick. "I felt like I was unstoppable. I'm not being disrespectful, but I won all those fights in a pretty dominant fashion. And even the Jury fight, I just chalked it up as a loss. I got caught and I was winning the fight. I felt great, I felt strong, there was nothing wrong, it just happened. But after the Vick fight, I really took a good, hard look at myself. Losing two fights in this sport is not an easy thing to handle, so I took a good look and realized I'm not unstoppable and I need to work on where I am stoppable."
Part of that process included moving to the Bay Area where he grew up to train with Tareq Azim and his team in San Francisco. He still maintains a good relationship with The Pit Elevated team in Utah, but he wanted to get some new looks that he most certainly has with training partners like Jake Shields.
"I lost my last couple fights, so what I was doing wasn't really working," he said. "And that's no disrespect to my guys; those are still my best friends and my training team, but I just wanted to mix things up, get some new coaches and some new partners. I've known Tareq Azim for a while and he really is an intense person and he has the same kind of mentality and focus that I feel like I have, so he matches it well as a coach, and that's what I decided I needed. I wanted to come work with some of the best grapplers in the world like Jake Shields, and these guys out here are pretty damn good on the ground and their feet, so it kind of exposed my holes and helped me fill 'em up for the next fight."
It's a mature outlook for a young man that could have easily said that he simply got caught in his knockout loss to Jury and his submission defeat against Vick, but instead said – at least after last August's loss to Vick – some things need fixing.
"I could easily chalk it up to being one of those things and I know that, but it's a game of inches, and when you're getting caught, there's obviously a flaw there," he said. "The first loss I chalked it up to a loss and didn't really fix it, and the second one, it showed that I didn't fix anything. I know I could beat both those guys on any given day, but they got me that day, and that's why I've got to completely close every hole and not give anyone any chance to beat me in any aspect of any fight."
Which all points to him being the wrong guy for former welterweight Edwards to test the 155-pound waters against. And Nijem makes it clear that "Fast Eddy" may not be ready for what he's getting into against the lightweights.
"One of the biggest things is speed," he said. "And he's not going to be stronger than everyone. I think he's expecting to drop down to 155 and be stronger than all the competition, but in reality, I'm a big '55er. And these guys are faster and it's a more technical game. The lighter you get, the more technique plays a part, and everyone's tough. I feel it's the hardest division in the UFC right now."
As such, every fight is an important one, every win keeps you alive, and every loss sends you further down the ladder. Nijem may be on the ropes at the moment, but he plans on firing on all cylinders in 2014.
"2014's going to be a good year for me," he said. "I'm gonna go out there and really make a statement at '55. I've had fun, it's been a great ride, and I could easily retire or be one of those fighters that was really good but could have been really great. But I made the decision that I want to be a great fighter and I'm going to sacrifice everything and put a hundred percent of myself into it and really be serious."
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Moral Injury: The Psychological Wounds Of War
"Moral injury" is a term used in the mental health community to describe the psychological damage service members face when their actions in battle contradict their moral beliefs. Thought it isn't diagnosable, doctors and veterans are searching for ways to support those who have experienced this inner conflict.
Tyler Boudreau, author, Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine
Dr. Jonathan Shay, clinical psychiatrist who coined the term 'moral injury'
Rev. Rita Brock, co-director, Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. Whether you call it battle fatigue or shell shock or PTSD, we've come to accept that the trauma of combat can leave profound psychological scars. But how do you describe the damage from actions that violate one's values, but don't involve trauma, injury from horrific scenes that betray core moral beliefs?
Some mental health experts have adopted a relatively new term: moral injury. It's not accepted as a psychiatric diagnosis, there's no real treatment, but more and more veterans believe it finally puts a name to their condition and an explanation to their symptoms.
We want to hear from those of you who served in uniform. Does the term moral injury resonate with your experience? Our phone number: 800-989-8255. Email us: firstname.lastname@example.com. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Later in the program, the latest from the Turkey-Syria border, where NATO missile batteries may soon be in place. But first, moral injury. And we begin with a 12-year veteran of the Marine Corps, Tyler Boudreau, who commanded an infantry company in Iraq. He joins us by phone from Amherst, Massachusetts.
Good to have you with us today.
TYLER BOUDREAU: Hi, thanks for having me.
CONAN: When did you first hear the term moral injury?
BOUDREAU: Well, you threw me, there. I think it's been a couple of years now, but it was after - I think the important time for me was that it was after I had written my book, because I wrote a memoir called "Packing Inferno." And at that time, I was thinking of guilt quite a lot, and I was talking about guilt, but I knew that I didn't hear of the term moral injury at the time.
And so I was - you know, I was categorizing that guilt under post-traumatic stress, and for a long time that was giving me a lot of trouble. And then someone said, hey, we have this term moral injury, and for me, that immediately resonated. I said, ah, this term can work, I can understand this. Because as you were just pointing out, some of the things that I feel, you know, angst about were not necessarily traumatic. And so now, you know, this new category really opened things up.
CONAN: What kind of things are you talking about?
BOUDREAU: Well, I think that particularly in a counterinsurgency or an occupation environment, there's a lot of more benign scenarios that are not necessarily highly violent, not necessarily a lot of killing going on, but there's a lot of things that people might feel, you know, that violated their moral codes.
And so, for instance, for me, an example might be authorizing snipers to shoot, you know, an Iraqi man over the radio. So, you know, there is violence actually happening there, but I'm not personally involved in it. I'm disconnected from that action, and I'm, in fact, miles away, and yet I still - I know that I played a role in that scenario. And so, yes, I feel some guilt about that, but I can't really call that traumatic. There was no trauma for me.
CONAN: And similarly, as a commander of an infantry company, you sent guys on patrol who did things that, well, may not have been pretty.
BOUDREAU: Yeah, well, let me just correct you there. I'm sorry. I took command of a company after Iraq. So in Iraq, I was an assistant operations officer, and - but I did, in fact, dispatch patrols frequently. That is - that part is accurate. And so, yeah, sure, there would be times where they would go on patrol, and they would be involved in situations.
And sometimes, it was situations where they had inflicted violence sometimes, and violence had been inflicted upon them. Either way, I am dispatching them, and I feel some responsibility for that, and there is, you know, once again, there's a sense of, you know, there's a sense of remorse or guilt or something where your morals are being challenged. And this term moral injury kind of gives - it opens up space for a conversation to be had about that.
CONAN: A conversation, but it's more than a philosophical debate - real effects.
BOUDREAU: Yeah, it does have real effects, although that's not the area where I'm most expert in. I mean, I am aware that the VA has studied it, and the military has kind of gotten involved in it. And I know that you're going to be talking to Dr. Jonathan Shay, and he knows, you know, quite a lot about that side of it.
I actually have focused more on the social function of this term and that conversation. That's been sort of the area where I have spent of my time thinking.
CONAN: But you did have effects from this, and you, as you say, were struggling to, well, when you wrote your book, compare it with PTSD.
BOUDREAU: That's right, yeah, for sure. This, you know, reflection of my own, without a doubt, emerged from my own experiences and it made me - you know, it made me think very hard about it. And once I started thinking about it, I mean, the - one of the main points that I make, and this connects to the individual, is that the conversation for post-traumatic stress is almost exclusively in a medical or mental health environment.
So, you know, if someone says, OK, you've been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, right away you're going to go see a therapist or a psychologist or wherever they're going to send you. They're going to send you, you know, to the doctor. And that's where your conversation is going to happen.
And it's very easy for the public, the American public, to say, hey, yeah, let's take care of those veterans. Let's get them to doctors. Now, with moral injury, the - kind of the distinction that I think is so important is now, it's not necessarily a medical issue anymore. Now it's a social issue. Now, when a veteran says, hey, I have a moral injury or I have something more that's challenging my moral code, that means it's challenging society's moral code.
And that means that it's a discussion for everyone, not just the medical community, and it's not something to just, you know, whisk the soldier or the veteran off to the doctor. It's, hey, we all need to be in this conversation. And we are all, by the way, responsible for whatever transgression that he or she is involved in. That's our transgression, too.
CONAN: Tyler Boudreau mentioned Dr. Jonathan Shay, who spent two years at the - excuse me, two decades at the Department of Veteran Affairs outpatient clinic in Boston. And he's on the line with us, joining us from member station WBEZ in Chicago.
Dr. Shay, nice to have you with us.
JONATHAN SHAY: Great to be here. And hi, Tyler. Good to hear your voice.
BOUDREAU: Hi, Tom. Thank you.
CONAN: How did you come up with this term, moral injury? What were the parameters that you were trying to describe?
SHAY: Well, this just fell into my lap from the story that the great ancient poet Homer tells of Achilles in "The Iliad." That is the story of moral injury and the terrible consequences of it.
CONAN: The death of Patroclus and his horrible revenge.
