OK, today is one of those strange days when two ideas which should never meet, are doing it. I cannot make this stuff up. Put up your feet and draw your bevvy of choice before reading this. It is so awful that it is actually amusing, in a very sick way.
Idea No. I. IP. No further general description required. Problems generally known here . In this case the IP problem was that Israel was allegedly interfering with the movement of Palestinian soccer players affiliated with FIFA so they could not move freely or travel to games outside whichever of Gaza or the WB they lived in, allegedly for Israeli security reasons, and Israel wanted a number of WB settler teams officially admitted as part of the Israeli Football Association, the FIFA affiliate, and there were issues about Anti Arab conduct at games of an Israeli team notorious for it. The Palestinian affiliate, there is one, moved to have Israel suspended for said conduct at the meeting which went on today in Switzerland and was heard today. Israel opposed the motion on the ground, not anything about soccer, but instead that soccer as a sport and international sports should not have politics intermixed in them, the Palestinian grievances being all politics, of course. If they said anything on the merits, it has not yet been reported where I can find it from Seattle.
Idea no. 2. FIFA is an international soccer support organization whose principal activity known here is sponsoring the World Cups, the nations World Cup and in alternate biannual periods, the club World Cup, and the Women's World Cup, starting in about a week in Canada and a few other things. It obtains income in the billions from the Cups and media and other marketing rights therein, some of which is distributed for support purposes to organizations in at least a large number of its 209 members, who are national representatives of their respective nations. It's a one nation, one vote proposition and China and Vanatu each have one vote, although only one generates substantial income from soccer.
It also has breathlessly awful corruption problems on a level publicly dwarfing most others, and on Wednesday last, fourteen of its officers and affiliates were busted on US warrants based in RICO, when they were mostly in Switzerland where they were attending the FIFA quadrennial convention where their leader, Sepp Blatter was breaking his own promise and running for a fifth four year term.
Blatter insisted on the quadrennial going forward and ran in the teeth of the arrests on US warrants which Loretta Lynch worked on before becoming AG, and also in the teeth of a similar but Swiss investigation including search warrants served Wednesday in Switzerland concerning the allocation of the Mens' National World Cups for 2018 to Russia and 2022 to Qatar. His claim in defense was that in an organization of world scope, with 500 employees, he could not know what all of them were doing. The kind of corruption under discussion involved among other claims demands by voters in the 2010 selection of Russia for the 2018 Men's World Cup and Qatar for the 2022, in the straightforward fashion of rep x of Qater offering a million and a half either dollars or euros to various voters in the choice of siting election, for their votes, that sort of corruption. Or Qater and Russia by means of Gazprom making a gas deal and agreeing which of the two would get which year.
Another special form of corruption is involved in the Qatar bid. All bids for World Cups involve building or refurbishing soccer stadiums and facilities, and Qatar had to build a whole set, and is hard at work doing it, but allegedly using human trafficked workers who are not free to leave Qatar and are not usually paid much or at all, and somewhere between 1200 and 3200 of whom have died during construction, to date. Given the human trafficking issues throughout Southeastern Asia right now, and trafficking across the Mediterranean and through the Balkans to the EU, it's a bad time for Qatar, whose image at least is having enough money if they wanted to use it to provide proper shelter and pay for workers and not have to take away their passports to keep them in Qatar. They don't want to use it for that.
As it is, the Qatar World Cup was granted for its usual Summer-in-Qatar -and-the- rest- of- the- Northern- Hemisphere period. FIFA did so without taking into account the 125 degree daytime weather in Qatar in that season, and the fact that soccer is not played indoors, and the fact such schedule was there so it would not conflict with the regular fall and winter scheduling of regular commercial soccer throughout the world, and it has now been moved to a fall or winter date right in the middle of the regular commercial soccer seasons for ALL of the teams who have to give leave to their contract players to stop playing for Man United and Barcelona and such and all of the media which would have broadcast matches including such players and teams, and instead to practice and play for their national teams in said rescheduled World Cup, usually not in the same nations as their commercial teams are settled. In addition, that wreaked such havoc on the Fox TV schedule, Fox having had the TV and cable rights to the Qatar Cup, that FIFA has apparently granted the hugely valuable 2026 TV and cable rights on a no bid basis to Fox, although where it will be played is not known, to make up for the Qatar chaos. Stop reading one moment to imagine the screams from all the other networks competing with Fox for soccer rights who did not get to bid.
