Football Is Fixed was established to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy and power both in sport and in wider society and to challenge their authenticity. Unless a justification may be provided for such institutions, they are illegitimate and should be dismantled in order to enhance our freedom and rights as human beings. This is, in essence, a Libertarian Socialist position.
In the words of Chomsky “we have, perhaps, reached a point in history when it is possible to think seriously about a society in which freely constituted social bonds replace the fetters of autocratic institutions”.
Throughout this post, we will be incorporating the thoughts of prescient thinkers from over the last 250 years. We are not political scientists and we have nothing to add to the summation of their intellectual endeavours except, hopefully, to combine these thoughts logically and to illuminate them with pertinent examples.
Due to the rampant filtration of left libertarian views in the media of the First World, we should start with some definitions and explanations regarding libertarianism and the utilisation of language by civil society to disguise meanings and create confusions.
• Democracy – Equality of all citizens before the law.
• Liberalism – Rights of people over their own person.
Each of these basic concepts of human existence is demolished by the realities imposed by capitalism in all its forms – a capitalist democracy is obviously a contradiction in terms. To quote Edmund Phelps of Columbia University who was awarded last year’s Nobel Prize for Economics: “Europe will continue to lag in productivity and innovation because it is stuck in a corporate [ie stakeholder] model of capitalism that takes the wishes of government and workers into consideration”. Like this should be regarded as a bad thing…
• Libertarian Socialism – There are two entirely different types of libertarianism. Libertarian Socialism is a truly bottom-up democratic system where the institutions and the frameworks that provide advancement and enlightenment are the possessions of each and every one of us. Social responsibility is at its core. This type of libertarianism shares many facets with the Anarchist philosophies of Bakunin and others.
• Libertarian Capitalism - This form of libertarianism is neatly described by “gain wealth forgetting all but self and, under no circumstances other than short term tactical, show any indication of a sense of responsibility to others”. It is evident that this breed of libertarianism shares equivalence with fascism.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has been a conscious effort by the captains of industry to warp the meanings of these terminologies. Is democracy really what the coalition of the willing are exporting to Iraq? Does Anarchism deserve its association with destruction and violence? Of course not… By reframing the political arguments, the non-democratic elite steals the language of equality and rights and transforms this language into their propaganda.
This is not just a recent phenomenon. In the late eighteenth century, Rousseau stated that “civil society is hardly more than a conspiracy by the rich to guarantee their plunder” while von Humboldt noted: “the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits”. Our modern world is run by a whole battalion of such listless voluptuaries who refuse any freedom of expression for the masses while accumulating incredible wealth in their offshore bank accounts. As Alexis de Tocqueville said: “what can be expected of a man who spent twenty years of his life making heads for pins?” The same question is of equal relevance to the call centres of Mumbai and the workhouse slaves of South East Asia lacing up Nike trainers.
Capitalism has moved forward in a series of clearly defined steps. Previous centuries endured the impacts of free trade and slavery as the forerunners of today’s system of globalisation. The politicisation of the people following the French Revolution, the Famine, two World Wars, the Bolshevik Revolution and the crushing of the Anarchosyndicalist collectives in the Spanish Civil War forced this fiercely non-democratic system to allow certain rights for the peoples of the First World – welfare states were created to offer safety nets for work, health and old age. Workers were even allowed a say in the running of the companies that employed them. This system of stakeholder capitalism, although still evidently an abuse of democratic rights, at least allowed wage slaves an input to their existence.
In the eyes of a corporate capitalist, stakeholder capitalism was an accommodation and not a goal in itself. The last quarter century has seen the establishment of a progression towards a far more abusive system of shareholder capitalism which entirely eliminates the rights of workers and their families (see Phelps’ opinion above). Capitalism was only able to move forward in this manner due to two coincident facts. Firstly, media propaganda had demonised democratic institutions such as the unions and, secondly, industrial sectors were maturing which significantly reduced the number of individual companies operating in any one sector. At present, aircraft manufacture is effectively dominated by Boeing and Airbus; there are just four global accounting firms; similar restrictive choice is seen in the oil and food retailing and many other sectors. This maturing of the marketplace puts massively increased abusive power in the hands of a very small number of companies with the obvious related potential abusive structures of cartels, oligarchies, monopolies and duopolies.
At the beginning of the twenty first century, we may only view life through the distorting prism of the coercive and personally destructive system in which we live. Freedom is a commodity – one can have as much as one can afford to purchase. Fraud by the poor is rampantly criminalised; tax evasion by the rich is creative accounting. Black youth smoking crack lose their freedom and, in the US, their right to vote; white investment bankers snorting cocaine is not an issue. According to Eduardo Galeano: “the majority must resign itself to the consumption of fantasy. Illusions of wealth are sold to the poor, illusions of freedom to the oppressed, illusions of power to the weak.” The privatisation of government goes hand in hand with the privatisation of the market. This is the central theme of modern political culture.
David Hume noted: “force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion”. Shareholder capitalists are more than aware of this fact and their coercion necessarily involves the incorporation of propaganda in their media and publicity machines. But Hume is obviously correct. If the disenfranchised of the world were simply to fold their arms and say “no!”, the whole abusive structure would grind to a halt.
It is, consequently, a critical input to the system to buy off a managerial and/or skilled level in society in the ultimate form of divide and rule. A few statements related to the selfish obedience and acquiescence of the blinkered middle classes are given below:
Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor - “Ignorance, and admiration arising from ignorance, are the parents of evil devotion and obedience.”
Chomsky – “The specialised class is offered the opportunities to manage public affairs by virtue of their subservience to those with the real power in our society – dominant business interests – and this is a critical fact that is, not surprisingly, ignored in the self-praise of the elect.”
Von Humboldt - “When a man is acquiescent, we may admire what he does but despise what he is.”
Chomsky (again) – “Since they are usually not very bright, or are bright enough to know that they better avoid the arena of fact and argument, they’ll turn to misrepresentation, vilification and other devices that are available to those who know that they’ll be protected by the various means available to the powerful.”
And, yet, it is the individuals who have effectively sold out on their fellow human beings who are most at risk from the impacts of the future path of capitalism. The regression from stakeholder to shareholder to private capitalism is almost complete. Having been bought off by the selfish fruits of their labour and limited power (wages, promotions, property, access to the stock and bond markets), the acquiescent will be entirely excluded from such constructs as capitalism advances to a world of private equity, market manipulation, hedge funds, cartelisation, monopoly, offshore financial centres, corporate corruption and currency manipulations. Those of us who have learned to accept our degree of disenfranchisement in a fascistic system will be psychologically (if not financially) more able to deal with the final progression of capitalism on its route from stakeholder – shareholder – psychopathic.
The power of the oligarchy always rests on fraud as it is necessary to make use of the masses, and the masses would not cooperate if they realized that they were simply serving the purposes of a minority. This opinion was put forward over half a century ago by a right wing ideologue called James Burnham and, despite an abhorrence of his political agenda, respect must be given as his vision is coming sharply into focus.
Bolshevism and capitalism are equivalent – they are both totalitarian systems. In the words of Martin Buber: “one cannot in the nature of things expect that a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forward leaves”. Libertarian Socialism according to von Humboldt establishes “the fullest, richest and most harmonious development for the potentialities of the individual, the community or the human race. Progress will follow the creation of freedom at every step”. We are a creative, inquisitive, learning species but freedom of thought and enlightenment should not only be for the rich. Education is the key input here – not the current educational system orientated to maintaining the existing social and economic structures but an educational system that allows us to transform such structures in a more creative and egalitarian manner.
One of the prime kneejerk responses to suggestions of a more utopian system for our planet is that such a goal is idealistic. Not so. Incrementalism has transformed our world as the autocrats have been forced to (allegedly) abolish slavery, give the vote to Blacks and Women, create social safety nets for the poor and allow workers to organise and share information (albeit in a repressive infrastructure). Libertarian Socialism is a work in progress. For example, Libertarian Socialists perceive a strategic future without the need for the corrupting powers of government and, yet, in the immediate term, government is our only structure whereby we may decelerate the progression of capitalism to its psychopathic conclusion of unaccountable private tyrannies. A further objection raised by opponents of even making the decision to seek a better future for the planet is that Anarchists and Libertarian Socialists are unable to provide a comprehensive template of the structural requirements and the ongoing development of a new social system. And yet, such an opponent would agree, if they were able to produce a valid argument at all, that science moves forward in incremental steps as people work together for a social and informational advancement of the world. Why should political science be any different?
John Stuart Mill provides, I think, the clearest description of what happiness is. “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness - on the happiness of others; on the improvement of mankind; even on some art or pursuit - followed not as a means but, as itself, an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way”. One of the things that most befuddles the acquiescent in the capitalist machine is that their obedience to the system results in a deficit of happiness and fulfillment. There is a significant amount of medical research that shows a positive correlation between life/career satisfaction and life longevity. In the words of Emma Goldman “Anarchism is the only belief that shows men and women their true selves and who they can be”.
No Cartesian Gods, No Capitalist Masters…
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 30 June 2007
Friday, 29 June 2007
A Very British Welcome
“Britain prides itself on making newcomers feel at home”.
This ludicrous claim was perpetuated by one Merril Stevenson in a special feature in The Economist earlier this year and, rather than merely asking “what planet…?”, we thought it might be more interesting to take an overview of British xenophobia in case we might be missing something here.
It is evident that all non-christian and non-caucasian immigrants to Britain are treated inequitably on an economic basis and, indeed, on any societal measure that one wishes to choose. Even later generations of the initial influx are denied any route to success beyond the specialised class as the upper echelons of society are almost entirely white, anglo-saxon and protestant. Ah, but, I hear you say, aren’t all other countries similarly bigoted when their systems are stripped down to the bare bones? No, and yes… Undoubtedly, all nation states are defensive of their proprietary powers (although Britain has always seemed particularly protectionist) but it is with regard to interpersonal attitude that Britain stands alone with its island mentality. We will return to the area of individual human interactions below but, firstly, it would seem necessary to explore examples in an attempt to find evidence of newcomers being made welcome.
Throughout the last three centuries, the structures of authority, hierarchy and domination in your sceptred isle have required a new underclass that might be exploited even more fully than the native working class in order to enhance corporate profits. From the slave trade to Polish nannies and from the Raj to Gurkha soldiers, Britain has sought out economic and military efficiencies of even greater magnitude than those created through the abuses of, for example, the workers in the Lancashire cotton mills. Some xenophobia occurs in particular windows of imperial opportunity, separate types exist in a continuum of abuse and yet others are cyclical in nature. Respective examples might include the Chinese coolies, Irish, Roma, Muslims or Jews, and the Poles.
After the First World War, Britain needed people as the upper classes had wiped out huge swathes of the working class population in a remarkable example of self-genocide (every single boy in my grandmother’s school class was killed in the “Great” [sic] war, for example). English industry was largely rebuilt by the Irish and the same process was repeated after the Second World War except that, on this occasion, the Caribbean was the source of choice. Greeted by signs on rented dwellings proclaiming “No Irish, No Blacks”, it was evident from day one as to one’s status in one’s new world. In this latter war, it was largely the fighting spirit of Polish flyers (and the Red Army) that tilted the balance in the favour of the Allies and, yet, these incredibly brave men were ostracised once back at the mess bar by the English upper crust. Post-war, the Poles were made unwelcome as they were taking the jobs of “our” miners and “our” doctors. Even today, Polish doctors are ostracised by the golden triangle of elite English medics emanating from Oxbridge and London.
Bringing the xenophobic tale up to date, it is now expected of all immigrant groups that they undertake a test of their Britishness. This is palpably elitist and racist. The autocratic institutions representing big business wish to foster immigration as the bosses are able to employ such individuals at cheaper wages than the local population and, equally important, these newcomers possess virtually no employment rights. This inevitably gives rise to tensions between the immigrants and the disenfranchised English which, apparently, will be entirely solved by questioning the newcomers on the Magna Carta, the Battle of Hastings and how many runs Geoffrey Boycott scored for Yorkshire. Twaddle…
I have lived in Greece for six years. I have been treated with the utmost respect and dignity by the vast majority of the Greeks with whom I have come into contact. And, yet, sixty years ago, Britain and America undertook the White Terror against left wing Greeks that had fought on the same side as the Allies in the Second World War. In support of the extreme right wing Mountain Brigade, the Sacred Band and even the fascist Security Battalions, the US (with the help of their new client regime, Britain) carried out over 3000 executions and over 700,000 civilians were forcibly evacuated from mountain villages and imprisoned in squalid internment camps. The vast majority of these people were from the Zagori mountains on the mainland adjacent to Kerkyra. And yet, I am referred to by people in my village as the “English gentleman” (incidentally, I am neither of these things…) and gifts of farm produce and locally produced wines are repeatedly given to me as gestures of friendship. The English on the island, in general, make no attempt to learn the language or to understand Greek culture and exist in elitist enclaves listening to chamber music and complaining openly about the attitudes of the Corfiots, the Albanians or Roma who, allegedly, blight their existence. Any sign of the imposition of a test for “Greekness”?
There are two prime differences of attitude at play here. One is plain xenophobia based on a fear of any human being that might be considered different in some manner. The second disparity is the more revealing. The Greeks have an understandable right to have a negative view of the UK as, within living memory, the English have exhibited a highly abusive form of duplicity. In comparison, the English abhor newcomers despite the fact that, historically, parallel forms of abuse were perpetrated on the ancestors of these immigrants.
Land of hope and glory, indeed…
In a final Orwellian twist to the rewriting of our history, Britain is, in 2007, celebrating the 200 year anniversary of the ending of slavery with a series of films and televisual feasts proclaiming the greatness of individuals like Wilberforce, Gladstone and Clarkson who, apparently, freed the Black people from their chains of oppression. Conspicuous by their absence are the names of Sam Sharp (who effectively emancipated the Jamaicans) and Toussaint L’Ouverture (whose guerillas defeated the two largest imperialist armies of the day – Britain and France in St Domingue). Even The Economist states “the slave trade would not have collapsed without rebellions by the victims”.
And why, you might ask, has this got anything to do with football? Being based in Caracas for a week, we are frequently assumed to be Americans. Despite the US backed 2003 coup, the Venezuelans are welcoming beyond belief. There is a warmth and social living perspective in every aspect of our interactions.
Compare and contrast…
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
This ludicrous claim was perpetuated by one Merril Stevenson in a special feature in The Economist earlier this year and, rather than merely asking “what planet…?”, we thought it might be more interesting to take an overview of British xenophobia in case we might be missing something here.
