Thursday 17 February 2011

Blazer Hits Out At FIFA Bidding Process – 3 Months Too Late

Chuck all use: Blazer shows his balls way too late
The FIFA Executive Committee’s hairiest and most huggable member, Chuck ‘All’ Blazer, has slammed the World Cup bidding process in an interview with the worthy but dull monthly football magazine, World Soccer. A mere several months too late, Blazer declared in the magazine’s March issue that “the whole process would probably be better if a concerted inspection was done prior to anyone being accepted as an eligible candidate”. What a brilliant idea! Why did no one think of this before?

Recommendations from the FIFA five-man inspection team were “ignored completely”, says Blazer. Well, we knew that as soon as the winners were announced. Blazer also says that fellow members of the ExCo were unwilling to properly discuss the inspections team’s concerns, and that many were swayed by vague promises of a “legacy” from potential host countries. Chuck says ‘legacy’. A cynic might say ‘bribe’.

Why didn’t Blazer go public with these concerns last year while the bidding process was still under way? And while we’re at it, would Blazer consider a “concerted inspection” to factor in a country’s human rights record? Probably not, judging by the happy half hour he spent with his “friend” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, so breathlessly documented on Chuck’s jetsetting blog shortly after he returned from Moscow.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Tackling Rio's Rotten Cops

Drugs and guns: don't trust Rio police with these items
As Brazil starts clearing its shanty towns of gangsters and drug barons in time to make things look nice and pretty for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, it’s being forced to tackle another long term internal problem – the corruption and violence of its own police force complicit in the drugs trade. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that an anti-corruption sting in Rio de Janeiro resulted in the arrest of 30 officers, following which the head of the Rio state’s investigative police, Allan Turnowski, resigned.

Turnowski’s former deputy, Carlos Antonio Luiz Oliveira, “was one of the officers arrested and charged with corruption, theft, and collaboration with drug traffickers”, the AP reported. Two of Turnowski’s predecessors over the past five years were also arrested at various times. With a police force this rotten, it must be tough to know where to start, with the 30 arrested officers “accused of selling heavy weapons to gangs, tipping off gangs about police raids, and stealing and selling drugs, money and weapons confiscated by police”. There’s also the staggering statistic from the 2009 Human Rights Watch report on Brazil stating that Rio police kill one in every 23 people they arrest.

Given that background, the arrests at least represent a scantling of good news, depending on how deeply police corruption has infested Rio. For a somewhat depressing overview of what Rio de Janeiro is facing as a city in the run-up to the big sporting events, read resident Dr. Christopher Gaffney’s blog post from the end of last year, Laws, Evictions and Demolitions.

Thursday 10 February 2011

Quote of the Month - Vaclav Havel

Havel: has experience overcoming dictatorships
"However, most important is that if [Western] relations with Russia are to be friendly, they must be open and sincere, otherwise there can be no friendship at all. That means one should be able to speak openly about everything at meetings and conferences. It shouldn’t be that we can’t discuss the killing of journalists in Russia, or the suppression of human rights, or all the warning signs surfacing in Russia because of oil and gas or other economic reasons. It's a big problem, but it's the same in Western relations with Arab states. There's a dilemma over how to balance concrete economic interests with critical opinions on the state of human rights. It's the human rights that suffer, and that's a great price to pay."

Czech playwright and former President Vaclav Havel, interviewed by Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe ahead of his first feature film, due out next month.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Democracy In Qatar by 2022?

Qataris - free to celebrate, but not to demonstrate
Could Qatar be a democracy by the time it stages the 2022 World Cup? With the near-revolution in Egypt, the fall of Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, and Gulf state dictatorships being forced by the increasing power of public will to take a long, hard look at how to go about saving their own asses, Gulf pro-democracy activists have called on the region’s monarchies to give some thought to political change.

“We hope that the ruling families in the Gulf realise the importance of democratic transformation to which our people aspire,” said a statement signed by the coordinator of the Gulf Civil Society Forum, Anwar al-Rasheed, as reported by Agence France Presse. It also called for the ruling families to “understand that it is time to free all political detainees and prisoners of conscience, and issue constitutions that meet modern day demands.”

Well, you can always ask.

