The FBI had somebody wearing a wire at the London Olympics to capture the FIFA corruption taking place in the margins. What were the British authorities doing? Nothing.
Britain prides itself as having in London the world’s leading financial centre. Substantial assets, both financial and real estate, from FIFA corruption are located in London. But Britain has taken over the crown from Switzerland as the major financial destination which will always protect ill-gotten wealth.
Alisher Usmanov played a major role as bagman for the corrupt Russian World Cup bid, particularly with delegates from FIFA’s Asian Confederation. His place as Britain’s third richest resident is very obviously based on extreme Russian corruption and he rose to power and wealth solely with the use of gangster muscle and contacts he gained and expanded while serving a prison sentence for blackmail. But he is a billionaire and beloved by the City of London so there is no danger of him ever being investigated in the UK.
That a key figure in FIFA corruption over Russia’s World Cup bid, is undisturbed in his large shareholding in Arsenal FC, says everything about the complicity of the British establishment.
Usmanov’s friend Gulnara Karimova is a startling example. She is now under formal investigation in Switzerland, France, Sweden and the Netherlands over the glaringly corrupt origins of her billions. Only a fake house arrest by her father has prevented her real arrest. Yet in the UK, where she has three homes including one in the No.1 Hyde Park criminals’ hangout, where she shops regularly and her son is at university, there is no move against her whatsoever.
I am delighted to see the moves against FIFA. But to me they illustrate very plainly what a corrupt stinking hole London has become.
“Jesus, Dreoilin et al. got Mary to leave by attacking her”
Your ignorance is profound. Mary has been here since 2007. I’ve been here since 2005. Habbabkuk since 2012. If Mary hadn’t left in a huff by now, I can assure you she didn’t leave in a huff recently. Which is why the concern about her health.
Gone. Book.
Suhayl Saadi; “How does that analysis explain the longstanding complicity of the USA/NATO with Jihadist paramilitaries/militaries”
Religion is an anathema to those in power, because it supersedes their power & authority; no truly religious person is going to obey a secular law if it opposes their religious beliefs; no truly religious person is going to turn a blind eye to gross moral injustices; no truly religious person is going to be a good blind consumer for the sex, sport & celebrity nonsense that is peddled to the masses; this is what lies behind the French reaction to the Charlie Hebdo murders, it was a challenge to their “laïcité, their attempt to neutralize the influence of religion, but just like the Soviets discovered after 70 years of suppression, religion is an integral part of the human psyche, the need to believe in something is inherent in the human condition, just ask an Atheist !
Divide & Rule has always been the favorite method for Control, and using the Religious Divide the favorite tactic, stoking up sectarian conflict, from Ireland, to Cyprus, to Palestine, to India, in Iraq, in Syria; so pointing out that that Western Powers co-operate with Islamic proxies & that they prop up corrupt rulers in Islamic Client States, is not proof that they are neutral towards or even tolerate of Islam, but the very opposite, it illustrates their need to divide, corrupt, weaken & control Muslims.
No surprise that the Salman Rushdie of this Blog picked up on this ! 😀
FIFA is extremely corrupt. The sponsorship deals and television rights deals are extremely corrupt. In addition to money from sponsors and television rights, there is a third stream of money that is even more corrupt – bribes from wealthy corrupt regimes that want to host the Finals. Russia and Qatar bribed massively to get the finals.
Blatter has assiduously spread around dirty money to the delegates frm developing nations who are eminently corruptible for a tiny percentage of the corrupt doash, so he got himself re-elected. Comfortably.
The same large Blatter majority could very comfortably have passed the Blatter motion to suspend Israel. They didn’t and it was withdrawn because THERE IS NO IDENTITY WHATSOEVER BETWEEN BLATTER AND HIS CORRUPT CREW AND THE PRO-PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT.
Putin does not want any spotlight on Russia’s bribery to win the games. Russia therefore sought to paint the anti-corruption actions as US imperialism. The Left fell for this especially because it was reinforced by an entirely and demonstrably false identification of the Blatter crew as supporting the Palestinian motion. Some of the Left pushed this line knowing it was a lie but viewing it as part of a greater anti-western pro-Putin good. Others, including many commenters on this blog, pushed it because they are incredibly dim-witted and naïve.
“and then joking about it as if she were just a 24/7 mindless, sleepless poster, constantly correcting the internet.”
Trowbridge, that comic I posted is a well-known comic from xkcd, and I posted it for everyone, as I said at the time.
It had nothing whatever to do with Mary personally.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Don’t accuse people regarding things you obviously know nothing about.
