The All-World Soccer Cup tournament starts today.

**kudzu** · 06-21-2018, 12:48 AM

Originally Posted by anatta

he hasn't got the money to do so with sanctions on the banks and the oligarchs. Restriction to western markets.
Oil/extractive prices are all that's keeping the economy going

Did Putin Buy the World Cup? The FBI’s Not Saying—Yet
The Daily Beast· 22 hours ago
LONDON—When players break the rules on the soccer pitch, the referee blows the whistle. When...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/did-pu...yet?yptr=yahoo

See also: New York Times.

**kudzu** · 06-21-2018, 12:49 AM

Originally Posted by tsuke

of course they are. They are one of the key vassals of the american empire in the area.

America has never had an Empire in the Middle East.. nor any colony there either.

**anatta** · 06-21-2018, 12:59 AM

Originally Posted by kudzu

Did Putin Buy the World Cup? The FBI’s Not Saying—Yet
The Daily Beast· 22 hours ago
LONDON—When players break the rules on the soccer pitch, the referee blows the whistle. When...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/did-pu...yet?yptr=yahoo

See also: New York Times.

interesting about Steele:
Steele’s most celebrated job after retiring from the MI6 Russia desk was investigating corruption within FIFA and—just as he would later do with lurid allegations about Trump—Steele took his findings to the FBI.

His reports on soccer helped to ignite a sprawling U.S. investigation that would lead to early-morning raids on the five-star hotel rooms of a clutch of top soccer officials.

How Russia won the World Cup
https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...-the-world-cup
His name was Christopher Steele.
His task, he said, was to help England 2018 “better understand what they were up against, and what they were up against was a completely alien way of doing business”. In the spring of 2010, not long after sources began saying that Putin had suddenly taken a strong personal interest in the bid, Steele began hearing a string of curious and troubling rumours.

In April, Russia’s deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin, went to Qatar to discuss a massive natural gas extraction project. That same month, Russia’s World Cup bid team also travelled there. One of Steele’s best sources said the timing was no coincidence, and that on top of massive gas deals, the emissaries were colluding to swap World Cup votes. Russia, the theory went, would pledge its ExCo member’s vote for 2022 to Qatar, and Qatar would promise that, in exchange, its ExCo member would pick Russia for 2018.

Other sources, meanwhile, began whispering that Russian bid officials had taken valuable paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and offered them to ExCo members in exchange for votes.

When Steele reported his findings, members of the bid team were predictably alarmed. England was doomed, Steele felt certain; it was never going to beat a country like Russia, which was clearly prepared to do anything to avoid a humiliating defeat on the world stage. But the former spy then had a second thought. The information he had been developing on Russia and Fifa was highly specific, but also unique and potentially valuable – perhaps extremely so. It would be a shame to see it go to waste. And it just so happened that Steele could think of another potential client for that information: the FBI.

**tsuke** · 06-21-2018, 01:11 AM

Originally Posted by kudzu

America has never had an Empire in the Middle East.. nor any colony there either.

chances are you have been living under the american empire your whole life unless you are in Iran or North Korea. As with all great empires revolts do occur from time to time as is the case with our Asian and European provinces trying to be their own seperate power centres (EU and China respectively).

The situation is actually very similar to Lucius Aurelian and the Gallic and Palmyrene division of the Roman empire.

**kudzu** · 06-21-2018, 01:23 AM

Originally Posted by tsuke

chances are you have been living under the american empire your whole life unless you are in Iran or North Korea. As with all great empires revolts do occur from time to time as is the case with our Asian and European provinces trying to be their own seperate power centres (EU and China respectively).

The situation is actually very similar to Lucius Aurelian and the Gallic and Palmyrene division of the Roman empire.

You are full of beans............ There is NO American Empire in the ME and never has been.

**kudzu** · 06-21-2018, 01:25 AM

Originally Posted by anatta

interesting about Steele:
Steele’s most celebrated job after retiring from the MI6 Russia desk was investigating corruption within FIFA and—just as he would later do with lurid allegations about Trump—Steele took his findings to the FBI.

