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«I do not believe in professional Olympics,» Lord Killanin pro­nounced when he took over in 1972. Yet under his aegis a set of new rules were passed for all athletes, allowing them money for food and lodging, for transport and all sorts of equipment and clothing, for physical therapy and coaches and insurance, and even pocket money. No limit is placed anymore on the length of time that any of that money may be spent in training. The attempt to mix amateurism and economics, which are surely incompatible, has now turned the Games from a noble experiment in global unity to a battle-ground of crass nationalism and shameless graft.

The eligibility code of the Olympic Games Charter, which was created by the Congress of Paris in 1894, expressly stated: «A competitor must not have received any financial rewards or material benefits in connection with his or her sports participation.» It went on to declare that «competitors who have been registered as professional athletes or profes­sional coaches in any sport; signed a contract as a professional athlete;

carried advertisement material on their person or clothing» may not par­ticipate in the Olympics.

None of that applies anymore. The Dream Team, a group of the great­est basketball players in the world, the cream of the National Basketball Association, each giant player a multimillionaire, was drafted to play in the 1992 and 1996 Summer Games in order that the US, drubbing such weighty teams as Albania and Peru, could win the gold medal.

Tennis players, skiers, track-and-field runners? They are all profes­sionals. Paid professionals. Paid and smug professionals. Just like the of­ficials of the IOC International Sports Federation. Everyone has been greased.

But it doesn't matter anymore. The ceremony of innocence is drowned. The spirit is gone, as well.

«Swifter, higher, stronger,» long the noble and altruistic slogan of the Olympic Games, should be changed to «Richer, fatter, happier.» The pursuit of excellence? Not anymore.

3. The Problem of Generations

Most serious writers on the problem of youth have recognized that youth's present difficulties in Western society are closely related to changed social and economic conditions and to the ensuing difficulty for youth in finding self-realization in work. As Goodman observes: «It's hard to grow up when there isn't enough man's work,» and he continues, «To produce necessary food and shelter is man's work. During most of economic history most men have done this drudging work, secure that it was justified and worthy of a man to do it, though often feeling that the social conditions under which they did it were not worthy of a man, thinking, «It's better to die than to live so hard» — but they worked on... Security is always first; but in normal conditions, a large part of security comes from knowing your contribution is useful, and the rest from knowing it's uniquely yours: they need you.»

Just as in this country an earlier generation needed youth because the economic security of the family depended on its contribution, so in Russia today youth is needed because only it can carry on the task of creating the new and better society; and in Africa because only it can move society from tribal confusion toward modern democracy. If the generations thus need each other, they can live together successfully, and the problem of their succession, though not negligible, can be mastered successfully. Under such conditions youth and age need each other not only for their economic but even more for their moral survival. This makes youth se­cure — if not in its position, at least in its self-respect. But how does the

parent in modern society need the next generation? Certainly not for eco­nomic reasons any more, and what little expectation a parent may have had that his children would support him in old age becomes superfluous with greater social security. More crucially, the status-quo mood of the older generation suggests no need for youth to create a much different or radically better world.

In many respects youth has suddenly turned from being the older gen­eration's greatest economic asset into its greatest economic liability. Wit­ness the expense of rearing and educating youth for some twenty or more years, with no economic return to be expected. Youth still poses emo­tional problems. To the preceding generation, as of old. But in past gen­erations these emotional problems were, so to speak, incidental or subser­vient to economic necessity. What at best was once the frosting on the cake must now serve as both solid food and trimmings — and this will never work.

Thus the economic roles, obligations, and rewards are no longer clearly defined between the generations, if not turned upside down. Therefore, another aspect of the relation between the generations looms even larger; in a balance sheet of interaction that is no longer economic but largely emotional. Modern man, insecure because he no longer feels needed for his work contribution or for self-preservation (the automatic machines do things so much better and faster), is also insecure as a par­ent. He wonders how well he has discharged that other great function of man, the continuation of the species.

At this point modern youth becomes the dreaded avenging angel of his parents, since he holds the power to prove his parents' success or failure as success is no longer so important in society of abundance. Youth itself, feeling insecure because of its marginal position in a society that no longer depends on it for economic security, is tempted to use the one power this reversal between the generations has conferred on it: to be ac­cuser and judge of the parents' success or failure as parents.

4. The Second Stage

The first stage of the women's movement, says Friedan, was fought against the «old structure of the unequal polarized male and female sex roles» In their struggle for equality, however, some militant feminists went too far and also rejected the family itself. In the second stage, Frei-dan believes that women should fight for a restructuring of our institu­tions so those women can be truly free to choose their roles — including the important choice of having children.