Rusbridger’s big bowing out speech…
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/29/farewell-readers-alan-rusbridger-on-leaving-the-guardian
Not mentioned, of course, is that the HSBC now controls the Guardian. Also not mentioned is the huge purge of BTL commentators over the last six months.
We’re now definitely in 1984-land.
I just read the posts you post about posters and posts which you ignorantly disapprove of, and interfere with even the posting of, especially mine, and shall continue to do so.
Yes, Macky, you’re right about the divide-and-rule tactic. My point really was that the powers that be are not interested really in ideology, they are interested only in mainatining their wealth and power. They adhere to fundamentalist capitalism becasue it maintians their wealth and power. This idea that there is ‘an attack on Islam’ is one peddled by Islamist organisations and ideologues because like all supremacists, they see the world in dualistic terms and it’s a simple and effective slogan to sell to (with which to delude) the masses. An attack (systemic economic, military) on what used to be called ‘The Third World’ now is framed as ‘an attack on Islam’. We see that Right-wing extermist Christinianity is entirely compatible with the US military project, so your argument that stringly-held religion and political power are incompatible does not really hold up to scrutiny. Israel and Pakistan both were founded on the basis of religion, yet there no opposition to political power in the Zionist project (quite the obverse) or in the sort of forces that have taken Pakistan beyond the brink of absurdity.
What the powers that be do not like, of course, like all empires and power structures throughout history, is independence (of any sort) any that includes both nationalistic independence and any philosophy that entails the redistribution of wealth.
And as for being “the Salman Rushdie of the blog”, well, I appreciate the sentiment, but all I can say is, I’d rather be the George Bataille of the blog. I like ‘The Story of the Eye’ and much else.
Craig,
” I am delighted to see the moves against FIFA. But to me they illustrate very plainly what a corrupt stinking hole London has become.”
Get real it is the “Golden Rule” – he who has the gold makes the rules – and – he who has the power of the gold chooses to indict those the golden ones choose to.
CB
Craig,
Get real it is the “Golden Rule” – he who has the gold makes the rules – and – he who has the power of the gold chooses to indict those the golden ones choose to.
CB
Sorry, Craig, we sort of cross-posted. I have no interest in football whatsoever, but corruption is universal!
He has game the system and he has proved to be a master at it. The Jordanian princeling and his support team were left with egg on their face and a humiliating defeat (the media were pontificating a defeat for Blatter etc.), despite the dog and pony show of the FBI, ABC, CIA, and the whole bally lot of the alphabet, all of which failed to unseat him. Democracy baby!!
The enormous amounts of money that is thrown around in football, has made a lot of people rich, and anywhere there are copious amounts of money getting thrown around will be wreaking with corruption. What is wrong with the plebs getting a bit of the action? It is not military industrial complex, or banking, or for that matter any one of the other corrupt constructs that is designed to kill, incarcerate, annihilate, destroy!
FFS it is a bloody game! A game! That is all it is about.
I am at a loss to find the brouhaha about “corruption” a none story that is dominating the oligarch owned media, how has this corruption affected the game or the spectators?
PS I am not a football fan and I find watching a bunch of millionaires going about having fun and kicking a ball around somewhat tedious.
Where’s Habba to tell us that everything is normal and under control, and that we don’t live in a dystopia?
Do the likes of Habba understand who will be amongst the first to be put up against a wall and shot?
Dumb, dumb, dumb, and it’s why they’ve totally destroyed this little blue planet we live on.
So al Nusra, the heart-eating crazies, are OK. Compared to the ISIS psyops maybe they are.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32913509
This is the mainstreaming of an “Islamic force” as a regional proxy for regime change. Not attacking the west makes them easier to support, for the reasons they and ISIS were created in the first place – to deal with Assad and to draw in Iran and Hezbollah (which will give Israel greater wriggle room in Southern Lebanon). Al Nusra are an easier sell now to the viewers back home. With added Turkish and US air support:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/turkey-us-air-support-syria-rebels-agree-in-principle
@Suhayl Saadi, No my argument is not that religious & political power are incompatible, rather it’s that a dominate power structure that is apolitical, will always consider the power of religion as a threat to be countered; where religion is actually part of the dominant political power, such as in Israel, it will attack other rival religions, hence the rampart Islamophobia & hostility towards Christians in Israel.
The US Elites co-opt Right-Wing extremist Christianity because it’s the foundation & essential component of American Exceptionalism, the supremacist ideology that the Elite there uses to manipulate its masses.
