Tag Archives: Athletes

City For Champions? Colorado Springs is city of blood-doping Olympian cheats

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Colorado Springs is not home to an Olympic Training Center because of our competitive nature, proclivity for classic games, nor certainly athletic bloodlines — it’s our high altitude that draws athletes in training so they’ll hit the games with a competitive advantage against the majority of teams stuck at sea level. Boosters who look to promote the city’s Olympic identity ought maybe admit its true character before taking for granted that people want to celebrate it.

Should the London Olympics remember the 1972 Munich Holocaust? Do you?

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America can’t memorialize the 1972 Munich hostage killings, because that act of terrorism was not unlike our own airstrikes or special ops raids, against purported enemy combatants, off the field of combat, except we don’t even try to kidnap them alive.
 
Of course the Israeli Olympic wrestlers and weightlifters killed in Munich in 1972 should be memorialized. But to call the deaths a massacre pretends the German police meant their ambush to kill everyone.* What happened at the 1972 Olympics is being recalled as the “Munich Massacre” but even the propagandists tweaking the Wikipedia entry don’t have the temerity to doff the disclaimer that “massacre” is the informal name. Shall we recall what happened? On September 5, 1972, PLO terrorists infiltrated the Olympic village and tried to kidnap Israeli hostages to exchange for 234 Palestinians held by Israel. Two Israelis fought back and were killed. Next the eight gunman and their nine captives were led into an ambush at a military airfield. After a 1 & 1/2 hour gun battle on the tarmac, trapped under the helicopters by police snipers, the PLO killed four of their captives. A police investigation revealed the remaining five captives may have died in sniper crossfire. This detail is disputed, but a secret financial settlement was sought and reached with German authorities. So, was Munich a massacre or a botched hostage rescue? Do words matter? The Mossad’s retaliatory murder of an innocent Moroccan waiter in Norway, mistaken for the Munich mastermind, is trivialized as the Lillehammer Affair.

Proponents want an Olympic tribute to the Munich Massacre “so that it never happens again.” Boy does that ever have a familiar ring to it. Look out for an Elie Wieselish re-tailoring of the original narrative, Steven Spielberg’s Munich being only a recent example of a myth-makeover remembrance.

To begin with, the PLO kidnappers were a faction of the PLO called the Black September Brigade, named after the Black September purge of the PLO from Jordan. This ouster, aided by the US and fought by Syria, was initiated by Israel’s attack on the village of Karameh, in which the PLO suffered 200 killed, to the IDF’s 28. Not a massacre because 150 PLO fighters were taken captive. Wikistorians taking liberties with translation are calling the PLO group “Black September”, with the effect of obfuscating the event which preceded the Munich operation.

The Munich raid to seize hostages was actually named “Operation Iqrit and Kafr Bir’im” after the Christian villages of Kafr Bir’im and Iqrit, ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948. Villagers were granted right of return by Israel’s supreme court, but overruled by the military. An attempt to return had been repulsed by police as recently as August 1972, as the Olympics began.

Next, the identity of the Israeli athletes is always left incomplete. With the exception of the 18 year old Russian immigrant, all the Israeli hostages were IDF soldiers who’d participated in military acts against Palestine, Egypt, lebanon, Jordan, or Syria, and so are not exactly the innocent civilians of current retellings.

Who killed the Israeli captives during the gun battle with German police? An immediate investigation found that sniper fire may have hit the captives, as it had also severely wounded a fellow policeman. A cover-up long obscured the official reports. While this could be pretended to protect the German participants, it also kept the blame on the PLO gunmen, which would have been critical to justify Israel’s “eye for an eye” revenge killings.

Did the gunman strafe their hostages with bullets upon seeing the arrival of the police armored reinforcements? The only witness accounts come from the German authorities. We might accept that the lead PLO gunman lobbed a grenade into the first helicopter with the intention of killing the four hostages it contained, if they were still alive. An autopsy revealing that one of the Israelis died from the flames is used the emphasize that the grenade, and thus a PLO terrorist, certainly killed him.

Though the German police admitted potential culpability for the deaths of the five hostages in the second helicopter, a later analysis put convenient blame on a particular gunman, one of them ones captured and who eventually escaped justice by being released. Certainly this narrative would be critical if Israel hoped for popular support for their effort to hunt the gunman down.

Many of Israel’s revenge killings involved car bombs which risked collateral deaths and injuries. Assassinating the “mastermind” killed eight others, including a nun, and injured 18 more.

Whether the PLO gunmen killed the Israelis or not, even the operation’s planners can’t be said to have intended it. No one masterminded a massacre.

Of the PLO participants in Munich, five gunman were killed, and three were captured. Those three were released weeks later to meet the demands of a subsequent hijacking. Israel’s Mossad boasted of having tracked them down and assassinated them shortly thereafter. But accounts vary, and one of them was interviewed decades later for a documentary. What’s known is that Israel implemented an “eye for an eye” operation that over 20 years hunted and killed 20-35 Palestinian targets. They weren’t sought out to take hostage but to murder, and most of them were unconnected to the Black September Brigade. The Mossad long-arm-of-the-law theme was less about revenge than deterrence, because anyone who might have masterminded or abetted the Munich plot was planning a kidnapping not a murder.

If a massacre is measured by an imbalance of casualties, let’s look at the numbers. After 11 Israelis were murdered, Israel retaliatory airstrikes killed 200 in Syria and Lebanon, an IDF raid killed up to 100 in Lebanon, and the Mossad targeted up to 35 in subsequent assassinations. Here’s an accounting:

Sept 5-6, 1972
11 Israeli athletes, coaches former IDF
(2 killed by BSB in initial break-in, 9 killed during the ambush rescue attempt, possibly by crossfire)
1 German police
5 PLO gunmen

Sept 8, 1972
IAF retaliatory airstrikes on PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon.
200 Palestinians killed, including women and children

IDF Operation “SPRING OF YOUTH” raid on Lebanon, April 1973
3 PLO suspected planners
12-100 PLO members
1 PLO wife
1 Italian woman
2 Lebanese policemen
Unknown number of Lebanese civilians

Mossad Operation “WRATH OF GOD”, (20-35 targets over 20 years)
PLO translator of disputed BSB involvement, Oct 1972
PLO senior official, December 1972
Palestinian activist “expertly” pushed under bus, London, 1972
Jordanian Fatah rep, January 1973
Law professor at Am Univ of Beirut, April, 1973
Replacement for Fatah rep, Athens, April 1973
(2 BSB minor members injured, Rome, April 1973)
PLO director of operations for BSB, June 1973
Moroccan waiter, mistaken identity, Norway, July 1973
3 Arab-looking men, Switzerland, January 1974
Arab security guard, Spain, August 1974
PLO rep, blamed on the Abu Nidal Org, London, January 1978
2 PLO reps, Paris, August 1978 (3 injured)
PLO suspected “mastermind”, car-bomb, January 1979, also killed:
4 Bodyguards
1 British student
1 German nun
2 Lebanese passersby (also 18 injured)
PLO military head, Cannes, July 1979
2 Palestinians, December, 1979
PLO rep, Brussels, June 1981
2 PLO senior figures, car bomb, Rome, June 1982
PLO senior official, car bomb, Paris, July 1982
PLO senior official, drive-by, Athens, August 1983
PLO Secretary-General, drive-by, Athens, June 1986
PLO official, car bomb, Athens, October 1986
2 Palestinians, car bomb, Cyprus, February 1988 (1 other wounded)
PLO suspected head of intelligence, June 1992

What’s that? The ratio is 11 to 335 and the Israelis want to call it a massacre? If you count the Palestinians killed in the initial Black September attack on the PLO in Jordan, the comparison becomes irrelevant.

