‘FIFA should remove ‘I’ and insert ‘A’ for American’

Trying to take control of FIFA, the US is showing it wants to run the entire world and tackle every alleged crime, said Lew Rockwell, of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It proves there is nothing Washington will not interfere in, he added.

Newly reelected FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced on Tuesday that he is stepping down. He has called an extraordinary FIFA congress to elect a successor.

RT:This story has generated a huge amount of interest around the world. From an economic point of view, there is also a lot at stake, isn’t there?

Lew Rockwell: Well, there certainly is, but I think the political angle is more important. We’ve had this act of imperialism. Who put the US in charge of international football? They’re able to because FIFA made a mistake of having an office in New York. Probably that is a warning to anybody else: Don’t have an office on US soil because then they can use that to take control.

Maybe the corruption charges are true, I don’t know, but again: Why is it the business of the US? I think that’s entirely because FIFA gave the World Cup in 2018 to Russia. This is just another anti-Russian move, and the US wanting to run the entire world, be in charge of every crime or alleged crime every place on the globe.

Paul Craig Roberts, an economic analyst, said: “This is another Washington-British scam against Russia. It reminds me of the orchestrated press attack on the Sochi Olympics. Washington is trying to turn professional sport into a propaganda weapon against Russia. They are going to use this to take the World Cup away from Russia.”
Roberts added: “There is no rule of law in the US. Law is a weapon that Washington uses to achieve its agenda.”

RT:But doesn’t it have a case there, because there are allegations of $150 million being misappropriated? A lot of this money apparently went through American banks, so part of it happened on American soil. So do they have the right to investigate it?

LR: They can investigate what happens on American soil, but they don’t have the right to go and arrest people in Switzerland or elsewhere. Would you say that England or Switzerland can go and arrest people in New York without the US government’s permission?

I have to tell you, there is corruption in the US too: there is corruption in US sports; there is corruption in the US government; there is corruption in every government. The problem the US has with this is not corruption, the problem it has got is with the results – Blatter wasn’t doing what he was told to do. And I guess now he has done what he was told to do. Obviously something happened to him. Maybe it was just the sponsors’ withdrawing; maybe it was the CIA. Who knows, maybe he was personally threatened or his family. This is the way governments operate there, sort of big-time mafias. We don’t know what happened. But as I said, this is not a good thing for football, not a good thing for the world. FIFA has got to change its name, it’s going to have to take out the “I” and put in an “A” for American.

RT:Do you think that major corporations, such as McDonald’s, played an important role here, forcing Sepp Blatter to resign?

LR: I guess, yes. Of course they are the ones that could be pressured by the US. Even aside the scandal thing, imagine that the US gave them their marching orders, and they took them. And I can understand why companies don’t want to be involved in something that’s potentially corrupt. Although they put on great football games. I don’t know whether they are corrupt or not. I think there is probably corruption in many different international sports associations, because there is so much money at stake. That is not a good thing – people shouldn’t be corrupt, people shouldn’t give bribes, people shouldn’t take bribes. But again, the US is using this to take control of international football; that’s what going on. Never again will the World Cup happen in a country that the US doesn’t like. The whole world is threatened by the US, which would like to be the world government; nothing is beyond its ken; nothing is outside of its control; nothing can stand against it in the view of the US.

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