It is evident that all non-christian and non-caucasian immigrants to Britain are treated inequitably on an economic basis and, indeed, on any societal measure that one wishes to choose. Even later generations of the initial influx are denied any route to success beyond the specialised class as the upper echelons of society are almost entirely white, anglo-saxon and protestant. Ah, but, I hear you say, aren’t all other countries similarly bigoted when their systems are stripped down to the bare bones? No, and yes… Undoubtedly, all nation states are defensive of their proprietary powers (although Britain has always seemed particularly protectionist) but it is with regard to interpersonal attitude that Britain stands alone with its island mentality. We will return to the area of individual human interactions below but, firstly, it would seem necessary to explore examples in an attempt to find evidence of newcomers being made welcome.
Throughout the last three centuries, the structures of authority, hierarchy and domination in your sceptred isle have required a new underclass that might be exploited even more fully than the native working class in order to enhance corporate profits. From the slave trade to Polish nannies and from the Raj to Gurkha soldiers, Britain has sought out economic and military efficiencies of even greater magnitude than those created through the abuses of, for example, the workers in the Lancashire cotton mills. Some xenophobia occurs in particular windows of imperial opportunity, separate types exist in a continuum of abuse and yet others are cyclical in nature. Respective examples might include the Chinese coolies, Irish, Roma, Muslims or Jews, and the Poles.
After the First World War, Britain needed people as the upper classes had wiped out huge swathes of the working class population in a remarkable example of self-genocide (every single boy in my grandmother’s school class was killed in the “Great” [sic] war, for example). English industry was largely rebuilt by the Irish and the same process was repeated after the Second World War except that, on this occasion, the Caribbean was the source of choice. Greeted by signs on rented dwellings proclaiming “No Irish, No Blacks”, it was evident from day one as to one’s status in one’s new world. In this latter war, it was largely the fighting spirit of Polish flyers (and the Red Army) that tilted the balance in the favour of the Allies and, yet, these incredibly brave men were ostracised once back at the mess bar by the English upper crust. Post-war, the Poles were made unwelcome as they were taking the jobs of “our” miners and “our” doctors. Even today, Polish doctors are ostracised by the golden triangle of elite English medics emanating from Oxbridge and London.
Bringing the xenophobic tale up to date, it is now expected of all immigrant groups that they undertake a test of their Britishness. This is palpably elitist and racist. The autocratic institutions representing big business wish to foster immigration as the bosses are able to employ such individuals at cheaper wages than the local population and, equally important, these newcomers possess virtually no employment rights. This inevitably gives rise to tensions between the immigrants and the disenfranchised English which, apparently, will be entirely solved by questioning the newcomers on the Magna Carta, the Battle of Hastings and how many runs Geoffrey Boycott scored for Yorkshire. Twaddle…
I have lived in Greece for six years. I have been treated with the utmost respect and dignity by the vast majority of the Greeks with whom I have come into contact. And, yet, sixty years ago, Britain and America undertook the White Terror against left wing Greeks that had fought on the same side as the Allies in the Second World War. In support of the extreme right wing Mountain Brigade, the Sacred Band and even the fascist Security Battalions, the US (with the help of their new client regime, Britain) carried out over 3000 executions and over 700,000 civilians were forcibly evacuated from mountain villages and imprisoned in squalid internment camps. The vast majority of these people were from the Zagori mountains on the mainland adjacent to Kerkyra. And yet, I am referred to by people in my village as the “English gentleman” (incidentally, I am neither of these things…) and gifts of farm produce and locally produced wines are repeatedly given to me as gestures of friendship. The English on the island, in general, make no attempt to learn the language or to understand Greek culture and exist in elitist enclaves listening to chamber music and complaining openly about the attitudes of the Corfiots, the Albanians or Roma who, allegedly, blight their existence. Any sign of the imposition of a test for “Greekness”?
There are two prime differences of attitude at play here. One is plain xenophobia based on a fear of any human being that might be considered different in some manner. The second disparity is the more revealing. The Greeks have an understandable right to have a negative view of the UK as, within living memory, the English have exhibited a highly abusive form of duplicity. In comparison, the English abhor newcomers despite the fact that, historically, parallel forms of abuse were perpetrated on the ancestors of these immigrants.
Land of hope and glory, indeed…
In a final Orwellian twist to the rewriting of our history, Britain is, in 2007, celebrating the 200 year anniversary of the ending of slavery with a series of films and televisual feasts proclaiming the greatness of individuals like Wilberforce, Gladstone and Clarkson who, apparently, freed the Black people from their chains of oppression. Conspicuous by their absence are the names of Sam Sharp (who effectively emancipated the Jamaicans) and Toussaint L’Ouverture (whose guerillas defeated the two largest imperialist armies of the day – Britain and France in St Domingue). Even The Economist states “the slave trade would not have collapsed without rebellions by the victims”.
And why, you might ask, has this got anything to do with football? Being based in Caracas for a week, we are frequently assumed to be Americans. Despite the US backed 2003 coup, the Venezuelans are welcoming beyond belief. There is a warmth and social living perspective in every aspect of our interactions.
Compare and contrast…
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Oil, Cocaine, Coups, Bots, Propaganda and Politics
Whatever happened to the principle of keeping politics out of sport? Indeed, has such a principle ever existed? This entirely fallacious construct has always been a diversion from reality but, as sport and politics increasingly become the shared currencies by which a country portrays it’s competitiveness and flair, the linkage is moving from one of association to one of spectacularisation and corruption.
From Hitler’s marketing of his political agenda during the 1936 Olympics to Maradona, Morales and Chávez (the absence of Fidel Castro preventing a modern day Gang Of Four) sitting side by side for the opening ceremony of yesterday’s Copa América , political leaders have always sought to be linked to sporting celebrations. But linkage is no longer enough as winning has become everything.
Athletics, cycling, wrestling, rugby and football (to name but a few) are inexorably associated with the abuse of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs). Without selecting any one particular occurrence, the general pattern is one whereby the powerful are able to employ teams of doctors and scientists to both create the PESs and to develop the masking substances that prevent detection. The sporting authorities have generally played along with this charade – it is a fact of outrageous statistical probability that the only player that I can remember (off the top of my head) being banned for doping in the World Cup is the best player to have ever graced a football pitch, Diego Maradona. On the numerous occasions where the European Big 4 (England, Italy, Germany and Spain) have been dabbling in a little illegal advantage, the authorities merely turn a blind eye to the corruption and focus on counting their profits.
The Primera Liga in Spain is typical of the laissez faire attitude demonstrated by the regulators historically. Erythropoitin (EPO) usage is rife in Spain and the drug may only be detected via blood tests which is presumably the reasoning why the Spanish authorities imposed futile urine tests in a rampant piece of corruption a couple of years back.
Consequently, this week’s announcement by Michel Platini that UEFA will be testing blood samples for the first time ever at next summer’s Euro 2008 competition is long overdue and is to be applauded.
But drug abuse is only a fraction of modern day contortionism within sport. The powerful nations have always enjoyed an advantage on the field of play and with the huge global television audiences for football, one might accept such a bias. However, recent high profile events have taken on a more holistically manipulated form. In one of the first posts on Football Is Fixed, we detailed the manner in which FIFA robbed Uzbekistan of a deserved potential place in the last World Cup via a Machiavellian piece of manoeuvring. To prompt your memory, the Uzbeks beat Bahrain 1-0 in the 1st Leg of the match which would determine who would meet Jack Warner’s oil rich Trinidad and Tobago in the play off for a place in the finals. During the match, the Japanese official incorrectly cancelled a penalty which would have given the Uzbeks a two goal advantage. FIFA’s ruling was, incredibly, that the match should be replayed entirely and, with Graham Poll in charge of the 2nd Leg, Bahrain unmeritocratically moved on. The fact that Uzbekistan has a far left administration obviously had absolutely no impact on this decision… FIFA's tilting in favour of Ukraine, Angola and Switzerland was similarly politicized.
The opening day of Copa América provided indications that, in the eyes of some of the competitor nations, it is no longer a case of supposedly keeping politics out of sport but rather of relegating sport to a secondary status so that the political operators may further their agendas. Following hot on the heels of a highly manipulated Gold Cup, it seems incredible that the issues highlighted below all occurred on the first day of the tournament.
• The CONMEBOL computer system was allegedly hacked into and, consequently, was offline for most of the twenty four hours leading up to the tournament start. Recent viral attacks have targeted European bookmakers and the entire country of Estonia was plunged into cybernetic misery when Russia decided to flex it’s bot muscles.
• The two main TV stations in the US showing the Copa América (GolTV and Telefutura) censored the inauguration ceremony making the heroically bold assessment that the mere sight of Comrade Hugo might pervert the minds of their sheltered citizens.
• The commentary on the US channels was also entertaining and was completely out of synch with the game by up to thirty seconds! The game had re-kicked off before the stations acknowledged that Peru had taken a 1-0 lead, for example. Were the TV companies writing the words for their commentators?
• In contrast, I watched the games from my hotel and was forced to miss the final Peru goal as television coverage flicked over to San Cristóbal so that we might all enjoy the publicity stunts that appear to underpin Chávez’s version of 21st Century Socialism.
* Whoever one speaks to refers to urban myths regarding the targeting of the tournament by US authorities. If it weren't for events four years ago, you would call it collective paranoia but...
• To my ears, cries of “incautado” (to place under worker’s control) appeared to be dubbed into the crowd volume to emphasise the glory of the Bolívarian revolution but Dizrhythmia was setting in and I might have imagined this one!
Now don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of this “revolution” that are admirable and it is a positive advancement that the majority of South American countries have shaken off the yoke of US imperialism whether administered militarily (eg Venezuela) or economically (eg Argentina). But there are many aspects of this whole process that are more akin to the establishment of a cult of personality rather than to the creation of a people’s Socialist society. Chávez focuses on the big gestures but not the minutiae (which is also something that may be labelled against the tournament's organisation as a large percentage of purchased tickets are yet to reach their recipients including me!).
Wow, and this is only the first day! Here's hoping that the USA meet Venezuela later in the competition...
Where are we going to be by the end of this competition? Another coup attempt perhaps?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
From Hitler’s marketing of his political agenda during the 1936 Olympics to Maradona, Morales and Chávez (the absence of Fidel Castro preventing a modern day Gang Of Four) sitting side by side for the opening ceremony of yesterday’s Copa América , political leaders have always sought to be linked to sporting celebrations. But linkage is no longer enough as winning has become everything.
Athletics, cycling, wrestling, rugby and football (to name but a few) are inexorably associated with the abuse of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs). Without selecting any one particular occurrence, the general pattern is one whereby the powerful are able to employ teams of doctors and scientists to both create the PESs and to develop the masking substances that prevent detection. The sporting authorities have generally played along with this charade – it is a fact of outrageous statistical probability that the only player that I can remember (off the top of my head) being banned for doping in the World Cup is the best player to have ever graced a football pitch, Diego Maradona. On the numerous occasions where the European Big 4 (England, Italy, Germany and Spain) have been dabbling in a little illegal advantage, the authorities merely turn a blind eye to the corruption and focus on counting their profits.
The Primera Liga in Spain is typical of the laissez faire attitude demonstrated by the regulators historically. Erythropoitin (EPO) usage is rife in Spain and the drug may only be detected via blood tests which is presumably the reasoning why the Spanish authorities imposed futile urine tests in a rampant piece of corruption a couple of years back.
Consequently, this week’s announcement by Michel Platini that UEFA will be testing blood samples for the first time ever at next summer’s Euro 2008 competition is long overdue and is to be applauded.
But drug abuse is only a fraction of modern day contortionism within sport. The powerful nations have always enjoyed an advantage on the field of play and with the huge global television audiences for football, one might accept such a bias. However, recent high profile events have taken on a more holistically manipulated form. In one of the first posts on Football Is Fixed, we detailed the manner in which FIFA robbed Uzbekistan of a deserved potential place in the last World Cup via a Machiavellian piece of manoeuvring. To prompt your memory, the Uzbeks beat Bahrain 1-0 in the 1st Leg of the match which would determine who would meet Jack Warner’s oil rich Trinidad and Tobago in the play off for a place in the finals. During the match, the Japanese official incorrectly cancelled a penalty which would have given the Uzbeks a two goal advantage. FIFA’s ruling was, incredibly, that the match should be replayed entirely and, with Graham Poll in charge of the 2nd Leg, Bahrain unmeritocratically moved on. The fact that Uzbekistan has a far left administration obviously had absolutely no impact on this decision… FIFA's tilting in favour of Ukraine, Angola and Switzerland was similarly politicized.
The opening day of Copa América provided indications that, in the eyes of some of the competitor nations, it is no longer a case of supposedly keeping politics out of sport but rather of relegating sport to a secondary status so that the political operators may further their agendas. Following hot on the heels of a highly manipulated Gold Cup, it seems incredible that the issues highlighted below all occurred on the first day of the tournament.
• The CONMEBOL computer system was allegedly hacked into and, consequently, was offline for most of the twenty four hours leading up to the tournament start. Recent viral attacks have targeted European bookmakers and the entire country of Estonia was plunged into cybernetic misery when Russia decided to flex it’s bot muscles.
• The two main TV stations in the US showing the Copa América (GolTV and Telefutura) censored the inauguration ceremony making the heroically bold assessment that the mere sight of Comrade Hugo might pervert the minds of their sheltered citizens.
• The commentary on the US channels was also entertaining and was completely out of synch with the game by up to thirty seconds! The game had re-kicked off before the stations acknowledged that Peru had taken a 1-0 lead, for example. Were the TV companies writing the words for their commentators?
• In contrast, I watched the games from my hotel and was forced to miss the final Peru goal as television coverage flicked over to San Cristóbal so that we might all enjoy the publicity stunts that appear to underpin Chávez’s version of 21st Century Socialism.
* Whoever one speaks to refers to urban myths regarding the targeting of the tournament by US authorities. If it weren't for events four years ago, you would call it collective paranoia but...
• To my ears, cries of “incautado” (to place under worker’s control) appeared to be dubbed into the crowd volume to emphasise the glory of the Bolívarian revolution but Dizrhythmia was setting in and I might have imagined this one!
Now don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of this “revolution” that are admirable and it is a positive advancement that the majority of South American countries have shaken off the yoke of US imperialism whether administered militarily (eg Venezuela) or economically (eg Argentina). But there are many aspects of this whole process that are more akin to the establishment of a cult of personality rather than to the creation of a people’s Socialist society. Chávez focuses on the big gestures but not the minutiae (which is also something that may be labelled against the tournament's organisation as a large percentage of purchased tickets are yet to reach their recipients including me!).
