After losing their last group game on June 22, the United States football team’s fight in this World Cup reached the end of the road. But there is an equally visible, prominent and apparently more successful symbol of the U.S. still battling it out in the football fields of Germany. That symbol is Nike, the sports brand based in the northwestern state of Oregon.
Named after the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, as seen in various sporting arena all over the world, has lived up to its name, reflecting its namesake in more ways than one.
As reported in the media, a win by a Nike–endorsing team was celebrated joyfully by the Nike team in Oregon, although the team was not the U.S.
These explain a great deal why football – and for that matter all sports – is not just sports. It is also a game with national pride at stake, and corporate players in their quest for sporting world domination.
A U.S. basketball team playing Russia or China in the Olympics, an Argentinean football team going against England or U.S. battling it out with Iran in the World Cup can never be just about sports. There is way too much symbolism to be reduced to just sporting matches.
In the ancient times of the Olympics, when Nike was known just a Greek goddess, the event was just another battlefield for the competing city-states. It was an avenue to demonstrate power and humiliate the enemy. Two fiercely competing city–states, Athens and Sparta, went to great lengths to ensure victory, including resorting to fraud and bribery, something not much different from today’s sporting world.
In modern times, the spirit of domination lives on. When Nazi–ruled Germany had the chance to organize the Olympics in 1936, Adolph Hitler made sure that the glory of Nazism would be visible for all the world to see.
In the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the sporting event became a perfect stage for a Palestinian group to communicate their message to the world.
During the Cold War, the opposing blocks of capitalism and communism fought it out in the Olympics. Both wanted to show to the world, or perhaps prove to themselves, that they were the strongest. For both blocks, winning would serve as a message that their ideology was the best.
Today, much like the ancient times, sports have demonstrated clearly that the idea of nation–state is here to stay. In the recent French Open tennis tournament, supporters of both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer waved and draped themselves in the Spanish and Swiss flags in supporting their countrymen. What could be more saliently political than a country’s flag? And by the way, both Nadal and Federer were wearing Nike in the final.
It shows that there are no other symbols to express their support. In Formula 1 racing, some supporters would still remember to wave the flags of the drivers’ country, although the teams they are representing carry more than just one flag of a multinational corporation.
But unlike the ancient times, there are now more than just nation–states who are players on the fields. This brings us back to Nike, which is now much more popular than the Greek goddess. And it also means that things are getting more and more competitive.
In the football world, while the U.S. team may not be very lucky, Nike is becoming a force to be reckoned with. It is hot on the trail of the German brand Adidas, which is arguably the most recognizable brand in football today.
In tennis, Nike’s dominance is unmistakable. The Greek goddess’s namesake has clothed great champions like Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Federer, the current world number one, is securing his place as a tennis great in Wimbledon.
Recently, he equaled Bjorn Borg's record of 41 straight wins on grass. That was another cause for equally huge celebrations both in Switzerland and Oregon, one for the country and one for the brand.
The success of Nike in the football fields has certainly made Adidas nervous. While Nike has mounted serious challenge to Adidas in football, one of which is being endorsed by the biggest football power Brazil, Adidas has not matched that success in tennis.
Perhaps there is no greater symbol of a brand’s success than being at the center of victory. Once, a final in the men’s single U.S. Open tennis tournament was between two players playing with Wilson rackets.
After the match, a Wilson advertisement proudly pointed out that each player "was playing with a Wilson, but they were both playing with a Wilson," referring to the players rackets and the official ball of the tournament, which was also of the Wilson brand. It was a great day for team Wilson.
There is now a reasonably good chance that a team wearing Nike would hoist the World Cup. What wouldn’t Nike give today to have a Nike World Cup official football, and in the final?
The director of this remake, apparently angry at criticisms levelled against the film, said in the BBC's Talking Movies that it is important this movie be made now, to reflect today's reality, to say something about what is going on.
But I am not so sure. While I am all for capturing or reflecting reality on celluloid, the fact that the film is a little uninspiring and the reference to global disasters like 911 and the Tsunami is superficial fails to make it as what the director claimed. For me, there is no doubt the film really wants to exploit what many are feeling today, as many think that 911 is some kind of very significant sign. Many who have looked hard enough could find something to sort of validate their views.
Sure, armageddon things are all the rage today but people seems to connect the dots only to confirm their theories. It seems that all times are the-end-is-near time. There have been too many potential anti-Christ, from Adolph Hitler to Osama bin Laden.
And for a film that is supposed to be scary, it is actually quite successful, the horror mood is certainly there, but it would not be so if you have seen many scary movies lately, especially when you can still hear Satan's voice from The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
The gimmick of releasing it on 6.6.06, and riding the wave of Da Vinci Code type religious hype makes it even more lame, especially in view of what the director said. And the religious things featured in the film are suspect.
The biggest problem for me is that there is really nothing different from the original film - except for some new interpretations - or anything that would make it more interesting that the original.
I think it would be a lot more interesting if you haven't seen the original.
Michael: Do you get to wear a tutu? Billy: Fuck off, they're only for lasses. I wear me shorts.
The movie is set sometime in 1980's, when Thatchernomics and coal miners clashed fiercely. You could say that it is a very leftist film, pretty much like The Barbarian Invasions, but the ideological background only makes the film much more interesting.
There is the Clash's anthemic London Calling in the police-miners clash, and there's a Karl Marx poster in Tony's (Jamie Draven) room. And class issue comes up in the very heated argument between Tony and Billy's (Jamie Bell) teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson (Nicola Blackwell).
This film is the best British film in years, so much better than others that appeared and hyped in the few years before. The soundtrack, with many songs by an awesome British band known as T.Rex, is superb. It is in fact one of my favorite soundtrack of all time.
It is hard to find what is wrong with this film. I think this is one of those films that you can easily give five out of five stars and don't bother explaining why. It was made beautifully. I think this is also one of those films that fans of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Saving Private Ryan can agree on.
The story is a simple tradition vs. nonconformity thing, something like a male version of Bend it Like Beckham, and also in the same category as Pocahontas. But there is something else in Billy Elliot. There is also compromise.
The film is kinda gay. There is a gay friend, Michael (Stuart Wells), and there's the gay Tchaikovsky's the Swan Lake or something. The soundtrack really tells a lot.
Billy's different lives are presented clearly in the film. He is happy when dancing, especially the scene where he and Mrs. Wilkinson dance to T.Rex's I Love to Boogie. But home is very sad, even when it's Christmas.
There are many poignant moments makes it intensely emotional and engrossing, like the time when Billy reads the letter from his mother with Mrs. Wilkinson, when his father, perhaps realizing that his dream is nearing an end, decides to become a scab so that Billy's dream would be fulfiled, and many more. It is one of the most emotionally intense film I've ever seen.
"You see? TV audiences don't want anything original. They wanna see the same thing they've seen a thousand times before." - Philip J. Fry
I hope it is not too late to celebrate a very good news for freaks who can't get enough of Futurama. Comedy Central plans to show new episodes of this show in 2008. The network bought 72 episodes of the show for U.S.$30 million last year.
It was a very sad news for fans of the Matt Groening animated series when Fox cancelled it in 2003. According to reports, the team will be back to offer their voices for the characters.
"At least I admit that I don't know. I know that things are fucked up, beyond belief, and I have nothing original to say about it... " - Jeff
I stumbled upon the VCD of this movie yesterday, that I bought in 1997, when VCD reigned supreme. For some reason, I found it kinda interesting, much to the chagrin of my friends whose categories of films are 1. Good movies, and 2. Movies with too much talking.
Suburbia is a story of a bunch of disillusioned, confused 20 somethings, you know, the feelings that most of us had when angst-ridden Nirvana, Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins first appeared. Only this is much worse.
The kids in this R-rated movie hangs out by the corner of a Pakistani immigrant's convenient store, like Apu's Quickie Mart in The Simpsons.
Here, the discourse unfolds, exposing their angst, naivete (although they appear sophisticated sometimes) and existential crisis.
The beginning of the film appears to promise something deeper, but somehow, like the incoherent ramblings of Jeff (Giovanni Ribissi) and his friends, things only appear humdrum and meaningless like the suburbia that they live in. But this doesn't make it any less engaging.
Jeff, the philosopher of the bunch, tries to care about some starving third world people somewhere, while knowing nothing about them. Another two of his friends for some reason are angry to the Pakistani immigrant store clerk (Ajay Naidu). Sooze (Amie Carey) is angry at men. Her performance, which she showed to her friends is titled "Burger Manifesto Part One — the Dialectical Exposition of Testosterone."
The day promised something a lot more interesting than usual: a visit from a friend who is a rock star whose video has appeared on MTV. It was like a personification of their dreams, especially Sooze's, who is dreaming of going to New York and making it as an performance artist. All of them appear to be going somewhere, except that they don't know where they are going.
The film is surely not everyone's cup of coffee, but it is an interesting observation of meaninglessness of post-teenagers life in a boring American suburbia. It may be crap to some, but it is freakishly interesting to watch, especially when your life appear to be reflected in it.
The acting, especially Ribissi's and Zahn's, are perhaps the best thing about the film. And for me, another best thing about this movie is the soundtrack.
1. "Sponsors are not faceless, ticket-eating monsters"
Adidas C.E.O. Herbert Hainer, 51, discusses the fuss over World Cup sponsors and the new German flag-waving frenzy, his bitter struggle against rival Nike and the question of whether FIFA chief Sepp Blatter should get the highest German medal of honor, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
2. From The New York Times, June 27, 2006 As soccer mania mounts, politicians' goals also count By LARRY ROHTER
With the knockout round in soccer's World Cup under way and an election looming, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has found the perfect way to combine his two main passions: when the opposition complains about incompetence and corruption in his government, he responds by linking himself to Brazil's wildly popular and successful national team.
"As in soccer, we are not going to cry about the goals we didn't score yesterday," Mr. da Silva said in a speech here, after Brazil eked out an unconvincing 1-0 victory over Croatia earlier this month in its first game of the tournament in Germany. "What we're going to do is think about the goals we're going to score."
Brazilians can count on hearing that kind of language every four years. The World Cup tournament not only regularly coincides with Brazil's presidential race, but it almost inevitably ends up spilling over into the campaign.
Brazil, which advanced to the elimination round and plays Ghana on Tuesday, has won five World Cups, more than any other country. Political folklore maintains that a Brazilian victory strengthens the incumbent. Though the numbers at the polls do not necessarily back up that theory, the country's obsession with the sport does offer opportunities both oratorical and practical to politicians.
Few are as astute as Mr. da Silva. In his public declarations he often uses soccer metaphors to explain his actions, as when the opposition was demanding late last year that Finance Minister Antônio Palocci be fired because of his involvement in the corruption scandal.