SHAY: Well, yes, I mean, the - and in particular it's all triggered by his boss Agamemnon's violating the moral consensus of the forces that he commanded. And the text is very clear that he really was off-base.
CONAN: And how did you come to apply this Homeric message to, well, experiences like Tyler Boudreau's in Iraq?
SHAY: Well, when I was working at the VA, it took me about a year to figure out that I was hearing the story of Achilles over and over again, sometimes as fragments and sometimes as the whole sequence exactly as Homer told it. And that was a piece of dumb luck for me, because I got the chance to write a book that has since had real legs to it.
CONAN: The book is "Achilles in Vietnam." Another one: "Odysseus in America." As you came to come up with this term, how did you apply it to veterans? And did they, as soon as they heard the term, like Tyler Boudreau said, ah-ha?
SHAY: Well, it's more than just the term, because Tyler I think is totally on-target when he says that to medicalize this - what's the pill for this? Uh-uh. In my view, recovery happens only in community. And typically, the first community in which that is going to work is the community of fellow veterans. And I - as far as I'm concerned, people with all the alphabet soup after his name have no business on center stage in this. It's other veterans.
CONAN: We want to hear from those other veterans. Does the term moral injury resonate with your experience? 800-989-8255. Email us: email@example.com. We'll start with Ben, and Ben's on the line with us from Oswego, New York.
BEN: Yes, sir. Thank you.
CONAN: Go ahead, please.
BEN: Yeah, this would be the very first time I've heard the phrase moral injury, but I'm certainly one of those combat vets where it just kind of - it just - it falls into place very easily. I was in a light infantry Army unit in the Iraqi theater, and needless to say, we had to track down our fair share of HBTs and handle our business.
And the process that we went through doing that, a lot of the times, you didn't really have the ability to concern yourself too much with moral obligation. It's more about the mission. And upon my return here in the States, and now that I have a young child and - you start to look at life in a bit of a different way, and this is whenever you first, you know, see the - what could be this moral injury.
I do have - I'm categorized and rated PTSD, but this is something that just kind of struck me, because just recently, I've been struggling very much so. And I happened to turn to the church community for assistance with this, mostly because my remaining friends that I associate with are still active-duty, and I don't believe it's my place to speak with them too heavy on the subject, because they have to go back over, and they need to be of a certain state of mind.
So it's double-edged, in a manner of speaking. But there was, specifically, just to give an example, I need to be mindful, I suppose, if you can forgive me for doing so, but I don't want to paint anyone or any particular establishment or institution in a negative light as much as possible in doing so. So we did have an insurgent who tried to drive a VBIED, a vehicle-borne IED into our FOB.
CONAN: A car bomb, yeah.
BEN: Yes, sir, but this was actually a dump truck. They were going all out, and they had some aircraft payload munitions and whatnot inside. And we fired upon the individual driving the vehicle. He was struck, but survived, and then we pulled him out of the vehicle and kind of got to work on him, trying to figure out what's going on. We deduced that he was kind of intoxicated by some form of a substance or another, and, you know, his face was drawn on.
We'd keep our HBTs in an exterior kind of tent, away from the FOB building, and just a general treatment. Again, I just - I want to be mindful, but I also want this conversation to be real. And, you know, I mean, those are human beings. They had to - you know, they had to use the facilities, if you will, and whatnot. And a lot of times, the soldier who would be watching over him may not be very - may not be very mindful to certain things like that. And I mean, I'm sure your imagination can take it just a bit, although I want to - I wanted to say that, you know, I just...
CONAN: Ben, we're going to leave you at that forward operating base just for a moment. We're going to take a short break. Can you stay on hold for a minute?
BEN: Sure.
CONAN: All right, we'll pick up the conversation after we get back. We're talking about the relatively new term moral injury to describe experiences in combat and the effects afterwards and the conversations afterwards that we all need to have. Stay with us. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. This hour we're talking about moral injury, a relatively new term used to characterize emotional scars that members of the armed forces bring back from the battlefield after doing and witnessing things that violate core beliefs.
Though the term is new, the problem is as old as war itself. So if you've served in uniform, tell us: Does this term moral injury resonate with your experience? 800-989-8255. Email firstname.lastname@example.com. You can also join the conversation online. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Dr. Jonathan Shay coined the term moral injury. He's our guest, along with Tyler Boudreau, a 12-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps. Ben is also on the line with us from Oswego, New York, who's been describing his experiences there at a forward operating base where the driver of a man who attempted to blow up a dump truck full of explosive materials was - Ben is it fair to say handled roughly?
BEN: Yeah, I mean, that's definitely one way you can certainly coin it. He was no friend of ours, and we certainly were not coming towards him. I mean, within the constraints of the Geneva Conventions and so on and so forth, we acted appropriately, but then again there's definitely a gray area, I suppose, that takes place whenever you're boots on the ground, and it's just you and then.
Their comfort really wasn't much of a concern of ours at the time.
CONAN: And Tyler Boudreau, I wanted to ask you: When Ben talked about the distinction between mission and morals, does that resonate with you?
BOUDREAU: Well, I think this is sort of a standard dilemma where you get in a situation where you feel, you know, you have to - you know, you have to get things done. You have to survive, or you have to accomplish the mission. And that struggle between, you know, if it becomes a struggle, if soldiers start to feel a struggle between their personal morality and the mission, what that reflects is the larger, you know, operation, you know, that the society, you know, that the country has put them, you know, in this situation. So that's one of the reasons that you come back to this is a social issue. It's not a clinical issue.
Hopefully you're not going to have, you know, a lot of people feeling that their personal, core beliefs have been violated if the mission is good, and when things start to get gray, you have probably more moral injury problems.
CONAN: And that conversation, Ben, you say you don't talk to your fellow soldiers about it.
BEN: No sir, I was just with one of them the other day, and I started to get into the subject because it has been something that started to bother me recently, just for whatever reasons. And I told him just outright that I wasn't going to get involved with it. He was more than welcome for me to discuss some things with him, but I know that while you're in the gray even, you - in that particular environment you have to be calloused and sometimes exceedingly so.
You have to be - you have to shut off the emotion 100 percent, but unfortunately whenever you do something like that, you're shutting off some other, you know, core parts of your personality, and that allows you to really start crossing that line, I believe. And I don't want him - I do not want my fellow active-duty soldier friends to have to get this kernel, this thought in their mind that's maybe going to cause them to second-guess themselves whenever they're in a situation where they must stay on point.
CONAN: And Dr. Shay, I wanted to bring you in here. There's a lot to talk about. Obviously you can't do any kind of diagnosis on the radio. But the - one of the things that seemed to me interesting that Ben talked about is that he does have a PTSD diagnosis. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
SHAY: No, they're not mutually exclusive at all. Moral injury can lead to PTSD, moral injury can come after PTSD. I mean, the simplest way to understand PTSD is the persistence into civilian life of absolutely valid survival adaptations, adaptations that let you survive when other human beings really are trying to kill you and doing a damn good job of it.
CONAN: Ben, thank you so much for the call, and I hope you get a chance to talk about this.
BEN: Yes, sir, thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you.
CONAN: Let's see if we can go next to - this is Mike(ph), and Mike's calling us from the big island on Hawaii.
MIKE: Hi, how are you?
CONAN: Good, thanks.
MIKE: Yeah, I mean I - the two calls and just a shout out to Dr. Shay. He does a great job. He's brilliant. And I use a lot of his materials. But, you know, my experience is - was hard to quantify, obviously diagnosed with PTSD, two tours in Iraq, two tours in Afghanistan, and my youngest son just out from his first tour to Afghanistan as a young Army officer.
But it really puts into perspective. Had a car bomb incident, a lot of body parts, just sensory overload. And I like what the last two callers have talked about, you know, the focus on the mission, you know, fundamental failing of your training if you just can't get your head stuck into the game and get things going and process and produce and accomplish.
It's just after the fact. And I am a PTSD sufferer, working on five years. I'm darn near normal. But that moral compass changes, and it changes at that point when you go through sensory overload, when you stack body parts, when you try to match one with the other, when you deal with concussion blasts and other issues. There's a darkness that descends. It's almost as if you lose heart and faith in humanity itself, and it's - it's horrific once you come to that realization. It's a tough road back.
CONAN: And how do you - you say you're darn near normal, a condition many of us would aspire to, but how do you get that back? How do you get that faith back?
MIKE: You know, I think it's - for me, I'm an avid reader. So it's looking at these sort of different philosophical constructs and trying to find one that, you know, has been mined previously that matches this experience. You know, you've been horribly scarred and traumatized, and in my outreach work with the VA, I just saw young guys who were so traumatized not only by their physical or other emotional injuries but by this moral compass shift that they couldn't get out of bed.
