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May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
in Tent City, But Where Do You Bathe?
Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
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the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
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May
27, 2002
Brazil, France and the 2002
World Cup
AFTER THE CUP, ELECTIONS...
On the football field, Brazil
seeks a long awaited re-match with France. In politics, there
may be a match-up instead.
by Norman Madarasz
Rio de Janeiro--Brazil
went into FIFA's 1998 World Cup as the confident defending champions.
Four years earlier in Los Angeles, the "Selection",
as the team is known at home, beat Italy in a scoreless epic,
played in scorching heat, that ended with Italy's Roberto Baggio
missing a crucial overtime penalty shot. So Brazil became the
first nation to win the World Cup on four different occasions.
In Paris, graced with the world's most lauded striker, Milan
Inter's Ronaldo, the team was poised to add a fifth series of
caresses and kisses to the golden globe.
Yet this was not to be. After overcoming
local skepticism, France used its home field advantage to surge
toward an upset 3-0 victory against Brazil. This was their first
appearance in the finals, and it just happened to coincide with
victory. It was only the sixth time a national team had won the
Cup at home. The team to have failed most spectacularly in that
endeavor was Brazil. In 1950, the Selection was clobbered in
the final 2-1 by underdog Uruguay in the newly built temple of
football, the Maracana, in Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil's thirst for a rematch has not
subsided by a sliver in these last four, long years. But the
country as a whole has even more to gain from a match up with
France on the political field. If their respective leftwing coalitions
take this year's elections the countries' rivalry may spin into
a rapprochement.
Opinion polls for June's legislative
elections in France are all but tentative. We know by now how
inaccurate they have been in the past. So it's really wait and
see time for the 86% of the electorate that actually voted against
rightwing president Chirac when it actually had the choice. Little
is known of what currently favored Brazilian presidential candidate
Ignatio Lula da Silva, aka "Lula", actually discussed
with former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in Paris just
days prior to the latter's fall. Everything suggests that the
two politicians saw a bright future of intertwined visions for
orchestration of center-left policies-- despite having to take
the occasional corner kick from field right in a disturbed sharing
of powers. The balance of all fields has decidedly not been created
equally.
As for Brazil's presidential elections,
they're only scheduled for October, but the stakes have already
been set. Running in his fourth campaign, Lula, like Jospin,
has had to edge over to the 'center' in the belief that the key
to effective government lies in coalition. Witnessing Jospin's
defeat at the hands of his own voters in the first-round of the
elections, he may be listening more closely to current President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso. As if sensing the rush just days prior
to the offensive in France, FH uttered words of a harbinger's
wisdom: "Is [the PT's] position just to win an election
or does it really signal a change in the way they see the world?
If it is just the former, the electorate won't believe it."
(The Financial Times, April 19, 2002). The clamor from the French
supporters had yet to start resonating.
The French general (legislative) elections
are set to take place during the preliminary rounds of the World
Cup. But the Plural Left coalition has been training as if headed
only into the semi-finals. Another team to be have been handicapped
by excessive confidence, the left now has to bite its tongue
following Jospin's relentless criticism of the paralyzing process
of "co-habitation". Trying to maneuver a left government
under a rightwing president "makes France ungovernable",
he recently confided to Le Monde.
Nonetheless, the socialists have reorganized
and their new leader and former party chairman, Francois Hollande,
hopes to halt the right's advance for another five years. And
who knows? The old coalition of Verts (Greens), Communists and
independent Radicals might be in excellent position to score
from the left, the center and even, all be damned, from the right.
Meanwhile at the Elysee Palace, President Chirac keeps the heels
warm of his sensationalized victory, largely thanks to leftwing
voters. His window display government, which remains essentially
powerless until an election victory, is again acting out his
fantasy of socialist partnership as even its most conservative
politicians grant that France has receded irrationally into immigration
paranoia of their own device.
That such discomfort is making its way
into the mainstream political class is largely due to its own
opportunism and populism. The freak results of the French presidential
elections, for remember that despite media exposure Le Pen barely
increased his number of votes on May 5, has had another effect.
