Intimidation

Two years ago I traveled with a group to New Zealand. Perhaps one of the most beautiful countries on earth, where I experienced one of the great sporting moments of my life.
Blogs give us the chance to write about what we know. I write about sports because that's what I know, and sports in a weird way, tells me about life, and communicates much more than what meets the eye.

During our journey to the south island, we stopped in a pub high in the mountains. The same mountains where director Peter Jackson filmed the majority of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The pub was buzzing with the pent up excitement seen only before the opening kick of a Tri-Nations Rugby Clash. This glorious night's battle was between the national rugby team of New Zealand, knicknamed the "All Blacks", and the hated Australian nationals, named "the Wallabies". The next few hours was filled with roaring homelanders, spurring their countrymen on to greater glory, enjoying the bounty of the land, racks of lamb around the house. You must understand this about me, I live for these types of experiences. This is the culture, these are the people.

That night I was introduced to the single most intimidating, awe-inspiring, emotional, moving, and freaking coolest pre-game ritual, speech, whatever you want to call it. I realize the running of the Sooner wagon is big, and Chief Osceola spearing the 50 means something, even 80,000 screaming "War Eagle" as the ball flies is special, and an octopus on the ice in Hoceytown smells awesome... But nothing! nothing, is like the "Haka" of the All Blacks!

The Haka, is a traditional Maori dance performed by the New Zealand Rugby team before each and every match it takes part in. Lead by its captain, and screamed by all 20-something players on the pitch. It is...(you fill in the blank)
Amazing.
The Maori people have always excelled in the art of haka, which is the generic term for Maori dance. Henare Teowai of Ngati Porou, an acknowledged master of the art of haka was asked on his death-bed, "What is the art of performing haka?".

"The haka is a composition played by many instruments. Hands, feet, legs, body, voice, tongue, and eyes all play their part in blending together to convey in their fullness the challenge, welcome, exultation, defiance or contempt of the words."

"It is disciplined, yet emotional. More than any other aspect of Maori culture, this complex dance is an expression of the passion, vigour and identity of the race. It is at it's best, truly, a message of the soul expressed by words and posture.."

The Leader barks out the opening lines:

Ringa pakia
Uma tiraha
Turi whatia
Hope whai ake
Waewae takahia kia kino

Slap the hands against the thighs
Puff out the chest
Bend the knees
Let the hip follow
Stamp the feet as hard as you can

The team roars to life chanting in unison the words below:

Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

I die! I die! I live! I live!

Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

I die! I die! I live! I live!

Tenei te tangata puhuru huru

This is the hairy man

Nana nei i tiki mai

Who fetched the Sun

Whakawhiti te ra

And caused it to shine again

A upa ... ne! ka upa ... ne!

One upward step! Another upward step!

A upane kaupane whiti te ra!

An upward step, another.. the Sun shines!!

Hi !!!

It is spectacular. Can you imagine staring across the field at very large men, screaming the language of their fathers, amping themselves for the confrontation before them. This is more than Rugby. This is more than a dance. This, is life.

Watch below.

All Black Haka , Game 3 2006 Tri Nations

Flying Daggers and the Olympics

Being the 25 year old American that I am, its hard for me to imagine a world in which the United States was not the very center of attention. For my entire existence, and even more since the age of 9, not one power, not one army, or one country, have even so much as distracted us from our raved affection for all things Britney and K-Fed. Even the horrifying tragedy of 9/11 ended up just being the screw we picked up in our tire, forcing us to pull over on the way home, missing the first segment of the culture-shaping - "The Simple Life 2".

For quite some time now, certain American's, even those stuffing their mouths with fried mayonnaise balls (thank you Daniel Tosh), have pulled out their "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt, only to have that priceless puzzled expression find their face when they read the inscribed label, "Made in China" - "We couldn'a made that?"- Apparently not.

China. Mysterious, are they really communist? China. We have to admit it, we're intrigued. Oh, it may in fact scare the hell out of us, you know, that they're 1 billion strong, 1/6 the population of the world, and yet all most Americans and the rest of the world's population could tell you about the Chinese is, "I like them little fortunes and all, but they could sure make them cookies taste better."

What are they like? Can we even go there? Most of us don't know, and that makes China the most intriguing, confusing, tricky yet exciting, and important foreign policy issue my generation will ever face.


Every so often the news will carry a story, detailing the handful of countries fighting over the right to host the Olympic Games. The choice the IOC makes can no doubt, effect a nation's short-term history. Just ask Germany after a successfully lucrative World Cup. So when Beijing some years back threw its name into the hat to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, no disrespect to Hot-Lanta, but this was a little different. Historically closed, and guarded China, willingly decided to throw its doors wide open for the world to come in and poke around a little. Believe it, they will be ready. All of our intrigue could lead to wonder. They know the opportunity, this is their showcase, their, "we know everyone's fascinated, and scared of us...So lets show 'em."