And I think it's a matter of time. It's a matter of love, appreciation. It's a sense of can do, finding a comfortable place. I had one very old but wise psychiatrist at the VA in Seattle tell me, you know, you live in a clay jar, and it's the height of courage to fly towards that one crack, that one fissure that shows the light. It's hard to get up there, but it's the courage to try. And I think that's the solution.
CONAN: Mike, thanks very much for the call.
MIKE: You bet.
CONAN: Keep working. Here's an email we have from Jack(ph) in Ohio: A moral injury here, I suffered it in April in 1967 on the Bong Son River when an unarmed prisoner escaped and hit the water. I begged him to come back, but he didn't understand. He was probably just a farmer we'd evacuated from the An Lao Valley like many of the others.
Finally when he was way out in the river, several of us began to fire at him. He seemed to realize he was in trouble and was hit once. He came up holding his arms out of the water, and my bullet hit him in the head. He sank, and we swam out and got his body.
This tragedy has haunted me for many years since. I wrote a song about it, and that seemed to help my moral guilt and injury for killing an unarmed, innocent man. Lord, forgive me. That's Jack in Athens, Ohio. Dr. Shay, there is no pill, you say. So how do you get that conversation going? What helps?
SHAY: Well, I want to say, Neal, that I've been twisting arms all over the place, pointing out that our society lacks any real understanding of what's needed for purification after battle. We need rituals, we need liturgies, we need narratives, we need artworks that - and the point here is that it's not something you say to a veteran.
You, Mr. Veteran, you need to clean yourself up. It's that we all need to clean ourselves up after war. These people went on our behalf and in our name, and we need to purify as a community, not just as just say to this returning veteran you need purification, uh-uh.
CONAN: Purification rites, we know them best perhaps from Native American experiences.
SHAY: That's one culture that certainly had a lot of understanding of it, but you find footprints of it in the Bible. Ancient Rome had a way of purifying the legions when they came back from the campaigning season. Just about every society but ours has had such a thing, and a parade isn't it. Nor is what happened to one of the veterans I treated, who was met at his front door in South Boston by his father when he returned from Vietnam. And he plopped a $50 bill into his hand and said, here, get drunk, get laid and I'll see you in the union hall on Monday morning. Whatever that was, it wasn't purification.
CONAN: We turn now to the Reverend Rita Brock. She's the founding co-director of the Soul Repair Center at Texas Christian University's Brite Divinity School. She's the author of "Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War." And good to have you with us today.
REVEREND RITA BROCK: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on, especially with Tyler and Jonathan, whose work I so respect.
CONAN: Well, you work on recovery from moral injury conversation, the societal conversation. If that's what we need to recover, we have a long way to go.
BROCK: We certainly do. We spend months, weeks and months, training ordinary people who grew up with us and teaching them to kill, and then we send them off to war, which is a horrible experience for any person with a conscience. And then we bring them home, and with a little bit of interviewing and a few hours maybe of talking to, we put them back in civilian society. And the rest of us just think, well, they'll just get over it and go on with their lives and be the same. And they're never the same.
CONAN: Never the same. So how do you get them back to some reasonable facsimile thereof?
BROCK: I think it really is a process of befriending veterans. It's - and facing into our own moral culpability. I look at someone like Tyler - who has incredible moral core, who's been fierce about facing into the things that he regrets and things that he did - and I think that the rest of us need to have the same kind of moral courage if we're going to help veterans recover.
But we can't - we're not there to be their therapists. We're not there to fix them. We're there to befriend them in a long process of coming to terms with what it meant for us to send other human beings into war and what it's required now for us to bring them home.
CONAN: And, Tyler Boudreau, this seems to me to be outside the conversation about whether it was worth it in one place or another about the cause. But the fact is we sent you there. We have to come to terms with what we all did.
BOUDREAU: Yes. I think that's exactly right, and I thank Rita for her kind words. And one of the reasons that I always kind of want to pull the conversation back to the social is because I think it's very instinctive for veterans and soldiers themselves to want to deal with it themselves. I think that it's sort of a natural reaction to society.
And, in fact, Dr. Shay even pointed out to me recently that the military is preferring now the term inner conflict over moral injury, and you can see the implications right there where, OK, this is a personal - this is personal work. You may get help, you may get a - you may get, you know, clinical support, but this is still personal work.
And I really disagree with that idea because, you know, the problem is, is that as soon as you turn it into a social problem, moral injury, even if it is an individual experience, it calls into question the entire policy. And, you know, maybe the policy needs to be called into question, and maybe it doesn't, but it should be on the table. And the morality of any policy, particularly that involves military force, should be on the table.
And I think that in our country - and maybe all countries - people are afraid of that conversation because of how it may look as far as their support for the troops or their support for the cause or their patriotism or whatever it is. But we have to as a society be able to discuss morality because this is what you get. You get soldiers who come home and who are wrangled, and we need to be able to deal with that as a society, not just as individuals who knew to do inner work. That's not good enough.
CONAN: Tyler Boudreau, a retired Marine Corps officer. Also with us, Dr. Jonathan Shay, a clinical psychiatrist and former psychiatrist at the Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic Hospital in Boston, coiner of the term moral injury; and the Reverend Rita Brock, the founding co-director of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And here's an email question from Noah in Tucson: Can you explain how moral injury is differentiated from cognitive dissonance? Moral injury seems to simply define the effect of cognitive dissonance, but I'm certainly no expert.
Dr. Shay, can you help us?
SHAY: Certainly, the dissonance in both versions of moral injury that are currently circulating, the dissonance is between what someone experienced and believes they have to do or have done. And the code in - as they understand it and as their local community and culture understands it, the code of what is praiseworthy and blameworthy, what I call what's right, a simple turn of phrase.
So you have three elements in moral injury, as both lines of research on it understand it. A betrayal of what's right, number one, and in one version - mine - by someone who holds legitimate authority. But in the other version, which is very important - and I'm not saying that it's not important, and it can coexist with the first kind - is where it is my - I do it. I betray what's right, not somebody in authority.
And then the third element is in common, and that is that the stakes are high. Nobody's ever morally injured in a penny ante poker game because the stakes just aren't high enough.
CONAN: Here's an email from Steven(ph) in San Francisco: I'm a veteran of the first Gulf War. The very nature of the military - war and killing - creates a moral dilemma. The first time you kill or injure an individual, there is a profound change in one's values and morals. Everyone who serves in combat suffers moral injury. Some are able to reconcile this more than others.
While I believe the VA should provide services to address this, VA disability payments regarding this would-be syndrome creates an unlimited liability for the nation's taxpayers. If one feels that one's morals and values will be compromised, they should not sign up for the military. First, quickly, Dr. Shay, is this a syndrome, a would-be syndrome?
SHAY: Well, first of all, I do not actually believe that there is an inherent injury to a human being or any other mammal or fish from killing another of one's own species. This is an idea that was put forth by Dave Grossman, and unfortunately, it just isn't well-founded. But the - Dave Grossman's very famous book on killing. I think that a lot of people do suffer very much when they believe they have killed the wrong people for the wrong reason.
In the lingo of the people who are currently there, somebody who didn't need to be killed. I get terribly angry at people, civilians, who say, oh, there are no rules in war. Well, I can tell you that soldiers, Marines care deeply about the things that keep them clean, and the rules of war are that keep them clean.
CONAN: We're going to continue this conversation for a couple of minutes after we come back from a short break. We'll also speak with NPR's Deb Amos, who joins us with the latest on Syria and how the recently announced cease-fire between Israel and Hamas may change things; certainly put more attention on the Syrian Civil War. Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
CONAN: In just a moment, we'll go to the border between Syria and Turkey to talk about the Syrian Civil War and how things are developing since the formation of a national coalition, a new national coalition that's been winning friends in foreign capitals, getting mixed reception thus far inside Syria. But we wanted to continue our conversation for just a couple of minutes on moral injury.
Still with us is Tyler Boudreau, a retired Marine Corps officer; Dr. Jonathan Shay, a clinical psychiatrist; and the Rev. Rita Brock, co-founding, co-director of the Soul Repair Center at the Brite Divinity School. Just to follow up on that email question. Tyler Boudreau, from your point of view, is moral injury something that's seeking to be defined as an injury that - as a syndrome, rather, that would require extensive treatment?
BOUDREAU: I definitely wouldn't deny treatment. You know what I mean? Like, I would think that that would be an, you know, inherent component if that's what's an individual, you know, wanted to be. I'm not, you know, into the medical world so I couldn't answer it like in a professional way as far as whether it's a syndrome or not a syndrome. But in terms of having counseling, you know, put it that way, and having some personal help, I think that's perfectly great. It's OK. I just want to include, you know, the larger conversation.
