Author: VD

Instapundit goes after the IRS

It is remarkable how quickly the feared agency began acting like frightened gangsters once they found themselves in the investigative crosshairs:

When charges came out that the IRS targeted Tea Party groups for harassment, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto started calling Obama “President Asterisk.” His point was that this illicit assistance tainted the election, the way an athlete’s use of illegal performance-enhancers results in an asterisk on any records he sets.

Now it may be time for another asterisk. As Congress investigates the IRS chicanery, the IRS has responded to a request for emails to and from Lois Lerner, who spearheaded the Tea Party harassment, by saying, basically, that the dog ate its homework. Or, rather, the IRS claims, somewhat dubiously, that “a hard drive crash” on Lerner’s computer led to the loss of emails to outside entities “such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.” You know, the very people she’s accused of coordinating her harassment with….

Targeting Americans is unforgivable; covering it up is worse, and if the
IRS has made it impossible to target the individuals responsible, then
the IRS as a whole should pay the price.

I find it very, very difficult to believe that the “missing emails” defense is going to hold up. Too many people have suffered at the IRS hands for too long for Congress to give Lerner and company a pass.

A failure to grasp consequences

I thought this article by a worried cultural blank-slatist was informative, because it demonstrates how, even when faced with the obvious consequences of multiculturalism and the rejection of their own traditional Christian culture, the secularists still leap to the wrong conclusions and refuse to abandon their groundless assumptions.

If I have learnt one thing working with children as a teacher, a volunteer and, more recently, a parent, it’s that what children want above all else is to fit in. The desire not to be different must be hard-wired, so urgent is the need of your average nine-year-old to have the same pencil case as every other nine-year-old. Individuality, much prized in adult life, is abhorred by our conservative juniors, who crave acceptance as the thirsty crave water. “Fitting in” is braided into the DNA of every child, regardless of creed or colour. When the deep, resonant bell of human evolution tolls, it says: “Belong, belong, belong.”

Integrating children into a new society, then, should not present too much of a problem. A football, some Panini World Cup stickers to trade, One Direction, Harry Potter, 97 episodes of Friends, especially the one where Rachel has a baby: common interests for youngsters are not hard to find. So how have we ended up with a situation where so many Muslims are adrift from the mainstream? Why this scandal in Birmingham where five overwhelmingly Muslim schools, some until recently judged to be outstanding, are to be put into special measures because they have sought to inculcate ideas that are repellent to this country?

Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on! A Muslim girl who winds up in Bolton or Luton should thank her lucky stars she doesn’t live in Sudan – or Pakistan, where, only last month, a woman was stoned to death by her family for the crime of marrying a man of whom they disapproved. Farzana Parveen’s father explained: “I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it.”

Are British values superior to Mr Parveen’s? I do hope so.

Unfortunately, the great lie underpinning the creed of multiculturalism, as spouted by Francois‑Cerrah and her ilk, is that all cultures are “equally valid”. Well, patently, they’re not. The reason irate Pakistani patriarchs are not chucking bricks at their errant daughters in the Birmingham Bull Ring is because Britain has a basically uncorrupt police force, a robust judiciary and an enlightened, hard-won system of liberal values that regards women and girls as equals, not third-class citizens.

But instead of standing up to barbarism and ignorance, too often we have looked away in embarrassment or fear. How many teachers have averted their gaze when 13-year-old Muslim girls suddenly disappear from the classroom to be taken “home” for a forced marriage, because this would present unwelcome evidence that some cultures are less valid than others?

How many health professionals in Bradford are concerned, but never say so, that intermarriage in the Muslim community – 75 per cent of Pakistanis in the city are married to their first cousin – is causing babies to be born blind, deaf and with other disabilities? Back in 2008, when Labour environment minister Phil Woolas said that British Pakistanis were fuelling the rate of birth defects, he was slapped down by Downing Street, with a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown saying the issue was not one for ministers to comment on. Government after government has filed this thorny issue in “The Too Difficult Box”, the title of a timely new book edited by former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke.

