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.
“I note that you haven’t addressed by query about the accuracy and origins on your post about the Ukraininan Rada asking for reparations from Mongolia – why is that?”
I see you did query the humorous Mongolia link. Three and a half days later when the thread had moved on.
The joke was that with Yatsenyuk’s claims that Russia invaded Germany to start world war 2 (which even surprised Merkel 🙂 ) all the clampdowns on anyone opposing the new ‘iron laws’ and Greece asking Germany for reparations a story like this would not be questioned. Well, like I said it took you 3.5 days. The original has a tag which clearly states it is a joke.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ede_1431905002
“You might also wish to explain your silence on the murder of Sergei Magnitsky while you are it.”
I did not do it. Honest, Guv.
Britain will be better off when it accepts that with or without Scotland it’s a little pissant country of no importance
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/post-elections-in-britain-does-it-matter/
“Lectures on shame from Mr Goss – quite comical really!”
I think really with your history you ought to have written: “More lectures on shame from Mr Goss!”
All regulars will find your comments comical in this respect. But then we need a laugh from time to time. Don’t stop contributing. More like the poison case at:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/05/corruption-welcome-in-london/comment-page-2/#comment-528808
Gave me belly-ache laughing. Even his dad said he was not poisoned.
Thanks, Macky, May your perfect dance be cosmic. Don’t forget always to use a mirror.
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Nevermind and Villager, thanks for your good humour and humanity.
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Is it not possible for good people to be against both imperialism and clerical fascism (no need for quotation marks, I think, but let’s not quibble over punctuation) and to see that the two are symbiotic and actually often compilicit? Perhaps it might occur to us to ask the Left in majority Muslim countries what they think on the matter? Trade Unionists, for example? RAWA in Afghanistan? The industrial workers in Pakistan – of which there are many – who risk everything to gain and keep the rights against the twin forces of unbridled sweatshop/bonded labour capitalism and clerical fascism? On the Saudi/Qatari model, the two there are inextriably linked.
Clerical fascism as a major ideological, political and military force is a product of imperialism – and of imperialism over the past 90 years at least, not just from 2003 inwards. That realisation – that imperialism has been one (though not the only) of the major aetiologies of clerical facism, and indeed, one might argue, of all fascism – does not mean that we have to pretend that one or the other does not exist or to suggest that if we criticise one we are supporting the other?
Anyway, enough! And apologies – it’s a hobby-horse of mine, one of several.
London might be the best at financial corruption but it is not unique.
My point was that it’s a state within a state, effectively. Like Delaware, perhaps, but with a more comprehensive set of financial engines, scams and laundries, including the national bank. I don’t think you’ll find anything close enough to the City/Offshore/Government nexus to seriously contest my point*, but I used the term loosely, as I am sure you have done when not thinking too deeply about your choice of adjective.
http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city
Remember, it even has its own police force.
*Don’t hesitate to provide a source…
“Is it not possible for good people to be against both imperialism and clerical fascism (no need for quotation marks, I think, but let’s not quibble over punctuation) and to see that the two are symbiotic and actually often compilicit?”
Absolutely – and, in the case of people like Hekmatyar, paid. Thanks, Suhayl.
Never mind that, it has it’s own mayor!
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No kidding!
The less charitable would classify the rage against social arrangements (ie not enacted in laws) as an identity crisis.
Time for Firefox and Habbabreak, methinks.
Macky
you put up Chunky Mark’s take, justified Rant on refugees on Kos.
Here, Will Self gives his take on refugees and tourists colliding on Mediterranean islands –
just when i thought such visions could not be made up –
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/people-trafficking-package-tours-drive-british-tourists-wild-lampedusa-722629742
P.s.. Mary, Warmest Wishes, Peace n Light to ya.
Suhayl Saadi; “Don’t forget always to use a mirror”
The day you catch me falling for Western war propaganda, you can cyber spit in my face; the day you catch me advocating for a phony war that will kill masses of innocent people, will be the day that the Sun rises in the West & sets in the East.
