games without frontiers
heads will roll
Soccer is the most beautiful most perfect game ever created by humans next to chess and go.
All three are at their core games about hunting and warfare.
Legend has it the first soccer ball was a human head.
Early football matches in the UK featured whole villages pitted against each other in bloody games that ran for days with no rules or referees.
These are more civilized times, so we’re told.
Africa brought ten nations to World Cup 2026, most of them countries the average western civilized human couldn’t identify on a map.
Morocco, South Africa, and the Ivory Coast have so far qualified for the knockout round of 32. A handful of others such as Ghana, Senegal, Egypt and the DR Congo may yet qualify as the final group results are sorted.
Among the richest most powerful teams in the cup are the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Spain, England and the US, aka the six countries who were responsible for and who profited most from the Atlantic slave trade and the genocide that was the Middle Passage.
It should be impossible to not notice that two of the smallest countries on that list, the Dutch and the Brits, whose homelands aren’t known for natural resources, are still among the wealthiest on the planet.
Likewise it’s impossible to not realize a third of the French national team including their star player could have easily chosen to rep various north African nations that are former colonies.
This post is not specifically about slavery or racism but capitalism.
Every time the networks cut away during water breaks to advertising for companies like Meta, SpaceX, Amazon or Google, or companies associated with, owned or controlled by them, it should be lost on nobody these are the same data harvesters who steal billions of gallons of fresh water daily from the biosphere that is the plant animal human food chain to cool their machines.
What should also sink in but does not because of massive gaps in our educational system is that the last time we gave such unchecked power to private for profit corporations was roughly five hundred years ago after the Americas were rediscovered for plunder and what we got were the West and East India Trading Companies, run by the Dutch and the Brits.
Those two private free market companies gifted us the economic lawlessness that became the Atlantic slave trade and the horrors of the Middle Passage.
The opium wars as well but save that for another day.
The banks and royals and other pirates kicked in to scheme and troubleshoot, refine and optimize and provide cover for the triangular east to west barter system that sent humans and peppercorn from Africa and the spice islands to the Caribbean, sugar and tea and humans to North America, tobacco and cotton to London and Spain and round and round and a lot of gold changing hands and all of it the spawn of the East and West Indian Trading Companies.
East was the Brits. West was the Dutch.
They were Amazon and Google on the high seas with private armies.
The Dutch were the last of the euro trash conquerors to outlaw slavery in their colonies, waiting till the last years of the American Civil War, and like the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French and the Brits, their main reason to cave to abolition was the trade was no longer sufficiently profitable.
In their disco days the East and West Indian Companies controlled up to half the world’s wealth, operated mercenary army and naval forces big and bad enough to challenge any nation state of the day, and they absolutely controlled trade and traffic on the high seas.
They were responsible for endless atrocities and crimes against humanity.
They also gave us Earl Grey tea.
It should be noted too that Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, Saudia Arabia... None of these countries are innocent in this. Slavery has forever been more about the wealthy enslaving the poor than it was about skin color. Before the Atlantic middle passage there was the Indian Ocean slave trade, operated by Islamic warlords under the Ottoman Empire.
Keep in mind I say all this as a lifelong player and disciple of the game. I have explained more than once the mechanics of the offsides rule to non disciples with the patience of a zen monk.
I know how it feels to win or lose a match on a penalty kick.
I have tried and failed to describe exactly how it feels to bend one like Beckham.
The only word that comes near is divine.
I’m a devout Tottenham Spurs and Barcelona fan who never misses a match against Liverpool or Real Madrid and nothing would please me more than seeing the Netherlands, Spain or England trounced by one of the African nations or the US to face Japan in a knockout round. Rather like much of the world’s reaction when the US were knocked out by Iraq in 1998.
Ten countries in the cup is already impressive. The next century belongs to Africa demographically speaking they have three 22 yr olds for every senior. The US has two seniors for every 22 yr old, Africa will rise.
China is taking the long view. They are investing in infrastructure on the African continent. They are building roads and factories eventually military bases but Africa will rise. They will dominate the world and the cup in the decades to come if we don’t destroy ourselves.
The Netherlands, while still outlandishly wealthy, are not anyone’s problem.
The new East and West Indian Trading Companies are Google, SpaceX, Meta, Palantir, Amazon and OpenAi.
These companies are the greatest enemies of and existential threats to the human race.
We must not let them push our eyes off the ball.
Heads will roll when the dust clears on this decade.
The only questions are whose heads and how horrible the spectacle.
If you have ever wished we could sort out world politics with the outcome of the cup you’re not alone.
peace.
postscript. I have new fiction on The Velvet and a new essay on Rule 35, paywalls currently down.
Links below.
