By Joe LAURIA

The International Federation of Felines (FIFe) on Tuesday ordered a ban on the importation of Russian-bred cats, presumably anywhere in the world.

“No cat bred in Russia may be imported and registered in any FIFe pedigree book outside Russia, regardless of, which organization issued its pedigree,” the FIFe board said in a statement.

The board said the ban was imposed because of events in Ukraine:

“The FIFe Executive Board is shocked and horrified that the army of the Russian Federation invaded the Republic of Ukraine and started a war. Many innocent people died, many more are wounded and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are forced to flee their homes to save their lives. We can all witness the destruction and chaos caused by this unprecedented act of aggression.

On top of that our Ukrainian fellow feline fanciers are desperately trying to take care of their cats and other animals in these trying circumstances. We are extremely happy that many members of FIFe clubs bordering Ukraine, such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova, are lending a helping hand to their Ukrainian breeder friends.

The Board of FIFe feels it cannot just witness these atrocities and do nothing, so it decided that as of 01.03.2022:

• No cat bred in Russia may be imported and registered in any FIFe pedigree book outside Russia, regardless of, which organization issued its pedigree.
• No cat belonging to exhibitors living in Russia may be entered at any FIFe show outside Russia, regardless of, which organization these exhibitors hold their membership in.”

So far the International Canine Association has said nothing about Russian dogs. Russian birds cannot be stopped from flying over the border.

Apparently taking no public position on Ukraine — no matter one’s walk in life — is making oneself an accomplice to Russia’s actions. It demonstrate the kind of pressure felt by ordinary people to not be seen as siding with Russia, even if that means not importing Russian cats.

It also highlights U.S. impunity for massive, unprovoked attacks on other nations, such as Iraq in 2003, that provoked no such public outcry in the West. On the contrary, dumping French wine and renaming French fries “Freedom Fries” was the outcry against France trying to stop that disastrous invasion.

‘The United States of Amnesia’ – Gore Vidal https://t.co/vfyqc7weEJ

— Joe Lauria (@unjoe) February 28, 2022

Sporting and Cultural Bans

The cat ban follows voluntary actions against Russian cultural and sporting organizations and individuals that fall outside the scope of U.S. and European sanctions.  On Monday Russian orchestra conductor Valery Gergiev was fired from his job at the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also been banned orchestras in Rotterdam, Vienna and at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Warner Brothers has delayed releases in Russia; Spotify has closed its office in Russia; the Glasgow Film Festival has dropped two Russian film and the Venice Biennale has removed Russia’s pavilion among other cultural bans.

A university in Italy even tried to ban a course on Fyodor Dostoevsky, but reversed itself after an outcry.  “Not only is being a living Russian wrong in Italy today, but also being a dead Russian, who was sentenced to death in 1849 because he read a forbidden thing. That an Italian university would ban a course on an author like Dostoevsky is unbelievable,” said Paolo Nori, a writer who is teaching the course.

The North American-based National Hockey League, which has hundreds of Russian players, announced that it was severing its business ties to the Russian Federation:

“The National Hockey League condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and urges a peaceful resolution as quickly as possible. Effective immediately, we are suspending our relationships with our business partners in Russia and we are pausing our Russian language social and digital media sites. In addition, we are discontinuing any consideration of Russia as a location for any future competitions involving the NHL.”

Russian-born NHL players have reported receiving threats. Dan Milstein, an agent who represents most of the Russians playing in the league, spoke of one of his players being verbally attacked on the street. “He was yelled at to, ‘Get back to your country,’ and was called a Nazi and other words,” Milstein told ESPN. “Clients are being called Nazis. People are wishing that they are dead. These are human beings. These are hockey players. These are guys contributing to our society, paying millions of dollars in taxes to support the U.S. and Canada and doing all kinds of charity work back home. Stop looking at them as aggressors. Stop being racist.”

In its statement, the NHL defended its Russian-born athletes. “We also remain concerned about the well-being of the players from Russia, who play in the NHL on behalf of their NHL Clubs, and not on behalf of Russia,” it said. “We understand they and their families are being placed in an extremely difficult position.”

The International Ice Hockey Federation has banned Russia and Belarus from participating in this year’s world championship.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recommended that athletes from Russia and Belarus be barred from its events.

The International Football Association (FIFA) has suspended Russia and barred it from competing at the World Cup later this year in Qatar.

The video game maker EA Sports has gone so far as to remove Russian teams from its soccer and ice hockey games.

IOC Executive Board recommends no participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officialshttps://t.co/XZyLIi11XR

— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) February 28, 2022

Media Shut Downs

The European Union and Britain have removed English-language Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik from the airwaves and cable networks and Google has removed their channels from YouTube in Europe.  Hackers have shut down Russian government ministry websites, including the Kremlin’s, making it difficult to access transcripts of Russian government statements.  Only the Russian state newswire TASS, appears to be functioning normally, although it too was hacked on Monday. Signed with the logo of the hacktivist group Anonymous, the following message appeared on its website:

“Dear citizens. We urge you to stop this madness, do not send your sons and husbands to certain death. Putin makes us lie and puts us in danger. We were isolated from the whole world, they stopped buying oil and gas. In a few years we will live like in North Korea. What is it for us? To put Putin in the textbooks? This is not our war, let’s stop it! This message will be deleted, and some of us will be fired or even jailed. But we can’t take it anymore.”

Russia intervened militarily last Thursday in the eight-year old civil war in Ukraine in which ethnic Russians have been under attack after resisting the U.S.-backed 2014 coup in Kiev.

Journalism 101: Two sides to every story.

How can the Russian side to this story be reported if Russian media is shut down by Western governments?

Only one side is allowed to be told. #censorship

— Joe Lauria (@unjoe) February 28, 2022

consortiumnews.com

President Trump’s enemies have accused him of every possible form of wrongdoing that could be done by a leader even before taking office as if his hands were in every pot related to American society. However a broken clock is right twice a day and the Orange Man has made his mark on the great American pastime. This may sound odd but politics and international relations have a much bigger role in sports than one would think and Trump is at bat to swat Cubans from playing Major League Baseball.

As Obama floundered to make a legacy out of a Presidency that ultimately failed to create any significant “hope” or “change” he made some small gestures to Cuba so that it would seem as though he fixed relations between the two countries. This included allowing Cuban athletes to play professional baseball in America with much less bureaucracy and personal risk. If the objective was to improve actual relations completely lifting the embargo and restoring full diplomatic relations with Cuba would have been better, but at least a dozen or so Cubans get to play in the MLB more easily, what a triumph of diplomacy for #44!

Trump has put the kibosh on this token offering of peace to the Cubans for mostly ideological reasons related to free markets, free labor etc. and an accusation that the Cubans are stirring things up in Venezuela.

