Youth soccer thuggery

'The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.'
--Fred Astaire


It looks like youth soccer thuggery is not limited to the United States. This article in the British Guardian reports that: boys' and girls' football [soccer] leagues across Britain are in turmoil because of abuse and violence by overwrought parents. Games are being abandoned as referees are assaulted, brawls break out and players are left in tears.

So much for sports as amusement, as a fun activity.

The problem is now so bad that officials who run children's teams have written to hundreds of thousands of parents warning that errant clubs could be fined up to £2,500 [US$4700], or even shut down, because of misbehaviour.

The English soccer federation, The FA, is now investigating around 100 cases in which adults, often parents, abused or attacked players, officials or the parents of youngsters on the opposition team. Parents have been disciplined for getting so excited they end up shouting or swearing at their own child.

'Some parents have been banned from attending matches because of their behaviour, such as striking a player or a fellow spectator,' said a spokesman for the FA. 'Very often these parents are competitive and passionate about their football and want their child to do well. Unfortunately they don't understand how their actions can harm their children's progress or enjoyment of the game.'

The spokesman is very diplomatic. These parents are idiots who don't have a clue. In youth sports, if a parent is more upset about how the game unfolds than the player on the field/ice/court, then something is seriously wrong with that parent.

I coach youth soccer. I am competitive. I go into every game hoping my team wins and trying to make it happen. But not at all costs. I'd love to win a lot of games and trophies, but I don't need them to know I'm a good coach. I don't need them to enjoy what I'm doing.

Ultimately it's about helping the kids improve as soccer players. As for these nitwit parents without the tiniest shred of perspective, who are trying to live their dreams through their kids or selfishly seek some reflected glory, they are the ones who ruin it for the kids. They are the ones who end up pushing their kids to quit the sport altogether in disgust.

Ice hockey great Ken Dryden once said, "Sports may build character, but more often, it reveals it." He was referring to athletes.

But the sentiment could just as easily apply to their parents.

Divine intervention?

Another thumbs down to an ego who deserves it more often than most: Philadelphia Eagles' wide receiver and media whore Terrell Owens.

Owens broke his left ankle a month and a half ago. His team will play in the Super Bowl on Sunday. He hasn't played since injuring the ankle in mid-December. Owens decided he was going to play in the NFL championship game.

Actually, he says the decision was made for him. Not by the coaches or doctors, but by God.

Yes, God.

"I respect Dr. Myerson [who performed surgery on his ankle] and his decision to not medically clear me," Owens said. "But prior to going down to see him for that last visit, I can honestly say God had already cleared me. It really doesn't matter what a doctor says. I've got the best doctor of all, and that's God."

Because with genocide in eastern Sudan, people rebuilding their lives after a terrible tsunami and all sorts of terrible things going on in the world, God decided to use his powers of intervention to affect a football game. After all, God surely wouldn't want to deprive the unwashed masses the joy of seeing Terrell Owens play.

If Owens had to get an injury, why couldn't God have made it to his mouth instead?

Stupidity in the DR Congo

Rhetoric against colonialism and neo-colonialism is standard fare in much of Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC] is same country that gave the world Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese nationalist who served briefly as the country's first prime minister. In 1961, Lumumba famously attacked Belgian colonial rule, especially the atrocious period during the reign of King Leopold II. He did so in the presence of Leopold's grandson King Baudoin who was in the capital Kinshasa (then called Leopoldville) for independence ceremonies. This touched off a diplomatic furor. Lumumba was assassinated later that year in a plot widely attributed to the Belgian government.

Chippla's blog points to a bizarre BBC story suggesting that attitudes in the capital might have changed. The Congolese interim government has re-erected in Kinshasa a statue of Leopold riding his horse, after spending 40 years where it properly belonged: in a garbage dump.

Leopold set up the Congo Free State in 1877 in what is now the DRC. Unlike most colonial ventures, the Congo Free State was not a Belgian colony, but was the personal property of the king. A land about the size of western Europe.

Congo Free State was Leopold's personal play thing for several decades until the Belgian state annexed it in 1908. Leopold's rule over the Free State exhibited a brutality that's hard to imagine now. Forced laborers were used mainly to extract rubber. Those who did not meet quotas had their hands chopped off.

"A people without history is a people without a soul," explained Culture Christophe Muzungu (whose surname means 'white man' ironically).

Leopold's era was surely the most soulless period in a land that's been cursed ever since. Why the descendants of his victims would want to honor this greedy terrorist with a statue is incomprehensible*.

Leopold's Congo was by far the most savage part of a not-very-pleasant European colonization of Africa. Estimates of those killed by the brutality of Leopold's forces vary widely, due to lack of numbers in early 20th century central Africa. However, estimates range from 5 million to 22 million.

Even conservative estimates put Leopold's Congo in the same league as Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR.