With Zhang Yimou, director of "Hero", "House of Flying Daggers", and "Raise the Red Lantern", tapped to direct the opening ceremonies, amazing, will truly be a souvenir. Zhang recently asked fellow director, Steven Spielberg, to be more than just an adviser, and give some "real, concrete suggestions".

China's "coming out party", will be unprecedented. Just ask Yu Yonggang-

"When he's not tending cherry orchards outside Beijing, Yu Yonggang can be found behind the twin barrels of a 37mm anti-aircraft gun, blasting shells at passing clouds...Now Yu and the other rainmakers face their toughest challenge: making sure it stays dry for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The idea is for the peasant gunners to work with meteorologists watching radar in the capital. Together, they will hunt pregnant rain clouds and pound them with rockets containing silver iodide. The hope is that any moisture will fall before the clouds can threaten the parade of athletes and lighting of the Olympic flame at the new National Stadium.

China's leaders want the Games to be a showcase for the country's astonishing economic development. The cloud-busting effort shows how far they will go to ensure that nothing interferes with the pageantry."-USA Today, McLeod

What!? They're making rain in China!? This is going to be ... you fill in the adjective.

For the first time, the world will see China in all of its glory. Will it inspire us? Will it scare us? Make no mistake, it will be spectacular. It could be the event that sets China as the new Superpower. Though they may be already, the entire world will recognize the United States is no longer the only big dog on the playground.

It will be their showcase, their invitation to the world to enter the theme park. And they know it. They'll be waiting for us. Will you watch with that curious intrigue, with that frightened eye? I will. I'll be the guy in the front row, watching "House of Flying Daggers" meets "Jurassic Park", while stuffing my face with fried mayonnaise balls.

Zidane

I have been accused of using the phrase, "the greatest ever", entirely too often (guilty- David Brent accent). Though I love the sports commentary of Miami's Dan LeBatard, and Boston's Bill Simmons, this article I stumbled across by French writer Bernard Henri Levy, in my opinion is the best piece of athletic journalism I've ever read. His conclusion is fascinating. It's worth your time. The Great Zizou.

PARIS - Here is one of the greatest players of all time, a legend, a myth for the entire planet, and universally acclaimed. Here is a champion who, in front of two billion people, was putting the final touches on one of the most extraordinary sagas in soccer's history.

Here is a man of providence, a savior, who was sought out, like Achilles in his tent of grudge and rage, because he was believed to be the only one who could avert his countrymen's fated decline. Better yet, he's a super-Achilles who- unlike Homer's- did not wait for Agamemnon (in the guise of coach Raymond Domenech) to come begging him to re-enlist; rather, he decided himself, spontaneously, after having "heard" a voice calling him, to come back from his Spanish exile and- putting his luminous armor back on, and flanked by his faithful Myrmidons (Makelele, Vieira, Thuram) -reverse the new Achaeans' ill fortune and allow them to successfully pull together.

And then this valiant knight who is a hair's breadth from victory and just minutes from the end of a historic match (and of a career that will carry him into the Pantheon of stadium-gods after Pele, Platini, and Maradona); this giant who, like the Titans of the ancient world, has known Glory, then Exile, then Return and Redemption; this redeemer, this blue angel dressed in white, who had only the very last steps to scale to enter Olympus for good, commits a crazy incomprehensible act that amounts to disqualification from the soccer ritual - the final image of him that will go down in history and, in lieu of apotheosis, will cast him into hell.

No one knows, as I write, what actually happened on the field of Berlin's Olympic Stadium.

No one knows what the Italian, Marco Materazzi, did or said (in the 111th minute of a match that this hero had dominated with all his grace) to reawaken in him those old demons of a kid from the streets of Marseilles, the very demons that soccer's code of honor, its ethic, its aesthetic, are made to quell.

Even if we knew why; even if we knew for certain that the Italian insulted him, or cursed his mother, father, brothers, sister; even if we got hold of the black box of those 20 seconds that saw the champion destroy in a flash his legend that is a mix of secret king, a Dostoyevskian sweet man, the ideal "Beur" son-in-law, future mayor of Marseilles and, last but not least, the charismatic captain leading his troops to consecration; even if we knew the whole story, this suicide would be as all ordinary suicides are; no reason in the world explains the desperate act of a man- no provocation, no nasty remark, will ever tell us why the planetary icon that Zinedine Zidane had become, a man more admired than the Pope, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela put together, a demigod, a chosen one, this great priest-by-consensus of the new religion and the new empire in the making, chose to explode right there, rather than wait a few minutes to settle the quarrel on the sidelines.