Trying to make peace via baseball is not a good option, however using baseball as a means of pushing influence into Cuban society is a fantastic option, which Obama wisely did try to do by having an MLB exhibition came in Havana. Sport is a strong means of projecting soft power and bringing America to Cuba via baseball is much better than letting a tiny unnoticeable pack of Cubans into American pro sports.

In order to show the immense soft power potential of international sports let’s use a hypothetical example. What if the US/Canadian NHL were to fall apart, (which may actually happen in our lifetimes) leaving the vacuum to be filled by the Russian KHL which already has 25 teams in 7 countries in Europe and Asia with surprisingly good talent. Sports leagues often lean towards monopolies because the one big league can buy all the talent leaving the scraps to various minor leagues that garner little interest or profit. (The KHL is a rare exception to this). This is why most major sports leagues in the US are the result of buyouts of smaller leagues generations ago. In the event of an NHL collapse any hockey talent in the world would either go to the KHL to make money or make $50,000 a year as a minor leaguer.

Given this hypothetical climate this Russian hockey super league could begin to make cultural and political dictates. The KHL could demand that at all international competitions everything must be written and spoken in Russian as it is the “official language of hockey”. All bus drivers, waitresses or anyone connected to the process MUST learn Russian even if fans are coming from China and Finland. On public transport even if no one speaks Russian all stops would have to have a Russian translation with horrible broken pronunciation of local cities like “Nyoo-EEork” and “Cheekago”. But that would be just the tip of this iceberg.

The “Juvenile Justice” programs in Scandinavia are disgusting to most Russians, and the league could demand that the Finns change their policy or lose their club in Helsinki. Juvenile Justice is “degenerate” after all. The league could promote some sort of anti-diversity policy where if the Chinese club is not made up of 75%+ Chinese then it is out, since most Russians do not respect national teams made of foreigners. Maybe most of all the league’s millions and millions of viewers could be subjected to all sorts of social advertising and “charity” projects that suit Moscow’s tastes. Coaches and players could be fined or suspended for not acknowledging the glory of the victory of the Russian people and Great Stalin in WW2 for example. Social programs about “how to be a real man” and the value of “multipolarity” would be part of every youth hockey organization.

The culturally imperialist demands of our example are exactly the types made by FIFA and the Olympics. Sport especially with its various “charity” programs, pushes an agenda across the globe from one civilization to others. This form of soft power is inevitable but rarely recognized. As it stands today, pretty much all serious sports leagues are from the Anglo-Saxon world and spread that culture’s worldview outwards and they all push a Progressive, SJWish agenda, wrapped up in a pseudo masculine package for easy consumption by the men who are the majority of sports viewership. Although there may be some positive aspects to FIFA’s diversity awards and demands that fans boo the other team politely and without politically incorrect insults, or that the NFL makes the players wear pink to show solidarity with women once a year regarding breast cancer, you can see these are obviously politically motivated forms of PR that get a huge amount of attention and affect society way more than any poster at a bus stop.

Sport connects deeply with our tribal mentality making even people who have zero interest in football watch as the national team plays with sweat on their brow from nerves. These sports teams become part of our identities and that is why there is no option or means to get rid of them. Nations that are powerful with a strong identity want to be in FIFA or the Olympics. The thing is that for nations like China and Russia who want a multipolar world the dynamics of these and other organizations need to stop being so unipolar and culturally exportive.

Baseball is a cornerstone of Cuba but the problem is that the MLB will always be bigger and always be in America. This is a dynamic that does not work in Cuba’s favor and Trump understands this. Sadly most people do not see the power and influence that international sports have and how they can be used as a weapon of soft power. The power in Cuba needs to understand that if it let’s enough baseball in, it will let the rest of US influence in along with it, perhaps Trump keeping the countries divided will work out for Havana.

Already, the tournament only in its first week of a month-long event has broken records. Not since 1954 has a World Cup produced so many goals in the early stages, with more than 20 matches so far resulting in goals in every fixture.

Surprises have been aplenty befitting the drama. Russia’s opening match against Saudi Arabia last week gave the host team a 5-0 victory and was a harbinger of the action-packed duels to follow among the 32 competing nations.

Organizing body, FIFA, has hailed the 2018 games as one of the best ever in the nearly 90-year history of the world’s most popular sporting occasion.

But perhaps the greatest surprise for fans and audiences tuning in around the world is just how convivial the championship has been. The 12 new world-class stadiums that Russia built for the event have seen top-flight football games as well as fans from every continent enjoying the goodwill and hospitality of the Russian nation.

It is almost funny to hear visiting fans express how much they are enjoying the friendly reception they have been greeted with from the Russian people. The question is: why be surprised? Of course, there is an explanation. The experience confounds the negative image of Russia that Western media have so assiduously tried to present.

Surely, that is the power of the “beautiful game”. To unite people in one common humanity to applaud the triumphs and even the tragedies of sporting together. Stereotypes are broken down and discarded by plain old human contact and goodness.

Let’s cut to the chase here. For the past four years in the build up to the tournament in Russia, Western governments and their docile news media have run a non-stop campaign to denigrate Russia as a pariah nation. They have tried to politicize the event as a means to discredit Russia as a country not worthy to hold the World Cup.

In so many ways, the Western media have tried to portray Russia as some kind of international reprobate nation. We won’t even dignify the claims by mentioning them specifically.

The cardinal outcome is that the myths and fabrications peddled by Western governments and media about Russia have been shown by the World Cup to be nothing but slander against the nation.

The sheer joy and entertainment afforded by Russia to billions of fans and ordinary people tuning in from around the world is the most spectacular negation of all the vilification that has been heaped on the country over the past four years.

Laughably, the US and its NATO allies have for years tried to denigrate Russia. Yet, even in these same nations, the media coverage has even had to succumb to the reality of Russia hosting a most magnificent event, filled with friendship and fraternity among people who simply delight in the beautiful game.

The goals on the field have been an absolute treat, among them Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick against Spain. But perhaps the most spectacular was off the field. That is, the own-goal scored by Western Russophobes who had tried to paint Russia as a hostile place, as a dysfunctional country. On the contrary, the World Cup has shown Russia at its finest. A country open to the very best in humanity.

All we can say is: tune out of the Russophobic nonsense that the world has been inundated with in recent years, and tune into the county that you are seeing with your own eyes.

There is an inescapable lesson here. Propaganda and prejudice is being blown away in one fell swoop by real, shared experience among ordinary people of all nations, of all colors, of all faiths.

All the reprehensible and foul Russophobia paraded by Western governments and their mendacious media has been red-carded – in an instant.

Three glorious weeks remain in the event. Enjoy. And may the best team win.

