Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: Using Soccer to Kick Iran

By Dave Zirin & John Cox
thenation.com
 - May 16, 2006 (web only)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060529/zirin
The World Cup--the monthlong competition taking place
throughout Germany beginning June 9--is by sheer
numbers the most important sporting event on earth.
Football--or soccer, as Americans insist on calling
it--is by far the world's most popular sport, and the
World Cup creates a near-united global audience.
Approximately one in four human beings will view this
year's final game. That means basically anyone who has
access to a television will be watching--though
probably fewer in the United States, where "soccer" is
still viewed in some quarters as a plot to create a
one-world government.
Politics cannot be separated from the World Cup any
more than it can be from the Olympics. Sometimes this
is for the best: For example, Africans throughout the
continent exulted in Senegal's shocking upset of its
former colonizer, France, in the first game of the 2002
Cup.
This year, however, German and US politicians have
seized on the tournament to intensify the saber
rattling aimed at Tehran. Citing Iran's efforts to
develop a nuclear program and the anti-Israel
pronouncements of Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, several leading politicians in both
countries have called for the Iranian team to be banned
from the World Cup. In this spirit of tolerance and
peace, Berlin's liberal daily Der Tagesspiegel ran a
cartoon in February that depicted Iranian soccer
players as suicide bombers.
Now Germany's conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel has
further stoked this sentiment by likening Iran's
nuclear plans to the threat posed by the Nazis. Italian
reform minister Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant
Northern League called on the international soccer
federation (FIFA) to exclude Iran and other "rogue
states," and in recent weeks British Conservatives--
perhaps distraught over their own team's dwindling
prospects, after an injury to their best player--have
gotten in on the act.
Back in Germany, some Christian Democrats have further
upped the ante by invoking the specter of Iranian
terrorism at the games, asserting that Tehran will slip
some suicide bombers disguised as regular fans into a
game. Calls for a ban, or at least for a travel ban
against the Iranian president, have intensified in
Germany as the games approach. Leading Conservative and
Social Democratic officials are now quoted almost daily
decrying a possible visit by Ahmadinejad. And in early
May, a German newspaper reported that officials of
Germany, France and Britain are hoping to orchestrate a
travel-ban scheme through the European Union that would
prevent high-ranking Iranian officials from attending
any of the games.
In the most recent gambit, on May 12 a group of
European Union representatives presented a letter to
FIFA demanding that Iran be evicted from the games. The
hypocrisy of this quasi-extortion is overwhelming: Iran
should be banned because its leaders indulge in
belligerent rhetoric and attempt to develop a nuclear
program, yet no one advocates the exclusion of the
United States, even though it is engaged in two
military occupations, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
President Bush has refused to rule out a nuclear strike
on Iran.
Despite its drive to demonize and isolate Iran, the
United States has been slower than its German
counterparts to use soccer in this campaign, given the
sport's relative obscurity here. But a few politicians
have craftily picked up on it. On April 6, Senator John
McCain, Mr. Maverick, introduced a resolution to the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee advocating a World
Cup ban on Iran--a resolution that is sure to go
nowhere. To its credit, FIFA has rejected all of these
demands, and seems unlikely to budge. But much of this
anti-Iran campaign has less to do with the unrealistic
goal of banning the top-level Middle Eastern team than
with grooming public opinion for aggression.
Iran's blustery president seems less of a threat to
Israel or to anyone else than to the rights and welfare
of his own people. Middle East expert Juan Cole pointed
out in a May 3 post on his blog that Ahmadinejad's
overheated oratory is hardly the gravest threat to
world peace.
Cole argues, "Ahmadinejad is a non-entity. The Iranian
'president' is mostly powerless. The commander of the
armed forces is the Supreme Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei
[who, by the way, just reinstated a ban on women's
attendance at soccer games that Ahmadinejad had
reversed in April]. Worrying about Ahmadinejad's antics
is like worrying that the US military will act on the
orders of the secretary of the interior. Ahmadinejad
cannot declare war on anyone, or mobilize a military.
So it doesn't matter what speeches he gives. Moreover,
Iran cannot fight Israel. It would be defeated in 72
hours, even if the US didn't come in, which it
would.... What is really going on here is an old trick
of the warmongers. Which is that you equate hurtful
statements of your enemy with an actual military
threat, and make a weak and vulnerable enemy look like
a strong, menacing foe. Then no one can complain when
you pounce on the enemy and reduce his country to
flames and rubble."
The Iranian people are even more enthusiastic about
soccer than most of the rest of the world. Iran even
held a national day of celebration when its team
qualified for the Cup, and Iranian soccer fans look
forward to cheering their team on as it attempts to
survive a difficult first round against Portugal and
Mexico. Perhaps the Iranian team will have an
opportunity to repeat the squad's upset of the United
States in 1998. But this would be little consolation if
the Cup is used as a platform to further threaten their
nation with invasion or occupation.
"I would rather people built a clear wall between sport
and politics," Iran's Croatian-born coach Branko
Ivankovic has said. But the Iranian people are being
reminded that, while soccer may be a beautiful game for
them, it's little more than a political weapon for
others.
[John Cox is an assistant professor of History at
Florida Gulf Coast University and a supporter of FC
Barcelona. Dave Zirin is the author of "What's My Name
Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States" and
wants to fight for a world where soccer players can use
their hands.]
-- 
www.iaciners.org
Grandma: How was school?
Napoleon Dynamite: The worst day of my life, what do you think?

 players as suicide bombers.
Balle. La verità è che sanno che vinciamo i mondiali.
-- 
Aramesh 

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Che poi dipingere un attaccante come "bomber" mi sembra anche normale...