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“Japan have played some of the best football of the tournament,” conceded a reluctant Alan Shearer before their Group F shoot-out with Denmark last Thursday.

“But,” added the BBC’s former England captain promptly, “that’s because they’ve no choice. They can’t play it long.”

Really, Alan? Why is that? A clue arrived at half-time when Shearer praised Japan’s “little playmakers”, a.k.a. “the number eight and Honda”.

Unlike the England team the BBC’s punditry line-up has very much met expectations this summer. Shearer, Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen are so patently moving together from golf course to club house to studio that it’s a surprise they manage to keep talking about the football without recourse to John Motson’s four-iron into the 13th green earlier in the day.

For teams with little Premier League or Champions League representation, there is scant attempt to disguise the BBC analysts’ ignorance. And if investigating players’ pre-tournament form is too much for six- and seven-figure salaried talking heads, you can forget about attempting to pronounce polysyllabic surnames.

Two honourable exceptions have been Clarence Seedorf who has taken over from Martin O’Neill in the likable, intelligent outsider role and Danny Baker, who made a guest appearance one night to let rip on various topics including “patronising coverage of plucky Africans”.

If you want reflective World Cup insight, we can apparently do no better than the former presenter of Pets Win Prizes. On BBC, ITV and Ireland’s RTÉ ex-pros variously put down the under-achievement of Cameroon and the Ivory Coast at this World Cup to “naivety”, “poor leadership” and “lack of intelligent players around the key men”.

But it is not the very disappointing African teams who have been patronised and dismissed most grievously. It is Japan. Having beaten Cameroon in their opening match they out-passed the much-fancied Netherlands for most of their second game before eventually losing 1-0. Last Thursday, little number eight and all, they put a strong Denmark to the sword 3-1 with more outstanding technical play. They also have a tremendous defensive work ethic, hunting in packs to retrieve the ball (something the tv pundits seem altogether less surprised by).

Yet no-one really takes them seriously. This attitude has been extended to the bookmakers, who make Takeshi Okada’s men big outsiders in their last-16 clash with Paraguay. The South Americans topped a group containing a dismal Italy but made hard work of matches with Slovakia and New Zealand, neither a serious force.

As such when Japan play Paraguay this afternoon for the right to face Spain or Portugal in the quarter-finals, I will be firmly on the side of the Japanese. This is not for any of the life-or-death issues that underpin most WSICF? blogs. It is about a lack of basic dignity and respect – and the chance to capitalise on that with Japan 3/1 to win in 90 minutes.

Moreover the further Japan go, the more chance the BBC notice that key playmaker Keisuke Honda is 182cm – the same height as former England target man Alan Shearer.

Posted in: Japan, Paraguay, Paraguay-Japan

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Both Japan and Paraguay will be pleased to have made it to the second round and a fourth match in this World Cup. This is the fourth time Paraguay have made it to the second round, but on previous occasions they have always gone out. The South Americans will fancy their chances this time against a Japanese team who have qualified from the group stage for the first time away from home.

Although it’s not one of the glamour contests of the second round, Paraguay-Japan draws an interesting contrast in the Whoshouldicheerfor.com rankings. Japan is the most equal country taking part in the World Cup, Paraguay the most unequal.

One way to measure inequality is to contrast how much the poorest 10 per cent earn compare to the richest 10 per cent. In Japan, the rich get 4.5 times more. In Paraguay the rich get 65 times more. Japan is the most equal country in the world. Paraguay is almost off the scale in how unequal it is.

Inequality tends to be higher in developing countries. In our globalised world, there is increasingly an upper-middle class in most countries, but the absolute level of poverty is much greater in the developing world. The gap between rich and poor tends to be greater the poorer a country is.

For the past thirty years, policy across the world has been dominated by the view that inequality does not matter. New Labour Ministers in the UK to World Bank officials have argued that as long as absolute poverty is falling, it does not matter if some people are getting filthy rich at the same time. The rising tide of globalisation would lift all boats up, even if some are lifted up more.

This argument is fundamentally wrong for many reasons. The simple injustice of some people having so much in a world of such poverty is the main one, followed by that inequality allowing the rich to exercise power and keep the world spinning in their own interest.

But to tackle the ‘inequality doesn’t matter’ people head-on, there is little evidence that growth has helped the poor, but a lot that it has helped the rich. David Woodward, whilst at the New Economics Foundation showed that to get £1 more to the poorest 1 billion people in the world requires the global economy to grow by £166. That’s £165 for me, £1 for you… This is such an economically inefficient way to tackle poverty it is like trying to ride a square-wheeled bicycle up a hill. Meanwhile, the fortunes of inequality creating bankers and footballers ballooned.

