Olympic Boozing: Would someone shut up that drunk? Oh, hello Mr. Sports Minister.

The Olympic Games have thus far yet to provide any really satisfying doping scandals. The major one thus far had to do with a North Korean shooter recently found to have used a banned substance. And it wasn't as if he was taking anything that would give him superhuman eyesight or the aim of Rambo in the bush -- just some drug that helped him chill out. Yawn. Next most exciting doping scandal? A Vietnamese artistic gymnast, who didn’t even make it into the top three, took something of some sort to help with whatever it is an artistic gymnastic does.

It’s as if people are no longer making the effort in the shadow of Ben Johnson, who humiliated our country by taking anabolic steroids (read: didn’t cycle the drugs out of his system in time) prior to setting a world record in the 100-metre dash in 1988.

In lieu of that and since we would rather not walk down the easily-misconstrued-comment-laden road of the age scandal surrounding female gymnasts (an over-40 part-time athlete only gymnast competition -- now that would be entertaining), and because we believe that Bob Costas was one of only about 16 people who saw the original lip-synched child folksong performance, we were pleased that amid all of this a minor scandal broke that is more up our alley (story here).

The incident occurred while Argentina and Belgium were playing a doubles tennis match. Tennis is not typically given to the type of abusive bellowing that is considered a matter of form in sports like baseball and football. But one fan was hollering for the Belgian players so loudly that at one point an Argentine player lost it and told the guy to shut the hell up.

The raucous fan turned out to be our new favorite politician, Belgian Sports Minister Michel Daerden. Holding the government sports portfolio usually means with being faced with tasks about as challenging as cutting the ribbon at the local YMCA or deciding whether or not the part of the local stadium's ceiling that fell onto the heads of spectators last weekend could stand some fixing. In a post like that you might as well enjoy yourself, and Daerden apparently has been doing just that. Not only was he also spotted drunk cheering on the Belgian hockey team, but he has reached the point of having such a rep as a drunkard, that his antics have made it onto YouTube.

Here then is the minister speaking shortly after an election of some sort or other in Belgium. Language barriers are not a problem here, as he is clearly speaking the international language of drunk:

Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems, Part II

For those of you who have missed your Amnesty International “urgent-action” mailings for the past eight years, the Olympics are now underway in Beijing. Athletes from around the world have come to demonstrate their athletic superiority over millions – that is in the case of sports that people actually give a damn about like basketball or foot-racing. The same cannot be said for sports kept alive by Olympic amateur athletic life-support and played with any level of dedication only by the 61 people who receive such funding, like, say, badminton or synchronized swimming. [This number diminishes significantly for Winter Olympics events, particularly the luge. Only about 18 people are involved in this; they use figures carved out of balsa wood and stuffed in winter jackets to pull off the illusion of more].

Of all the events on the Olympic roster, these two might just take the cake for the most ridiculous. Synchronized swimming could give out points to the competitor whose eyes show the greatest tolerance to chlorinated water and be just as legitimate a sport as it is now, and badminton is tennis minus the skill or athleticism played primarily by drunks at cottages who have tired of pelting beer cans with rocks. It’s a mystery why these events have survived, when others that are also better suited to the beer-cooler crowd have been cut, like the tug of war, or the motorized water sports event of 1908, an Olympian feat in sloth that couldn’t be topped unless go-karting making it onto the Olympic program.

But regardless of the sport and whether an international gathering of its devotees could be held in a phone-booth, all winners get to hear their national tune when they’re up on the podium and receiving a medal that they may or may not pawn in the lean years to follow. Canada, our home country, has quite possibly the most namby-pamby anthem around (though it's a toss-up between that and “Advance Australia Fair”).

Far more evocative and interesting, if also jingoistic and violent, are the songs on this list, those primarily born out of revolution and bloodshed, that nonetheless give the people something to be fired up and shake their fists for during international sporting competitions.

Here then are the Top Five Most Violent National Anthems of All Time!

