Le Pen and others of his ilk do not recognize themselves in a team whose leader is of Algerian descent--Zinedine Zidane--and whose most feared striker is black--Thierry Henry. Le Pen used to torture Algerians for the French military in the 1950s and it turns his stomach that his team reflects France's (and Europe's) colonial past, with players from Cameroon, Guadalupe, Senegal, Congo, Algeria, and Benin among other countries.

Le Pen's efforts to use the pitch as a battleground for his Neanderthal views about immigration and Islam have not gone unanswered. After his latest comments, France midfielder Lilian Thuram said, "Clearly, he is unaware that there are Frenchmen who are black, Frenchmen who are white, Frenchmen who are brown. I think that reflects particularly badly on a man who has aspirations to be president of France but yet clearly doesn't know anything about French history or society.... That's pretty serious. He's the type of person who'd turn on the television and see the American basketball team and wonder: 'Hold on, there are black people playing for America? What's going on?'"

Thuram went on to say, "When we take to the field, we do so as Frenchmen. All of us. When people were celebrating our win, they were celebrating us as Frenchmen, not black men or white men. It doesn't matter if we're black or not, because we're French. I've just got one thing to say to Jean Marie Le Pen. The French team are all very, very proud to be French. If he's got a problem with us, that's down to him but we are proud to represent this country. So Vive la France, but the true France. Not the France that he wants." In addition, the immensely talented Henry has started an antiracist campaign called Stand Up Speak Up. Henry pushed his sponsor Nike to produce black and white intertwined armbands that demonstrate a commitment against racism. So far, they have sold more than five million. "That's important in making the very real point that racism is a problem for everyone, a collective ailment," Henry said to Time Magazine. "It shows that people of all colors, even adversaries on the pitch, are banding together in this, because we're all suffering from it together."

Henry's campaign has resonance because Le Pen does not have the market cornered on racism in the sport. So-called fans, throwing banana peels and peanuts at star players of African descent, have plagued European soccer this past season. For much of the World Cup, such assaults did not occur. But before the June 27th game against Spain, the French coach, Raymond Domenech, said Spanish fans were "making monkey chants" as the French team left their bus. The incident evoked memories of an outrageous racist diatribe against Thierry Henry delivered by Spanish coach Luis Aragones to "inspire" his team before a match against France a couple years ago. When Franch defeated Spain last week, it was more just desserts for Aragones and another bitter pill for Le Pen.

Thuram and Henry are continuing a proud tradition of recent years, as players from "Les Bleus," as the national team is called, have consistently spoken out against those like Le Pen who cannot countenance a non-white French team. Le Pen made headlines before the 1998 World Cup for saying that France's multi-ethnic team was "artificial," and was mortified when Zidane and Henry did something no previous Frenchmen had accomplished-won the World Cup, a triumph that was widely celebrated as a victory for multiculturalism. While Le Pen was campaigning in the presidential elections of 2002, the French team issued a statement denouncing the politics of the National Front. Delivered by Ghanaian-born captain Marcel Desailly, the statement read: "The players in the French team, from diverse origins . . . are unanimous in condemning resurgent ideas of racism and exclusion." Desailly's statement further condemned "attitudes that endanger democracy and freedom as intolerable and indefensible, particularly in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural France." Zidane amplified this message, calling for a huge vote against Le Pen.

It is paradoxical that a victory by France, a country with as grisly a colonial past as any European power, could be a cause for celebration by immigrants and fighters for social justice. But as last year's "suburb" riots and mass youth demonstrations have shown, there is a battle over the future of French politics and by extension, the future of Europe. Anti-Arab and Moslem sentiment is by no means monopolized by Le Pen and his cronies on the far right. Whether or not they defeat Italy for the title, the astonishing success of France's multi-ethnic team presents another vision for the future of the continent.

Dave Zirin is the author of "'What's My name Fool?': Sports and Resistance in the United States." Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.

John Cox is an assistant History professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

"Money is being spent on consultants who are earning up to 1,000 dollars a day," Caroline Sande Mukulira, South Africa country director for ActionAid International, told IPS Wednesday.

