nycprof,

Agree about Totti although the notion he took a beating is specious (he was more slowed by injury), but, I suspect you would've gotten pretty good odds on Rooney being the one to meltdown. Anyway, you exaggerate a bit. I didn't say the fouls suffered by the Italians were all dives but you have to at least admit that some of them were. Also, you're missing a key point. It doesn't make sense to extol the toughness of the Italian leagues and then try and excuse the flopping. The notion put forth by another LW that players in general dive because they have so much on the line, and if they don't, the ref might miss a foul and/or serious injury is a lame excuse.

Finally, my other point about them playing well AND being fakers/whiners etc. is not mutually exclusive at all. It is exactly the reason why the Italian team generates so much "meh" toward them. They are routinely a very talented top flight team with some of the best players in the world playing for them. They, along with a few other usual suspects, are always in the hunt for the World Cup and yet they still pull that cynical diving nonsense and bush league taunting that set Zidane foolishly off.

Speaking of which, some of these letters have me wondering if some of you have actually played a sport. If you think the taunting of Zidane was normal trash talk, then I suspect not. It may be normal trash talk if you're sitting on your couch or in the stands or at your keyboard. Normal trash talk between players is usually a variation of "you ain't got no game".

I propose the following experiment: Hmmnn, let's pick a sport. It almost doesn't really matter which one.... okay, I believe the most legendary playground basketball tournament in the country (the Rucker tournament in Harlem) started last week or so. Let's go and try and get in one of the pickup games before or after the tournament games and, if successful, let's have you "words are only words" people trash talk a player on the other team by calling his mother a whore and his sister a slut, or some variation thereof, and then let's see what happens.

Perhaps you can tell him as he starts to beat you down that words are only words and that this was just an "free speech" experiment to see if your intellectual posturing was valid. Don't worry though, I'll pull him off you before you get seriously hurt. Words may be only words but sometimes the words that come out of your mouth can get your ass in trouble.

Fair enough. Thanks for the information. Between you and Carlos T, I've learned a lot about the background of soccer.

"Why after the withdrawl do people continue to bomb us? And specifically from the places where there was no longer a military occupation?"

Since you're in Israel you should know this - Israel left Lebanon because they were losingand the the associated costs (militarily and economic) were getting to be too big a burden. The Gaza issue is entirely different. Although the IDF pulled out of Gaza militarily, Israel still controls Gaza in almost every way imaginable. They've built a wall around it, they control who comes and goes, they control the economy and so on. Estentially it's one big prison.

Keep up the good work though and be careful.

"Israel had total control of all access to Sabra and Shatila. Also, from its positions in the hills, Israeli soldiers could look down into the camps. Israel let the Phalange in, watched them murder a 1000 or so, fed the killers lunch when they took a break, watched them kill another 1000 or so and then let them go. Deliberate mass murder planned and executed by Israel through its surrogate."

I don't see how anyone can argue against the above. It's not pleasant but it's well established fact.

Despite the attempt to conflate the two by the usual cheerleaders, it seems that propaganda attempt is failing as is another Big Lie technique. Namely the Islamo-facists line. That's just the new "politically correct" way to be an anti-Arab or Muslim bigot. You can lump all the Arab and/or Muslim states into one big "terrorist" mass and imagine that the "world is being terrorized by them".

"While much of the world doesn't support Israel's tactics, they don't offer an alternative other than allowing themselves to be terrorized."

In fact, much of the world is not terrorized at all.

"Hezbollah hides among civilians, guaranteeing that any response against them will kill the very people they profess to love. We have a word in English for people who hold a gun in one hand, and a baby in the other hand. We call them cowards."

That particular word also applies to heavily armed occupying soldiers who kills kids who are throwing rocks at them.

Interesting thought. The only problem is I don't see how a NATO type organization could handle what are, for the most part, internal issues (e.g. moderates vs radicals).