Sunday 19 December 2010
Wednesday 1 December 2010
SARAH AND JULIAN
Do we really believe that the reason Interpol has put out an international warrant for WikiLeaks supremo, Julian Assange, is because of alleged rape charges from Sweden? Admittedly such charges are serious but there are few alleged rapists who set Interpol's sirens blaring and fewer still whose appearance on the 'Red List' corresponds with their appearance, for entirely different reasons, across the front pages of the world's media for three consecutive days.
Interpol is merely being opportunistic, attempting to remind people that it still exists and how good its post hoc work usually is! But, fair's fair, the global police are not the only ones we might accuse of opportunism.
What about Sarah Louise Palin, poster girl of the American right and wielder of the flaming sword of righteousness? "Julian Assange has blood on his hands and should be hounded like an Bin Laden," she is reported to have said, adding that, "He is an anti-American operative." Julian Assange, incidentally, is Australian.
You know, until this outburst, I had been inclined to dislike the slippery Mr Assange and to like, for largely physical reasons, the booby Mrs Palin. I have now changed my mind but not so much because of Palin's stridency but because the material that Mr Assange's site is offering to the world, is genuinely fascinating and often, to my mind, reassuring.
I am glad, for example, that Britain, Russia and the US have been concerned about the possibility of Pakistani weapons-grade uranium getting into the wrong hands. I was equally glad to discover that, since I last thought about it, China has grown up and, at least if the information that they are bored and somewhat embarassed by North Korea is true, see themselves correctly as part of the global Real-Politik. And again I am glad to discover that Prince Andrew is both royal and random.
Have these revelations really been anything more than slightly annoying to the US? I mean they hardly add up to Bin Laden's 9/11 atrocities.
Interpol is merely being opportunistic, attempting to remind people that it still exists and how good its post hoc work usually is! But, fair's fair, the global police are not the only ones we might accuse of opportunism.
What about Sarah Louise Palin, poster girl of the American right and wielder of the flaming sword of righteousness? "Julian Assange has blood on his hands and should be hounded like an Bin Laden," she is reported to have said, adding that, "He is an anti-American operative." Julian Assange, incidentally, is Australian.
You know, until this outburst, I had been inclined to dislike the slippery Mr Assange and to like, for largely physical reasons, the booby Mrs Palin. I have now changed my mind but not so much because of Palin's stridency but because the material that Mr Assange's site is offering to the world, is genuinely fascinating and often, to my mind, reassuring.
I am glad, for example, that Britain, Russia and the US have been concerned about the possibility of Pakistani weapons-grade uranium getting into the wrong hands. I was equally glad to discover that, since I last thought about it, China has grown up and, at least if the information that they are bored and somewhat embarassed by North Korea is true, see themselves correctly as part of the global Real-Politik. And again I am glad to discover that Prince Andrew is both royal and random.
Have these revelations really been anything more than slightly annoying to the US? I mean they hardly add up to Bin Laden's 9/11 atrocities.
OH NO, NOT THE WORLD CUP AS WELL
We're on the eve of FIFA's decision about where to allocate the 2018 World Cup and the tension is palpable. England's "World Cup Team", not to be confused with people who actually play football have, for example, worked themselves up into a lather about the airing of a BBC Panorama programme strongly suggesting three of the current FIFA decision makers took bribes, substantial bribes, from ISL (International Sports & Leisure) in the 1990s.
The Sun has this morning, I understand, written an open letter to FIFA explaining that their decision makers should not think the British people are against the idea of hosting the football World Cup, whatever impression the BBC may have made. Well this British person does not want to host the World Cup - the Olympics were already, to my mind a step too far (for example making London to only city to host the Games three times) - we don't need the cost and disruption of the World Cup as well.
But my opposition is not just about the money, not just about the fact we will have another bout of construction projects a la Crossrail which, when questioned, are commended to us with the statement, "for the Olympics", it is also specific opposition to football.
I have always felt, that football is a sport played by and watched by hooligans. The sport promotes tribalism and often descends into racism, it promotes the deification of physical attributes over the intellectual, it lifts men (inevitably men) of few moral positives to become role models, it underpins all the tedious conversations heard in bars and greasy spoons throughout the land and, worst of all, it promotes the wearing of manmade fibres.
That said, I would not be averse to Spurs winning the League or the Cup.
The Sun has this morning, I understand, written an open letter to FIFA explaining that their decision makers should not think the British people are against the idea of hosting the football World Cup, whatever impression the BBC may have made. Well this British person does not want to host the World Cup - the Olympics were already, to my mind a step too far (for example making London to only city to host the Games three times) - we don't need the cost and disruption of the World Cup as well.
But my opposition is not just about the money, not just about the fact we will have another bout of construction projects a la Crossrail which, when questioned, are commended to us with the statement, "for the Olympics", it is also specific opposition to football.
I have always felt, that football is a sport played by and watched by hooligans. The sport promotes tribalism and often descends into racism, it promotes the deification of physical attributes over the intellectual, it lifts men (inevitably men) of few moral positives to become role models, it underpins all the tedious conversations heard in bars and greasy spoons throughout the land and, worst of all, it promotes the wearing of manmade fibres.
That said, I would not be averse to Spurs winning the League or the Cup.
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