But the Munich ratio is nothing compared to the 1,500 Gazans killed in Operation Cast Lead. Now there’s a massacre.

*ON THE OTHER HAND. The botched hostage rescue in Munich might very well have been a massacre. Do we really want to go there? The German snipers who initiated the gun battle at Furstenfeldbruck Airbase may really have behaved with a total disregard to the fate of the Israeli hostages. With the antisemitism that prevailed in Europe, and still prevails there among the working classes, it’s very likely the policemen looked at the gunmen and their captives with equal scorn. If the bound Israelis weren’t hit in the crossfire, it could certainly be held that the sniper attack provoked their killing. The coverup and subsequent private financial settlement reached between Germany and the Israeli survivors suggests a culpability of the like. In that respect, if European Jews look back at Munich 1972 and say it was a massacre, I believe them.

Do the 2012 London Olympics need extra security forces to protect Israeli athletes or to arrest them?

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Organizers are worried about inadequate security for the Olympic Games set to begin next month in London. What security threat are they anticipating exactly? It’s true the Olympics have become a bullseye for globalization critics. More and more, both athletes and groupies represent the jet set. But other than past indigenous protests in the Commonwealth territories, which amounted to no more than nonviolent blockades, what does the UK need paramilitary forces to defend against this time? Another 1972 Munich massacre? At the summer Olympics in Munich, the Israeli wrestling team was murdered by PLO terrorists called the “Black September Brigade”, but the official narrative leaves off that the Israeli athletes were targeted because they were IDF soldiers who’d participated in the counter-insurgent near-complete rout of the PLO, known as Black September. So that raises an interesting question. Is London expecting to host Israeli athletes who were veterans of Operation Cast Lead or the attack on the Mavi Marmara, whose assassinations someone might want to avenge? British authorities could address that most handily with preemption, because this time the IDF campaign against Gaza was widely regarded to have violated international law. Warn Team Israel that any such veteran setting foot in England would face prosecution for war crimes. While London is at it, issue the same warning to Team USA. Yeah, and Team UK, and Team Germany, et cetera, for Afghanistan, Libya, now Syria. It’s become the 2012 NATO War Criminals Olympics, gone professional, no amateur status terrorists need apply.

Soccer offsides rule is agreement not to score behind your opponent’s back

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Soccer offsides rule is agreement not to score behind your opponent’s back

The US pretends the International Criminal Court doesn’t have jurisdiction over its war crimes, and thinks the same immunity should shield us from FIFA referees I guess.

The USA-Algeria match today was hard fought, admittedly team USA displayed an offensive edge. Rooting for Team Weasel Empire doesn’t automatically make you a Nazi, but I’ll be curious to hear firsthand accounts of the hostility our compatriots faced in the stands. The silver lining to a US victory is that eventually our sportscasters will have to apologize to American TV viewers about the constant booing whenever USA gets the ball.

Vuvuzelas may turn out to be a fortuitous annoyance for Western broadcasters. They mask the dynamics of how the spectators are really responding. I was slow to realize what I was hearing during the USA-Algeria match, a consistent switch from boos to cheers whenever the ball changed hands. I’m surprised I didn’t see more commentary about it.

Honestly, the TV talking heads spoke of the US supporter presence being “huge,” and didn’t bat an eye at the eruption of disapproval when Landon Donovan scored the last minute goal to net a USA victory.

The next match pits the US against Ghana, which sets up a plausible excuse for why the entire stadium will be cheering against the USA. Much as I’d like to see an African team advance, I hope the Americans survive, because the more American stateside see our athletes jeered and booed, the sooner our sorry imperialist swagger can face abrupt self-reflection.

Eduardo Galeano’s SOCCER IN SUN AND SHADOW offers a great explanation of the Offsides Rule. Simply put, it reflects the gentleman’s agreement not to go behind your adversary’s back. What sport is there to kicking at an unprotected goal?

Yanks overseas pretend to be Canadian but how do you do that in Vancouver?

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Since the overt militarization of Pax Americana, US citizens traveling the world are advised to pretend they’re Canadians. It only took this week’s unexpected team USA victory over Canada in men’s Olympic hockey, to ignite anti-American feelings. Even before the games began, the USOC’s USA House was the only hospitality venue whose address was not made public, conveniently too because it was safely not open to the public. Now visitors leaving USA House are reminded not to wear or behave in any fashion that would distinguish them as Americans as they make their way to their accommodations.

Security warnings didn’t lessen even as Canada took revenge with a win against the US in Women’s Hockey. Canada’s speed skating victory wasn’t helped by Apolo Ohno’s complaint that his disqualification might have been owed to the supervising judge being Canadian.

Will a Canadian victory in the finals be enough to ameliorate feelings against Americans who dominate every other aspect of North American culture so obnoxiously? In either outcome I foresee American visitors and athletes taking their leave with as little fanfare as possible.

Just as McDonalds is uncontested as it pretends to speak for all Olympic athletes that their toxic McNugget is the “favorite of Olympians,” so is the American war machine able to coopt US athletes for their imperialist message. Critics of the Olympics are ridiculed for politicizing the games, yet militant nationalism pervades the ceremonies.

The television announcers remind us that the USA hockey players have been paired with beneficiaries of the Wounded Warrior program. Each stick-wielding, armored, helmeted ice warrior thus plays for the honor of an actual US soldier. A recognition I believe of America’s undying desire to have a second chance to kick ass.

I don’t know anyone rooting for Team USA, the finals rematch would seem to be an extraordinary opportunity for Obama-spirited diplomacy. These athletes are all NHL players of mottled nationalities, probably most Canadian as much as they are American. What better chance to let the victory to the host. Can you imagine the US asserting its dominance over its coalition partner? What could come of that?

Americans have precious few fans outside the homeland. Oh, they tell us, “we love Americans, just not America.” But in Vancouver this week, that was not true. Imagine Canadians added to the list of world people grown tired of the idiot American brute. Canada will take the sympathy of the rest of the Commonwealth with them.

After two weeks of patient cheerleading against US Olympic supremacy, suddenly I’m jumping up and down for a US win!

It’s just a game. The white man’s war on the world is not.

Suomi hockey team beats Slovenska for bronze at 2010 Jeux Olympiques

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Suomi hockey team beats Slovenska for bronze at 2010 Jeux Olympiques

Finland beats Slovakia for 3rd placeWhat does it say across the front of the Finnish hockey jersey “SUOMI?” Is that an acronym or an internet initialism? While it could be enthusiasm for Olympic mascot Sumi, Suomi is Finnish/Saami for what they call their country. Apparently the Finns didn’t get the memo about bringing Olympic text into uniform English-compliance.

Swedish jerseys use the abbreviation SWE for example, even though they spell their name Sverige. Similarly Austria, AUT, which otherwise goes by Österreich, and Japan, who spell it Nippon.