Notes the report, "High salaries paid to expatriate advisors can also cause significant resentment among counterparts and the public in the south."

"In the Ghana education service headquarters, government officials receive about 300 dollars a month, what a relatively inexperienced Ghanaian consultant could expect to earn in a day, and a foreign consultant in a few hours," it adds.

The report also mentions a former UK-funded consultant's claim that their daily take-home pay in Sierra Leone was the same as the monthly salary of the auditor general.

Perhaps more alarmingly, however, these high-priced advisors may fail to deliver lasting benefits.

'Real Aid 2' cites the case of the Bagamoyo irrigation project undertaken in Tanzania with Japanese support, where farmers were trained in the use of pumps supplied by the Japanese, in the 1990s. As a result of the rising cost of diesel and the lack of local expertise to maintain the machinery, the project's success has been limited.

In addition, says ActionAid, technical assistance is often far less neutral than the term would imply.

"They (donors) continue to use technical assistance to police and direct the policy agendas of developing country governments, or to create ownership of the kinds of reforms donors deem suitable," notes the report.

"Donor funded advisors have even been brought in to draft supposedly 'country owned' poverty reduction strategies."

Technical assistance that is too expensive, or ineffective, amounts to "phantom aid," observes ActionAid -- as opposed to the "real aid" of the report's title, which leads to discernible improvements in poor nations.

The report also identifies other trends that turn real aid into phantom aid; these include counting debt cancellation as aid, requiring aid to be spent on goods and services from donor countries irrespective of whether these offer the best value for money -- and poor donor co-ordination of aid.

"Between 2005 and 2006 80 percent of all contracts awarded by DfID (Britain's Department for International Development) went to UK (United Kingdom)-based firms. In their rhetoric, they will say the money went to aid. In reality, the money remained in the UK," said Mukulira, who also took issue with refugee-related domestic costs that certain rich countries catalogue as aid.

"Switzerland and Austria are particularly notorious. When you see figures from their aid budget, 15 percent of it is spent on refugees living in their countries."

All in all, ActionAid estimates just under half of all aid to be phantom aid.

According to 'Real Aid 2', the inefficiency of technical assistance is "an open secret within the development community." Still, says Moreblessings Chidaushe of the Harare-based African Forum & Network on Debt & Development, an NGO, poor nations are struggling to change the way funding is administered.

"It is difficult for poor countries to negotiate the type of aid they get; it's lack of resources. Either you take it or you leave it. If you take it, you take it with conditions. If you don't, you end up with nothing," she told IPS Wednesday.

ActionAid proposes a number of solutions for this situation, notably that developing nations make their own determinations of what technical assistance they need.

Recommendations to donors include a call for them to make as much use as possible of the resources in poor countries targeted for assistance, rather than looking abroad.

As the report's author, Romilly Greenhill, notes in a statement, "Aid needs to help the poorest, not line the pockets of western consultants."

"Too much aid continues to be designed and managed by donors. It is tied to their countries' own firms, is poorly coordinated and is based on a set of assumptions about expatriate expertise and recipient ignorance."

"That's not an issue we worry about here at home. That's an issue that the European leaders are going to have to work through," Bush said in an interview with foreign reporters ahead of this week's trip to Germany and to St. Petersburg, Russia.

Bush defended Putin against criticism from some at home and overseas that Russia should not be a member of the Group of Eight industrial democracies, let alone the host, because of antidemocratic activities.

"As far as that G-8 goes, from my perspective, Russia is an active participant. President Putin has been there, he speaks, he talks, he acts, he interfaces, plus, he's hosting it," Bush said.

"We've got a good friendship with the Putins. We're comfortable around them," Bush said in an interview in the White House on Monday with reporters from Russia, Germany, Italy and Japan. The White House released a transcript of the session on Tuesday.

While he noted that "there are problems that are surfacing" in the U.S.-Russian relationship, Bush's words were far milder than those of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a speech in Lithuania in May, Cheney accused the Putin government of backsliding from democracy and exerting more state control over the economy, particularly the energy industry.