From personal experience I can affirm that the motivation behind the decisions that influence the momentum of the economy and Russian society today does not emanate from anti-Western attitudes or stereotypes. Most decision makers are young, do not hold the preconceived ideas of the Soviet era and they are, many of them, graduates of Western higher-education institutions that specialize in issues of contemporary importance. I've met business leaders and public-sector managers who have studied at the best universities in the West (i.e. Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Chicago, MIT, Harvard) and are determined to work for measurable, efficient, and visible results.

These kind of attitudes can be found in every region in that vast country. Ethnic Tatars, for example, are the toughest negotiators and simultaneously most flexible dealmakers I have encountered.

Found in the Urals, Crimea, and predominantly in the city of Kazan by the Volga River, these Russian citizens successfully blend their ancestral commercial instincts and the determination and discipline of the Russian bureaucracy with that indigenous talent for creating strategic delays that is found so often in their national culture.

In short, Russia today is essentially no different, as far as its inclinations and objectives are concerned, from the rest of the world. So where are the distinctions? First of all, Russia is not a democracy in the way we sometimes think of it here in the West. Some years ago President Putin described his style of government as "the dictatorship of the law." Some of his strategic advisers have spoken insistently of "disciplined democracy." In other words, all the nonsense and manifestations of anomie that are present in the streets of many of our cities are not tolerated there. Freedom of speech however is not necessarily curtailed. There are many media outlets in Russia (e.g. The Moscow Times and Kommersant) that do not shy away from anti-government commentary and frequent criticism. There are no exaggerations however, no vitriolic headlines or passionate, personal characterizations or attacks. Self control runs deep. 

Patriotism is also very strong. Compared to the days of its Soviet past Russia has lost huge swaths of its territory. Vladimir Putin has renewed a national feeling of self-respect and restored a sense of socioeconomic balance. Russia is a normal, fully-fledged national entity once again. It is a fact that his efforts and his main concerns have been directed toward providing his country with a greater sense of its own dignity and encouraging the rest of the world to view it with respect. On the issue of radical Islam for example, Putin has proven to be a no-nonsense leader. He grasped immediately the reality that ISIS could only be defeated using boots on the ground. Thus he helped implement an alliance between Assad's military in Syria, volunteer fighters from Iran, the Shia militias from Iraq, and the Kurds. This combined force managed to push back the Islamists and bring ISIS to the brink of extinction in Syria.

Russia of course is now and has always been an unknown entity to foreign observers. Famously, Winston Churchill defined Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."  The thoughts, intentions, and attitudes of the decision makers in the state apparatus and private entities are always enshrouded in two or even three layers of inscrutability. An outsider almost always finds himself confronted by a wall of suspicion and disbelief. However, after an initial phase of distrust, which is sometimes agonizingly long, Russians open up and cooperation becomes candid and constructive.

For Russia the World Cup will offer another window to the world. I anticipate it will be a positive experience for everyone.

For the next four weeks, billions of people around the world will feast their eyes on one of the globe’s most-loved spectacles.

Thirty-two nations will compete in the “beautiful game” with 64 matches in total being held in 11 different cities across Russia, from Kaliningrad in the west to Yekaterinburg in the east.

It will be the 21^st World Cup event organized by the sport’s governing body, FIFA, or Federation Internationale de Football Association, since the very first games were held in Uruguay in 1930.

Ahead of the opening of the 2018 tournament, Russian President Vladimir Putin shared the joy and honor of his country hosting the event. “Generations of Russian fans have dreamed of this day,” he said while addressing the FIFA congress in Moscow.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino playfully referred to history, saying that “Russia has never been conquered,” but this week the country will be “conquered by football,” he quipped with a smile.

The FIFA chief went on to say that for the next month the whole world will be similarly conquered by the sport as nations tune in every day to enjoy the drama, talent and celebrations.

What a sweet surrender for all of humanity! Not by force, aggression, armies or violence, but by sheer joy of a beautiful game, shared by all human beings as equals, united in emotions, elevated above petty nasty things like jingoism and chauvinism, prejudices and stupid animosities.

Putin also thanked Infantino for FIFA’s commitment to holding the games in Russia, and for “keeping politics out of sports”. Indeed, Infantino and FIFA deserve respect for steadfastly adhering to the selection of Russia as the host country. For the past four years, there has been a scurrilous Western media campaign to discredit Russia over a range of trumped-up political accusations.

Western politicians have even called at various times for Russia to be de-selected as the host nation for the 2018 tournament. When FIFA itself was embroiled in bribery allegations back in 2016 – when Infantino took over from Sepp Blatter – the whole affair seemed to be driven by an ulterior agenda to smear Russia. Notice how that supposed scandal has since faded into oblivion; proof that it was always a non-issue and just another contrived Western media campaign to denigrate Russia.

One of the most disgraceful and fatuous attempts at sabotaging Russia’s World Cup event was the British foreign secretary Boris Johnson making the comparison earlier this year to the 1936 Berlin Olympics hosted by Nazi Germany. Johnson was trying his best to hype up the propaganda war over the alleged poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal – another media campaign that like countless others has faded into oblivion.

Anyway, as Putin remarked this week, the World Cup has finally come to Russia – and thanks in part to FIFA under Gianni Infantino not being pressured into succumbing to odious politicization of the event.

President Putin spoke for millions of football fans and ordinary people around the world when he praised the great sporting event for providing a forum for common humanity. He said the enjoyment of the games is a chance for people to share culture and celebrate our one humanity, and to “understand that other countries like their own are home to kind, enthusiastic and open-minded people, and all of them want to live in peace, communicate with each other, visit each other, and watch and play football together.”

That is a powerful cultural, and in a wider, benign sense, political force. There might seem a contradiction in the maxim of “keeping politics out of sports”. Yes, if by “politics” it is meant to mean a narrow, nationalistic, antagonistic form, then definitely that must be excluded. But the wider politics, or perhaps philosophy, that Putin was alluding to is beyond narrow, nationalistic agendas. It is about common humanity. If football, and sports generally, reinforce that higher value, then bring it on.

Getting back to the nastier politics and in particular the anti-Russia agenda that has been extant over recent years, this week saw more examples in the most petty and pathetic way. The day before the World Cup opening in Moscow, Western news media ran non-entity stories, whose real purpose was not to inform audiences, but to make a last-ditch bid to smear Russia.

France 24 TV, the state-owned channel, carried a report alleging that certain football stadiums were not finished to requisite building standard for the games. It was a lame report by the channel’s Russia correspondent Thomas Lowe, who never seems to have anything positive to say about the country. Skimpy details were padded out with hearsay complaints from a few disgruntled residents griping about nearby construction. Is that the best France 24 can come up with? The day before the big event. How cheap!

