Harem Scarum

 --The Week magazine, 5.19.14 issue

Said I remember when we used to sit

In the government yard in Trenchtown

Oba, ob-serving the hypocrites

As they would mingle

with the good people we meet 

--No Woman No Cry, 

Bob Marley 

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is

If you don't believe me,

take a look at the one you're with

Woman is the slave to the slaves 

--Woman is the Nigger of the World, 

John Lennon

 “I have reason to believe Boko Haram

will see reason and let these girls go.

I think they will have a conscience

to let these girls go.”

Oronto Douglas, special adviser on strategy 

to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan

 __________________

Tuning in to the BBC World Service last night, I heard that Scotland would be playing Nigeria (site of the recent ballyhooed kidnappings by Islamist group Boku Haram.) At topic was a serious issue, but it was not girls or kidnapping. It was Potential game-fixing by the Scotish Football Association (SFA), and it was discussed with animated solemnity.

Hearing this reminded me that book's like Foer's How Soccer Explains the World explain our actuality well. This is no judgement call, but the back field of our pretended concerns is always in motion, and it consists of the things in which we actually engage and which divert us, like watching sports.

Additionally, we now have the ability to slake off our emotions via broadcasting them over our social media networks, but this hullabaloo accomplishes naught in changing the actual shape of things. It does, however, dissipate enough of the participant's energy so that he will never actually be a potential threat to any status quo. It pits one versus the other in a simplistic partisan competition, mimicking the games we play out on the field, establishing franchises and affiliations, and opponents.

Take, for instance, the recent (but not unusual) low-level nasty work of Nigeria's Boku Haram:

The New York Times reported last week that Nigeria's army was "Holding Up the Hunt" for the abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. "Foreign diplomats say that the Islamist group Boko Haram appears to be winning the struggle with a weak military." Yet Nigerian President Jonathan's policy strategist says "reason" and "conscience" will hold the day. 

Good luck with that.

And ... why is it we care? Not in the human, Christian, Enlightened sense, but WHY would we take any military action (U.S. Sends Troops to Chad to Aid Hunt for Nigerian Schoolgirls)? Puppies, kittens, girls -- most people become upset when the innocent are abused, but why would we risk even one soldier's life or limb over Nigeria's endemic problems? 

Is it because this Muslim group chose a really scary name? It sounds like the bogeyman from hell. Is it because they're taking young women and returning them impregnated -- the oldest "survival of the fittest" ruse in the book? Are we afraid there are sleeper cells of Boko Haram in Detroit or Cleveland, or that they'll come over here to get our women and children?

Islamist groups do these things, have been doing these things, for a long time now. Our intervention in the Middle East had nothing to do with it, unless you think they are clever enough to be committing these abductions to provoke the guys in white, like catnip to the cat. Nigerian's Islamic leader Abubakar Shekau said of the girls in a released video, "They are slaves and I will sell them because I have the market to sell them" 

If the military in their own nation is not too gung-ho on the matter, why should we be? Is it because we have a President who is as angry over veterans dying for lack of decent medical care as he is over women in Nigeria nation being kidnapped?   

It's not our sense of immense paternalism toward the weaker sex, though I'm sure the military would like to feel or project the notion that they really are doing some good in the world. No -- if this were so we'd be intervening in too many countries to name that subject their women to servitude, prostitution and worse. Women will continue to be the Second Sex until enlightenment reaches all humans.

Since this has not happened here in the belly of the democratic beast, do not expect it to be enforced upon a tribal warrior mindset anytime soon. No matter how many cups of tea you lay out, even with clotted cream, berries and scones.

 No way ... so why the pretense?

The Commentariat calls for action. The politicians send the military into harm's way. Everyone seems satisfied, not realizing that we are merely exchanging potential violence against our own citizens for the endemic violence of yet another Islamic culture.

Nothing will change; it is a zero-sum game, on the human level.

Why do the supposedly-concerned not do or call for doing the heavy-lifting of resolving some of the outrages in their own country and culture? Is it sound and fury, signifying nothing?

[adapted from RangerAgainstWar.]