Norge, Polska, Nederland, España, Schweitz/Suisse, Belarus, Latvija and Kasakctah are perhaps close enough not to confuse American television viewers. Other hold outs are Hungary’s Magyarország, Germany’s Deutschland, and Russia’s ?????? -even the Asian nations know to romanize their Olympic alphabet. When in Rome, even the Greeks speak English.

It amazes me that American interviewers expect Olympic athletes to speak English. Where they don’t, their names don’t even get a mention. South Korean speed skaters are referred to only as “the Koreans.” Chinese free-style ski jumpers were given English nicknames so their “Chenglish”-speaking American coach could tell them apart.

Medal count reflects Wealthy Olympics

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The US media ranks the US ahead in the Vancouver Winter Olympics based on most medals won. The non-American consensus rates competitors according to their gold, Germany often leading. If your average win is silver, it does seem queer to declare yourself in first place. Not to mention that total wins appear irrevocably linked to the size of the teams fielded. Inspired by 538 giving 2010 odds based on statistical analysis, I thought about other likely predictors. Number of athletes and population size are both outweighed by Per Capita Income as the deciding factor for final rankings.

Gold
Medals		 Total
Medals		  
Country		 Team
Size 		 
Population 		GDP per
capita 		Prob.
Rank
8 32 USA 215 309m $ 46k 1
9 27 Germany 153 82m 39k 3
8 20 Norway 99 5m 77k 4
8 17 Canada 206 34m 39k 2
6 11 South Korea 46 50m 16k 9
6 8 Switzerland 146 8m 66k 5
4 13 Austria 81 8m 45k 7
4 10 China 90 1,336m 3k 10
4 8 Sweden 106 9m 43k 6
3 14 Russia 177 142m 9k 8

McDonalds: Eat Like Fat Olympians

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The authentic moment in the McDonalds commercial “Eat Like Olympians” is where an athlete walks amazed past tables of A-list Olympians stuffing their faces with Chicken McNuggets. He’s not starstruck, but dumbstruck at the sight of athletes poisoning themselves/selling out. Would they, could they? Not and hope to win. Center stage is US speed skater JR Celski and it’s a damn shame. I always hope medalists will seize their moment in the spotlight to hold their fists high like Mexico 1968. No, they’re so self-obsessed they shill for McDonalds and dope the minds of their admirers with Olympic strength toxin.

Canadian audiences have to suffer a wide campaign of misinformation from a handful of their Olympic hopefuls: Cassie Campbell, Brad Martin, Crispin Lipscomb, Cindy Klassen, Shawn Johnson, and Patrick Chan. Each pretending to eat the garbage.

How is being received? Have a look at this preteen rebuttal on Youtube entitled Olympics + McDonalds = Fat Olympians whose main character is a loving tribute to Shaun White.

White Flight from football to assault rifle

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White Flight from football to assault rifle

Lacrosse baggataway warriorRyan dons the rest of his gear in the car. Pads, armor, helmet, even mouth guard. I adjust the rearview mirror downward until I see his small frame in the backseat. We’re only halfway to practice and he’s already biting down, breathing through his nose, focused straight ahead. It’s the same routine for football, except today he’s got a lacrosse stick across his knees. In his grip, I should say. When we pull the car to the edge of the parking lot, he jumps and literally hits the ground running. From my height he gives me the sense I’m a helicopter pilot who’s dropped soldier reinforcements to join the team on the pitch. There’s a steep hillock between Ryan and the field, but his charge never slows, he ascends like a Cavalry of One, his stick brandished like an assault rifle.

Would an M16 be held any different? The difference between football and lacrosse is that your little assault squad is armed.

In 1763 a band of Chippewa Indians seized Fort Michilimackinac by feigning a game of baggataway, the Native American origin of lacrosse. The Indians pretended that an over-spirited drive led players over the fortifications and within minutes they’d stormed the ramparts.

In a spirit of honoring American Indian tradition, like the harvest celebration of Thanksgiving, American dads are pushing a new sport unto the youth athletic season. Because the first early adopters where also the first white men to hit the New World, the sport now has a Mayflower WASP identity too.

Lacrosse has an exotic appeal in spite of its New England tradition. It’s sort of field hockey gone aerial, full court jai alai with armor, East Coast blue blood rooted with the authentic red bloods, the original old money land owners.

Is that what’s behind the lacrosse resurgence? As Ryan’s team wrapped up the other day, they passed baseball diamonds and could not hold back from chanting “lacrosse, lacrosse” toward the children playing baseball, as if to instigate a cross-sport rivalry. Lacrosse teams are still relatively scarce. On weekends they have to cross neighboring metropolitan regions to play each other.

How many sports programs do you need to round out your kids? Boys have baseball, football and basketball, among the big team sports. Neither of which are the biggest sports internationally. Soccer and handball. Curiously both those require little equipment. They are perfect for the Third World, but imperfect for consumer cultures which have wheels of commerce to drive, especially in recreational pursuits.

Which could explain why Lacrosse teams have to traverse great distances to encounter adversaries. The usual cross town rivals can’t pony up the money for this game.

Lacrosse is White Flight from football. Most schools have barely enough money to keep their athletes in football gear, let alone a completely redundant lacrosse kit. And so the only kids playing lacrosse are from families who can afford the hundreds extra for the specialized equipment. Added bonus, there are no players bringing a black athletic advantage to the game. Like the other equipment intensive sports of the northern climes, lacrosse is a venue where white boys can dominate, and give their accustomed advantage some elbow room.

I remember a fencing instructor encouraging prospective young pupils at a toney gym, about a peripheral advantage to the sport. Ivy League schools offered fencing scholarships, and prospects outside the usual New England states would be at an advantage for consideration. It was the first glimpse I had of counter-insurgency strategies in America’s race war.

Lacrosse may be the arena where prosperous families can let their white boys roughhouse with supremacy, but the joke’s definitely on them. It’s a sport for social climbers, and this ladder is definitely pointed elsewhere. Is your Playstation 3 teaching options trading or first person combat? Lacrosse is real world preschool basic training.

What does lacrosse impart that Football doesn’t? The teamwork is the same, the size differentials are still key. In both games there is only one ball, but in lacrosse, regardless who has the ball, everyone has a stick. If ever there was a sport which prepared athlete soldiers, lacrosse is it.

The sport of real blue bloods was always Rugby. In England, where commoners play rugby, you can always tell the rugby veterans by their broken noses and missing teeth. In America it’s the preference of the prep schools and private colleges, where offspring of the affluent can acquire scars without fear that it will hinder their job prospects because their futures are secure.

America’s white settlers weren’t blue bloods, they were the ground troops dispatched to seize the continent. It looks to me, the same American Dreamers are being tweaked again into service of the empire. The poor bigoted middle class is turning their boys out for real war.

Is there a sumo in your future?

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Is there a sumo in your future?

Mark FidrychThe Bird
I used to avert my imagination on the subject of Sumo Wrestling. Probably I still do, visualization wise. But the bigger than grotesque spectacle has suddenly fascinated me, as a historic predecessor of the wide world of sport of our future.

How odd that a tiny bonsai-grown island people fixate on professional athletes multiple times a normal human size.

It seems so inorganic, to cheer for man-hippos, instead of competitors made from our own image. After all, we cheer for home teams, not cross town rivals.

But sports fans are coming round once again to see their hero athletes for the super humans they need to be, to impress us with their superhuman feats.

