Bartlett's Bizarre Bazaar

I enjoyed reading this interesting piece of news in The Guardian, hot off the cyber-press. Apparently, Javier Zanetti, the Argentinean captain of Italian football team Inter Milan, has arranged for the Zapatista rebel movement in Mexico to benefit from the ‘changing room fines’ levied against his team mates, which, in the hyper-wage environment of European professional football amount to a sum considerably larger than the average ‘swear-box’. So far the club has donated €5,000, an ambulance and Zanetti’s shirt, which Subcomandante Marcos is reported to have been photographed wearing.

Inter Milan is apparently committed to sustained support, the team’s revolutionary conscience being stirred by reports in the Mexican media of Army attacks on Zapatista villages. However, a more cynical reading of the situation would see the hand of Massimo Moratti, the former president of Inter Milan and oil magnate, manoeuvring for possible access to exploitation rights to the mineral wealth of Chiapas, the Zapatista governed Mexican state. Which would be a depressing, but familiar, conclusion.

To end this post with a tone of optimism, read this communiqué from the Zapatistas, read at an anti-war march in Italy, February 2003.