By consulting the French population on its fears of street crime,
the media have given voice to otherwise unspoken ethnic bashing:
in simple terms, racism. In a recently published study, Le Monde
revealed that during the political campaign television stations
devoted 18 766 program slots to "crime, stone throwing,
car theft, robberies, and intervention by the police and/or riot
police". That makes for 987 subjects per week all broadcast
against a background of what the Ministry of the Interior has
confirmed to be a slight decrease in crime. No explosion of "insecurite",
not even an "invasion" of desperate immigrants, but
stabilization of crime. On the other hand, media-sponsored fear
has stirred up an awful lot of ethnic tension. This is tension
lying worlds away from the nationalized ethnic energy that has
made France's national football team shine as a global collective.
None of this success has stopped the
right from finding itself mired in its old indecisiveness regarding
the far-right Front National. Notwithstanding his arrogance,
Alain Juppe, among Chirac's intimates, is ironically a real Republican
contemptuous of Le Pen. Yet not even his face could betray the
utter distaste with which he contemplates a return to power of
the Plural Left coalition in the Assemblee nationale with Chirac
at the helm. Faced with the prospect of having to direct their
votes to an opposing party in the event of finishing third in
the first round, Chirac's rightwing candidates are symptomatically
stuttering about whether they'll be sent to Le Pen's camp.
The French right really does despise
their socialist next-of-kin more than Le Pen's racists. Which
is more than can be said for LePen who holds Chirac especially
in contempt. Hatred for the left, nowadays, may only be owing
to the success with which it has implemented rightwing policies.
And despite what Anthony Giddens believes, there are no "rightwing
issues", only rightwing policies. In that regard, France's
center-left politicians ought to be wary: when back to their
senses, the majority of the population wants a responsible and
activist government truly working for social change.
While the picture looks favorable for
a match-up between France and Brazil after the final election
results, there will be no rematch in the World Cup finals. If
the teams do meet in upcoming weeks, a near certainty, it will
happen at an earlier stage of the showdown. The chance dynamics
used to organize the group divisions have landed three top-seeded
teams in the same slice of eliminatory matches. Apart from Zidane
and Ronaldo Gaucho's mates, the favorites of the Group A-C-F-H
slice are Argentina (second-seeded) and England (12th). Were
both France and Brazil to finish first in their respective groups,
they'll be facing off in quarterfinal match-57. Should either
finish second, and survive the quarterfinals, they'll meet in
semi-final match-62.
In 1998, the country of samba as a whole
watched in disbelief as the Selection stumbled woodenly under
the weight of a hundred thousand euphoric French fans in what
was generally a midfield confrontation. Zidane performed an unimaginative
carbon copy head butt from a corner kick to advance France's
lead to 2-0 by half-time. In the second, as Brazil fought through
apathy to lurch into offensive territory, it was caught off-guard
by Manuel Petit's breakaway. He finalized the triumphant victory
for "Les Bleus". France became "le pays du foot".
While the French recuperated from a nightlong
revelry on the Camps Elysees, their second in a week with another
one still planned for the victory parade, disheartening news
started leaking from the Brazilian camp. As if in a hangover
from the match, most concurred that Brazil simply could not have
played as badly, nor could not it have lacked as much soul without
there being some other reason behind the defeat. Suspicion would
turn to reality.
On the eve of the championship match,
the Selection's refuge had been ransacked by panic as the Inter
Milan start-striker Ronaldo apparently suffered a nervous seizure.
Though he alone had convulsions, the entire team ended up being
but a shadow of itself on the field the following afternoon.
The incoming ambulance and intensive medical care Ronaldo was
given seemed to underscore the seriousness of the incident. "We
lost the World Cup but I won another cup - my life," Ronaldo
later avowed. The team's sponsor, Nike, has repeatedly been criticized
for allegedly pressuring the coaching staff into making Ronaldo
play. Whether due to a sleepless night, or exaggerated reliance
on a single star player, the team that had brilliantly beaten
Holland just days before stiffened in midfield and lost.
In Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo",
Andrea laments: "Unhappy the land that breeds no hero."
