Apparently the Royals Are Tories

The royal family invited to the wedding members of the unemployed royal families of Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia (sic), various absolute monarchs (ie. dictators) from around the world (although the crown prince of Bahrain at least had the shame to decline to attend, not wanting to bring negative attention to the ceremony), representatives from Zimbabwe, North Korea and Yemen (although they did disinvite Syria and Malawi), former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, both of the Conservative party, and Guy Ritchie, David Beckham, and Elton John, but not the previous two prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown or the UK's commissioner at the European Union, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Baroness Catherine Ashton, all of the Labour Party?

Ed Miliband at least did get an invite. I would suggest that after he enjoys some wedding cake, he should add to the Labour platform the abolition of the monarchy.

Let England Shake

"The West's asleep / Let England shake! / Weighted down with silent dead / I fear our blood won't rise again / England's dancing days are done..."

So Polly Jean Harvey sang a year ago on the Andrew Marr Show, accompanied by a strange stringed instrument and a looped sample of "Istanbul, Not Constantinople," her boa and hairdress suggesting a raven (leaving the tower?) while fellow guest Prime Minister Gordon Brown looked on. At the time Nick Clegg was "soaring" in the polls, Brown was calling voters "bigoted," and people weren't so sure about David Cameron and his friends. But soon the election results were in, Brown was out, and Britain had its first coalition government since the Second World War and its first government involving the Liberals since the Great War. Then came austerity.

Harvey's excellent new album Let England Shake was released a few months ago, and it's my favorite of the young decade (though the Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem albums from last year give it a run for its money). Written on an autoharp, it has a more ethereal sound than her punkish early work, it is catchy, accessible, poetic and interesting. The songs are about her native England and about war. Several songs refer to the failure at Gallipoli in 1916, others more generally to the trenches and battles of the Great War. "Written On the Forehead" is about Iraq. Harvey commissioned photographer Seamus Murphy to make short films in England for each song. Harvey explained the reading and research into conflict that preceded the recording of the album ("I was wanting to show the way that history repeats itself, and so in some ways it doesn't matter what time it was, because the endless cycle goes on and on and on... I started wondering where the officially appointed war songwriter was. You have got your war artists, like Steve McQueen, and your war photographers. I fantasized that I had been appointed this official songwriter and so I almost took on that challenge for myself,") and the Imperial War Museum offered to make her an official war song correspondent.

"Goddamn Europeans, take me back to beautiful England, and the grey, damp filthiness of ages and battered books and fog rolling down behind the mountains on the graveyards and dead sea-captains..."

Following Polly's advice, I returned to London, the center of the world, earlier this month after an eight year absence. When I studied there in college, Tony Blair took the United Kingdom into George W. Bush's Iraq War. I watched Bush, Blair, Jose Manuel Barroso and Jose Maria Aznar give Saddam Hussein their demands from the Azores. I marched through Hyde Park in the biggest war protest in decades. I was in Amsterdam on a field trip when the bombs started falling and I had never been more ashamed of my country. In April 2011, Tony Blair is long gone, his candidacy for President of the European Council laughed off the stage (though Barroso rules the Commission blocks away from where I live in Brussels). London had just seen the biggest protests since eight years ago, however, against the coalition government's austerity measures, breaking into small riots. Trafalgar Square had been cleaned up nicely, though. I arrived during a spell of lovely warm weather and there wasn't much of a hint that anything was wrong in England. Indeed, the tea towels had been printed for the April 29 royal wedding.

I enjoyed the Imperial War Museum, which is really worth an afternoon next time you're in London. But Harvey's album is timely, the present moment reminds you that Britain's glory is past, even as cosmopolitan London still feels like the center of the world. The United Kingdom is slowly but surely drifting apart into its constituent nations. Cameron, along with Nicolas Sarkozy, led Barack Obama into a "kinetic military action" in Libya, but within a few days Britain had used up a huge chunk of its missile stockpile. The government had to reconsider its defense budget cuts. The Arab Spring generally represents a crack-up of the mostly British-imposed post-Great War, post-Ottoman order of the Middle East (the shaping of which is excellently described in David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace, which I just read). Eight Arab royals, mostly from countries with long and close relationships to London, are attending William and Kate's wedding but the crown prince of Bahrain is staying away to avoid protests as the future of the house of Khalifa is threatened by protests. A relatively modern Gulf state - the first to diversify its economy away from energy - has fallen under martial law because killing its people is the only way for its 18th century monarchy to stay in power.

The Economist's Bagehot columnist last week took the occasion of the royal wedding to suggest a republic to prevent further class-based nastiness in England. Timothy Garton Ash admits that the monarchy doesn't work in democratic theory but has a heritage value, he asks if we'd prefer a President Blair in Buckingham Palace and points out rightly that "Rupert Murdoch is a far greater threat to British democracy than our hereditary head of state." There are probably decades to go before these bright young things take the throne as King William V and Queen Catherine. The forecast in London tomorrow is cloudy with a chance of rain.

