match fixing at the rugby world cup

I cannot believe that the Japanese rugby team defeated the South Africans.
I mean, I don't believe it.
It didn't happen.
I am suggesting the match was fixed.
No disrespect to the Japanese ability to defy the odds.
They are an epically valorous nation.
But the match was fixed.
The winners need never have known how or why.
My analysis is that we are dealing with one of two possible methods of  match fixing in the Japanese South African game.
The first is the most offensive to my refined preraphaelite sensibilities.
A group of South African players would have been bribed and a group of match officials would have been bribed by mobsters seeking to land a gambling coup.
Not all the players or officials.
Just a select group.
There need have been no involvement whatsoever from the Japanese team.
The winner doesn't have to be in on the con as my source in the gambling world told me after the Cricket World Cup some years ago when Ireland "beat" Pakistan and when I was doubting that the Irish team could have been corrupted to fix a game.
My source insisted that the Irish could be corrupted but as it happens he believed they hadn't been.
In a fixed match, the winners can be playing their hearts out honestly, he explained.
The winners need never know that a cadre among the opposition has been bought.
The winners think they're scoring through sheer skill and no one need ever tell them it ain't necessarily so.
So to this year's rugby.
The first and most opprobrious match fixing scenario is that gangsters bribed some South Africans and some match officials to favour a Japanese win.
There would have been significant sums of money handed over.
And there would have been a clear understanding from those involved that talking about it, or messing up the fix some other way, could get them killed.
"The fat man will be mad as a snake," as Bruce Grobelaar the famous match fixing goalie once said after failing to ensure the right result in a fixed soccer match having epically tried to let in three goals but still  having failed to inflict a defeat. on his own team who kept scoring at the other end.
The best bit was when Grobelaar tried to let in a fourth goal agaiinst his own team but saved it by mistake.
Hilarious no.
Ah say it ain't so Grob, say it ain't so.
But I digress.
Presumably the same principle of fear applies for hundred million dollar match fixing screw ups in rugby games.
There is intimidation as well as cash blandishments.
When things go wrong, the fat men gang bangers get mad.
Those in on the deal know what that means.
It means death.
I remember twenty years ago a Colombian player called Escobar returning to South America after a poor Soccer World Cup performance including a rather paradoxically magnificent goal against his own team.
The gangsters shot him at the airport.
I've no idea whether he let them down or whether he was involved with them directly at all.
But they were there to meet him at the airport.
And they registered their interest in modern sporting events by murdering a human being.
By the way, I remember his name because Aunty Mary, ever the sentimentalist, named one of her cats after him.
Okay.
Back to the present Rugby World Cup.
There is a second scenario for the Japanese South Africa match having been fixed.
It is a good deal less opprobrious than what I've outlined above.
And almost entirely devoid of evil.
The second scenario is actually the one my instincts tell me might have happened.
In this scenario, South Africa decided to lose deliberately, not to land a gambling coup, not to short change their fans, not to inspire the Japanese with delusions of grandeur, but solely in order to confuse their likely opponents later in the competition.
The real targets of the ruse would be New Zealand and Australia who seeing the Japanese in excelsis, would come to the fatally wrong conclusion that this is not a good South African team.
High stakes poker.
South Africa still have to win their next two games to qualify.
Which scenario do you believe?
I'm telling you it was either this or the fat man.
The Japanese did not win that game.
Here is the news.
If I had cash on me at the moment or a farm, and if I had not renounced gambling forever, I'd be betting the farm and my cash on South Africa to win the Rugby World Cup.
And whatever was left would go on Trump to win the American presidency.

today they said

President of the United States Barack Obama: "More people die in domestic gun violence than in terrorist incidents."

James Healy: "In 1939, more British people were dying in falls from their horses than had ever died at the hands of the SS or the Gestapo or the Wehrmacht or any other international agency seeking to extirpate humanity. Such duplicitous reasoning Mr Obama would prevent us seeing, or acting on, the world wide Muslim terror army which is presently massing on our borders."

in time of the breaking of nations

If we do not cease our abortions, our euthanasias, our fornications, our sorceries, and our murders, then God will not uphold us.

Our countries, our freedoms, our culture, our traditions will be engulfed in black Islamic night.

We cannot be sure of victory.

We can only deserve it.

At the moment we don't even deserve it.

wakefulness

slowly the night so slow
and life's ebb so low
though soon the dark must go
still slowly the night so slow

top ten reasons islamic culture is superior ie more enlightened than the culture of those societies which i normally refer to as the civilised world or the democratic world or the western world or the free world

1. The abortion culture imposed on Europe and America by atheistic pseudo elites, and on Russia and China by communists and post communists, has wiped out untold millions of human lives. It is not Muslims who have done this.

2. Abortion in a pill has been devised by French pharmaceutical companies and marketed from France to the world. In my own country Ireland abortion pills are now routinely provided to children by pharmacists without parental consent and without notification to guardians or care givers. It is not Muslims who have done this.

