Charlie Gilmour Cleans the Cenotaph

If it's any testimony, the state of Charlie Gilmour's mind on the day in question can hardly have been helped by the scenes he saw in front of Parliament a short time before his infamous cenotaph stunt. He would have seen the blows of the riot police raining down on unprotected heads. And been crushed as a result of the same idiotic police tactics like everyone else. His response was not violence, but to bare his chest and invite the TSG to do their worst. Which is, in my experience, one classic response to the traumas of demonstrations when they involve violence.
The loss remembered by the Cenotaph is a spiritual loss, not a national one. The memorial carries a spiritual message, not a national anthem, glorifying a country or its head of state or its name or its flag. The Cenotaph is not a rallying call for another generation of dead young people, it is a warning against wars between nations - each defined by its own flag. Let's face it, the Cenotaph and flags don't mix.
And so by removing the Union Jack from this memorial to the dead, the exhibitionist Charlie Gilmour was in fact de-vandalising it.  The real desecrators are those insisting on draping a badge of so much war on it, and on prosecuting anyone attempting to purify it.

The Lost Memorials of Giodarnus Bruno

'The only thing ever officially condemned or banned during the benificent reign of the great leader Themystocles of Decron was a portrait of himself painted by his ex wife, Desdezine, who he knew was plotting to kill him, and who he hated with such venom that after her sudden, fortuitous death from anthrax at the age of eighteen, he declared a whole year of national holiday, during which time no taxes were paid.
As a civic warning, he mounted her rotting body in lead hoops above the gates of the city for all to see, and made of her brains a delicate stew. This he forced her twelve private advisors and co-conspirators to eat at a great public banquet. After they all subsequently died of the anthrax, their corpses were cremated and the ashes baked into the lining bricks for the new public latrines in the city square. The perverse result of these acts of spite was the idolisation of Desdezine in the public memory as the cause of both the year without taxes, and the eradication of cholera from the city, which had been a regular visitor until Themystocles’ sanitary works were completed.
Within two generations the adoration of Desdezine had grown beyond that of the ancient gods of Decron, and its priests held all power in the land. Worshippers held a meniscial sacrifice of pigs, whose blood was poured into the latrines in a ritual cleansing. Thereafter, the pig became generically associated with Themystocles, until eventually the original Gallian ‘dsem’ (pig) became corrupted to ‘them’, which remained the word in usage until swine were cleansed from the land by the Moorish covenant.
Other than this indignity, the king’s name and works were utterly forgotten. This was the immortality granted to Themystocles by his grateful subjects for his benign rule.
Of the painting nothing more is known.'

Local Feuds for Local People

Eric Pickles' 'Localism' involves nothing less radical than promoting Mrs Doomes-Patterson from running the bi-ennial production of Pirates of Penzance to running the refuse, education and library services of Suburbiton Borough Council.
It is a great way of preventing any unsightly council housing from being built. And a fantastic opportunity for the Point-Elbowed Classes to enact their petty agendas, but it is inherently un-democratic, and actively elitist. It will create factionalism and vendettas within 'communities', and take away from the hardest-working and least-educated what little power they have left.
The Tory/Liberal coalition which ran Southwark for almost ten years destroyed what little community participation there was, crippling it with confrontational Westminster-style administrative models, and helping small cliques of leaseholders to monopolise local Tenant Management Organisations.
Decentralised power is a great idea, but it isn't a cost-cutting measure. To set up it needs investment and understanding of how society works. The condems can provide neither.

Revenge of The Anti-Pastor

The nutty nobody invited to star at the neo-fascist disturbance in Luton doesn't know what he's letting himself in for. He may be able to indulge his fantasies without question on his lawn in the brainwashed pastoral idyll of Bumfuck Alabama, but he will find that our culture is a little more challenging. 
The rabid thugs of the EDL will exploit this mail-order minister until his teeth shake. He will find himself imbroiled in the attempt to blame the Muslims of Luton for the Swedish suicide-bomb attacks of the weekend. And should realise that the random hate-attacks generated by the EDL carnival of spite will be partly on his Christian head.
But since when were the Americans Christian?