A second report in the Washington Post carried grim warnings about Russian football fans allegedly having outsized racialist hostility. Lamentably, racist sociopathy is an ugly tendency among a small minority of football fans in many countries. England and Italy have particular problems. There is no sound indication that Russia is any worse. Besides, the real aim of the Post’s report seemed to be more about casting a last-minute cloud over Russia as a football venue.

These last two media examples are the type of “politics in sports” that should be abhorred. This kind of politics has nothing to do with bringing people together. It is all about dividing and conflicting, and abusing sport for unscrupulous agendas.

In any case, when the Russia World Cup games get underway all the naysayers and negative numbskulls will be swept away by the global euphoria. Our common humanity will overwhelm all the petty snipers and would-be warmongers.

Russia has the honor of being home to all of humanity for the next four weeks.

The small-minded Russophobes are going to be left on the sidelines of this great global spectacle.

So, let the games, and let the celebrations begin, for all of humanity.

Soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, ruled that when England plays Scotland next week on November 11 neither team is permitted to wear the red poppy symbol on their shirts.

For decades, the tiny red flower has been donned on sundry garments as a show of respect by ordinary Britons for soldiers and other armed-service personnel who have died in past wars. At this time of year, for example, every British TV news presenter is obliged to pin a poppy on his or her lapel under pain of being pilloried as «unpatriotic».

Both England and Scotland teams are defiantly protesting the FIFA ban, saying that they will go ahead with their plan for players to display the floral symbol, even though the action could result in financial penalties against the respective countries.

The teams are playing in London’s Wembley arena in an opening qualifier match for the 2018 World Cup to be held in Russia.

Every year, Britain and other nations of the British Commonwealth hold public events to commemorate legions of war dead on November 11. The date also marks Armistice Day that ended the First World War in 1918.

The annual British remembrance ceremony is dedicated to all fallen members of the armed forces, not just those who died during the First World War, but in every war that British forces have participated in. That includes servicemen killed in action during far-flung international conflicts from Iraq and Afghanistan to colonial-era wars in Africa and Asia.

This is where the issue becomes problematic. FIFA’s rules forbid any national team displaying logos conveying a «political, religious or commercial message on shirts».

British football officials and media are claiming that the red poppy and the act of remembrance are not political. The British seem to be deeply perplexed that the custom of honoring their war dead could be construed as having a political connotation.

England’s Football Association issued a statement saying: «The poppy is an important symbol of remembrance and we do not believe it represents a political, religious or commercial message, nor does it relate to any one historical event».

British Prime Minister Theresa May fulminated in the House of Commons this week that FIFA’s poppy ban was «utterly outrageous». Her Conservative government is reeling with unpopularity over the Brexit EU debacle, so no doubt May’s playing on populist emotions is good politics for relief.

May told parliamentarians: «Our football players want to recognize and respect those who have given their lives for our safety and security. I think it is absolutely right that they should be able to do so». 

The British tabloid press are also predictably whipping up public fury. The demagogic Murdoch-owned Sun blared on its front page that «Footie chiefs ban war dead tributes on England shirts», while the equally jingoistic Daily Mail blasted two words on its front – «POPPY WAR!».

The same media outlets have embarked on a campaign to vilify the FIFA official responsible for the decision. FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura, from West Africa, was labelled by the Daily Mail as a «Senegalese bureaucrat» and the newspaper snidely pointed out that she was newly appointed in the job by FIFA President Gianni Infantino. In other words, there is a racist undertone in the British press that Samoura, a former UN diplomat, is not competent.

To her credit, the FIFA general secretary remained steadfast in her decision. While in London this week, she said: «Britain is not the only country that has been suffering from the result of war. Syria is an example. My own continent has been torn by war for years. And the only question is why are we doing exceptions for just one country and not the rest of the world?»

And that indeed is the point. If every footballing nation was allowed to display images commemorating wars, then the practice would descend into chaos. Admittedly, it can be argued that some wars down through history were objectively noble. It is arguable that Russia’s Great Patriotic War (1941-45) was one such event in that it led to the defeat of genocidal Nazi Germany and European fascism.

Nevertheless, the whole subject is fraught with nationalistic interpretation. One nation’s «good war» is another nation’s «bad war». So, in the end, it seems judicious to just drop the matter and play safe by upholding a total ban on all national soccer teams displaying any untoward symbol.

It is naive perhaps to expect to keep politics entirely out of sport, as we clearly saw earlier this year at the Rio Olympics when Western states used the issue of doping by athletes as an excuse to ostracize the Russian team.

However, if FIFA were to permit national teams to display images beyond a minimum of the country’s flag then surely it would invite a slippery slope of rampant politicization.

On the specific British grievance over FIFA’s ban, the furor betrays typical British national conceit. The Brits may claim that their commemoration is a neutral matter of merely paying respects to the dead. Put in those anodyne terms one might understand the perceived offense.

But the British annual war remembrance is far from being a neutral act of paying respect to the dead. It is a deeply political act that is entwined with Britain’s imperialist past and ongoing pretensions.

When British politicians and members of the monarchy lay poppy wreathes at London’s Whitehall Cenotaph on November 11, they are glorifying all military operations ever undertaken by the British state.

As noted above, that includes such illegal overseas interventions as in Iraq (2003-2011) during which more than a million Iraqis were killed. It includes paying respect – glorifying – former British counterinsurgency wars in Cyprus, Ireland, Kenya, Yemen, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, among many others, in which legitimate independence movements were bludgeoned by British soldiers carrying out cold-blooded massacres.

And yet, British leaders self-righteously refer to these murderous campaigns as chivalrous acts «for our safety and security».

Moreover, the red poppy tradition – inspired by the delicate blossoms that would later console the killing fields of Flanders – was first began by a British public disgusted by the First World War which they saw as an outcome of feuding among the European monarchs, including Britain’s. The commemoration, however, was quickly co-opted by the British rulers as a deft means of absolving their warmongering guilt and propensity.

That’s what many people view as objectionable in the contemporary British war remembrance and its poppy displays. The event has become a political subterfuge, giving moral authority to Britain’s power structure which to this day remains a belligerent warmongering entity.

Just this week as the controversy of FIFA’s poppy ban was underway, scarcely was it noticed that British Defense Minister Michael Fallon was telling a parliamentary committee about military plans for a future war with Russia.

Today, Britain may be a has-been colonial power, but its political establishment still constitutes an insidious war-making machine.

Any act that gives Britain’s establishment a veneer of acceptability is a hugely political act. Wearing a red poppy is such an act, even if performed unwittingly by footballers. And FIFA is right to give it a red card.