"Why would I mess with Palocci?" Mr. da Silva responded shortly before the minister in fact stepped down. "That would be the same as removing Ronaldinho from Barcelona," the president continued, referring to the Brazilian player who was voted the best in the world last year and the Spanish club he normally plays for. "Sometimes Ronaldinho misses a shot, but just let him play."
Mr. da Silva's genuine enthusiasm for soccer contrasts sharply with the attitude of his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Mr. Cardoso is an intellectual, a sociologist who speaks five languages, has a Ph.D. and has written many books, but he never seemed convincing when feigning interest in the game.
"When you get down to it, he thought it to be of minor importance," said Juca Kfouri, one of Brazil's leading commentators on the sport.
Though Mr. Cardoso could never have afforded the political cost of such an admission while he was a candidate or in office, he now owns up to that truth. In his just-published memoir, "The Accidental President of Brazil," he writes: "I never watched much soccer on television; I always preferred reading a good book instead. In truth, I am a Brazilian who doesn't much like soccer."
But Mr. da Silva has discovered that being too ardent a fan can also create political problems. When he suggested twice this month that the star forward Ronaldo was overweight, the player took offense and fired right back at the president.
"They say that he drinks a whole lot," Ronaldo told Brazilian reporters in Germany. "Everybody says that I'm fat and he drinks. Since it is a lie that I'm fat, I think it must also be a lie that he drinks."
Mr. da Silva then backed away from further confrontation with the popular player, sending him what has been described as a letter of apology. But the president has continued to opine on the quality of the national team's play and to be photographed wearing the squad's yellow and green jersey.
His main adversary in the election on Oct. 1, Geraldo Alckmin of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, has also played the soccer card. Wearing a casual shirt, Mr. Alckmin was photographed at a barbecue restaurant in São Paulo watching Brazil play Croatia, though he erred in predicting that Brazil would win 4-1.
Mr. da Silva is by no means the first president to use soccer to strengthen his ties to the people, or to get himself into trouble by second-guessing the professionals. Before the 1970 World Cup, Gen. Emílio Médici, the country's military dictator at the time, criticized the coach of the national team, João Saldanha, for failing to add a player the president admired.
"I don't tell him who to choose for his cabinet," Mr. Saldanha, a journalist and a member of the Communist Party, retorted. "So he shouldn't be telling me who to pick for my squad."
Shortly afterward, Mr. Saldanha, who earned the nickname Fearless João because of the episode, was fired. The team went on to win the World Cup, and in his memoirs, Mr. Saldanha maintains that he was dismissed because Brazil's military rulers could not stomach the thought of a Communist running a team that symbolized national accomplishment and pride.
Yet one of the enduring images of General Médici, nicknamed the Executioner, is of him with his ear glued to a transistor radio, listening to Brazil's matches. "The liking for soccer humanized the dictator," the columnist Merval Pereira wrote in the Rio newspaper O Globo this month.
"Already at that time, rudimentary marketing techniques were used to attenuate the cruel face of torture in the dungeons of the dictatorship."
World Cup play also has a big impact on the economy. When Brazil wins, people here feel happy and proud, and respond by spending more money, which boosts growth and by extension confidence in the government.
Mr. Cardoso now acknowledges tapping into that sentiment in 1994, during his first, successful run for president. He was finance minister at the time, and the introduction of an anti-inflation program and a new currency, the real, coincided with World Cup play in the United States, which Brazil eventually won.
"So much of economics is linked to expectations," Mr. Cardoso wrote. "If people expect a new business or a new policy to fail, it usually does. The opposite is also true. If Brazil did reasonably well in the World Cup, we thought maybe the country would relax a little bit and start believing in itself again. Maybe a bit of optimism would rub off on the real and give it a better chance at success."
All bets are off, though, if Brazil finishes anything but first in the current tournament. In his memoirs, Mr. Cardoso noted that when he and Mr. da Silva first ran against each other in 1994, Mr. da Silva, the die-hard fan, cautiously kept his distance from the national team, but he, the reluctant soccer neophyte, took the risk of hitching his fortunes to the national squad.
"Was it a slightly hammy bit of political theater?" Mr. Cardoso asks. "Yes, of course. But it was also quite dangerous. If I was to be identified publicly with the team, what would happen to me if Brazil lost?"
"They shouldn't show that on TV! Kids might be watching!" - Beavis
"But this is HDTV, it's got better resolution than the real world" - Philip J. Fry
"While other people were out living their lives, I wasted mine watching TV, because deep down I knew it might one day help me save the world." - Philip J. Fry
“When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.” - Andy Warhol
“Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.” - Daniel J. Boorstin
As Franklin Foer explains in How Soccer Explains the World, football is so much more than just sports, and the world's great football powers know this all too well.
Although many continuously try to sell the idea that sports can bring two warring groups together, and there is sanity in the football fields, for those who know what is at stake, there is no such thing. Sport is pop culture and so much more, including foreign policy and trade.
This latest Adidas tv commercial, which everyone I know thinks is the coolest football commercial ever, is a part of battle in a lerger wars; brand wars. It is a way of Adidas telling Nike that the former still rule the football fields, much like Nike and Wilson rule tennis.
Adidas go way back with fottball, but Nike is catching up, with huge endorsement deals with some of the biggest and bankable teams, one of which is Brazil.
It would be very interesting to watch a Nike-Adidas final this time, which would be a huge brand battle that both would not want to lose. But Nike is really mounting a serious challenge to Adidas in the football world.
Sports also demonstrate clearly the power of the nation-state. In tennis, supporters still cary flags of the countrymen they are supporting, although they may live in faraway Monaco, safe from the long reach of their countries' tax authorities.
'The Road to Guantánamo' Offers Grim Chronicles That Anger and Stir By A. O. SCOTT
THE release of "The Road to Guantánamo" comes shortly after the suicides of three prisoners held in American custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in the midst of renewed concern, in the United States and abroad, about the mistreatment of detainees and the policy of holding suspected terrorists at the detention camp. In a sense, then, the film, which is based on the testimony of three British Muslims captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantánamo for more than two years, does not tell us anything new. It is nonetheless a wrenching and dismaying account of cruelty and bureaucratic indifference, a graphic tour of a place many citizens of Western democracies would prefer not to think about.
It should be emphasized that the movie, directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, is not a documentary. It does rely on talking-head interviews with the former prisoners — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhel Ahmed, known collectively as the Tipton Three for the town in northern England where they grew up — and faithfully reproduces their version of events. Most of what the audience sees on screen, however, is a re-enactment, conducted mainly by nonprofessional actors. By the time the action reaches Guantánamo — those scenes were shot in Iran — the artifice is unmistakable, since no camera could have penetrated the actual isolation cells, interrogation rooms and chicken-wire cages of Camps X-Ray and Delta. But earlier sequences in Pakistan and Afghanistan have the shaky, grainy urgency of real life captured on the fly.
This is not the first time Mr. Winterbottom has mingled the techniques of documentary and fictional filmmaking; he did it whimsically in his mischievous nonadaptation "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," pruriently in the moodily hard-core "9 Songs" and soberly in "In This World," his grim chronicle of young refugees in flight from Afghanistan. Nor is he alone in teasing the cinematic boundary between storytelling and truth-telling. He seems to have been inspired at least partly by Iranian films like "Close-Up," "The Apple" and "Where Is the Friend's House?," which used ordinary people and on-location photography to recreate real events.
Those films can induce a kind of vertigo in the viewer, an almost philosophical confusion about the literalness of the filmed image. And "The Road to Guantánamo" can be disorienting, especially in its first half, as it switches back and forth between the recollections of the three main characters and the raw immediacy of their restaged ordeal. It is sometimes hard to match the speakers with the amateur actors playing them, or to establish a clear sense of who they are. Curiously, their personalities emerge only in the dehumanized environment of Guantánamo itself, when their heads have been shaved and they are dressed in identical orange jumpsuits. There, as the combination of tedium and brutality stretches time and tests their endurance, the movie begins to gather the emotional force that is likely to leave you sickened, shaken and angry. For their part, the former detainees look back calmly and speak about their worst moments with a combination of detachment and puzzlement. How did this happen to them?
"The Road to Guantánamo," relying as it does on their testimony, does not entirely answer that question. In September 2001, Mr. Iqbal flew to Pakistan to meet the woman his mother had chosen for him to marry. Shortly afterward, Mr. Ahmed, who had agreed to be the best man at the wedding, arrived with two other friends, Mr. Rasul and Monir Ali.
The story of how they ended up in Afghanistan is left a bit hazy, in spite of vivid images of miserable bus rides over bumpy, unpaved roads. The idea of crossing the border into Afghanistan seems to have arisen almost on a whim. They wanted to see for themselves what was going on and to participate in a humanitarian aid mission organized by the imam of a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan. Sitting in an outdoor restaurant one evening, they talk excitedly about the size of Afghan flatbreads, as if they were planning a culinary road trip.
As the war against the Taliban intensifies, the four young men travel first to Kandahar, then to Kabul and finally to Kunduz, where they are captured by Northern Alliance soldiers. At that point, an arduous, possibly ill-advised adventure turns into a nightmare, as they are first accused of being Al Qaeda fighters and then, after months of harsh treatment, coerced into confessing that they are.
There may still be some die-hards who respond to pictures of hooded prisoners and detailed accounts of physical and psychological abuse with accusations of anti-Americanism. The filmmakers and the Tipton Three are fairly circumspect with regard to their own political beliefs, but their ideological commitments are really beside the point. A news clip shows President Bush referring to the Guantánamo detainees as "bad guys," and it is not necessary to believe that the Tipton Three were good guys — one of them had a police record in Britain — to be appalled at their treatment.
And also profoundly depressed. "The Road to Guantánamo," while far from a great movie, nonetheless effectively dramatizes a position that has been argued, by principled commentators on the left and the right, for several years now: that the abuse of prisoners, innocent or not, is not only repugnant in its own right. It also squanders a crucial strategic advantage in the fight against terrorism, namely the moral superiority of liberal democracy to the nihilism and extremism that oppose it.
The facts on which "The Road to Guantánamo" is based are horrifying, and in its most effective moments it provokes strong feelings of helplessness and dread. But by far the scariest thing about this movie is that, for too many people in this country and elsewhere, it may already have lost the power to shock.