Naughtie's Shaft of Wit

BBC veteran James Naughtie caused much hilarity last week by inadvertently re-naming Tory Nobody Jeremy Hunt in the finest Cockney Rhyming-Slang style. A new euphemism is born, and a very useful one too.
Naughtie blamed Reverend Spooner for his bungle. Naturally this blog deplores such facile displays of logo-tistical dexterity. But it has to be said that Naughtie did not perform a Spoonerism, but merely muffed his lines, possibly because of Freudian slippage, possibly not.
When Robert Newton uttered the famous out-take 'Arrr, Jam Lid!' on the set of Treasure Island - that was a Spoonerism. The title of this blog, for reasons I've forgotten, is a Spoonerism.
Scum scaremonger Richard Littlejohn, however, is simply a cunt. And the shafts of wit by fellow-traveller Jeremy Clarkson will never be the same again either.

Wikileaks - The Death of Spin

The greatest truth about Wikileaks is that there is no way of blocking it. Not while governments rely on the internet. So all the quibbling is totally irrelevant.
As for the idiots who believe the lie that the files are all about how the Pope wears a hat, it isn't interesting enough to hear exactly how Washington sabotaged the Copenhagen talks. And hear that China is prepared to pull the plug on North Korea, and hear that Burma is building an atom bomb.  Or what the Americans really think of Pakistan and the Yemen.
 'If our troops’ presence in Pakistan was going to be visible, Pakistan might not let them into the country. And the Yemeni government might veto transparently American drone strikes.

This would mean killing fewer terrorists in the short run, but it would probably mean creating way fewer of them in the long run. '

Ali Abdulah Saleh, the Yemeni dictator, brags to a US diplomat: “We’ll continue to say the bombs are ours, not yours.” 

Meanwhile, critics who would have happily hanged Daniel Ellsberg for the Pentagon Papers are blustering that Assange is not even a pale imitation. But the man himself is quite certain.

 “EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”

We have discovered an America that was under our noses, in both the literal and metaphorical senses. After Hilarious's tender Epistle to the Brits yesterday, the Special Relationship seems to have got Specialer, if anything. But the only real question is "What do documents released by the Wikileaks website tell us.." And the answer is that everything is now very, very different. Turned inside out like the Lloyds of London building.