Still, such is the arrogance of Rule Britannia, one can expect a fierce, dirty campaign in the coming days against FIFA mounted by the British media. And with its recent controversies over corruption under former President Sepp Blatter, the governing soccer body might be susceptible to British foul play.

The first American target of note was the international football association, FIFA. Not content with trying to sully the reputation of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics with issues of gay rights and doping of athletes, the US disinformation boiler rooms began a full-scale attack on FIFA. The major reason is Russia’s hosting of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The US Justice Department, in a major move toward the internationalization of domestic US law, began unsealing indictment after indictment of FIFA officials for financial crimes. The actual target of these indictments was Russia.

The United States, continuing its economic and political pressure on Venezuela, decided to pressure its three right-wing allies in Latin America – Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay – to deny the chair of the Mercosur customs union to Venezuela. After Uruguay, whose term was expiring, the next country in alphabetical order to assume the chair of the Latin American customs union was to be Venezuela. However, two countries where the Central Intelligence Agency arranged for constitutional coups to oust progressive presidents – Brazil and Paraguay – joined Argentina, ruled by a right-wing president narrowly elected in a dubious electoral process, in denying the chair to Venezuela.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez said that what Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay were doing to Venezuela was the restoration of the CIA’s Operation Condor against Venezuela. Condor was a 1970s operation concocted by Henry Kissinger, the CIA, and fascist governments in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay to target leftists throughout the Condor participants with assassination and torture. In a display of ultimate hubris, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay refused to recognize Venezuela as the chair of Mercosur, citing Venezuela’s economic, political and social crises, all of which were hatched by the CIA and its surrogates inside Venezuela.

If Washington wanted to split Mercosur, it got its wish. Uruguay responded to the actions of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay by stating, “there are no legal grounds to prevent the handover of the pro tempore presidency to Venezuela”. Bolivian president Evo Morales tweeted that the Washington-inspired diplomatic assault on Venezuela was “Another attack on the economic integration by instruments of the capitalist system. We salute the Venezuelan pro tempore presidency of Mercosur.”

The operation to oust progressive president Dilma Rousseff as president of Brazil and replace her with the proto-fascist Michel Temer was designed to prevent Rousseff from opening the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Neither the Obama administration nor the CIA wanted to see South America’s first Olympics opened by a progressive leftist who had once been tortured by CIA-trained interrogators.

The CIA’s nightmare scenario was a 2016 Olympics where Rousseff would have been joined in the VIP section of the Olympics stadium in Rio by Latin America’s other progressive leaders: Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Morales, Uruguay’s Tabare Vazquez, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet. With Temer opening the Olympics, Rousseff and many of her political allies in Latin America will not be present in Rio. The United States had no problem ensuring the Rio Olympics became a total disaster just to guarantee that progressive Latin American leaders were denied a platform to show the world that Latin America was no longer under the colonialist boot heel of Washington. It was the same mindset that Washington had in mind for Sochi. The United States was more than willing to ensure disruption at the 2014 Winter Olympics through quiet support, much of it through George Soros-financed organizations, for gay rights and other pressure groups to damage the reputation of the Sochi games.

Not content with disrupting the Rio Olympics by ousting Rousseff as president of Brazil, Washington doubled down by using its agents of influence to resurrect doping accusations against the Russian Summer Olympics team. Washington’s goal was to see Russia suspended from the Rio games.

Resisting pressure from Washington, IOC president Thomas Bach wisely decided to avoid a blanket ban of Russian athletes. Bach called such a unilateral ban on Russia participating in the Rio games as a “nuclear option”. He also said that such a “nuclear option” would have resulted in “collateral damage” among innocent athletes. Bach’s use of two geopolitical military terms was no mistake and it bore the mark of someone responding to familiar American “shock and awe” pressure. The United States used its compliant stooges, Germany and Canada, as well as the dubious World Anti-Doping Agency, run by a Scottish lawyer, to call for a total ban on Russian athletes in Rio.

Washington has also used its influence in ASEAN to ensure the organization became part of the US alliance against China in East Asia. Working behind the scenes within ASEAN, Washington attempted to get the organization, which does not include the United States among its members, to issue a statement backing the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rejecting China’s maritime claims to waters and islands in the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines. Cambodia blocked Washington’s maneuver and prevented an ASEAN statement in support of the Philippines against China.

In 2012 and 2016, ASEAN failed to issue a joint statement following a foreign ministers’ summit. This has happened only twice in the 49-year history of the organization. In both cases, it was Cambodia that stood in the way of an ASEAN statement, initiated by American agents within the ASEAN Secretariat in Indonesia, in opposition to China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Across the globe, the United States has sought to expand its influence in international organizations. The United States, using Germany and a few right-wing countries in Eastern Europe as surrogates, has ensured the European Union does not weaken economic sanctions against Russia. The Arab League has become a tool of the United States in applying pressure on Syria, thanks mostly to jihadist-supporting regimes in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait. The African Union has become nothing more than a pathetic cheerleader for the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), which only seeks to undermine the sovereignty of African nations and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities.

Through its neo-colonialist local partners, Australia and New Zealand, Washington ensures the Pacific Islands Forum remains nothing more than a powerless talking shop. To ensure that the forum never touches the issue of the colonial status of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands, Washington has permitted all three colonial territories to join the Pacific Islands Forum as observer states to advance America’s agenda. American nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean region are never discussed by the forum nor is the semi-colonial status of three full members of the forum that remain beholden to the dictates of Washington: Micronesia, Marshall Islands, and Palau.

There is a bull in the china shop of international diplomacy and its wears the ugly and discredited attire of Uncle Sam.

Nothing exemplifies the use of music as a soft power weapon more than the annual Eurovision song contest. At this year’s Eurovision contest held in Stockholm, the winner was Jamala of Ukraine. Her winning was for her song «1944», an anti-Joseph Stalin song about his deportation of Crimean Tatars at the height of World War II. Stalin feared the Tatars’ collaboration with the German Nazis. Stalin had good reason to fear Adolf Hitler’s links to the Tatars. Evidence of Hitler’s mutual love affair with European Muslims extended throughout Balkan Muslim communities in Bosnia, Sanjak, and Albania, which were absorbed into the Third Reich.

As is the usual situation with today’s Eurovision, Jamala and her song were chosen as a way to bash Russia over the retrocession of Crimea to the Russian Federation in 2014. It did not matter to the Eurovision officials that Russian performer Sergey Lazarev was the odds-on favorite to win this year’s Eurovision.

For Russia, Jamala’s win evoked memories of 2014 Eurovision winner, the bearded Austrian transvestite Thomas Neuwirth, also known as «Conchita Wurst». It was clear that the Copenhagen Eurovision contest chose Neuwirth to send a «soft power» message to Russia and other conservative-minded Eastern European countries, which opposed the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) of the US State Department and George Soros’s various non-governmental organization fronts.