Wow, and this is only the first day! Here's hoping that the USA meet Venezuela later in the competition...
Where are we going to be by the end of this competition? Another coup attempt perhaps?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
I'm Not Going To Fight For Oil
Today sees the start of the Copa América which is being held in Venezuela for the first time in the long history of the competition. One can only hope that the tournament will be more meritocratic than the Gold Cup which CONCACAF (with some considerable help from the officials) literally gave to a very moderate USA team – Canada should feel particularly aggrieved after their farce of a semi final.
The signs are promising. The matches are to be played in nine stadiums spread around this stunningly beautiful country which should enable soccer to broaden it’s fanbase at the expense of the national sports of rounders and beauty contests. Furthermore, although Hugo Chávez exhibits a megalomaniacal streak, it is refreshing to be in a country where socialism isn’t a dirty word – as soon as you land at the Simón Bolívar International Airport, you become aware that there is something significantly different about the place.
Over the duration of the competition, we are going to attempt to put together a series of posts relevant both to our blog and to the situation in both Venezuela and South America in general. Today we start with a little geopolitical pattern recognition in relation to black gold.
Venezuela is big in oil which was the prime reason for the unsuccessful US backed coup in 2003. Chávez has led the way in South America in renegotiating the abusive oil contracts established by the global oil giants by effectively renationalising the industry in favour of the populations rather than the shareholders of Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell. Blinkered individuals who believe that US foreign policy isn’t dictated by the needs of Big Oil and the inappropriately close links between this industry and the hierarchy of the American administration should consider the data below. We have listed the ten countries with the largest known deposits of oil together with the number of years that the stuff should last if it is continued to be pumped out of the ground at current rates. The figures are from BP.
Saudi Arabia 264 billion barrels (67 years)
Iran 135 billion barrels (87 years)
Iraq 115 billion barrels (100+ years)
Kuwait 105 billion barrels (100+ years)
UAE 95 billion barrels (90 years)
Venezuela 80 billion barrels (78 years)
Russia 80 billion barrels (22 years)
Libya 40 billion barrels (62 years)
Kazakhstan 35 billion barrels (77 years)
Nigeria 35 billion barrels (40 years)
Interesting eh? Observing geopolitical events directly linked to US strategies brings virtually all these territories into sharp focus. America has only a decade of oil left and the refusal of the hyperpower to recognise the necessity of a multi-tiered energy policy has resulted in huge numbers of innocent (and not so innocent) deaths in the last fifteen years as the US has either targeted the major global oil producers or has allowed such nations a very privileged status on a mutually beneficial level.
We would wish to offer a few examples of cynical realism for your delectation! Most of the collaborators and perpetrators of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia and, yet in the aftermath of the atrocity, senior Saudi officials (including relations of Bin Laden) were allowed to leave the US without questioning. Is there anybody out there who is naïve enough to believe that a similar accommodation would have been allowed if the plotters had been from, say, Cuba? Thought not… The first Iraq “war” was initiated solely because Saddam exhibited the temerity to cross the border into Kuwait with it’s oil reserves that will last into the next century - a similar strategy was conspicuous by it’s absence in Rwanda, for example. Additionally, once oilmen realised the supply side problems, peace was quickly established with Qaddafi despite the Lockerbie bombing and Kazakhstan has been fast tracked to the upper economic tables despite a government of dubious legality. For goodness sake, their football team is even allowed to compete in Euro 2008 which, considering the country is firmly located in Asia, is the sort of entertaining skewing of reality that is usually only reserved for the likes of that other great European country, Israel. The Niger Delta is one of the most destabilised regions in the world and Nigeria frequently ranks among the most corrupt countries in the various global surveys. Nigeria is one of the few countries on the planet that exhibits income inequality greater than that in Britain and the disenfranchised population have taken to kidnapping to get their deserved slice of the action before the cash is returned to shareholders as dividends. The re-energisation of the Cold War (which, lets face it never really ended) is another oil industry backed campaign. The multi coloured pseudo revolutions in Georgia and the Ukraine (amongst others) are indicators of the geopolitical creep in eastern Europe. The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq together with the attempted coup in Venezuela are further indicators of US geopolitical aims.
Not content with correlating US foreign policy with a commodity grab from the biggest oil inventories, the intelligence agencies and mercenaries of the US, Britain and Israel have been active in the supplementary territories too. Mossad took out Savimbi and oil is now great in Angola. Sudan can continue to murder, rape and pillage in Darfur as Khartoum is a second division oil producer with close links to China – if serious pressure was to be placed on Sudan, the supply crisis would deepen sending global oil prices higher still to the detriment of the world economy. It has reached the stage where satellite discovery of oil reserves is ALWAYS bad news for the masses in the countries concerned as Equatorial Guinea discovered when a bunch of South African and British mercenaries including Thatcher’s idiot son were caught plotting a coup there. Were there any arrests and convictions for the main perpetrators? This is a question that simply doesn’t even warrant an answer!
We have deliberately left one country in the top ten oil nations out of our assessment – Iran. One of the prime reasons that US policy in the Middle East appears so befuddled to observers is that there is minimal usage of the standard divide and rule tactic. If the regional hotspot had been a simple matter of politics, the US would have undoubtedly sided with either the Shia’s or the Sunni’s to drive forward their alleged democratic agenda. History does not support the reality of any such tactic. I’m too busy to go into details but the various conflagrations in the region are a random walk of US support for the various Islamic factions where the choice is entirely related to the requirements of Big Oil.
So, there are just two of the main oil countries that have come through this process with any degree of autonomy having successfully fought off US imperial interests - Saudi Arabia is simply too important to undermine and Venezuela will simply not put up with the interfering input of the CIA being crackers in Caracas.
And up from the ground came a bubbling pool...
Vamos Venezuela!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The signs are promising. The matches are to be played in nine stadiums spread around this stunningly beautiful country which should enable soccer to broaden it’s fanbase at the expense of the national sports of rounders and beauty contests. Furthermore, although Hugo Chávez exhibits a megalomaniacal streak, it is refreshing to be in a country where socialism isn’t a dirty word – as soon as you land at the Simón Bolívar International Airport, you become aware that there is something significantly different about the place.
Over the duration of the competition, we are going to attempt to put together a series of posts relevant both to our blog and to the situation in both Venezuela and South America in general. Today we start with a little geopolitical pattern recognition in relation to black gold.
Venezuela is big in oil which was the prime reason for the unsuccessful US backed coup in 2003. Chávez has led the way in South America in renegotiating the abusive oil contracts established by the global oil giants by effectively renationalising the industry in favour of the populations rather than the shareholders of Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell. Blinkered individuals who believe that US foreign policy isn’t dictated by the needs of Big Oil and the inappropriately close links between this industry and the hierarchy of the American administration should consider the data below. We have listed the ten countries with the largest known deposits of oil together with the number of years that the stuff should last if it is continued to be pumped out of the ground at current rates. The figures are from BP.
Saudi Arabia 264 billion barrels (67 years)
Iran 135 billion barrels (87 years)
Iraq 115 billion barrels (100+ years)
Kuwait 105 billion barrels (100+ years)
UAE 95 billion barrels (90 years)
Venezuela 80 billion barrels (78 years)
Russia 80 billion barrels (22 years)
Libya 40 billion barrels (62 years)
Kazakhstan 35 billion barrels (77 years)
Nigeria 35 billion barrels (40 years)
Interesting eh? Observing geopolitical events directly linked to US strategies brings virtually all these territories into sharp focus. America has only a decade of oil left and the refusal of the hyperpower to recognise the necessity of a multi-tiered energy policy has resulted in huge numbers of innocent (and not so innocent) deaths in the last fifteen years as the US has either targeted the major global oil producers or has allowed such nations a very privileged status on a mutually beneficial level.
We would wish to offer a few examples of cynical realism for your delectation! Most of the collaborators and perpetrators of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia and, yet in the aftermath of the atrocity, senior Saudi officials (including relations of Bin Laden) were allowed to leave the US without questioning. Is there anybody out there who is naïve enough to believe that a similar accommodation would have been allowed if the plotters had been from, say, Cuba? Thought not… The first Iraq “war” was initiated solely because Saddam exhibited the temerity to cross the border into Kuwait with it’s oil reserves that will last into the next century - a similar strategy was conspicuous by it’s absence in Rwanda, for example. Additionally, once oilmen realised the supply side problems, peace was quickly established with Qaddafi despite the Lockerbie bombing and Kazakhstan has been fast tracked to the upper economic tables despite a government of dubious legality. For goodness sake, their football team is even allowed to compete in Euro 2008 which, considering the country is firmly located in Asia, is the sort of entertaining skewing of reality that is usually only reserved for the likes of that other great European country, Israel. The Niger Delta is one of the most destabilised regions in the world and Nigeria frequently ranks among the most corrupt countries in the various global surveys. Nigeria is one of the few countries on the planet that exhibits income inequality greater than that in Britain and the disenfranchised population have taken to kidnapping to get their deserved slice of the action before the cash is returned to shareholders as dividends. The re-energisation of the Cold War (which, lets face it never really ended) is another oil industry backed campaign. The multi coloured pseudo revolutions in Georgia and the Ukraine (amongst others) are indicators of the geopolitical creep in eastern Europe. The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq together with the attempted coup in Venezuela are further indicators of US geopolitical aims.
Not content with correlating US foreign policy with a commodity grab from the biggest oil inventories, the intelligence agencies and mercenaries of the US, Britain and Israel have been active in the supplementary territories too. Mossad took out Savimbi and oil is now great in Angola. Sudan can continue to murder, rape and pillage in Darfur as Khartoum is a second division oil producer with close links to China – if serious pressure was to be placed on Sudan, the supply crisis would deepen sending global oil prices higher still to the detriment of the world economy. It has reached the stage where satellite discovery of oil reserves is ALWAYS bad news for the masses in the countries concerned as Equatorial Guinea discovered when a bunch of South African and British mercenaries including Thatcher’s idiot son were caught plotting a coup there. Were there any arrests and convictions for the main perpetrators? This is a question that simply doesn’t even warrant an answer!
We have deliberately left one country in the top ten oil nations out of our assessment – Iran. One of the prime reasons that US policy in the Middle East appears so befuddled to observers is that there is minimal usage of the standard divide and rule tactic. If the regional hotspot had been a simple matter of politics, the US would have undoubtedly sided with either the Shia’s or the Sunni’s to drive forward their alleged democratic agenda. History does not support the reality of any such tactic. I’m too busy to go into details but the various conflagrations in the region are a random walk of US support for the various Islamic factions where the choice is entirely related to the requirements of Big Oil.
So, there are just two of the main oil countries that have come through this process with any degree of autonomy having successfully fought off US imperial interests - Saudi Arabia is simply too important to undermine and Venezuela will simply not put up with the interfering input of the CIA being crackers in Caracas.
And up from the ground came a bubbling pool...
Vamos Venezuela!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 25 June 2007
Building Your Club On Third World Corruption
The summer break is filled with football stories that run and run and run... The summer break is also the time to hide away the media items that might imply that something is wrong with the game. The former creates highly manipulated betting markets where inside information rules and yet public disinformation driven by the media counterbalances such insider behaviour thus creating an equilibrium of positions in the marketplace. It also sells newspapers. The latter is a standard distraction tactic utilised by power abusers globally to limit public attention of things that they wish for you not to see. For example, the rise and fall of Quest's results covered barely a week in the press and Bob Woolmer's murder (sorry, death) lasted only a day while Thierry Henry's transfer to Barcelona and the takeover and management issues at Manchester City have been running since the dawn of time (or so it seems). In this post, we intend to focus on the former - the soap operas of the close season. We will be using the uproar at Man City as a structure that may be replicated in any spectacular society media ruse.
As we have posted previously, Thaksin Shinawatra is not a fit and proper person to be involved in the Premiership (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/06/taxing-thaksin.html). The freezing of his Thai-based assets would have ended his alleged interest in buying Man City if the man hadn't been making full use of offshore financial centres (OSFs). Aside from his looting of the country on a business level when he was Premier, we firmly believe that Thaksin and his cronies were linked far too closely to the underground Far East betting markets in Thailand. The dirty profits resulting were, no doubt, successfully secreted away in one of Asia's prime OSFs locations - Macau, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore. Due to his close corruptive links with the latter of these, it would be our estimation that this is where the money is based that may be used to purchase Man City. The Thai Finance Minister, Chalongphob Sussangkarn, states that Thaksin had declared no overseas assets when he was in power and, consequently, he is certain the Thai Assets Examination Committee will seek out the source of his funds with respect to potential (probable) illegality. Even the normally compliant Minister for Gambling, Richard Caborn, is urgently seeking talks with Scudamore of the Premier League specifically regarding Thaksin's attempted takeover. 'Nuff said...
It appears that the main momentum towards the takeover in Manchester has been former Man City player and supremo, sometime horserace trainer and businessman, Francis Lee. No surprise there then. Lee dived in the penalty area, ducked and dived in his bogroll business and now he is utilising his betting industry contacts to allow Manchester City to hit the illegal Asian betting markets big style. City sacked Pearce who not only had the common sense to get rid of Calamity James but also may well have led the England U-21's to Euro glory had it not been for the withdrawals of half his team due to Premiership club pressures. The media and the bookies then had a field day with markets and speculation regarding Ranieri becoming new manager when he had already signed on the dotted line in Turin and are continuing in the same manner with an avalanche of press leaks about Mr. Eriksson and Michael Owen.
The Dietrological Trading Team are unanimous in our assessment of the way that this theatre will play out. Thaksin will not be allowed to take over the club as he will not be able to prove the legality of his money and, although laundered money is as omnipresent in the Premiership as in the arms industry, Thaksin is neither American nor Israeli and we believe that the authorities are going to have to create a threshold of how deep into the gutter the money sloshing around the game is sourced. Inevitably, there is also a mature market monopolistic angle to this and, additionally, there is a racist angle to this nonsense too. The European and Israeli market operators are involved in an ongoing battle with the Asian market makers for absolute control of the global betting industry and inviting your enemy into your battle formations is not something that would have been suggested by Clausewitz, Howard or Sun Tzu! Furthermore, we do not believe that Sven will be welcome back into the English game. It was his wheeling and dealing in the fake sheikh episode that initiated the whole bungs inquiry - whistleblowers at any level are not welcome in the corrupt corridors of English football - and he also implied Redknapp's criminality which is only a wise course of action if invisibility is an option! As for Michael Owen? Whatever... If City wish to play with ten players, that is their choice. Of course, Thaksin and Sven might avoid these major obstacles but, in our guesstimation, the probability is low.