Furthermore, inequality is a bad thing, and disadvantages everyone; rich and poor. In their book ‘Spirit level: Why more equal societies almost always do better’, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show that citizens of more equal countries have longer, healthier, and happier lives, whilst violence, imprisonment and addiction are lower. Furthermore, it is not just the poor who are affected by inequality. Men from the poorest Japanese social classes are healthier than those from the richest social classes in England. Inequality destroys the relationships between everyone in a society, to the detriment of all.

In 2000, the CIA made a prediction which reads more like a statement of the bleeding obvious:

“The rising tide of the global economy will create many economic winners, but it will not lift all boats. [It will] spawn conflicts at home and abroad, ensuring an ever wider gap between regional winners and losers than exists today. [Globalisation’s] evolution will be rocky, marked by chronic financial volatility and a widening economic divide. Regions, countries, and groups feeling left behind will face deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation.”

Posted in: Japan, Paraguay, Paraguay-Japan

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Denmark and Japan boast contrasting profiles both overseas and at home: the former are more generous with aid and have stronger female representation in government; the latter have much lower military spending and income inequality.

These mixed efforts are good enough for upper mid-table places in the rankings, 11th and 14th respectively, so unless you are Danish, Japanese or a blue whale you may not have an instinctive preference for a Group F clash that will dictate who follows the Netherlands into the second round.

As such we will look outside the established rankings for other pointers. And in the case of two wealthy competitors such as these it is interesting to examine attitudes to the rights of disenfranchised citizens domestically.

One such group is the Deaf community, a minority widely stigmatised as disabled. In response to enduring discrimination Deaf advocates campaign for the promotion and protection of Deaf culture (most obviously sign language) as well as assistance in gaining mainstream parity in education, employment and social integration.

Denmark has long been an example of good practice for the rest of the world. There is a world renowned international leadership training for young deaf people, Frontrunners at Castberggard (a High School owned by the Danish Deaf community), which is a great source of empowerment and leadership for the international Deaf community. In Denmark all deaf people are entitled to full sign language interpreting hours in mainstream education as well as for work meetings with hearing colleagues. Deaf people can also get an interpreter for selected social activities for seven hours per week (the Danish Deaf Association continues to campaign for unlimited interpreting services for all social activities).

Unfortunately the situation is deteriorating rapidly with lobbyists eclipsing advocacy groups in policy formation. 99.98% of Danish deaf children under the age of 11 now receive cochlear implants and don’t use any sign language at all. This creates a virtual wall between deaf children and deaf adults, treating deafness as a disability rather than a difference in human experience – i.e. fixing something that doesn’t need to be fixed. Children’s choices are disregarded with invasive, fallible surgery enforced upon them.

The government, the Danish association of parents of deaf children (90 to 95% of deaf children have hearing parents) and Ear, Nose & Throat surgeons form a powerful front for implanting all deaf children. The Danish Deaf Association and Danish Deaf activists oppose these measures but are relatively powerless.

This decline in Danish Deaf rights is increasingly reflected in everyday life. The TV programme for deaf children was closed down some months ago. Deaf couples with deaf children are moving to Sweden because of better educational opportunities, commuting back to Copenhagen for work. A minority culture is being sacrificed for political expediency and ill-considered conformism.

As recently as 30 years ago Japan was no-one’s idea of an exemplar for Deaf rights. Deaf individuals were generally classed as legal minors or mentally deficient, unable to obtain a driver’s licence or write a will. Activists struggled to replicate the success of campaigners in the United States, who had built on deaf culture and the civil rights movement to pursue radical separatism in which deafness was characterised as a quasi-ethnicity. In Japan at this time racial difference was scarcely acknowledged in the public sphere.

Two decades of activism have brought remarkable results and deaf Japanese now enjoy mainstream acceptance. This is widely attributable to the success of the moderate Japanese Federation of the Deaf, who pursued assimilationist policies with mainstream society (e.g. use of lip-reading). At the same time Deaf culture and identity is championed like never before by younger activists who promote the use of Japanese Sign Language. It amounts to a case study in Japan’s changing attitudes to identity, cultural and linguistic difference over the last 30 years.

Thursday’s meeting between Denmark and Japan is a straight fight for second spot in Group F – Takeshi Okada’s side progress with a draw – and a good shot at the latter stages. The competent but hardly exceptional Paraguay likely await in the last 16 with Brazil probable quarter-final opponents.

Whether you are championing the Danes for their historic support for Deaf rights or Japan for their recent advances, a report on the game (and all others) will be made in International Sign on the FIFA website shortly after full-time.