The women's movement is being blamed, above all, for the destruc-

tion of the family. Churchmen and sociologists proclaim that the Ameri­can family, as it has always been defined, is becoming and «endangered species,» with the rising divorce rate and the enormous increase in single-parent families and people — especially women — living alone. Women's abdication of their age-old responsibility for the family is also being blamed for the apathy and moral delinquency of the «me generation.»

Can we keep on shrugging all this off as enemy propaganda — «their problem, not ours?» I think we must at least admit and begin openly to discuss feminist denial of the importance of family, of women's own needs to give and get love and nurture, tender loving care.

What worries me today are the agonizing conflicts young and not-so-young women are facing — or denying — as they come up against the biological clock, at thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-nine, forty, and cannot «choose» to have a child. I fought for the right to choose, and will con­tinue to defend that right, against reactionary forces who have already taken it away for poor women now denied Medicaid for abortion, and would take it away for all women with a constitutional amendment. But I think we must begin to discuss, in new terms, the choice to have children.

What worries me today is «choices» women have supposedly won, which are not real. How can a woman freely «choose» to have a child when her paycheck is needed for the rent or mortgage, when her job isn't geared to taking care of a child, when there is no national policy for pa­rental leave, and no assurance that her job will be waiting for her if she takes off to have a child?

What worries me today is that despite the fact that more than 45 per cent of the mothers of children under six are now working because of economic necessity due to inflation, compared with only 10 per cent in 1960; no major national effort is being made for child-care services by government, business, labor, Democratic or Republican parties — or by the women's movement itself.

5. Fight to Veto 'Dirty Dozen' Pesticides

An international campaign has been launched yesterday to ban the use and sale of the «dirty dozen», a list of pesticide chemicals that have been linked with cancer, birth defects and poisonings.

Friends of the Earth have joined forces with other environmental groups in Britain and abroad to have the 12 pesticide active ingredients banned worldwide.

«Many of the chemicals are already banned in several countries but the British government continues to give official clearance to them for use in agriculture, the home and garden,» a spokesman said.

The campaign is being supported by groups in 25 countries taking si­multaneous action.

«Manufacture, import and export trade is allowed in all 12 of the 'dirty dozen' pesticides, even though there is worldwide evidence of their bad effects.

«Some of the chemicals have been linked with cancer and birth de­fects, while Parathion is a nerve-poison pesticide so acutely toxic that a teaspoonful splashed on the skin is fatal.

«Paraquat is also so poisonous that it has been responsible for many deaths in both humans and animals.

«These pesticides should be immediately suspended by the British government, pending a full and public review procedure, in which the evidence against them can be heard,' said FE pesticides campaigner. «They must be assumed guilty until proven innocent. Thousands of peo­ple have suffered and environments have been ruined. The case against the 'dirty dozen' is overwhelming, and the government must explain why it insists on letting this irresponsible trade go on.»

6. Jobless Youth

Liverpool — Until several years ago, the West European labor move­ment, as well as governments and business communities, did not even recognize youth unemployment as a major problem, or one that should be dealt with separately from adult joblessness.

But there are now over 10 million residents of the European Union without jobs, and people under 25, most of them with little or no em­ployment experience, account for more than 40 per cent of their ranks.

In France, Britain, and the Netherlands, youths are three times as likely to be without jobs as adults are. In Italy, youth unemployment rates are a startling seven times those for adults. Among the EU countries only Germany, perhaps because of a combination of strong apprenticeship programs and low wages for teen-agers, has brought youth unemployment down to adult levels of joblessness.

As the problem of jobless youth has moved to center stage—through international conferences, demonstrations, or riots like those that recently exploded in Liverpool and other British cities — the trade union move­ment has been under almost as much scrutiny and criticism as government officials and employers.

Labor leaders have been forced to concede that the economic crisis is often pitting the interests of older workers, struggling to hold on to their jobs, against those of younger people seeking employment for the first time. Businessmen and government officials, who once whispered their

reservations, are now loudly proclaiming that past trade union successes in raising wage levels, social benefits and job security have priced young people out of the labor market.

Only belatedly have labor leaders recognized that their impressively organized unions are not particularly endowed to help people leaving school and applying for their first jobs.

A sign of growing labor concern in Britain, where youth unemploy­ment is among the worst in Europe, was the decision of the Trades Union Congress to launch a campaign with the country's main youth organiza­tions to mobilize public concern over the young jobless.