None of the characters recently involved in buying the Premiership clubs are what one might term ethical businessmen. The drivers of modern shareholder capitalism wish to hide away their profits from the tax authorities and there is a global network of OSFs that were established for this very reason. The global financial system is made less robust by the fact that some 15% of trading and investment exists around such dark pools of liquidity. Aside from denying governments their taxes and enhancing the bank balances of some particularly unsavoury characters, this process significantly increases systemic risk in the marketplace which prevents financial regulators and overseers from correctly estimating where the next financial crisis might begin. For example, the use of complex derivatives and the growth of hedge funds are generally secreted away in territories with minimal supervision. Each capitalist hotspot has a variety of OSFs hotspots. Britain relies on Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands and Jersey; The US on Bermuda, the Caribbean, Delaware and Nevada (the latter two onshore rather than offshore); Germany on Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg; France on Monaco and a variety a pinprick islands. OSFs are utilised both to launder money and to avoid taxes but, revealingly, the authorities are only interested in eliminating aspects of the former while regarding the latter, perversely, as somehow demonstrating how well the "market" in support of tax evasion works! By allowing companies and the wealthy to avoid taxation, OSFs sap tax revenues from real economies limiting the ability to pay for public services and resulting in increased taxation for those not fortunate enough to be provided with a tax-free loophole. When Bush produced a one-off tax amnesty in 2004, American companies repatriated $350 billion with psychopathic pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, leading the way with $38 billion! One might have thought that such creative accounting might preclude their targeting of Third World generic drug producers. Not so! The activities of the corrupt tend to spread throughout their business operations as all major company decisions are founded on the company culture. If the culture is to race to the bottom of the barrel then the bottom of the barrel becomes synonymous with the corporation.
And, yet, tax evasion is not the most worrying aspect of OSFs. That prize is reserved for the money launderers which rather neatly brings us back to Mr Shinawatra, Manchester City and the bookmaking industry. Organisations and individuals involved in the betting industry whether allegedly legal as in Nevada or downright illegal as in the Far East football betting markets or the South Asian cricket markets have a major problem with their ill-begotten financial gains. It is relatively easy to fix a Premiership football match, to place many millions of dollars on the underground markets and to collect your corrupt winnings. Then what? The only route to securing one's profits are the OSFs and the bookmakers are able to effectively disguise their financial gains through the use of shell companies or even legitimate above board bookmaking operations in the region. Most major European bookmakers either trade directly in Asia (Ladbrokes, for example) or have close links with financial institutions in the Far East (eg William Hill and Japanese investment house, Nomura). With an infrastructure that may be easily moulded to the specifics of a particular company, it is a facile process to rinse your money in an OSFs.
The OSFs are a blight on the whole financial system and not just the football industry. Although Dietrological primarily focus on the links between finance and football, we should be even more concerned about the impact of OSFs on the international financial markets (IFMs). There is a very high probability that the next financial depression will erupt when a number of OSFs hedge funds go belly up leading to feedback loops that create contagion throughout the financial system.
Do the fans who used to stand on the Kippax still want Shinawatra to take over? Probably, they are not the brightest bunch of fans on the planet...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
As we have posted previously, Thaksin Shinawatra is not a fit and proper person to be involved in the Premiership (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/06/taxing-thaksin.html). The freezing of his Thai-based assets would have ended his alleged interest in buying Man City if the man hadn't been making full use of offshore financial centres (OSFs). Aside from his looting of the country on a business level when he was Premier, we firmly believe that Thaksin and his cronies were linked far too closely to the underground Far East betting markets in Thailand. The dirty profits resulting were, no doubt, successfully secreted away in one of Asia's prime OSFs locations - Macau, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore. Due to his close corruptive links with the latter of these, it would be our estimation that this is where the money is based that may be used to purchase Man City. The Thai Finance Minister, Chalongphob Sussangkarn, states that Thaksin had declared no overseas assets when he was in power and, consequently, he is certain the Thai Assets Examination Committee will seek out the source of his funds with respect to potential (probable) illegality. Even the normally compliant Minister for Gambling, Richard Caborn, is urgently seeking talks with Scudamore of the Premier League specifically regarding Thaksin's attempted takeover. 'Nuff said...
It appears that the main momentum towards the takeover in Manchester has been former Man City player and supremo, sometime horserace trainer and businessman, Francis Lee. No surprise there then. Lee dived in the penalty area, ducked and dived in his bogroll business and now he is utilising his betting industry contacts to allow Manchester City to hit the illegal Asian betting markets big style. City sacked Pearce who not only had the common sense to get rid of Calamity James but also may well have led the England U-21's to Euro glory had it not been for the withdrawals of half his team due to Premiership club pressures. The media and the bookies then had a field day with markets and speculation regarding Ranieri becoming new manager when he had already signed on the dotted line in Turin and are continuing in the same manner with an avalanche of press leaks about Mr. Eriksson and Michael Owen.
The Dietrological Trading Team are unanimous in our assessment of the way that this theatre will play out. Thaksin will not be allowed to take over the club as he will not be able to prove the legality of his money and, although laundered money is as omnipresent in the Premiership as in the arms industry, Thaksin is neither American nor Israeli and we believe that the authorities are going to have to create a threshold of how deep into the gutter the money sloshing around the game is sourced. Inevitably, there is also a mature market monopolistic angle to this and, additionally, there is a racist angle to this nonsense too. The European and Israeli market operators are involved in an ongoing battle with the Asian market makers for absolute control of the global betting industry and inviting your enemy into your battle formations is not something that would have been suggested by Clausewitz, Howard or Sun Tzu! Furthermore, we do not believe that Sven will be welcome back into the English game. It was his wheeling and dealing in the fake sheikh episode that initiated the whole bungs inquiry - whistleblowers at any level are not welcome in the corrupt corridors of English football - and he also implied Redknapp's criminality which is only a wise course of action if invisibility is an option! As for Michael Owen? Whatever... If City wish to play with ten players, that is their choice. Of course, Thaksin and Sven might avoid these major obstacles but, in our guesstimation, the probability is low.
None of the characters recently involved in buying the Premiership clubs are what one might term ethical businessmen. The drivers of modern shareholder capitalism wish to hide away their profits from the tax authorities and there is a global network of OSFs that were established for this very reason. The global financial system is made less robust by the fact that some 15% of trading and investment exists around such dark pools of liquidity. Aside from denying governments their taxes and enhancing the bank balances of some particularly unsavoury characters, this process significantly increases systemic risk in the marketplace which prevents financial regulators and overseers from correctly estimating where the next financial crisis might begin. For example, the use of complex derivatives and the growth of hedge funds are generally secreted away in territories with minimal supervision. Each capitalist hotspot has a variety of OSFs hotspots. Britain relies on Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands and Jersey; The US on Bermuda, the Caribbean, Delaware and Nevada (the latter two onshore rather than offshore); Germany on Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg; France on Monaco and a variety a pinprick islands. OSFs are utilised both to launder money and to avoid taxes but, revealingly, the authorities are only interested in eliminating aspects of the former while regarding the latter, perversely, as somehow demonstrating how well the "market" in support of tax evasion works! By allowing companies and the wealthy to avoid taxation, OSFs sap tax revenues from real economies limiting the ability to pay for public services and resulting in increased taxation for those not fortunate enough to be provided with a tax-free loophole. When Bush produced a one-off tax amnesty in 2004, American companies repatriated $350 billion with psychopathic pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, leading the way with $38 billion! One might have thought that such creative accounting might preclude their targeting of Third World generic drug producers. Not so! The activities of the corrupt tend to spread throughout their business operations as all major company decisions are founded on the company culture. If the culture is to race to the bottom of the barrel then the bottom of the barrel becomes synonymous with the corporation.
And, yet, tax evasion is not the most worrying aspect of OSFs. That prize is reserved for the money launderers which rather neatly brings us back to Mr Shinawatra, Manchester City and the bookmaking industry. Organisations and individuals involved in the betting industry whether allegedly legal as in Nevada or downright illegal as in the Far East football betting markets or the South Asian cricket markets have a major problem with their ill-begotten financial gains. It is relatively easy to fix a Premiership football match, to place many millions of dollars on the underground markets and to collect your corrupt winnings. Then what? The only route to securing one's profits are the OSFs and the bookmakers are able to effectively disguise their financial gains through the use of shell companies or even legitimate above board bookmaking operations in the region. Most major European bookmakers either trade directly in Asia (Ladbrokes, for example) or have close links with financial institutions in the Far East (eg William Hill and Japanese investment house, Nomura). With an infrastructure that may be easily moulded to the specifics of a particular company, it is a facile process to rinse your money in an OSFs.
The OSFs are a blight on the whole financial system and not just the football industry. Although Dietrological primarily focus on the links between finance and football, we should be even more concerned about the impact of OSFs on the international financial markets (IFMs). There is a very high probability that the next financial depression will erupt when a number of OSFs hedge funds go belly up leading to feedback loops that create contagion throughout the financial system.
Do the fans who used to stand on the Kippax still want Shinawatra to take over? Probably, they are not the brightest bunch of fans on the planet...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 23 June 2007
Propaganda And The Peripheral Press
Busy lives result in many of us having to depend on a variety of externalised sources for our societal information. The previous post suggested that such a dependency is inappropriate and that we are not able to rely on the media to act as an independent channel to the truth. One of the prime ways that media achieves this sleight of hand is via the reframing of an argument, reality or news story. A spectrum of tactics is utilised to divert our attention from where we should be looking to an altogether safer environment where the global elite and the media barons wish for us to look. The media undertakes a critical role in the filtering of information and in the subject matter that is allowed to pass editorial control. As an example, lets look at how media in the west has dealt with the continuing crisis in the Middle East both with respect to the war of terror and the Palestinian crisis.
Firstly, a little background...
The coalition of the willing is active throughout the Middle East with the publicised aim of bringing democracy to the region. The initial spin around the illegal occupation of Iraq was that the west was out to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people while unearthing Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and bringing the former rulers to summary justice. All of these publicised factors were a veil behind which the reality of the west's agenda lurked - this alleged process of democratisation never mentioned oil or the west's long-term strategic geopolitical agenda in the region.
The USA have not utilised the winning of hearts and minds as a military backcloth since Vietnam. The shock and awe tactics developed against the Vietcong have been the strategy of choice in the intervening years and Iraq is no different. Instead of trying to win popular support, the US has instead approached conflict on a behavioural level whereby tactics are developed that bludgeon the population into an acceptance of western democracy - think Fallujah, for example. Baudrillard famously claimed, quite correctly, that the first Iraq war never actually took place as the armed forces of the protagonists never actually fought each other face to face - as good an example of the triumph of shock and awe over hearts and minds as one is likely to find! The shock and awe mentality has spread through to the gross violations of the Geneva Convention that are represented by Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The torture techniques that were successfully utilised against the US in Vietnam have formed the bedrock of America's own tactics in extracting (flawed) information from prisoners in the current phase of the American's imperial agenda. Many of the forms of torture are highly behavioural in style and, yet, are very successful in breaking the wills of the alleged enemy combatants - 24/7 heavy metal music, waterboarding, the use of wild dogs and sexual humiliation have the same collated impact as more physical forms of abuse.
Since the 2nd World War, the US has intervened repeatedly across the planet under the flag of freedom. Initially, it was freedom from communism that allowed the butchery and starvation of many Greek people, for example, to be justified on the grounds that a few starving children were of no relevance when compared with the good fight against the commies. At this time, the CIA was globally active destabilising democratically elected regimes in furtherance of America's imperial aims. As an example, compare how CIA agent Larry Devlin was sent to the Congo to poison the government leader Patrice Lumumba with the huge fuss over the poisoning of some minor Russian recently in London. Lumumba was eventually kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 1961 with the acquiescence of the Belgians and Americans. The number of column inches relating to these two news items is revealing.
Bringing the argument up to date, I intend to focus on the attitude of the powers that be to the democratic election of Hamas to rule Palestine. The coalition of the willing are big on democracy (apart from the US 2000 election, that is) and one might have thought that a non-rigged election might be applauded. Don't be soft. Global sanctions were the first tactic to be introduced, followed by the imprisoning of over half the Hamas MPs in Israeli jails. When this failed and a peace deal was reached between Hamas and Fatah that promised the hope of a better future for all Palestinians, the coalition got serious. In February, Condoleeza Rice held meetings with Fatah, Israel and pliant Arab leaders. A strategy was established to provide arms and training to Fatah with the prime purpose of overthrowing a democratically elected government through the tried and tested tactic of divide and rule. Israel loosened their vice-like grip just enough to allow the weapons into the territories with the inevitable result of yet more bloodshed. The Americans also backed the attempted coup against Venezuelan hardman Hugo Chávez in 2003 in an attempt to undermine the man's Bolívarian revolution and we could itemise numerous other recent examples where the coalition of the willing have clearly demonstrated an aversion to democracy when such democracy does not serve their strategic agenda.
So how does our free press deal with this sixty year old global agenda? Quite simply, it doesn't. All coverage of the militaristic agendas of the world's sole superpower is conspicuous by it's absence. For example, look at assassination. The deaths of Litvinenko (the unfortunate Russian) and Rafik Hariri are an omnipresent factor in all news coverage of Russia and our glorious war. But, where is the press coverage for the murders of Yasser Arafat or Savimbi? Or look at the warping of the arguments. The coalition line goes that there can be no accommodation of Hamas until the group recognises Israel's right to exist. Where is the press coverage regarding Likud's lack of recognition of the right of a Palestinian state to exist? The press also wishes for us to perceive these wars in isolation rather than combining them as an ongoing campaign to achieve prescribed military aims.
The conflicts in the Middle East only make full sense when one views the agendas that have been implemented over the last half century in an holistic manner. Look at a map of the region with oil deposits highlighted and all the incremental wars and invasions start to make sense. Oil pipelines, control of the region from Europe through Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Afghanistan are the key factors. Democracy, weapons of mass destruction and alleged assassinations were simply so much spin. The US allows Israel illegally held nuclear weapons but threatens more armageddon if Iran go down the same route. The whole agenda is kneejerkingly simplistic and reactive. By targeting Islam as a whole, America has missed out on a more creative tactic of setting the Shias against the Sunnis at America's bidding and vice versa. Any moral high ground that may have acted as a persuasion to the myopic masses has been totally undermined by illegal war, torture, terror and rabidly non-democratic processes.