At least the peoples of the former Soviet states had the good taste to tear down Stalin's statues.


Recommended reading: King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild.


*-addendum: Perhaps not as incomprehensible as one might have originally thought. On the BBC World Service last night, Hochschild theorized that the bankrupt DRC government is trying to curry favor with Belgian donors. He noted that DRC President Joseph Kabila gave a speech before the Belgian Senate last year praising "the Belgians, missionaries, civil servants and businessmen, who believed in the dream of King Leopold II of building a state in the centre of Africa" referring to them as "pioneers." Pragmatic, perhaps, but appalling nonetheless.

On imperialism

James, over at Hobson's Choice blog, has a fascinating entry on Imperialism as a Vocation and an interesting series of essays on Private Sector Imperialism. Both are well worth a read.

Shake Hands With the Devil

This is part of a regular feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.


Mother Jones has an interview with retired Canadian Gen. Roméo Dallaire. Dallaire was head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the genocide who was prevented from having his force intervene to stop the atrocities because of the opposition of the Belgian, French and American governments. Then when he asked his forced be enlarged and given a mandate to intervene, the Security Council, on the demands of the Belgians, French and Americans, slashed the force's size by 80%. Dallaire is one of the true tragic heroes of Rwanda. His case demonstrates that "the UN" can only act if powerful member states want it to act and it's powerless if those member states want to bury their heads in the sand. The interview is worth reading if you don't know much about the behind-the-scenes of Rwanda 1994 that could've prevented the genocide if anyone outside Dallaire's mission had been willing to take even the smallest action. His account of that horrible period is called Shake Hands With the Devil.

Why democracy and militarism are mutually exclusive

Bobo's blog offers congrats to Vermonter Eugene Jarecki who won a grand prize at the Sundance film festival for his film Why We Fight. It's described as at American militarism, and argues that promoting democracy with force has never worked.

I see three principal reasons for this.

First, the US has never fought a war that was fundamentally about making another country democratic. This has been the RESULT of a few years, World War II being the one typically cited by militarists. However, promoting democracy abroad was never the objective of World War II: it was self-defense and defense of our allies (not all of whom were democratic). The objective may have been noble, but it should be represented accurately.

Second, for democracy to take root in a country, it requires a fundamental committment of the people of that country to buy into the principles of democratic governance. If the people don't buy into those principles, they can't successfully be imposed by an outside hegemon. Outsiders can help, by supporting domestic democratic reformers. But ultimately, the people of a country have to want democracy themselves and be willing to accept the principles required for democracy to work or it simply won't work.

The other reason democracy can't be promoted with a barrel of a gun is quite simple. Brute force is the absolute ANTITHESIS of the give and take required for a democracy to function. In democracy, if you can't get everything you want, you have to negotiate and compromise. With militarism, if you can't get everything you want, you just invade willy-nilly or bomb the hell out of the bastards. Democracy requires accepting that sometimes your side won't win the day. Militarism doesn't.

UN-scapegoating more important than halting atrocities

A UN investigative commission yesterday issued a report into the atrocities being committed in Darfur, eastern Sudan. What did it say? Well it depends a lot on what you read (again demonstrating the wisdom of not relying on a single media source).

This article from the Associated Press, which is the most important source of world news for most newspapers in this country, made its headline: 'U.N. Clears Sudan of Genocide in Darfur.'

In order for something to technically be genocide, it must fit a precise legal definition (click here to read that definition). Something can fail to meet the definition of genocide but still be a war crime.

'UN Clears Sudan of Genocide in Darfur.' That sounds pretty definitive, right? It's not genocide so the Sudanese regime should feel exonerated. Ideological critics pounced on such headlines to denounce the UN for being complicit in atrocities, for protecting war criminals, for essentially saying, 'It's not genocide, so it must be ok.'

And a shallow, superficial reading of only the headline might lead you to that conclusion.

Take this shallow, superficial attack entitled 'The Security Council tries hard to stay irrelevant.' The author, it wouldn't shock you to learn, has traditionally been very sympathetic to both President Bush and the belligerent neo-conservative agenda. In his ideological fervor, he's too lazy to distinguish between a UN investigative commission (which issued the report) and the Security Council. But this is the first time he's written about Darfur (because it gave him a chance to attack "the UN") so such lack of nuance is utterly predictable.

This critic cited an excerpt of the report which claimed that Sudanese government sponsored militias "widespread and systematic" abuses that may constitute crimes against humanity, then added snidely 'Because the distinction is just oh-so-important.'

As anyone reasonably informed person knows, such distinctions ARE important in a LEGAL context. If you want to put criminals on trial, you have to make sure they are indicted with the proper charge so they are not ultimately set free. And those more concerned with justice than partisanship would not want such war criminals to be set free. Legal proceedings have to be done with much more precision than careless political rants.

