fidel castro dead?

this guy has been killed off more than i dont know what.. ive heard this story a million times now.. one of the things i was afraid of before i moved to brasil was that i would miss the scene in miami when fidel castro finally died.. there are stories buzzing all over the internet.. val at babalu blog has some info here, and links here, and here is a story.. of course, there are those that think he was killed off in 1981 and replaced by alexis papagos.. (thanks to sergio at babalu who found that story)

more on zidane

someone in the comments section asked for a bit more on the zidane incident.. here is a link to google news with more info, and here is another.. follow tem and you will find more info on it.. this story is bringing everyone out of the woodwork.. in this story, an iranian official says zidanes reaction was a result of islamic pride.. in this story a far right italian politician has interesting comments.. here is a snippet : Meanwhile, the far-right vice-president of the Italian Senate stoked anti-French feeling in the country on Tuesday, branding the French team as "blacks, Islamists and Communists".Roberto Calderoli, head of the right-wing popular Northern League party, refused to retract earlier comments in which he hailed Italy's defeat of France in Sunday's World Cup final as "a victory for Italian identity"."When I say that France's team is composed of blacks, Islamists and Communists, I am saying an objective and evident thing," Calderoli was quoted on Tuesday as saying by the Ansa news agency.Italy's all-white team, from a largely devout Catholic populace, had won against "a France team which sacrificed its own identity by lining up blacks, Islamists and Communists to get results," Calderoli had said on Sunday.

everyone has an opinion....

zidane

just one way to describe the zidane incident:

O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,Shrunk to this little measure? (julius caesar 3.1.148)..

one of the best players in the history of the game, the best french player ever.. more cantona than platini...

Garanhuns to Araua, Aracaju, and back to Garanhuns

THE TRIP FROM GARANHUNS TO ARAUÁ
ok it was a VERY long trip and week.. for starters, we had serious bus problems.. soon after the trip started, one of the wires that sends juice the windshield wipers was frayed and came loose.. every 30-45 minutes theyd come undone and we had to stop and reconnect them.. things became unraveled, literally, when we blew a tire and it was just shredded to pieces.. we pulled over to the side of the road to change it, only to discover the jack did not work.. luckily, a truck driver that had pulled over had one in working condintion and lent it to us.. he was really nice about it, he waited almost 45 minutes as we changed it and refused to take money from us for his trouble.. "we are all on the road, and one day i may need your help", is what he said and then drove off.. the kids enjoyed the fact that a bus for an all girls school pulled over and their driver helped us.. you take one bus with 60 boys ranging in ages from 11-17, and take another one filled with about 50 girls ranging in ages from 13-19, and you get quite the event.. we got the spare on, but it was bald.. we had to drive slow into the next town to get a new tire.. while we waited for the new tire, we got lunch.. this whole process delayed us about 5 hours.. we got in to arauá alot later than we had planned, but at least we made it to arauá, in the state of sergipe..
THE TOWN OF ARAUÁ
think small... imagine a one mule town.. now, imagine a town smaller than that.. the only place with internet access was city hall.. not much to do in this town.. i like small towns, but this was too much.. everything stops after about 8PM.. it got so bad we got away two nights after the games were done.. the first place we visited was estância, a bit bigger than arauá but smaller than garanhuns.. we got the kids pizza.. the second trip we made was to a town called boquim, and i really liked this place.. small, but it still had signs of life.. there was a plaza in the center full of girls looking for guys, and guys looking for girls.. the players really enjoyed it..
THE TOURNEY IN ARAUÁ
the tourney was very competitive.. there really wasnt a bad team there.. the teams came from various states here in the northeast: bahia, sergipe, alagoas, and us, pernambuco.. all the teams had ups and downs, but in the end, all classified for the finals.. the youngest group lost in the first games of the semi finals on an own goal.. the middle group lost on penalties.. the older kids made it to the finals, but lost on penalties as well, and we ended up with a second place trophy.. all the other coaches came over to tell us ours was the most organized, most professional looking group, and many offered players to train with us.. in the future we are going to hold our own tournament here in garanhuns and many will bring their teams to participate in it
BACK TO GARANHUNS
if the road to arauá was difficult, the road back to garanhuns was worse.. this time the other tire blew.. we got it patched up, but about 45 minutes later, it blew out AGAIN.. we decided to drive to aracaju, a beach in sergipe.. we tired to find a hotel for the night, but due to an event, most everything was booked.. at 4 in the morning we finally found a hotel where we could get 10 rooms and cram the kids in.. the next day while we got the tires fixed the kids went to the beach.. it was the first time a few of them had ever been to the beach and they really enjoyed themselves..

What Could the N.F.L. Learn From the World Cup?