Might I suggest that for a brief democratic period, baseball offered more than an illusion, that a neighborhood hero could emerge from the most unassuming physique. Today Americans recognize that professional athletes are no longer improved versions of us. Real winners are crafted by genetics and unimaginable dedication, for their superhuman destinies.

Our insistence that athletes cannot use steroids therefore seems to me awkwardly unreasonable. Doping levels the playing field, for aspirants up against genetics.

That viewers recognize the well demarcated expectations of the differing athlete body types, became no more clear to me than in this year’s Super Bowl, when a Steelers linebacker carried the ball from end zone to end zone, dodging not only his pursuers, but the book maker’s handicap as well.

Even Saturday Night Live parodied the feat, although their urban comedy cannot be said to snub the NFL certainly. Weekend Update portrayed the beleaguered James Harrison as still out of breath, a full week after SB XLIII. It seems even SNL knows that non-sports watchers would recognize that Harrison’s 100 yard triumph was over and above what a non-running football position could be called upon to do.

It could almost have been an ordinary Japanese man facing a Sumo. That would be populist fantasy, but not sport.

Red Bull is dangerous

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Red Bull gives you angel wingsRED BULL contains: caffeine, ginseng and guarana (all legal stimulants) sugars, artificial sweeteners, taurine (an amino acid said to lower blood pressure).
 
RED BULL promises: increased energy, better concentration, sharper cognitive performance, greater endurance, higher metabolism, faster reaction time.
 
RED BULL delivers: increased heart rate, heightened blood pressure, anxiety, jitters, hyperactivity, insomnia, hypoglycemia, dehydration.

A single can of Red Bull or any other “energy drink” increases your risk of heart attack or stroke. The caffeine-jacked soda pop causes blood to become sticky which is a pre-cursor to cardiovascular problems. One hour after drinking Red Bull, the blood system becomes abnormal, functioning as it would in a patient with heart disease. This effect is seen even in young people.

Take a look at Red Bull‘s website. The company has aligned itself — through high-dollar sponsorships, which are nothing more than manipulative ad campaigns — with the sporting crowd. It started with rodeo; the Red Bull logo is tailor-made for a swaggering cowboy. The company’s tentacles have reached into the racing circuit, BMX cycling, extreme skiing, even soapbox derby. You’ll find athlete superstars wearing the Red Bull logo in arenas and venues across the globe.

It would be one thing if Red Bull was marketing its product to coke heads and junkies, providing them with a legal daytime buzz. But to suggest that athletes will benefit from the “energy” Red Bull offers is wildly irresponsible and evil. Unlike the electrolyte-balanced rehydration found in Gatorade, Red Bull is chock full of stimulants which cause rapid DE-hydration, making energy drinks exceptionally dangerous when used in rigorous physical activity. Loss of consciousness, kidney failure, and death are a few of the more troubling outcomes of serious dehydration. Even mild dehydration makes you feel like crap — foggy, sluggish, headachy — which doesn’t enhance physical or mental performance in anyone.

Threatening the health and well-being of rednecks and jocks the world over wasn’t quite enough for these bastards. Red Bull expanded its reach into the late night crowd. Barfare like “Vodka Bulls” and “Jaeger Bombs” combine Red Bull‘s powerful stimulants with a heavy depressant which can lead to heart failure and other health crises. Norway, France, Denmark, and even Uruguay have banned sales of Red Bull completely.

Red BullHistory has shown us that we can’t expect responsible behavior from corporations. They have an apparent duty to shareholders to make money, unfettered by ethical considerations. That’s why the Food and Drug Administration has been appointed our trusty watchdog. As soon as they’ve finished banning every natural supplement found in any organic health food store, I know they’ll muster the energy to take on Red Bull.

That day can’t come soon enough. Many of us are tired of running on empty promises.

The All-American Hitler Youth uniform

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The All-American Hitler Youth uniform

youth football
COLO. SPRINGS- You won’t find Youth Football scheduled on Sundays. Are they concerned about conflicting with Sunday church service or with the NFL?

Televised Pro Football doesn’t defer to the Lord’s day, in fact, it’s rechristened it. That’s not to pretend that football is America’s religion, but hasn’t its violence become our nationalist ethos? I think football’s armature is obviously the uniform of our soldiers and paramilitary police.

The day seems to grow ever farther off, when US imperial Fascism will be unmasked for what it is, at least when common Americans will come to recognize it: white supremacy through Capitalism. What will ultimately be revealed as having been America’s propaganda programs aimed at its children, akin to the Hitler Youth of the Nazis? No Child Left Behind tills the soil of impressionable minds with its scorched-earth mis-education, the Boy Scouts plant seeds, and the Junior Marines harvest. But American football fertilizes with ideology.

Roman Catholics excuse Pope Benedict XVI (himself a Pius XII apologist) having belonged to the Hitlerjugend in his youth, by explaining that a wider percentage of German children belonged than really ascribed to Nazi extremism. Might not the same rationalization be made about America’s young footballers? Few of the young athletes grow up to join the SS, but a good many of them will conform from the sidelines and lead the nationalist cheers.

Can the NFL even pretend to be an innocuous spectator sport where it is obviously ritualized warfare?

Patriotic American flags adorn the back of every NFL helmet. Not the front. Though both teams of the game are marked with the national flag, only the side on the offensive is noticed carrying it. The TV camera frames the flag as the viewer follows the advance. Television convention has it that in closeup, defenders are usually shown facing us. Whichever team we may be cheering, the TV would seem to prefer to project the hopeful ambition of the ventured aggression, sooner than the held-breath of the position defended.

Boyscout uniforms, like those of the Hitler Youth, glorified the soldiers of their day by emulating the functionality of their rugged khaki clothing. Can the same thing be said of scouts today? US soldiers, like their compatriot law enforcement officers stateside, wear bullet-proof armor. Combat soldiers, like riot police, wear padded exoskeletons under increasingly intimidating garb. Who are the 10-16 year-olds playing soldier these days?

If it sounds too good to be true

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Human Growth Hormone…it probably is.
 
Jamaica’s Usain Bolt won both the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints in world record time, something that hasn’t been done in 32 years. The Jamaican women, led by Shelly-Ann Fraser, swept the 100-meter race. Today another Jamaican woman, Veronica Campbell-Brown won the 200 meter sprint. A single country winning gold in all four sprints hasn’t happened since the USA did it in 1988.

All this metal begs the question, what the hell is going on with the Jamaican runners?

I’m much too sweet to have a taste for sour grapes, but it seems likely that the Jamaican sprinters are doping. Their current coach’s association with Trevor Graham — a Jamaican silver medalist in 1988 and coach of Beijing silver medalist Shawn Crawford — who recently received a lifetime ban from the sport for helping athletes obtain performance enhancing drugs, further fuels suspicion.

Of course, the Jamaican Track Federation vehemently denies the doping charges pointing out that the athletes have been tested and retested and, according to team doctor, Herb Elliott, remain “ready at any time at any hour to be tested.”

Sounds convincing…NOT. The dopers are always body lengths ahead of the U.S. Anti-Doping agency. It makes no difference how many times you test if you’re not looking for what they’re taking.

There is a Jamaican saying likkle likkle mek nuff nuff. Loosely translated it means “a whole lot of a little bit amounts to a whole lot.” Or, more simply, it all adds up.