The other accusation of Wikileaks is that it doesn't understand the entire scope of how world affairs work behind closed doors and thus is unable to use proper discretion in what it releases, which assumes that the ruling classes do understand, which is patent nonsense.
They haven't shown much evidence of understanding yet, or we wouldn't be in a state of perpetual, industrially essential war.
The fact that the entire Wiki-Witchhunt cannot cite a single case where operatives or contacts have been placed at risk, and now have had to resort to a Fatwha on Assange and stealing the assets of Wikileaks, is testimony to the level of scrutiny exercised by Wikileaks and its partners in the conventional media.
If Joe Lieberman wants Assange's head on a pole today, how long before he wants to haul the editor of the New York Times onto the scaffold, and even poor old Alan Rusbridger? Wiki-Terror? The neologisms fly to all the 9/11 jargon like pins to a magnet. The state terrorists are being outed by their own actions. It's like watching monkeys with a mirror.
 The reason reactionaries and other corporate poodles are trying to sneer Wikileaks onto the back pages is because they know that the next tranche of files are just as likely to reveal the murky dealings of their beloved banks and oil corporations. They get that much, at least.
The cardboard house is collapsing in a rain of Kings and Queens and Jakes of Spades and Diamonds and Clubs. There isn't any precedent for this, I don't think. Though I'd like to hear some nominations.
If it's done nothing else, Wikileaks has flushed all the crazies out of the woods.  Screams like:
'YOU ARE CRAZY IF YOU ATTACK OUR GOVERNMENT!' are now common from the reactionary right, especially the American right, who have spent the last two years trying to destroy their own government themselves..
What they mean of course is:
'THE PARTY IS ALWAYS RIGHT!'
Did Orwell ever get a Nobel Prize? Of course not. Now that is crazy. 
As a side effect, the so-called 'Liberationists' will have to decide how much Liberty they really want, since they seem to be the ones demanding Assange's head on a spike. They will have to choose between Mother state and the truth. Between the Ku Klux Klan as supported by the banks, and Wikileaks, robbed of its assets and deprived of its donors by the banks. 
Progressives should welcome Wikileaks.  By scrutinising bureaucracy and the managerial world it makes a progressive society possible.  When it's done that, and there is a progressive country to blow the whistle on, the leaks can still be judged in the same way that they are now. But with Wikileaks and its clones in place, constantly monitoring the state from the inside, there may not be much to blow the whistle on.
 Meanwhile, don't worry about being able to donate to the toxic Ku Klux Klan, their website, bank accounts and PayPal streams are safe. Isn't that reassuring for you? Doesn't that ease your paranoia a bit?
For turning this into a moral issue, with Wikileaks on one side and the Klan on the other, America has been incredibly stupid. Again. Just as they were after 9/11, and after the fall of the Warsaw Pact, to name but a few. If they'd stuck to the mind-numbing trivialities of authenticity and ownership, the story would have shrunk down to the level of a Congestion Charge quibble. A battle of the bureacrats. But instead, by tomorrow, some smart Alec somewhere will have redrafted the I Have A Dream speech, and they won't be far wrong. Not only have Paypal Amazon and major banks been implicated in the Fatwha, now Twitter and possibly the rest of the 1st generation social network giants are under suspicion.  It could be All Change soon if they don't follow their users, rather than government and corporate convenience. 'Facebook - The Decline and Fall'? If Mastercard is not safe from attack, who is? Who's the Daddy now? The true power-structure of the internet is becoming clear, and it isn't good news for those who thought they controlled it. What we now have is a territorial war between billions of modern free-minded individuals and the dinosaur states and corporations who keep them afloat. And the dinosaurs have more to lose by a Scorched-Earth policy than we do. So turning off the internet is not on the cards.
But the likelihood is that for the dinosaurs, the meteor has already struck, and the shockwave is just over the horizon. Only the mammals will survive.

Along with the Guardian and the New York Times, the BBC has been one of the few organisations willing to co-operate with Wikileaks. And will be one of the few major organisations left relatively un-scarred by the new internet power-structure. In fact, they have everything to gain, whereas the commercial jackals have everything to lose, if they haven't already lost it.

But this isn't simply a matter of right and left. There will be some very strange bedfellows brokered by Wikileaks. Even The American Civil Liberties Union have joined in the debate on the side of Assange.

 "We’re deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea. The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Prosecuting WikiLeaks would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents. "

If the corporate world wants to get even more paranoid in its bunker, fine. But it won't do it any good. It will make its job more difficult and we will all see it happening live in cinemascope. There isn't anywhere for it to run anymore. The Sword of Damocles is always going to be over its head. Governments have a clear choice: come clean or become Chinese.

We Pledge Not To Riot

Winston being useful.

'VIOLENCE IS NEVER JUSTIFIABLE!' 

All the usual predictable lying idiocies being wheeled out again I see. Are earthquakes and floods 'justifiable'? The truth is that yesterday's violence was inevitable, and not so much because of the usual petty barbarisms by the police, but because of the massive lies and vandalism of this so-called government.
If Braindead Boris Johnson and the Blustering Classes are furious at a few broken windows, just how incandecent do they get are wars which kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to boost oil-company profits, and which cost fortunes which could be spent securing the future of society? Not very, it seems. Their 'opinions' can be ignored with confidence. 
All civilised societies have long accepted that education benefits all, not just the student, and so my degree was paid for by everyone, and so I was happy to become a taxpayer afterwards. My generation felt a moral obligation to repay what others had done for us. 'Felt', not calculated, or granted, or submitted to. It was a natural, cultural convention which helped include us in something which was recognisable as a society. If this government truly believes what it preaches, the logical conclusion is to privatise all education, making parents pay for the best education they can afford. In fact, why not repeal the 1870 Education Act and be done with it? The Market will Provide.
The theory that only graduates benefit from their degrees inevitably leads to the conclusion that they should bear all the cost, and therefore that they should keep all the rewards. The result, more tax-exiles at one end of the scale, and more subversives at the other, and more resentment all round. The gross wanton Vandalism of the Condems is breeding the next generation of tax-avoiders and sociopaths. 