Stunned

Still trying to believe it.And now Spain gets to try and prove that they ARE the best side in the world, and the Dutch get to try and erase 36 years of rue and loss.

Cruel, beautiful game.

Are you ready for some futbol?

So while I may be an angry ranter, like Hitler with his Alpine walks and Stalin with his...OK, maybe Stalin was just a hideous despot lacking any pleasant hobbies...and for all that I'm not so sure that we're going good places and, hey, what the fuck are we doing in this handbasket..?

It's a sunny day in Portland and the U.S. men's soccer team is playing in the Round of 16. So I'm going to take the day and enjoy the pleasures thereof, and I hope you will to. Today, on my shift, the MilPub is going to be a sports bar, the waitresses will be in the respective national team jerseys and the big-screen TV tuned to ESPN for the kickoff at 11:00am...

For those of you who have been following the World Cup, I append this silly little video. For those of you who haven't, the "big controversy" this year has (other than the usual moaning from keepers about the match ball) been the constant droning of something called a "vuvuzela", which - for all attempts to turn it into some sort of South African cultural thing - is just that damn cheap plastic crap horn that has been an irritating feature of sporting events since the 1970's. Every match this year had been accompanied by these frigging things, and it's gotten to the point where vuvuzelas, and hating vuvuzelas, has gone viral. Here's the funniest "vuvuzela video" I've seen; for your entertainment, ladies and gentlemen, the Fellowship of the Vuvuzela...

From Behind the Bar

I wanted to break in here to solicit some input from some of our more silent servers. Specifically basil, sheerah and Lisa have been very quiet lately. I've talked to jim about this, and he and I have agreed to take our feet off the bar rail for a little bit in hopes that we can get some more conversation from some of our staff who may have felt a little...overwhelmed by the volume that we produce.

Al and Publius, too, have been posting some good stuff, and, as always, more is better when the beer and the conversation is good.

So how about it?

Oh, and before I shut up, let me toot my little Portland horn a bit for my beloved Portland Timbers. We may be small, and we mayn't be able to do better for sister cities than Mutare, Zimbabwe; Ashkelon, Israel; and Khabarovsk, Russia, but how about Boca Juniors and Manchester City? In three months? To play our Boys in Green? We may be small, but in footy terms, we'll roar up yer lobby.We'll be coming, we'll be coming, we'll be coming down the road...when you hear the noise of the Timbers Army boys, we'll be coming down the road!

U.S. 2: Esp 0

So with a good helping of luck, some hard men in the back and a touch of skill it turns out that a rank outsider can beat the best soccer team in the world.

Today's victory over Spain has to be considered one of the most stunning results in U.S. soccer history. While beating Mexico was considered miraculous in the day, the USMNT has pretty much owned El Tri over the past ten years, suggesting that the level of play in CONCACAF (while still pretty much wallowing down there with Asia and the better teams in Oceania) has levelled out, with the U.S., Mexico, El. Salvador and Honduras the pick of the litter.But this wasn't Mexico at the Azteca; it was the monster, the red-and-yellow beast that has swallowed European soccer whole and been chewing on it for the past three years, the Seleccion d'Espana. This isn't just David and Goliath; this is David whipping the Giant of Gath's feet out from under him and then doing one of those Buffy under-the-arm-backhand stabs to the heart.

Not since the days of Joe Gaetjens has the USMNT done anything like this. Admittedly, the goals were freakish (mind you, Gaetjens' was, too); Altidore got away with some pretty dicey pushing and then managed to riccochet the shot in off the Spanish keeper's right hand, Clint Dempsey should, frankly, be hunting up Ramos, the Spanish defender who managed to completely lose his composure six yards from his goal and tee the ball up so the Clintster could turn on it and slot the thing in, a shot a U-6 would have had a hard time missing. And, yes, the Spanish had most of the run of play, most of the shots, and Howard and the U.S. backline had to play like madmen to keep the clean sheet.

But the point is, they did. They DID. For the first time in history, a USMNT will play in a FIFA championship final.Somewhere where the fields are always green and level, the referees always knowledgable and fair, and the fans always rowdy and happy, Joe Gaetjens is juggling a ball with a little smile on his face.

And so do I.