Tag Archives: Team USA

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.

World Cup victory dances demonstrate culture clash of national identities

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World Cup Football champions España hopped up and down like school- boys in elation about their victory. More culture shock for NFL or MLB fans: FIFA goals were celebrated with the airplane, the “can you believe that?”, the pileup, the pyramid, the group dance, and team USA’s “America Fuck Yeah!”

FIFA vuvuzela horns may prove to be thin-skinned America’s best friend

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Gearing up for Saturday’s World Cup match between the USA and Ghana, media talking heads are already preparing US viewers for the home field advantage that will favor the remaining African team in contention. Convenient actually, because by chance our A-Team is booed in any arena it sets its invader’s foot. The now maligned South African horns have so far masked a third world animosity that might put most Americans over the edge. The nerve of those ingrates, to boo, hiss and whistle the emperor’s freedomTM fighters?

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

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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.

Artemev head shoulders and legs above

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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.