Last Thoughts on the World Cup

I feel like I should write a last few sentences about the World Cup before moving on to other topics, so that I don't leave you hanging in the quarterfinals. I miss the 19th FIFA World Cup, and I can't wait for the 20th in Brazil in 2014. So let's go back for a few minutes early July....

• Paul the Octopus was right about everything. Spain really loves him now, while Germans want to eat more octopus. But he's apparently staying in Germany and trying to help Greek sea turtles, rather than move to Spain.
• I believe Germany was the most talented, most fun to watch team in this tournament. But they also weren't consistently the best, losing to Serbia, and then coming out completely flat-footed against Spain. Spain never really impressed, but they won the World Cup like the tortoise, slow and steady, with an amazingly low 8 goals. Germany scored that many against Saudi Arabia in 2002, Portugal nearly scored that against North Korea this time around. You wonder how Spain would have fared against Diego Maradona's Argentina, Brazil, or even plucky little Uruguay (whose Diego Forlan deservedly won the Golden Boot after a last tough performance against Germany in a third-place match which was better than the final).
• But Spain deserved to win the final match against a disappointing Netherlands (which nevertheless had a couple golden chances to steal a victory from the better team). Having finally attained the grand prize, Spain is now the third most-successful European nation in soccer, in my view. On the World Cup all-time table (finally updated), with their 18 points in South Africa (6 wins, 1 loss, 0 draws), they have leapfrogged France into sixth place, only one point behind England. Like England and France they have won the World Cup just once. But England's win was in 1966 and Spain's was in 2010, and Spain have won two European championships while England has never won. England really has very little to brag about in their soccer accomplishments at the national level, haha. OK, France has also won two European championships but they embarrassed themselves so badly at the World Cup in 2002 and 2010 that Spain gets the edge.

There you go. My next post about soccer will probably have something to do with Ukraine's problems getting its Euro 2012 stadiums built in time. Nice flower symbol!

World Cup, Day 3

When Clint Dempsey's shot slipped through Robert Green's hands yesterday, the American ran down the field pointing his fingers and his eyes to the heavens. With good reason - America's draw against England can't really be attributed to an impressive performance by its strikers or midfielders, and the less said about the defenders the better. Chalk it up to a combination of divine intervention or luck, whatever you prefer, and Tim Howard's top-notch goal-keeping. The draw was a fine result for Team USA. England, who I believed was one of four or five teams that could win the Cup (Spain, Brazil, the Netherlands, England, maybe Argentina), did not look bad but nor did they look like champions.

Germany, on the other hand, just made a statement. Given that their goalkeeper had committed suicide last year and that their next-choice goalie and captain Michael Ballack were out of this Cup, I predicted Germany, along with fellow European powers Italy and France, was headed towards a disappointing Cup, even a first-round knockout in Group D, which looked decently tough before today. But after today's results Germany and Ghana have momentum, Germany looks like a contender, Ghana looks like it might be Africa's great hope, Serbia looks haunted by the prospect of second consecutive bad Cup performance, and you can stick a fork in Australia's ass and turn them over, they're done, with their best player red-carded out of the last two group games.

Little Slovenia is next up for the Americans. When I was shopping for jerseys I considered them, as their mountain outline is either one of the coolest jerseys in the tournament or a bit too Charlie Brown. But Slovenia gear was off-limits because they're in my team's group. I see a US victory and the US and England both in the Round of 16, with England more likely to finish first on goal differential or America drawing one of its two remaining opponents. Then Germany would be a scary opponent, but we'll see how they play in their next two games. Ghana is capable of beating them, and from the qualifiers, you would think Serbia able as well.

And then there's Greece, who I had picked as my second-favorite team in the Cup, based on my Greek roots and the present situation of the country (this job is flexible, last year it was held by home team Germany). I picked them for the semifinals on a whim, but now I don't think they're going to make it out of the group. They were easily outclassed by South Korea yesterday. Which means they're playing for respect, and against history. I've found many interesting nuggets of information in the Goldman Sachs World Cup 2010 and Economics report. One of which is that only one team has played a full six games in the World Cup without winning at least a draw. But Slovenia, Greece, and New Zealand could all have joined El Salvador in this ignominious record by the end of this World Cup. With its victory, Slovenia has more than a snowball's chance in hell of actually advancing to the second round ahead of the United States or England. But Greece and New Zealand could yet match the record. Greece, additionally, has lost four games, and never scored a goal, with 12 goals against it. Only Zaire, which was outscored 14-0 in its one Cup, has a more lopsided history. El Salvador's goal differential is 1-22. To escape ignominy, Greece must beat or draw mighty Argentina or Africa's largest county, Nigeria, which has a very good keeper. So good luck Greece, you'll need it.