Labeling youth unemployment «the most serious crisis since World War II», the TUC general secretary warned that more violence would erupt in British cities unless action is taken on jobs.

In Liverpool, whose total unemployment rate is at twice the national level and has reached 40 per cent among young people, trade unions have only recently considered establishing centers to advise school leavers where to seek job training and how to claim unemployment benefits.

«It doesn't sound like much, and we're not at all certain we can take on such costs,» a division officer for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, said a few weeks before the upheavals in Liverpool. «A lot of us still feel we are talking about something that should be govern­ment's job. But the situation is appalling. Just a few days ago, there were 69 applicants for one secretary job in these offices — all of them 18- to 20-year-olds who never worked in their lives.» That ratio is not much worse than elsewhere in the city:

The Liverpool Employment Offices recently listed 51,000 job seekers for 1,000 vacancies.

In a now-famous speech, the Prime Minister suggested some time ago that people should be prepared to move away from their communities in search of jobs.

But with few jobs available anywhere in the country, moving offers no solution to Liverpool's unemployed youth.

7. «The Right Product at Right Time»

¹ Tokyo — Less than a generation ago, the Japanese automobile was little known, and less respected, around the world. Even Japanese con­sumers were convinced that, could they afford it, the longer, plusher, gas-guzzling models of the United States, or the more bizairely sporty autos of Europe, were preferable to their own modest products.

But times have changed. Last year, Japanese industry exported 5,966,961 vehicles (including trucks), or fully 54 per cent of its entire

production. Most of those were directed to markets in the United States and Europe where, for a variety of reasons, Japanese cars have become the rage.

Japanese manufacturers claim they were as surprised as anyone by the surging demand for their product. «We just happened to have the right product at the right time,» says one automobile executive.

As they tell it, the rising popularity of Japanese automobiles in the American market was due much more to the sudden increase in the price of oil than to any «blitz» or economic offensive on their part. When prices at the local pump doubled in less than a year, and American auto manufacturers were unable to supply a sufficient number of fuel-efficient cars, Japanese auto dealers moved in to fill the gap. In Detroit it is widely presumed that the ills of the American auto industry are largely caused by the Japanese «assault». Had the Japanese restrained themselves, and not taken advantage of the situation, the 30 per cent unemployment figure for U.S. auto workers would not have arisen, claim the U.S. auto makers.

The Japanese are convinced that their success in the United States is not the primary factor behind the financial and marketing failure of the U.S. companies. They argue that it was American auto mismanagement rather than Japanese «offensives» that resulted in the deficits.

But fuel efficiency must be only part of the problem, especially if the success of Japanese makers in the European countries is considered. There, the high quality of Japanese goods, their comparatively low price, and the excellent after-sales network are sales points, as in Europe the Japanese are competing against local producers well-stocked in fuel-ef­ficient cars.

Despite their success, Japanese auto makers and observers of the auto scene are increasingly uneasy about the future. On the one hand, they face the prospect of a tide of protection in the United States as well as in Europe.

On the other hand, the Japanese auto makers are caught on the horns of a domestic dilemma. With the Japanese auto market also stagnating — sales and registration at home are slack, and many dealerships are in defi­cit— they are under increasing pressure to export.

One highly touted, long-range solution to Japan's embarrassment of auto riches is the internationalization of Japan's auto industry. Already, there are clear signs that Japanese auto makers are moving to produce a large number of their vehicles overseas, no matter what the consequences for Japanese employment.

Given the fate of other auto makers, the Japanese should consider themselves quite fortunate. With most of the world's big car producers in deficit, the worst the big Japanese makers have to report is a slight de­cline in profits.

8. Nasty, ubiquitous and unloved

Skinheads have been frightening a lot of people in post-communists Central Europe, but several governments are trying to control them

Among the countless plaques and memorials in the ancient bit of Hungary's capital overlooking the Danube is one that mourns German and Hungarian soldiers who died trying to break out of Buda Castle at the end of the second world war. This was where, on February 13^th, 500-odd neo-Nazi skinheads from around Europe gathered to lament the passing on the «SS heroes», after which they headed off to a nightclub called the Viking. When police appeared at the club and started asking for pass­ports, the skinheads rioted. Several policemen ended up in hospital, 30 foreign skinheads were arrested, six of whom were quickly tried and found guilty of assault. So it goes for skinheads: thuggery at home pil­grimages to Nazi memorials and scrapes with the law abroad.