3. Euthanasia has become legal practice in the Netherlands and beyond. Elderly Dutch people are afraid to go to hospital for fear their doctors will kill them. It is not Muslims who have done this.

4. Assisted suicide for teenagers has now become legal practice in Belgium and Luxembourg. It is not Muslims who have done this.

5. Doctors in the west have devised procedures for the generation of life in test tubes. The test tube baby practice, which to them is a business, also means killing babies in test tubes, for during each procedure several embryos are created, but only one is brought to term. It is not Muslims who have done this.

6. The pornography industry has disrupted men and women and children across the world inducing rape, suicide and other individually and societally destructive behaviours. It is not Muslims who have done this.

7. Commentator Mark Steyn has noted that most western converts to Islam are women and that many of them are turning to Islam to escape from the slatternly image of women which has been forced on them by modern western culture. Sexualised images abound in western advertising, media and cinema, objectifying women, debauching men and debasing children. These images and the absence of an attendant value system are profoundly disruptive to the personhood of children and adults. It is not Muslims who have done this.

8. The sensual representation of violence for entertainment in the movie and television industries is profoundly disruptive to the mental and spiritual health of children and adults. It is not Muslims who have done this.

9. Contraceptive culture in the west has collapsed value systems and propagated as a normative life style the most bestial behaviour among men and women. It is not Muslims who have done this.

10. I would argue that atheism culture in the west, sprung from an undiscerning reading and a presumptuous propagation of the theories of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, has led directly to the mayhem of both Hitlerite Nazism and Stalinist Communism. (As well as the aforementioned satanic cult of abortionist baby killing which currently indicts us all.) This institutionalised substantially unquestioned cultural and political atheism has deprived generations of men, women and children in Europe, America and all over the planet earth, of hope and wisdom and of knowledge of their creator. Atheistic conformism has left untold numbers of us stumbling in darkness through the very real cosmic battles with evil, that all must face. European and American culture has become mired in the worship of pleasure and so flounders in its own hedonism. It is not Muslims who have done this.

lost in america

Watching Pope coverage on the American news networks.
Last night he was in Philadephia for a monster gathering.
As always on these occasions I essay a faint superiority vis a vis the networks' editorial decisions as to what is worth showing.
It was fun flicking between the leftist pseudo liberal CNN, the supposedly right wing Fox News and the self described Catholic channel EWTN to discover that each network was agreed on one thing.
They seemed to have agreed on the essential probity of talking over comedian Jim Gaffigan who was doing a warm up for the Pap.
Memo to the news networks: Do you really think people want to listen to Wolf Blitzer, Julia Banderas and Raymond Arroyo over Jim Gaffigan?
Seriously though.
Wolf, Julia and Raymond are all very professional people.
But Jim Gaffigan is funny.
And that's a rare quality in these strange modern times.
There was a similar moment later in the night when a rock band styled The Frey were screeching away before a bemused Pope who was probably thinking: "In Argentina I could have you shot.".
The commentators were reverentially silent.
Then a black kid stepped forward and began to sing Pie Jesu.
This is one of the best songs ever.
Like I'm not joking folks, you gotta hear it.
And the kid could really do it.
It was perfect for him. It was perfect because of him. It was perfect because of what it is even without him.
But the kid could really do it.
And as he began to sing, the commentators started talking over him.
The kid's singing was like the moment of the night.
And the lads all started chatting: "Pope looks happy," "Pope's enjoying this," "Pope's gotta be thinking: It's good to be the Pope," and so on.
I thought it was a howl.
Well I howled a bit anyway until they shut up.
The kid provided another great moment after he'd finished when the Pope gave him a rosary beads and he was walking offstage but suddenly he ran back and said to the Master of Ceremonies actor Mark Wahlberg: "I loved you in Ted."
Priceless.
There were many great moments.
Most of all I enjoyed my beloved guest commentators from the priesthood on the various networks attempting to suggest that Pope Francis is not controversial, is not departing from the heart of the ancient faith, and could not be some sort of socialist.
Some of them even squirmed.
Personally I'd prefer a socialist as Pope to some sort of apocalyptic figure supernaturally undermining the Catholic Church from within.
If these are the choices I'd settle for the socialist.
It's what I really hope he is.
A socialist Pope is my least worst scenario with this guy.
Then there was a singer called Marie Miller who with some very distinctive musicians alongside her showed what can be done with real country music and the quality of the genuine.
Ah the quality of the genuine.
If I could fake that I'd be a rich man.
That old gag.
Another great moment came from Aretha Franklin.
What she did with Amazing Grace was pure poetry.
As in, I didn't understand a word of it but I felt it must be good.
She didn't greet the Pope either like the others did, just danced off stage and was gone.
Might have reservations like myself.
We soul singers sometimes get the most striking intuitions...