The Football Is Fixed Inaugural Annual Awards
Football Matches of the Year: Mexico v Argentina and Germany v Italy in the World Cup provided a reminder of the type of uplifting competitive soccer that used to be more common prior to the influx of gambling money into the game.
Political Leader of the Year: Evo Morales (the President of Bolivia) who continues to stand up for the rights of the coca growing campesinos in the face of American pressure to control the sources of cocaine in South and Central America. Having observed how Uribe (with US backing) eradicated FARC plantations while accomodating AUC plantations in Colombia, Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo are having none of it.
Football Chant of the Year: He Eats Chow Mein, He Votes Sinn Fein, Nakamura, Nakamura (Glasgow Celtic)
Reformed Psychopath of the Year: Bill Gates for setting up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to oversee global poverty and health issues as opposed to profit and wealth issues. One would like to think that this was his initial aim when setting up Microsoft. A pity that it takes private philanthropy to address Third World poverty. A big up for Warren Buffett too.
Sportsperson of the Year: Ricky Ponting. Pom-basher extraordinaire.
Rigged Election of the Year: Mexico by a mile. Utilising electoral procedures more commonly seen in Rwanda and Florida, Calderon and the PAN stole the election from the mayor of Mexico City, Lopez Obrador. Little chance of a country adjacent to the USA developing democratic politics after 71 years of dictatorship under the Orwellian-named Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Dodgy Refereeing Performance of the Year: Poll for trying to prevent the gamble on Australia being landed by denying the Aussies two penalties, disallowing a fair dinkum goal, refusing to send off a second Croat after 3 bookings and generally losing the plot big style. Interesting that his "international retirement" announced post World Cup doesn't include Champions League, UEFA Cup or Euro 2008 games.
Abuse of Democracy of the Year: USA and Israel for undermining, sanctioning, illegally arresting, killing and generally destabilising the democratically elected government of Palestine, Hamas.
Sports Scandal of the Year: Moggiopoli.
Sports Whitewash of the Year: The Steven's report into bung culture.
Political Duplicitous Bastard of the Year: Blair.
Judicial Duplicitous Bastard of the Year: The dodgy David Mills QC (quite crooked?).
Most Interesting Mafiosi Befriending the British establishment of the Year: Super Silvio Berlusconi.
Politicised Footballers of the Year: Patrick Vieira and Lilian Thuram for supporting the rights of disenfranchised immigrants in France and being top players too. El Hadji Diouf for his support for Mouride causes. Can't imagine Ashley Cole or Frank Lampard getting political eh?
Political Appointment of the Year: Hank Paulson moving from Goldman Sachs to US Treasury Chief and only agreeing to go if the US government finally got serious about global climate change.
Footballers of the Year: Ronaldo for being a circus star but, mainly, for getting Engerland knocked out of the World Cup. Essien for being class.
Disappointment to his Father of the Year: Hillary Benn.
Dead Fascist of the Year: Pinochet and let's hope Thatcher joins her role model asap. And people wonder why Latin America has moved to the Left...
Fixed Football Match of the Year: Celtic beating Man Utd. Brilliant theatre proving that sometimes crooked can be artistic.
Investment Bank of the Year: Goldman Sachs - these people know how to trade the markets.
Crap Transfer of the Year: Mourinho for Gallas/ Cole swap. Unbelievable.
Customer Focused Company of the Year: Google. Love the algorithm. Love Blogspot.
Internet Radio Station of the Year: Pandora. My personal DJ.
News Channel of the Year: Al Jazeera. Proper Global Coverage.
Blogs of the Year: The Daily Kos State of the Nation (www.dailykos.com) and Prudent Bear (www.prudentbear.com).
Best Read of the Year: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn; Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky; Writing And Difference by Jacques Derrida.
Ostrich of the Year: Joint winners Niall Ferguson - colonialism-denier and Bjorn Lomborg - idiotic sceptic.
Slipped Mask of the Year: Blair's apoplexy when a Tory backbencher suggested that England is becoming a police state.
Anarchist Business of the Year: Skype - not content with mashing the music companies with KaZaA, they are now targeting the telecoms companies.
Great White Satan 1 Iran 0 (Iran Ban):
FIFA has today suspended Iran from all international football competitions. We are all totally convinced that this was a footballing decision and a footballing decision alone. Absolutely nothing to do with sanctions in any form. Something suitably arbitrary like government interference in the game was the reason provided. Definitely much more serious than Moggiopoli then.