This was all so predictable. Back in the summer of 1981, I was working in a primary school in west London where the children were dizzy with excitement about Prince Charles and Lady Di. The royal wedding was a great unifying event, but there was one group of pupils who were not allowed to fit in. The little Muslim girls did not wear cool, gingham-checked dresses in the heat like the others. Instead, they were dressed in the winter uniform – a polo neck and tunic worn over strictly non-uniform trousers and thick tights. As far as I could tell, no teacher dared challenge this clear breach of school rules. In a similar spirit, it was accepted that the Muslim girls could not attend the weekly swimming lesson.

When a trip was planned to Hampton Court, the children were told they would be seeing Henry VIII’s bed. Somehow, the word “bed”, coupled with the humongously horny Henry, set off alarm bells among Muslim parents, who withdrew their sons and daughters from the outing. This irrational boycott was tolerated. I remember thinking how awful and sad it was that liberal, white teachers didn’t stick up for the Muslim children’s right to play a full part in the life of their country.

It made me angry when I was practically a child myself, and it makes me even angrier now, 30 years on, thinking of the lost decades when good people did nothing to prevent the toxic situation outlined this week by the chief inspector of schools. Music and dancing banned in a primary school because they are un-Islamic. Muslim pupils not allowed to study Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing because it shows young people falling in love and marrying. A preacher who believes homosexuals should be stoned to death invited to address an assembly – in a British school in a British town, forsooth. Children as young as six told that Western women are “white prostitutes”, if you please….

I think the battle we must fight now really has very little to do with sincere religious belief. It’s about social control, repression, misogyny and cruelty.

Multiculturalism, and the insistence that all cultures are created equal, was the inevitable result of the secular rejection of Christian European culture. It was the combination of a) asserting traditional customs and morality to be onerous with b) the intrinsic philosophical groundlessness of secularism. Without deeming all cultures equal, and thereby permitting everyone to pick and choose whatever standards they preferred, they could not render judgementalism the one and only sin and provide themselves with a weapon against their traditional culture.

But instead of admitting they were wrong to advocate secularism over traditional Christian European culture, they are trying to separate the consequence from the cause. And that is not going to work.

I’ve nearly finished reading Thomas Asbridge’s The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land. And one thing that is clear is that conflict between secularism and Islam is even more inevitable than the historical conflict between Christianity and Islam. It is evident that Islam goes through periods of decadence, decay, and dormancy, before it revives and becomes expansionary and imperial. This cycle can no more be externally controlled and managed than an individual can negotiate with the cells in his body.

What we are witnessing is The Third Jihad, the third great wave of Islamic expansion. The first was 622 to 732 AD. The second was 1071 to 1683. The third began in 1936, when the Muslim Brotherhood first began to oppose British rule in Egypt.

And as long as the secular West is babbling about the evolutionary need to “belong belong belong” and actively inviting its own invasion, the Third Jihad will continue its rapid expansion across the globe. Muslims are “adrift from the mainstream” because they are a rival mainstream, and a powerful historical mainstream with considerable advantages over the barren secular one. The complete collapse of the well-armed Iraqi Army in the face of the outnumbered, outgunned ISIS forces despite its material advantages is an apt metaphor for the way in which Western secularism now finds itself in full-fledged retreat before the advance of global Islam.

Brazil v Mexico

This promises to be an enjoyable game, as well as determining whether
the home team is a legitimate contender for the title or not. The
Germans look fearsome; the USA looks tactically competent, but
insufficiently athletic and technical to hope for more than a draw
against Portugal and a possible second-place finish on goal
differential.

Game of Thrones Season 4 finale

In addition to streamlining the story, Messrs. Benioff and Weiss appear to have a better grip on where A Song of Ice and Fire is going than Mr. Martin does himself. Not that I appreciated all their innovations; while apparently aborting Brienne of Tarth’s tedious wandering is a true mercy, it was just silly to see her defeating the Hound, not once, but twice. But at least a) she is a physical freak, and b) they made it look like a close-run thing, so it wasn’t too ridiculously Pink in these latter and oft very silly days.

I was wondering what on Earth Stannis Baratheon was doing NORTH of the Wall. Why does Mance need a tunnel to go south if Stannis doesn’t need it to go south? Ships, one presumes, but this was not actually explained that I noticed. And how did Stannis’s tiny force, even augmented by Iron Bank financing, so easily demolish the 100,000 strong army of the Wildings?