Pertubuhan Kerjasama Shanghai (SCO), pakatan menghimpunkan China, Rusia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan dan Uzbekistan mengadakan sidang kemuncaknya di kota kelahiran kumpulan yang digelar "kelab diktator" itu, Shanghai, China pada 15 Jun lalu. Pertemuan ini, yang menandakan genap lima tahun penubuhannya sebagai SCO, menarik minat banyak pihak. Selain kelab diktator, SCO juga pernah digelar NATO Timur, menggambarkannya sebagai pakatan pertahanan menyaingi Barat diketuai Amerika Syarikat. Kini, selepas mencapai usia lima tahun, sejauh manakah potensi SCO sebagai pengimbang hegemoni Amerika Syarikat, alat politik tenaga dan dominasi China dan Rusia? Dan apakah respons Barat terhadap pertubuhan yang semakin berpengaruh ini?
Pertemuan ketua–ketua negara Pertubuhan Kerjasama Shanghai (SCO) di tempat kelahirannya, Shanghai, China 15 Jun lalu telah membawa pertubuhan itu ke perhatian dunia. Mesyuarat di Shanghai itu merupakan yang paling berprofil tinggi, disebabkan kehadiran ketua negara ahli pemerhati Iran dan paling utama pengumuman yang dibuat dengan penuh yakin bahawa pertubuhan itu akan berperanan lebih besar dalam hal ehwal antarabangsa. SCO yang diangotai China, Rusia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan dan Uzbekistan dengan ahli pemerhati Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan dan India merupakan separuh daripada penduduk dunia.
Dalam pertemuan terbaru itu, kedua–dua pemimpin China dan Rusia, Presiden Hu Jintao dan Presiden Vladimir Putin berikrar untuk meningkatkan kerjasama di kalangan negara SCO, melaksanakan persetujuan yang dicapai dan memainkan peranan lebih berkesan di peringkat antarabangsa. Kedua–dua pemimpin, sebelum dan ketika pertemuan bersejarah itu berlangsung, membuat beberapa kenyataan memuji pertubuhan itu sebagai satu kejayaan, sambil melahirkan harapan untuk peranan lebih besar organisasi itu, yang dilihat sesetengah pihak sebagai pencabar baru Pertubuhan Perjanjian Atlantik Utara (NATO). SCO kini semakin jelas akan mengalami pertembungan kepentingan lebih hebat dengan AS dan Eropah, terutama akibat hubungan rapat Beijing dan Moscow dengan Tehran, salah sebuah pengeluar minyak terbesar dunia yang sedang menjalankan program tenaga nuklear.
Pertemuan terbaru itu menandakan ulangtahun kelima SCO, walaupun jika dikira berdasarkan pertubuhan asalnya, kumpulan Lima Shanghai yang ditubuhkan dengan semua ahli kecuali Uzbekistan untuk mengatasi pertikaian sempadan pada 1996, pakatan itu sudah berusia sepuluh tahun. Sidang kemuncak kelima itu diadakan ketika dua negara utamanya, China dan Rusia dan negara pemerhati Iran sedang terlibat dengan konfrontasi dengan Amerika Syarikat (AS) dan Barat, walaupun dalam tahap yang berbeza. Disebabkan ini, kebangkitan SCO dilihat semakin berpengaruh dan mampu mencabar hegemoni AS, yang jelas dilihat apabila baru–baru ini, Setiausaha Pertahanan Donald Rumsfeld mengkritik Beijing dan Moscow kerana melibatkan Iran dalam SCO.
Peningkatan kuasa SCO berlaku di tengah–tengah kebimbangan dunia terhadap kenaikan harga tenaga dengan perhatian tertumpu kepada China, yang semakin menghampiri AS sebagai pengguna tenaga terbesar dunia dan Rusia, yang semakin jelas menggunakan senjata bekalan tenaganya untuk diplomasi. Melalui SCO, China yang keperluan tenaganya meningkat setiap tahun mengukuhkan hubungan dengan negara–negara lebih kecil Asia Tengah yang ingin muncul sebagai pengeluar minyak dan gas penting dalam pasaran dunia, seperti Kazakhstan. China memerlukan keselamatan bekalan manakala negara ahli seperti Kazakhstan dan Uzbekistan memerlukan pelabur, pasaran untuk barangan mereka dan jaminan perlindungan daripada ancaman campurtangan AS dan Eropah seperti dilihat di Georgia, Ukraine dan negara ahli Kyrgyzstan.
SCO sangat penting untuk berjaya bagi China untuk memastikan keselamatan bekalan tenaganya. China jelas sekali bersedia untuk melabur berbilion dolar untuk memastikan bekalan minyak dan gas terus diperolehi. Satu kejayaan China ialah pelaburan besar–besaran di negara jiran Kazakhstan yang berpotensi muncul sebagai pemain penting bekalan tenaga global. Di mesyuarat SCO terbaru, China sekali lagi menegaskan kepentingan kerjasama dalam industri minyak ditingkatkan dalam SCO. Zhou Jiping, timbalan pengurus besar syarikat minyak nasional China, CNPC, menyatakan pelaburan China akan membawa manfaat ekonomi kepada negara hos.
Manakala Presiden Hu pula menyuarakan hasrat untuk meningkatkan kerjasama tenaga dengan Iran. Iran memiliki sumber tenaga yang diperlukan China, dan oleh itu menjadi satu destinasi penting pelaburan tenaga syarikat China. China, melalui syarikatnya Sinopec, dan Iran kini sedang merundingkan urusniaga gas selama 25 tahun yang dianggarkan bernilai AS$100 bilion.
Tahun lalu, 11% import minyak China diperolehi dari negara–negara SCO. Isu keselamatan bekalan China bagaimanapun tidak terhad di sekitar negara SCO sahaja. Washington mendakwa hubungan Beijing dengan negara pengeluar minyak di Afrika, terutama Sudan, memberi sokongan kepada pemerintahan yang cuba dipinggirkannya. Pengkritik China mendakwa hasil jualan minyak Sudan kepada China digunakan untuk membeli senjata yang digunakan pemerintah Sudan untuk membunuh musuh politik.
Pada masa sama, Rusia, salah sebuah pengeluar minyak dan gas utama dunia juga dengan yakin menggunakan kekuatan daripada sumber tenaganya untuk menegaskan kuasanya di arena antarabangsa. Di mesyuarat SCO lalu, Putin menyarankan penubuhan kelab tenaga SCO, menandakan usaha pengukuhan pengaruh SCO dalam pasaran tenaga dunia. Rusia, melalui syarikat gas multinasionalnya Gazprom, membekalkan 25% bekalan gas Eropah. Pengukuhan kuasa politik Rusia melalui bekalan tenaganya, dan usaha perluasan operasi Gazprom dibimbangi Eropah. Tindakan politik paling jelas dilakukan Rusia ialah pada musim sejuk lalu, apabila bekalan gas ke Ukraine dikurangkan berikutan pertikaian harga.
Kemudian, hasrat Gazprom menguasai pengedaran gas di United Kingdom turut menimbulkan kebimbangan di negara itu. Berikutan episod–episod itu, Gazprom menjadi sasaran kritikan Barat. Syarikat multinasional gergasi itu dikritik kerana urusan dan perdagangan yang tidak telus.
Gazprom baru–baru ini muncul sebagai syarikat tenaga kedua terbesar selepas ExxonMobil dari AS apabila sahamnya meningkat sebanyak hampir 9 peratus. Pengeluar dan pengeksport gas asli terbesar dunia bernilai AS$240 bilion ini kini menjadi syarikat tenaga ketiga terbesar dunia di belakang syarikat British, BP. Peningkatan ini menegaskan kedudukan Gazprom sebagai salah sebuah multinasional dan syarikat tenaga utama dunia, apabila mencapai kedudukan sebagai syarikat keempat terbesar dunia selepas ExxonMobil, General Electric dan Microsoft. Berdasarkan nilai sahamnya, Gazprom menduduki tangga kelima.
Rusia yang mempengerusikan G8 kali ini, yang akan bermesyuarat di St Petersburg Julai nanti, menegaskan kepentingannnya dalam pasaran minyak apabila menjadikan keselamatan tenaga sebagai fokus G8 tahun ini. Barat menyedari apa yang ingin ditegaskan oleh Moscow. Hubungan Rusia dengan Barat, terutama Kesatuan Eropah (EU) dingin akibat politik tenaga Moscow. Berikutan itu, Barat menggesa Moscow meratifikasi Piagam Tenaga Antarabangsa yang bertujuan antaranya memastikan ketelusan urusniaga bekalan tenaga. Rusia yang telah pun menandatanganinya menolak untuk mengesahkannya selagi perjanjian itu tidak menjamin kepentingannya.
Rusia juga mendapat manfaat melalui SCO dengan memastikan keselamatan ruang pengaruh tradisionalnya daripada pencerobohan AS. Penubuhan pangkalan tentera AS di republik pasca–Soviet selepas 11 September, 2001, peralihan kuasa di beberapa negara bekas Soviet dan dasar perluasan NATO ke arah timur Eropah dilihat Moscow sebagai pencerobohan ruang pengaruh tradisional Rusia. Dua kes paling berprofil tinggi menyaksikan kejayaan Moscow ialah tindakan Uzbekistan menamatkan perjanjian menempatkan pangkalan udara AS di negara itu. Sebuah lagi negara, Kyrgyzstan, meningkatkan sewa pangkalan AS di negaranya, secara agak jelas menyampaikan mesej bahawa AS tidak diperlukan lagi di negara itu. Kini AS sedang berunding untuk meneruskan penempatan tenteranya di Kyrgyzstan. Kedua–dua tindakan ini dibuat dengan kehendak SCO tahun lalu.
Negara–negara kecil, yang cuba dipengaruhi kedua–dua AS dan Rusia, terpaksa memilih penaung yang boleh memastikan keselamatan pemerintahan diktator mereka. Uzbekistan di bawah pemerintahan Presiden Islam Karimov sebelum peristiwa Andijan dilindungi Washington, tetapi selepas dikritik Barat berikutan pembunuhan beramai–ramai itu mengalihkan kiblat politik ke Moscow. Peralihan itu ditandakan dengan satu kontrak pelaburan tenaga dan latihan ketenteraan dengan Rusia.
Terbaru, negara yang diancam campurtangan Barat beberapa bulan lalu, Belarus, menyuarakan hasrat untuk menjadi ahli pemerhati SCO, tindakan yang akan mendekatkan lagi Minsk dengan Moscow. Dasar tidak campur tangan ini sangat menarik bagi negara–negara Asia Tengah yang dipimpin pemerintah diktator. Matlamat memerangi ekstremisme dan pemisahan – yang boleh ditafsirkan dengan mudah sebagai Islam politik – seperti ditegaskan SCO menepati sikap pemimpin tersebut terhadap pembangkang, seperti yang dilihat dalam kes Uzbekistan.