Well, what you’re saying, Macky, is not really incompatible, not mutually exclusive with what I’m saying. Religion – including Islam – has been co-opted in general by those in power. Of course they want it to serve their ends and that’s nothing new. To see religion as some sort of oppositional force to the power structures would be a misjudgement. It is the misjudgement that the leftist Iranian revolutionarries made when they thought the clerical fascists would serve to liberate the Iranian people and so allied with them to overthrow the Shah. instead what they got were more massacres. Religion can inform liberatory narrative (including some strands within Islam, Christian liberation theology and so on), but in its current political manifestations – Zionism, Islamism, Right-wing Evangelical Christianity, the BJP in india and so on – it overwhelmingly is not and will tend to align with the extant power structures. We have seen this happen again and again over the past 70 years. Good discoursing with you.
Where is Mary?
Are you all right Mary?
Seconded.
Well, thirded, since Dreoilin was the first to ask, despite stupid comments by Trowbridge) I like that comic picture, btw, Dreoilin, very much: a friend of mine sent it to me years ago, and I saw myself and laughed a lot.
I do think, Craig, that you mean the ‘City of London’, and then probably not everyone in it, rather than ‘London’. Walthamstow, for example, has very little in common with Canary Wharf. Much cleaner, for one thing.
I fear Mary has been ‘slugged’ – so I am projecting praise…
Well yeah, it’s stupid to recommend a poison.
Blatter appears to have been selected because he tried to make sure that poor countries received a fair share of FIFA funds:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-32928984
That throws a somewhat different light on the situation. The West are right to fight corruption, but why America should have gotten involved when soccer is not its national sport, I am not quite sure.
The latest thing is after all this Sepp Blatter still gets re-elected as president of FIFA!!!!!!
@Lysias: Talking about paedophilia and football, Lysias:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMd9Mbnrp7w
LOL the case in point being that you can ‘get away’ with absolutely anything – particularly in Britain – so long as you pass the football test. I guess it’s only a matter of time now before some football ‘legend’ is found out as a raving paedo but in the tabloid eyes of the Great British Public he’s somehow deemed a ‘different/okay sort of paedo’ ‘cos he’s good at football(!)
Abe this sort of talk will land you in re-education classes, do you realize that?
This is the planet US anything and everything is concern of the US! A cat’s fart in India can unleash a destructive hurricane in Indiana could cost US oodles of money; all cats in India must have a butt plug, or a fart filter, or these will have to be droned out of existence!
US tells China how to go about conducting themselves at Sea, tells the Russians how to go about laying their pipe lines. Tells the customers of the Russians not to buy gas from those pesky Russkies. Tells the Iranians they cannot enrich fuel, just in case, and in fact Bu$h went so far as outlawing all nuclear sciences and studies in Iran.
That is the trouble with a bunch of megalomaniacs running the world all the while keeping their back covered by trampling on any and all perceived, or real, or imaginary competitors threats!
Perhaps the “dim witted and naïve” might wish to reflect as to why all the computers used by the Russian team bidding for the 2018 World Cup were destroyed.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/nov/13/russia-evidence-2018-world-cup-bid-destroyed
The same mentality probably underlies why it is now a crime to reveal any “secrets” about Russian troops in Ukraine while the official line is that there aren’t any there in the first place. Not that I suspect that this will make any difference to the thinking of the “dim witted and naïve”.
In Mary’s absence and knowing her interest in all matters Palestinian perhaps this otherwise unobserved piece of news may be of interest.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/articles/news/2015/05/gaza-palestinians-tortured-summarily-killed-by-hamas-forces-during-2014-conflict/
Let us not forget that as well as suffering created by the IDF, Hamas and Assad are not above adding their own little bit to the suffering of the Palestinians.
For the dim witted and naïve who believe that Putin has been battling against corrupt oligarchs for the last 15 years rather than encouraging them to even greater extremes and at the same time putting his own hand in the till might I suggest they join his judo club.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/15/putin-and-his-judo-cronies/
@Suhayl Saadi, The difference between our positions is that you seem to use the extreme strands of religion, the parts that are readily co-opted by power elites, to damn by association all religion, but you especially concentrate on Islam for some reason. I maintain that mainstream moderate religion is a force for good, is viewed as a threat, and it is targeted for undermining by the Elites.
Since you didn’t appear to much like the Salman Rushdie comparison, how about a Juan Cole comparison, because he too portrays himself as a Lefty-Liberal, but is not adverse to some Humanitarian Bombing if prompted by the latest Western campaign against some “New Hitler” bogeyman.
Anyhow to end on a light note, enjoy this comical corporate attempt to hi-jack Religion;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaIq9o1H1yo
@Resident Dissident, you’ll forgive some of us who view the credibility of the AI report you have just provided, with the same credibility of its report on Ukraine War Crimes;
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/29/amnesty-international-ukraine-war-crimes-report-fails-the-test/