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Blatter was already voted in for his fifth term as head of the FIFA criminal syndicate. Too bad this didn't come a bit earlier. As some of you may know FIFA officials have been arrested by U.S. authorities related to a slew of corruption charges. From a BBC article on the matter: "Re-elected Fifa president Sepp Blatter has sought to downplay the US criminal proceedings launched against officials of world football's governing body. Seven officials and associates were arrested in Zurich earlier this week, as Fifa gathered for its congress. Mr Blatter, 79, described the issue as "infractions" involving a marketing company operating in the Americas. He is not named in the indictment <http://www.justice.gov/usao/nye/pr/May15/2015-May-27.php>, and denies having anything to do with an alleged $10m (£6.5m) bribe. Asked by a reporter at a news conference whether he authorised the payment allegedly relating to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, he said: "Definitely, that's not me." <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32941740> Russia and Qatar are certainly in the line of fire as countries hosting the worlds biggest "mega-event," the world cup since suspicions over bribery claim continue as major issues come along with both choices. Russia has huge problems with racism <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31644075>in football with supporters regularly making racist chants toward African players; many of these supporter clubs have ties to neo-nazi and ultra-nationalist politics. Qatar, other than the obvious problem of playing football in a summer tournament with temperatures over 100 degrees, has received attention for the inhumane labor practices that border on indentured servitude. I quick google search will come up with dozens of stories, like this on from the Wash Post. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/27/a-body-count-in-qatar-illustrates-the-consequences-of-fifa-corruption/> Blatter has been in the middle of every dirty piece of work FIFA has managed since he took over, but he is not really the problem FIFA as a governing body is as it sole reason is to raise immense profits from the world biggest sport. Football is a worth hundreds of billions of dollars of profit, so along with Cricket, Rugby, American sports, and many other "national" sports, not only is it a huge part of capitalist machine, it is very much the fabric of our lives. Not until radicals learn to reconcile how sport plays into the lives of the working class will we be successful in changing society. Soccer VS The State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics by Gabriel Kuhn, along with the academic work done on Hooliganism from Ian Taylor's Marxist view to the Leicester school's Eliasian approach to the post-modern "denial" of the hooligan are ways of thinking about sport that U.S. based activists often dismiss as a subject not worthy of discussion. Other than generalized condemnation of sport from some Frankfurt school that posits everyone who enjoys watching or playing sports as a cultural dupe, or the silence beget of the shame of the radical who watches or plays the "wrong" sports, the left in the U.S. gives up vital ideological terrain by not participating in making sport our own. On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism < [email protected]> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > I am not in a position to judge this scandal. I received an appeal from > Avaaz to help oust Blatter. I note that not only Putin, but Third World > countries in general are reported to support Blatter. > Can anyone add to our knowledge of this? > ken h > > https://secure.avaaz.org/en/fifa_blattner_en_loc/?bcrOobb&v=59462 > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/mediacrusher%40gmail.com > -- J.A. Masko College of Communications Penn State University State College, Pa 16801 “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.” -Werner Herzog, “LESSONS OF DARKNESS” _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
