Well Done Spain.

It's true, last night you won the World Cup.

What's more they risked losing the final by switching from their usual style of play to a more attacking style. Sadly the Dutch did everything they could to spoil it by kicking everything and anything except for the ball. So why it wasn't a pretty game at least it wasn't a boring game. A boring final would have been a terrible shame because apart from the Group C silliness in the early stages the 2010 World Cup was the most entertaining World Cup since probably France '98. The drama of the Uruguay V Ghana in particular will stick in the memory for years to come. It then would have been a absolute travesty if the worlds over-riding memory of South Africa's first World Cup was a dull 0-0 draw that had to settled by penalties.

In getting to the final though Spain robbed the continent of Africa of the spectacle of a Germany V the Netherlands final. Both Germany and the Netherlands are religiously and politically significant nations. Germany is more or less the birthplace of the Protestant Christian faith. Protestantism began there as a legitimate theological separation from the corrupt Catholic Church which had become far more about collecting money from the faithful then anything to do with the teachings of God or Christ. Like Britain the Dutch Monarchy soon leapt on the idea and used it as an excuse to collect even more money from their subjects both as the Monarch and as head of the national Church. Some 500 years and many wars later Germany is modern secular Republic with many practising Protestants in it's population. The Netherlands on the other hand is still ruled by Monarch in accordance with the religious law of it's quasi-Protestant national Church. So inspite of the tolerant image of Amsterdam the Dutch like to project to the world the Netherlands has a large and nasty rightwing core running through it.

The convergence between religion and politics is a very important issue in Africa at the moment. All across the continent Pentecostal Christianity is on the rise especially amongst the poor. Although Protestant very few of these Churches are aligned with the main Protestant Communions like the Church of England etc. In countries such as Uganda* and Malawi* these Churches do a lot of good work but create certain social and economic development problems. For example their opposition to the use of birth control creates population pressures and helps HIV to spread. Also like some American TV evangelists some of these preachers and Churches are more concerned with making money off the faithful then anything else. In countries like Nigeria this explosion of Christianity is creating much more serious social problems with Christian militias and Muslim militias carrying out periodic tit for tat massacres. If this trend spreads and if these Churches become aligned with more mainstream European Protestant Communions it will the results will be catastrophic. Africa will once again become a giant chess board on which western Christians and eastern Muslims fight endless wars by proxy. This will destroy all the good development work that's been done over the last thirty years and make the bad old days of the Cold War look like childsplay.

With this in mind and Muslims not really playing football I thought that it would have been a beautiful legacy of Africa's first World Cup for the final to be a spectacle that helped Africa's Christians choose between religious Churches that help to bring out the best in men and political Churches that help to bring out the worst.

Instead what we got was Germany and Uruguay once again re-enacting the second world war in the third place play-off. A boost to nationalism in a European country that has economic problems and a history of Fascism. Intensified sectarian rioting in Belfast and three bombings in Uganda that have killed at least 74.

As for the Uganda bombing Britain's MI6 were definitely calling the shots although they may have done it by getting their Ugandan allies to provoke the Al Shabab militants. The specific objective of blaming this group of Somali Islamists is to draw attention to Somaliland. Now part of northern Somalia, Somaliland used to be a British protectorate. By Somali standards it is relatively peaceful and Britain is using this fact to call for Somaliland break away from Somalia and become an independent nation under the guises of a peace process. In reality Britain are hoping that the historical links mean that an independent Somaliland will act as a British puppet state boosting Britain's influence in the continent with all the oil, gold and diamonds.

More broadly Britain wanted to use the attack to increase fears about Islamic militants across the region. This will help turn these new Churches into Christian militias who will fight the Muslims. I don't think this actually has much to do Islam. Instead it seems a wider strategy to destabilise these African nations in order to keep them poor and therefore easier to exploit.


After a long and headache inducing tournament I was hoping to have a couple of days peace and quiet before looking at some of the other issues the Brits tried and failed to impose on the World Cup to ruin it further. Unfortunately this won't happen because the Americans are still chasing the low value product at the expense of the high value product. This is as tedious as it is time consuming.


Anyway the Spanish don't need to worry about any of that because they've just won the World Cup!!










*Yeah the gay rights for gays mob are familiar with those countries I believe.