Blatter had opposition, which was reduced to that by a Jordanian Prince, also busy doing other things, by meeting day. There was discussion that before deciding to run for his fifth term, he had agreed with the head of UEFA to run for his fourth team and then step aside for the UEFA head, which, of course, he did not do once elected to his fourth term, and now his fifth.
The hostility to the corruption was so great that large sponsors of the Cups like shoe manufacturers, Coke and Visa have expressed serious concern about continuing participatiion, i.e., buying media rights and ads and such, if the corruption is continuing, and UEFA, the European organization which has most of the more famous and successful world soccer teams, which employ most of the more famous and successful soccer players no matter what their location of origin, is threatening to boycott FIFA if Blatter were reelected. He was. This time around, the US and Canada both voted for the Jordanian prince, despite clear warnings that Blatter will make them pay for that when they try to get the 2026 Men's cup and get stiffed with style.
The vote on Blatter was 133-73 in Blatter's favor in the first round, which required a 2/3rds vote to win, and the Jordanian prince withdrew before a second round of voting where only a majority vote was required.
At the end of the telecast, Blatter also announced that an agreement had been reached between the Israeli Football affiliate and the Palestinian affiliate to withdraw the suspension motion and instead establish a three person committee to deal with problems and ensure the movement of Palestinian players and other issues, a proposal would be moved forward to create a form of identification for soccer players in motion which would have expedited treatment, and the UN would be consulted as to whether Israel could treat the five settler teams as Israeli teams without violating international law, which settlement was embodied in a resolution passed by what is reported as a 90% affirmative vote, with a number which is not 90% of 209, which should appear soon on the Web, as all this happened about an hour or so ago. At the end of his description of the IP settlement, Blatter thanked the Jordanian Prince for his help on working this problem out.
My original reason for moving to the New Diary key was a meditation on the peculiarity that Sepp Blatter has become one of the more powerful persons in the world owing to his careful manipulation and expansion of soccer from a regional game to a global one, and from ticket sales to media rights. Using any means he chooses. He heads a very successful corrupt organization which works in no small part because of that corruption.
At a time when the US is peering at various sorts of apparently ruthless and soulless Rs who are proud of their contempt for the rest of humanity except when paying taxes so Rs need not do so, the means Blatter and FiFA use make both the Rs and the Godfather modest and law abiding by contrast, save for bloodshed which FIFA itself does not do, but see above re Qatar.
And the various national organizations who vote in FIFA have heard all this, and just voted him in for a fifth term, at the age of 79. They know about the skimming of monies aimed at them, by various persons, some of whom are under indictment at the same time they sit on the FIFA executive board or have controlling power over CONCACAF, the South and Central American regional FIFA affiliate or the like. They know about the bribes. They vote for Blatter again and again, anyway.
One of the reasons is that many of the national organizations would not have the money to function and promote soccer if FIFA didn't pay it to them, and getting that money is worth a lot to them, even if it is not quite as much as originally left Zurich headed in their direction, the balance skimmed here and there. If they have to give up some of it in skimming or bribes to get the rest and do the soccer work they do, they will gladly do it, because the alternative is no soccer at all.
FIFA also provides a vehicle for the ambitious FIFA or FIFA affiliate officer to have a very nice title and a travel budget and other such perks when they are from states which frequently, because small or poor or both, seldom offer such personal benefits to anyone. And the one nation - one vote system means that the small and poor countries have very high vote ratios over against the nations which are the source of most of the money, and the fan bases, and the big teams, and can make policies which benefit the small and the poor. And do.
Blatter has worked this system very well, and today's innovation noted by him is a desire to have the regional organization of Oceania, a solid Blatter area where the one nation of any size is New Zealand out of eleven island nations, get more than one seat out of thirty for the whole world on the FIFA executive board, the body which is supposed to supervise Blatter between Quadrennial meetings. Another utterly reliable vote for whatever he asks to be done.