If I believed this critic's comments, I would be outraged too. It sounds really bad what the UN said. It sounds like they are acting as apologists for genocide.

[Full disclosure: I've repeatedly described the situation in Darfur as genocide, one of the few things about which I've supported unreservedly the Bush administration.]

Except a closer look reveals something significantly different.

Take the BBC article on the story, which is entitled: 'UN urges Darfur war crimes trials.'

Even conservative Fox News' headline did a better job than the critic in capturing the spirit of the report: 'U.N.: Sudan Not Genocidal, but Still Bad.'

Hold on a moment. How can the UN be urging war crimes trials? I thought the UN was acting as apologists for the atrocities? I thought they were saying it was fine and dandy? How can they be both apologists while demanding justice?

It's all so confusing.

The UN investigation recommended that the Sudanese war criminals be brought before the International Criminal Court.

You'd think the critic would support such a decision. One part of the report he cited uncritically was The Sudanese justice system, it concluded, "is unable or unwilling" to address the situation in Darfur.

Oh wait a second. The Bush administration vigorously OPPOSES the International Criminal Court. And so does the critic, who writes The ICC was an awful idea from the start. You don't deal with genocide (or crimes against humanity or whatever) with a silly little court that only has [authority] over those who agree to let it have power over them. The obvious lack of logic just boggle my mind.

So by this logic, I can get away with theft if I don't 'agree to let [a court] have power over' me?

Typically, the critic attacks 'a silly little court' as a way of deterring genocide but he doesn't bother to offer better ways. If he has better ways of implementing justice than 'silly little courts,' then he would do well to be specific. Because it's easier to sit in your computer chair and criticize those who are trying to make a more just world than it is to actually make a contribution yourself.

[Nicholas Krystof's column in The New York Times argues that the Bush administration should set aside its opposition to the International Criminal Court, an opposition that effectively shielders the war criminals]

It's quite obvious to anyone that the critic's main concern is not the fate of the victims of atrocities/genocide/war crimes in Darfur. If it were, he would've focused on them or on attacking those who were committing the atrocities. He would've focused on what COULD BE DONE to stop the massacres. I've offered several essays which included ways to deal with the situation. Instead, he choses to eviscerate a poorly constructed strawman (and he doesn't even bother to get the right target!) which neatly conforms with his pre-conceived ideological notions.

It's a sad statement on the morality and values of those who are more concerned with petty (and not even factually accurate) sniping at the UN rather than trying to figure out how to halt the terrible atrocities. The situation in Darfur is too grave for attention to be deflected by such disingenuous ranting. Save the UN-bashing for something else. Let's try to figure out how to pressure the Sudanese regime into halting their sponsorship of genocidal militias. And if you can't offer something constructive, then at least stop denigrating those who are.

Religious obscenities

According to some religious extremists, the Asian tsunami was God's retribution. For what? Well, that depends on what kind of extremist you ask.

Hindu extremists say God was upset over Christian activity in India.

Last week, a column on the widely-read Indian news site Rediff.com suggested that the tsunami was a sign of retribution against Christians, whose activities are seen as betraying India's essentially Hindu character... Columnist Rajeev Srinivasan pointed to several religion-related factors he sees as pertinent. Referring to the earthquake as the "Christmas quake," he implied that the timing wasn’t mere coincidence. He also noted that the tsunami hit a church at Velankanni, one of the most significant Christian pilgrimage points in South India, resulting in the death of 50 people. Finally, he connected the tragedy to what many see as the recent mistreatment of a revered Hindu leader, noted a column on the website beliefnet.com

Some Christian extremists, on the other hand, say God is pissed off at Muslims.

Author Henry Blackaby, speaking at a Kentucky pastors' conference here in mid-January, said he didn't fully appreciate the significance of the widespread destruction until he saw a map published by the Voice of the Martyrs depicting the most intense regions of Christian martyrdom worldwide. Blackaby said he noticed that the tsunami hit many of those same regions. He told a workshop audience that most Christians don't realize that 400,000 to 450,000 believers are killed annually for their faith, and that many regions of persecution shown the map "match to the T" the tsunami's swath of destruction, explained an article from The Baptist Press.

"(But) if you read the Old Testament, especially, God is very concerned how the nations treat His covenant people," Blackaby added. "The nations that persecuted, offended and killed His people, God came down and destroyed them. And He's the same God today. He's just as concerned about His people."

I wonder exactly how that works since a) presumably God created Hindus and Muslims too and b) the Old Testament was recorded before the evolution of Christianity.

Muslim extremists, for their part, don't want to be left out of the judgementalist fun. The newspaper of the PJD, Morocco's Islamist Party, reportedly claimed that the tsunami showed showed God's displeasure with South-East Asia's sex tourism industry. Some 5000 people marched in the capital Rabat in support of the paper, though the comments have been denounced by other Moroccan political parties.