Sporting Madness

Wednesday's announcement [ Geoffrey York , The Globe and Mail ] that the Dalai Lama will be barred from visiting South Africa until after the 2010 World Cup was rather interesting. After all, as the Globe pointed out in their editorial on the matter, this is a country famous for producing civil-rights advocates like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu . This move seemed a step back from the recent success of South Africa, and more in tune with the country's ugly past under apartheid. Government spokesman Thabo Masebe told the Globe the move “would not be in South Africa's best interests.” That depends on the interests you're considering. There's a good reason "Follow the money" is one of the most memorable lines from the film version of All The President's Men , one of my favourite journalism books of all time. You can often learn quite a bit from the greenback trail. Let's try and apply that methodology here and see where it takes us. South Af...

I was glad to hear that International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge decided to take a stand for the good of the Olympics. However, I wondered which of the many available targets he would shoot at. Would it be China's failure to live up to its promises of democratic reforms [ Amnesty International ]? Perhaps the arrest and sentencing to "re-education through labour" of those people who dared to apply for permits to protest [ Deadspin ]? The censorship of the Internet [MSNBC] sites available to journalists who had been promised open access? The massive cheat-at-all-costs campaign the Chinese have employed to win the gymnastic events with underage athletes [Juliet Macur, The New York Times ]? The rounding-up [Jay Nordlinger, National Review Online ] of Falun Gong practioners, disaffected minorities and Chinese writers who dare criticize the regime, probably to be shipped off to secret forced-labour camps [Geoffrey Clarfeld, National Post ], where they might ...

Anyone who thinks Sepp Blatter and FIFA have any integrity left needs to read Andrew Jennings ' story today in the Daily Telegraph about how a Swiss court recently ruled that FIFA had made attempts to deceive detectives investigating the missing $45 million embezzled by ISL, FIFA's former marketing agency, and forced them to pay some $57,000 in court costs as a result. As Jennings writes, "In an extraordinary decision, three judges in Zug hearing a fraud trial into the collapse of Fifa’s former marketing partner, ISL, ruled earlier this month that football’s governing body 'knew more than they told investigators', that their behaviour “was not always in good faith”, and some of their claims 'were not credible.'" That's pretty significant. FIFA's defence in the whole ISL case was that they didn't find out about the missing money and the kickbacks to top officials until it was too late, even though there was compelling evidence to the cont...

"We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig. Cow after cow. Village after village. Army after army. And they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie. They lie, and we have to be merciful, for those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. I do hate them." - Marlon Brando as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (Photo from Michael Heilemann ) "The European Union is an economic and political power with 27 members and 30 (soccer) associations — 15 per cent of the total of the FIFA family. Shall they make the rules for all the others? This is political interference. We should not be afraid to intervene." - FIFA president Joseph S. "Sepp" Blatter What's the connection between one of Hollywood's most interesting characters and the world soccer El Supremo? It's not as far-fetched as you might think. One is a power-crazed maniac willing to do anything to accomplish his nefarious goals; t...

November 17, 1973 : "I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." - Richard Nixon to a televised audience June 23, 1972 : "Of course, this is a, this is a hunt, you will-that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further." - Richard Nixon to chief of staff H.R. Haldeman January 26, 1998 : "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." - Bill Clinton to the White House Press Corps August 17, 1998 : "I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky t...

I know I've written extensively before about the problems with the 2008 Olympics, but Jack Todd's column in today's Montreal Gazette begs to be addressed. I actually agree with a fair bit of what Todd wrote, which is somewhat rare: he's a skilled writer and he defends his arguments well, but his views on sports are usually a good distance from my own. We draw similar conclusions for drastically different reasons though, and in the end, he goes much farther than I would. Todd starts off well, talking about how it's terribly disappointing that the IOC and the international community that so graciously awarded China these games as a "force for good" are now washing their hands of the whole bloody mess. "For shame. Under cover of darkness, China is once again inflicting untold horrors on Tibet while the rest of the world looks on, wringing its hands and doing little or nothing else to stop the killing," he writes. "Obviously, the IOC made ...