Yep, to a whole lot of gold.

Thank you Mr. President for all you do

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Thank you Mr. President for all you do

Beijing beach volleyball bikinisIsn’t it vaguely jarring when someone is asked publicly what would be their fondest wish, and they don’t say “world peace?” I feel that way about athletes and celebrities in these times of great conflict. They could say Impeach Bush, Stop Torture, the Media Is Lying, or at the very least, the Emperor Has No Clothes! Instead they feed the media narrative fretting about their quest for a medal, about which we know already.

Not to say the reporters aren’t eager to run with whatever revelation they get. When Usain Bolt revealed that he fuels his running by eating “nuggets,” the press was quick to announce the Fastest Man on Earth eats McDonalds. It’s an easy conclusion. Where else are nuggets on a menu but the Mc variety? A convenient conclusion too, as McDonalds is a chief sponsor of the Olympics. They’re running adds featuring ex-athletes, in athletic settings, pitching McPhood. Although no Olympic athlete could jeopard his/her health to a McDonalds meal depth-charge. Sports reporters know that too. Shame on them for perpetrating the McNuggets disinfo until Bolt’s father could be reached for an explanation. Usain’s “nuggets” are a concoction of yams, and no doubt something Jamaican that will soon be ruled out as doping.

Reporters did interview an Olympic competitor who’s eating plenty at the Beijing McD’s. He’s an archer, who has no need to move around. Probably his weight stabilizes his aim. Probably too he’s got no aspirations for the Pentathlon. The convenient unofficial unsolicited McEndorser weighs 215 pounds.

I’ve heard Olympic athletes are oblivious to real world concerns. Perhaps I can forgive them for not making political statements, even though they have the forum. They’re forbidden, but as attention hounds, you’d think they’d notice that the athletes now most honored for the 1968 Mexico City Games were the ones who raised their fists.

Instead the 2008 Beijing Olympics has this: heralded to be the best Beach Volleyball duo of all time (The TV announcer kept asking “Can I say it? Can I say this is the best beach volleyball team of all time?!” -even though this sport/spectacle pandering to the NASCAR fans has been part of the Olympics only THREE TIMES BEFORE), the winners had this statement to make, after clearing it with their interviewer.

Said Kerri Walsh: “Can I say something? Thank you Mr. President, for your support. And thank you for all that you do!”

Artemev head shoulders and legs above

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Artemev head shoulders and legs above

Sasha ArtemevDid you miss this spectacular moment in men’s gymnastics? It was the last round on the pommel horse. Team USA was going for silver, the Japanese were already looking dejected about being left the bronze.

The three Americans sent to cleanup were –ironically said the announcers– each of them alternate team members. And then the unthinkable happened.

Well it wasn’t unthinkable, I was thinking it. I was rooting against team USA with my blackest might, for being the ass-backward patriotic pawns the US athletes are. I was amused to see Raj trip up, and thrilled when the same thing happened to the Taiwanese-American. Yeeeee!

But next up was Sasha Artemev, whose erratic record, we were told, was what disqualified him from the original team. He failed 3/4 of the time. But the 1/4 performance ranked him as world champion on the pommel horse. So as the diminutive boy contemplated his mount, under all the pressure I’d wished upon team USA, it became impossible not to have a change of heart.

I’d barely ever watched gymnastics before, but Artemev’s performance went from dazzling to miraculous. As a teammate of his told reporters later, for a moment it looked like Artemev might have launched himself skyward from the horse, but he defied antigravity and hung on. Who has ever fought being earthbound except race cars? I doubt even Michael Jordan has to temper his air flight.

Never the less, Sasha Artemev whirled like a helicopter tugging against a leash and landed as solid as you hope every time that every gymnast could, beaming, and it was Seabiscuit, Rocky and the Little Engine That Could!

But the tension now mounted because Team USA’s score had slipped so badly that now the German team was in contention to reach the bronze. Would the Americans medal at all? Everything was up to the German pommel horse numbers.

As each German performed his routine, Artemev’s act looked all the more luminous. The German routines were executed well, but were completely earthbound by comparison. What could the poor Germans do to compete in such a fix, short of improvise Artemev’s leap to the heavens and court probably an infinitely greater than 3/4 chance of failure?

Here’s a video of an Artemev performance at an earlier gymnastic meet. In this minute and a half, you get to see what the coaches feared would happen in Beijing, then you’ll see a preview of what ultimately did.

102 Olympic medals for white swimmers

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Michael Phelps his poised to beat Mark Spitz’s record for medals won in a single Olympics. Does it say something that both are swimmers? Maybe there are too many swimming events? You don’t find 1/2 length, or 1/4 length fencing matches. You certainly don’t have shooting medley relays.

I can understand the merit of 50, 100, 200 and 400 meter distinctions. Relays also make team sorting events out of pretty plainly singular physical efforts. But do we need those variants at the international level which is often dominated by athlete superstars? If you want to have feel-good team events, perhaps relays could exclude the soloists.

How do you account for 34 swimming medal events out of a total of only 302 Olympic events. While baseball as an Olympic sport is being dropped? That’s two dozen athletes per team being offered no medal, while one swimmer gets a shot at eight.

No to mention that baseball has become dominated by athletes of color, while swimming as yet has not. It’s easier for our world neighbors to afford a bat and ball than swimming pools. Not to mention the leisure time necessary for the training. Whereas baseball is a social sport.

Is it amazing that America, home of the baseball World Series, played only among North American teams, doesn’t medal in the real world series? And how about our loss to Cuba? Even as both countries hold baseball to be the national sport, err, pastime, the match-up is still akin to a class AA school set upon single-room schoolhouse classification. We draw our athletes from a population 303 million, including the Cuban players who defect. Cuba’s talent comes from a pool of 11 million.

Opening ceremonies of Beijing Olympics star humanity in his own flea circus

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Opening ceremonies of Beijing Olympics star humanity in his own flea circus

Metropolis science fiction horror
Can you remember an Olympic Games opening ceremony that was not spectacular? Suffice it to say Beijing was the biggest, befitting the world’s most populous nation. “Awesome” provides perfectly qualified praise. I have to say this spectacle invoked colossal horror as it drew a full-color digital smiley face over Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Automatons
I thought the drumming performance was the most impressive. Two thousand (and eight) drummers beating their hands on antique-style drums set in mobile tables. The bare skinned drummers beat hard, seemingly to illuminate the square table surfaces, like fireflies assigned coordinates in an array, or a spider’s web.

We’ve admired marching ceremonies before, and synchronized flags. We marvel at the precision ensembles of Rockettes, Busby Berkley choreography, and, for want of an example further afield, the Chinese circus. What made the Bird Nest Stadium extreme so horrific was the miniaturization of man’s role. If it had been a Seurat painting, one man, one dot, we might have been comforted to see ourselves woven into a tapestry which created an artistic expression. Instead, long shots showed the full effect to be an LED board, each pixel either on or off, flickering based on whether that person was activated or not. Man as electron, charged or uncharged.

I wondered what was the stadium perspective. Did the audience of 91,000 see the large electronic panel or the matrix of individuals sweating to power it? An aerial view gave the TV audience the full effect, while other cameras zoomed in as if to provide a microscopic perspective of the human termites working frenetically in the machine.