With thanks to Maartje DeMeulder.

Posted in: Denmark, Denmark-Japan, Japan

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

I was surprised to find that that South Korea is ranked only 29th out of the 32 countries by ‘Who should I cheer for’ below even England and only two places above the US! The issue South Korea really loses out in the ranking is the amount it spends on the military (as well as its high carbon dioxide emissions). South Korea spends on weapons 2.6 times the amount that Argentina does and emits 9.7 tons of  carbon dioxide per person compared to just the 3.7 tons per person which Argentina emits.

With a nuclear armed North Korea as a neighbour, perhaps this high military spending is understandable? After all it is easy to put the blame on North Korea with the many horrendous human rights abuses committed by the fascist regime of Kim Jong-il. But to understand how we ended up in this precarious situation of a Korea split in to two heavily militarised states; which are still officially at war it is necessary to understand the history of the division. Korea was liberated in 1945 from Japanese rule, in the south of the country by the US and in the north by the USSR.

It is often held that the Korean War was started by the war mongering North Korea simply invading the South. This ignores the complexities of the issue. In his insightful book, Rogue State, William Blum highlights that under US occupation their progressive wartime allies (who were extremely popular) were violently suppressed and the US instead supported the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This made unification of Korea near impossible and essentially made the Korean War, in which 2.5 million civilians were murdered, inevitable.

The war would see many war crimes and not just ones committed by the North, which had a policy of assassinating all intelligencia located in the South. Just as horrific was the South’s mass killing of anyone suspected of being a communist sympathiser which led to up to 100,000 bodies being dumped in trenches, mines and the sea. The US too committed many war crimes. For example, concerned that there might be some northern soldiers mixed in with group of 400 civilians they decided to machine gun all of the unarmed civilians and massacred hundreds more by happily blowing up bridges packed full of fleeing refugees. Not only did the US repression cause the Korean War and cost nearly four and a half million people their lives, it also led to a long line of corrupt, reactionary, and ruthless dictatorships in South Korea.

The blame must be layed squarely at the door of the US, UK and other NATO countries, but given the memory of the dead and the many fears for the future; I will find it hard to cheer for anyone during the games which either of the Koreas are playing in.

Posted in: Argentina, Matches, South Korea, Teams

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

In 1959 my grandfather was sent to Japan as a British diplomat. The country he found was undergoing what is now a famous post-war economic recovery.

At the time, the Japanese government was pursuing a strategy of tight economic protectionism, and substantial investment in education. The American army had left only seven years earlier, and Japan’s equivalent of the Marshall Plan had helped kick start the re-building of infrastructure. Japan closed its borders to most international competition, and concentrated on building up its companies, and investing in its people and its infrastructure. Major corporations provided lifetime job guarantees, and factories were heavily unionised, international trade was carefully regulated.

Throughout this period, the country saw growth rates of more than 9%, and rapidly rose to become the second biggest economy on earth. Once companies had built up, throughout the sixties, they were slowly released onto global markets, but with strict controls ensuring they maintained access to their domestic markets.

But by this point, my grandfather had moved on. In 1963, he was sent to the newly independent Cameroon. Unlike Japan, who centuries before had managed to keep European colonialists at bay, Cameroon had suffered from French imperialism. However, significant oil reserves and a willingness to subsidise agriculture led to initial growth in Cameroon, allowing it to become one of the wealthiest sub-Saharan countries.

Unfortunately, though, international economic collapse of the 1980s stifled this. While Japan had built up sufficient wealth by this point, Cameroon had to go cap in hand to the IMF and World Bank. The following decades have been characterised by privatisation and the enforced free trade. 4 re-structuring programs later, the country has not met any of the targets imposed on it by these organisations. In a country replete with natural resources, 23% of the population are chronically hungry, and life expectancy sits just below 60. Such has been the success of two decades IMF/World Bank management.

Like most wealthy countries, Japan has been more than willing to plunder the Cameroonian markets levered open by the IMF and World Bank. Most notable, perhaps, is Japanese industrial fishing off the coast of West Africa. Famous for their love of fish, the people of Japan have managed to trawl their own seas to oblivion. As a result, they have moved on to those areas with any remaining fish – with the West African coast towards the top of their priority list. As one Japanese company boasts: “More than any other parts of the world, the coastal waters of West Africa bring a wealth of business in commercial fishing.” And Cameroon has suffered along with it’s neighbours, as traditional fisherpeople face dwindling stocks of their main source of food.