Despite these questions, it promises to avoid the interminable Stannis in the Snow chapters that so dragged down the latter books. And Benioff and Weiss have wisely kept the Mereen elements to a bare minimum, retaining only the emotionally powerful aspects of the Danaerys storyline – losing Ser Jorat and having to chain her dragons – rather than waste time on bureaucratic and romantic matters.

Tyrion’s escape seemed rushed. The murder of Shay was more like an accident than a betrayal punished, and it seemed odd that Tywin didn’t simply point out that he sent Jaime and Tyrion’s escape was all his doing. But Tyrion redeemed the whole scene with his final, hissed “I have always been your son”. One won’t often see two better actors facing off than in that last father-son Lannister showdown.

I also liked that Benioff and Weiss clearly grasp how boring the Bran storyline is. Short, action-packed, and full of skeletons erupting from the snow, that was definitely a great way to go. Burying Bran under a tree and leaving him there to vegetate for the rest of the show strikes me as an excellent idea.

All in all, I am considerably more optimistic about Season Five than I am about The Winds of Winter, although I would very much like to be proven wrong and to see Mr. Martin regain his fastball.

Precognition and probability

Outlaw X and others have noticed Hollywood’s pre-9/11 references to the date:

While watching the 1998 film, “Enemy of the State,” I noticed a curious reference to 9/11. A few others online have noticed this as well. As we showed recently, pre-9/11 film references are common, and show more than mere coincidence, especially in the cases of the references in the Simpsons, The Lone Gunmen and the Iron Man cartoon.  This one is peculiar, in that it picks out John Voight’s character, “Reynolds” in the film, who is the head of the NSA and is involved in numerous illegal activities such as wiretapping, spying and tracking.  The film has Will Smith and Gene Hackman on the run from big brother, and is replete with references to the control grid, 1984 and Brave New World. It also thows in a little hint at 9/11 for good measure.

This is not necessarily of any significance beyond mere chance. Richard Feynman once explained how confirmation bias often causes us to see patterns that are not there, because we assign significance to some outcomes and pay no attention to others. However, these 9/11 references also cannot be automatically dismissed as confirmation bias, especially since we know that the CIA and other government agencies have long been directly involved with using Hollywood for propaganda purposes.

It is not difficult, merely tedious, to determine whether confirmation bias is at work here or not. An examination of every film release from 1992 through 2001 and a compilation of every date graphically displayed in the films will soon show which dates are statistical outliers. If the 11th of September happens to be one of the dates that is disproportionately displayed, that would be a strong indication, albeit not absolute proof, that there was beforehand knowledge of its future significance.

I have no interest in watching a decade’s worth of movies, nor do I think it is necessary to do so in order to doubt the Official Story of 9/11 (regulars know that I am cynical enough to assert the mere fact that a particular version of events has been deemed Official by the government is sufficient reason to be dubious about it) but if those who are conspiracy-minded are interested in providing evidence that goes beyond mere happenstance, that would be one way to go about it.

Germany v Portugal

Great result for the USA, if they can beat Ghana today. Germany’s destruction of Portugal, complete with a red card and an injury, has Portugal reeling and should set the USA up nicely… if they can get at least one point from Ghana.

YOWZERS! 31 seconds in and Clint Dempsey nutmegs a defender, manages to pull the ball along with him, and slides it home off the post! 1-0 USA.

Lions Den X: Tom Kratman

The Taurans had dedicated three hundred sorties to a pre-landing preparation of the island.  That was not small change, those roughly two thousand tons.  But, it was generally agreed, the Taurans had to do their business and leave before the Zhong reached within two kilometers of the beaches.  Otherwise, the world, fate, God, Murphy (who, it was well known, had emigrated to Terra Nova in the first wave), or the Emperor Mong, whom the Zhong and Anglians both disowned, would fuck somebody.
 
With the ovals and circles at sea straightening now into deadly arrows, pointed not-quite-straight at the beaches, the Taurans half darkened the sky.  They lashed down not only at the landing beaches, but at half a dozen others as heavily, and eleven more a bit more lightly, for the deception value.  Known, or believed to be known, artillery positions got a special pasting. 

