"Headbutt heard around the world" a victory for Bush propaganda

SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM & DAVID GAMBACORTA
Philadelphia Inquirer
Jul. 12, 2006

The 2006 World Cup soccer final was decided when France’s superstar, Zinedine Zidane, headbutted Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the chest in apparent response to a verbal insult, triggering a red card, and tipping the balance of the game, and the cup, to Italy.

The Paris-based anti-racism advocacy group SOS-Racism quotes “several well-informed sources” that Materazzi called Zidane “a dirty terrorist." While Materazzi has categorically denied the charge, expert lip readers confirm, based on studies of tapes of the incident, that Materazzi called Zidane the “son of a dirty terrorist whore."

The single most alarming aspect (of this otherwise silly sports moment) is socio-cultural: a single word, “terrorist," has been weaponized to such a degree, that it was enough to drive a man at the top of his sport to throw away his celebrity and a brilliant career, with the entire world watching. “Terrorist” has not only been turned into the ultimate epithet, and a trigger for violence and racism. (Materazzi falsely believed that Zidane is of Middle Eastern heritage, which Zidane clearly did not take well.)

For this, we must thank the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney administration, and its disinformation agents around the world (particularly in Israel and other pockets of US-Bush gangsterism) for the manufacturing of 9/11 and the “war on terrorism” phantoms, their endless war, and the disinformation apparatus that continues to monger ignorant fear in every corner of the world, and deep in the brain synapses of every person on earth.

How much more devolution will be the direct result of the actions of the Bush administration?