Pakatan ini jelas telah berjaya mengawal negara–negara yang sebahagian besarnya Muslim dan secara efektif mengawal gerakan Islam politik di negara tersebut. Dari sudut ini, Islam politik terhalang daripada bergerak dengan efektif di negara–negara dikuasai diktator tersebut. Sama ada di blok Barat atau Timur, Islam politik berdepan halangan yang sangat besar. Pemimpin seperti Islam Karimov menekan gerakan Islam dengan keras di bawah pengaruh AS dan juga dengan sokongan Moscow. Hal ini mampu mendatangkan implikasi moral kepada Tehran yang ingin diterima sebagai ahli penuh SCO. Kedua–dua negara utama SCO, Rusia dan China, terlibat dengan tekanan terhadap minoriti Muslim dan sokongan kepada diktator.
Setakat ini, petanda terpenting SCO dalam menegaskan kewujudannya sebagai pengimbang pengaruh AS ialah pergerakan negara–negara Asia Tengah ke Timur dan memastikan keselamatan bekalan bagi China, yang pada tahap tertentu, bertentangan dengan kepentingan Barat. Ini juga bermakna Beijing dan Moscow menegaskan pengaruh mereka di Eurasia, sekaligus bermakna akses AS ke rantau itu terjejas. SCO tidak berperanan sebagai satu pakatan pertahanan, walaupun latihan perang Peace Mission pada Ogos 2005 memberikan petunjuk ke arah itu. Rusia, China dan negara anggota SCO ada menjalankan latihan ketenteraan, tetapi isu yang mendominasi masih kerjasama ekonomi dan tenaga. Ini bagaimanapun tidak bermakna pertahanan tidak akan menjadi fokus SCO.
Kehadiran Presiden Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ke sidang kemuncak SCO telah mengundang kritikan keras Washington. Iran melihat SCO sebagai platform pentingnya untuk merapatkan diri dengan Rusia dan Beijing sebagai pengimbang kepada pengaruh Barat, terutama pada waktu ini, ketika AS berusaha menghukumnya dengan alasan membangunkan senjata nuklear secara rahsia. Untuk merapatkan lagi hubungan dengan SCO, Ahmadinejad menawarkan kerjasama tenaga lebih rapat dengan ahli SCO dan menawarkan untuk menjadi hos pertemuan menteri–menteri tenaga negara SCO untuk membincangkan kerjasama tersebut.
Seperti juga Rusia, Iran menggunakan sumber tenaganya sebagai kuasa dalam hubungan dengan negara–negara lain, terutama China, pengguna tenaga kedua terbesar selepas AS. Ucapan Ahmadinejad di Shanghai dengan jelas mengemukakan hasrat penyatuan SCO untuk menolak pengaruh AS. Beijing dan Moscow ialah dua ahli tetap Majlis Keselamatan Bangsa–Bangsa Bersatu yang menolak tindakan menghukum Tehran seperti dikehendaki Washington. Bagaimanapun, Iran tidak berkongsi sebarang kepentingan dengan AS, tidak seperti Moscow dan Beijing, menjadikan pengaruhnya agak kecil berbanding kedua–dua kuasa tonggak SCO itu.
Washington bagaimanapun telah berjaya dalam satu tindakannya menangani kebangkitan SCO dengan mengadakan perjanjian kerjasama nuklear dengan New Delhi, yang tidak menandatangani perjanjian mencegah penyebaran nuklear. Tindakan ini jelas sekali untuk mengimbangi Iran dan China. Dan dalam sidang kemuncak SCO kali ini, Perdana Menteri India, Manmohan Singh tidak hadir tetapi diwakili menteri minyak negara itu. India merupakan pesaing utama tenaga dengan China sejak beberapa tahun lalu.
Dari sudut ini, India jauh ketinggalan berbanding China yang menguasai negara–negara seperti Kazakhstan yang kaya minyak dan mempunyai hubungan baik dengan Iran dan negara Muslim seperti Pakistan. Tindakannya menjauhkan diri dengan SCO kemungkinan akan merugikan dari sudut keselamatan bekalan tenaga. Hubungan baik Beijing dengan negara–negara pengeluar minyak dan gas Asia Tengah berupaya untuk terus membantu China mendapatkan bekalan tenaga untuk memuaskan permintaan yang sentiasa meningkat.
Disebabkan realiti ini, China akan terus meningkatkan hubungan baik dengan negara–negara jirannya. Dan sebagai kuasa serantau yang bercita–cita besar, China juga meluaskan pengaruh ke seluruh Asia, termasuk Asia Tenggara yang berkedudukan strategik. Hubungan baik dengan negara Asia Tenggara seperti Malaysia dan Indonesia juga meningkatkan profilnya di kalangan negara Muslim.
Walaupun kaya dengan simbol dan retorik, sehingga kini, selain beberapa dasar dan tindakan yang anti–AS, hala tuju SCO masih kurang jelas. Beberapa pihak menyifatkan SCO hanya sebagai marriage of convenience Rusia–China untuk memastikan kepentingan geopolitik kedua–dua negara, tetapi kepentingan tersebut mampu untuk bertembung di masa depan. Walaupun banyak pertikaian telah diselesaikan dan mampu bekerjasama, Rusia masih bimbang terhadap potensi China.
Moscow sudah tentu tidak mahu pengaruhnya terhakis dan dibayangi Beijing. Ini bermakna sukar untuk Iran yang mempunyai kuasa minyak dan gas diterima sebagai ahli penuh seperti yang diharapkan Tehran yang melihat SCO sebagai instrumen menghadapi tekanan AS. Iran sekiranya menjadi ahli SCO juga akan membawa pengaruhnya tersendiri. Kepentingan Moscow dengan Beijing sendiri sukar untuk dipastikan untuk terus selari bagi memastikan hala tuju SCO.
Tetapi sehingga kini, SCO berjaya digunakan untuk menegaskan pengaruh Beijing dan Moscow di kawasan yang dianggap kedua–dua kuasa itu sebagai ruang pengaruhnya. Kepentingan seperti memastikan keselamatan bekalan tenaga, mendapatkan perlindungan politik dan mendapatkan akses pasaran setakat ini, pada tahap tertentu, dapat dipenuhi.
Peranan SCO sebagai instrumen geopolitik Beijing dan Moscow juga bermakna penghakisan demokrasi di rantau dalam ruang pengaruh kedua–dua kuasa itu. Rejim diktator dijanjikan perlindungan daripada tekanan Barat. Ini menjadi sasaran pengkritik pertubuhan itu. Walaupun berpotensi mengimbangi tindakan hegemonik AS, demokrasi tidak menjadi satu isu penting bagi SCO. SCO hanya memiliki tarikan antihegemoni AS tetapi tidak memiliki soft power seperti yang dimiliki AS. Akibatnya, AS dan Barat masih dapat menggunakan tarikan demokrasi dan pasaran bebas untuk menangani pengaruh Beijing dan Moscow.
Nigella: "Don't let the word stew put you off. Yes, I know it's crippled with connotations of school-dinner gristle and gluey-gravied mess, but the lamb shanks here are anything but that. Of course, you could use shoulder, cut into greed-satisfying chunks, and it still wouldn't be compromise, but the bone in the shank gives such rounded richness of flavour and there's something so unpretentiously satisfying about the great meaty hunkiness of it on the plate. Since supermarkets now routinely stock (or will order in) lamb shanks, and since they're both meaty and cheap, it makes sense to seek them out for this.
As with all stews, this is even better made in advance and reheated; for me, this only makes things easier. The couscous, however, needs to be made last minute."
Ingredients:
6 tbspns ground nut or vegetable oil 8 Lamb shanks 2 onions 4 cloves of garlic sprinkling of salt 1 tbspn tumeric 1 tsp ground ginger 1 dried red chilli pepper, crumbled, or quarter teasp dried chilli flakes * 2 tsps cinnamon 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg black pepper 3 tbspns honey 1 tbspn soy sauce 3 tbspns Marsala 6 tbspns red lentils
to serve:
3 tbspns chopped pistachios, chopped blanched almonds or a mixture of both
Instructions:
Put 3 tablespoons of the oil into a very large, wide, heavy-bottomed pan and warm over medium heat. Brown the lamb shanks, in batches, in the pan and then remove to a roasting tin or whatever else you've got to hand to sit them in.
Peel the onions and garlic and process in a food processor or chop them finely by hand. Add the remaining oil to the pan, and fry the onion-garlic mush until soft, sprinkling salt over to stop it catching.
Stir in the turmeric, ground ginger, chilli, cinnamon and nutmeg, and season with some freshly ground pepper. Stir again, adding the honey, soy sauce and Marsala. Put the shanks back in the pan, add cold water almost to cover, bring to the boil then put a lid on the pan, lower the heat and simmer gently for 1 to 1 and a half hours or until the meat is tender.
Add the red lentils and cook for about 20 minutes longer without a lid, until the lentils have softened into the sauce, and the juices have reduced and thickened slightly. Check for seasoning. Toast the nuts by heating them for a few minutes in a dry frying pan, and sprinkle onto the lamb as you serve it.
Serves 6
COUSCOUS
Nigella: "The lamb shanks can be cooked in advance: this, needs to be done at the last minute. But relax, it's a low-effort undertaking. If you don't own a couscoussier (and there's no reason why you should) just steam these grains above boiling water in an ordinary vegetable steamer. Of course it's possible to cook couscous just by steeping it in boiling water (and check packet instructions for directions) but I can't honestly tell you it will make them as fluffily light. Otherwise, with this aromatic, sauce-rich stew, just serve plain rice instead - or a bowlful of buttery mash, of half potatoes, half parsnips, well seasoned and spiced with mace."
Ingredients:
500g couscous 2 tsps salt 4 cardamom pods approx 25g unsalted butter in two slices 25g flaked almonds 50g pinenuts 25g pistacchios
Instructions:
Fill the bottom of a steamer, or base of a couscoussier should you possess one, with water and bring to the boil. When it looks like it's almost ready to boil, fill the kettle and put it on, then empty the couscous into a glass bowl, add the salt, crush in the cardamom and mix with your fingers, then pour over a litre of boiling water from the kettle and place a plate on top of the bowl. Leave to stand for 5 minutes, then drain and empty into the steamer or couscoussier top and sit this on top of the boiling water beneath. Add the slices of butter on top of the couscous then clamp on the lid and let steam for 7-10 minutes, by which time the couscous should be tenderly cooked and the butter melting. (You can do this a simpler way, if you prefer, by just steeping the couscous in the boiling water for 10-15 minutes, but the grains will be more dense and more likely to clump. It's not disastrous, however, and you must decide what you're prepared to do.)
Meanwhile, toast the almonds by frying them in a dry pan till fragrant and golden, remove them to a plate then do the same to the pinenuts. Chop the pistacchios. Once the couscous is cooked, tip into a bowl, fork through (and always use a fork for mixing or fluffing up couscous; a spoon will crush it and turn it stodgy), sprinkling in the almonds and pine nuts as you do so (and taste for seasoning at the same time, too). Now fork in most of the pistacchios, and sprinkle those that remain lightly on top.