No. The truth is that it is perhaps not so easy to stay in the skin of an icon, demigod, hero, legend.

The only plausible explanation for so bizarrely scuttling everything- which, remember, let a lot of time go by (the 20 long seconds following the Italian Machiavelli's undoubtedly calculated outrage) in order to concentrate itself into the outburst of a player who was out of breath and stupidly losing control of his nerves- the only explanation is that there was in this man a kind of recoil, an ultimate inner revolt, against the living parabola, the stupid statue, the beatified monument, that the era had transformed him into over these past few months.

The man's insurrection against the saint. A refusal of the halo that had been put on his head and that he then, quite logically, pulverized with a head-butt, as though saying,

"I am a living being not a fetish; a man of flesh and blood and passion, not this idiotic empty hologram, this guru, this universal psychoanalyst, natural child of Abbe Pierre and Sister Emanuelle, which soccer mania was trying to turn me into."

It was as though he were repeating, in parody, the title of one of the very great books of the last century, before the triumph of this liturgy of the body, performance and commodity: "Ecce Homo", This is a Man. Yes, a man, a true man, not one of these absurd monsters or synthetic stars who are made by the money of brand names in combination with the sighs of the globalized crowd.

Achilles had his heel, Zidane will have had his- this magnificent and rebellious head that brought him, suddenly, back into the ranks of his human brothers.


--Mr. Levy is the author of "American Vertigo" (Random House, 2006). This piece was translated from the original French by Helene Brenkman

HOLD ON

Recently, my brother and I watched a PBS program on the AIDS pandemic in Africa. The special featured an all-star panel of figures from Bono to President Clinton, Franklin Graham, and Bill Gates. We sat astounded at the immensity of the problem, and moved to tears at different times by the heart breaking pictures
of an entire continient ravaged by disease.

Not too long before I saw the program I became aware of the crisis in the Darfur region of Africa. It's amazing how you can live your life in this present world of instant communication and information, and still not be aware of an incredible atrocity like the one occurring in Darfur. For those who may not be aware of the crisis, here is a brief history thanks to the people at savedarfur.org:

Open warfare erupted in Darfur in early 2003 when the two loosely allied rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), attacked military installations. This was followed closely by peace agreements brokered by the United States to end the twenty-year-old civil war in the south of Sudan which allocated government positions and oil revenue to the rebels in the south. At that time rebels in Darfur, seeking an end to the region's chronic economic and political marginalization, also took up arms to protect their communities against a twenty-year campaign by government-backed militias recruited among groups of Arab extraction in Darfur and Chad.


Nearly three years into the crisis, the western Sudanese region of Darfur is acknowledged to be a humanitarian and human rights tragedy of the first order. The humanitarian, security and political situation continue to deteriorate: atrocities continue, people are still dying in large numbers of malnutrition and disease, and a new famine is feared According to reports by the World Food Program, the United Nations and the Coalition for International Justice, 3.5 million people are now hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced due to violence, and 400,000 people have died in Darfur thus far. The international community is failing to protect civilians or to influence the Sudanese government to do so.


My thoughts lately have focused on what can we do. Is it possible for an individual in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to effect change in Africa? Can a church in another part of the world actually carry an influence around the world to the most desperate and hurting people? What am I going to do? What are you going to do? An entire continent is being ravaged by disease and genocide and what will the Church do about it? Is it possible for the individuals and families that make up the Church in the west to take the task on themselves and look to redeem those crying for help? "Hold On!" My hope is that we would lift a response that would say, "Hold on! We're coming. Help is on the way!" Millions of people are looking to the sky desperately crying out for something, someone to come and redeem them. To bring them peace and save them from their hell. Will we be there? Will you be there?

For us, the gospel is ultimate redemption. It's message brings not only spiritual health, but it carries with it a call for Christians to bring physical and social peace to those crying for help. In our charge to go to the ends of the earth and make disciples with the gospel, we also bring with that message physical, emotional, and social redemption to the world. The biblical scriptures tell us that all are created "in the image of God". If all are the image of God, than their are millions upon millions of "images", people created with the utmost dignity and worth given by God, suffering in ways we could never imagine no doubt all over the world, and horribly in Darfur. So what will we do? What am I going to do? What will you do? What is the gospel you believe in? Does it include the physical and social redemption of the marginalized? The gospel message of Jesus Christ calls his followers to a radical life of bringing the cultural, social, and spiritual renewal of the world ushering in the Kingdom of God on earth.

For more information on Darfur and how you can get involved see - www.savedarfur.org, www.unicefusa.org, and www.npr.org