Monopoly, the world’s best-selling board game, is going global. A simple idea, substituting the iconic properties of the original game with hallmark cities of the world. Hasbro is letting people vote on its Web site for which cities to include in the new game.
In this celebration of capitalism, would-be moguls could buy up properties in cities such as Moscow, … Tokyo, Japan and Jerusalem, Israel.
Wait. Nix that last one — at least the Israel part.
Given the white-hot controversy over Israel — the world’s most fought-over piece of real estate — should the board game refer to “Jerusalem, Israel” even though Palestinians say Jerusalem will be the capital of any future Palestinian state? Should it say “Jerusalem, Palestine?”
Instead of rolling the dice, parent company Hasbro is taking the middle ground.
The company is letting people vote on its Web site for which cities to include in the new game — “Dublin, Ireland” for example. It recently removed “Israel” after “Jerusalem” and then eventually removed all of the country names.
“It was never our intention to print any countries on the final boards and any online tags were merely used as a geographic reference to help with city selection,” Hasbro said in a written statement. “We would never want to enter into any political debate. We apologize for any upset this has caused our Monopoly fans.”
Comment:
Jerusalem is the capital city of Israel. In all its long history it has been the capital of one nation, Israel. Since a Palestinian country has never existed (of which, please note, ’tis not the same as saying it should never exist) it would and should, quite possibly, perhaps, just maybe, rule that one out by default. Note: I have left some things unsaid.
And because I’m cheery owing to the Hak-Maoist helping me figure out how to hoist up a tube in this web lodge at long last, some cheery music from when I was a kid:
Plus how it’s done out our way nowadays (sorry, no music):
Just when you think the nadir has been reached, a craven invocation of pan-Slavic ‘racial’ mythology appears at CiFillis, which in another time and place–if the words ‘Jews’ and ‘Germans’ were substituted for ‘Muslims’ and ‘Russians/Serbs’–would have been published in the editorial pages of Der Stürmer:
The independence of Kosovo is a hugely emotional issue for Russians (because Kosovo [sic] is part of the sacred soil of the Holy Slavic nation) … intensity of opposition to Kosovo’s independence in Serbia and Russia is such that it would be a mistake to ignore it (we will not tolerate this war of extermination against the Holy Slavic nation) … create a precedent for many separatist movements all over the world, from the Basques in Spain to the Uighurs in China (and especially those pesky Chechens, of whom we cannot massacre enough–100,000 and counting) … Many Russians warn that the creation of a Muslim state in the middle of Europe will strengthen the position of Muslim minorities and of Islam in Europe generally (we must protect our sacred soil from the dusky asiatic hordes) … They also point to the role of Kosovars…in drug and people trafficking in Europe (because there is absolutely 100 percent no drug or people trafficking going on anywhere in the former Soviet states–oh no) … If Serbia, an independent state…can be partitioned like this, flagrantly against its will (the will of 95% of Kosovans must not be allowed to interfere with our Holy mission) … Even if one accepts that Serbia committed abominable atrocities in Kosovo–which few Russians do (those weren’t atrocities because they fucking deserved it–they have hairy palms, they cannot control their sexual appetites and they don’t sit straight on the toilet) … how would the British feel if in 20 or 30 years Windsor, for example, proclaimed its independence on the grounds that the majority of its population was now Muslim (Windsor was a part of Pakistan until it was annexed by the British Empire in 1912–honest).