'VIOLENCE NEVER ACHIEVES ANYTHING!' 

Last night's Newsnight featured batty Prof David Starkey claiming that this level of insurrection hadn't been seen since The Chartists, which is probably untrue. He failed to mention that the Chartists' inevitable attitude to violence was as follows:
'By moral force if we may. By physical force if we must.' And eventually that logical approach won most men the vote, as it did for women later on when the Suffragettes bombed and smashed their way through Whitehall and Oxford Street.
The vast peaceful impotent protest against the Iraq war, and the decade long candlelit vigil against Apartheid show just how much contempt governments feel for actions which don't express true anger. They have proved over and over that violence is the only language they understand.
Inevitability cuts both ways, of course, and all protestors need to understand that. It was inevitable that the police were going to prevent an invasion of Parliament. And that they would use violence to do so. Being crushed against barriers in Parliament Square, and hit from behind by police batons (twice) was not fun. But the prospect of being hung with £30,000 of life-crippling debt at the age of 18 must be far less fun.  And the destruction of further education,  and the atomisation of society into millions of squalid penny-pinching micro-businesses, all indifferent to anything but their own wealth makes violence on the streets far more inevitable. People are not accountants. And further education is not a glorified Gradgrind apprenticeship, existing merely to Gerrajob!
If yesterday seemed like violence, wait until those whose homes are threatened by the Condem's mad, vindictive housing vandalism take to the streets. If demonstrations are still allowed, that is. They will definitely pledge not to riot. But we all know what pledges mean these days, the Fib-Dems have taught us that, at least.

The Day In Pictures

At Trafalgar Square, things were confused, with much to-ing and fro-ing, but some structure. 

Then the police blocked Whitehall, and seemed about to kettle everyone in Trafalgar Square, as they have done before. That was when the people decided to go down the Mall and turn left to Parliament Square, singing 'Who ate all the pies?' to the flabby plods trying desperately to keep up (and failing). 

The Kettle has spawned a much more mobile protest strategy, which is beyond the control of anyone, creating chaos. Ask Prince Charles - though it didn't get as ugly for him and Camilla as it did for poor Alfie Meadows.

'Cut Your Nose Off To Spite Your Face - This is Going to Get Ugly'

The Grateful British Public.

The first sign of trouble at Parliament Square. A reporter notes the number of an officer who attacked a protester, to dismayed cries of 'What's he doing?' from his fellow officers. So they do know who the rogue elements are in their ranks. The unfortunate violent minority who come along just to cause trouble.

 The crowd still stayed overwhelmingly peaceful. With a wide range of protest on display.

R.I.P. Education 9/10/2010

 'Debt Is Not The Answer To Debt - Nick Clegg 21:04'

The Education Maintenance Allowance is vital to countless working class students. Soon it will be gone, and instead of going to college, young people will have to scrape by in the jungle of the streets. Cottage-industry dope-dealing has a reasonable profit margin, apparently - given a modest and unambitious lifestyle.

The fences around the square couldn't last. There simply wasn't enough room on the streets for all the people who wanted to be there. If the square had been made accessible in a civilised fashion, as for the Lebanon demonstration in 2006, the situation could have been defused. But the police and London Authority have decided that this shabby patch is sacred. That to damage it with the feet of dissent would be a betrayal of their curatoship of a glorious national treasure. Property is sacred. 
After this, the standoff in front of Parliament was bound to be ugly, as was the rest of the day.
15.07. The first significant bit of defiance gains access to the square for the huge crowd, which was probably much the safer option for all. 

Reclaiming Parliament Square for free expression. One concrete achievement.

