Hooliganwatch™: The Final Preparations

The final push to the World Cup has begun and the Hooliganwatch™ phones have been ringing off the hook. Stories about the apocalypse, fights, racism, and other depressing things have been abundant lately and frankly we haven’t been able to keep up with them all. After all, we are busy sharpening our chainsaws just in case we run into a pack of hooligans in Germany. But we have gathered some stories that will either ruin your day or bring joy to your life depending on where you reside on the hooligan spectrum.

We start as always in Poland where President Lech Kaczynski has vowed to launch a “fight without mercy” against his country’s miscreants. “We will wage a ferocious battle,” said Kaczynski, using language that hooligans can clearly understand. Included in that ferocious battle are plans to tighten the border between Germany and Poland in advance of the World Cup.

If any of those crazy Poland hooligans do make it across the border and if they are arrested in Hamburg, they can look forward to spending some time in police car depots that have been converted to hold people arrested during the World Cup. The accommodations may not be great, but considering the prices of hotels in Germany this summer it might not be a bad place to crash.

In more sobering news, there have been some in Germany who have suggested that traveling to some parts of the country isn’t advisable for people of color. Uwe-Karsten Heye, head of anti-racist organization “Gesicht zeigen” (”Show face”), says: “There are small and medium-sized towns in Brandenburg and other places where I would recommend that nobody with a different skin color go. They would possibly not leave there alive.”

German officials have responded to such suggestons by saying that they are going to take a tough stand against racism and won’t tolerate hate crimes. They say that people of all nationalities will be welcome throughout the country.

We can’t end on an depressing note, so thankfully we have our friends at The Onion who write about how American soccer fans are preparing for the World Cup by staging a series of practice riots.

Even in the dark and dangerous offices of Hooliganwatch™ we can appreciate good satire while we prepare for the end of the world.