Do not expect an eloquent exchange of opinions with Central Europe's shaven heads. When interviewed, they say little, standing arms crossed, fists clenched, eyes burning. Nor are their dogs, often pit bulls with sharpened incisors, much more friendly. The skinheads' preferred method of communication is a boot swiftly and repeatedly administered in the face of a prone victim, though in one recent attack Slovak skin­heads did use baseball bats to beat a gypsy boy almost to death. Their fa­vourite targets are indeed gypsies, followed by African students, sundry other ethnic minorities, drug addicts and the homeless.

There are differences between an average West European skinhead and his counterpart farther east. Not all western ones are neo-Nazis; not all are violent; some even call themselves «anti-racists», and enjoy Ja­maican reggae music. There are anarchist skinheads in the West, even glad-to-be-gay skinheads. But in Central Europe to be a skinhead is, on the whole, to be violent. Post-communist skinheads tend to swallow a mix of white supremacy, neo-Nazi dogma, and nationalism tailored to the country in question.

Their numbers vary from country to country, but have been going up. Government and police tend to deflate figures; human-rights groups and the skinheads themselves usually bump them up. One serious study, by the Anti-Defamation League in New York, reckons that, of some 70,000 hardcore neo-Nazi skinheads worldwide, Central Europe now accounts for a good quarter.

Last month, working together with the Czech secret service, police ar­rested 12 leading skinheads said to belong to the Czech chapter of a Brit­ish-based «Blood and Honour» gang. They also confiscated neo-Nazi propaganda due to be sold at a skinhead concert, and declared that neo-Nazis across the country had suffered a crippling blow.

Human-rights watchers are less sure. Skinhead groups are well run. They distribute propaganda printed by American neo-Nazis in various languages and send out «skinzines» illegally through the post. The Czechs alone have 15 of them. They are nasty, but it may be hard to pin charges of inciting hatred on the arrested skinheads.

Still, many Central Europeans are trying to stem the skinhead tide. A few days after the riot in the Viking club, several thousand Hungarians gathered to protest against racism. Judges are being sent on courses to make them more aware of racially motivated crimes. The police are hiring gypsy advisers. It is only a start. But the alarm bells have rung: more and more decent Central Europeans reckon that something must be done.

9. Living without it

At the University of Texas Law School, the halls are whiter than they once were. Three years after a federal court ruled in Hopwood v Texas that public universities in the state could no longer use race as a factor when considering applicants, there are a mere eight black students in a first-year class of 455 at the law school, a smaller percentage than in 1950.

Although Texas is ground zero in the fight over racial preferences in American universities, it is far from the only battlefield. Last November, voters in Washington state passed a referendum similar to California's Proposition 209, banning racial preferences in college admissions. In both Washington and Michigan, lawsuits similar to the Texas case have been filed against the public universities.

For 30 years, American universities sought to increase racial diversity by recruiting and admitting minority candidates, sometimes at the ex­pense of white candidates with better qualifications. This practice went unchallenged until 1978, when the Supreme Court ruled that, although rigid racial quotas were unconstitutional, universities could take race into account since there was a «compelling interest» in promoting diversity in America's colleges.

Proponents of affirmative action, including most university adminis­trators, feel they need only point to the decline of minority enrolment in the best public universities in California and Texas in the two years since the ban on racial preferences went into effect.

Conservative opponents of preferences admit that minority numbers have decreased at the most selective public universities in Texas and Cali­fornia. Yet they point to the fact that enrolment of blacks and Latinos throughout the state system has remained stable since 1996. The way to guarantee more minority students at the top universities in the future, con­servatives argue, is to address the twin pillars of social disintegration: broken schools and broken families.

Opponents of racial preferences also accuse the other side of double standards: on the one hand lamenting the decline of black and Latino en­rolment since 1996, yet at the same time ignoring the dramatic increase in the number of Asians admitted during that period. Long boasting the highest scores on standardised tests among minority groups, Asians have never needed preferential treatment from universities, and are now bene­fiting from the new system.

Both sides arm themselves with government studies and self-serving statistics; yet most people concede that very little can be done at the po­litical level. The future of racial preferences rests with the courts. What the legal system cannot do, however, is address the root of the problem: the fact that black and Latino students still lag woefully behind their white counterparts. So long as this grim reality persists, the system will remain broken, and no amount of judicial tinkering will fix it.

II. ТЕКСТЫ ДЛЯ ПИСЬМЕННОГО ПЕРЕВОДА

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1. What the EU Needs Is a Copy of «The Federalist» Papers

Los Angeles — It may be indelicate for an American to point out, but now that the start-up of Economic and Monetary Union has accelerated the European Union's pace toward full economic integration, the US ex­perience may provide some useful lessons. Not that we do everything right or that we provide a precise model for the working of a somewhat similar economy, but some long-standing American economic interac­tions do resemble those developing on the old Continent.

