Bill Lee
Much fuss is being made of the recent charges being levied against some of the worthies of FIFA (that would be the Fédération Internationale de Football Association). The president of this not for profit organization (I’m not kidding, you can look it up), “He who cannot be named” has even been forced to resign amid the swirl of the charges. From one of my favorite shows on my favorite radio network (CBC) I hear that two of the big bold events (err, soccer world championships or cups or spectacles or whatever they’re called) scheduled for Russia and Qatar should be investigated for bidding corruption. Imagine, corruption related to these whacking great money making (for some) extravaganzas. Shocked, I am shocked I say. Oh come on. Are we being asked to believe (conned) that in these particular tournament bidding processes money changed hands for votes while all the previous ones were as clean as a whistle? Have we no imagination, or power of rational thought? The goddamn organization has been corrupt for years; various people involved in the Football federations have been seen to be wallowing in the mire to get their share of the obscene booty all along. The story is surely not that they have been on the take. It is that they have finally irritated sufficient people, in this case the American Football folks, who somehow drew a line at how much they would fork over and lost the bid. The Americans got investigating and some guys got caught. I'm not saying that any so called miscreants should get off this time and not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but it seems more than just a titch unfair, or at least gross hypocrisy on the part of soccer reporters and fandom, to suddenly get on their high horses about countries following the real (rather than the pretend) rules and offering bribes left right and centre. How else to obtain the “honour” of the over hyped circus? The spending of unconscionable amounts of a country’s public purse in shovelling cash and exotic trips and prostitutes and whatever else it takes has been and is, a given in FIFA circles. This is the way these organizations work and have always worked. They sucker movers and shakers (and citizens) of various countries into thinking that bringing the FIFA (and let us not forget the Olympics who adhere to the same low principles) dog and pony show to their sovereign turf will somehow put them on the world map or provide some sort of legitimation (one suspects this latter motivation would have been a driver for both Russia and Qatar). And of course it does, for the time of the event. Then, like a drunk sobering up the morning after they find they have been fleeced and have a horrible hang over to boot.
But back to the issue at hand, the fiddling with the two bidding processes. While nothing has been proven in a court of law, there is no doubt that it looks bad for the Russia and Qutar bids. But should it? If the process has always been corrupt and if we have all joined hands and looked the other way in all the previous cases, why not just exact the pound of flesh from the poor suckers who seem to have gotten caught – all from CONCACALF region – and sure, keep turning over rocks, but leave the silly extravagances where they are. God knows the law of Karma or economics will kick in soon after the event as they are left holding the bag for a lot of unusable venues. On the other hand there are of course the very tenable reports of what amounts to be conditions of slave labour in Qatar in producing the monstrosities of the World Cup. And of course there is the disgusting, homophobic tendencies in Russia (though I bet there is not a lot of LGBTTQ happiness in Qatar either) that the world should be up in arms about. If some country wants to sell its soul for five minutes of fame and to do it grease the palms of the organizers, let them carry the burden of their folly. In Qatar and Russia however we are seeing heavy duty oppression. Surely these real outrages should be dealt with as absolute refusal to boycott not the silliness of the hand wringing of corruption of an organization whose very raison d’etre is corruption.
We have got the wrong end of the stick if we think that the culture of corruption is the big deal in all this. The world let Russia get away with the most grievous oppression of Gays and Lesbians during the last Winter Olympics. Those who think they won’t try, and try successfully, to maintain it during their time of the FIFA World Cup have to be living in la la land. The world presently, while in high dudgeon about a bunch of well healed FIFA officials getting a little richer via money, etc. changing hands under the table, seems to care not a whit about the vile, atrocious and brutal treatment of migrant labourers who are slaving away putting up the monuments to folly in Qatar. For God’s sake those are the real crimes, the issues on which we should be focused.
Much fuss is being made of the recent charges being levied against some of the worthies of FIFA (that would be the Fédération Internationale de Football Association). The president of this not for profit organization (I’m not kidding, you can look it up), “He who cannot be named” has even been forced to resign amid the swirl of the charges. From one of my favorite shows on my favorite radio network (CBC) I hear that two of the big bold events (err, soccer world championships or cups or spectacles or whatever they’re called) scheduled for Russia and Qatar should be investigated for bidding corruption. Imagine, corruption related to these whacking great money making (for some) extravaganzas. Shocked, I am shocked I say. Oh come on. Are we being asked to believe (conned) that in these particular tournament bidding processes money changed hands for votes while all the previous ones were as clean as a whistle? Have we no imagination, or power of rational thought? The goddamn organization has been corrupt for years; various people involved in the Football federations have been seen to be wallowing in the mire to get their share of the obscene booty all along. The story is surely not that they have been on the take. It is that they have finally irritated sufficient people, in this case the American Football folks, who somehow drew a line at how much they would fork over and lost the bid. The Americans got investigating and some guys got caught. I'm not saying that any so called miscreants should get off this time and not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but it seems more than just a titch unfair, or at least gross hypocrisy on the part of soccer reporters and fandom, to suddenly get on their high horses about countries following the real (rather than the pretend) rules and offering bribes left right and centre. How else to obtain the “honour” of the over hyped circus? The spending of unconscionable amounts of a country’s public purse in shovelling cash and exotic trips and prostitutes and whatever else it takes has been and is, a given in FIFA circles. This is the way these organizations work and have always worked. They sucker movers and shakers (and citizens) of various countries into thinking that bringing the FIFA (and let us not forget the Olympics who adhere to the same low principles) dog and pony show to their sovereign turf will somehow put them on the world map or provide some sort of legitimation (one suspects this latter motivation would have been a driver for both Russia and Qatar). And of course it does, for the time of the event. Then, like a drunk sobering up the morning after they find they have been fleeced and have a horrible hang over to boot.
But back to the issue at hand, the fiddling with the two bidding processes. While nothing has been proven in a court of law, there is no doubt that it looks bad for the Russia and Qutar bids. But should it? If the process has always been corrupt and if we have all joined hands and looked the other way in all the previous cases, why not just exact the pound of flesh from the poor suckers who seem to have gotten caught – all from CONCACALF region – and sure, keep turning over rocks, but leave the silly extravagances where they are. God knows the law of Karma or economics will kick in soon after the event as they are left holding the bag for a lot of unusable venues. On the other hand there are of course the very tenable reports of what amounts to be conditions of slave labour in Qatar in producing the monstrosities of the World Cup. And of course there is the disgusting, homophobic tendencies in Russia (though I bet there is not a lot of LGBTTQ happiness in Qatar either) that the world should be up in arms about. If some country wants to sell its soul for five minutes of fame and to do it grease the palms of the organizers, let them carry the burden of their folly. In Qatar and Russia however we are seeing heavy duty oppression. Surely these real outrages should be dealt with as absolute refusal to boycott not the silliness of the hand wringing of corruption of an organization whose very raison d’etre is corruption.
We have got the wrong end of the stick if we think that the culture of corruption is the big deal in all this. The world let Russia get away with the most grievous oppression of Gays and Lesbians during the last Winter Olympics. Those who think they won’t try, and try successfully, to maintain it during their time of the FIFA World Cup have to be living in la la land. The world presently, while in high dudgeon about a bunch of well healed FIFA officials getting a little richer via money, etc. changing hands under the table, seems to care not a whit about the vile, atrocious and brutal treatment of migrant labourers who are slaving away putting up the monuments to folly in Qatar. For God’s sake those are the real crimes, the issues on which we should be focused.
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