Clerical fascism originated during fascist Italy in the 1920’s, and it meant the collusion of religious leaders with the secular ideology of European fascism. As Muslim States are certainly not secular, the use of that term in the context of Islam, is nonsensical. It has become an Islamophobic short hand code, like that other favourite but meaningless term of “Islamofascism; both are purely perjorative anti-Islamic propaganda terms. It’s trying to frame TWOT as a re-run of WW2.
@BrianFujisan, unbelivable! It’s reads like a huge piss-take, but I fear some of it may be on the level !!!
I should perhaps clarify Re my first sentence above @10;51, Mark’s video is a response in disgust at the Daily Mail Migrants Article.
With regard to some of the comments here, the latter part of the 20th century, leading into the 21st century, saw an unexpected rise in religious extremism, be it Muslim suicide bombers at one end of the scale, to the bombing of abortion clinics by Protestent fundamentalists at the other. In the 1950s and 1960s religion became increasingly marginalised by science and reason; but then in the 1970s and 1980s it came to the fore once more. Religious people realised that they had the power to fight back against secularism and modernity. Fundamentalism largely stems from fear, in much the same way that secularism does, and is a reaction against a changing world that’s often hard to understand.
In recent times the spirtual side of humanity has been somewhat surpressed by scientific rationalism, a rationalism which has been so successful in the western world that it’s now generally believed that reason is the only avenue to truth; whereas in more traditional societies reason was seen as complimentary to myth, which was another way of looking at reality from a more spiritual, intuitive, mystical angle. With regard to this different kind of truth, you can make a comparison to art. You can’t say what a piece of music by Mozart is about, or prove why it works, but it is telling you something, it is affirming something. Likewise you can’t look at religious doctrine in a rational way, because reason and science does not really address questions of ultimate meaning. Tragedy is a good example. When something tragic happens we are more likely to console ourselves with things like poetry or music, or weeping with a friend, rather than turning to reason for answers.
American Protestent fundamentalism was the first to surface in modern times. Early in the 20th century the Protestents began reading religious scripture in a literal way, as though it were scientific fact. Before then, people read scripture in a more allegorical, mystical way. Islamic fundamentalism didn’t come along until later in the 20th century. The West looks at the Ayatollas & Co as some throwback to medieval times, but this is not the case. In the past very few Muslim women wore a veil. The clothed from head to toe stuff is quite a recent interpretation of Islam. In fact you could say that modern fundamentalism has become a complete distortion of religion, because the cornerstone of all of the world’s great faiths is compassion; love thy neighbour and all that. Fundamentalist theology, be it Protestent or Islamic or whatever, is one of rage, resentment and revenge.
aye Macky, it actually wouldn’t Surprise me, if some twisted people could, they would. and now the idea has sprung. we have after all seen far more evil than what Self describes, in recent years, Libya, Syria, Ukraine. Iraq, ( that Pre-planned infanticide )
it all so saddens my heart. What Hope is there, the Elite are out of control methinks.
Oh well, no edit function on this blog, so I can only hope readers get my drift.
‘Perhaps you might wish to back this up with some facts – bad as it was under Yeltsin it has got considerably worse under Putin as Transparency International and others will testify’
Res Diss- TI’s ‘corruption perception index’ is an excellent tool- but it doesn’t support the ‘facts’ as you state them.
In 2014 Russia was placed 136 out of 175 countries surveyed,but in 1998 it was placed 76 out of only 85 countries surveyed-
http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/1998_corruption_perceptions_index
Given that most of the former Soviet Union has scored very badly in these surveys since their inception in 1995, perhaps a comparison with neighbouring Ukraine would be instructive. You’ll note from the link above that in 1998 Russia’s ranking of 76 was worse than that of Ukraine which was ranked at 69 (alongside Bolivia).