Putting people in the role of insect automatons would seem to me a phobia of a humanitarian society. But the mechanized human component of the 2008 opening ceremonies was not disharmonious with the way we already see China. Everywhere performers were tethered, playing tiny roles in gargantuan schemes. Some provided the piston power to undulating cubes. They revealed themselves only at the end, and emerged only partially, free but to give a smile and wave. These giant light-board shows were switched by computers, their human components alerted by electric signal, be it light, or tone, or sensor, to synchronize their positions. A TV commentator who remarked about the amazing lack of wires, would be overlooking how his personal computing devices communicate these days.

Human labor
The human element was required for the spectacle, otherwise we’ve seen more complex LEDs on old ballpark scoreboards. Technically the chain-link of humans was superfluous, but doesn’t it represent China, where labor costs are negligible?

And so we cheered the 2008 drummers, who worked drums mounted into tables that could pass for work desks. Indeed the drummers were bent over them like bent people, galley slaves exerting themselves to the rhythm of the whip. It was a sea of modern slaves, the sweatshop laborers. Actually, two thousand and eight impressed the crowd, but that number is probably small for a factory workforce. Probably there are scenes like this many times as big in daily Chinese work life.

Food processing

Later the performance took on a Disneyesque quality as dancers opened umbrellas illuminated with large smiling faces of children. Is that a touch-stone theme for pseudo international-harmony? The promise of children? I wondered after seeing the drummers harnessed to their sewing tables, coordinated by an electronic whip-master, if the faces of children represented the child workforce. In traditional cultures childhood idleness ends when a child can carry water or sweep the floor. The idealized child is a Western facade and here China appears eager to celebrate the ruse. Mankind’s aspiration should emulate the innocuous, non-threatening smile of a child.

Gladiators
Never before have I gotten a clearer sense of the Olympics as gladiator games. The audience are the privileged few, who do not bring politics to the games except the rivalry of nationalism, a preference for their athletes, rooting for a win to enhance their prestige. Ninety dignitaries were in attendance in Beijing. And what a celebration of harmony. Regardless the turmoil between nations outside, between world leaders, harmony. Because they’re going nowhere. Only rebels and coups threaten the ruling class. Did you know an IOC rule forbids the display of flags of entities not competing in the games?

Politics don’t enter the minds of the athlete class because they’ve got a singular focus, their performance. Some strive for financial rewards, others are focused on the physical achievement. All are vying to please the emperor, to live to compete again.

Even as the techno pageantry dazzled, by the end I was still shocked to see a human being reduced to flintlock to carry the flame to the gigantic torch, a blazing industrial altar.

The colossal fireworks show looked to be outside the view of the stadium audience, but I saw no throngs outdoors to witness it. The pyrotechnics reminded me of Shock and Awe the first night in Baghdad, cameras well recessed to take it all in. It turns out a chunk of the fireworks was CGI for the TV spectacular.

In hindsight for me the highlight of the evening was seeing President Bush sitting next to Vladimir Putin, each saluting their athletes in turn, neither turning toward each other, at least on camera, while in Georgia US backed forces battled Russian soldiers in all out war. An example of a tangible measure to which politics are kept out of the Olympic Games.

Photos:
Drummer pool

Umbrella children

The ideal soldier shoots for Beijing gold

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pentathletes garden of the gods
The Olympic Games are almost upon us. Which contests are you most looking forward to? I tend to like them all, even the events that aren’t immediately understood as sport, like table tennis, rhythmic gymnastics and archery.

One event that dates back to ancient Greece is the pentathlon. In its modern incarnation, athletes must excel at five separate sports: horse-jumping, fencing, shooting, swimming and running. All of these are part of the Olympic Games already, so why the odd amalgamation of seemingly random events?

Isn’t it obvious? The five events paint a romantic vision of a military liaison on horseback. When his mount is brought down behind enemy lines, he must fight with pistol and sword, swim across a raging river and deliver his message on foot. The pentathlete is the ideal soldier.

It begs the question, which country can offer the world this soldier? Which military superpower has dominated Aristotle’s beloved pentathlon?

After a century of Olympic contests, there are two countries in a dead heat, with medal counts that far exceed the nearest competitor. You probably guessed it — Hungary and Sweden.

“The most perfect sportsmen, therefore, are the pentathletes because in their bodies strength and speed are combined in beautiful harmony.”
Aristotle

Olympic audience cheers for Americans will be canned and jeers will be caned

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Oh my goodness, I know why the 2008 Olympics are being hosted in China! If Beijing was decided in July 2001, the globalization overseers were certainly showing their forward thinking, knowing the imperial oil wars they were about to unleash, and acknowledging that American villainy was about to drop its humanitarian pretense in exchange for unapologetic carpet bombing of uncooperative peoples. Had the deciders previsioned Americans becoming so unpopular in the world that international audiences would boo US athletes at every chance? Of course the bid applications for hosting the Olympics would have been prepared long before I’d be comfortable to predict the Bush/CIA coup plan was hatched. Anyway, booing is easily masked for American TV viewers by interposing prerecorded cheers. It worked in Athens.

Although in Athens, the hatred of Americans wasn’t yet a rolling boil.

In 2004 the American public was still seen as a victim itself of the Florida coup. In August 2004 we had yet to RE-ELECT George the War Criminal. Later in November Americans showed the world our doofus mettle, proving to be a mass of reckless morons worse than Bush. The world could see Bush stole the 2004 election too, but to their horror the American public did not object, nor intervene to prevent US imperial aggressions from continuing unabated.

At the Athens Olympics there was also a greatly reduced turnout of international attendees. The terrorism threat had been amplified so that fewer travelers showed up. Olympic organizers had to discount the tickets and open the doors to the locals in an effort to fill the stadiums. TV cameras kept their shots closely cropped to avoid featuring the empty bleachers.

But really, how fortuitous that America’s Olympic athletes will be facing a predominantly Chinese audience. The Chinese are no friends of ours, certainly, but they will be the most gracious of hosts. How face-saving for us that the Chinese are the only thoroughly polite/subservient population one could entrust not to heckle the American team to tears. Westerners sitting among them will be those affluent enough to travel to China, putting them among the multinational profiteer class who knows on which side its bread is bloodied. If there are any regular sports fans in the crowd we’ll have a bedlam of jeers, but stateside who’ll know, because our television soundtrack will echo only the cheers.

US athletes know it already when they tour outside the homeland. The Stars and Stripes are reviled. The American team need only get possession of the ball and crowds boo. In this New American Century of US military supremacy, it’s all onlookers can do.

The next Olympic venues are safely scheduled within the empire’s anti-immigrant walls, London 2012 and Chicago 2016. By 2020 we will parade our athletes safely in Uzbekistan, where our regents there will boil hecklers in oil.

In the meantime the Chinese will play supplicant hosts, their polite culture several millennium ahead of the west in valuing saving face. Bush can keep politics out of the Olympics, where sweatshop gulags await Chinese dissenters.

One gold equals 1,000 silvers

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Chinese Olympic rowing teamNevermind that gold and silver are often separated by a hundreth of a second. Chinese statistics reflect adherence to this depressing credo. In the 2004 Summer Olympics, the USA reigned with 102 medals. China was a distant third with 63. Gold told a different story. China was second with 32, four behind the United States. “Silver? It means nothing here; you might as well finish last,” says former Soviet coach Igor Grinko. “Coaches like me come, help them win gold medals, or we are fired.”