And let me just also add this, because this is a piece of moral injury that gets ignored again and again, and that is the victims of those - the victims, you know, if you are - if you have done some transgression, if you've killed somebody, if you've hurt somebody, there's a victim there. You have a moral injury. But if you don't have included in that conversation the people who you have hurt, then you can't have the moral injury.
And so, you know, and particularly in the conflicts that we're talking about today, Iraq and Afghanistan, where a big piece of those operations are, you know, helping the Iraqi people, helping the Afghanis, well, you know, we tend to not pay much attention to those people in this conversation and they've got to get into the conversation. They need to be acknowledged in order for us to have that moral injury.
CONAN: All right. Here's...
BROCK: Neal, this is Rita. I agree with Tyler on that. And I wanted to add a response to the idea that some people are unfit to serve in the military if they're going to have moral injury because I think it misunderstands even the nature of military training, in which anyone who goes through military training is taught moral values. They're taught just war principles, the Geneva conventions. There are all of these codes of honor around what is a soldier to do and not do. And shooting innocent civilians is not something a soldier does.
But when you throw people into a war where there's no army and no military there fighting and they're only fighting civilians, you get - the moral ambiguities become quite fierce and horrible. And you have soldiers having to kill children, pregnant women, dogs. It becomes a terribly morally compromising situation even for people who feel good about being in the war and wanting to be there and wanting to serve their country. It doesn't mean that they don't come home with their moral consciences wrecked.
And I actually think that - I agree that there are certain forms of treatment that might be needed. But this is a problem for the whole society. To try to slide it into just something that the VA can take care of, I think, is the wrong approach. The reason we started the Soul Repair Center in Texas is because our mission is not to treat veterans individually. Our mission is to train the public on understanding what moral injury is and being willing to help veterans recover - not as a disorder, but to support them for the rest of their lives and learning to live with what happened to them in war because it's not something you're ever going to forget.
CONAN: Is it something that you can manage though?
BROCK: Yes. And I think that's part of it. You just have - you - what happens is that you have to support people in all the moral questions and the struggle they're in to try to understand what happened to them, and to help them reconstruct a moral identity that can integrate what happened to them in war, but will allow them to want to live and even perhaps to thrive for the rest of their lives.
CONAN: Let's leave it there. Reverend Brock, thank you very much for your time today.
BROCK: You're welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you.
CONAN: Rita Brock, co-director of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School, author of the recent book "Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War." Our thanks as well to Dr. Jonathan Shay, clinical psychiatrist, formerly with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston, with us from WBEZ, our member in Chicago. Dr. Shay, thanks very much.
SHAY: You're welcome. It's great to be here.
CONAN: And Tyler Boudreau, thank you for your time there in Amherst.
BOUDREAU: Thank you very much for having me.
CONAN: We'll come back and talk about Syria and Turkey in just a moment.
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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.


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Mr. President, as Co-Chairman of the Helsinki Commission and the sponsor of the 2002 Senate-passed resolution urging the Ukrainian Government to ensure a democratic, transparent and fair election process in advance of their parliamentary elections, I find recent developments relating to upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine deeply troubling.
Ten months before these critical elections, a constitutional amendment is making its way through the Ukrainian parliament designed to ensure that the current, corruption riddled powers-that-be retain their grip on power, neutralizing the leader of the biggest democratic fraction in parliament and Ukraine's most popular politician, Victor Yushchenko. The amendment calls for abbreviating the presidential term for the October 2004 elections to two years, with the election of a president by the parliament in 2006, notwithstanding opinion polls indicating that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians support preserving direct presidential elections. This amendment had been approved by Ukraine's Constitutional Court in a decision which has led many observers both within and outside of Ukraine to question the independence of the Court. The Court's decision a few weeks ago to allow President Kuchma to run for a third term – despite the 1996 constitution's two-term limit, has only raised more questions.
Media repression continues, including the issuance of directives sent to media by the Presidential Administration on what and how issues and events should be covered, especially in the electronic media. A recent Freedom House report concludes that "the current state of affairs of Ukraine's media raises serious questions as to whether a fair and balanced electoral contest can be held." Newspapers critical of the authorities are subjected to various methods of repression, including attacks against journalists, arrests of publishers, "special attention" via tax inspections, administrative controls over distribution and pressure on advertisers.
Mr. President, at the same time, administrative measures are being taken to prevent lawful political activity, the starkest example of which was the disruption – instigated by the authorities – of a national congress of the Yushchenko-led Our Ukraine bloc in Donetsk last November. Most recently, a presidential decree dismissed the elected Our Ukraine mayor of Mukachevo – despite a ruling by the Supreme Court which confirmed that he had been elected in a legitimate way. In a telling twist, an acting mayor from the political party led by the head of the Presidential Administration, Victor Medvedchuk, has been installed.
As Co-Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, I share the concern of colleagues on both sides of the aisle that the presidential election in Ukraine scheduled for October be free, fair, open and transparent and conducted in a manner consistent with Ukraine's freely-undertaken commitments as a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The Helsinki Commission, consistent with our mandate to monitor and encourage compliance with OSCE agreements by all participating States, will continue to follow the situation in Ukraine closely.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of a recent Washington Post editorial on troubling pre-election developments in Ukraine be included in the Record. Thank you, Mr. President.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2004]
A Resolution for Ukraine
According to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the Bush administration's first foreign policy resolution for 2004 is "to expand freedom." And not only in Iraq and the Middle East: In an op-ed article published in the New York Times, Mr. Powell promised to support "the consolidation of freedom in many new but often fragile democracies . . . in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa." We hope that support will extend beyond the rhetoric that too often has substituted for genuine democratic advocacy during President Bush's first three years, and that it will be applied even where the United States has interests that make toleration of autocracy tempting.
One region where such U.S. engagement, or its absence, might prove decisive is the band of former Soviet republics to the west and south of Russia. Several are struggling democracies; others are ruled by autocrats. Almost all are under threat from Moscow's resurgent imperialism. As the tiny state of Georgia recently demonstrated, democracy is the best defense against Russian President Vladimir Putin's attempts to create a Kremlin-dominated sphere of influence. Countries that have held free and fair elections have tended to gravitate toward strengthening their independence and seeking good relations with the West, while unstable autocrats are more likely to yield to Mr. Putin.
The country closest to a tipping point may be Ukraine. Like Russia, Ukraine has an electoral democracy tainted by corruption and strong-arm tactics and an economy warped by clans of oligarchs. Much of its population, however, aspires to integration with the West. President Leonid Kuchma has been linked to corruption and serious human rights violations. In recent months he has been moving steadily closer to Mr. Putin, allowing a Russian takeover of much of Ukraine's energy industry and signing an economic integration treaty.
Now Mr. Kuchma appears to be looking for ways to curtail Ukraine's democracy so that he can prolong his own hold on power when his term expires this year. Last month his allies in Parliament pushed through the first draft of a constitutional amendment that would cut short the term of the president due to be elected in October and provide that future presidents be chosen by Parliament, where Mr. Kuchma's forces retain control. Then the judges he appointed to the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution's two-term limit does not prevent Mr. Kuchma from serving again. The president's cronies protest that they are only moving the country toward a more parliament-centered system, and Mr. Kuchma coyly says he has not "yet" decided to seek another term. But the effect of his moves would be to neutralize the country's most popular leader, Viktor Yushchenko, who, polls say, would win the next presidential election if it were fairly held.
More than Mr. Kuchma's quest for continued power is at stake. Mr. Yushchenko is popular precisely because he is associated with those Ukrainians who seek to consolidate an independent democracy and move the country toward integration with Europe. Mr. Putin surely will be sympathetic to Mr. Kuchma's subversion of the system. The question is whether the Bush administration will work with Western Europe to mount an effective counter. Freedom could be consolidated this year in Ukraine or slip away. The outcome may just depend on how well Mr. Powell keeps his resolution.


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CHAPTER 7: Riding the Ukulele Boom
The 1920s were booming years for the Martin Company, as the ukulele captured the fancy of the American public. The first Martin ukuleles were not well received. They were made much like a guitar, with too much bracing in the body, particularly in the top, which was of spruce. The excessive bracing and the spruce top gave the instruments a dead and lackluster tone that failed to appeal to the buying public.
Recognizing the shortcomings of its initial ukulele design, Martin went to work at producing an acceptable uke. By reducing the amount of bracing and substituting mahogany for spruce, Martin quickly garnered a large share of the ukulele market. The demand for the products was such that Martin was forced to double the capacity of the North Street plant with an additional wing and increase in the work force. Guitar production in 1920 totaled 1,361 units; records of ukulele production were not kept, but Christian Frederick Martin III estimates that the company turned out nearly twice as many ukuleles as guitars during the '20s.
