The Running Dead – Football (soccer) Referees
A few years ago, professional football starting using video technology to help referees. The idea was that any huge mistake by the official would be looked at by an off-field referee, surrounded by a bank of screens, and the correct decision made. The theory was impressive, but it has made a complete mess of the modern game of football.
The big problem is that the decision is still made by a fallible human being, and often the result is not only incorrect, but can take several minutes to be made known, during which time the players stand around scratching their heads, and the poor old spectator, paying up to £100 for a seat at the match, hasn’t got a clue what is going on. (I have to say that the obscenely highly paid footballers don’t help at all, and most are happy to cheat, or at least influence decisions by nefarious means.)
For a multi-billion pound sport, it is simply unacceptable, and with the Video Assisting Referees system bedding-in period long gone, is unlikely to show any signs of improvement. So what will happen is this.
The football authorities will pretend that everything is fine and dandy, and the whole messy scenario will continue for a few years. But the idea of a human running a football match will be consigned to history in a relatively short time.
I don’t know the pace at which Artificial Intelligence is progressing, but it won’t be too long before the whole football match will be adjudicated by, effectively, a robot. Decisions will be made instantly, and guess what, there’ll be no referee on the pitch to whom the players can argue and insult. Which is what happens now.
Where I live, the Turkish Cypriots can be fanatical football supporters. If they disagree with a refereeing decision, it is nothing for them to stand up and scream at the beleaguered official: “Your mother is a whore!” Or worse. But imagine if AI had made that decision? There would be little point 
in angrily shouting at a remote computer telling it that its mother has questionable sexual habits.
So, problem solved. Sadly for the man-in-the-middle, or woman, they are already the Running Dead.
Amen.
Gone with the wind
There are institutions that last long, almost forever, and there are mighty ones that fall from grace very spectacularly, they go down in flames, to the big surprise of many.
The good example of the first ones is the Vatican. I’m not a Catholic or even any other kind of a Christian in any way, but this institution is too strong to vanish anytime soon. It’s got a lasting tradition and a very contradictory history but it is so old that it has long become a part of the history of humanity. I don’t expect it to disappear during my lifetime. In fact, it might get even stronger.
But there is another kind of institution that might look like a Colossus but in fact is just like a phantom. The best example is the Soviet Union. Who could predict its break-up in 1991? We, all who have been born in the USSR and lived there would never imagine it would suddenly fall from grace. I personally couldn’t even think of it: you wouldn’t expect the Moon falling from the skies, right? The USSR was something solid, very hard, made to last centuries… Who now remembers this: CCCP?
But it did fall down.
Who’s next?
I suspect it won’t be the WHO or the World Health Organization. Yes, it seems to be a very corrupt body that, at best, had overslept the COVID-19 virus and, in the worst scenario, just had been owned by China to hide the consequences and relieve the Chinese from bearing responsibility for it. (Hope the revenge would get the Chinese).
I believe the next one to go with the wind will be the United Nations. It has been useless during the genocide in Africa when around million people had been massacred (Tutsi vs Hutu) in Rwanda.
It has been useless in every major crisis since at least 1999 Yugoslavia, then the 2003 war in Iraq. It is a joke when we think of the UN role in the Middle East conflict. Decades have come and gone…
To make a long story short, it is just not working. At least, the way it was planned by FDR.
The UN makes lots of noise and movements around the world. They spend countless amounts of money but the effectiveness of the UN is in doubt, I’d say. In fact, the UN is already dead. Russia, in an effort to keep its own world status, is trying hard to convince everybody else that its dead stinking body is still alive and kicking but… we all know what zombies look like. This thing is walking, it could even cause big trouble but… it is just as dead as wood.
There’s a good book by Graham Hancock, ‘The Lords of Poverty’. It perfectly explains what the UN 
has become now. It exists mostly – but not entirely – to justify its own existence.
I predict in 20 years from now that the UN will be gone with the wind or transform into something very different from what it is today.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Twenty Years
When I first considered this topic I thought universities would be the subject. The pandemic has brought remote learning to the fore and the days of the $500,000 education are clearly numbered. That’s still true and I don’t think it will take 20 years to happen.
But the more I considered the topic, the more I came to believe Covid-19 will drive huge changes in the Far East and this isn’t going to take anything like two decades.
Australian Television Commentators (ABC-TV) are saying they put the odds of war with the Chinese within the next twelve months at 50/50. This is not hyperbole. As you read this, the Aussie Government is urgently building a fuel depot in the North of the country to service AU and US warships. The Australian defence budget has been pumped-up by a whopping 40%.
China has clearly used the virus as cover for aggressive moves against ALL it’s neighbors throughout the region:
- Fighting India in the Himalayas
- Creating serious drought the lower Mekong to force three countries into territorial concessions
- Passing new laws to control Hong Kong
- Putting perhaps a million Uighur Muslims into re-education camps and sterilizing their women
- Claiming almost all of the South China Sea
- Daily trespass on Japanese islands
- Claiming Vladivostok is in fact a Chinese city
This list goes on & on but I’ll stop here; my point should be made. The troubling part of this is that flu season will not start until about October. The above is going on in the middle of the Summer!
The Americans are going into an election cycle and their news will be almost exclusively domestic; a flare-up in Covid-19 at the start of flu season and whatever crazy thing Trump Tweeted last night.
China is rapidly building transport capability in the Himalayas and adding more robust defences to her Islands in the South China Sea. Little need to stir this pot.
So my prediction for things that will not exists in twenty years:
- Taiwan
- China’s roll as the World’s factory.
- North Korea
- The World Wide Web
- The Chinese Communist Party if they have mis-calculated
The Philippines will still exist but only as a vassal state; same for perhaps a dozen African countries. 
The real fight may well be over Iraq. Why? Because China will get oil. I believe the threat of Nukes will stop a full-on WWIII. Walking Dead? Depends which country you’re from.