Arthur Schlesinger established that the global agenda moves in a series of fits and starts. Every 40 years or so, there is a new climax of psychopathic behaviour that reaches such a crescendo that the elite have to take notice of the masses and, consequently, decelerate. This law is based on the valid premise that most people just wish for an easy life but that when societal, business, governmental and military psychopathy reaches a zenith, the cry goes up that enough is enough and we are all rewarded with a window of pseudo-social living until the next generation can be bought off through their lack of political memory. The last two zeniths were represented by the Depression and the aftermath of Vietnam. Our current cycle began with the nadir of the imposition of shareholder capitalism in the early eighties and the increase in enlightened cynicism is suggestive of an imminent new zenith.
It is by no means certain that the planet will be able to survive the next wave of psychopathy unless considerable restructuring is undertaken in the near future.
And what may we expect from our free press? It is to all of our disadvantages that our present media does not inform us about geopolitical realities and corruptions but chooses to focus instead on propaganda and the periphery. Even in France, 75% of the media is in the possession of just two military defence companies. We cannot expect such organisations to take a neutral line.
In the words of Bertrand Russell: "the authorities no longer have sufficient belief in the justice of their cause to think that it can survive the ordeal of free discussion." Expect more of the same ad nauseum...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Firstly, a little background...
The coalition of the willing is active throughout the Middle East with the publicised aim of bringing democracy to the region. The initial spin around the illegal occupation of Iraq was that the west was out to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people while unearthing Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and bringing the former rulers to summary justice. All of these publicised factors were a veil behind which the reality of the west's agenda lurked - this alleged process of democratisation never mentioned oil or the west's long-term strategic geopolitical agenda in the region.
The USA have not utilised the winning of hearts and minds as a military backcloth since Vietnam. The shock and awe tactics developed against the Vietcong have been the strategy of choice in the intervening years and Iraq is no different. Instead of trying to win popular support, the US has instead approached conflict on a behavioural level whereby tactics are developed that bludgeon the population into an acceptance of western democracy - think Fallujah, for example. Baudrillard famously claimed, quite correctly, that the first Iraq war never actually took place as the armed forces of the protagonists never actually fought each other face to face - as good an example of the triumph of shock and awe over hearts and minds as one is likely to find! The shock and awe mentality has spread through to the gross violations of the Geneva Convention that are represented by Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The torture techniques that were successfully utilised against the US in Vietnam have formed the bedrock of America's own tactics in extracting (flawed) information from prisoners in the current phase of the American's imperial agenda. Many of the forms of torture are highly behavioural in style and, yet, are very successful in breaking the wills of the alleged enemy combatants - 24/7 heavy metal music, waterboarding, the use of wild dogs and sexual humiliation have the same collated impact as more physical forms of abuse.
Since the 2nd World War, the US has intervened repeatedly across the planet under the flag of freedom. Initially, it was freedom from communism that allowed the butchery and starvation of many Greek people, for example, to be justified on the grounds that a few starving children were of no relevance when compared with the good fight against the commies. At this time, the CIA was globally active destabilising democratically elected regimes in furtherance of America's imperial aims. As an example, compare how CIA agent Larry Devlin was sent to the Congo to poison the government leader Patrice Lumumba with the huge fuss over the poisoning of some minor Russian recently in London. Lumumba was eventually kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 1961 with the acquiescence of the Belgians and Americans. The number of column inches relating to these two news items is revealing.
Bringing the argument up to date, I intend to focus on the attitude of the powers that be to the democratic election of Hamas to rule Palestine. The coalition of the willing are big on democracy (apart from the US 2000 election, that is) and one might have thought that a non-rigged election might be applauded. Don't be soft. Global sanctions were the first tactic to be introduced, followed by the imprisoning of over half the Hamas MPs in Israeli jails. When this failed and a peace deal was reached between Hamas and Fatah that promised the hope of a better future for all Palestinians, the coalition got serious. In February, Condoleeza Rice held meetings with Fatah, Israel and pliant Arab leaders. A strategy was established to provide arms and training to Fatah with the prime purpose of overthrowing a democratically elected government through the tried and tested tactic of divide and rule. Israel loosened their vice-like grip just enough to allow the weapons into the territories with the inevitable result of yet more bloodshed. The Americans also backed the attempted coup against Venezuelan hardman Hugo Chávez in 2003 in an attempt to undermine the man's Bolívarian revolution and we could itemise numerous other recent examples where the coalition of the willing have clearly demonstrated an aversion to democracy when such democracy does not serve their strategic agenda.
So how does our free press deal with this sixty year old global agenda? Quite simply, it doesn't. All coverage of the militaristic agendas of the world's sole superpower is conspicuous by it's absence. For example, look at assassination. The deaths of Litvinenko (the unfortunate Russian) and Rafik Hariri are an omnipresent factor in all news coverage of Russia and our glorious war. But, where is the press coverage for the murders of Yasser Arafat or Savimbi? Or look at the warping of the arguments. The coalition line goes that there can be no accommodation of Hamas until the group recognises Israel's right to exist. Where is the press coverage regarding Likud's lack of recognition of the right of a Palestinian state to exist? The press also wishes for us to perceive these wars in isolation rather than combining them as an ongoing campaign to achieve prescribed military aims.
The conflicts in the Middle East only make full sense when one views the agendas that have been implemented over the last half century in an holistic manner. Look at a map of the region with oil deposits highlighted and all the incremental wars and invasions start to make sense. Oil pipelines, control of the region from Europe through Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Afghanistan are the key factors. Democracy, weapons of mass destruction and alleged assassinations were simply so much spin. The US allows Israel illegally held nuclear weapons but threatens more armageddon if Iran go down the same route. The whole agenda is kneejerkingly simplistic and reactive. By targeting Islam as a whole, America has missed out on a more creative tactic of setting the Shias against the Sunnis at America's bidding and vice versa. Any moral high ground that may have acted as a persuasion to the myopic masses has been totally undermined by illegal war, torture, terror and rabidly non-democratic processes.
Arthur Schlesinger established that the global agenda moves in a series of fits and starts. Every 40 years or so, there is a new climax of psychopathic behaviour that reaches such a crescendo that the elite have to take notice of the masses and, consequently, decelerate. This law is based on the valid premise that most people just wish for an easy life but that when societal, business, governmental and military psychopathy reaches a zenith, the cry goes up that enough is enough and we are all rewarded with a window of pseudo-social living until the next generation can be bought off through their lack of political memory. The last two zeniths were represented by the Depression and the aftermath of Vietnam. Our current cycle began with the nadir of the imposition of shareholder capitalism in the early eighties and the increase in enlightened cynicism is suggestive of an imminent new zenith.
It is by no means certain that the planet will be able to survive the next wave of psychopathy unless considerable restructuring is undertaken in the near future.
And what may we expect from our free press? It is to all of our disadvantages that our present media does not inform us about geopolitical realities and corruptions but chooses to focus instead on propaganda and the periphery. Even in France, 75% of the media is in the possession of just two military defence companies. We cannot expect such organisations to take a neutral line.
In the words of Bertrand Russell: "the authorities no longer have sufficient belief in the justice of their cause to think that it can survive the ordeal of free discussion." Expect more of the same ad nauseum...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 21 June 2007
The Prevention Of Journalism
In order for any corrupt structure to maintain it's power foundation in a world of 24/7 rolling news media, control of the media outlets and the individual journalists is of paramount importance. Individuals like Berlusconi, Chávez and Murdoch further their political and business agendas through their extensive media empires which allow them to set the media templates that produce the propaganda, spin and fallacy that comes to be termed news. This is hardly a recent phenomena and journalistic hacks have been avoiding upsetting the corportate apple carts since Orwell's time at least - to quote: "...in England the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates, and the bureaucrats, but that on a long view the weakening of the desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all".
In the football sphere, all insiders whether traders, bookmakers, management, boards, journalists, commentators, administrators, senior players and referees are aware of some or all aspects of the corruption of the game. Indeed the manipulations form the prime basis of most conversations between insiders as there is a certain thrill at being privy to a corruption that is able to provide you with both interpersonal currency and financial gain. And yet, from a media perspective, none of these corrupt structures are presented to the public via the media outlets that allegedly keep us informed of the developments in our sport. Why so?
The simple and unpalatable answer is that all the insiders, no matter what their relative position in the informational hierarchy, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. This is self evident at the top of the pyramid but, at lower levels, a balanced acquiescence is necessary to co-opt and to maintain effective control of the worker ants. If a journalist, for example, decided to go public about the corruption relating to the highly liquid betting markets in the Far East with their inappropriate influence on match outcomes in the Premiership, then he/she is losing out in a range of ways through such whistleblowing. Firstly, you're out of a job as soon as it is feasible. Secondly, a whole bunch of individuals will not be particularly thrilled by your actions. Thirdly, not only are you kissing goodbye to a nice steady wage for being obedient, you are also losing out on those nice little earners that permeate through from the corrupters to the trading rooms and on into the media centres. Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds him/herself thwarted by the general atmosphere of conformity imposed by a few rich and powerful men. The enemies of intellectual freedom always attempt to keep the issue of truth versus lies as far away from public gaze as is possible when set against the events that represent our spectacularised reality. Liberty of the intellect means the freedom to publicise what one has experienced and NOT to be obliged to create illusory fabrications that suit the strategies of the media barons.
To quote Orwell again: "Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud". Many of our modern so-called democracies exhibit exactly this construct.
It is a pertinent question that needs to be asked far more aggressively than any sideshow to do with wrist slapping related to the bungs inquiry. Why is illegal underground criminalised gambling allowed on major football matches? Why does no media outlet even confront the issue?
Think about it...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
In the football sphere, all insiders whether traders, bookmakers, management, boards, journalists, commentators, administrators, senior players and referees are aware of some or all aspects of the corruption of the game. Indeed the manipulations form the prime basis of most conversations between insiders as there is a certain thrill at being privy to a corruption that is able to provide you with both interpersonal currency and financial gain. And yet, from a media perspective, none of these corrupt structures are presented to the public via the media outlets that allegedly keep us informed of the developments in our sport. Why so?
The simple and unpalatable answer is that all the insiders, no matter what their relative position in the informational hierarchy, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. This is self evident at the top of the pyramid but, at lower levels, a balanced acquiescence is necessary to co-opt and to maintain effective control of the worker ants. If a journalist, for example, decided to go public about the corruption relating to the highly liquid betting markets in the Far East with their inappropriate influence on match outcomes in the Premiership, then he/she is losing out in a range of ways through such whistleblowing. Firstly, you're out of a job as soon as it is feasible. Secondly, a whole bunch of individuals will not be particularly thrilled by your actions. Thirdly, not only are you kissing goodbye to a nice steady wage for being obedient, you are also losing out on those nice little earners that permeate through from the corrupters to the trading rooms and on into the media centres. Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds him/herself thwarted by the general atmosphere of conformity imposed by a few rich and powerful men. The enemies of intellectual freedom always attempt to keep the issue of truth versus lies as far away from public gaze as is possible when set against the events that represent our spectacularised reality. Liberty of the intellect means the freedom to publicise what one has experienced and NOT to be obliged to create illusory fabrications that suit the strategies of the media barons.
To quote Orwell again: "Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud". Many of our modern so-called democracies exhibit exactly this construct.
It is a pertinent question that needs to be asked far more aggressively than any sideshow to do with wrist slapping related to the bungs inquiry. Why is illegal underground criminalised gambling allowed on major football matches? Why does no media outlet even confront the issue?
Think about it...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
A Kaiser, A Cyclist And A Few Dodgy Referees
Despite the successful hosting of last year's World Cup and the glorious bullying 13-0 defeat of San Marino, recent times have not been the most positive in German football (nor indeed in German sport in general). In many ways, we are in just deserts territory here but not entirely so. How come the hosting of the spectacular society premier global football tournament has still produced a period of defensive self-analysis?
As we have posted previously, the Bundesliga is the least corrupted of the big 5 European football leagues being a different magnitude of meritocratic when compared with the nonsense in the Premiership or Serie A. When the link was proven between referee Robert Hoyzer and Croatian underground betting rings, the authorities moved at speed to convict the corrupt official both with respect to the laws of the game and the laws of the land. Furthermore, another top flight referee, Jürgen Jansen, would have been banned in the scandal if a behind-the-scenes agreement had not been reached by the DFB and Berlin's public prosecutors office. But proper credit must be given to the German authorities. All major illegal gambling on the Bundesliga for periods of season 2006/07 were directly targeted by the authorities. A considerable area of our early season analysis focused on this totally unique way of undermining the match manipulators. Professional betting money was being forced either to be less psychopathic in it's degree of corruption (ie less greedy) or out of the game altogether in search of other properly psychopathic pastures. The mechanism utilised by the DFB is complex and analytically proprietary but it forms only part of a declared longer term strategy for the domestic markets to be under the direct control of the DFB. There are evidently infrastructural similarities between England and Germany here but it should be noted that both the inner workings of the power hierarchy and the degree of corruption are markedly dissimilar.
Despite cleaning up their act regarding Hoyzer and Jansen, the German referees have still produced a problematic year (and not just for underworld gambling syndicates). Herbert Fandel has been parachuted to stratospheric levels since Michel Platini took control of European football. I have a problem with this. Match data analysis, match performances, inability to gauge a violent atmosphere, peculiar correlations to particular betting market patterns, and a refereeing style that made Graham Poll's degree of egotism seem mild suggest that Fandel, if allowed to officiate at all, should be in the German Regional Leagues or some equivalent level. And he's got big hair...
Fandel has been chosen for three major events in the late season. First was his inflammatory refereeing of the Roma versus Manchester United uproar in the Stadio Olympico. People got hurt because of his style of refereeing on that evening and being struck off might have been a suitable reward. But no. Give the man the premier club game on the planet instead and let him fuck that up too. And so it came to pass (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/05/low-lie-fields-of-athens.html). Not content with allowing Fandel to mess up big style twice, he was then given, and eventually forced to abandon after being assaulted by a stroppy Danish fan, the Denmark versus Sweden Euro 2008 Qualifier. Flouncy drama queen style officiating is not a good idea when there is a bit of an atmosphere going down. Spectacular society cannot spectacularise bigotry, hatred, hooliganism and regional and international rivalries and the game would be improved if low key officials were in charge of such events.
Kicker magazine is the ultimate source for football data on the Bundesliga. Kicker is obsessive about all aspects of match data (as indeed are the media of all the other major leagues; it is only in England where this level of analytical information is hidden from public gaze) and they rate the referees in an obsessively detailed manner. My personal view is that the best referee in Germany is Knut Kircher. Let's compare Fandel with Kircher. Kicker rates referees on a 1 to 6 basis (one being excellent). Fandel only scored 2.5 or higher on four occasions (19% of games); Kircher achieved sixteen 2.5+ ratings (57%). Or, to enhance the point, 3.5+ being achieved by Kircher 86% of the time; Gagelmann 94%; Fandel 52%.