In structuring the organization of the company, Frank Henry Martin initially envisioned Christian Frederick Martin overseeing manufacturing with Herbert Keller Martin attending to the sales. This division of responsibility worked well until Herbert Keller Martin died unexpectedly after a few days of illness in 1927. With the passing of his brother, Christian Frederick became increasingly involved in company sales efforts, traveling extensively throughout the country.
During the decade of the '20s, sales of C. F. Martin instruments increased every year, and by 1928 annual guitar production stood at 5,215 units, over four times the output of 1920. With the advent of the Great Depression in 1929, national economic hardship forced the Martin family to discard aspirations for increased sales and concentrate on plain survival. With millions out of work and thousands of businesses on the brink of bankruptcy, selling guitars proved increasingly challenging.
Between 1929 and 1931, guitar sales were virtually halved. Responding to the harsh climate, Martin reduced its wage rate and for a time operated on a three-day week. The company also diversified, producing violin parts and even some wooden jewelry, in an effort to keep workmen busy. However, the company never vigorously pursued any of these areas. "We were always afraid that getting into some other business would hurt our guitar business," related C. F. Martin III. He added, "We entered a few other fields during the Depression, not with any enthusiasm, but out of necessity."
Striving to stimulate seriously depressed sales, Martin launched an active product development campaign during the Depression. During this period, the company added new designs to the product line, altered existing products, and explored numerous features in hopes of finding a product that would bolster lagging sales. While many of the products conceived during this period had a short life span, two major developments emerged that had a lasting effect on the company: the creation of the now famous "Dreadnought" guitar and the invention of the 14-fret neck.


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Bulbs, Bulbs, Bulbs!
Fall has officially begun, which means that one of my favorite times of the year is approaching. No, I'm not talking about the golden, warm, crisp days of early fall, although those are nice. I'm talking about bulb-planting time! I love bulbs with a passion, not least because so many are deer-resistant, and they're one of the few things I can plant with abandon (with some caveats) in my garden.
There's also something rather delightful about sticking something in the ground in the fall, forgetting about it until spring, and then stumbling across those green shoots when they start coming up. Bulbs are often the first thing to bloom after the winter, ushering in the return of warm days, flowers, and time spent outdoors. These delightful heralds of spring are easy to plant, easy to take care of, and they make great cut flowers, to boot.
So let's talk about bulbs. Botanically speaking, bulbs are bulbous fleshy organs that store food, allowing plants to go dormant during the harsh winter weather. Once the soil begins to warm up and the days get longer, bulbs can begin to send out shoots. Some, like onions, are edible, while others are purely ornamental. Many reproduce by division (amaryllis, for example, can spread like wildfire if they're happy where they are), and they can withstand very tough conditions.
Ornamental bulbs, our concern today, include plants like daffodils (technically called narcissus), amaryllis, alliums (members of the onion family cultivated specifically for ornamental purposes), crocuses, hyacinths, lilies, irises, ipheion, galanthus, anemones, tulips...you're starting to get the picture. They come in a huge array of colors and cultivars; some are aromatic, others are double-petaled, and some are really quite exotic, like the ice cream tulip.
You can buy bulbs anytime (store them in a cool dry place), but fall is the best time, because then you can get them in the ground quickly. Garden supply stores are one resource, but you can also mail-order bulbs, which is an especially good choice if you want to make a bulk order. Many sellers offer a guarantee, assuring that their bulbs will sprout, but make sure to read the terms carefully so you understand how to file a claim if you get duds.
To plant bulbs, it helps to have a bulb planter, a nifty little tool that works kind of like a cookie cutter. You stick it straight into the soil to pull out a wedge, drop your bulb in (roots down, although bulbs can reorient themselves if needed), and push the soil over to cover. Bulb planters take a lot of the work out of the process and allow you to keep planting depths consistent. You should also scatter some bulb food in the hole to give the bulb some extra energy for the winter ahead, and encourage bright, beautiful blooming.
Then, ignore your bulbs until spring! Once they start to sprout, you may find it helpful to put up little flags to remind yourself not to run them over with the lawnmower. The flags are also useful at the end of the season, when all the leaves have died back and bulbs might be hard to find. You can use the flags to locate your bulbs, dig them up, divide them, and store them for fall planting.
Some useful bulb tips:
*If you have a gopher problem, be aware that some bulbs, like narcissus, actually aren't that appealing to gophers. They might move them around, but they won't eat them. (You can potentially use that to advantage to create a ring or girdle for vulnerable plants like young fruit trees -- the gophers won't want to pass the bulb barrier.) You can have your bulbs and enjoy them too.
That said, if you want to grow a cultivar that gophers love to eat (like tulips), you have a couple of options. One is to use sunken planters. Disposable plastic containers like the ones plants come in from the store can be ideal for this. Simply dig a hole big enough for the planter, seat it in the ground, fill it with soil, and plant your bulbs inside. The gophers won't be able to chew through the planter, and your bulbs will flourish.
You can also use an above-ground planter, of course. Beautiful pots of bulbs on the patio, porch, and around the house can be stunning in the spring, especially when the flowers are aromatic. Some bulbs can be forced to bloom in winter with a little sleight of hand, allowing you to enjoy handsome blooms and great smells in the darkest part of th eyear.
*If you have a deer problem, many deer-resistant bulb varieties are available, thankfully. They're often too bitter and unpleasant for deer to eat, even if they're desperate. Alliums, daffodils, Chionodoxa, Camassia, Colchicum, and even more have no appeal to deer. And they come in a huge array of cultivars, allowing you a great deal of flexibility when it comes to filling your garden with your most colorful dreams.
*Make sure to plant bulbs in well-drained soil. If they get soggy, they can start to rot, and they'll die. If your soil is clay-like or heavy, amend with sand, pearlite, and other materials to make it more airy.
Katie Marks writes for Networx.com.
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Cops Shoot at Car Filled With Kids During Wild Traffic Stop [VIDEO]
Police officers in Taos, New Mexico have found themselves in the center of the storm for their handling of a traffic stop.
In the video below, you can see officers having a tough time dealing with a woman they pulled over for speeding. She is uncooperative and one of her kids in the car gets out to come to her aid.
Eventually, the mother drives away, prompting backup that had been called in to shoot at her vehicle. She leads them away on a short chase before eventually giving up.
The woman and the son who helped her are now both facing charges for their roles in the incident.


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When football fans witnessed Barcelona's dazzling 5-0 demolition of rivals Real Madrid, they would have been forgiven for assuming that this was an unprecedented performance, but they would have only had to look back three weeks for a similar exhibition in Portugal, when Porto crushed Benfica 5-0 at the Dragão Stadium. The country's most successful team of recent times thrashing its celebrated capital city opponents? Check. Inspired by a South American phenomenon? Check. Guided by a progressive young coach? Check.
After finishing a disappointing third in the Portuguese League last season, Porto replaced their coach Jesualdo Ferreira with André Villas Boas, a protégé of José Mourinho. Although this is his first coaching role at a leading club, the 33-year-old has already stamped his authority on the team, which has played some beautiful, free-flowing football this season. So much so that Porto are unbeaten in the league, which they lead by an astonishing eight points after 13 games, and are very much favourites to regain the title.
Their inspiration has been a young Brazilian striker named Givanildo Vieira de Souza, better known to the football community as Hulk, largely due to his powerful physique. His presence was badly missed by Porto last season, after he was suspended for a few matches for his part in a post-match brawl following an ill-tempered match against Benfica, when he was found guilty of attacking match stewards in the tunnel. His goals might have made all the difference to Porto in the championship run-in and would almost certainly have avoided the ignominy of failing to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in living memory.
"Andre Villas Boas - remind you of anyone?"
This represented a slap in the face for a club that has become accustomed to filling its trophy cabinet in the past few years. Before 2009/10, Porto had been victorious in the Portuguese championship four consecutive times, which meant that they had collected six Primeira Liga titles in seven seasons. Their history in the last decade also features two European successes under the guidance of the Special One, when they beat Celtic 3-2 to secure the UEFA Cup in 2003 and triumphed 3-0 against Monaco to win the Champions League the following year.
Unfortunately, during this period the club was also tainted with the whiff of scandal for its involvement in the so-called "Golden Whistle" investigation, when it was claimed that referees were offered bribes before two of their matches during the title winning campaign in 2004. They were subsequently docked six points and fined €150,000, though some thought they had got off rather lightly. Importantly, they were still allowed to compete in the Champions League, even though they were initially banned, as on appeal the authorities ruled that the time limit for dealing with the match fixing allegations had passed.
All in all though, the "noughties" has been a highly enjoyable era for Porto. Their success on the field of play has been matched by their performance off the pitch, as the club has reported profits in each of the last four years, which is very good going in these difficult economic times. Although the club tends to make sizeable operating losses, it more than compensates for the shortfall by making equally large profits on player sales.