From the Freakonomics Blog..
What Could the N.F.L. Learn From the World Cup?
The World Cup final was both predictable (Italy’s comeback and eventual triumph after the early French goal) and bizarre (Zinedine Zidane’s farewell head-butt). Not a great game but not bad.
The consolation match on Saturday, between Germany and Portugal, wasn’t much more exciting—except for the hometown German fans, who saw their young team secure third place in the tournament with a 3-1 victory.
But even if you weren’t a Germany fan, it was nice to have one extra game after getting hooked on all this soccer over the past few weeks.
Which led me to think: why doesn’t the N.F.L. have a consolation game?
It could be held the Saturday afternoon before the Super Bowl, presumably in the same stadium. Imagine the N.F.L. held such a game this year. It would have matched the losers of the conference championship games, the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers. Not the most exciting matchup imaginable—but, as with the World Cup, with a nation of TV fans having followed the teams through the regular season and playoffs, I’d imagine there would be plenty of interest. And plenty of money to be made for the N.F.L. and the many other people who have a piece of the football pie.
You could surely object to this idea on the grounds that the Broncos and Panthers, having lost in the conference championships, just want to go home and couldn’t work up the vigor to play another game. But hey: this is the league that sends its all-stars to a Pro Bowl after the season, in Hawaii, a game that absolutely nobody watches. And yet they still go, and they still play it.
The N.C.A.A. used to hold a consolation game during its Final Four weekend, but I believe it was abandoned it in the early 1980’s. I think the N.F.L. would do a good enough job with a Consolation Bowl that it would become part of the fabric of what has become Super Bowl weekend. And by creating a 3rd and 4th place finisher in the N.F.L., the Consolation Bowl would make 2nd place—i.e., the Super Bowl loser—a bit more meaningful, whereas now everyone complains that no one ever remembers the loser of a Super Bowl.
Considering how adept the N.F.L. is at maximizing profits, goodwill, and opportunity, I’m guessing this idea has already come up for conversation at league HQ plenty of times. Here’s hoping that Paul Tagliabue, the forward-thinking outgoing N.F.L. boss, watched enough World Cup to think that it might be worth giving it a try.

theres a new trophy in garanhuns

just a quick note on the tourney, we finished in second place, and brought back to garanhuns a trophy.. the player holding it is the team captain, named aponay.. hes a (brasilian) indian..

back in garanhuns

well, i finally made it back to garanhuns.. it was a long week, and the bus trip seemed even longer.. give me some time to catch up with the work in the office and i will update everyone on the tourney, the trip, and new happenings, but in short, its great to be back in garanhuns...

off to another copa..

ok one last post before i leave.. right now i got 45 or so kids running around at the stadium.. they will spend the night there and tomorrow morning at 5 AM or so we leave for arauá, sergipe for a one week tourney, III copa ouro, against similar schools.. this is a good test run for future tourneys.. we get to work out all the kinks and each tourney runs smoother.. now, on the brasil loss.. they played like crap, france was the better team.. but what surprised me was the reaction.. i thought people would be walking around like zombies.. i only saw one guy and a couple girls cry.. the rest, they are partying on like if nothing happened.. they figure, we will celebrate to cheer ourselves up.. pretty intersting.. ok in out for a week..

Run Away! Run Away!