In 2014 however, the positions are reversed- Ukraine is now ranked below Russia, and is indeed the lowest ranked European country
http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/a_year_after_maidan_ukraine_is_still_the_most_corrupt_country_in_europe
So that’s ok then, we’ve trashed the Pacific Ocean…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/08/california-stranded-sea-lions-pacific-ocean
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150420-velella-jellyfish-pictures-california-beach-ocean-animals-science/
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Biologists-try-to-figure-out-Northern-California-6287803.php
And of course none of these articles mention Fukushima; but this Times piece does:
Japan faces 200-year wait for Fukushima clean-up
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article4394978.ece
For all you little pricks who like to persuade us that we don’t live in a police state, for more than four years now there have been at least three commercial-size nuclear reactors in complete meltdown, and all totally uncontained (each of which is three times bigger than the No.4 unit at Chernobyl, which had a partial meltdown and was contained within ten days).
We’re on the edge of extinction, folks, but you still prefer to listen to the psycho propaganda from the vile little pricks.
Cue the vile little pricks…
Laura Stuart, British journalist, author, human rights activist, house-wife – and revert to Islam penned a two part report on the Israelification of UK.
“Amongst the most powerful lobby groups in the UK that wield a huge influence on Government policy, are the pro Israel lobby groups and think-tanks such as the Henry Jackson Society and BICOM. I would mention the Quilliam Foundation but the organization, particularly its leader Maajid Nawaz, have been totally discredited and have no influence within Britain’s Muslim community. The ‘Friends of Israel’ group of each of the main political parties are also very influential within the parties,” Laura Stuart said.
http://rehmat1.com/2015/05/31/uk-the-israeli-colony/
@MJ
“Don’t you think Israel’s interests would be best served by having a highly corrupt FIFA?”
If you read the latest news – you must have got your answer.
FIFA has refused to ban the Zionist entity, saying PA took its “request” back.
Craig,
I am coming late at you – but – I am coming at you.
As much as I love you on many other issues and likewise do respect you.
You are here demonstrating naivety – and – I am prepreaped to debate you fully – point by point.
Mate – you just got it wrong this time.
Which nations it the world are more financially corrupt than the US and UK? Which nations have stolen, enslaved, bribed and indeed accepted “dirty money” to the ultimate points to enhance their economies? It was five days before the election of the president of FIFA, then the powers that be raided a number of delegates who are suspected of being responsible for corruption.
The CIA has a job to do. It did it. Let us be real.
Who very carefully prepared this operation?
Sure FIFA, just like Wall Street has corruption within it. Where are the indictments for Tony Blair, for war crimes – George Bush for the same – the Wall Street boys for stealing people’s life savings. Then you want to moralise with me about FIFA?
Was it not the very same US banks that hired FIFA delegates to launder the money?
Drugs, Mafia, FIFA money into the US banking system is the order of the day.
Come on Craig Murray – get real.
Hegemony – and UK – fall in line – Craig Murray – wake up!
CB
Craig,
I am coming late at you – but – I am coming at you.
As much as I love you on many other issues and likewise do respect you.
You are here demonstrating naivety – and – I am prepreaped to debate you fully – point by point.
Mate – you just got it wrong this time.
Which nations in the world are more financially corrupt than the US and UK? Which nations have stolen, enslaved, bribed and indeed accepted “dirty money” to the ultimate points to enhance their economies? It was five days before the election of the president of FIFA, then the powers that be raided a number of delegates who are suspected of being responsible for corruption.
The CIA has a job to do. It did it. Let us be real.
Who very carefully prepared this operation?
Sure FIFA, just like Wall Street has corruption within it. Where are the indictments for Tony Blair, for war crimes – George Bush for the same – the Wall Street boys for stealing people’s life savings. Then you want to moralise with me about FIFA?
Was it not the very same US banks that hired FIFA delegates to launder the money?
Drugs, Mafia, FIFA money into the US banking system is the order of the day.