This is a hugely important activity for Porto's business model, which can most clearly be seen in 2006, which was the last time the club made a loss, almost entirely due to the club's decision to retain players that year in order improve their chances of winning. Similarly, the 2010 profit of €0.1 million was €5 million lower than the previous year, which is more or less the reduction in profit on player sales.
The other key driver in Porto's finances is revenue from the Champions League. Indeed, the €10 million reduction in 2010 revenue was largely due to the team's earlier exit from that competition. However, Porto are very skilled at balancing their books, so they compensated for most of the decline in revenue by cutting their costs by €7 million, mainly in the wage bill, though they were also helped by €3 million lower interest payments, due to the reduction in interest rates.
Porto's cash flow from operations (EBITDA) is fairly healthy, averaging €33 million over the last four years, once non-cash items like player amortisation and depreciation are added back, but this is again very reliant on the profit made from player sales. If this were excluded, then EBITDA would be slightly negative.
Although president Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa has been criticised by some supporters for the club's policy of selling their best players year after year, a cursory glance at the financials is enough to understand why this approach is necessary. The relatively low revenue, combined with wages high enough to remain competitive, mean that Porto need to make money in the transfer market to survive. They have been remarkably consistent in the profits they have managed to generate from this activity in recent years: 2008 €35 million, 2009 €40 million and 2010 €35 million. They are well on course to repeat the trick in 2011 following this summer's sales of Bruno Alves to Zenit St. Petersburg for €22 million and Raul Meireles to Liverpool for €13 million.
The numbers are simply incredible for a club of Porto's size. Since that Champions League win in 2004, the club has raked in almost €350 million revenue from player sales, though its net surplus is "only" €190 million, as it also spent €160 million on buying players in the same period. Looking at this another way, Porto have spent a lot on buying players, but have made even more on selling them. In fact, in the last 11 years, only twice have Porto had a (small) net spend in the transfer market and that was way back in 2002 and 2004.
They are absolute masters at selling two or three players every season for big bucks, interestingly often as bulk purchases, e.g. three players to Dynamo Moscow and two to Chelsea, though the latter sales were obviously partly down to Mourinho raiding his former club. The list of players transferred for over €5 million since 2004 is an extensive one:
Much of this is down to Porto's world-class scouting network, which is especially formidable in South America. They need to search far and wide for promising prospects, as they cannot afford to pay top dollar for foreign players, though they address this financial weakness in an innovative way by sharing the player's rights with an agency, which means that they do not have to fund a transfer in one fell swoop.
For example, in April 2005, Porto bought 50% of the sporting rights of Lisandro Lopez (from Racing Club) and Lucho Gonzalez (from River Plate) with the remaining 50% only acquired in season 2007/08. Clearly, this type of deal is a double-edged sword, as it means that any future profits are shared proportionally with the agency, but it does reduce Porto's initial outlay and de-risks their activities in the transfer market.
"Bruno Alves - To Russia With Love"
Even though Porto cannot afford to pay very high wages, they still have much to offer South American players. Not only is Porto itself a very successful club, their regular participation in the Champions League provides a perfect platform for emerging talents to display their wares. Moreover, players can easily obtain work permits and embark on the path towards a EU passport, which makes them a more attractive prospect to clubs in countries with more restrictive regulations. Finally, Brazilian players do not have to struggle with any language issues.
On the flip side, Porto are forced to reinvent themselves every season with no player being considered irreplaceable. In this way, when Carvalho left for England, he was replaced by Pepe, whose exit was compensated by the emergence of Bruno Alves. Even with this massive turnover of players, the club has managed to maintain its successful record, consistently winning the Portuguese league, though arguably the departure of three key players to France in the summer of 2009 was a bridge too far.
In the same way that Porto often buy a percentage of a player's rights, they sometimes also sell part of a player in order to raise cash. There was an example of such a trade only last month, when the club sold percentage of three recent arrivals for a total of €8 million (37.5% of Joao Moutinho, 35% of James Rodriguez and 25% of Walter).
"Falcao - no, not that one"
They also often structure their transfers in a way that they can share in a player's future development, e.g. Aly Cissoko's deal with Lyon included a 20% sell-on clause, while the agreement with Lyon for Lisandro Lopez could be worth an additional €4 million depending on sporting achievements. While hesitating to use the phrase "wheeler dealers", Porto are definitely very nimble on their feet in the transfer market, leaving many of their more illustrious (and staid) peers in the shade.
Ironically, given the vast sums that Porto received from Lyon in 2009, the French club is often considered to operate a similar business model, sharing many of the characteristics of their approach to the transfer market. Up until the last two years, that was certainly the case, before Lyon embarked on a spending spree of their own recently, though their president has promised that they will revert back to type in the future. Furthermore, in relative terms, Porto are even more reliant on money made from player sales, due to the fact that Lyon enjoy a far higher turnover.
This is the essence of Porto's problem, for the club is a big fish in a small pond. The Portuguese market is a small one with many clubs struggling financially, so the only realistic way for Porto to keep up with Europe's elite from the wealthier nations is to sell the players that they develop. In that way, they can just about find enough money to fund a wage bill that will allow them to be competitive.
We can see the magnitude of the problem by examining the Deloittes Money League for 2008/09. There's not a Portuguese name in sight among the top twenty listed, which is no surprise given that Benfica is the only Portuguese club to make an appearance on this august list, back in 2006 (in 20th position). Porto's revenue of €68 million in 2008/09 leaves them miles behind wealthier clubs. To place that into context, Real Madrid's revenue of over €400 million is almost six times as much. Even a club like Newcastle United, which was relegated at the end of that season, generated 50% more money.
This highlights the enormous financial challenges confronting clubs from outside the Big Five countries (England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France). By a strange coincidence, Porto's revenue is almost exactly the same as that of Ajax, who face the same sort of issues. In terms of Premier League clubs, the nearest revenue equivalent is Stoke City, who have made a lot of progress recently, but, with the greatest respect, their record is nothing compared to Porto's. From that perspective, there is no doubt that Porto have been punching well above their weight in Europe, regularly reaching the last 16 of the Champions League.
At this point, I should probably clarify that this analysis is based on Porto's consolidated accounts, which include the following companies: PortoComercial (sponsorship, licensing and merchandising, 93.5% owned), PortoEstadio (stadium, 100%), PortoMultimedia (70%) and PortoSeguro (insurance, 90%). That said, the results are still very largely based on the operations of the football club.
The importance of player trading to Porto's business can be seen very well in the above graph. If profit on player sales is considered as "revenue", its contribution has been notable in the past few years, averaging around 60% of normal turnover. Put another way, the club makes three times as much from the transfer market as gate receipts. This would be very worrying if Porto had not shown that they are capable of maintaining this "revenue stream" year after year, with the exception of 2006, when, of course, the club made a big loss.
It is imperative that Porto continue along this path, as the revenue growth in other areas has been very limited. Gate receipts are actually down 17% in the last five years, while television, the impetus behind revenue growth in many countries, has only risen €5 million in the same period. The star performer has been commercial income, which has doubled to €24 million. Although total revenue growth of 24% has outpaced cost growth of 19%, the absolute growth is smaller, meaning that the operating loss has slightly grown over this time. Whichever way you look at it, the club needs to buy and sell.
As we have seen, broadcasting is not as important for Porto as other leading clubs with the 2010 revenue amounting to only €20 million, comprising €8 million from the domestic deal and €12 million distributions from UEFA for the Champions League. Even with the boost of European revenue, which represents over half of their total TV revenue, this is fairly pitiful compared to the major leagues. If we compare Porto's revenue with the clubs that earn most from broadcasting income in those other leagues, we can see that they earn between four and eight times this amount.
The total value of the Portuguese Liga TV rights is only around €50 million a season, which compares very unfavourably to others: England €1.2 billion, Italy €900 million, France €700 million, Spain €500 million, Germany €400 million. That might be expected, but the Portuguese contract with Olivedesportos (matches shown on SportTV) is also behind Turkey €250 million, Holland €100 million and Greece €54 million. This is not a collective deal, so the lion's share of the TV revenue (about €24 million) goes to the traditional big three clubs in Portugal: Porto, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon.
From that perspective, Porto's €8.4 million is not too bad (up from €7 million in 2008), but to put this into context, Arsenal also finished third in their league and received around €62 million, which is nearly eight times as much - and the Premier League TV money will further increase this season. In fact, Arsenal on their own received more than all of the 16 clubs in the Portuguese Liga combined.
That's why the Champions League money has been so important to Porto's finances over the last few years. This is most evident in 2004, the year when they won the tournament and received €25 million, which was almost 40% of their turnover that year, but even this year when the revenue was down to €12 million, that was still worth 20% of their income - and that excludes gate receipts and sponsorship increments.