June 26, 2006, 5:49 a.m.Run Away! Run Away!A short history of the party of surrender.By Mario LoyolaThe text of the Kerry-Feingold proposal to withdraw American forces from Iraq contained an element of unintended comedy: The President shall redeploy, commencing in 2006, United States forces from Iraq by July 1, 2007 … leaving only the minimal number of forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces, conducting targeted and specialized counterterrorism operations, and protecting United States facilities and personnel (emphasis added). Since that just about is the mission, the proposal would have had no effect at all on troop levels. So its sole purpose was to serve as a declaration of surrender. Most Democrats, however, preferred the surrender declaration proposed by Senator Carl Levin, which not only did not specify a date, but in fact hardly specified anything at all. This rather effete (and eerily French) inclination to seek defeat has a rich history in the Democratic party, going back at least to the Kennedy administration. Despite sweeping declarations about paying any price, etc., for the success of liberty, Kennedy’s foreign policy was actually based on the notion that war most often results from miscommunication. That, apparently, was his thinking when he reassured the Soviets that we would not attack if they raised a wall in Berlin. (They didn’t know that before, which is why they hadn’t built it). The predictable result, a few months later, was the Berlin Wall, which saved the Communist regime of East Germany from death-by-mass-emigration. What is harder to divine is what Kennedy might have been thinking when he waited until the Bay of Pigs invasion was underway before deciding to pull American air and logistical support. Thousands of Cuban exiles, who were in fact willing to pay any price for the success of liberty, threw their lives away on the beach or rotted in jail for decades. And then, of course, we have the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was caused most fundamentally by Khrushchev’s desire to see if there was any limit to Kennedy’s submissiveness. (Fortunately, there was a limit to the Pentagon’s.) The roots of the Democratic defeat-fetish grew deeper in the weary Johnson years, during which nearly a million American boys were sent to the other side of the world by a president who was driven there almost purely by domestic politics and who appears never to have worked up any real resolve to win. By the time 1968 rolled around, Johnson himself gave up, and withdrew from the reelection battle.Nixon and Kissinger came to office convinced that Vietnam was unwinnable (which, by that point, may have been true) and that the key thing was to surrender without appearing to have done so. They started negotiating with everyone — the North Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Russians — to try to triangulate a settlement that would bring “peace with honor.” For most Democrats, there was no reason to sugar-coat it — surrender tasted just fine by itself. They put enormous pressure on the administration to withdraw, with or without concessions from Hanoi. In diplomacy, this is called a unilateral concession; in strategy, we use a different term: Surrender.Interestingly, it was at about this time that “neoconservative” Democrats started to give the party a more hawkish tilt. The détente inherent in triangulation brought Kissinger into increasing propinquity (so to speak) with the Soviets, which made some Democrats very angry. Led by Senator Scoop Jackson (and his aide Richard Perle) these Democrats demanded that the Nixon administration extract concessions from the Russians in exchange for the grain credits we were offering them — in particular, that the Russians allow tens of thousands of Jews to leave the Soviet Union. But this hawkish trend faded just a few years later, when the neoconservatives were driven from the Democratic Party by a president for whom defeat was a moral virtue. The basic message of the Carter presidency was that America is on the decline, and we have to accept it. Though the Carter years are really too depressing to think about, I recently came across an interesting and telling anecdote: The Delta Force units that took part in the disastrous Desert One operation were under orders not to use lethal force if they got as far as the embassy in Tehran and encountered a hostile crowd. (As Mark Bowden revealed, they had little intention of following these ridiculous instructions). In fact, Carter has dedicated his entire career to American surrender. After Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, he lobbied the Security Council to vote against the Gulf War resolution, by writing letters to each of the members. (Only Cuba and Yemen followed his sage advice). More recently, he has worked to establish warm relations with many of America’s enemies, most scandalously Hugo Chávez.After a long interregnum of American victories, Clinton brought the Democrats back to the White House and proceeded to pack as many defeats into eight years as was humanly possible. There was North Korea, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Rwanda, Iraq again, and Kosovo. Bosnia and Kosovo eventually turned into victories, but not before we allowed the Serbs to win. In Bosnia, we actually helped the Serbs by drawing Bosnian Muslims into undefended “safe havens” and then looking on with some concern while the Serbs slaughtered them. In Kosovo, Clinton also tried to lose, by allowing Belgium (Belgium!) to block NATO from planning for the use of ground combat troops even as a contingency. The result was that 800,000 Kosovar Albanians lost their homes, and many tens of thousands their lives, before General Wesley Clark finally pounded Belgrade into submission with air strikes. He was promptly fired. The greatest of Clinton’s achievements in the realm of defeat-fetish was his response to al Qaeda’s declaration of war on the United States. After our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were destroyed, Clinton valiantly lobbed scores of cruise missiles at a milk factory in the Sudan and several empty campsites in Afghanistan. The only effect on Osama bin Laden, besides giving him a reason to laugh at us, was to convince him that we were weak and would quickly accept defeat if we were hit hard enough. And now, with the Iraq war, the Democrats are at it again. Their comparison of Iraq to Vietnam is, to say the least, a stretch. The insurgency in Iraq has failed to achieve a national geographic scope; it has no foreign countries supporting it; it has no political program that anyone can understand; and it does not even have the scant military effectiveness of the Viet Cong. But there is one striking parallel with Vietnam: The Democratic party is once again mired in a race-to-the-bottom debate about how best to make America surrender. As events in the Senate showed last week, there is diversity of opinion among Democrats on that issue; victory, on the other hand, has almost no support within the party. Senators Clinton and Lieberman, among the only Democratic politicians who think that victory is both possible and necessary, routinely get booed at public functions when they even mention the dreaded “v” word.The basic problem for the Democrats is that Americans are not instinctive losers. And because the Democratic base is split between moderates who want to surrender in Iraq, and liberals who want to surrender generally, they can’t exploit the biggest vulnerability Republicans have, which is, of course, the war. Any time the Democrats are forced to take a position on the war, they alienate a part of their base, and embarrass themselves in the process. This is why last week’s defeat of the two surrender declarations in the Senate is such good news for Republicans; the Democrats appear to have made surrender the essential theme of their political platform. As a result, they may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory come November. —Mario Loyola is a writer in Washington, D.C.

update

ok guys i was without internet for a week or so as we set up the new office.. sunday im leaving for a tournament ans will be without internet for another week or so, but after i get back i should be able to update regularly.. miss you all...