The Eurovision political win for Ukraine’s contestant this year does not bode well for next year’s Eurovision contest in Kiev. Although politics are to be left off of the Eurovision performance stages, per Eurovision’s own rules, the contest has taken a decidedly political turn in being used to attack Russia and advance causes unpopular in the Orthodox Christian east. Russian Senator Frants Klintsevich, the first deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, understands well the use of Eurovision as a cultural soft weapon by the West. Pointing to next year’s Eurovision contest in Ukraine, Klintsevich said, Russia may boycott the contest since Ukraine will undoubtedly use the event to score cheap propaganda points against Russia.

As with most cockamamie foreign policy strategies infecting the Western world, the concept of using «soft power» as a strategic force multiplier was conceived by a globalist veteran of US Intelligence-sponsored think tanks and cabalistic power centers. The father of soft power is Joseph Nye, a habitué of Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs, which not coincidentally shares its initials with the Central Intelligence Agency – «CIA». Nye has also served as a top dog with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, Aspen Institute, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Nye served in the Clinton administration and provides key foreign policy advice to his old friend, Secretary of State John Kerry.

Long an advocate of using soft power to manipulate world events, Nye became a behind-the-scenes guru for Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Nye’s 2004 book, «Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics,» is required reading for the interventionists that infest the Obama administration. Soft power projection was most recently used by Washington in the Obama administration’s support for the «constitutional coup» against President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, a few months before this year’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Rather than have global focus on Rousseff at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, media attention will instead fall on Washington’s right-wing replacement for Rousseff, the incredibly corrupt Vice President Michel Temer who, if he is not thrown out of office beforehand for criminal malfeasance, will open the Summer Games in Rio to the delight of the soft power promoters in Washington.

So, according to Washington’s plan for the Rio Olympics, Temer, the right-winger and proto-fascist, will be welcoming world leaders to the first Olympiad ever held in South America. Rather than Rousseff opening the Games to the delight of fellow progressive leaders from Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, and El Salvador, it will be Temer holding court with his fellow proto-fascist Latin American leaders – Mauricio Macri of Argentina, Horacio Cartes of Paraguay, and Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras.

The United States has not hesitated to politicize the Olympic Games in the same manner that Eurovision and the World Cup have been politicized. The American-led boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow in 1980 is a case in point. Ever since the decision to boycott the Olympics, the games saw a Soviet-led retaliatory boycott in 1984 and a US-promoted LGBT series of provocations at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. NBC, which has had sole broadcasting rights for the Olympics since 1988, ensures easy access for US government provocateurs to include political and social commentary throughout the coverage. NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, was a key player in the US propaganda war during the Cold War.

The scandals that rocked the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) were oddly prompted by investigations launched by the US Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and US Internal Revenue Service. The clear aim was to sully the reputation of FIFA before the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The action by the United States in indicting several FIFA and national soccer officials from countries around the world was one of the first cases of the use of a counter-soft power weapon. Since Russia stood to gain in the soft power war by hosting the internationally-popular World Cup, the United States countered by using its law enforcement mechanisms to attack FIFA and, by association, Russia. Soccer is not even among the top popular professional sports in the United States and it continues to be overshadowed by American football, basketball, baseball, and ice hockey. Therefore, the decision by the FBI and Justice Department to become the world’s policemen for international football becomes even more suspect.

Traditional US soft power dominance over the global news media is why the United States, particularly former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reacted so negatively to the appearance on satellite channels around the world of RT from Russia, CCTV from China, Press TV from Iran, and TeleSur from Venezuela. Because America lacks anything of value in real journalism today, the State Department and its NGO minions resort to castigating the «other» international news networks as propaganda channels and purveyors of «conspiracy theories», the latter the long-time preferred pejorative for the CIA in undermining America’s critics.

Hollywood continues to represent the linchpin in America’s soft power corruption. Generally, Russians, Chinese, Arabs, and Iranians continue to be portrayed as villains in a number of Hollywood thrillers. The fact that the US Department of Defense, CIA, and FBI all maintain «entertainment liaison offices» in Los Angeles points to the close cooperation that has always existed between Hollywood and the US military-intelligence complex.

There are increasing signs that the world is growing tired of American soft power cultural «trash». Many nations are rediscovering their own national heroes who are beginning to draw the attention of children away from such campy American exports as Captain America, Superman, Batman, and Spiderman. In any event, Genghis Khan of Mongolia, Shaka Zulu of the Zulu nation, Emperor Kangxi of China, Czar Peter the Great of Russia, Emperor Xerxes the Great of Persia, and Alexander the Great of Macedon are much more interesting and compelling figures to be proud of than Jamala and Conchita Wurst.

The scandal and arrests that have taken place in 2015, however, have nothing to do with corruption and everything to do with geopolitics. Welcome to the soccer/football front! FIFA has become another arena for the multi-spectrum war being fought by the US and its allies against countries like Russia. The energy and currency wars are now being augmented by a behind the scenes war at FIFA. Joseph Blatter or Sepp is a casualty of this war.

As far back as 2005, Blatter has refused to get embroiled in Washington’s geopolitical chess game(s). Under him FIFA refused to surrender to the US Department of State’s demands that Iran’s team be blocked from participating World Cup 2006 or demands that Palestine not be admitted into FIFA. FIFA’s geopolitical offenses, however, may have reached a tipping point.

FIFA’s consideration of Palestinian requests to suspend Israel, on the basis of Israeli sabotage and attacks against the Palestinian team, as item fifteen of the agenda of its 65th Congress could have been one of these offenses. Days before the 65th FIFA Congress was to take place, however, Blatter meet with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian quasi-dictator Mahmoud Abbas to reach some type of understanding. This may the basis for the withdrawal of the Palestinian Football Association’s motion to suspend the Israeli Football Association from FIFA.

Not only were both the US and Britain upset that they were not awarded the statuses of hosting World Cup 2018 and World Cup 2022, but they have been pressuring FIFA against Russia. What may have led to Washington’s campaign to remove Blatter by organizing a coup inside against Blatter was FIFA’s refusal to sanction Russia by getting with the US and EU program against Moscow. 

Washington’s Attack on FIFA

Just days after he was re-elected on May 29, 2015 to continue heading FIFA for a fifth term by the majority of delegates at the 65th FIFA Congress, Joseph Blatter took the unusual step of announcing that he was stepping down as the international sport federation’s president on June 2, 2015.  The move was unusual, because up until his May re-election Blatter had managed to overcome the pressure and attempts by the US and its allies to force him to resign from the presidency of FIFA. He announced that he had taken the decision because he did not have everyone’s support for his continued presidency in FIFA during a press conference at FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.