Sukan Olimpik, yang kembali ke tempat lahirnya baru-baru ini, sering dikaitkan dengan kemanusiaan, kesamarataan, semangat kesukanan dan pelbagai nilai universal lain. Baru-baru ini, di Athens, Greece, nilai-nilai itu sekali lagi dikemukakan kepada dunia. Bagaimanapun, sejak pertandingan ini bermula di kota Athens ribuan tahun lalu, nilai-nilai universal ini sebenarnya tidak pernah menjadi matlamat temasya sukan ini. Lebih dari sekadar semangat kesukanan dan kesamarataan, sukan Olimpik ialah mengenai kuasa. Segala sudut perlaksanaannya, dari persediaan untuk merebut menjadi kota penganjur hingga pertandingan sukannya, elemen kuasa dapat dilihat dengan jelas.
Jika dikatakan Greek menyumbang demokrasi, dan ilmu falsafah kepada tamadun manusia, Olimpik merupakan satu lagi sumbangan besar kepada umat manusia. Segala nilai yang dibawa Olimpik, iaitu tragedi kemanusiaanya, termasuk korupsi dan pertunjukan kuasa, diteruskan sehingga ke hari ini, dan pada skala yang jauh lebih besar.
Sejak persengketaan negara kota Greek hingga hari ini, Olimpik tidak pernah dapat lari dari percaturan politik. Permusuhan seperti yang dilihat antara Athens dan Sparta sebelum masihi dahulu masih terus berlaku hingga hari ini. Sekurang-kurangnya sejak Olimpik di Los Angeles pada 1984 yang menyaksikan peningkatan perbelanjaan dan berleluasanya tajaan korporat, skandal, korupsi, diskriminasi dan penindasan menjadi tema utama pesta sukan ini. Hari ini dapat disaksikan iklan Visa - kad rasmi sukan Olimpik - di televisyen yang hampir menjelaskan segala-galanya mengenai Olimpik: sukan itu kini dikuasai jenama-jenama korporat. Manakala belanja besar - sehingga berbilion dolar - yang dikeluarkan penganjur untuk menganjurkan sukan ini pula memperlihatkan politik sentiasa menjadi elemen penting sukan berprestij ini. Hari ini, persengketaan negara-negara yang menyertai sukan ini mengingatkan kembali persengketaan antara negara-negara kota Greek beribu tahun lalu.
Pada zaman silam dahulu, negara-negara kota Greek yang sentiasa berperang dan berlumba menguasai rantau tersebut menjadikan Olimpik hanya sebagai salah satu gelanggang persengketaan mereka. Sukan yang jauh lebih ganas pada masa itu jelas menunjukkan elemen kuasa dan politik pada sukan Olimpik. Semua pihak berusaha membuktikan kekuatan masing-masing. Athens dan Sparta terutamanya, dua musuh tradisi, melakukan apa sahaja untuk menewaskan pihak musuh, termasuk penipuan dan rasuah. Sukar untuk mengutamakan semangat kesukanan atau nilai-nilai kemanusiaan apabila sentimen politik sentiasa menguasai keadaan.
Ini tidak banyak berbeza dengan apa yang berlaku di Olimpik hari ini. Olimpik sentiasa dijadikan medan mempamerkan kuasa kepada pihak lain. Setiap peluang menganjurkan Olimpik adalah peluang untuk mempersembahkan keagungan kepada dunia. Semasa zaman pemerintahan Adolf Hitler, sukan Olimpik 1936 di Berlin ingin dipersembahkan sebagai bukti keagungan Nazi. Pada 1972 di Olimpik Munich, 11 atlet Israel dibunuh beberapa hari sebelum kejohanan itu bermula. Kumpulan Black September yang melakukannya menjadikan Olimpik, yang ditonton oleh seluruh dunia, sebagai medan menyampaikan mesej politik mereka.
Pada zaman Perang Dingin, dunia kapitalis dan komunis sangat menyedari bahawa musuh mereka di arena dunia juga adalah musuh di gelanggang sukan. Persoalan prestij menjadi perkara penting dalam hal ini. Kedua-dua pihak juga ingin membuktikan bahawa merekalah yang lebih kuat. Sukan Olimpik di Moscow, Rusia pada 1980 diboikot banyak negara, diketuai Amerika Syarikat, dengan alasan untuk menyampaikan mesej menentang tindakan ketenteraan Rusia di Afghanistan, negara yang lebih 20 tahun selepas itu, diserang oleh Amerika sendiri. Disebabkan jutaan dolar yang ditaburkan untuk Olimpik ini, tidak memeranjatkan pelanggaran etika oleh Jawatankuasa Olimpik Antarabangsa (IOC) berlaku dengan berleluasa. Jenama terkenal dimunculkan di mana-mana, sehingga larian obor sendiri dikenali dengan nama Larian Obor Coca-Cola/Samsung. Nama seperti McDonald's dan Visa tidak dapat dipisahkan lagi dari sukan Olimpik. Setiap penganjur kini berlumba membuat keuntungan dengan menjual hak eksklusif kepada penaja korporat. Penganjur sukan ini mudah untuk mendapat keuntungan, antaranya melalui pelancongan, pembinaan dan pengangkutan. Pertandingan ini membuka ruang kepada IOC pula untuk mendapat imbuhan dari pihak yang berlumba menjadi penganjur.
IOC sebagai sebuah organisasi memiliki kuasa yang sangat luas dalam menentukan siapa yang menganjur dan peraturan lain kejohanan ini. Untuk mempengaruhi undi IOC, jutaan dolar dibelanjakan pihak korporat untuk membeli "hadiah" kepada anggota badan itu. Isu ini paling hangat diperkatakan selepas skandal sekitar Olimpik di Sidney pada tahun 2000 dan sekitar pemilihan Salt Lake City sebagai penganjur Olimpik Musim Sejuk 2002. Seorang pegawai Jawatankuasa Olimpik Australia mendedahkan perbelanjaan membeli undi untuk mendapatkan hak menganjurkan Olimpik di Sydney - dengan bantuan kerajaan Australia -mencapai A$28 juta. Pegawai Salt Lake City dilaporkan telah membelanjakan lebih AS$1 juta untuk membeli pelbagai jenis hadiah kepada ahli-ahli IOC, tidak termasuk belanja lain untuk memenangi hak penganjuran.
Berikutan skandal itu, semakin ramai pihak menggesa reformasi menyeluruh dilakukan melibatkan IOC yang mempunyai peluang sangat luas untuk melakukan korupsi. Pelbagai kos temasya sukan ini terus meningkat. Ruang iklan yang dibayar kepada IOC hari ini mencecah sehingga AS$55 juta. Beberapa tahun lalu, rangkaian televisyen Amerika, NBC mencapai persetujuan bernilai AS$3.5 untuk mendapat hak penyiaran sukan Olimpik - termasuk Olimpik musim sejuk - dari tahun 2000 hingga 2008. Untuk menjadi penaja rasmi Olimpik (untuk tempoh empat tahun), syarikat korporat membayar sekurang-kurangnya AS$40 juta kepada IOC.
Rasa kesal terhadap politik wang yang sangat berleluasa ini pernah diluahkan oleh seorang atlet Kanada, Kaliya Young, yang mengambil keputusan untuk tidak menyertai Olimpik selepas melihat apa yang berlaku pada kejohanan sukan itu. Beliau menulis dalam sebuah akhbar Amerika pada 2000: "Perspektif saya terhadap sukan ini sedikit-sedikit mula berubah. Saya mula melihat bahawa pengorbanan saya akan dipergunakan oleh Olimpik dan penajanya untuk mencapai sesuatu yang berkonflik dengan nilai-nilai fundamental saya.
"Persembahan kompetitif saya bukan hanya akan menjadi sebahagian satu komuniti global yang bertanding dengan semangat kesukanan, persahabatan dan kesepakatan dunia, tetapi hanya akan diperalatkan oleh syarikat korporat untuk kepentingan komersil mereka. Keuntungan tidak akan diperolehi oleh atlet yang bertanding, tetapi menjadi milik IOC, jawatankuasa Olimpik nasional dan pihak penaja."
Menurutnya lagi, "Semangat sukan Olimpik ini telah dihakis apabila temasya ini menjadi platform syarikat multinasional mempromosikan produk tidak sihat mereka kepada dunia, dengan peserta Olimpik menjadi alat promosi mereka. Coke bukan minuman biasa atlet, seperti juga burger McDonald's bukan makanan atlet. Makanan sebegini bukan sebahagian pemakanan sihat atlet. Saya mula mempersoalkan bolehkah saya memberi komitmen mempromosi produk sebegini dengan melakukan persembahan dengan logo mereka kerana dengan melakukan sedemikian, saya seolah-olah mengakui produk berkenaan 'sihat' dan baik."
Beribu batu dari kegemilangan atlet dan jenama sukannya di Olimpik dan temasya sukan lain dunia, isu penindasan pekerja pembuat pakaian dan peralatan tersebut masih menjadi satu isu besar yang menunjukkan mesej yang bertentangan dengan mesej kemanusiaan Olimpik. Berpuluh juta dolar nilai lesen telah dipersetujui antara syarikat sukan berkenaan dengan IOC untuk meletakkan logo Olimpik pada pakaian jenama mereka, menjadikan jenama terbabit sebahagian dari Olimpik.
Disebabkan ini, sekumpulan aktivis masyarakat sivil memulakan kempen Play Fair at the Olympics sebagai usaha untuk menggesa syarikat terbabit cuba mengubah keadaan itu. Jenama-jenama terkemuka seperti Nike, Reebok dan Adidas sering dikaitkan dengan penindasan pekerja di syarikat-syarikat yang mendapat kontrak membuat pakaian untuk jenama tersebut di negara-negara yang mempunyai undang-undang buruh yang lemah seperti Indonesia, Vietnam, China dan banyak lagi negara lain. Walaupun syarikat berkenaan tidak membuat sendiri produk mereka, aktivis terbabit menggesa mereka bertanggungjawab terhadap keadaan pekerja syarikat yang membuat produk mereka yang masih dinafikan dari menikmati hak asasi, apatah lagi menyertai kesatuan sekerja untuk mendapatkan hak sebagai pekerja.
