Soccer is a great game, and the rich variety of styles and passions that come with being truly global makes the World Cup a nonpareil event in the universe of competitive sport.
The art of reading between the lines is as old as manipulated information.
In some circles Stalin has in fact been making a comeback. His portrait hangs above the dashboard of trucks, a symbol of blue- collar nostalgia for a tough leader.
A history of perceived humiliation, after all, lurks behind many acts of terror. And competing narratives of victimhood and insults sustain conflicts in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and many other regions.
Newspaper reporting is really storytelling. We call our articles 'stories,' and we try to tell them in a way that even people who don't know all the background can understand them.
Every time some spoiled European soccer millionaire complains about the blaring vuvuzelas, I want them to blare louder.
Back when George W. Bush was identifying his Axis of Evil, it struck me that a longer and more instructive list could be compiled of the Axis of the Humiliated (or Insulted and Injured, to borrow from Dostoevsky).
What Paris has done right is to make it awful to get around by car and awfully easy to get around by public transportation or by bike.