Come on Craig Murray – get real.
Hegemony – and UK – fall in line – Craig Murray – wake up!
CB
Sorry – did not realise that I had duplicated.
CB
Macky
Suhayl said religious organisations “will tend to align with the extant power structures.”
Yes if you question the 9/11 tripe, the mosque will be the first to tell you you are living in cloud cuckoo land.
That is because it is firmly aligned with extant power structures,
As to the myth that young UK Muslims are being radicalised. UK nosques recruit totally unradicalised youngsters for David Cameron’s Al Queenida in Syria so that they can vent their immature rage on other Muslims instead of UK foreign policy. David Cameron provides full benefits for their families, visas and airline tickets. Saudi and Qatar cash put butter on the basic packages.
Thanks, Technicolour, yes of course, good on you.
“… the day you catch me advocating for a phony war that will kill masses of innocent people, will be the day that the Sun rises in the West & sets in the East.” Macky
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Persistent misrepresentation of my views. But that’s to be expected, I guess. It has been fun interacting with the various projected cybe-personalities that have frequented this blog over the years, going back to Larry from St Louis. It is fun particularly to be lectured again by a Big White Person on how one should think, speak and behave. Remember, Macky, to be mellow, remember that we are all One.
“As Muslim States are certainly not secular, the use of that term in the context of Islam, is nonsensical.” Macky.
Some of them were, actually and others had strong secular tendencies/structures. So that is an inaccurate analysis.
And if fascism is a union of the state, corporate power and the military-police structures – as Mussolini defined it – then of course many states tend towards fascism, or have fascistic tendencies, some obviously more than others. On the Left, for example, the idea sometimes has been to evoke the underlying fascism in the capitalist liberal democracies.
Clerical fascism has taken many forms – Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Khomeini’s Iran, the ‘Concordat’ Vatican during WW2, Saudi Arabia. The use of term is not an attempt by, say, the Communist Party (which uses it) and other left-wing organisations to reprise WW2, it is an attempt to describe a specific type of political system, in which fascist means of control are ‘justified’ by particular interpretations of religion.
But if one prefers a dualistic – and conveniently nativist – world view of humanity, that kind of complex narrative is not permissible. In essence, White Supremacists and Clerical Fascists share this need for a dualistic world view. In this comforting schema,’all Muslims’ are the same and those who do not adhere to a recently-constructed nativist rubric are rubbished. We, overwhelmingly brown people, must accept our lot as ‘natives’ governed by a monolithic political-religious structure because, we are informed it is our ‘tradition’ not be secular. In this simplistic and oppressive world view, the only possible configuration is defined by the postmodern political ‘philosophy’ which its adherents wish to label, ‘political Islam’ (but since there are many forms of political Islam, some of them liberatory so why should we accept their deliberate monopolisation of that term?) and all dominant (basically White Power/First World, etc.) groupings are the same.
In this analysis, there is no reference to, or cognisance of, any liberatory thought/forces that might exist, or be possible, in societies defined now – but only recently – by the monicker, ‘Islam’. There is no reference to economics, to social class, to the means of production. In essence, the Left, and those who espouse Islamic liberation theology, in ‘Muslim society’ (again, recently defined as such) – those tendencies which oppose both military capitalism and the allied clerical fascism which it promotes and sustains – has been disowned. And it has been disowned by some of those who, one would imagine, one would think would be its natural supporters in the so-called ‘West’.
And so, we have the absurd situation of Leftists in the West on the same ‘side’ as the King of Saudi Arabia and thence, the USA et al, both of which in various have promoted clerical fascism as a useful strategic instrument to exert hegemony.
Courtenay Barnett at 3:08ish.