Fandel isn't the only overrated and allegedly corrupt referee still operating in the Bundesliga and, if it were in our interests, we would be more expansive about our database. But it isn't...
It is to Germany's credit that it has just been announced that a serving policewoman, Bibiana Steinhaus, will referee second level Bundesliga games from next season. This is an immensely positive move of the type that we have been advocating throughout the lifetime of this blog. Less Poll and Wiley and more women officials please.
This spectrum of pluses and minuses in the world of German refereeing has had to take it's slot on a crowded stage. Below are just a few of the other destabilisers that have hit Deutschland of late.
* Johansson losing to Platini in the race to be UEFA supremo totally undermined the rumoured hidden agenda of Beckenbauer stepping into the Swedes shoes after a year. Der Kaiser threw all his toys out of the pram and sacked Magath as FC Bayern manager. Impulsive stroppy strategy is rarely a good thing as Bayern managed not only to fail to win the Bundesliga title but achieved a creative double whammy of missing out on the Champions League too.
* The revelations relating to pumped up Jan Ullrich and a host of other German cyclists who explored the benefits of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) have rocked the country massively. Cycling is serious in Germany and the invalidation of past sporting triumphs is not easy to swallow. Links from the doping ring to Freiburg's sports teams and medical establishments and the consequent adjacentness to current German football team boss Joachim Löw have hardly lifted the gloom. Bring back Klinsmann! PESs have existed in German sport for far too long and it is an unreasonable abuse to expect or force your countrymen (and women) to damage their bodies in search of sporting excellence. This sentence could equally have been applied to virtually any other first world country but, despite that, we have never seen an incidence similar to Bayer Leverkusen in the year they reached the Champions League Final and the negative reaction to their alleged PESs usage during the following season.
* The general level of merely adequate performances across the board in football have been a source of much angst. Performances of German club teams in the Champions League and UEFA Cup has been abysmal and it is not a normally recognisable German trait to regard a Semi Final defeat to Italy with home advantage to represent a World Cup success.
* FC Bayern have been displaying a degree of paranoia regarding their supposed demotion in the ranks of the G14(18). Such adjustment has probably occurred but it's a bit rich to hear the Bavarians complaining about an abuse of power and privilege.
Capacity crowds being the norm for German football matches makes the Premiership and Serie A green with envy. There are a complex array of reasons for the high number of sell-outs in the Bundesliga but there are a few that the DFB might particularly like to focus on as they move forward into the post-Hoyzer era. Crowds have fallen in England and Italy as the general consensus of opinion in both countries among the true spectators (not the prawn sandwich lot) is that the game has sold out to a rather unpleasant mixture of inappropriate individuals. There are clear indications that the DFB, in it's desire to be able to compete on a level playing field across European and global football competitions, is selecting a similarly corrupt edifice to the ones in place in Serie A and the Premiership. The German fan is a knowledgeable fan and this simply isn't going to wash. And, furthermore, the timing is poor. The German model will be up and running at just around the time when mainstream media is forced to acknowledge the corruption in the global game related the betting markets.
If you are going to be corrupt, get a distinct first mover advantage. For repeated examples, monitor Murdoch's empire building strategies...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
As we have posted previously, the Bundesliga is the least corrupted of the big 5 European football leagues being a different magnitude of meritocratic when compared with the nonsense in the Premiership or Serie A. When the link was proven between referee Robert Hoyzer and Croatian underground betting rings, the authorities moved at speed to convict the corrupt official both with respect to the laws of the game and the laws of the land. Furthermore, another top flight referee, Jürgen Jansen, would have been banned in the scandal if a behind-the-scenes agreement had not been reached by the DFB and Berlin's public prosecutors office. But proper credit must be given to the German authorities. All major illegal gambling on the Bundesliga for periods of season 2006/07 were directly targeted by the authorities. A considerable area of our early season analysis focused on this totally unique way of undermining the match manipulators. Professional betting money was being forced either to be less psychopathic in it's degree of corruption (ie less greedy) or out of the game altogether in search of other properly psychopathic pastures. The mechanism utilised by the DFB is complex and analytically proprietary but it forms only part of a declared longer term strategy for the domestic markets to be under the direct control of the DFB. There are evidently infrastructural similarities between England and Germany here but it should be noted that both the inner workings of the power hierarchy and the degree of corruption are markedly dissimilar.
Despite cleaning up their act regarding Hoyzer and Jansen, the German referees have still produced a problematic year (and not just for underworld gambling syndicates). Herbert Fandel has been parachuted to stratospheric levels since Michel Platini took control of European football. I have a problem with this. Match data analysis, match performances, inability to gauge a violent atmosphere, peculiar correlations to particular betting market patterns, and a refereeing style that made Graham Poll's degree of egotism seem mild suggest that Fandel, if allowed to officiate at all, should be in the German Regional Leagues or some equivalent level. And he's got big hair...
Fandel has been chosen for three major events in the late season. First was his inflammatory refereeing of the Roma versus Manchester United uproar in the Stadio Olympico. People got hurt because of his style of refereeing on that evening and being struck off might have been a suitable reward. But no. Give the man the premier club game on the planet instead and let him fuck that up too. And so it came to pass (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/05/low-lie-fields-of-athens.html). Not content with allowing Fandel to mess up big style twice, he was then given, and eventually forced to abandon after being assaulted by a stroppy Danish fan, the Denmark versus Sweden Euro 2008 Qualifier. Flouncy drama queen style officiating is not a good idea when there is a bit of an atmosphere going down. Spectacular society cannot spectacularise bigotry, hatred, hooliganism and regional and international rivalries and the game would be improved if low key officials were in charge of such events.
Kicker magazine is the ultimate source for football data on the Bundesliga. Kicker is obsessive about all aspects of match data (as indeed are the media of all the other major leagues; it is only in England where this level of analytical information is hidden from public gaze) and they rate the referees in an obsessively detailed manner. My personal view is that the best referee in Germany is Knut Kircher. Let's compare Fandel with Kircher. Kicker rates referees on a 1 to 6 basis (one being excellent). Fandel only scored 2.5 or higher on four occasions (19% of games); Kircher achieved sixteen 2.5+ ratings (57%). Or, to enhance the point, 3.5+ being achieved by Kircher 86% of the time; Gagelmann 94%; Fandel 52%.
Fandel isn't the only overrated and allegedly corrupt referee still operating in the Bundesliga and, if it were in our interests, we would be more expansive about our database. But it isn't...
It is to Germany's credit that it has just been announced that a serving policewoman, Bibiana Steinhaus, will referee second level Bundesliga games from next season. This is an immensely positive move of the type that we have been advocating throughout the lifetime of this blog. Less Poll and Wiley and more women officials please.
This spectrum of pluses and minuses in the world of German refereeing has had to take it's slot on a crowded stage. Below are just a few of the other destabilisers that have hit Deutschland of late.
* Johansson losing to Platini in the race to be UEFA supremo totally undermined the rumoured hidden agenda of Beckenbauer stepping into the Swedes shoes after a year. Der Kaiser threw all his toys out of the pram and sacked Magath as FC Bayern manager. Impulsive stroppy strategy is rarely a good thing as Bayern managed not only to fail to win the Bundesliga title but achieved a creative double whammy of missing out on the Champions League too.
* The revelations relating to pumped up Jan Ullrich and a host of other German cyclists who explored the benefits of Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) have rocked the country massively. Cycling is serious in Germany and the invalidation of past sporting triumphs is not easy to swallow. Links from the doping ring to Freiburg's sports teams and medical establishments and the consequent adjacentness to current German football team boss Joachim Löw have hardly lifted the gloom. Bring back Klinsmann! PESs have existed in German sport for far too long and it is an unreasonable abuse to expect or force your countrymen (and women) to damage their bodies in search of sporting excellence. This sentence could equally have been applied to virtually any other first world country but, despite that, we have never seen an incidence similar to Bayer Leverkusen in the year they reached the Champions League Final and the negative reaction to their alleged PESs usage during the following season.
* The general level of merely adequate performances across the board in football have been a source of much angst. Performances of German club teams in the Champions League and UEFA Cup has been abysmal and it is not a normally recognisable German trait to regard a Semi Final defeat to Italy with home advantage to represent a World Cup success.
* FC Bayern have been displaying a degree of paranoia regarding their supposed demotion in the ranks of the G14(18). Such adjustment has probably occurred but it's a bit rich to hear the Bavarians complaining about an abuse of power and privilege.
Capacity crowds being the norm for German football matches makes the Premiership and Serie A green with envy. There are a complex array of reasons for the high number of sell-outs in the Bundesliga but there are a few that the DFB might particularly like to focus on as they move forward into the post-Hoyzer era. Crowds have fallen in England and Italy as the general consensus of opinion in both countries among the true spectators (not the prawn sandwich lot) is that the game has sold out to a rather unpleasant mixture of inappropriate individuals. There are clear indications that the DFB, in it's desire to be able to compete on a level playing field across European and global football competitions, is selecting a similarly corrupt edifice to the ones in place in Serie A and the Premiership. The German fan is a knowledgeable fan and this simply isn't going to wash. And, furthermore, the timing is poor. The German model will be up and running at just around the time when mainstream media is forced to acknowledge the corruption in the global game related the betting markets.
If you are going to be corrupt, get a distinct first mover advantage. For repeated examples, monitor Murdoch's empire building strategies...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 16 June 2007
Dealing With A Mid-Life Crisis In The Markets
Earlier this month in an attempt to avoid work, I posted excerpts from an email response to a reader who had requested generalised information about how to structure an investment portfolio in the current climate (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/06/some-words-some-wise-some-foolish.html). One aspect of trading that was deliberately omitted from the post concerns Middle Aged Markets. Why did we specifically choose not to suggest trading on these mid-phase structures? The answer is focus...
Young and mature markets offer significantly more simple analytical structures to a market analyst. In the former the fundamentals are paramount while, in the latter, an analysis of corrupt non-democratic structures is a primary template. The degree of absolutism in infrastructure enables a slimmed down systems thinking style of analysis to be incorporated into the overall holistic trading model structure. Mid-phase markets are slightly fuzzy and, consequently, significantly more non-linear mathematics is necessary in the analysis. These markets incorporate inputs and structures covering all market phases as a competitive playing field is fought over by different global power individuals, companies, hierarchies and consortia with shared strategy. For amateurs to successfully trade on these markets, a disciplined market focus must be built into every day of your life. Most amateurs neither possess an holistic big picture thing or an analytical thing which makes the various market forces and dynamics rather opaque to put it mildly. Even highly skilled analysts will endure periods of trading on mid-phase markets where a breakeven short-medium term trading scenario is the best that can be expected. In addition to this constant climate of machinations and background noise, there are repeated infrastructural breakpoints as new power bases are formed to hijack the competitive process into a more monopolistic structure. The markets lurch forward in a series of seemingly randomised steps (they aren't random, by the way, but that's another story for another time!) and analysts build their sector specific trading models in real time as new realities conveyor belt themselves into market realities. It's like physics at speed. Our Trading Team target solution to any new market breakpoint within twenty four hours although some major infrastructural events may lead to a window where trading on that particular market is suspended while we test the robustness of our model. Nowadays, the model is solid enough to be trusted (with a little human prompting) to identify mispricing virtually immediately in any new market structure.
In addition to issues relating to corporate flux through market competition and corruption, there are added layers of complexity caused by regulatory capture, market efficiency and insider trading. Once international and/or national organisations and regulators become co-opted into the competitive market process, entirely new sector constructs appear at speed which is highly befuddling to amateurs. Pro's know where to look for swift solutions to new realities - amateurs start thinking random walk or resort to selected psychological styles to explain "their" new reality. Markets are often at their most efficient in mid-phase windows which represents clear issues to any trader or analyst. We are always looking for value and, for value to exist, our analysts perception of a true price needs to differ to a statistically significant extent from the market. As markets grow up from their young structure, one of the prime new inputs is insider trading. Insiders take on far greater importance as the market sector develops into middle age. Whenever a new sub-structure is established, related markets will be markedly inefficient for a window which allows clear competitive (yet corrupt) advantages for an insider trader. Numerous revealing academic papers illuminate this area and game theorising the process enables analysts to clearly observe the mini-cycle from efficient to inefficient and back to efficient again.
We would also suggest keeping away from the even more psychopathic markets like derivatives. Many of the market types broadly under such a heading are opaque, non-regulated, highly manipulated entities which require a combination of a VERY clear sector holistic view together with some horrendously complex mathematics. Particularly heavily tilted towards the insiders who develop the market templates, it is possible to win in these marketplaces but one should remember that one is effectively playing high stakes poker on a table that is controlled by the house.
In summation, Middle-Aged Markets are a challenging environment for market newcomers. For the insiders, the middle-people, the analysts and the regulators to be profiting to various degrees of handsomely, there are, by necessity, a whole bunch of patsies from the workers of the world through to amateur market participants. As Warren Buffett quite correctly states: "If you have been in the [poker] game for 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy".
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Young and mature markets offer significantly more simple analytical structures to a market analyst. In the former the fundamentals are paramount while, in the latter, an analysis of corrupt non-democratic structures is a primary template. The degree of absolutism in infrastructure enables a slimmed down systems thinking style of analysis to be incorporated into the overall holistic trading model structure. Mid-phase markets are slightly fuzzy and, consequently, significantly more non-linear mathematics is necessary in the analysis. These markets incorporate inputs and structures covering all market phases as a competitive playing field is fought over by different global power individuals, companies, hierarchies and consortia with shared strategy. For amateurs to successfully trade on these markets, a disciplined market focus must be built into every day of your life. Most amateurs neither possess an holistic big picture thing or an analytical thing which makes the various market forces and dynamics rather opaque to put it mildly. Even highly skilled analysts will endure periods of trading on mid-phase markets where a breakeven short-medium term trading scenario is the best that can be expected. In addition to this constant climate of machinations and background noise, there are repeated infrastructural breakpoints as new power bases are formed to hijack the competitive process into a more monopolistic structure. The markets lurch forward in a series of seemingly randomised steps (they aren't random, by the way, but that's another story for another time!) and analysts build their sector specific trading models in real time as new realities conveyor belt themselves into market realities. It's like physics at speed. Our Trading Team target solution to any new market breakpoint within twenty four hours although some major infrastructural events may lead to a window where trading on that particular market is suspended while we test the robustness of our model. Nowadays, the model is solid enough to be trusted (with a little human prompting) to identify mispricing virtually immediately in any new market structure.