As China prepares its debut as Olympic host, it has ramped up its effort to win gold. The strategy is to focus on sports that offer many opportunities for gold, like rowing. Rowing. Crew. Such a long Chinese tradition, right? No, of course not. But the sport offers 14 separate events, 14 chances for gold, unlike basketball or volleyball — sports that have a rightful place in Chinese culture — that offer only 1 or 2.

In China, very young children are evaluated for potential athletic prowess and shipped off to distant locales to train, train, train. Seven days a week for years, separated from family and community, they are cogs in the Chinese wheel. They head out every morning, shoulders slumped, exhausted, unmotivated, to play a sport that is meaningless to them. Great financial gain at one end, prison (for doping) at the other end, they work toward a predestined fate.

I am sure that the Chinese will fare well in Beijing. They have to. But the glory will be reserved for the athletes that defy fate. Just as computers will never outshine humanity’s best and brightest, so the Chinese machine will fall short. The 1980 Miracle on Ice — the US hockey team that defeated Cold War Russia to go on to win the gold — was not about raw talent, or national financial support, or intense training regimens. The Miracle on Ice was about the human spirit, about love of sport, reverence for tradition, synergy above all else.

Passion defies logic. Love, dedication and athletic brilliance will always trump mechanization. Even when it wears a human skin.

I can not wait to see the US kick China’s autocratic ass on its home turf.

Televised football is the fascist pageant

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Offensive projectileI’ll tell you, this is the heart of the beast. Colorado Springs may be the apex of US religio-military nonsense, but the American beast is television, the rotten core of which is Fox TV, and its absolute poisoned heart is televised football.

Football is crass, violent, anonymous, uniformed, incorporated and a perfectly trivial distraction from all else. Nothing new, but I’d like to offer this impression.

For starters, have you noticed, the camera coverage of the cheerleaders is from exactly the angle a pervert would ask? In uncouth parlance it’s called “upskirt.” How do you suppose the camera bearers excuse themselves panning across the cheerleaders at bare thigh level? It’s neither a spectator POV, nor that of any athlete, unless he’s Chucky, strolling well wide to receive the cheerleaders. When the girls leap on and off the shoulders of their male counterparts, the cameras explicably-enough climb to male shoulder level.

Of course it’s not a matter of impolite cameramen getting up from their knees. The cameras today float on wires like surveillance robots to produce tailor-made angles. Being my point I suppose.

Thanks to these robots, the audience is afforded action shots without precedence. As a result, we can follow the action practically outside the context of what’s taking place. It’s great isn’t it? Who cares what bones are getting crunched outside the frame, follow the ball. The action is violent but without consequence. Athletes are expected to defy physics for cameras themselves liberated from constraint. Catch without thought to how you’ll land. The players are so jacked up on painkillers and adrenaline that the impacts will register only later. Off camera.

That’s how we fight wars, isn’t it? Eye on the bouncing ball, all damage is collateral, the players expendable.

Players jump all over themselves enthusiastically after successful plays, but lo, have been forbidden to posture victoriously in the end zone. The unsportsmanlike penalty is unpopular and proving difficult for the athletes to avoid. I can tell you what that’s about. The rich white man doesn’t mind his gladiators amping themselves for a challenge, but he’ll be damned if he has to witness what will almost always be a black man crowing about his superiority. Rich white men can propagate rap music to the masses like crack cocaine, but they’re not about to abide the braggadocio themselves. When did acting too-big-for-your-britches become unsportsmanlike behavior? When it proved to make heroes of the likes of Muhammed Ali. Who went to jail sooner than go to Vietnam.

The media coverage is equally restrictive about which athletes it acquaints with viewers. Do you think Peyton Manning is the only charismatic quarterback, or rather the only safe spokesman? The videotaped segments of players introducing themselves have become completely stilted in formality. Post-game interviews mandate that athletes wear some official headgear which casts their features in shadow, preserving their anonymity. They remain monosyllabic gladiator brutes who otherwise wear helmets, increasingly now with visors like so many Power Ranger Storm Troopers.

The talking heads attendant to the bowl games, whether ex-athletes or sportscasters, were all wearing the Neocon uniform, the black suit, and new for 2008, a four button jacket buttoned to the top like a veritable military uniform. Only Brent Musburger had enough clout to decline the odd conformity. Black used to denote caretakers. Fully buttoned suits were for tailors and soldiers. History has never looked fondly on soldiers who wore black.

The Cloverfield al-Qaeda Witch Project

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Promo postcard for CLOVERFIELD“Whatever it is, it’s winning.”
 
Our Lady Liberty beheaded, smoke and ash circa 9/11, Cloverfield would seem to know what it’s insinuating. So this is The Blair Witch Terrorist Project, where there’s nothing in focus but black void, and we’re to fear what? The unknown? Kids are afraid of it already, it’s called the dark. I’d be afraid of fearing the unknown: that was the Dark Age.
 
The marketing campaign should offer this caveat:

As the media conglomerate Hollywood studio behind this movie, in the interest of full disclosure, I am an agent for WHATEVER (where “whatever” is defined as totalitarian oppression by reign of fear). Thus it is my interest, and that of WHATEVER’s, to make you believe we are winning. After all, winning is simply the act of convincing you, by deed or by decree, that your protectors have lost. In effect you must come to see that your upstream is obsolete, and of the necessity to fall in with new masters. Whether or not it is true, it will become true. That is how another is victorious, how the conqueror vanquishes you.

You’ve seen this presumably pompous routine from prizefighters. It’s the same unspoken intimidation from athletes to chess grand masters: the psych-out. You’ve lost the match before stepping into the ring, do not fool yourself otherwise.

Military propaganda fliers say it from the sky: resistance is futile. I’m Psych-Ops baby! I’m a ruse permitted by the conventions of war, so long as I’m not perfidy: I can’t lie and tell you an armistice has been signed, but I can mislead you into thinking you’re surrounded. The clever propaganda convinces you it will be easier for you if you lay down your gun. Easier for us too. We can shoot you but it’s a lot more effective to conquer you en masse, that you survive to resume your peacetime task in what becomes our labor pool.

Look at this Cloverfield promo. (Ignore for the time being what you might have gleaned from their viral marketing campaign that this is a movie about a Godzilla-esque hydrant who takes the head of the Statue of Liberty for a game on kick the can around Manhattan.) Can you think of anything more chilling than the Statue of Liberty with her head torn off, dark gaping slashes across her back, leaving vulnerable every American’s liberty?

I can.

Imagine headless American zombies who don’t know right from wrong, up from down from a hole in the ground, running from every sudden noise, every unexpected voice they don’t recognize, even and especially, in another language or praying to another God, anything that deviates from their norm or the accepted behavior they believe will not displease their masters. These zombies will be insisting that you run and cower as they do, lest you draw wrath and misfortune upon all. Or be treated as a deviant about whom they have been warned.

NPR movie critic Bob Mondello in his review of I AM LEGEND tried to insinuate that its zombies reflected the terrorists we fear, being as they were determined to destroy America for nefarious zombie-terrorist reasons. What a crock. We are the zombies.