I have to agree that singling out Russia, and Russian oligarchs, for corruption is not balanced. There are lots of other oligarchs and bankers who are just as corrupt from all over the world. I doubt there is any worse than Ahmed Chalibi, who as well as robbing poor savers in Jordan, provided intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Craig does say that London has become a cesspit for encouraging these crooks to settle here. On that I agree. All FIFA bids are probably corrupt. I have never suspected otherwise. The Olympic bidding is the same. And the Nobel Peace Prize. And The Booker. It seems to me nearly all major events have influential pressure groups using persuasive methods to use favouritism to channel the event in a certain direction. What happens at the top to ensure that certain individuals or groups get preferential treatment is anybody’s guess because they all have it written into their rules and regulations that no employees can submit entries, anybody contravening the rules and regulations will be eliminated. And yet it goes on.
Bribery is a by-product of capitalism, and the biggest wallet usually chooses the winner. How do you think a small country like South Korea, split by an imaginary line drawn by the Yanks (38th parallel) in the perpetual war it started there, could win a bid to host the 1988 Olympics if politics and bribes were not involved? It was an exercise to show how much better life is in the western-backed south. It was the second time Asia had hosted the Olympic Games.
But when it comes to Russia, and when it comes to Putin, I believe Craig has the “four legs good, two legs bad” mentality. There is no middle-ground. He does not like either. The Russian people however do not share his dislike of their leader. What has happened in Ukraine, far from breaking Putin’s hold on the reins, has got all the sceptics firmly behind him and US-funded opposition has all but disintegrated in Russia. There is an old saying about throwing good money after bad, and I suspect in its attempt to change the face of Europe, the US (supported by its toadies) will have its war. That is one of my main concerns. They’ve fucked up the Middle East and now it’s our turn to witness the US compassionate humanitarian intervention.
Board up your windows!
Mr Goss’s original post
“The Verkhovna Rada parliament in Kiev has really lost it in trying to get cash to pay off its mounting debts. Don’t laugh! With all its gold reserves gone it has copied Greece’s request for compensation from Germany (WWII) by demanding that Mongolia pay reparations for attacks from the Khan dynasty in the 13th century.
Not surprisingly Mongolia has responded by saying to give them a list of the names of those who were affected and they will settle. You must read this if only for a cracking photo of a little Mongolian girl and her camel who seem to understand what is happening in Kiev.
http://redpilltimes.com/ukraine-government-is-kookoo-crazy-verkhovna-rada-calls-for-sanctions-against-mongolia-for-khan-genocide-in-13th-century/”
He of course now claims 9 days after his original post (which linked to a site which had no joke take and linked to the disreputable saker site which had no such tag), and being given a week to clarify his original posting, that his original posting was only a joke by linking to another site previously not linked to at all.
I’m afraid is that what Mr Goss has provided is yet another LIE, which he doesn’t have the good grace to even admit. This all coming on the same day that he accuses Amnesty of misrepresentations regarding human rights (although saying that they were dismantled by Macky will be seen by moat sentientient human beings as something of a joke) and just after he accused me of having no shame. My only observation is that if you give Mr Goss enough rope he will soon enough hang himself – perhaps in future he could save us all the bother and label all his posts as jokes at the time.
I agree Mr Goss didn’t kill Magnitsky – but the man he so admires has not a little responsibility for the deed and almost certainly agreed to him being tried after his death – so perhaps in future the lying Mr Goss might wish to take his pathetic humour elsewhere?
Mr Goss
Is Mr Putin’s declared annual income on his tax returns of around £100k equivalent a lie or a joke?
“far from breaking Putin’s hold on the reins, has got all the sceptics firmly behind him and US-funded opposition has all but disintegrated in Russia.”
This is of course what Mr Goss looks for in his favoured regimes – he fails to understand that opposition to those in power is a key feature for the political health of any country.
“This is of course what Mr Goss looks for in his favoured regimes – he fails to understand that opposition to those in power is a key feature for the political health of any country.”
It is not a real opposition. It is US-funded attempt at an overthrow of the legitimate government (something it has quite a reputation for). Thanks to Wikileaks we know that. No wonder these fascist groups attract supporters like Resident Dissident.