5) Turkey: This one beseeches each faithful citizen of Turkey to: "Render your chest as armor and your body as a trench!" Ouch! Why? The anthem goes on to explain: "For soon shall come the joyous days of divine promise... Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow? Perhaps even sooner!" Perhaps even sooner! You never know! Maybe next Wednesday... Possibly Labor Day.

This one wins the prize for pure intensity with one of its closing quatrains, describing a citizen so full of love for his nation that HIS TOMBSTONE prostrates a thousand times in ecstasy because things are going right in Turkey.

Choice Lyrics (Full anthem here)

For only then, shall my fatigued tombstone,
if there is one, prostrate a thousand times in ecstasy,
And tears of fiery blood shall flow out of my every wound,
And my lifeless body shall gush out from the earth like an eternal spirit

And now, a child singing the full version of the anthem. Actually, we're just guessing on that. She might just be reciting the traditional couple of quatrains typically saved for public performance, and the rest is a rant on the declining quality of Turkish Saturday morning cartoons, we're not sure.

4) Mexico: Latin America has more than its fair share of bloody national anthems -- see Uruguay and its national tune featuring the catchy refrain "Nation or the grave!" -- but Mexico's gets a place here for its Rambo-like obsession with blood -- blood in the fields, blood on the flag, bloody noses that don't stop when you pinch your nostrils and tilt your head backward... Well most of that anyway. This is another one with extra verses that are never sung in public. That's for the best as we're guessing it would be enough to frighten those with less violent anthems from daring to compete.

Choice Lyrics: (Full anthem) War, war! Let the national banners
be soaked in waves of blood.

Oh Fatherland, ere your children, defenseless
bend their neck beneath the yoke,
may your fields be watered with blood,
may they leave their footprints in blood.







3) Vietnam: A country that has overcome so much in the past half century, not the least of which was having its name associated with an obnoxious Robin Williams movie of the 1980s, to become one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing economies. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In this anthem we learn that the road to prosperity is paved with the corpses of the enemy, and also that gunfire provides a nice backbeat:

Choice Lyrics: (Full anthem)
Our hurried steps resound on the long and arduous road.
Our flag, red with the blood of victory, bears the spirit of the country.
The distant rumbling of the guns mingles with our marching song.
The path to glory is built by the bodies of our foes.

And here we have further proof of a universal truth concerning national anthems: they sound better when sung by a bunch of drunk people in a bar.

2) Romania: One of the few songs we can ever recall hearing that manages to work in a mention of the "knout", a leather (though often adorned with metal, particularly hooks) whip popular in czarist Russia for strapping serfs. And then it gets violent.

Choice Lyrics: (Full Anthem)
Priests, lead with your crucifixes! Because our army is Christian,
The motto is Liberty and its goal is holy,
Better to die in battle, in full glory,
Than to once again be slaves upon our ancient ground!

1) France: Home to Paris, the city of love, and Le Marseilles, a Valentine to violence disguised as a national anthem. Composed in revolutionary France, this ditty doubles as a nice all-purpose theme-song for the guillotining of noblemen, and the expelling of the foreign hordes.

Choice Lyrics: In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

And the best anthem sung in a movie scene ever:



CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE TOP 10 MOST VIOLENT NATIONAL ANTHEMS!

Olympics 101: Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems, Part I

Despite sinking more coins into our Olympic coffers than a virgin at Lucky Fountain, Toronto has been repeatedly denied the chance to host the games and as a result, we won't get to see if the shot-put can, after 2500 years of failing to do so, finally ignite the public's imagination.

By not landing the Games of the Olympiad, we'll not only miss out on yelling 'Geronimo' off a 10 meter springboard, but also the aesthetic thumb in the eye that is the opening ceremonies, which distill a nation's character down to a few silly gesticulations, which in our case would be break-dancing Mounties, some sort of giant papier-mâché leaf and a chorus line of lumberjacks.

However, the Olympics are about more than just cheap showmanship, like your uncle who can balance a cane on the end of his toe while whistling "Chevy Van". They're a chance for countries to atone for past sins, march together in a show of togetherness twice a decade and see whose athletes can pump themselves more full of pharmaceuticals than an Amy Winehouse pot luck.