Pekerja-pekerja terbabit diberi gaji yang sangat tidak setimpal dengan masa bekerja mereka yang boleh mencapai 18 jam sehari di persekitaran kerja yang sangat teruk, di kilang yang dikenali sebagai sweatshop. Mereka turut dihalang dari meminta hak sebagai pekerja dan menyertai kesatuan sekerja. "Peserta kempen Play Fair telah mewawancara hampir 200 orang pekerja di kilang di seluruh dunia dan di kilang yang membuat pakaian berjenama Olimpik dan mendapati kes perkerja bekerja shif sehingga 16, malah sehingga 18 jam, dan mendapat gaji yang sangat rendah yang tidak cukup untuk menampung hidup mereka. Mereka juga mendapati terdapat ugutan terhadap pekerja dan pencabulan hak mereka, dan ugutan terhadap pekerja yang ingin menubuhkan atau menyertai kesatuan sekerj," jelas Katherine Daniels dari Oxfam seperti dilapor CorpWatch Ogos lalu.
Menurut laporan CorpWatch itu lagi, kempen Play Fair at the Olympics mendapati syarikat Puma dan Fila memberikan kontrak kepada syarikat yang sering mendera perkerja mereka, termasuk gangguan seksual yang berleluasa dan mengugut untuk memecat pekerja yang enggan bekerja lebih masa. Laporan Play Fair itu juga mendapati kilang yang membuat produk untuk Fila, Nike, Umbro, Speedo, Reebok dan ASICS memalsukan bukti, termasuk rekod gaji pekerja apabila pemeriksaan ke atas kilang mereka dilakukan, dan kredibiliti pemeriksa itu juga diragui kerana tidak dapat dipastikan siapa yang membayar mereka. Kumpulan Play Fair dalam satu kenyataan mereka menyatakan kekesalan terhadap respons dingin IOC terhadap kempen mereka. Menurutnya, IOC enggan mengakui tanggungjawab mereka, walaupun mempunyai pengaruh yang luas dalam dunia sukan, termasuk terhadap penggunaan logo Olimpik pada pakaian sukan.
Penindasan itu bagaimanapun tidak hanya terhad kepada pekerja pembuat pakaian sukan. Perhambaan seperti yang berlaku pada zaman Greek sebelum masihi berlaku lagi hari ini. Dalam usaha Greece mengejar kegemilangan menganjurkan temasya sukan ini, hak-hak pekerja terpaksa dinafikan untuk memastikan kejayaan penganjuran acara bersejarah ini. Menurut satu laporan akhbar London, The Telegraph kontraktor pembinaan untuk kemudahan sukan Olimpik 2004 di Greece telah mengambil beribu-ribu pekerja asing dari Eropah timur, Timur Tengah dan Asia untuk bekerja tanpa permit. Lapor The Telegraph, pekerja asing terbabit bekerja tanpa insurans sehingga 14 jam sehari sejak empat tahun lalu dan tinggal di kongsi tanpa bekalan air dan elektrik. Menurut laporan itu, pekerja asing terbabit menerima gaji serendah 20 euro sehari, jauh lebih rendah dari gaji minima Greece sebanyak 30 euro sehari. Keselamatan pekerja berkenaan juga sangat tidak terjamin. Dilaporkan 14 orang pekerja kehilangan nyawa dalam perlumbaan menyiapkan fasiliti Olimpik kali ini. Bagaimanapun, ada pihak yang bimbang angka sebenar mungkin jauh lebih besar dari itu. Hakikatnya, Greece, sebuah negara yang jauh kurang maju dari negara Kesatuan Eropah (EU) lain, kurang mampu untuk menyediakan Athens untuk menjadi tuan rumah Olimpik kali ini. Banyak pihak di Greece kurang senang dengan apa yang berlaku di negara mereka hari ini, walau ramai yang enggan bersuara kerana sentimen nasionalis. Sebuah kumpulan berhaluan kiri, Anti-2004 mengecam keras kerajaan Greece kerana hal ini, terutama kerana kawalan keselamatan yang sangat ketat sehingga didakwa menjadikan negara itu seolah-olah sebuah "negara polis." Akibatnya, kerajaan negara itu kelihatan mengabaikan segala peraturan buruh untuk menjaga nama sebagai tempat lahir Olimpik.
IOC juga mengabaikan isu hak pekerja apabila memilih China sebagai tuan rumah Olimpik 2008. IOC patut mengambil kira penindasan terhadap pekerja yang berlaku di negara itu. China dikenali sebagai salah sebuah negara yang lemah undang-undang pekerjanya, dan pemilihannya sebagai tuan rumah Olimpik, yang memerlukan negara itu membina lebih banyak kemudahan bertaraf Olimpik kemungkinan besar akan memburukkan lagi penindasan dan pencabulan hak terhadap pekerja seperti yang dilihat berlaku di Greece.
Olimpik kali ini menjadi satu tragedi bagi Greek, selain kepada seluruh dunia sukan. Sentimen mengembalikan Olimpik ke tempat asalnya itu melibatkan kos yang sangat besar kepada negara yang pernah mencipta keagungan itu. Pihak yang berlumba mengaut keuntungan melalui pelbagai projek pembangunan yang dikaitkan dengan Olimpik mendapat peluang mereka melalui Olimpik kali ini. Kos yang sangat besar juga ditanggung oleh mereka yang menjadi mangsa pembangunan dan warga kelas kedua negara itu, kaum Roma (juga dikenali sebagai Gipsi).
Defisit belanjawan Greece kini telah melebihi had maksima yang ditetapkan oleh EU. Greece pada mulanya menjangkakan belanja untuk menganjurkan Olimpik kali ini sekitar 4.6 bilion euro. Bagaimanapun, angka itu kini dilaporkan boleh mencapai 7 bilion euro, dengan belanja keselamatan sebanyak 1 bilion euro. Skala sukan Olimpik hari, dan kuasa IOC yang seolah-olah memiliki kejohanan Olimpik ini membawa kepada gejala yang dilihat hari ini. Negara penganjur Olimpik tahun ini terpaksa berdepan tragedi itu untuk membuktikan kepada dunia bahawa "Greek boleh!" - September 2004
Losses, and the Losing Losers Who Hate Them By MICHAEL J. AGOVINO
MINNOW and superpower alike last week could still dream of hoisting the World Cup on July 9 in Berlin, but by Tuesday, some teams will be boarding planes home, wondering what went wrong. It won't be too long, though, before the losing players might be found on a quiet beach in the Maldives, their misery consigned to memory.
Not so the losing fans. It has been said that losses are more devastating, and lasting, for them.
Famous upsets in sports abound — the accomplished Soviets losing the 1980 "miracle on ice" Olympic hockey game to the college-age Americans; the United States "dream teams" being beat in basketball — but it is still soccer, by far the most popular sport, whose results are so entangled with a nation's history and sense of identity.
If it's tempting to suggest a link between national character and the ways nations have coped with defeat, the slim catalog of responses — especially to humiliating losses, or those at the hands of geopolitical rivals — probably says more about how similar people are. They blame themselves. They blame the other guy. They weep. They stew. They act stoic. They act up.
One favorite response is scapegoating. In 1950, Brazil, the host and favorite, lost in the final to Uruguay. The author Alex Bellos, in his book "Futebol: Soccer, the Brazilian Way," writes that the goalkeeper, Barbosa, "became the personification of the national tragedy." He died 50 years later, apparently unforgiven by his countrymen.
Although Brazil has suffered cataclysmic defeats in addition to 1950's, it has won a record five World Cups.
"Brazilians, to generalize awfully, are emotionally bipolar," Mr. Bellos, who divides his time between England and Brazil, said in an interview. "Everything is either the best in the world or the worst in the world. They have a superiority complex in terms of football, yet the flipside is a developing nation's crushing insecurity complex. When they win they forget their problems. They are the happy, party-loving. When they lose it reinforces a sense that they are useless and predestined towards failure — not just in football but in everything."
The Dutch are not known for public displays of emotion, but Holland's loss to West Germany in the 1974 World Cup Final is "burned into the Dutch psyche in the way that Dallas, 22 November, 1963 haunts America," David Winner writes in "Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football." There was open weeping. Mr. Winner cites a study of that loss that concluded, "The defeat of 1974 is the biggest trauma that happened to Holland in the 20th century apart from the floods of 1953 and World War II." He quotes a Dutch psychoanalyst: "There is still a deep, unresolved trauma about 1974. It's a very living pain, like an unpunished crime."
Since then, the Dutch, still steeped in Calvinist ethos, albeit secular, have had an unusual string of bitter defeats, but according to Mr. Winner, they "go numb and pretend it doesn't matter. They shrug and don't talk."
The Italians, who like the Dutch have had a series of improbable last-minute implosions, turn not so much operatic, as per stereotype, but somewhat paranoic, according to the new book "Calcio: A History of Italian Football" by John Foot of University College in London. The referees punished Italy to favor the host South Korea — that was the chorus heard from Palermo to Milan in 2002. In 2004, the Danes colluded with those evil Swedes and played to a deliberate 2-2 draw that ousted the Italians, the dark thinking went.
The English, says the novelist Nick Hornby, author of the soccer memoir "Fever Pitch," would rather pin blame on an individual on their own team, either a manager or player (David Beckham in 1998 for committing a silly foul in front of the referee; the goalie David Seaman in 2002 for misjudging Ronaldinho's blooping shot — or was that a pass?). But in an interview Mr. Hornby said, "It's been so long since England have won anything in soccer that it feels as though real contenders come from a parallel universe England can't seem to break their way in to."
William W. Kelly, an anthropologist at Yale who teaches a course called "Sport, Society and Culture," said he is "leery of national character as an explanation for anything, including sports behavior."
He added: "The Brazilians, the Germans, the Italians and the English, among other national teams, have all had shocking early exits in modern World Cup play, followed by fans behaving badly and media and politicians pointing fingers. I'm not sure that there has been enough difference in their reactions to attribute them to a collective personality."
Sam Mchombo, a linguistics professor at Berkeley who has lectured on soccer in identity formation, is similarly reluctant to impute reaction to collective personality, but he does note that many of the African nations, given their meager resources, are just happy to have qualified for the cup, and the reactions to the losses, he said, "have not been irritable or violent but rather with a degree of stoicism or grace."
Few reactions to loss on the pitch could be more starkly bleak than the one Ryszard Kapuscinski describes in his book "The Soccer War," about the cup qualifying games between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969, and the ensuing madness.
"Eighteen-year-old Amelia Bolanios was sitting in front of the television in El Salvador when the Honduran striker Roberto Cardona scored the winning goal in the final minute," he writes. "She got up and ran to the desk which contained her father's pistol in a drawer. She then shot herself in the heart. 'The young girl could not bear to see her fatherland brought to its knees,' wrote the Salvadoran newspaper El Nacional the next day. The whole capital took part in the televised funeral of Amelia Bolanios."