His reports on soccer helped to ignite a sprawling U.S. investigation that would lead to early-morning raids on the five-star hotel rooms of a clutch of top soccer officials.

How Russia won the World Cup
https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...-the-world-cup
His name was Christopher Steele.
His task, he said, was to help England 2018 “better understand what they were up against, and what they were up against was a completely alien way of doing business”. In the spring of 2010, not long after sources began saying that Putin had suddenly taken a strong personal interest in the bid, Steele began hearing a string of curious and troubling rumours.

In April, Russia’s deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin, went to Qatar to discuss a massive natural gas extraction project. That same month, Russia’s World Cup bid team also travelled there. One of Steele’s best sources said the timing was no coincidence, and that on top of massive gas deals, the emissaries were colluding to swap World Cup votes. Russia, the theory went, would pledge its ExCo member’s vote for 2022 to Qatar, and Qatar would promise that, in exchange, its ExCo member would pick Russia for 2018.

Other sources, meanwhile, began whispering that Russian bid officials had taken valuable paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and offered them to ExCo members in exchange for votes.

When Steele reported his findings, members of the bid team were predictably alarmed. England was doomed, Steele felt certain; it was never going to beat a country like Russia, which was clearly prepared to do anything to avoid a humiliating defeat on the world stage. But the former spy then had a second thought. The information he had been developing on Russia and Fifa was highly specific, but also unique and potentially valuable – perhaps extremely so. It would be a shame to see it go to waste. And it just so happened that Steele could think of another potential client for that information: the FBI.

Very interesting.. It really deserves its own thread...........

**iewitness** · 06-21-2018, 03:49 AM

keep your eyes on the balls you damned Global proletariat ninnies.

**kudzu** · 06-21-2018, 05:26 AM

Originally Posted by iewitness

keep your eyes on the balls you damned Global proletariat ninnies.

Donald Thoresen, "The White Race as Global Proletariat ...

One of the intellectual developments responsible for transforming numerous Italian Leftists into Fascists was the notion of a nation-based proletariat.

https://www.counter-currents.com/201...l-proletariat/

**iolo** · 06-21-2018, 06:48 AM

Originally Posted by kudzu

You are full of beans............ There is NO American Empire in the ME and never has been.

Bloody hell - all those mass murders were just jolly games, hey? Heil Trump. Netenyahu and the Master Race!

**cancel2 2022** · 06-21-2018, 06:49 AM

Originally Posted by kudzu

You are full of beans............ There is NO American Empire in the ME and never has been.

Wow!

**kudzu** · 06-21-2018, 07:01 AM

Originally Posted by Havana Moon

Wow!

The US has always stood against "Empire"... That's why we fought the Revolutionary War.

**iolo** · 06-21-2018, 07:06 AM

Originally Posted by kudzu

The US has always stood against "Empire"... That's why we fought the Revolutionary War.

No, the US were against anyone else's empire. Manifest Destiny anyone? I prefer even soccer!

**anatta** · 06-21-2018, 07:15 AM

Originally Posted by kudzu

You are full of beans............ There is NO American Empire in the ME and never has been.

agree. there was way too much ME interventionism, but no empire building

**iolo** · 06-21-2018, 07:18 AM

Originally Posted by anatta

agree. there was way too much ME interventionism, but no empire building

There was never any Soviet Empire either. Just countries in miraculously close agreement with the country with troops on their soil!

**cancel2 2022** · 06-21-2018, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by kudzu

The US has always stood against "Empire"... That's why we fought the Revolutionary War.

People like you make me laugh, talk about being in denial!!

America's critical weakness, however, was its fatal lack of self-knowledge, he said. "When you talk to Americans about empire they say, 'but we came into existence to fight imperialism.'

"US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously told al-Jazeera 'we don't do empire'. But how can you not be an empire and maintain 750 military bases in three-quarters of the countries on earth?" He argued that "Britain had an amazing capacity for self-criticism, even when the empire was at its height.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/...ducation.books