15.16. We Are Not Your Slaves

'Hands off now!' was the command. Anyone touching the barrier could be batoned.

15.30. 'Hit me, hit me. HIT ME!'

15.40

Not long after this, I was batoned to the head, and later to the shoulder blade. Both from behind. A new experience for me. More uncomfortable was being crushed against the barrier with a steel rail against my chest at one point. Which was inevitable, but not a good idea. As the people at the front kept suggesting: 'Pull the barriers back! Don't give them back to them!' But the natural direction of a crowd is always forward.
It became obvious that the barriers were never going to be breached. Storming Parliament is not really going to be allowed, and everyone knew that, though it is always a gesture which has to be made.

After it got very cold indeed, and the bonfires had started on the square, the crowd in Victoria Street were Kettled by police and horses.

 Damaged protester being dragged from the scene.

 The Kettle tightens its grip, with predictable results.

 Protester being arrested for escaping the kettle, and separated from her little friend (or relative).

17.10

By this point, my body was giving out, as was the light, and I quit while still ahead - and while out of the Kettle. I knew that leaving was a mistake, but this kind of demonstration is definitely for the young and very fit.

The first use of riotshields on the British mainland was in Lewisham in 1977. Perhaps this year will see the first use of riot gas or baton rounds to protect the listed windows of the Courts of Justice. But since the protest can now be spread across the entire city, targeting the tax-dodgers of Vodaphone and Topshop and other feral Consumerist troublemakers, it is hard to see how the police can control the resistance now possible via the mobile phone - unless there is some kind of blanket ban, which will cause ten times more violence.

The question nobody stops to ask is why are there so many young people who are so alienated from society that they want to burn it down. The answer is simple. Every edition of every tabloid rag and every hour of shock-jock talk-radio is a licence to insult, vilify and persecute young people. ASBOS, Mosquitos, hoodie-bans, curfews.. the list of paedophobia goes on and on. This is a culture which deeply hates and resents kids. And now their hopes of enlarging their minds, and of lives with some degree of spontaneity are about to be wrecked. From now on, every 18 year old will be expected to have his or her life mapped out as clearly as any Victorian apprentice or Eton schoolboy, or Michael Heseltine. And central to that plan will be massive amounts of personal debt. Not the £9,000 of government lies, but more like £30,000 after living expenses. Add to that the now-obligatory mortgage, and the chains begin to weigh like Jacob Marley's.

"I'm Julian, and this is My Friend Assange."