To which, Galileo rebuffs: "No, unhappy the land that needs
a hero." No matter how absurd and how unacceptable athletes'
salaries have become, there can be little debate as to the need
for heroes among the world's youth. Among royalty, Zidane is
emperor with his $65 million contract for Real Madrid, whom he
lifted to the 2002 European championship. A master sports artist,
instead of the American pop scrub being spread about by media
giant Viacom through MTV-- and please don't give me that line
about being over-the-hill...--, is often the most intimate contact
many get with a hero. Ronaldo may be old hat now, after his arduous
two-year recovery from a battered knee. But I can still hear
the innocent voice of a young French Beur, i.e. of Maghrebin
origin, who years ago had to utter timidly how he thought Zidane
was a greater player than Ronaldo. Although he may have been
eclipsed by the magician from Kabylia, there's poignancy in a
hero's fall from grace. And they all do fall.
The pressures and expectations of the
biggest match open any field to risk. Politicians understand
this as well as athletes. As Lula's ratings have risen in opinion
polls, Brazil has faced the destabilizing effect of declarations
made by international bond ratings firms, when it isn't from
the American Congress itself. In hasty reports issued on the
week of April 27, JP Morgan's riskmetrics created a series of
field days for speculators as it increased Brazil's risk points,
then readjusted them on a decrease, all to finally increase them
again on May 23. The problem? Speculators are harping as they
wait to flock in for the free-market catch of the day: inevitable
instability prompted by election of a leftwing government.
Few analysts sensitive to such croaking
noticed a number of fundamental points. Risk agencies establish
their ratings based on projections of the reforms social movements
are expected to implement, and the degree of resistance the local
elite is to bring to them. Among the 'sciences', risk analysis
profoundly lacks rigor, to say the very least. So while banks
may not be glaringly optimistic on Brazil, given that Argentina
and its collapsed economy are clamoring next door, they have
been far more cautious regarding what are, after all, their own
investments. Their mouthpiece, The Financial Times, was only
too eager to unequivocally emphasize this on May 1st (no pun
intended). Its editorial slammed: "it would be a mistake
to exaggerate the risks [involved in Lula's election]."
Although Brazil's banks are among the most prosperous worldwide
(Bradesco, No. 1 in Latin American, is among the world's top
ten in profits), the message has only mildly been received. Then
again, we know how faithful private banks are to the local economy.
On the other hand, when JP Morgan revised its risk rating for
Brazil a week-and-a-half later, it was the international press
that seemed to be hard of hearing. So to tickle the tympanum,
on May 23, JP Morgan scratched the noise up again by hoisting
the country up to 972 on its Embi+ index-- portraying the country's
economy as one of the world's least stable.
So the suspense rises... As we move into
Asia's Cup, a leftwing tandem is working on their dribbles to
eke out a well-needed diagonal Atlantic alliance. In the likelihood
of winning the elections for which they are favored, the PT and
Plural Left will still have to deal with strong national resistance,
especially in France, from the stagnant and heavily subsidized
agriculture sector. Brazil also has to fend off the German dominated
steel position in France's European commitment. Yet in the historic
parts of downtown Rio de Janeiro, the French Flag flies over
the Bank of Brazil's Cultural Center, which is hosting an exhibit
devoted to Paris 1900. It waves but a breadth away from the France-Brazil
house now honoring the king of "futebol", Pele. Faced
with such sights, not only do I sometimes imagine France to have
finally vanquished its dreams of an Antarctic presence. It often
appears as Brazil's own has settled on the shores of the Seine.
Doubtless France has brilliantly kempt
its game ever since the fateful 1998 final. Les Bleus went on
to win the European Cup, and remained unbeaten until last Saturday's
debacle against Belgium-- during which, the faithful hasten to
add, Zidane was skirting the kicks of another defender: his newborn.
Like the Socialists in 1997 Les Bleus proved that their upset
victory was an experiment that could be repeated outside of the
laboratory-- in spite of public skepticism. Surely the taste
for revenge has been a dramatic device as much in sport as in
art. Indeed, it very much justifies classifying sport as art:
given the place, the player and the team, and, especially, the
act of crowning a hero.
Whether Brazil goes on to beat France,
time still remains for solid political solidarity and collaboration.
In such moments, it's the internationalist spirit that lifts
sportsmanship to politics.
France kicks off against Senegal on Friday,
May 31, to open FIFA's 2002 World Cup of Football.
Brazil gets into gear against Turkey
on June 3.
Norman Madarasz
writes from Rio de Janeiro. He welcomes comments at normanmadarasz@hotmail.com.
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