There are some countries, such as those whose main export is a variety of tart nectarine, that you never really get to hear from in non-Olympic years unless an extradition treaty is violated or some autocrat is ousted and replaced by an antelope as the interim head of state.

The odd time though, one of these nations will unhinge the masturbatory grip on the podium held by Russia, Germany or the United States and you'll get to hear an off-key warbling of some country's national anthem and bear witness to a moment of pride that'll last for generations to come, if you define "generations" as however long it takes for the urine sample to come back positive, the sportsman in question to defect, or when the next commercial break will air.

But what exactly are they singing about as banners are raised to the rafters and the eyes of the world (or at least the eyes of the world that aren't glazed over by a less than rousing game of handball) are upon them?

Not surprisingly, most anthems are a call to arms, mostly partisan hymns that are a soundtrack to bayoneting your nearest geographical neighbor and a tune you can tap your jackboot to as you proclaim the superiority of your culture, mountain ranges and comely women (the seldom heard fifth stanza in Slovenia's national anthem: "To you, our pride past measure, Our girls! Your beauty, charm and grace!")

There are some ditties sung that are much more ominous than any ‘Bombs bursting in air', you might've whistled while relieving yourself after a heavy lunch, and that would make a scout troupe cower in fear more than a scoutmaster's invite to a midnight swim.

Of course, officials quickly noted that when performed at certain epochal functions, some of these stanzas were better left out altogether, like in the case of Italy, where if something of import were to be held in Warsaw, for example, it might be prudent to omit the bit about "the Polish blood they drank, along with the Cossack."

We thought we’d share a few choice verses, unearth a few national secrets, and perhaps create a diplomatic shit-storm with this, our list of the Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems!

10) Algeria: Being that Algeria's national hymn was written not long after the North African nation broke free from France, thus ending one of the most violent and oppressive periods in European colonial history, we're not surprised that their national anthem makes scant reference to daisy-picking and the value of complacency. Of course, as you'll learn during the course of our bloody world tour of national anthems, nothing ups the carnage in a national anthem like a good throwing off of the yoke of an oppressor. However, this one gets bonus points for the fact that amidst all bloodshed and overthrowing of oppressors, it never forgot the importance of the beat:

Choice Lyrics:
"When we spoke, nobody listened to us,
So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm
And the sound of machine guns as our melody"
(click here for full anthem)








9) Tunisia / Haiti: Continuing on with our theme of countries breaking free from French colonial rule and celebrating their independence in violent verse, here are two nations that preferred death over French rule, much as we'd prefer such a fate over say, a screening and subsequent discussion of the Sex & the City movie.

Choice Lyrics:

"The blood surges in our veins,
We die for the sake of our land."

"For the flag, For our country
To die is a fine thing! Our past cries out to us:
Have a disciplined soul! To die is a fine thing!"
(Full anthem: Tunisia, Haiti)

8) Albania: It is impossible to enter into a discussion about Albania, without in some way referencing Mother Teresa. That should suffice. For a far more eyeball-rewarding look at a native of that country, turn your peepers to the left. Saints preserve us!

And in its national anthem we have a recurrent theme in many such ditties: the glory of having your ass shot off in a war.

Choice Lyrics:

"From war abstains only he,
Who a traitor is born,
For he who is a man is never frightened,
But falls, but falls a martyr to the cause!" (Full anthem)




7) Hungary: The Magyar Himnuz, based on a poem of such emotional intensity, that some interpreters apparently see it as an example of the nation's deeply-rooted pessimism. We would agree, but what does it matter anyway?
Choice Lyrics:

"But no freedom's flowers return
From the spilled blood of the dead,
And the tears of slavery burn,
Which the eyes of orphans shed."

(and later) Grief and sorrow all the same
Underneath a sea of blood (Full anthem)

CLICK HERE FOR THE TOP FIVE MOST VIOLENT NATIONAL ANTHEMS!