Losing in the World Cup isn't the only way to pummel self-esteem. Not qualifying, like the two-time champion Uruguay, who inexplicably lost to Australia in a playoff, can be painful too. Eduardo Galeano, whose aphoristic book "Soccer in Sun and Shadow" is often quoted, said in an e-mail interview, "When we Uruguayans suffer a humiliating defeat, we confirm that we are no more than a fiction in history, a mistake on the map, a bad joke of God or Devil."
World watch: Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit
The recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its birthplace was not only the most high profile, but also confidently announced the rise of the group that brings together China, Russia and Iran.
Here are some news and analysis on the symbolic, historic event.
1. European Union Moves Ahead With Turkey and Croatia Talks By JAMES KANTER, International Herald Tribune
BRUSSELS, June 12 — The European Union pushed forward with enlargement plans on Monday, conducting a first round of membership negotiations with Turkey and Croatia and signing a pre-membership agreement with Albania.
The talks with Turkey proceeded after a compromise was reached over a demand by Cyprus that Ankara open its ports and airports to trade with new European Union member states, including Cyprus, as it had agreed to do last July. The European Union foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, urged Turkey to do just that, or face delays in "the overall progress in the negotiations."
Cyprus, which remains in a standoff with Turkey over the island's division, then dropped its objections to the start of talks, and the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, departed for Luxembourg to join the meeting. The foreign ministers' discussions centered on science and technology, and were the first of 35 rounds of negotiations to be held with Turkey in the accession process, which is expected to take at least a decade. Krisztina Nagy, the spokeswoman for Olli Rehn, the union's enlargement commissioner, said the talks with Turkey and Croatia remained on schedule.
The moves toward further enlargement are continuing despite doubts among some Europeans after the last round of enlargement — to 25 countries from 15 two years ago. There has also been concern about Europe's ability to absorb Turkey, which would be the first mainly Muslim nation to enter the union, as well as the Balkan countries.
But proponents of expansion say the process helps create stable, Western-oriented neighbors. "The process of accession can virtually transform a country," said Katinka Barysch, chief economist at the Center for European Reform in London, citing the vast changes in the economies of Poland and other Eastern European countries.
In addition to formally opening membership talks with Croatia, the Union recognized Montenegro as Europe's newest sovereign state. Montenegro voted in May to end its federation with Serbia and declare independence.
The agreement commits Albania, a formerly Stalinist country, to intensify economic and political changes in exchange for greater trade with the union, but offers no entry date.
European leaders have grown wary of enlarging the union after the rejection by French and Dutch voters of a European constitution last spring. Those votes were seen by some as a rebuff to a larger union after eight formerly Communist countries, along with Cyprus and Malta, joined the bloc two years ago.
For Turkey, the stakes are high. As inflation has increased and the value of the lira has fallen, the prospect of European Union membership has become even more important in improving standards of living, foreign investment and employment.
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2. China Posted Trade Surplus of $13 Billion Last Month By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI, June 12 — China said Monday that its trade surplus reached a record $13 billion in May, raising the prospect of renewed trade frictions with the United States and Europe.
The huge trade gains are just the latest evidence of China's remarkable economic boom, and the figures could create new pressures on Beijing to allow its currency to appreciate against other world currencies as a way of balancing global trade.
After posting a record $100 billion trade surplus in 2005, much of it with the United States and Europe, China said Monday that its total surplus had already reached nearly $47 billion in the first five months of this year, a period that is traditionally slower for exports than the second half of the year.
The government said that in May, exports rose 25 percent, to $73 billion, while imports rose 22 percent, to $60 billion.
The record trade figures come at a time when economists are growing increasingly worried that China's economy is beginning to show signs of inflationary pressure and overheating.
Two years before Beijing is expected to be host of the Olympic Games, investment activity is climbing, bank loan growth is soaring and the nation's biggest cities are in the midst of an unprecedented building boom.
China's leaders are now trying to rein in a blistering hot economy, which grew by more than 10 percent in the first quarter of the year.
Hoping to cool things down a little, Beijing has, in recent months, raised interest rates, introduced new measures to crack down on speculation in the real estate market and tried to restrain "excessive" investment in certain commodities and industries, which could be helping bolster cheap exports.
Last year, when exports were up $29.9 billion in the first five months, there were calls from American and European officials for China to restrain its trade growth and raise the value of its currency.
China allowed its currency to appreciate 2.1 percent last summer, and the Chinese currency, the yuan, has climbed slightly more so far this year, to about 8 yuan to the dollar.
But now, China's early-year trade surplus is once again taking off. And plans to encourage domestic consumption and bolster imports as a way of better balancing trade have not been able to keep pace with export growth.
"The economy is cooking along," says Jonathan Anderson, an economist in Hong Kong at UBS. "Still, they have excess capacity, so that's slowing down imports."
Last month's $13 billion trade surplus eclipsed the record $12 billion surplus China recorded last October.
There are also some signs of inflationary pressure, economists say. While inflation grew at a mild 1.4 percent in May, several economists said that inflationary pressure could be building and might show up more clearly in 2007 or 2008, after a lag period. They are also worried about the enormous rise in bank loans.
"Data like this triggers worries of real overheating or rather, overstimulation of the economy," Stephen Green, a senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank said in a report Monday.
World watch: Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Pertubuhan Kerjasama Shanghai)
This year is a very interesting and significant year for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Its two biggest members, Russia and China - and an observer member, Iran - continue to dominate headlines. In the middle of this month, the five-year-old organization will hold its fifth summit in its birthplace, Shanghai. In July, St. Petersburg will host the G8 meeting. Both will focus on energy, in a time when China is significantly altering the global energy landscape and Russia - and even Iran - is confidently flexing its energy muscle. Here is an article I wrote last year on the organization some dubbed as Nato of the East, and seen as a threat to American and European interests.
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Dalam tempoh dua bulan lalu, banyak peristiwa telah menunjukkan isyarat kebangkitan satu pakatan blok Timur yang sangat berpotensi menyaingi dunia Barat, walaupun agak kurang mendapat perhatian media antarabangsa. Mei lalu, kebangkitan rakyat di Andijan, Uzbekistan, negara Asia Tengah yang paling rapat dengan Amerika, ditewaskan dengan kejam oleh kerajaan negara itu pimpinan diktator Presiden Islam Karimov. Karimov yang telah lama menikmati sokongan Amerika Syarikat kemudian digesa oleh kuasa besar itu agar melaksanakan reformasi politik di negaranya, menandakan Karimov tidak lagi boleh bergantung pada sokongan Barat.
Sebagai reaksi, akhir Julai lalu, kerajaan Karimov memutuskan untuk menghalau tentera Amerika dari pangkalan Karshi-Khanabad di Uzbekistan. Sebuah lagi negara yang menempatkan pangkalan tentera Amerika, Kyrgyzstan, juga melakukan tindakan hampir sama. Kyrgyzstan memutuskan untuk menghadkan penggunaan pangkalan tentera Amerika di negara itu, dan memberikan syarat Amerika hanya dapat menggunakan pangkalan itu hingga keadaan stabil di Afghanistan. Selepas itu, kewujudan pangkalan itu akan ditamatkan.
Akhir Ogos lalu, syarikat minyak China, Perbadanan Minyak Nasional China (CNPC) berjaya mengukuhkan kedudukannya di Asia Tengah melalui pembelian PetroKazakhstan, syarikat minyak milik Kanada yang beroperasi di Kazakhstan.
Peristiwa paling penting berlangsung akhir Ogos lalu, petanda terbesar era baru hubungan kuasa-kuasa Timur; latihan ketenteraan besar–besaran Peace Mission 2005 melibatkan tentera China dan Rusia, yang pertama kali diadakan.
Peristiwa-peristiwa itu menandakan kebangkitan pakatan baru untuk mengimbangi hegemoni Amerika dan pengaruh Barat, atau lebih tepat lagi, sebuah pertubuhan yang berupaya dijadikan instrumen memelihara dan mencapai kepentingan geostrategik Moscow dan Beijing. Badan itu, Pertubuhan Kerjasama Shanghai (SCO), kelihatan semakin berkesan untuk mendepani usaha Rusia dan China menangani dominasi Amerika di Asia di wilayah sekitar dua negara itu dan berpotensi diperluaskan lagi.
SCO ditubuhkan pada 15 Jun, 2001 di Shanghai, China, melibatkan enam negara; China, Rusia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan dan Uzbekistan. SCO ialah lanjutan daripada rangka kerja kumpulan Lima Shanghai yang ditubuhkan pada 1996, dengan ruang kerjasama sebahagian besarnya melibatkan kerjasama menangani krisis sempadan negara terbabit. Pertemuan pada ulang tahun ke lima kumpulan Lima Shanghai itu telah menyaksikan kemasukan ahli baru, Uzbekistan dan kelahiran deklarasi yang melahirkan SCO.
Setiap tahun, sidang kemuncak SCO diadakan di ibu negara negara anggota secara giliran. Ruang kerjasama SCO terus diperluaskan, yang diperlihatkan dengan jelas melalui latihan ketenteraan Peace Mission 2005 Ogos lalu. Empat lagi negara Asia; India, Iran, Mongolia dan Pakistan memegang status negara pemerhati SCO. Iran jelas kelihatan semakin merapatkan hubungan dengan SCO, terutama Rusia dan China yang banyak bekerjasama dengannya dalam bidang ketenteraan dan tenaga. Dan dalam banyak hal, Rusia dan China boleh diharapkan oleh Iran untuk mempertahankannya daripada tindakan politik Barat. Baru–baru ini, Moscow menentang hasrat Barat untuk merujuk kes nuklear Iran kepada Majlis Keselamatan PBB.
Pada 5 Julai lalu, sidang kemuncak SCO di Astana, Kazakhstan, mengukuhkan lagi pakatan ini yang selama ini tidak mampu bergerak sebagai satu pertubuhan kerjasama yang kukuh, terutama akibat pengaruh kuat Amerika ke atas wilayah Asia Tengah, kesan "perang menentang terorisme" di Afghanistan. Lebih empat tahun selepas penubuhannya, SCO akhirnya pada tahun ini berjaya memperlihatkan penyatuannya, atau sekurang-kurangnya kejayaan dua negara terbesarnya, Rusia dan China menggerakkan pertubuhan ini untuk memelihara kepentingan di wilayah Asia Tengah.
Uzbekistan merupakan negara paling bermasalah dalam SCO. Walaupun menjadi ahli, Tashkent berkiblat ke Amerika dan mendapat sokongan dan bantuan ketenteraan dari negara kuasa besar itu walaupun memiliki rekod hak asasi manusia yang sangat teruk. Pemerintahan diktator Karimov tidak pernah diganggu oleh Washington, sehingga peristiwa berdarah Andijan Mei lalu. Sokongan Barat terhadap pemerintahan diktatornya tidak dapat dijamin akan berterusan, terutama selepas Andijan.
