Surprise . . . Surprise, it seems that FIFA have finally admitted – or been forced to admit – rampant corruption. But surprise, surprise, Blatter was re-elected without opposition, only to resign abruptly under threat of investigation by the FBI.
Like the Olympic Committee before it, like World Cricket and the betting scandals in the UAE, the mix of wealthy developed nations and poor Third World countries (with the wealthy countries controlling the management) does not work. Votes can, and are, bought cheaply to make sure the “right” decision is reached. Any scandals can be covered up because the majority are involved in the scandal and have a vested interest in not being found out.
It makes you wonder if democracy itself can ever work? One man one vote is a fine principal – but big money easily corrupts the process. The politician with the biggest war chest – who can afford the best spin doctors, PR advisors and lawyers – wins. In Western societies the poor working man, if not bribed directly, is easily duped and misled. And in Third World countries where the majority are barely surviving, they are quite easily and cheaply bribed.
This is demonstrated in organisations like FIFA, and it even extends to the dysfunctional United Nations. Funded almost entirely by the USA and Europe, these paymasters can be easily outvoted by various Third World blocks intent on taking their revenge against the colonialists. But the Big Money West control them via the Security Council, and by making sure the Secretariat is in safe hands. Disenfranchised as they are these Third World Charlies use their position any way they can – and from my personal experience nepotism, cronieism and corruption exist within the UN (and Aid agencies like The World Bank and The Asian Development Bank).
This is shown by my story FALSE ECONOMY in my book THE GULF. Like all the other stories in the book it is journalistic, based on my 40 years experience in the region – a dramatization of real events. Since the five fold increase in crude oil prices in the early 1970s crude oil and its derivatives have been the single largest commodity in international trade.
Big Oil Money is the biggest money of all. It funded the rapid and dazzling development of the Middle East, and in particular The Gulf States of Shia Iran, and Sunni Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Limitless supplies of this black gold, and America’s insatiable greed for cheap energy, funded the rapid growth of the region from a collection of tribal and feudal Emirates living at existence levels into glittering arenas of hedonistic Western capitalism such as Tehran in the time of The Shah, and then Dubai and Bahrain and now Riyadh.
And it is this that has caused the Clash of Cultures between the fundamental puritan Islam of the Iranian Ayotollahs and the Saudi Wahhabs, and uninhibited permissive Western hedonism.
It’s all about oil – and religion. If oil had never been found, the only expatriates in the MidEast would be a few biblical scholars and archaelogists trying to cope with the heat, the dust, thieving Bedouins and corrupt bureacrats.
If you want insights into the Middle East, and its harsh and apparently barbaric societies, and its corruption, from the perspective of weird and wonderful oilfield trash, expatriate characters who washed up there in the oil patch from 1960 to 2001, preview my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” at:
and download it if you have a Kindle.
Or if you prefer a real book you can order the paperback edition from:
Using the ISBN number is 978-1908147097
They offer free delivery worldwide.
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