In addition to issues relating to corporate flux through market competition and corruption, there are added layers of complexity caused by regulatory capture, market efficiency and insider trading. Once international and/or national organisations and regulators become co-opted into the competitive market process, entirely new sector constructs appear at speed which is highly befuddling to amateurs. Pro's know where to look for swift solutions to new realities - amateurs start thinking random walk or resort to selected psychological styles to explain "their" new reality. Markets are often at their most efficient in mid-phase windows which represents clear issues to any trader or analyst. We are always looking for value and, for value to exist, our analysts perception of a true price needs to differ to a statistically significant extent from the market. As markets grow up from their young structure, one of the prime new inputs is insider trading. Insiders take on far greater importance as the market sector develops into middle age. Whenever a new sub-structure is established, related markets will be markedly inefficient for a window which allows clear competitive (yet corrupt) advantages for an insider trader. Numerous revealing academic papers illuminate this area and game theorising the process enables analysts to clearly observe the mini-cycle from efficient to inefficient and back to efficient again.
We would also suggest keeping away from the even more psychopathic markets like derivatives. Many of the market types broadly under such a heading are opaque, non-regulated, highly manipulated entities which require a combination of a VERY clear sector holistic view together with some horrendously complex mathematics. Particularly heavily tilted towards the insiders who develop the market templates, it is possible to win in these marketplaces but one should remember that one is effectively playing high stakes poker on a table that is controlled by the house.
In summation, Middle-Aged Markets are a challenging environment for market newcomers. For the insiders, the middle-people, the analysts and the regulators to be profiting to various degrees of handsomely, there are, by necessity, a whole bunch of patsies from the workers of the world through to amateur market participants. As Warren Buffett quite correctly states: "If you have been in the [poker] game for 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy".
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The Idiot, Poor People, Crime And Punishment
When the prospect of a bungs inquiry first appeared on the horizon, groups of traders got together in a private sweepstakes market to name the most likely managers to be fingered (assuming any fingering was to be undertaken). With a gloat and a bulging wallet, I offer you my quintet of Allardyce, Souness, Redknapp, Curbishley and Mourinho :)
The naming of sixteen suspect transfers plus one other transaction that is deemed so serious that police action is already underway moved the Quest process onwards incrementally yesterday. The Premier League and Quest were effectively forced to "go public" after news that an arrest had already been made for money laundering related to the football industry. Despite enjoyment at seeing some reprehensibles having to seek urgent legal advice, we are still at the tip of a rather large iceberg here. The lack of any hard evidence presented by Quest may well be indicative of a public warning, a yellow card if you like, for the named and partially shamed protagonists.
It is interesting however that the names are representative of some of the main operators in English football. With the exception of Mourinho from the above listing, all of the other four are on our Trading Team's A List of Focus Managers. We know little about the inside world of bungs and agents but we are pretty perceptive when it comes to global football betting markets and Souness, Redknapp and Curbishley allegedly share our intimate knowledge of such sectors. It is not so surprising the allegedly bad apples might be allegedly bad in all areas of their businesses. Which makes Quest Point 7 all the more entertaining: "In the course of the Inquiry a further matter has become evident that the Inquiry believes should be considered by the Football Authorities. Willie McKay provided information that he had registered a race horse in the name of Harry Redknapp. Harry Redknapp has confirmed that this could well have happened though it was a very unsuccessful horse that resulted in no material gain or reward for him. There is no evidence that this transaction is related to any specific transfer, more a consequence of a long term personal association. Inquiries into this matter should continue". Perhaps these inquiries might include Redknapp's property empire?! By the way, Portsmouth are linked in some manner with points 1, 4, 5 and 7 in Quest's report.
Over 60% of the transfers pinpointed yesterday involve African players. The market conditions for footballers from Africa are considerably more abusive than even the Latin American market. Grinding poverty is a heavy millstone to carry to the negotiating table and tilted contracts are more easily created by operators like Pini Zahavi who have a total grasp of the incentives and clauses to be addressed (think Tesco with regard to planning permission, for example). Predictably, Zahavi is threatening blood and thunder for Quest at the hands of his solicitors but, then again, Allardyce was informing the BBC that his lawyers would be in touch following the Panorama exposé. Such posturing is generally public spin and a statement of a lack of intent rather than the opposite.
Slightly suspicious Barry Silkman is right on one level in his complaints about being highlighted as a dodgy character. If he was corrupt in Rochembach's transfer to Boro then so was current England manager Strategic McClaren.
This whole inquiry is highly selective and should have, in a perfect world, stretched all the way back to the time when Sky first got involved in English football. Many of the movers and shakers in our spectacular society sport would have been shifting nervously around if that had been the time window of choice. The arbitrarily selected two years has avoided the potential for English football to be entirely destabilised to the core.
As a final piece of entertaining intrigue, Willie McKay started off in life as a Glaswegian bookmaker before getting involved as proprietor of Merton Grange horseracing stables with a little bit of football agent work on the side. How many pies, pal?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The naming of sixteen suspect transfers plus one other transaction that is deemed so serious that police action is already underway moved the Quest process onwards incrementally yesterday. The Premier League and Quest were effectively forced to "go public" after news that an arrest had already been made for money laundering related to the football industry. Despite enjoyment at seeing some reprehensibles having to seek urgent legal advice, we are still at the tip of a rather large iceberg here. The lack of any hard evidence presented by Quest may well be indicative of a public warning, a yellow card if you like, for the named and partially shamed protagonists.
It is interesting however that the names are representative of some of the main operators in English football. With the exception of Mourinho from the above listing, all of the other four are on our Trading Team's A List of Focus Managers. We know little about the inside world of bungs and agents but we are pretty perceptive when it comes to global football betting markets and Souness, Redknapp and Curbishley allegedly share our intimate knowledge of such sectors. It is not so surprising the allegedly bad apples might be allegedly bad in all areas of their businesses. Which makes Quest Point 7 all the more entertaining: "In the course of the Inquiry a further matter has become evident that the Inquiry believes should be considered by the Football Authorities. Willie McKay provided information that he had registered a race horse in the name of Harry Redknapp. Harry Redknapp has confirmed that this could well have happened though it was a very unsuccessful horse that resulted in no material gain or reward for him. There is no evidence that this transaction is related to any specific transfer, more a consequence of a long term personal association. Inquiries into this matter should continue". Perhaps these inquiries might include Redknapp's property empire?! By the way, Portsmouth are linked in some manner with points 1, 4, 5 and 7 in Quest's report.
Over 60% of the transfers pinpointed yesterday involve African players. The market conditions for footballers from Africa are considerably more abusive than even the Latin American market. Grinding poverty is a heavy millstone to carry to the negotiating table and tilted contracts are more easily created by operators like Pini Zahavi who have a total grasp of the incentives and clauses to be addressed (think Tesco with regard to planning permission, for example). Predictably, Zahavi is threatening blood and thunder for Quest at the hands of his solicitors but, then again, Allardyce was informing the BBC that his lawyers would be in touch following the Panorama exposé. Such posturing is generally public spin and a statement of a lack of intent rather than the opposite.
Slightly suspicious Barry Silkman is right on one level in his complaints about being highlighted as a dodgy character. If he was corrupt in Rochembach's transfer to Boro then so was current England manager Strategic McClaren.
This whole inquiry is highly selective and should have, in a perfect world, stretched all the way back to the time when Sky first got involved in English football. Many of the movers and shakers in our spectacular society sport would have been shifting nervously around if that had been the time window of choice. The arbitrarily selected two years has avoided the potential for English football to be entirely destabilised to the core.
As a final piece of entertaining intrigue, Willie McKay started off in life as a Glaswegian bookmaker before getting involved as proprietor of Merton Grange horseracing stables with a little bit of football agent work on the side. How many pies, pal?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 15 June 2007
Eric Blair Versus Anthony Blair
I haven't moaned on about Anthony Blair for weeks now and I've really been trying to resist any further mention of him as he undertakes his Farewell To The World Tour 2007. It should occasion no surprise that I am about to fail with this personal undertaking.
By visiting Iraq on the day of the FA Cup Final at the shiny new Wembley, Blair was making a clear statement as to how he viewed the public perception of his "achievements". Can anyone imagine his narcissistic side missing an opportunity like that earlier in his imperial majestic period?
Fair dinkum. Go quietly and I'll try to forget that you ever existed. And then the man decides to write an essay for The Economist entitled "What I've Learned". Wondering how he might spin out the word "Nothing!" to cover three pages, I sat on the beach at Mon Repos and missed my swim and gained several serious mozzie bites while incredulity paralysed my senses.
At the time, I was reading a book of Orwell's essays, journalism and letters from 1945-50 and the difference in true human stature between the two men was palpable. Blair spinning his way around pithy platitudes in all his holographic shallowness while Orwell oozes principles and justice.
Now obviously, Blair would have preferred to have written an essay on "What I've Achieved" but, aside from war crimes, ruining the party of Bevan and handing over Belfast to the mafia, that would have been a real struggle to stretch out. Throughout his reign, Blair has slowly morphed into a citizen of the world's only remaining primitive society and his prep school standard essay is full of mid-Atlantic twaddle like "Get Real" and "Period" taking on full sentence status to stress some ineffective point while coming across like a real macho USA sort of guy. Cracker's "Yo Blair" was evidently merely indicative of their intercourse.
The essay is revealing due to a complete lack of any consequential utterances suggestive of a belief in anything political at all over the last ten years - we are not dealing with a man of substance here. Nor a man of the English language. "Ten years ago, if you had told me I......" he gushingly opens his opus before an adrenalin rush leads to the second paragraph opining "If you had told me a decade ago that I......"
At no point in his essay does Blair lay out any set of principles or a belief mechanism. His politics are reactive as he positions himself where he believes he needs to be with regard to his hidden agenda. Comparing with Orwell's approach to anything and everything reveals Blair's absolute lack of moral robustness.
He repeatedly justifies the rampant erosion of civil liberties under his stewardship with the tiresome mantra "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". Yes we have - we fear the loss of OUR civil liberties. This is a removal of a basic human right. Spending time in inner city Manchester is like living in the Big Brother house (with evictions but without any winner). I wouldn't be surprised if a Geordie voice is added to the ubiquitous copters hovering overhead. "Thursday 8.13 am, all the people are in the ghetto..."
Throughout his tirade, the only prevailing attitude is "the right is never wrong". The Middle East is the fault of Hamas, Fatah, Arabs, Sunni's, Sufi's, Shia's, Hezbollah but, surprisingly, not the US or Israel (nor Britain for that matter). His support for a militaristic geopolitical agenda based on the use of overwhelming force and an abrogation for international norms of behaviour is highly selective and is not based on any set of principles. Certain countries eg Iraq, Iran, Angola, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea etc have got oil (or other valuable resources) and/or geographical significance so we can invade these countries under a banner claiming "democracy" while leaving less fortunate nations to maintain their non-elected dictatorships as we've nothing to gain by getting involved. Think Myanmar, for example.
We know that Al-Fayed has got an understandable grudge with the British establishment but the man is still spot on when he states: "...he used to live in a council flat in Scotland and now he thinks he is the Emperor".
In describing the experience of living under British "democracy" in his country, an Indian economist stated: "It is disingenuous to invoke "democracy," "due process of law, "non-violence," to rationalise the absence of action. For meaningful concepts under such conditions become meaningless since, in reality, they justify the relentless pervasive exploitation of the masses; at once a denial of democracy and a more sinister form of violence portrayed on the overwhelming majority through contractual forms". Iraq or what?
Blair is indicative of the dumbing down of politics in the last half century. The most startling aspect of a comparison between Orwell and Blair (aside from a shared surname) is the depth of the general political awareness following the war compared to today's consumerist spectacularism. A comparison between Tribune and The Sun is deeply depressing!
Right... that's it. Blair will never ever get another mention on this blog. He will remain, in the words of The Economist "the strangest tory ever sold"...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
By visiting Iraq on the day of the FA Cup Final at the shiny new Wembley, Blair was making a clear statement as to how he viewed the public perception of his "achievements". Can anyone imagine his narcissistic side missing an opportunity like that earlier in his imperial majestic period?
Fair dinkum. Go quietly and I'll try to forget that you ever existed. And then the man decides to write an essay for The Economist entitled "What I've Learned". Wondering how he might spin out the word "Nothing!" to cover three pages, I sat on the beach at Mon Repos and missed my swim and gained several serious mozzie bites while incredulity paralysed my senses.
At the time, I was reading a book of Orwell's essays, journalism and letters from 1945-50 and the difference in true human stature between the two men was palpable. Blair spinning his way around pithy platitudes in all his holographic shallowness while Orwell oozes principles and justice.
Now obviously, Blair would have preferred to have written an essay on "What I've Achieved" but, aside from war crimes, ruining the party of Bevan and handing over Belfast to the mafia, that would have been a real struggle to stretch out. Throughout his reign, Blair has slowly morphed into a citizen of the world's only remaining primitive society and his prep school standard essay is full of mid-Atlantic twaddle like "Get Real" and "Period" taking on full sentence status to stress some ineffective point while coming across like a real macho USA sort of guy. Cracker's "Yo Blair" was evidently merely indicative of their intercourse.
The essay is revealing due to a complete lack of any consequential utterances suggestive of a belief in anything political at all over the last ten years - we are not dealing with a man of substance here. Nor a man of the English language. "Ten years ago, if you had told me I......" he gushingly opens his opus before an adrenalin rush leads to the second paragraph opining "If you had told me a decade ago that I......"
At no point in his essay does Blair lay out any set of principles or a belief mechanism. His politics are reactive as he positions himself where he believes he needs to be with regard to his hidden agenda. Comparing with Orwell's approach to anything and everything reveals Blair's absolute lack of moral robustness.
He repeatedly justifies the rampant erosion of civil liberties under his stewardship with the tiresome mantra "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". Yes we have - we fear the loss of OUR civil liberties. This is a removal of a basic human right. Spending time in inner city Manchester is like living in the Big Brother house (with evictions but without any winner). I wouldn't be surprised if a Geordie voice is added to the ubiquitous copters hovering overhead. "Thursday 8.13 am, all the people are in the ghetto..."
Throughout his tirade, the only prevailing attitude is "the right is never wrong". The Middle East is the fault of Hamas, Fatah, Arabs, Sunni's, Sufi's, Shia's, Hezbollah but, surprisingly, not the US or Israel (nor Britain for that matter). His support for a militaristic geopolitical agenda based on the use of overwhelming force and an abrogation for international norms of behaviour is highly selective and is not based on any set of principles. Certain countries eg Iraq, Iran, Angola, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea etc have got oil (or other valuable resources) and/or geographical significance so we can invade these countries under a banner claiming "democracy" while leaving less fortunate nations to maintain their non-elected dictatorships as we've nothing to gain by getting involved. Think Myanmar, for example.