Global football moves increasingly in step with World Government. Certain countries are rewarded for their compliance with a globalised shareholder society - for example in recent times, Ukraine, Angola, Trinidad and Tobago and a little further back Croatia and Czech Republic. Others are punished - Uzbekistan, North Korea, Iran, Kenya, Romania and China.
Perhaps countries undertaking free market reforms should be weighted by a couple of tenths of a goal in FIFA competitions to take account of this!?
CLEVELAND, Ohio – THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY, a genre spy-thriller by Robert Spirko, was fourth on the best-seller list at Atlasbooks, Inc., a national book distributor.
ReplyDeleteSpirko, a financial and geo-political analyst who has given his advice to the National Security Council, turned his attention to the Middle East in 1987, after discovering several common elements related to the Middle East question. He wrote down his analysis, and when he was finished, he not only had a solution to the quagmire, he had a story to tell. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY foreshadowed the Persian Gulf War by three years, and the resultant Iraq War followed by the Sept. 11 attack.
Spirko states, "The chief threat in the region I see right now is the threat to Saudi Arabia by Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda were to overthrow the present royal family in Saudi Arabia, cutting off the oil supply to western nations including Japan and China, it would bring down entire world economies. France and Germany would be begging us to go to war to retake those oil wells. It would be World War III."
“If such a scenario were to occur,” he reiterates, “France and the European economies would collapse in a matter of weeks.”
“Another looming concern is Iran which wants to develop nuclear weapons to couple with their Shahab 4, 5 & 6 missiles on the drawing boards which have a range to hit London, Israel, all of Europe, southern Russia and the United States. Also, the Iranian government has said it initially had 300 centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons grade material. They have increased that to 3,000. They will soon increase that again to 10,000 centrifuges,” Spirko says. “They have the additional capacity to add another 20,000 centrifuges in mass production techniques that will enable them to produce at least seven nuclear bombs in about a year. Where did they get these centrifuges?”
Spirko answers that question by stating an Arab proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Simply put,” Spirko explains, “they probably got them from Saddam Hussein before the Iraq War started and were probably smuggled out of Iraq and into Iran just like he did his air force of 600 Soviet fighter planes. In other words, he gave them to his former enemy rather than let them be destroyed on the ground.”
“Why would he have done any differently with the 30,000 centrifuges he supposedly had on a decentralized basis inside Iraq before the war?” Spirko asks. “Isn’t it strange that Iran could come up with a nuclear weapons program in about six months to a year when it took the United States six years under the Manhattan Project with 5,000 of the world’s most brilliant scientists like Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Seaborg, Einstein, Fermi, and others working on it?”
Another point Spirko makes on the Mideast is that, “It is time for the Israelis and Palestinians to return to the Camp David Peace Talks or some other place, resume where they left off and "freeze in place" the already-agreed-upon negotiating points,” Spirko says.
"And, it's all related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which I said back in 1987 was the crux of my book. It always has been, and always will be until it's settled,” Spirko says. “That linkage is exactly what Osama Bin Laden stated in a taped message aired the weekend before the election in November of 2004. Whether you believe him or not is beside the point. That's what's he told us, and we'd better take that into account."
The novel is a mass market paperback produced by Olive Grove Publishers, and can be purchased at area bookstores through Ingram Book Group, New Leaf Distribution, and Baker and Taylor, priced at $14.99, ISBN 0-9752508-0-9. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY can also be ordered on the web at www.atlasbooks.com, or email orders from: order@bookmasters.com, or from Barnes & Nobles, Border's, Dalton's, efollett.com & Follett bookstores at colleges and universities, WaldenBooks, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Target.com and other popular retail bookstores. Or, readers and store managers can call 1-800-BOOKLOG, or 800-247-6553 direct, to order.
"Fixed Football Match of the Year: Celtic beating Man Utd. Brilliant theatre proving that sometimes crooked can be artistic."
ReplyDelete"Fixed"? "Crooked"? Tut, tut. Sour grapes, anyone?
"Set-piece legend Matt Le Tissier has hailed Shunsuke Nakamura's winner for Celtic against Man Utd as the best free-kick ever scored. (Daily Record) "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/gossip_and_transfers/6179148.stm
Monsieur le Tissier was not guilty of hyperbole:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSNB91E0ifw
(Eat your heart out, David Beckham.)
Marathon Blogging Discussion Of The Year: Dejan and Colonel Chabert on David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE
ReplyDeleteFootball has always been fixed, but the new thing is that people sell inside information. There was information about fixed matches on this site one day. www.betfair-secrets.webbyen.dk Has anyone tried the service? How is it?
ReplyDelete