Porto use a slightly strange accounting policy when it comes to reporting Champions League revenue, whereby as soon as they have qualified for the competition, they immediately book the guaranteed element for the following season. So the 2009/10 revenue for participating in the group stage (worth €7.1 million) was already reported in 2008/09, hence the reduction in the 2009/10 accounts, even though Porto actually received more from UEFA that year: €18.7 million in 2010, up from €14.5 million in 2009.
What is certain is that qualification for the Champions League has been fairly lucrative to Porto, €92 million in the last seven years, though they have again been short-changed because of their misfortune in playing in a small country, more specifically a country with a small TV audience.
"Happy days for Varela"
Although Champions League participation fees and performance prizes are the same for every club, the share of the television money from the market pool is dependent on the size/value of a country's TV market, so the amount allocated to teams in other countries is more than that given to Portugal. For example, last season Porto reached the last 16 and received €5.4 million from the market pool, which was much less than the €18.1 million distributed to Chelsea for reaching the same stage.
Actually, Porto's share of the 2009/10 pool was higher than they are accustomed to receiving, as the allocation also depends on the number of representatives from a country that qualify for the group stage, and there was only one from Portugal that year, compared to two or even three in previous seasons.
Porto's bottom line will therefore be adversely impacted in 2011, as they have only qualified for the Europa League, which distributes much less money than the Champions League with the guaranteed fees worth only €1 million. In fact, if Porto were to battle their way through countless matches and win the trophy, they would still only get €6.4 million, though that's better than nothing.
"25 million for Quaresma?"
Hence, the determination that the club's absence from the Champions League will last no more than a year. Only first place in the Liga ZON Sagres guarantees qualification, but the runners-up can also get there if they make it through the qualifying matches. The latest UEFA coefficient rankings suggest that Portugal may get a third place from next season, which would give Porto an even better chance of returning to Europe's premier competition. That would obviously please their fans, but it would no doubt also bring a smile to the face of their bank manager.
And there's more: as the 2009 annual report stated, "In addition to the direct financial results awarded by UEFA, the presence of FC Porto in the great showcase of European football, where players strongly shine, is essential to their valorization as economic assets of the society." Not the greatest translation in the English version of Porto's accounts, albeit scoring high marks for lyricism, but, in short, this means that the Champions League is also the perfect shop window for Porto's selling policy.
Where Porto have done quite well is in increasing their commercial revenue, especially sponsorship and advertising, which has reached €14 million. They have an interesting shirt sponsorship deal with Portugal Telecom, which features one company tmn (mobile network) on the home shirt and another meo (IPTV) on the away shirt in the same way that Arsenal used to have Sega and Dreamcast on different kits. This is a long-term six-year deal worth €21.45 million and runs until June 2011.
However, this is still on the low side by international standards, equivalent to only €3.6 million a season, while Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Real Madrid all have deals worth over €20 million. It might seem absurd to make comparisons against clubs of this stature, but Porto will have to beat these teams if they want to lift the Champions League trophy again.
Similarly, the kit deal with Nike brings in less than €3 million a season (four-year deal worth €11.1 million, potentially rising to €14.8 million depending on team's success, for the period 2008-12). Although Porto have been very active in merchandising initiatives, including revoking an agreement with TBZ following poor performance and setting up several club stores (co-branded with Nike), revenue from this source only comes to just over €2 million a year. A similar amount is generated by corporate hospitality, which is contracted out to a company called EuroAntas.
Gate receipts are also nothing to write home about at just €11 million, which is the lowest that they have been in the last six years. The €2 million decline is partially attributed to the earlier Champions League exit with the previous season's glamour quarter-final against Manchester United bringing in €0.9 million alone, but is also symptomatic of the general economic malaise affecting Portugal, which resulted in the average league attendance falling 14% from 38,800 to 33,500. The poor results probably also played a part, as the average so far in the current successful season has climbed back up to 37,800, which is just behind Benfica, who have the highest crowds in Portugal at the moment.
However, as we have seen, this does not produce much in cold hard cash with the gate receipts being worse than every club in the Deloittes Money League. There may be some match day income hidden away in commercial revenue, but the harsh reality is that the club's revenue here lags a considerable distance behind its foreign competition. Manchester United's match day revenue of €128 million is about ten times higher than Porto's. It's difficult to compete with such financial might, especially as this difference accrues every single season.
The club is housed at the Estádio do Dragão (Stadium of the Dragon), which replaced their old stadium, Estádio das Antas, in 2003. It seats over 50,000 spectators and its name is derived from the dragon on Porto's crest, which is also the nickname of Porto fans. The new stadium was built for the European Championships held in Portugal in 2004 and cost €98 million, of which €18 million was contributed by the taxpayer. To further support the funding, naming rights have been sold for each stand, mainly to divisions of the principal sponsor Portugal Telecom, but also to other companies like Coca-Cola.
The stadium is actually owned by EuroAntas, which granted Porto a 30-year lease in 2003 to use the facilities for an annual payment of around €1 million. It is also used for other events like the "Race of Champions" featuring the top drivers in motor sport. In addition, the complex features a multi-sport arena nearby for Porto's basketball and handball teams.
"Enter the Dragon"
Moving onto costs, even though expenses are higher than revenue, it is clear that Porto strive to reflect any movement in the revenue in the costs line, so when revenue surged 24% in 2009, costs grew by a similar amount 25%. On the other hand, when the 2010 revenue fell 15%, cash costs (excluding player amortisation) were also cut by 14%. This is a tough balancing act, as the wages have to be held at a minimum level in order to attract the right quality of player.
As the annual report explained in its quaint English, "the company bets on the investment of the team with players of high quality … to ensure the best sporting results, which necessarily requires adequate compensation to their status." Nevertheless, Porto's wage bill of €39 million is very low by international standards, a long way below big spenders like Barcelona €263 million, Inter €205 million, Real Madrid €187 million and Bayern Munich €165 million. An interesting equivalent would be Celtic, but even their wage bill of €43 million is higher. Of more interest to Porto fans might be the wages of Arsenal, the team that eliminated them from the Champions League last season, which are €130 million – over three times as much.
Wages actually reduced 17% in 2010 from €48 million to €39 million, partly due to worse sporting performances, which resulted in lower bonus payments. Porto have stated that 25% of staff costs are related to the performance of the team, so in a good sporting year, these costs will increase ceteris paribus. The split of this year's staff costs is: players €23 million, technical and administrative staff €10 million, directors €2 million (on the high side), insurance €1 million, other costs €3 million.
Porto also specifically mention in their annual report the Webster Law having an inflationary impact on salaries. This regulation allows a player to unilaterally terminate his contract after three years (or 2 years if he is over 28) to move to a foreign club, only compensating the club with a sum equivalent to the remaining salary for the time left on his contract. Clearly, that could spell disaster for Porto's business model and its reliance on money from player sales, hence the decision to raise salaries in 2009.
Given these pressures, the club is justifiably proud of keeping its wages to turnover ratio below UEFA's recommended upper limit of 70%. This ratio actually fell to 68% last year, which is very impressive if you consider the constraints imposed by the low revenue.
The trend in player amortisation, namely the annual cost of writing down the cost of buying new players, is more concerning, as this has been steadily rising over the last two years. In the four years between 2005 and 2008, it had held steady at around €20 million, but it has now shot up to €27 million. Of course, this can quickly be reduced with the sale of a couple of players that were bought for high fees, so I would expect this trend to reverse in the near future. In any case, it's still much lower than those sides that have spent really big in the transfer market, such as Manchester City €83 million, Barcelona €71 million, Real Madrid €64 million and Chelsea €57 million.
Like most other Portuguese clubs, Porto have a lot of debt. Given the imbalance between expenses and revenue, this is hardly surprising, but it is exacerbated in their case by the cost of building the new stadium. That said, the debt is still on an upward trend, though it has remained at €84 million for the last two years. This comprises €76 million of bank loans plus a €17 million bond less €8 million of cash.
According to the annual report, "the company managed to relieve the financial pressure by issuing a new bond." This bears 6% interest per annum and is repayable in December 2012. What was reassuring is that the bond issue was 4.5 times over-subscribed, reflecting the market's support for the club. This is not the first time that Porto have tapped the debt market, as they issued a similar three-year bond in 2006, which was repaid on schedule in December 2009.
Of more concern is the security provided to guarantee the loans with the accounts listing all sorts of collateral, including Champions league revenue, stadium naming rights, sponsorship contracts and transfer receivables. The club is obviously aware of this issue and stresses that it can service the debt by referring to the net debt/EBITDA ratio. In Porto's case, this works out as 2.7 (84/31), which is not great, but I've seen worse. The ratio effectively indicates how many years' earnings would be required to pay off all the debt and is considered alarming if it rises above 3-4.