By tomorrow, Wikileaks Arch-Mastermind Julian Assange could be behind bars. A new European warrant has been issued for his arrest on very dubious Swedish charges. The Americans are also after his blood, shaved ape Joe Lieberman declaring that Wikileaks is the "most terrible act of espionage in US history" and is busy reinventing the treason laws to put a stop to it and try to turn back time and un-invent the internet. While the hapless Bradley Manning faces calls for his execution, in public, presumably. Lieberman is also busy bullying as many servers and associated sites into taking hostile action against Wikileaks. Amazon, in particular.
In effect, there is now a Fatwha on Julian Assange, even the Canadians are joining in:
"I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone of something."
Like the other village idiots sitting on the bridge sucking their thumbs, Lieberman doesn't understand what is happening to him. He doesn't understand that Wikileaks is not a website with lots of TopSecret information on it, but merely a piece of technology which anyone can use to do the same thing. It is the invention of the sickle. Lieberman's Law will not prosecute or deter a single 'spy', but will be as futile as trying to make all cameras 'illegal'. His law is unworkable since it would mean unplugging the internet, which his state machine depends on just as much as Iran's or even North Korea's.
Lieberman doesn't understand that we now have our own surveillance cameras inside government and corporations. Wikileaks amounts to another form of the 'Counter-veillance' used during the G20 demonstrations in London. Regardless of the destructive power of any of the individual leaks, the mere existence of Wikileaks represents a new map of the political universe, one as radical as Copernicus' heliocentric solar system. The state no longer being the sole arbiter of truth. The confidentiality provided by the Wikileaks system implies the eventual erosion of secrecy. And those states who will not voluntarily open their operation, and decide to retreat into a bunker of hyper-secrecy will ultimately become unworkable due to their own isolation. 
At this moment, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that there are disaffected lieutenants and captains and passed-over majors in the Burmese dictatorship who have their own axes to grind with their bosses, and who are now aware that revenge is only a few clicks away. Wikileaks might well prove to be be the mechanism behind the biggest wave of regime-change since 1989, if blockheads like Lieberman would get out of the way.
Yesterday, www.wikileaks.org was shut down (whether from direct attack or mere overload is largely immaterial) and had to relocate via Switzerland and Sweden (ironically enough) emerging as http://wikileaks.ch/. Producing the sequel was as easy as that. The Web Strikes Back. If all else fails the fastest way to access the site is to type its Internet Protocol address into your browser, which is http://213.251.145.96/.
 The next tranche of leaks are rumoured to uncover the machinations of the banking implosion of 2008. Whether Assange is in prison or not, the levels of betrayal and sheer sabotage of the bankers will make any accusations against Assange shrivel up like salted snails. 
Without Julian Assange, the US cable leaks would have been released un-cut. The White House needs him far more than he needs them. Together with his media partners, he is the only thing protecting the US from its own leakages. Which makes the ridiculous Fatwha against him all the more stupid and vindictive.
Some of those attacking him now should be very, very careful. When the revelations emerge which attack their political Bogeymen (the EEC, Walmart, Wall Street) they will have to perform a hand-brake turn of Essex delinquent proportions, and be revealed as stupid and vindictive too.. the rest were always a bunch of bastards, and have long sacrificed any right to mercy.
It's interesting also that no outlet has yet gone to the trouble of finding someone charged with the same offences as Assange, and asked them how they were treated, and how many superpowers tried to extradite them, and how many US Congressmen and presidential hopefuls called for their assassination.
No doubt this will be because the case is sub-judice?

Guardian Interview

We The Undersigned, Solemnly Pledge NOT to Riot Next Thursday

After solemnly pledging not to increase tuition fees, Vince Cable has now decided to vote for his own plans to triple them - after yesterday saying he would abstain.
The depth of student anger against the liberal Democrats at such bare-faced treachery will be revealed next Thursday, but another demonstration tomorrow will give a clue as to what students now think about the pledges of politicians. Perhaps they should make some of their own.