But this situation also raises the question of what happens when a corrupt organization works for those it is supposed to benefit, perhaps not at the maximum benefit to them it could work but enough so that they do in fact have a good bit of something they want as long as it is related to soccer. Soccer is a peculiar sport which throws up good players in all sorts of locations, and provides ways for them to move forward if they have the talent to do it, and provides both for orderly Blatterly structural corruption, and good old evil game fixing, which FIFA bashes diligently.
And if you think I am overstating the reach, contemplate the article in the NYT a few months back which noted that for the first time EVER, the national team from Bhutan (Do you even know where Bhutan is, much less that it had a national soccer team?) has moved forward in its Division of the Asian regional soccer league by beating Sri Lanka. Bhutan is team and a country so small and poor that all members of the team have real jobs and do not usually get paid for playing soccer, availability of gear and uniforms is 'iffy' and that's being polite, and there was a question of whether they would forfeit the game played in Sri Lanka in their best of two matches, because they couldn't afford the cost of transportation to get there and weren't sure there even was any.
This brings us to the addition of Problem 1 to Problem 2.
The articles already being written on this tout the way the Israeli and Palestinian reps supposedly shook hands when the deal to avoid the motion in chief to suspend Israel was made with the Israeli waving and waving calling "Shake my hand, shake my hand" and the Palestinian glaring at him with folded arms pointing out that the motion was withdrawn but the conflict was not. Face to face elements of the combat, perhaps withdrawn.
But this is IP, and this was an occasion where all those little countries voted a resolution with a three person committee on which FIFA sits, Hello Prince Ali probably, and a set of things that will have to get done, else it will come back to FIFA. Special sports ID for Palestinian soccer units so their travel to matches is not impeded is one of the named ones. And FIFA does in fact have pithy rules about racist comments at matches, as a number of jurisdictions in Europe have learned to their sorrow, and to their teams playing in empty stadia from which all fans are barred. The Settler soccer teams issue is headed to the UN.
The first and foremost characteristic of the Settlement is that FIFA took it seriously and recognized the Palestinian side as a full participant with concerns which did in fact have to be addressed and rejected the Israeli claim of mere politics!, and in fact appear to have forced a compromise along, rather than voting it down or tabling it, with the compromise embodied in an amendment to the motion to suspend getting a 90% vote, that neither Blatter nor the Prince could get for their election contest.
This is a form of very visible, because soccer related, national recognition in precisely the vein Palestine is working to achieve, and a result which at least works to address the problems in a businesslike manner, and punt the hard ones to the UN WITH FIFA'S NAME ON IT, not just Palestine's. The inclusion of FIFA may mean it gets more than a perfunctory wave, since there is no nation without soccer maniacs, and an answer may be forthcoming. The reports of the committee FIFA member to the home office will be something to read and remember. And pictures of Bibi and Blatter schmoozing together notwithstanding, it got done in the same session as the need to hide from the US and Swiss authorities.
What is so awful and amusing is the ability of FIFA to come up with and in the same session vote in the resolution of the IP issue in a way which makes it more likely than not that the issue is not deferred into the fog, and the Palestinian side had a respectful hearing on the merits, and even two demonstrators waving flags in the back of the gathering, in Switzerland. All by an organization which nearly advertises it can be bought by a Putin or a Qater or a South Africa. And which, although corrupt, was sufficiently organized and efficient to get it done the first time around, results to be reviewed by an entity, FIFA, which is not itself involved but has a huge voice it is not shy in using.
Congress cannot do this.
The UN cannot do this.
Corruption embodied did it. That's the awful part.
Comments under my usual rules. Link your citations to evidence. Stay on the subjects. No personal attacks, and no attacks on soccer teams or personalities other than Blatter and the Jordanian prince who you don't like. No Godwin violations. No personal attacks on other commenters. Updates acceptable since I am writing within two hours of the event. I'd say no attacks on my favorite soccer team but I have not mentioned it's name here.