Nike tags more advertizing surface

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Viking uniform a maze of swooshesOh my goodness look at the Swooshes TM! Nike strikes again with its branding of the Minnesota Vikings. How many not so subliminal Nike trademarks do you see in this picture? The Viking uniforms sport the same torso swoosh as the Broncos but there’s more! Above the shoulders, behind the arms, and the refashioned horns.

Original Viking helmetIf the NFL is more restrictive than the NCAA about displaying manufacturers logos on uniforms, that’s not keeping Nike from tagging the athletes like so much graffiti.

On the old helmet, the ring around the horn was a semi circle, not a lateral crescent.

Nike swoosh the new uniform

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Jake Plummer no longer of the Denver BroncosMy lover won’t talk to me if I refer to the garments of professional athletes as “outfits.” She doesn’t appreciate “costumes” either. Both terms fit to me, considering the theatricality of the performances and outcomes, involving rivalries that could not matter less.
 
The new Bronco look is distinguished by a curvy flank stripe, designed by the uniform’s manufacturer… NIKE! Bronco fans still argue it’s not product placement of the trademark Nike Swoosh. That’s a Bronco fan for you.

NFL rivals Adidas stripes versus Nike swooshI’ll admit when a Bronco is standing up, or is at rest, the orange swoosh forms just an elongated crescent. The real genius of this design is that when the athlete is poised to strike or is in motion, either end of the slash serves to form America’s beloved Just Do It check mark.

Tell me the photo at right doesn’t reflect the real competing titans of the NFL: Adidas versus Nike.

The Semite’s anti-Semite

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Would it be anti-Semitism to make note that the US entertainment industry is predominated by Jews? Studio heads, producers, financiers are disproportionately Jewish, fair to say? Television, newspapers, publishing houses, quite a number headed by Jews. We could throw in the fashion industry, department stores, talent agencies, advertising agencies, financial institutions, it seems so stereotypical, but it is oddly true. The head start which Jews got during Christianity’s Dark Ages when no one but a Jew could a lender be, has set people of Jewish lineage well ahead in the world of commerce. Businesses can have an air of waspness, as the Bourgeoisie always did, but behind them, financing them, were Jews. It is not defamatory to make this observation, is it? No disrespect intended toward Jews.

It’s like pointing out that due in no small part to the African-American heritage having involved the selective breeding of slaves, Black athletes now dominate every professional sport in their hood. Of late, even golf. This is not racist talk, it’s straight talk.

So let’s address the Jewish lock on the US communications industry. It looks waspish, all the talking heads, the fat men, are wasps, but the money men are Jews. On the TV, rarely is any fun made of Jews, or Israel. The Israeli lobby can dominate our congress but the media is not going to tell us about it. Our TVs can make fun of Evangelicals, lampoon all priests as pedophiles, browbeat black welfare mothers, but Jews are inviolate. Is it because Jews have editorial control? Who knows.

When something like the Mel Gibson outburst happens, I can’t help but wonder how complex this gets. Gibson’s drunken tantrum didn’t have to make the news, in fact the police tried to downplay it. Instead the media ran with it, making Mel Gibson a household joke. Why? He would seem to be a valuable media property, why tarnish it? Later when I saw the release of Apocalypto, with Mel Gibson’s name getting top billing, I had to wonder whether the anti-Semitic rant was tarnish at all. Maybe in some ways it made Gibson more popular. Maybe it enhanced the box office for Apocalypto.

Then I heard a pundit criticizing the excessive media coverage of Gibson’s tirade compared to the lesser media coverage of Hezb’Allah’s simultaneous rampage against Israel. That false comparison hit a note for me. The media hadn’t failed to report Israel’s travails facing rocket attacks, what they failed to cover was Israel’s assault on Lebanon and Israel’s pledge to bomb ten buildings in Beirut for every Hezb’Allah rocket that struck an Israeli. The media failed to report the Lebanese civilians being massacred out of all proportion to the Israeli soldiers killed. It failed to report the secret raids in Palestine under cover of the assault on Lebanon. The media continues to underreport the targeted assassinations of Lebanese and Palestinian politicians, duly elected, with whom Israel does not want to deal.

But in the midst of all the non-reporting on Lebanon, word was still filtering out about Israel’s atrocities. It was coming mostly over the internet, via international news sources, but the truth was reaching many Americans. By the time Mel Gibson made his drunken anti-Semitic rant, a good number of Americans were coming to see that an Israeli-driven blood-bath was being perpetrated in the Middle East and American Jews were providing cover, even defending it. In a sense, as Israeli atrocities escalated, someone was bound to decry it. And it came in the form of a drunken Mel Gibson. And the media seized on it.

Kinda like the emperor parading naked, his handlers looking nervously around hoping that no one breaks decorum. But a young boy is bound to speak up unless you can preempt it with a moment you can manage. Instead of a boy, a stooge, speaking what everyone dares think, but a stooge easily discredited. Archie Bunker drunk, instead of Michael Wallace stone sober. Thus the media can address the issue of the anti-Israel backlash as anti-Semitism and not the issue of Israeli genocide in Lebanon and Palestine.

Karl Rove did this with George Bush’s cocaine rap in college. Rove knew the police records would come up, so he leaked them to a reporter whom Rove knew could be discredited. St Martin’s Press published the facts in Favorite Son, Rove stepped out to reveal the JB Hatfield’s dubious past. Immediately St Martin’s Press voluntarily withdrew all copies and burned them. Bush’s arrest for cocaine possession, very likely drug dealing, and the community service he received at a time when possession of marijuana would land prison time, simply went away.

Oh, Favorite Son was republished, and the facts circulate online, but the media didn’t and doesn’t cover it. You’d think they’d like a great story. I’m always reminded of why most of TV shows are so dumb, because they make the commercials look brilliant. That is, after all, the business of televison

I am not suggesting that Mel Gibson is part of a media conspiracy. Not in the least. I am suggesting that how the media choses to shape a story, whether to tell it or not, how to tell it, is certainly conspiratorial. Conspiracy is a loaded term because it’s become a discredited term. A handful of media entities colluding to shape a story is not a conspiracy anymore than you deciding to organize a surprise birthday party for a coworker would be a conspiracy. In your case, there’s a clear common interest in keeping the party a secret and you do it. In the case of a media conglomerate owners who decide what news may or may not hurt their common friend Israel, it doesn’t take a conspiracy to agree on a common cause. Show only Israelis worrying about rocket attacks, don’t show the half million cluster bombs left in Lebanon to snare curiosity-killed toddlers.

And when there’s a undercurrent brewing up in America, bursting to decry the Israeli murderers and their apologist Jews at home, point the camera at one who’s famous, maybe mildly sympathetic, drunk of course so it’ll be forgivable and let him rant. Next in front of everyone slap his wrists to teach how unseemly it is to be brnaded anti-Semitic. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt Gibson much, remember the adage, no such thing as bad publicity. When Apocalypto comes around, Gibson’s name will still draw. And Apocalypto’s message will work even better on the dumb white supremacists who thought his rant was serious.

It’s not anti-Semitic to condemn Israel for its campaign of genocide and apartheid in Palestine and Lebanon. It’s not anti-Semitic to point at the Israeli influence over our government’s actions. It’s not anti-Semitic or defamatory to accuse American Jews of uncritical support of colonial Zionism. It is not a case for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League to ask the American Jews underwriting our media to stop lying to themselves and us.