One hundred and thirty-three out of two hundred and nine association representatives at the 65th FIFA Congress voted for Blatter in the first round of voting at the Hallenstadion in Zurich. This amounts to 63.6%, or roughly 64%, of the FIFA Congress. Since this number was just short of two-thirds or 66% of FIFA’s voting members needed to secure a first round win, a second round of voting was to commence. 

FIFA Vice-President for Asia and runner-up, Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein bin Al-Talal bin Abdullah, had no chance of winning and dropped out of the election before a second round of voting took place.  Prince Ali had managed to secure only seventy-three votes in the first round. This means that 34.9% (approximately 35%) of FIFA supported Prince Ali’s bid to run FIFA as its new president.

Despite the fact that he had secured the support of the majority of soccer/football associations at the FIFA elections, Blatter was still coerced into announcing his resignation. After his re-election by the 65th FIFA Congress, reports published by the New York Times, ABC News, and Reuters all announced that Blatter was now being criminally investigated by US authorities. «Blatter had for days tried to distance himself from the controversy, but several United States officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity,» admitted that they wanted to build a case against him by using FIFA colleagues of his that they had arrested earlier (Sam Borden, Michael S. Schmidt, and Matt Apuzzo, «Sepp Blatter Decides to Resign as FIFA President in About-Face,» New York Times, 2 June 2015). 

Prior to the investigation on Blatter, the US had the Swiss police arrest seven FIFA officials at the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich on May 27, 2015. These officials were in Zurich preparing to cast their ballots for the FIF elections. They were arrested on «suspicions» of corruption and extradited to the US by Switzerland. 

The US actually accelerated its investigation even while a separate probe was being conducted by the authorities in Switzerland as to how FIFA awarded World Cup 2018 to Russia and World Cup 2022 to Qatar. This is the crux of the matter. FIFA was not willing to rescind its decisions and follow Washington’s geopolitical script against Russia.

The timing of the raids and arrests occurred twenty-four hours before FIFA’s elections. The arrests were deliberately planned to prevent Blatter from being re-elected. Blatter responded by saying, «No one is going to tell me that it was a simple coincidence, this American attack two days before the elections of FIFA. It doesn’t smell good.»

The Politicization of FIFA: Dividing the World

The contours of geopolitical rivalries and divisions are manifesting themselves in FIFA. While El Salvador and Honduras fought a war ignited by soccer/football in 1969, what is happening behind the scenes with the FIFA scandal is giving new meaning to «Soccer/Football War». 

Although the voting at the Hallenstadion was conducted by secret ballot, there is a general understanding of how the FIFA delegates and regional confederacies voted.  Aside from Australia, all forty-seven members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) are believed to have voted for Blatter. The AFC made strong statements of support for Blatter since the scandal broke. The fifty-four members of the Confédération Africaine de Football/Confederation of African Football (CAF), which is the largest FIFA confederations, also all voted for Blatter and made strong shows of support for him like the AFC.

The Union des Associations Européennes de Football/Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the US on the other hand were hostile towards Blatter. EU politicians, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, had been demanding he resign as the president of FIFA. UEFA even threatened to cut ties with FIFA if Blatter was re-elected.  The English Football Association also called for a boycott of the World Cup. The campaign against Blatter reached a point where Sepp said that UEFA was involved in an unnecessary demonization campaign. 

UEFA, however, was not united against Blatter. «UEFA is divided: a quarter of its members apparently voted for Mr Blatter, defying a plea from Michel Platini, UEFA’s head, to oust the Swiss septuagenarian. Among those who backed the incumbent were Russia, Spain and, less predictably, France, Mr Platini’s own country. So UEFA action is, alas, unlikely to extend much beyond removing co-operation from FIFA committees,» the Economist reported («Untangling FIFA’s mysteries,» 2 June 2015).

Aware of what was happening behind the scenes, the Russian Federation, at both the FIFA level and the political level of the Kremlin, voiced its strong support for Joseph Blatter. Vladimir Putin even leapt to support Blatter. Aside from France, Spain, and Russia, as many as eighteen UEFA members, including Armenia, Belarus, Finland, and Kazakhstan are believed to have supported Blatter during the voting in Zurich (««Little point’ to divided Uefa talks on Sepp Blatter, says Dutch football association,» Dutch News, 2 June 2015). 

The US and Canada were also isolated among the Confederation of North, Central America, and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF). The CONCACAF countries of Central America and the Caribbean put their support behind Blatter.

Are the US and EU Fighting Corruption or Fighting Democratization in FIFA?

In Orwellian terms, the press in the US and Britain have tried to portray Blatter’s projects to enhance the standing of soccer/football in Africa and Asia through investment and development projects as a form of «bribery.» Even critics admit that the equal division of profits between the two hundred and nine members of FIFA generated by revenues and tournaments «has prompted many a genuine football revolution in the developing world» (Tom Peck, «Fifa corruption: How Sepp Blatter buys support by investing Fifa's millions in Africa,» Independent [London], 28 May 2015).

Mauritania provides an excellent case study of how the equal division of profits among all of FIFA’s members, starting in 2013, has helped poorer countries improve the standing of soccer/football. To enhance the profile of the sport, studios were built to provide Mauritanians the opportunity to watch the sport from television.  Two paragraphs published in the Independent (ibid) relay what occurred:

• «We now have a TV production unit, one of the first of its kind in Africa,» explained the president of the Mauritanian Football Association, Ahmed Ould Yahya, at the time. «We’ve signed a contract with the national broadcasting company and we show matches every week. That is really changing the image of the game in the country».

• Before the money arrived, Mauritanian football had effectively collapsed. It had never played in an international tournament, and fallen out of the world rankings. It is still struggling, but now it also has pitches and facilities, all paid for by Fifa. Mauritania has never played in a World Cup, but has had its share of the profits. All 209 Fifa member nations receive an equal share of the income from the tournament in Brazil in 2014, around $1.2m (£783,000).

The above is being billed as form of bribery. Not once is the deep corruption involved in UEFA or the European Union ever mentioned. This has prompted observations that aside from geopolitics, this is an issue of power and economics. The following excerpt illustrates this point: ««The past two editions of the World Cup have been played in South Africa and Brazil. The next one is in Russia. All three are BRICS countries. It’s obvious that the west is not very happy with this. All this talk about corruption is an attempt by Europe and America to bring the game back into their sphere of influence,’ says Thiago Cassis, a reputed Brazilian football writer. «There is a lot of corruption in European football too. They do not talk about it. This whole game is not about tackling corruption, but regaining control…»  (Shobhan Saxena, «Make No Mistake, the FIFA War is Not About Football or Corruption», The Wire, 31 May 2015).