Generally speaking, Wallenstein was surprised at the fury of the Tauran assault.

My cousins have apparently got a few grudges from the five minute bomber raids.

The Zhong and Taurans had, if anything, been overly cautious about the use of the latters’ airpower in proximity to the formers’ unarmored Marines.  While the first wave of landing craft were eight hundred meters offshore, the last of the Tauran strikers was flying east toward their bases in Santa Josefina.

To smoke was now added a considerable cloud of dust raised by the bombs.  Most of the island could not be seen with the naked eye or unaided camera.

“Switching to thermal imaging,” Khan announced.  The screen went blank, then red, then to a mix of stark black and red.  It took a bit of time for both mind and eyes to adjust. 

“Narrow focus on the island and the leading wave,” Wallenstein commanded.  “Order Harmony to bring the skimmer in lower, and have them prep another in case we lose this one.”

“Aye, aye, High Admiral,” said one of the communications boffins.  Communication was nearly instantaneous, while the skimmer was close in any case.  The focus of the crew and their commander narrowed considerably as the first waves of the Zhong Marines splashed ashore

 “What’s that?” Wallenstein asked, as the skimmer approached a tilted triple turret.

“We’ve got lasing!” a petty officer announced.  “Lasing from the whole northern coast.  Lasing from the balloons.  Lasing from Hill 287.  Lasing…”

The room shook with an inarticulate cry of despair from the Zhong Empress.  She saw what Khan saw, and had divined the meaning just as quickly

“It’s a gun; I’d guess an eighteen centimeter gun,” Khan said, his voice heavy with defeat.  “On a railway carriage.  It came from one of the ammunition bunkers we didn’t attack.  I think…I think there are going to be a lot of them.  And they’re not lasing for its own sake.”

Tonelessly, hopelessly, he added, “Empress, you should tell the Zhong Fleet to retreat… High Admiral, tell her.”  Khan’s chin sank onto his chest.  “But, of course, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”

By now, I expect you know the drill. I have three review copies of Tom Kratman’s The Rods and the Axe to send out to the first three readers willing to read it, then write a review and send it to me before June 25th. If you’re interested, send me an email with AXE in the subject. We have the necessary reviewers now, thank you.

Legalized fraud

Overturning centuries of English Common Law, false representation is now legal in the United States.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) won dismissal of a suit over $450 million in residential mortgage-backed securities, with a New York judge saying that the firms that bought the bonds should have done more research beforehand.

State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos dismissed the claims against Goldman Sachs today, saying the investors only reviewed data presented in offering documents for the securities and never asked to review files for the underlying loans.

“The true nature of the risk being assumed could, admittedly, have been ascertained from reviewing these loan files and plaintiffs never asked for them,” Ramos wrote.

In other words, it’s perfectly legal to present someone with a fraudulent document claiming to be selling them a pig in the poke, because if they don’t actually look in the sack to see that there is a dead rat, and not a live pig in there, it’s their own fault. This is another sign of the continued collapse of the rule of law in the USA.

Congratulations, Justice Ramos. You may have just destroyed the securitization market. Who in their right minds will ever purchase a loan security again? If you were going to review each and every loan and ascertain the risks involved, you would already be a mortgage bank.

Fortunately for Goldman Sachs, there should be enough con artists out there for the apex con artist to continue preying upon. But what sane and honest individual would ever choose to do business with them in light of their behavior here? And can you imagine if this standard were applied across the board? No one would ever dare to buy something in a box or order anything off the Internet ever again.

Contamination by association

In keeping with the argument presented by Tim Atkinson, I encourage left-liberal science fiction writers to not “give house room” to known child molesters and rapists. Atkinson writes:

Now, there’s a conversation to be had about how and whether to read authors with detestable views. I’m not pro-censorship, I’m pro-context. But putting someone prone to racist outbursts on a conservative voting slate for the shortlist for the prestigious Hugo Awards – that sends a entirely different message to the one I think you hoped it would.

Would Beale have gotten onto the shortlist for Best Novella – which he succeeded in doing – if he hadn’t had this kind of support? We’ll probably never know. But the point is that the Beale-boosting contaminated by association the conservatives-and-libertarians-overlooked-in-SF position the slate was intended at least in part to raise.

