I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Come To Milton Keynes

We have always known that those running English football were idiots.

Even so football supporters will be amazed that Milton Keynes has been selected as a possible venue for World Cup 2018 matches, whereas genuine football towns such as Derby and Leicester were rejected. Even the third ground to be rejected - Hull - arguably has a much stronger case than the home of the MK Dons.

Lions led by donkeys anyone?

The Curious Case Of The Multiple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's

JFK assassination buffs have long been fascinated by one of the most curious aspects of the life of his alleged assassin - Lee Harvey Oswald.

Several fishy trails exist of someone who resembles Oswald, or someone using his name and/or variations of his name. This continued right up to JFK and Oswald's deaths - for example the much debated visits to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City in 1963. JFK researchers have even speculated that the Warren Commission combined the life stories of two men to form its information on just who Lee Harvey Oswald was. 

It is entertaining to come across a modern version of the multiple Oswalds. 

For some time now various Americans have stepped forward to claim that the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was amongst the Iranian students in charge of the hostage taking of some 400 Americans at the US embassy in Tehran from 1979-81.
We now have a British version of this, with a story emerging in November that Ahmadiejad was part of a group of Iranian consulate staff who severely beat-up Iranian exiles in London in 1984. They had broken into the Consulate to protest about the on-going campaign of executions in their country. An interview with an activist who was involved in that campaign can be found here.   

 

One obvious problems exist with the embassy Ahmadinejad's. In both cases, witnesses are being asked to compare someone who is frequently in the news today, with someone they may have seen in the flesh some 25 to 30 years ago. No easy task. 
Add to this the political background, where those wishing to isolate Iran internationally and to portray its President in the worst possible light, have an added incentive to blacken Ahmadinejad's CV. 

So - where will Mr Ahmadinejad - or one of his doppleganger's - be found next? 

Todays Crap Joke

The quality of jokes being sent in has not improved.............

Did you hear the one about the fat, alcoholic transvestite? At Christmas all he wanted to do was eat, drink and be Mary!

A Dumb Animal And?

Captions please for this picture of the Respect MP George Galloway, and his elephant friend. 

The picture comes from GG's recent visit to Bangladesh, as part of a 21 strong Respect delegation - which you can read all about here. It would of course be very interesting to know who pays for such delegations.....

 

Winter 2009 Issue of Lobster Published

The December 2009 issue of Lobster, number 58, is now out.

This is the first issue to be published solely online, and it can be downloaded via the Lobster website here. I'm not a great one for reading theory, or indeed any serious writing of any length on a computer screen, so I must confess I will have to print it out and study it, but at least Lobster has carried on in some format.

On Identity

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.....Let us leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order".

Michel Foucault "The Archaeology of Knowledge" p.17.

Muay Thai On Sky Sports Today

I have not written much on Boxing recently, and even less on Muay Thai.

As my own training has been blown slightly off course, I have been rather out of the loop, but am delighted to hear that Sky Sports 3 is covering the MSA Muay Thai Premier League:

Sky Sports 3 10 December 09 1.30am
Sky Sports 2 10 December 09 11am
Sky Sports 2 10 December 09 4pm

You can just about catch the 4pm show, although knowing Sky this will be repeated quite a bit over the next few days.

Rugby, Class and Bookshops

One of the joys of living in London that has not quite been snatched away in recent years, is the access to so many second hand bookshops. 

I say not quite, because the number has been greatly reduced - comparing Charing Cross Road today to fifteen years ago is a somewhat depressing experience, but some shops remain, like stubborn weeds determined to defy the corporate gardener. In some areas charity shops are now the closest we have to second hand book shops, and in one Dalston shop recently I came across a rare gem - the Rugby League Annual for 1977-78. 

Reading it is to be transformed to another, rather more innocent world - the teams names - Bradford Northern, Blackpool Borough, Wakefield Trinity are often long gone. Two whole pages are devoted to the colours of all 30 professional sides - no sponsors names clogging up these designs. Even the pictures of players like Roger Millward, Brian Hogan, Tony Karalius and Mike Coulman exude a certain reassuring ambience (although that cannot be said for the picture of Hull K.R's John Millington, who looks worryingly like a photofit of the Yorkshire Ripper!)

The highlight of the book is 'The Schoolboy Dream' a report of the warm up to the 1976 Challenge Cup Final, where two school teams from Hull and Leeds played in front of 100,000 fans prior to the match between St Helens and Widnes. Whilst the boys got commemorative plaques from John Noakes of Blue Peter, St Helens were awarded their trophy by - wait for it - Mrs Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party! 

Whether any rugby league fans got an early boo in - after all this was three years before the wicked witch became Prime Minister - is sadly not recorded. If only they had known what was to come, she might never have left the ground alive! On one level though, you have to give Maggie her due - when the Challenge Cup final is held in 2010, it is pretty nigh impossible to imagine David 'Snooty' Cameron shaking hands with the winning captain............

Afghanistan: The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap is the longest running stage show in the world. Here it is the actors and the audience that change, but never the plot or the ending. 

Reading Olivier Roy's "Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan" something similar seems to occur in that country. Roy wrote this in 1986:

"..... any anti-guerilla strategy presupposes the raising of an independent native army and militia. But the goal of handing over responsibility for the fighting to the Afghans themselves is far from being reached. Due to the number of deserters, the government army has scarcely ever topped 30,000 men, in comparison with the 100,000 which were planned for; it is still not very reliable, in spite of the fact that there are a few competent brigades."

Replace the word militia with police, and that perfectly describes events in 2009. 

International Solidarity With Greek Youth Spreads

Whilst the rioting in Athens and other Greek cities has received blanket news coverage, actions in other parts of Europe have not. 

Berlin and Hamburg saw a series of attacks on police buildings and political offices which, in a rather hammy response, have been referred to as a "declaration of war" by the police officers union. As Michael Winner would put it, "Calm down dear, calm down"!

It is also interesting that yesterday evening Sky News was reporting that the riots were a year on since the clashes in which 15 year old Alexandrous Grigoropoulos had been killed. This is not strictly true - Greece saw weeks of rioting in late 2008 precisely because Alexandrous had been killed, a rather subtle but not insignificant slip.