Barat memiliki kepentingan tersendiri dalam melindungi rejim Karimov, tetapi pemerintah yang lebih pro-Barat dan propasaran lebih disenangi Amerika dan Eropah. Barat mampu mengeksport "revolusi berwarna" ke Uzbekistan, seperti yang telah dilaksanakan di Georgia, Ukraine dan Kyrgyzstan. Menyedari kedudukannya dalam bahaya, Karimov mengubah kiblat politiknya ke timur. Dua minggu selepas peristiwa Andijan, Karimov telah melawat Beijing. September ini, perubahan ketaatan Tashkent dikukuhkan lagi dengan latihan ketenteraan antara Uzbekistan dengan Rusia. Dan awal September lalu, satu konsortium carigali gas di kawasan Laut Aral Uzbekistan telah ditubuhkan melibatkan beberapa syarikat termasuk dari Rusia, China dan Malaysia, usahasama yang berupaya mendekatkan lagi Uzbekistan dengan Rusia dan China dan mungkin menyelamatkan rejim Karimov daripada tekanan Washington dan Eropah.
Dalam masa dua tahun, dua republik pasca-Soviet, Georgia dan Ukraine telah mengubah kiblat mereka ke Amerika. Ini menjejaskan dengan lebih teruk lagi maruah Rusia yang pernah menjadi kuasa besar dunia. Penghujung 2003, Presiden Eduard Shedvadrnadze dijatuhkan melalui satu tindakan massa yang disokong Washington dan pertubuhan bukan kerajaan Barat. Mikhail Saakshvili, peguam yang mendapat pendidikan di Amerika menggantikan Shedvardnadze sebagai presiden baru Georgia, negara laluan eksport minyak ke Barat. Terbaru, awal tahun ini, Viktor Yanukovych ditewaskan oleh lawannya, Viktor Yushchenko, juga dengan sokongan dan bantuan kewangan Washington. Rusia, yang turut memberikan bantuan kepada sekutunya di Tbilisi dan Kiev, tidak mampu menghalang bekas republik di bawah pengaruhnya itu “dirampas” Amerika.
Kedua-dua Amerika dan Rusia mempunyai kepentingan ekonomi dan politik yang luas di Georgia dan Ukraine, dan Presiden George W Bush dengan yakin menyambut kemenangan sekutunya di republik tersebut sebagai kejayaan demokrasi dan bukti keramat suara rakyat. Presiden Rusia, Vladimir Putin pasti melihat agenda Bush itu dengan penuh curiga. Tanpa berselindung lagi, Bush telah pun memperlihatkan hasratnya memperluaskan pengaruh di republik-republik pasca-Soviet. Bush kelihatan yakin sekali ruang pengaruh Rusia itu akan dirampas, dengan menjadikan penyebaran demokrasi sebagai alasan. Sebab sebenar berkait rapat dengan kuasa, dan kepentingan ekonomi Amerika dan negara-negara Eropah.
Terbaru, Azerbaijan, negara kaya minyak yang menyempadani Georgia, Rusia dan Laut Kaspia berdepan ancaman perubahan rejim tajaan Amerika. Strategi yang sama seperti yang berlaku di Georgia, Ukraine dan Kyrgyzstan telah dilihat di Azerbaijan. Pada 2003, presiden Azerbaijan, Haidar Aliyev meninggal dunia dan tempatnya diambil alih oleh anaknya, Ilham Aliyev. Bagaimanapun, perkembangan terbaru menunjukkan Barat agak kurang selesa dengan presiden baru Azerbaijan itu yang dikatakan mahukan bahagian yang lebih dalam sumber minyak negaranya.
Azerbaijan memiliki kedudukan yang strategik di rantau kaukasus dan bersempadan dengan Rusia dan Iran. Bekas republik Soviet ini memegang sekitar 20 peratus sumber minyak dan gas Kaspia, dan antara pembekal penting minyak kepada Barat melalui projek saluran paip minyak Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan - melibatkan Azerbaijan (Baku), Georgia (Tbilisi), dan Turki (Ceyhan) - projek minyak terbesar Barat di Kaspia diketuai syarikat minyak Britain, BP. Perubahan sikap kerajaan Azerbaijan akan menjejaskan kuasa Barat ke atas saluran minyak Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, projek yang dilihat dengan penuh cemburu oleh Rusia yang satu ketika dahulu menguasai kawasan tersebut.
Penguasaan Amerika ke atas minyak di Kaukasus dan Asia Tengah juga merugikan China. Amerika akan bergerak lebih jauh ke timur dalam projek saluran paip minyaknya untuk membawa sumber penting itu dari Kazakhstan dan Turkmenistan yang juga menyempadani Laut Kaspia ke pasaran Barat. Amerika yang bimbang terhadap kebangkitan China menyedari kelemahannya ini; pergantungan kepada bekalan minyak untuk menggerakkan enjin pembangunannya.
Washington melaksanakan usaha membendung China dengan jelas, dan ini telah dapat dilihat melalui penguasaannya ke atas rantau Asia Tengah dan tekanan terhadap Iran, negara pembekal penting minyak kepada China. Tidak lama dahulu, Amerika menghalang syarikat minyak China, Perbadanan Minyak Luar Pantai Nasional China (CNOOC) daripada mengambil alih Unocal, salah sebuah syarikat konsortium saluran minyak Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan. Tindakan Amerika di Iraq juga telah menjejaskan China dan Rusia apabila kontrak minyak syarikat dua negara itu dengan Iraq di bawah Saddam Hussein dibatalkan setelah Amerika berjaya menjatuhkan rejim Saddam.
Dalam menangani kebangkitan blok Timur ini, Malaysia, sebagai salah sebuah negara penting Asia telah memulakan langkahnya. Enam hari selepas latihan perang Peace Mission 2005, Timbalan Perdana Menteri Najib Razak telah memulakan lawatan rasmi ke China, usaha diplomatik yang memiliki signifikan yang besar bagi kedua-dua negara. Lawatan yang diadakan 31 tahun selepas Malaysia menjadi negara bukan komunis pertama di Asia Tenggara memulakan hubungan diplomatik dengan China meningkatkan hubungan baik Kuala Lumpur-Beijing dalam banyak bidang. Antaranya termasuk Memorandum Persefahaman Kerjasama Pertahanan Dua Hala yang ditandatangani di Beijing yang bakal meluaskan lagi kerjasama pertahanan kedua negara.
Dalam usaha Amerika mengawal pengaruh China di Asia, kunjungan Najib yang juga Menteri Pertahanan ini menandakan Malaysia tidak bersedia membantu agenda kuasa besar itu terhadap China, walaupun sebelum ini menyokong kuat "perang menentang terorisme." China memiliki kepentingan yang sangat besar di Malaysia yang lebih daripada sekadar kepentingan ekonomi. China menyedari usaha Amerika menguasai Selat Melaka, laluan perdagangan penting bagi China dan laluan 80 peratus import minyaknya. Washington pernah menyatakan hasrat untuk mengawal keselamatan Selat Melaka, usaha yang pasti akan dilihat dengan penuh curiga oleh Beijing.
Perkembangan melibatkan Selat Melaka akan terus menjadi elemen penting dalam usaha Amerika mengawal pengaruh China, yang sangat bergantung kepada keselamatan laluan Selat Melaka. Malaysia juga berkepentingan untuk berbaik dengan China, yang dilihat ramai sebagai kuasa besar rantau Asia. Syarikat minyak Malaysia juga ingin meningkatkan kerjasama tenaga dengan China dan juga Rusia serta meningkatkan penglibatan dalam industri minyak di Asia Tengah, yang dapat dilihat melalui konsortium carigali gas Petronas dengan syarikat Rusia LUKoil, CNPC dan beberapa syarikat lain dalam satu projek di Uzbekistan, projek yang dijangka mula beroperasi tahun depan selepas perjanjian kerjasama dipersetujui semua pihak.
SCO juga telah meningkatkan hubungan dengan Persatuan Negara-Negara Asia Tenggara (Asean), melalui Memorandum Persefahaman yang ditandatangani sekretariat kedua-dua badan di Jakarta 21 April lalu. Antara bidang yang diliputi persefahaman itu termasuklah memerangi jenayah transnasional dan kerjasama dalam sektor tenaga. Satu signifikan lawatan Najib juga boleh dikaitkan dengan Sidang Kemuncak Asia Timur (EAS) pertama yang bakal diadakan di Kuala Lumpur akhir tahun ini, yang turut mengundang China. Pertemuan ini diperhatikan potensinya oleh Amerika, yang tidak dijemput ke pertemuan ini.
Ada pihak melihat ini sebagai tindakan mengetepikan Amerika, ulangan episod Kaukus Ekonomi Asia Timur (EAEC). Seorang pengkaji dari kumpulan pemikir berhaluan kanan Heritage Foundation, Dana Robert Dillon dalam satu tulisannya menunjukkan kemungkinan China meluaskan pengaruhnya melalui EAS, termasuk melibatkan ketenteraan. Beliau turut menyarankan Amerika segera menangani EAS demi kepentingan kuasa besar itu di Asia. Dalam kenyataan Najib di Shanghai ketika lawatan rasmi itu, beliau menangkis dakwaan itu dan menegaskan EAS bukan bertujuan untuk menyaingi mana-mana blok. Amerika yang sentiasa bimbangkan kemunculan kuasa pencabarnya tidak mungkin akan menerima kenyataan itu.
Keberkesanan SCO sebagai alat memelihara dan mencapai kepentingan Beijing dan Moscow akan bergantung kepada kejayaannya menangani negara-negara ahli yang sebelum ini berbelah bagi antara Barat dan Timur. Dan kepentingan Rusia dengan China juga tidak sentiasa selari. Tidak mungkin Rusia akan membenarkan China menjadi pemimpin SCO. Amerika juga sentiasa berusaha menarik negara-negara Asia lain dari berhubung rapat dengan China. Setakat ini, China dan Rusia telah berjaya menangani pakatan itu dengan baik, dan semakin berkesan digunakan menghadapi asakan Barat di Asia Tengah. Menyedari potensi ini, jelas sekali Amerika tidak akan berdiam diri. - 24 September, 2005
Today, much like the ancient times, sports have demonstrated clearly that the idea of nation–state is here to stay. In the recent French Open tennis tournament, supporters of both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer waved and draped themselves in the Spanish and Swiss flags in supporting their countrymen. What could be more saliently political than a country’s flag? And by the way, both Nadal and Federer were wearing Nike in the final. 
In tennis, Nike’s dominance is unmistakable. The Greek goddess’s namesake has clothed great champions like Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Federer, the current world number one, is securing his place as a tennis great in Wimbledon. 