Correia mounts a mainly art-for-arts-sake defence for the inclusion of Beale on his slate (it’s a long post so I’d suggest scrolling or searching for it). Unfortunately, he presses onto deny both the racism of Beale’s statement and of the man himself, which seems at best naïve and at worst disingenuous in light of his public record….

I have been clear, I hope, that Correia is not supporting Beale over and
above putting him on his Hugos slate and is on the record that he
himself is not racist. My key point is that putting forward such a
divisive, controversial figure (to put it mildly and in terms you might
find acceptable) risks contaminating by implication
conservative/libertarian positions in science-fiction.

I find Mr. Atkinson’s concern about messages and contamination to be fascinating. Mr. Atkinson claims my comments made in response to a woman lying about me and repeatedly attacking me are “controversial” and risk “contaminating by implication
conservative/libertarian positions in science-fiction” while completely ignoring the fact that, by the same metric, the liberal/left position in science fiction has undeniably been contaminated for 15 years by the documented public evidence that Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the most influential and celebrated feminist authors that Pink SF/F has ever had, was an abusive, sexually aberrant child molester and incestuous rapist.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was convicted on a federal child pornography charge prior to her marrying the homosexual child molester Walter Breen and editing one of his books defending pedophilia. Bradley’s own daughter has publicly stated that her mother raped her on more than one occasion. One of Bradley’s lesbian lovers testified in a 1998 legal deposition that she was aware Marion Zimmer Bradley sexually harassed and tortured her own daughter, and raped her own son as well.

SFWA purged me from its ranks for a single tweet, but has not yet seen fit to purge Marion Zimmer Bradley despite her many sex-related crimes dating back to the 1950s. They have not revoked the two Nebula nominations given to a known child molester and a magazine named after her. SFWA still features an RIP notice for Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as a listing for Bradley’s literary estate and the agent for that estate on its Internet site. (However, it is interesting to note that SFWA never awarded her any distinction as a Grand Master or Author Emeritus whereas she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention in 2000, which suggests that some SFWA officers were probably aware of her problematic history.) But SFWA’s Nebula-winning members and former officers are still writing and publishing laudatory articles about the confirmed child abuser, some as recently as last week.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the 47 SFWA members who called for my expulsion and none of the 8 SFWA Board members who voted for it have ever openly condemned Marion Zimmer Bradley or called for the revoking of all awards and recognition given to her by various science fiction and fantasy organizations even though knowledge of her crimes has been a literal matter of public record for more than a decade. By the Left’s own transitive logic of contamination-by-association, until they do, it must be assumed that Steven Gould, Rachel Swirsky, Lee Martindale, Matthew Johnson, Bud Sparhawk, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (a self-described racist), John Scalzi (a self-described rapist), the Toad of Tor, Jim Hines, Jo Walton, Deborah Ross, Amal El-Mohtar, and dozens of other left-leaning science fiction and fantasy writers are morally degenerate individuals who celebrate homosexuality, torture, child abuse, child molestation, incest, and rape.

It appears not to be a coincidence that their books are so often packed with sexual perversions and crimes. It is beyond irony, and well into dark parody, to discover that this inclusive and tolerant crowd has long included, tolerated, celebrated, and even honored a felonious feminist child molester. In light of these facts, I sent the following letter to Steven Gould, the President of SFWA, yesterday:

Dear Mr. Gould and the SFWA Board


I have three questions in light of the recent public statements that
Marion Zimmer Bradley raped her daughter, and the legal depositions of Ms Bradley and Elizabeth Waters which are posted on SFF.net and indicate Marion Zimmer Bradley:

  1. was aware of her husband’s criminal sexual molestation of
    several underage boys
  2. tortured and sexually molested her own daughter
  3. raped her own son

First, as a tolerant and inclusive organization, does the
behavior which SFWA tolerates include abnormal sexual behavior
such as homosexuality, child abuse, torture, and incestuous rape by its
members? Second, will the SFWA Board be purging Marion Zimmer
Bradley from SFWA’s historical membership list and removing all
references to her, her estate, and her estate’s agent from the
SFWA web site? Third, will the SFWA Board be retroactively
expunging from the Nebula Awards list Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1976
Best Novel nomination for The Heritage of Hastur and
Mary C. Aldridge’s 1990 Best Short Story nomination for “The
Adinkra Cloth”, published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy
Magazine.