Oligarchs 2 - Football 0

In a chilling impression of a schizoid robot zombie narrating his own storyboard, Sep Blatter eventually announced that FIFA had chosen Russia to host 2018 World Cup - Two self-serving oligarchies scratch each other's backs - Panorama is justified.
If FIFA rejected England's bid because of Panorama, they do not deserve the stranglehold they have on world football, and the sooner a rival accountable, transparent organisation emerges to put football on a reputable level, the better.
Competing governing bodies are a sad prospect, and with little hope for the sport, as in boxing, but they are inevitable when the monopoly controlling power loses this much credibility.
The idea that we shouldn't have Rocked The Boat is despicable. A craven submission to coercion and censorship. FIFA had a glorious opportunity to prove its detractors wrong, and instead it proved them, and the BBC, right. The Murdoch papers will try to whip up a hate-storm against the BBC. The Panorama revelations being the fatal dagger in a fiendish plot to rob Britain of £Billions with which to build orphanages and kitten sanctuaries.
A Russian World Cup certainly robs Rupert Murdoch of £Billions, but like FIFA, he would have had to pay very little tax to Britain in April 2019. In fact, almost all those trying to suppress the truth about FIFA stood to gain from an English tournament, but would have paid less to Britain in return than the average consumer.
It also seems that Blatter instructed the jury, mentioning the 'toxic' British media, who he was not happy with - who have not been very co-operative with The Organisation. What, he asks, has FIFA done to reserve such disrespect? 
A responsible FIFA would be less worried about investigative journalism which uncovers corruption, and more worried about a muckraking British press willing to destroy the reputations and morale of the English world cup squad in the run-up to the tournament, as it did this year, effectively scuppering any chance of success.
But if only it were journalistic integrity which was at stake. The fact is that FIFA's Terms & Conditions include exorbitant tax breaks and suspension of trifling rights such as the Minimum Wage. We're well out of it. If the price of getting on the World Cup gravy train is censorship and exploitation, we can leave it to the professionals. 
The Dutch estimated that, done properly, hosting the World Cup would have cost them money, not made a profit. But then, their estimates included silly little luxuries like the tournament's carbon footprint. No chance of Russia worrying about trifles like that. Another chance wasted. 
If major sporting extravaganzas are to continue, they will have to learn to live within environmental limits. FIFA will be the last governing body to pioneer such an agenda. And we do not know exactly how today's decision was taken. 
But we do now have more confirmation than ever that Russia is a gangster state, thanks to Wikileaks, and the BBC. Presumably there are just as many principled people left to blow the whistle on FIFA as there are on Russia, or the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, or the behaviour of American troops when they invade other people's countries. So maybe we will eventually find out just how much back-scratching went on between the various players. But it will be no thanks to the Murdoch media and its fellow-travellers, whose appetite for censorship and suppression grows steadily with each advance in the technology of free-expression.
South Africa and Russia did not win the tournament rights because they had the best stadiums or the best level of football or the best crowds, infrastructure or security levels. They won because of the legacy of consumers left behind after the corporate Blitzkreig of advertising had done its job. As with all wars, it was a battle of market expansion. Maybe we will one day see a World Cup and an Olympic Games which aren't merely vast advertising campaigns for Coca Cola, Nike and McDonalds, but not until FIFA and the IOC are about sport, not profit.
Now that history hasn't repeated itself this far, and we haven't won the rights to stage the World Cup 2 years after the Olympics, we can only hope it goes all the way. The last time, our celebrations were very brief.

Kiss Blatter's Arse, Says Murdoch & Co

There has been a predictable tsunami of guff from the usual suspects about the BBC Panorama report into sporting criminality. They are absolutely disgusted that the BBC will potentially influence the outcome of the World Cup by revealing a few home truths before the decision is taken in two days time. They are, in effect, prepared to turn a blind eye to FIFA corruption as long as England gets the tournament.
That there should be any question of this report prejudicing England's bid goes to show the level at which FIFA operates. If it became known that Spanish or Russian TV was witholding a similar report in order to ensure its bid there would be howls of rage in Wapping and Canary Wharf. If, of course, they could find a Spanish or Russian TV station with the guts and independence to do so.
Most rational opinion is that we'd be advised to understand the nature of the organisation we'd be signing away lots of sovereign rights to, such as taxation and minimum wages. Who would want to be a member of a club which allowed Sep Blatter to be a member? 
This afternoon, David  Beckham was wheeled out to defend the England bid and FIFA. The usual primary school mumblings aside, he sounded like something out of a 50's gangland movie with Sidney Tafler : 'Look, I know these boys aren't exactly angels, but they get the job done. Know what I mean? We scratch their backs, they scratch ours, no questions asked." The BBC has broken the unwritten code. It has snitched on its partners, which is an omerta! It simply doesn't know to keep its nose clean. Or how to accept an offer it can't refuse.
No wonder sport is riddled with crime and becoming In-Credible. In other words, dying.
Is it a co-incedence that the Kiss Blatter's Arse Brigade are in agreement with the Anti-BBC media corporations who would all make a fortune from an English World Cup 2018?
Because if England does win the rights, which they should if their bid is taken on its merits, and goes on with a bright young squad hopeful of success after winning its qualifying group, which they probably will - it won't matter. Because after the final group game, the gallant British tabloid press will systematically dismantle the team with a succession of 'scandals' and general muckraking. More than likely the captain will be forced to stand down, and at least two of its star players will be pilloried out of form by the gutter-sheets, just as they did to this year's team in South Africa. And the only winners will be the media and the global corporations. The British public will be fleeced, as usual.