The Netherlands May Yet Win the 1978 World Cup
The Times has a small piece about how the military governments of Peru and Argentina stitched up the 1978 World Cup Finals in Argentina.
Search the Internet and there’s this article in the Buenos Aires Herald.
Here’s an extract.
The news is that FIFA, soccer’s world body, could annul Argentina’s 1978 World Cup victory. That may be putting it too harshly, but they are focusing on Argentina’s arranged 6-0 victory against Peru in the semifinal group to reach the final and keep out Brazil.
The report states evidence from Peru’s goalkeeper in that match, Argentine-born Ramón Quiroga — originally the main suspect — that a lot of his players played below form, not the strongest team was picked and the defence “did not stop anything”, that then military government president, General Jorge Videla was in Peru’s changing room talking to several players before the match and that a former Peruvian senator, Genaro Ledesma Izquieta, a political prisoner in Argentina at the time, said he was going to be freed if Argentina scored at least four goals more than Peru.
Whether FIFA will act thirty-four years later is a very awkward question. On the other hand, it was posted on an Argentinian website.
According to the report, FIFA is also annoyed that they have named their football championship after the General Belgrano.
But FIFA has also asked the Argentine FA (AFA) why the current closing tournament has been named after an Argentine navy ship (Crucero General Belgrano) sunk by the British during the 1982 Malvinas War. This could be sanctioned under FIFA statutes which forbid any political significance of tournament names. The name was “suggested” by the Argentine government which pays for the TV rights of soccer matches under the “Free soccer for all” programme which could also be looked on as government interference.
The AFA (and/or the government) however has decided to continue to use the ship’s name for the current tournament. What has, and will save Argentina from possible sanctions is that AFA chief Julio Grondona is FIFA’s first vice-president and is close to President Joseph Blatter.
I think the Falklands are the least of the Argentinian President’s problems. I suspect that the average Argentinian might like the Falklands oil, but take away free football on television and the riot would be extremely large.
We Have Ways of Making You Believe These Things
I have always felt Scientologists to be a group of religious nutters. but not after reading reports in The Times and this one in the Sun. They’re dangerous, sadistic, religious nutters.
Iran’s Incompetent Bombers
I found the story in The Times today under the headline, Failed Bombers had beer-and-prostitute holiday in Thailand. The full story is here on a website called scoop.co.nz.
It’s a pity that the man on the Tehran omnibus probably won’t read the story. But then his .0000001 or much less of a vote, wouldn’t get rid of the country’s ridiculous government.
Still incompetent bombers have always been good for a laugh in both fact and fiction.
Un-American Activities
The Times devotes its second leading article to their process of shipping people halfway across the world to stand trial without the evidence being tested in a court of law, where the accused has had the opportunity of testing the evidence.
The article finishes with this paragraph.
The national interest of the US lies in living up to its own rhetoric, and demonstrating that, wherever someone lives, the American promise of freedom under the law extends to them. Arresting people and shipping them half way across the world without a fair trial is the sort of thing that the founding fathers made it their life’s work to prevent.
The sooner we call time on this law the better.
What worries me is that I have a common name, which is probably one of the most common in the English-speaking world. Suppose the United States said say, that I was behind some notorious Internet hack, would I get the justice of having the evidence tested in a British Court. Possibly not, because Tony Blair signed my rights away, just as he did to everybody other British citizen, who lives peaceably within the law in the UK.
How I Met Lady Lucan
Now this is not the wife of the infamous 7th Earl who disappeared, but the wife of the 6th Earl.
At the time we were living in a flat in St. John’s Wood and she was canvassing for the Labour Party.
The Anonymous Widower 