“The Gulf peoples look forward for their countries to be among nations supporting freedom, the rule of law and civil and democratic rule which have become a part of peoples' basic rights,” the statement also said. The Forum, according to AFP, is made up of “liberal intellectuals, academics, writers and rights activists drawn from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states.” The six GCC states are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Monday 7 February 2011

Quote of the Week - Nemtsov Calls For Sanctions Against Russian Leaders

London knows best, little man...
“I have an idea for you [the West] how to help democracy in Russia. Let you implement sanctions against people who break [the] Russian constitution [and]… agreements on human rights and democracy, like you did with [Belarussian President Alexander] Lukashenko.” Former Russian deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, a liberal opposition leader who last month spent two weeks in jail for participating in a political demonstration, talking to Stephen Sackur of BBC’s HARDTalk.

The programme should be re-christened RUDETalk judging by Sackur’s attitude in this interview. He has perfected the BBC’s plummy-voiced sneer that is apparently required nowadays to show what a tough, uncompromising journalist you are, although in reality he ends up just sounding like a supercilious prick when he asks Nemtsov, “And you think that’s a serious proposition?”

“I’m talking about sanctions not against the state, but against persons who break and who destroy peoples’ rights in this country,” Nemtsov clarifies for the hard-talking hack. He continues by asking, “What’s the difference between Putin and Lukashenko?” The snippet ends there, so we don’t get to hear Sackur’s doubtless erudite and cogent riposte. Remind us again why the BBC’s respected around the world for its high standards of journalism?

Meanwhile, The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Luke Harding has been refused re-entry to Russia, and was told by a airport security, “For you, Russia is closed.” If you’re wondering why, one of Harding’s apparent offenses has been to report on the contents of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables. One of his pieces from late last year opened with the line:

“Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a “virtual mafia state”, according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.”

Apparently that kind of analysis doesn't go down very well with the Kremlin. And if it's diplomatically unfeasible to expel US embassy staff, target the messenger instead.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Russia Narrows Gap Between Church And State

“In order to strengthen social stability today …(the state and the Church), probably like never before, need to act together,” Russian President Dimitry Medvedev said on Thursday, welcoming a decision by the Russian Orthodox Church to allow its clergy to stand for political office if it feels that the church's interests are threatened. When might that be? They don't specify.

Soon they'll let you have a hat like that too, Dmitry
Surprising developments, given that the church and state are officially separated in Russia. Then again, perhaps it’s less surprising when you think that both institutions are characterised by their conservative, reactionary, and authoritarian nature. Both openly support Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, for example.

Still, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s enthusiasm for a calendar of scantily clothed students published to mark his 58th birthday might not have gone down so well with Church clergy who believe in a medieval dress code for Russian women, because the sight of bare flesh makes them… well, who knows what it does to them. Opens their minds more than they can cope with?

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Western Celebrities Cuddle Up To The Kremlin

Hmm, I think the Chechen people need a little pleasure
First, the highly principled football player. Former Dutch great Ruud Gullit is heading for the Russian first division to coach Terek Grozny, a club whose president, by a happy coincidence, is Moscow’s Chechen henchman Ramzan Kadyrov. The unelected, authoritarian President of Chechnya has a big reputation in the Northern Caucacus, though unfortunately it’s mainly for reported human rights abuses. Under his regime, dissenters disappear, opponents are assassinated, women must wear headscarves, and houses belonging to the innocent relatives of insurgents mysteriously burn down in the night. Moscow doesn’t have a problem with this, and neither, it seems, does Gullit.

In fact, he draws an apposite parallel, likening his move to Grozny with the decision of the Dutch team to take part in the 1978 World Cup, hosted by the brutal Argentine military junta. “There was a lot of discussion in 1978, but the Netherlands went then for sport,” Gullit told the Dutch daily De Volkskrant. “This is exactly the same. You will always have people for and against. But I don't want to be involved in politics, I want to concentrate on the sport and give the people there a little pleasure in their lives again.”

How noble of Gullit to think of the pleasure that he can bring to others. Anyone being held in one of Kadyrov’s illegal prisons, where torture is allegedly routine, will look forward to their release so they can nip down to the local stadium and forget their forced confession by watching a suave former European Footballer of the Year shouting out instructions to his team.  

Second, the gnat-brained British model, Naomi Campbell, who has done investigative journalism the service of interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin for GQ magazine.