«Dependent on South America and Africa for football talent, and, increasingly Asia for TV audiences, the Europeans know they are losing control» of soccer/football, the Brazilian journalist Shobhan Saxena has noted (ibid).  «Europe wants to import all the labour from us because that gives them a global TV audience and lots of money. But they do not want to give us World Cups or share any power with us,» a FIFA delegate from Africa at the 65th FIFA Congress has explained in this regard (ibid). 

The Reason Behind the FIFA Arrests: Pressuring Latin America against Russia

All the FIFA officials arrested before the elections in Zurich were Latin Americans from Central America and South America. Aside from their own corruption investigations, this has prompted both resentment and backlash in CONCACAF and the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol/South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL).

The Wire gives the Latin American perspective on why the US and its allies targeted the Latin Americans in FIFA. «Why did they arrest officials only from our federations and that too in Switzerland? Why didn’t they approach our governments through Interpol? Is it because they knew that extradition from South America to US is impossible?» one Brazil’s soccer/football official asks (ibid).

This account points to an organized effort to derail FIFA with a coup: «There was also anger about reports in the western media about the CBF chief Marco Polo Del Nero «fleeing’ Zurich for Brazil as he «feared’ arrest. In fact, when papers like the Guardian and New York Times were reporting Del Nero’s «escape’ from the FIFA meeting, the Brazilian official was still in Switzerland. «They brought all this pressure on us to force us to vote for Prince Ali. They have been lobbying with us for months. When they didn’t see it working, they conducted the raid followed by veiled threats to others that they could be arrested too. Some British and American journalists were part of this pressure tactic,’ the Brazilian official alleged» (ibid).

Resending the Selection of Russia as the Venue for World Cup 2018

What it comes down to is World Cup 2018 in Russia. The Latin American perspective is the following: «From the versions of the Zurich raid given by some South American officials, it appears that the FBI, Swiss police and a few western reporters hunted them together,» Saxena reports (ibid). He was also told by one FIFA delegate from South America that the US was trying to pressure the Latin Americans. «As the Asian and African vote was solidly behind Blatter, they wanted the votes from the Americas for Prince Ali. They were desperate to make the prince the new chief of FIFA as he could re-open the bids for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments,» testifies the Paraguayan official (ibid). «Since the UK and the US lost the 2018 and 2022 bids respectively, they have been working to somehow cancel the World Cups in Russia and Qatar. They haven’t accepted the fact that they lost the bids in a fair contest» the same official has explained (ibid).

Prince Ali, who is also the head of both the Jordanian Football Association and the West Asian Football Federation, was the candidate that Blatter’s opponents in the US and Britain had put forward. The US, Britain, and the leadership of the Union des Associations Européennes de Football/Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) had for months been actively lobbying for Prince Ali against Sepp Blatter. True to his pedigree, like the other so-called «royals» of the Hashemite scion in Jordan, Prince Ali  is a puppet or a «stooge» that represents US and British interests as one anonymous Brazilian official told Saxena in an interview (ibid). 

The whole FIFA scandal is not about corruption or dignity. The whole affair is about geopolitics and managing the world. Joseph Blatter was forced to step down because FIFA refused to cancel its decision to allow Russia to host World Cup 2018 and to reopen the bids for hosting World Cup 2018 and World Cup 2022.

This is part of Washington’s agenda of isolating Russia from the World.

This Washington-orchestrated scandal stinks to high heaven. It seems obvious that the FIFA officials have been arrested for political reasons and that the recently overwhelmingly-reelected FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, was forced to resign by Washington’s threats to indict him as well. This can happen because Washington no longer is subject to the rule of law. In Washington’s hands, law is a weapon that is used against everyone, every organization, and every country that takes a position independent of Washington.

This clears the deck for Washington and its British lapdog to take over FIFA, which henceforth will be used to reward countries that comply with Washington’s foreign policy and to punish those who pursue an independent foreign policy.

The only hope for South America, Asia, and Russia is to form their own World Cup and turn their backs on the corrupt West.

It is astonishing that Russia, Asia, and South America so much desire to be part of the corrupt and immoral Western world. Why do countries wish to be associated with evil? Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and perhaps Argentina and Brazil have learned that being in the Western orbit means putting their country under Washington’s control.

Putin, Lavrov, and China’s leaders say that being associated with the West is like being associated with the plague. Yet they still want to be associated with the West. Why do Russia and China think that their self-esteem depends on Washington’s approval?

FIFA is a Swiss-based organization. Yet the arrests of FIFA officials is based on a Washington-initiated “investigation” by the FBI. By asserting the universality of US law, Washington is asserting the authority of its police and prosecutors over sovereign countries.

Why did Switzerland, and why do other countries lay down in obedience to Washington’s assertion of the universality of its laws? Are the political leaders paid off or are they threatened with assassination or false indictments? What explains that of all countries on earth only Washington’s law is universal, acknowledged and bowed down before in other countries? Is if fear of retribution?

Possibly, but one answer is that the entire point of being a leader of a foreign country is to be made rich by kowtowing to Washington. One year out of office and Tony Blair was reported to be worth $50 million. Where did the money come from? No one wanted to listen to Blair’s speeches when he was Prime Minister. Why did Americans pay him six-figure sums to give speeches?

Putin can become rich, too. All he needs to do is to turn Russia over to Washington.

Here we are in an orchestrated soccer scandal hyped to the hilt by the presstitute media while all the real scandals go unremarked.

For example, a number of the mega-banks in the West have pleaded guilty to felony charges and only suffered fines. As Finian Cunningham has pointed out, the money laundering and price-rigging by the “banks too big to jail” dwarfs the alleged criminality at FIFA.

Washington itself cannot be believed as not a single significant statement out of Washington’s mouth since the Clinton regime has been true; yet, Washington still parades around as the arbiter of truth.

Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Assad did not use chemical weapons. Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Russia did not invade Ukraine. But Washington convinced the world that its lies were true.

It is almost a certainty that politicians up in arms over unsubstantiated charges that FIFA took bribes have themselves taken bribes. Just look at the bribes given to Congress by corporations to vote fast track for TTIP.

Can anyone name even one leader of one EU country (other perhaps than Greece at the moment) who doesn’t take bribes from Washington?

According to Udo Ulfkotte, no one can name even one British or EU newspaper that doesn’t take bribes from the CIA.

How many UN votes are determined by Washington’s threats and bribes?

Whether or not FIFA decisions are tainted by bribery, the purpose of the “investigation” is to cast doubt on the decision to hold the World Cup in Russia. The World Cup is a global spectacle and conveys prestige on the host country. Washington intends to deny this prestige to Russia. That is what the “investigation” is about.

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