As a former life member of SFWA expelled by the current SFWA
Board for a tweet deemed inappropriate, I should be very interested to hear SFWA’s formal position
on homosexuality, child molestation, torture and incestuous rape by its
members. I look forward to reading your response.


Sincerely,
Vox Day

Some may find it shocking to learn that even after learning about the extent of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s crimes, members of the SFWA are still defending the woman and her work. I can’t say I’m even surprised.

In addition to the lives she harmed, MZB’s works saved the lives of
other people by speaking to them when other works and other people would
not and/or did not.

Truly.

Rachel E. Holmen, who worked as an editor for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine said about Marion: “When she visited cons, ten or twenty young women an hour would stop by
with stories along the lines of “Your books saved my life.””

There are other writers being published now who may speak to those
same hearts, but if MZB is still the author that would help them, then I
think it’s important that her work be available to do so. This doesn’t
diminish her very real (and very severe) failings.

Rachel’s quote points out why we need diverse books by diverse writers that speak to diverse audiences.

Additionally, MZB gave a start to a lot of women writers—a higher
percentage than anyone else in the genre at the time. Those writers
helped pave the way for even more female voices in the genre.

Keep in mind that the SF/F Left openly states that science fiction needs books by child molesters and rapists. Because diversity. And equality. And it remains enthusiastic about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s depraved legacy.

“Great to see MZB’s Legacy Continue!”
– Jim Hines, Hugo Award-winning SFWA member

I certainly wouldn’t say so. Would you? The Left always claims the Right is a collection of racist white supremacists. But how seriously can you take the accusations made by collection of child-molesting perverts? The only rape culture to be found in science fiction and fantasy is on the SF/F Left.

UPDATE: Deidre clarifies her position on Marion Zimmer Bradley and makes it clear that she is NOT defending the woman.

The entire reason I posted about Marion Zimmer Bradley at all is that
she did unconscionable things and enabled unconscionable things and
Tor.com was whitewashing that. Full stop.

Even if you disagree
with me about almost everything else, we probably agree that suicide, in
general, is a sad loss of life. There are a lot of people who’ve had
rough childhoods who feel suicidal and who have attempted suicide. If
MZB’s books help keep a few of them living long enough to get through
that dark patch, then I think that is a good thing.

It does not change the fact that I think she belonged in prison.

Now, I think she’s wrong as I do not believe the child molester’s books saved a single life, the various claims of attention-seeking drama queens notwithstanding. But regardless, it is clear that she is not defending Marion Zimmer Bradley, she is not claiming that the woman’s actions are justified by the impact of her books, and she should not be criticized for doing so. To the contrary, she should be lauded for calling out the ghastly MZB-glorifying actions of Tor.com and others.

Switzerland v Ecuador

I’m enjoying the results to date. Here is hoping that the doughty Swiss can continue the theme. Hopp Schwiiz!

I didn’t actually think the English were bad, and Sterling is clearly a player to watch. But they simply weren’t strong enough to break through the Italian catenaccio-style defending. Some may find it boring to watch, but I’ve played with Italians long enough that I’ve come to respect the defense-first philosophy.

And Pirlo… what can you say about a playmaker still playing at this level at 35? It’s unbelievable. Remember, those midfielders are covering the equivalent of up to three 5k races in only 90 minutes, with only one break in the middle. Calcio isn’t as violent as MMA, NHL, or the NFL, but it is a brutal sport in its own way. There is a reason why even superlatively great players like Brazil’s Kaká are done as internationals at 32 and there is talk of England’s Rooney being washed up at 28.

UPDATE: Switzerland was robbed of one game-winning goal (seriously, what is it with these terrible assistant referees and their dreadful offsides calls?) but a PHENOMENAL slide tackle to stop a dangerous shot in the area, followed by a GREAT advantage call by the referee, led to a long counterattack and goal with 14 seconds left in injury time. 2-1 Switzerland!