SOTT FOCUS: FIFA 'scandal' = US attempts to impose sports sanctions against Russia

© AFP
How dare they! Being all friendly...

    
The good ol' US of A is at it again. Fighting injustice, dispensing truth, kickin' corrupt corporate butt and taking names. No evil-doers are safe, not even outfits that most people in the US Justice Dept. have probably never heard of, like FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football.

If, like most of the rest of the world, you think that this 'scandal' has anything to do with the US government's desire to see justice served, then I have a chemical weapon storage facility in Syria to sell you. This 'scandal' is nothing more than a bare-faced and embarrassingly pathetic attempt by the US empire-builders to prevent Russia from hosting the 2018 soccer world cup. Like a petulant, spoiled child that has been told 'no', this is the US government's version of throwing a tantrum and screaming "I HATE YOU!"

The official story is that, over the course of several years, the 14 indicted officials had accepted bribes for voting to award FIFA events to particular countries, primarily Qatar, South Africa, and various Latin American nations. But these days, no US government-inspired 'scandal' is worth promoting if it doesn't target Russia, the American empire's favorite whipping boy.

Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup in 2010, at a time when the US government still thought it could 'contain' Russia. With last year's events in Ukraine however, all bets were off and Putin's Russia plummeted to an all time high in the league table of states in need of 'regime change'. So while there is no doubt that FIFA is as perfidious as any other global corporation, there is obviously more to this situation than mere bribery.

So given that corruption within FIFA has been an open secret for years, the question becomes, why now? FIFA is scheduled to elect its next president today, with the incumbent Sepp Blatter, who is up for reelection, viewed as a pro-Russian because he presided over the awarding of the 2018 games to Russia. Coincidentally (or NOT!) just one day before the US DOJ indictments, US Senators John McCain and Robert Menendez sent a letter to the FIFA congress urging it to remove Russia as the host country for 2018. Their schizoidal rationale was that: "allowing Russia to host the World Cup would bolster the Putin regime at a time when it should be condemned".

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The Senators' letter to FIFA

    
Now, isn't it 'funny' that the world's pre-eminent financiers and supporters of terrorism and brutal dictators have the cojones to call the Russian government a "regime"? Isn't it a hoot that the same global mafia bosses who orchestrated the overthrow of the Ukrainian government last year and ushered in a civil war that has cost the lives of at least 5,000 civilians have the effrontery to accuse Russia of "violations of Ukraine's territorial integrity"?

Another detail in the background here is the fact that FIFA was considering suspending Israel due to their treatment of Palestinian footballers. The 'scandal' has proven so glaringly 'fortuitous' for Israel that even the had to call it out and admit that the distraction of the 'scandal' will leave the Palestinian authority's attempt to have Israel banned dead in the water.

But take a moment to fully grasp the extent of the desperation of the Anglo-American empire builders in their attempt to vilify Russia. The very idea that Russia might enjoy the positive propaganda of hosting the 2018 world cup caused such fulminous frothing of the mouth at the US State Dept. that the organisation that had awarded the games to Russia had to be taken down, including its president.

For his part, Putin seems to be on the ball, so to speak. Here's what he had to say regarding the arrests:

As for the arrests that were made, it seems strange in the very least as the arrests were conducted on the basis of corruption charges made by the American side. Whom did they charge? International officers. It may be possible that some of them did something wrong, I do not know, but the USA definitely have nothing to do with this. These officers are not United States' citizens, and if anything did happen, it did not happen on the territory of the United States and the USA have nothing to do with it. This is yet another obvious attempt to spread their jurisdiction to other states. I have no doubt that this is obviously an attempt to prevent Mr Blatter's re-election to the post of FIFA President, which is a grave violation of the principles that international organisations function on.

We are aware of the position of the United States regarding the former special services employee Mr Snowden, who was a National Security Agency employee and who made public the illegal practice of the United States practically all over the world, including tapping the phones of foreign leaders. ... What about Mr Assange, who has been forced to hide at a foreign embassy for several years? ... He is being persecuted for spreading the information he received from US military regarding the actions of the USA in the Middle East, including Iraq.

Why did I bring this up now? Unfortunately, our American partners use these methods for their own ulterior purposes. They are illegally persecuting people. I do not rule out the possibility that the same goes for this situation with FIFA. Although I do not know what this will result in, but the fact that this is happening on the eve of elections of the FIFA president leads one to think so.

Putin is absolutely correct here. This is a blatant example of the US government's fervent belief in their right to 'rule the world'. The DOJ has no jurisdiction over the FIFA officials, no legal authority to target foreign nationals who are not resident in the US. Then again, the US government and its institutions have spent the last 100 years crapping all over international law.

So the 'take home' message here is that the U.S. can't stand the idea of Russia and Putin gaining any more popularity and positive global press when the U.S. is bending over backwards to vilify them as the next Nazi regime. People around the world are already seeing Putin in a more realistic light, which is the total opposite of the image of Russia that the psychos in Washington have worked hard to create. Ordinary people are also increasingly seeing the U.S. for what it really is: a destructive regime that should be condemned, dismantled and put to rest before it brings down the whole planet with it.

So, at a time when Putin and Russia are doing everything they can to block the U.S.'s underhanded, cynical, destructive policies (including the destabilization of foreign countries using manufactured 'civil unrest' movements, blackmail, and the creation of terrorist groups), it is the U.S. regime, not Russia, that should be universally condemned.

But who, we wonder, might preside over any eventual withdrawal of Russia's right to host the 2018 world cup, assuming this little scheme succeeds? (President) Hilary Clinton perhaps? The same Hilary who, as patron of the Clinton Foundation - a mafia organisation if there ever was one - accepted a large donation from FIFA and another from the brutal Qatari dictatorship that is using slave labor to build the stadiums for the 2022 event? The words 'hypocritical' and "a**holes" don't really suffice to describe the extent of the mockery of justice that we are witnessing here. So let's just call them criminal psychopaths on steroids.

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Joe Quinn (Profile)

Born, bred and fled from the last outpost of the British empire, Joe is a researcher, editor and writer at Sott.net

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