In at least three areas of economics — monetary policy, taxes, and fis­cal policy — we've been there, done that. Together, the three may also provide some hints about political confederation.

• In the realm of monetary policy the European Central Bank can learn from the Federal Reserve, if it is willing to. The Fed's ability to maintain its integrity while paying due deference to the democratically elected authorities with which it works provides a model more appropri­ate to a complex economy than does the haughty independence of the

Bundesbank. The single-minded Bundesbank ideology — price stability-uber-alles — cannot work in a Europe where recession threatens to in­crease already high unemployment; the Fed's pragmatic willingness to bring growth and employment into the balance can.

• The lessons for tax policy are less direct. What is thought of, as tax policy in the United States cannot exist in the European Union because the EU levies no taxes of its own? It is financed by contributions from the member states, which use their tax revenues to support the EU budget as well as their much larger national needs. Although political infighting over relative contributions is inevitable, EU members have also been squabbling over «harmonization» of national taxes — setting EU-wide rules for rates and regulations.

The American experience suggests that this is quite unnecessary. The US Constitution provides few constraints on the ways in which the states may raise revenues: they can legally levy income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes and property taxes on their individual and corporate residents at any rates they want, and they do. State taxes vary, but the variations stay within limits because the citizens and the companies in the states compete with one another.

The limits are imposed by economics, not legislation; they work and cause few quarrels. Similar natural limits are in fact becoming visible in Europe; the squabbles are unnecessary.

With monetary policy in the hands of the European Central Bank, fiscal policy — budget deficits and surpluses a la Keynes — is the re­maining tool with which the member states of European Economic and Monetary Union, or EMU, can affect their own growth and employment. But such national autonomy is illusory however; the rules of monetary union limit deficits, and economic reality reinforces the rules. Before EMU a state could finance a deficit by borrowing from its own central bank. No longer.

The US model is again illuminating. The American states cannot run persistent deficits because they cannot borrow to finance those deficits, except at prohibitive interest rates. The federal government, however, can borrow from the Federal Reserve to finance immense deficits, has done so, and surely will again when economic downturn calls for fiscal stimu­lus. Except for one crucial difference, the government of EMU could similarly borrow from the central bank when dictated by Europe's needs — the difference, of course, being that there is no government of EMU.

This leads to the possible lesson for political confederation. When re­cession suggests a continentwide need for stimulus, the pressure will be on the member states to create some sort of joint fiscal decision-making mechanism. Such a mechanism will not be called a confederation but it

will be a major step in that direction. It will raise the question of whether the mechanism should be used for making other joint decisions. That in turn should reraise the question of the «democratic deficit»; in particular, should the one body elected by European individuals, the Parliament, be given more power over such decisions?

The move will be on. At that point, an American might even have the temerity to suggest that Europeans read «The Federalist» papers.

2. What Happened to That «Global Architecture?

When Brazil had devalued the real, the folks in Washington who claim responsibility for global monetary order were uncustomarily silent. One is tempted to say there was stunned silence, but that would imply that Brazil's move came as a surprise to the Treasury and the International Monetary Fund.

Surely it didn't, but there was another very good reason to keep quiet. Brazil had been a test case for that new global «financial architecture» that President Bill Clinton proclaimed to the world last fall. The real's collapse made abundantly clear what some of us had assumed: The promise of a «new architecture» was just more Bill Clinton hot air.

Of course, the hot air had a purpose, as do all of Mr. Clinton's skill­fully crafted orations. He wasn't striving for «new architecture» as he claimed, but rather trying to save the old architecture, which was in dan­ger of collapse. Specifically, he was trying to persuade the US Congress to cough up more money for the tottering IMF. The Brazil gambit was one of the arguments employed. If the IMF were not refinanced, it could not bail out Brazil and Brazil would go the way of the Asian tigers, with serious repercussions for the US and world economy.

The string of disasters midwifed by the global money managers is re­flective not only of misjudgments but of a fatal flaw in the existing «architecture.» Mr. Clinton had the words right in September, he just didn't know the score. Either new architecture or no architecture at all is needed. But a president who spends most of his working hours figuring out how to buy votes with public money is not likely to be very critical of a multilateral agency that does pretty much the same thing. It subsidizes two very influential constituencies, international bankers and the profligate politicians who preside over such places as Russia, Indonesia and Brazil.

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