So, as these two countries face each other in South Africa, what we see are examples of two different models of economic development. In blue, a country which managed to avoid imperial colonisation of both European gun-boats and IMF conditions. In green we will see a team representing a country that has suffered from both. In blue we shall see a country which has exploited it’s own natural resources, and moved in on markets prized open by the World Bank and IMF. In green, we shall see those suffering from these policies. In blue, we shall see a country who’s wealth has multiplied since my grandfather lived there. In green, a country which still suffers the colonial oppression it hoped it had left behind it by the time he arrived.

Posted in: Cameroon, Japan, Japan-Cameroon

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Group E

Netherlands

Tipped in the WDM office as possible dark-horse winners, despite injury putting Arjen Robben’s participation in doubt, the Oranje are an attractive bet at 10/1. They can also lay claim to being the ethical punters’ choice, being the most generous aid donor at the tournament and one of only two competitors that have met the long-standing target of giving 0.7% of their gross national income as overseas aid. The Dutch give 0.82% of GNI in 2007, edging out, by a mere 0.1%,…

Denmark

…the other country to receive an overseas aid gold star from the OECD. The Danes have the distinction of winning a major championship – Euro 92 – after receiving a place only as a direct result of a UN Security Council Resolution (number 757, which ended Yugoslavia’s tournament before it had begun). They’ve never come close to repeating the trick and, with a strong Cameroonian challenge for second place, may well fall at the first hurdle for the first time in their history.

Japan

The first World Cup to be held in Africa features both hosts of the first in Asia, the joint Japan-South Korea tournament of eight years ago. The Japanese caused England problems last week, but their one goal was the only one in a four-match warm-up schedule, and their qualifying campaign was none too convincing either. Japan enjoys mid-table security/obscurity in the WSICF? rankings, but it’s hard not to like a country where the Prime Minister resigns because he broke an election promise – especially when that promise was to close foreign military bases. Expect another resignation – from Head Coach Takeshi Okada – before June is out.

Cameroon

With Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast) doubtful and his Chelsea teammate Michael Essien (Ghana) out of the tournament, Cameroon’s Sameal Eto’o could be set to be the continent’s hero in South Africa. Pity he doesn’t have the team around him to make a repeat of their 1990 quarter-final run all that likely. 1990 hero Roger Milla’s criticism of Eto’o – that he has performed well for European bosses but done nothing for Cameroon – would be a rather fairer description of the country’s famous rainforests and shrimp fisheries, both of which have been exploited enthusiastically by Western entrepreneurs while the Camerounais suffer the second-worst rate of chronic hunger in the tournament, with 23% not getting enough to eat.

Group F

Italy

The home of this author’s forefathers, it’s fair to say that La Patria is dodgy at best on both a footballing and social justice estimation. The ageing champions will be doing well to progress beyond the quarter-finals, with the Netherlands their likely opponents.

If Italy’s midfield feel a little past their sell-by date, Silvio Berlusconi’s leadership is positively rancid. With total control of the media, Silvio has shifted the Italian mainstream to the right and encouraged the rise of ultra-nationalist groups such as the Lega Nord. The effect is visible in our rankings: Italy’s overseas aid commitment is less than a third of the OECD target, and its economic inequality is worse than any other European competitors’ – except England.

Paraguay

Known to football fans mainly for the heroics of former keeper Jose Luis Chilavert, who – lest we forget – has scored more international goals than Emile Heskey, Paraguay qualified strongly, finishing ahead of Argentina in the 10-team CONMEBOL mega-group.

That campaign featured only 3 draws – a feast-or-famine record that seems appropriate for the most unequal country at the World Cup. The richest 10% of Paraguayans collect over £65 for every £1 earned by the poorest 10%. I wonder what a similar comparison between the richest and poorest players here would look like?

New Zealand

The All Whites qualified for this World Cup – their second – from a group which comprised Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. As a native of the Old Caledonia, whose group included the Netherlands and Norway and whose players are therefore not in South Africa but relaxing at home with a pizza supper, this fills me with rage.

How frustrating, then, New Zealand is top of the Global Peace Index and boasts the kind of legislation banning nuclear weapons in her territorial waters that has been proposed, but not progressed, by Scotland’s government.

I’d love to hate New Zealand. But it would be like kicking a kitten.

Slovakia

This may be the Slovaks’ first World Cup but they look good bets to qualify from a weak group. Plus, be fair, they’ve only been a country since 1994.

The country is has experienced rapid economic growth since the break-up of Czechoslovakia, yet enjoys the most equal distribution of wealth in the tournament and enviably low carbon emissions – less per capita than those of the hosts.

Posted in: Cameroon, Denmark, Group previews, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Paraguay, Slovakia

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.