World Cup, Day 1

Since the last World Cup, I have mastered the arts of international affairs (incidentally, this is the excuse I have for not posting for a month - celebration around graduation). So I came up the following formulation: in the world of soccer and in the international system, the roles of the United States and Brazil are reversed. In the real world, the United States is the hegemonic superpower and Brazil is the emerging great power that isn't quite there yet (as the West, Russia and China's response to the Brazil and Turkey-brokered deal with Iran on nuclear energy shows). In soccer, the roles are reversed. The USA is one of the most likely countries who has never won the World Cup to win one this time or in the near future (Goldman Sachs gives the USA a 2.81% chance, ninth most likely overall, behind fellow never-wons Spain and the Netherlands and a bit ahead of fellow dark horses Serbia, Mexico and Portugal). But they are an underdog, and it makes them easy to root for.

It is Day 1 of the World Cup, and while I have not managed to write about the Cup ahead of the start of play, I have been eagerly anticipating this day and am plenty inspired now. I have made my predictions with several brackets, bought a Greece jersey as I have decided to make them my second-favorite team, at least at the start of the tournament (why? because they've been in my thoughts, and I am of one-eighth Greek ancestry, and because I thought it would be fun to wear that jersey at European Studies cocktail parties around graduation; its cooling technology also made it a great choice to wear under the graduation gown), and have washed my USA jersey for tomorrow's match with England. Today I was drinking a Dos Equis at Cafe Citron watching the Cup opener on Univision with a bunch of Mexico partisans before 10:30 a.m. Unfortunately I had to closely watch my alcohol intake during the games today, with an afternoon optometrist appointment, lest the World Cup leave me with several years of headaches from a bad prescription, that would be a truly terrible hangover.

OK, not a game was won today, but the games were quite enjoyable, and host South Africa got a good result, if disappointing considering their chances for more goals. The vuvuzela horns made their presence known, filling bars across six continents with a droning noise to accompany the match and the commentary. South Africa is an easy team to root for, we'll see if they can make it out of the first round. I also like Uruguay, perhaps the most improbable of the seven teams that have won the Cup (Brazil five times, Italy four times, Germany three times, Argentina and Uruguay twice, England and France once). Uruguay hasn't won since 1950, but still, all the other countries that have won are much bigger (Uruguay has about 3.5 million people, Argentina has more than 40 million and the others are larger).

I love the World Cup, it is indeed my favorite sporting event. Four years ago, I was lucky enough to be living in Hamburg, teaching less than 20 hours a week, and had plenty of time for enjoying the full Cup experience, and the fantastic chance to blog about it for the International Herald Tribune (the 2006 blog site is no longer online, and I had technical difficulties posting my writings a week ago, so let me know if you really want to read them and I can e-mail you my copy as Microsoft Word document). Four years prior to that, Team USA's surprise showing made me a World Cup fan. I had to leave home for the airport to fly to Alaska, where I was spending the summer, in the middle of the game against Germany, and did not see the Cup to the end from the Alaskan wilderness, where I was learning the arts of birdwatching and bicycling and hiking on glaciers and living in a tent and drinking my dirty dishwater. But the experience (along with playing youth soccer in Mia Hamm's old league, the Annandale Boys and Girls Club of Northern Virginia) primed me for football fandom when I arrived in London for my study abroad program the next year.

Speaking of England, tomorrow's match is simply the most exciting of the 48 first round match-ups. If any of the 32 teams could play any of the others, North vs South Korea might be most interesting, but that's impossible because they're both from the relatively weak conference of Asia which only gets four slots. Brazil vs Portugal is another great match-up of former colony vs its old master, and the level of football might be even higher there, except that it's a game 3 and chances are both will have advanced already and the stakes won't be as high. So USA vs England is the pick of the group stage. Like many a patriot, I'm predicting a USA upset. It won't be easy though. I really think Germany, Italy and France are all going to have disappointing Cups, which leaves England as one of the strongest European powers. But then there is Spain flying high in recent years, and ever-dangerous Holland.

OK, lest I go on for too long, here are my picks for the cup, from my brackets. I filled out a bracket in January when I first could, and picked Spain to beat the Netherlands in the final (by the way, Argentina, Brazil, Germany or Italy has played in every final, so this would be unprecendented), with the United States and England both making it to the semifinals. In May, I couldn't edit this bracket because I couldn't remember my user name or password, so I just discovered this today, although I remembered I had picked Spain. In my main bracket, my May bracket, I picked Spain over Brazil, with the United States and Greece in the semis. And yesterday, not being allowed by ESPN to enter my May bracket in a fourth group, I chose to go a little wilder on the group stage, and ended up with the Netherlands over Spain simply because I had given my bracket a Dutch name from a Wikipedia article on the Dutch War of Independence and why not (although a Dutch victory would probably give rise to mixed feelings for many in South Africa), with the United States and England again in the semis. So those are the teams I think are going to have a good Cup. And we'll just see what happens.

May Wayne Rooney sleep tonight like Richard III before the battle of Bosworth Field. USA! USA! USA!