"A special day"
The other aspect of debt that is important to clubs like Porto with their frenetic activity in the transfer market is how much they owe to other football clubs, which stands at €25 million. This is in line with previous years: 2008 €23 million, 2009 €26 million. However, other clubs owe Porto more than twice as much with an incredible €56 million of receivables. This appears to be a vital part of Porto's transfer dealings, as the sum is unchanged from last year, while 2008 was also high at €46 million. The largest debtors are Lyon €12 million, Marseille €10 million and Inter €6 million. Porto supporters might be surprised to know that the club is still owed money two years after the sale of Quaresma to Inter.
This is one reason why Porto's balance sheet shows €23 million of net assets with assets of €183 million being higher than liabilities of €160 million. The surplus is partly due to the value of player registrations held on the books, which increased last year from €58 million to €69 million. Of course, this accounting value is significantly below the players' market value, which has been estimated at €132 million by Transfermarkt. In particular, players developed by Porto's academy will have zero value in the accounts, but are obviously worth something.
However, there are risks facing Porto's strategy, as the transfer market has been deteriorating recently, with all clubs affected by the recession, and values of players have plummeted, e.g. Zlatan Ibrahimovic's price was slashed to €24 million just 12 months after Barcelona paid €70 million, while Diego moved to Wolfsburg for €16 million a year after Juventus bought him for €25 million. The statistics show that Europe's top five leagues spent almost 40% less on transfer fees in the summer of 2010 than the previous year.
"Meet El Presidente"
On top of the adverse market environment, the advent of the UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations could also have a detrimental effect. These will force clubs to break-even if they wish to compete in European competitions, so expenses have to be covered by revenue. As a major expense element is the player amortisation arising from transfers, it seems logical that clubs will endeavour to reduce their transfer spend, which might well harm selling clubs like Porto.
Having said that, Porto have managed to beat the odds so far with the transfer of Bruno Alves this summer among the top ten worldwide. Maybe it just means that only those clubs with superb scouting networks and an excellent track record for developing players will thrive in the new world – and Porto certainly fit the bill there. It is clear that they still have many players who would be in demand with Manchester City being only one team linked with a €30 million move for Hulk.
Even so, it makes it even more important for Porto to produce players from their "Dragon Force" academy, as the club may have less money in the future to spend on bringing players in. This is why they have invested substantial funds into improving the Vitalis Park facility, which now features 11 grass pitches and 7 synthetic pitches. There is a risk that players would then be transferred to richer clubs at a younger age, but the financial arguments are pretty compelling.
"The dynamic duo"
The fact is that the Portuguese League does not generate enough money on its own for its clubs to compete in the upper echelons of the Champions League. Many clubs are struggling financially, over burdened with debt, leading to seven clubs from the top flight recently seeking assistance from the LPFP (Portuguese Football Federation). Although this theoretically represents financial aid to improve sports facilities, it looks more like grants are being given out to enable the survival of these clubs.
This is the situation in which Porto operates, so their focus on making money from selling players is perfectly understandable. They have become the ultimate football traders, buying low and selling high with great success, which should be applauded, especially as their results on the pitch have rarely suffered. It's a delicate balance, however, as seen by their failure to qualify for this season's Champions League. This year looks much more encouraging though with a very good possibility that the league title will once again return to the Dragons' Den.


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Tiger is a Dad: Varsity Dad Alert! Elin gave birth to daughter Sam Alexis Woods overnight. No WONDER Tiger was distracted at the Open on Sunday.
Hot Blogger Bracket, Round 4: I'm up against Jon Pyle of Pyle of List, the toughest matchup yet. Click here to vote (Yes, for me: Because self-promotion is HOT!)
MLB: Start snitchin'! Jason Giambi is going to TALK. To George Mitchell, according to a report in today's NY Daily News. Then, presumably, to anyone who will hear his sob story about ratting out his fellow players -- and perhaps including a bit of a hedge, insisting that he had no other choice and wanted to put it behind him...yada yada yada...naming names?
"The Kobe Video Guys": I love this amateur video situation, where a fan is trying to sell the footage of
In this era of YouTube, it's refreshing to see someone trying to make money from amateur footage. It'll be available in complete form online – free – soon enough.
The "Video Guys" want to release it, too. HoopsWorld.com has seen it and helped get the word out there about it. Here's more, from NBA Fanhouse.
More NBA: KG to the Celtics? I covered why this works for both teams in a late-day post yesterday. Check it out below, or click here.
Pac-Man Fever: Given his latest mess, Pac-Man Jones quite simply might be the most mythic "F-up" in NFL history. Just when you think his legacy is complete, he goes further.
CWS: You know I love a good superlative, so "longest game ever" certainly qualifies. Congrats to UC-Irvine, which beat CS-Fullerton in a record 5 hours and 40 minutes (13 innings).
Orioles fire manager Sam Perlozzo: Hard not to see THAT one coming. I think Joe Girardi is the obvious choice. "Best available" and all that, right?
NBA Draft: Jeff Green staying in. He'll be rewarded with a Top 10 spot.
Meanwhile, Greg Oden will meet with the Blazers today: I know there are all sorts of rumors that Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard likes Durant, but he'd be insane to pass on Oden.
NFL: LaVar Arrington hurt in motorcycle accident: When will athletes learn that driving a hog just ain't worth the risk?
NFL Concussion Summit: It's too serious to joke about, but this event lends itself to the easy joke. I'll avoid it, but I'll bet others will jump right in.
MLB Stud: Chone Figgins, who racked up SIX hits, including a rare walk-off triple. Six hits?
MLB Dud: Curt Schilling, giving up 6 ER on 10 hits in 4.1 IP, with zero strikeouts, notable because Schilling had pitched 348 straight games with at least one strikeout. Most MLB starting pitchers probably do, too.
MLB Stud, Record: Apparently, Jim Thome is the career interleague home-run leader. That's quite a title. (Glove Stud: Jermaine Dye, same game.)
Prince Fielder: 26 HR and counting. He's the new Ryan Howard, who was the new Prince Fielder. How meta...
MLB Punishments: Derrek Lee and Chris Young were suspended five games each for their part in a weekend melee. Seems a little long, but whatever.
USFL Reunion: Who WOULDN'T want to go this weekend?
Must-Read: Deadspin's interview with Harold Reynolds.


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The tragic Virginia Tech massacre remains at the front of my mind -- and I'm sure many of yours. It's awful in a way that makes a mere blog post about it seem (even more) superficial, even with the most heartfelt intentions.
I was certainly relieved to hear that super-Commenter Rafael, who is down there, was OK, as was my sports-blogging comrade Nick D. from The Dugout and AOL Fanhouse, who is a student down there. (Read his account here. And here's an update post from today.)
I'm sure everyone on this blog could find a one- or two-degree connection to Virginia Tech.
It's interesting: The way most fans (readers of this blog and otherwise) relate to Virginia Tech is through sports. We "know" the Hokies -- we feel a connection to them -- because we see them throughout the ACC schedule in football, where they are a perennial Top 20 power, and hoops, where they just finished their "breakout" season.
I don't mean to diminish the heart-breaking scope of the tragedy at all by saying that it has irrevocably changed the way we will think of Virginia Tech in sports. But the school's name, when you think of it in a sports context, will always be connected to this tragedy.
You can root against the Hokies on the field or court, but -- from yesterday's tragedy onward -- at least a small piece of you will always sympathize with their students, staff and fans.
More from around a numbed sports world:
MLB: Dmitri Young gets my Stud for his day-late "42" tribute, which included 3 hits and 2 RBI in a Nats win (Nats win!) over the Braves. (Runner-up: Barry Zito, getting his first win with the Giants.)
Alfonso Soriano gets my "Dud" for the day: Who had "April 16" in the "Pricey Cubs Free Agent Gets Hurt" office pool?
Madden Jinx Watch: Vince Young is going to be on the cover of Maddden '08. That sound you hear is the collective screams of all Titans (and VY) fans who cringe at the inevitable season-ending injury.
More: I hate to say "I told you so," but it looks like the Sonics are moving. Will
NFL Draft: Great rumor! The Bucs reportedly (via Yahoo) are willing to throw a ton of draft picks at the Raiders to jump from No. 4 to No. 1, presumably to draft Calvin Johnson (who, as those of you tracking the Sports Blogger NFL Mock Draft know, I/we tabbed as the Best Player Available in the draft with the No. 1 overall pick).
(Question: For these mock drafts, this one and others, are you judged by your ability to match (a) player to team or (b) player to draft slot? I'm seriously asking.)
NFLPA takes on its retirees: In theory, this shouldn't be a battle the NFLPA would win, but fans seem to care about NFL retirees about as much as the players' union (which is to say, not much).
Media: Olbermann to NBC's "Football Night in
Weekend Remainder: I totally forgot to throw out a huge "Yes!" for Chicago being picked as the USOC's contender city for the 2016 Olympics.