We know that Al-Fayed has got an understandable grudge with the British establishment but the man is still spot on when he states: "...he used to live in a council flat in Scotland and now he thinks he is the Emperor".
In describing the experience of living under British "democracy" in his country, an Indian economist stated: "It is disingenuous to invoke "democracy," "due process of law, "non-violence," to rationalise the absence of action. For meaningful concepts under such conditions become meaningless since, in reality, they justify the relentless pervasive exploitation of the masses; at once a denial of democracy and a more sinister form of violence portrayed on the overwhelming majority through contractual forms". Iraq or what?
Blair is indicative of the dumbing down of politics in the last half century. The most startling aspect of a comparison between Orwell and Blair (aside from a shared surname) is the depth of the general political awareness following the war compared to today's consumerist spectacularism. A comparison between Tribune and The Sun is deeply depressing!
Right... that's it. Blair will never ever get another mention on this blog. He will remain, in the words of The Economist "the strangest tory ever sold"...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 14 June 2007
El Deporte Es Un Derecho De Todo El Pueblo
It would be foolish to see the tainting of football as merely an English problem - the varying impacts of corruption, criminal groups, the inappropriate power of supporters groups, regulatory capture, ineffective administration and illegal gambling are global phenomena. Our prime issue is to push the first world football nations into an acceptance of their corrupt realities rather than their focus being exclusively on the systemic corruptions of the supposedly lesser nations. However, it is a positive process to assess the degree of malaise undermining the global game and, consequently, in this post we take a quick European survey of the plight of the game.
* Netherlands - AZ Alkmaar's coach, Louis Van Gaal, stated after his team had been denied a Champions League place by the infinitely more powerful G14(18) team Ajax and some creative officiating "AZ must have to be the far better side so that such decisions won't be to our disadvantage".
* Switzerland - Basle win the Cup Final with a hilarious injury time penalty and sending off decision when Scott Chipperfield was allegedly fouled by keeper David Zibung. Guess which team is the more powerful?
* Montenegro - Both the top two sides in the nascent independent Montenegrin league were accused by the other teams of "buying games". Zeta and Budocnost Podgorica finished an astonishing 27 points clear of the third placed team. After one particularly hot little event against Korn, the Budocnost coach, Bozo Vukovic, was asked whether the game had been regular. His response exhibited clinical economy of truth: "As far as I'm concerned it was, but I can't answer fully this question".
* Macedonia - The rebel federation group named the Board for Change has taken control of Macedonian football risking FIFA sanctions as the takeover process has been a pea-souper of opacity.
* Israel - With a French arrest warrant for illegal arms dealing hanging over his head, Arkady Gaydamek chooses to own Beitar Jerusalem directly and Portsmouth indirectly via a compliant son. Harry Redknapp should note that the Beitar coach Yossi Mizrahi was recently sacked by cuddly Arkady despite winning the league title for the first time in nine years. Arkady muttered something about a lack of exciting football being the reason which is obviously significantly preferable to a lack of exciting betting, I suppose...
* Albania - Former SK Tirana president, Lufti Nuri, is now the Albanian federation vice president and it will come as no surprise that rival coaches are finding the situation "intolerable" in the words of Partizani Tirana boss Albert Xhani. "We can fight against Tirana, but not against the system that made them champions" he axe-grindingly added.
* Turkey - Another fan was shot dead after the Fenerbahce v Galatasaray game which determined the Turkish title race. Istanbul governor Muammer Guler complained: "Explosives and weapons were brought into the stadium in advance, in an organised way. It is not possible to explain this away as neglect or a simple mistake".
* Ukraine - Racist bigot and national team boss, Oleh Blokhin, has moved beyond the intellectual capacity required to make offensive comparisons between Black footballers and members of the ape family by threatening to quit if the number of foreigners in the Ukrainian league is not reduced to five players by 2010. "If the situation does not improve, I'll step down as Ukraine coach". See ya, pal!
* Poland - Fellow Euro 2012 hosts Poland completed a year of domestic footballing controversy when the title was decided by referee Hubert Siejewicz on the last day of the season following FA takeover nonsense and a match fixing scandal that saw two teams forcibly relegated.
* Bulgaria - Alexander Tassev became the third Lokomotiv Plovdiv president to be murdered in the last two years.
Parallels exist for all of the above examples in the so-called developed football nations. This season alone has brought us calciopoli, another Athenian fan death, the Catania/Palermo incident, Aragones and his enlightened racism, West Ham United's regulatory capture, Barthez and Nantes, the full impact of the Hoyzer refereeing scandal in Germany, the bungs affair in English football, the mass takeover of leading English clubs to open the sluices to Far East gambling markets, suspicions of EPO usage in Spain, Germany and France etc etc.
The illnesses that undermine football (and other leading sports) are shared with society at large. The systemic scams share equivalence of hierarchy, structure and form. No finesse just power play.
To requote Baudrillard "Power is only too happy to make football bear a facile responsibility, even to take upon itself the diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
* Netherlands - AZ Alkmaar's coach, Louis Van Gaal, stated after his team had been denied a Champions League place by the infinitely more powerful G14(18) team Ajax and some creative officiating "AZ must have to be the far better side so that such decisions won't be to our disadvantage".
* Switzerland - Basle win the Cup Final with a hilarious injury time penalty and sending off decision when Scott Chipperfield was allegedly fouled by keeper David Zibung. Guess which team is the more powerful?
* Montenegro - Both the top two sides in the nascent independent Montenegrin league were accused by the other teams of "buying games". Zeta and Budocnost Podgorica finished an astonishing 27 points clear of the third placed team. After one particularly hot little event against Korn, the Budocnost coach, Bozo Vukovic, was asked whether the game had been regular. His response exhibited clinical economy of truth: "As far as I'm concerned it was, but I can't answer fully this question".
* Macedonia - The rebel federation group named the Board for Change has taken control of Macedonian football risking FIFA sanctions as the takeover process has been a pea-souper of opacity.
* Israel - With a French arrest warrant for illegal arms dealing hanging over his head, Arkady Gaydamek chooses to own Beitar Jerusalem directly and Portsmouth indirectly via a compliant son. Harry Redknapp should note that the Beitar coach Yossi Mizrahi was recently sacked by cuddly Arkady despite winning the league title for the first time in nine years. Arkady muttered something about a lack of exciting football being the reason which is obviously significantly preferable to a lack of exciting betting, I suppose...
* Albania - Former SK Tirana president, Lufti Nuri, is now the Albanian federation vice president and it will come as no surprise that rival coaches are finding the situation "intolerable" in the words of Partizani Tirana boss Albert Xhani. "We can fight against Tirana, but not against the system that made them champions" he axe-grindingly added.
* Turkey - Another fan was shot dead after the Fenerbahce v Galatasaray game which determined the Turkish title race. Istanbul governor Muammer Guler complained: "Explosives and weapons were brought into the stadium in advance, in an organised way. It is not possible to explain this away as neglect or a simple mistake".
* Ukraine - Racist bigot and national team boss, Oleh Blokhin, has moved beyond the intellectual capacity required to make offensive comparisons between Black footballers and members of the ape family by threatening to quit if the number of foreigners in the Ukrainian league is not reduced to five players by 2010. "If the situation does not improve, I'll step down as Ukraine coach". See ya, pal!
* Poland - Fellow Euro 2012 hosts Poland completed a year of domestic footballing controversy when the title was decided by referee Hubert Siejewicz on the last day of the season following FA takeover nonsense and a match fixing scandal that saw two teams forcibly relegated.
* Bulgaria - Alexander Tassev became the third Lokomotiv Plovdiv president to be murdered in the last two years.
Parallels exist for all of the above examples in the so-called developed football nations. This season alone has brought us calciopoli, another Athenian fan death, the Catania/Palermo incident, Aragones and his enlightened racism, West Ham United's regulatory capture, Barthez and Nantes, the full impact of the Hoyzer refereeing scandal in Germany, the bungs affair in English football, the mass takeover of leading English clubs to open the sluices to Far East gambling markets, suspicions of EPO usage in Spain, Germany and France etc etc.
The illnesses that undermine football (and other leading sports) are shared with society at large. The systemic scams share equivalence of hierarchy, structure and form. No finesse just power play.
To requote Baudrillard "Power is only too happy to make football bear a facile responsibility, even to take upon itself the diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Spooky Or What?
Spookier and spookier. Last Friday, my brother had a cycling accident in Marin County in San Francisco and was treated at the Sausalito Hospital receiving thirty facial stitches in return for the donation of three teeth. On Saturday, my brother-in-law taking time off from his day job as a mountaineering instructor fell off his mountain bike losing three teeth but, in a disappointedly non-competitive manner, only achieving fourteen facial stitches. I have been riding my Marin Sausalito bike with a little more caution as magical thinking implies that the butterfly effect should result in such calamities happening in three's...
Even spookier still. Bob Woolmer died of allegedly natural causes. The broken bone in his neck mysteriously healing after death and the betting patterns suggestive of insider trading on the Pakistan v Ireland match apparently have now ceased to exist. Once the Jamaican police leaked news of their abrupt about turn to Sky television last week, one had to expect that the investigating authorities were about to display a difficult relationship with the truth.
Anyway, the World Cup cricket authorities are happy as are the Pakistan team, the bookmakers, professional gamblers, the ICC, Scotland Yard and, most importantly, the Woolmer family.
I love happy endings...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Even spookier still. Bob Woolmer died of allegedly natural causes. The broken bone in his neck mysteriously healing after death and the betting patterns suggestive of insider trading on the Pakistan v Ireland match apparently have now ceased to exist. Once the Jamaican police leaked news of their abrupt about turn to Sky television last week, one had to expect that the investigating authorities were about to display a difficult relationship with the truth.
Anyway, the World Cup cricket authorities are happy as are the Pakistan team, the bookmakers, professional gamblers, the ICC, Scotland Yard and, most importantly, the Woolmer family.
I love happy endings...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
Taxing Thaksin
The general behaviour of the fans of Manchester City regarding the potential for Thaksin Shinawatra to takeover their club shares clear parallels with the similarly blinkered approach of Liverpool supporters to the arrival of Hicks and Gillett - at least the Manchester United fans had the sense to see what the Glazers' leveraged buyout meant for the club on a the level of financial risk. The support of one's club has taken on greater levels of pseudo-religious fervour in recent years and, in a largely secular society like England, this inevitably has produced a moral vacuum when it comes to assessing the realities related to the takeover of the game by operations that include a global betting strategy in their financial projections.
There were no complaints from the usually vociferously intrusive Liverpool supporters groups as the prospect of a bigger ground, numerous top tier transfers and, most importantly, being able to compete with the Mancunians again in the Premiership clouded the judgement process. We have outlined the business practices of both the new owners of the Liverpool Reds in numerous other posts and only the inclusion of a betting strategy makes their "investment" rational. And these types of people absolutely do not do irrational things with money... Recent rumours are suggesting that perhaps Benitez will not have that much money to misspend after all.
The City supporters have been even more myopic. To understand the business psychology of the new owners of the other big English teams requires a little research but anybody who knows anything about the Far East understands what sort of operator is Dr Thaksin Shinawatra. The alleged $2 billion he and his family pocketed from the sale of the Shin Corp telecom giant to Singapore's Temasek Holdings was a corrupt and nepotistic piece of rabidly non-democratic business while his psychopathic military campaigns in the south of Thailand against the Muslim minority must be setting alarm bells ringing in Longsight and Rusholme. Furthermore, Bangkok is one of the core hubs of the underground and illegal Far East football betting market circuit - markets where £1 million bets on individual English Premiership matches pass without the blink of an eye. Nothing but nothing that went on in Thailand during Shinawatra's elected dictatorship was unbeknown to him or his cronies. It is naivety of the highest level to make the assumption that this man has anything positive to bring to the Premiership other than greater levels of corruption and even closer links to the colossal pools of liquidity that control our game.
Fortunately, Monday's announcement that the takeover depended on a positive input from the Bank Of Thailand effectively torpedoed the whole bidding process although the decision by Thailand's Assets Examination Committee to withhold $1.5 billion of his allegedly stolen gains hardly helped his chances either.
Since being ousted by the military while he was hobnobbing with George W, Shinawatra has been conducting a political campaign in his native country from his English base. This is a tried and tested manner to campaign in territories where physical danger is the reality - think Bhutto with regard to Pakistan or spooky Russian mafia man Boris Berezovsky. Shinawatra has utilised the spectacular society stunt of buying into the English game to boost his popularity among the soccer mad rural voters that gave him his power foundation. No doubt, Shinawatra is interested in getting hold of a racehorse in the Premiership but we would suggest that this objective falls significantly lower on his hidden agenda than getting his hands on his cash and punishing the military in Thailand.
The hierarchy at City have been in headless chicken mode since the "rumours" first surfaced. "Proper money if we sack the manager" = sack the manager. "Claudio Ranieri is Shinawatra's number one target" which must have been news in Turin where it was common knowledge that Deschamps was to be replaced by Ranieri at the season's end. "The board notes the information emanating out of Thailand today in respect of Dr Shinawatra and the freezing of his assets" = oh shit!
Being up shit creek without a paddle (nor a manager, nor a Joey Barton), with players being questioned by Manchester police over training ground rumpuses just three weeks prior to the onset of pre-season training is about as destabilised as it can get. CEO Alistair Mackenzie had better develop a strategy... and soon.
Despite the general theme running throughout this post, we have to declare that last week's assertion by Dr Shinawatra that "he wanted to buy the team to inspire Asian children to seize their opportunities in life" almost convinced us as to the man's integrity.
The last word goes to Surayud Chulanont, his successor in Thailand, "the rule of law came under fierce attack from the powerful, the rich and their cronies" and "corruption washed through our government."
One can see why England is such a tempting base for the likes of Dr Shinawatra.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
There were no complaints from the usually vociferously intrusive Liverpool supporters groups as the prospect of a bigger ground, numerous top tier transfers and, most importantly, being able to compete with the Mancunians again in the Premiership clouded the judgement process. We have outlined the business practices of both the new owners of the Liverpool Reds in numerous other posts and only the inclusion of a betting strategy makes their "investment" rational. And these types of people absolutely do not do irrational things with money... Recent rumours are suggesting that perhaps Benitez will not have that much money to misspend after all.
The City supporters have been even more myopic. To understand the business psychology of the new owners of the other big English teams requires a little research but anybody who knows anything about the Far East understands what sort of operator is Dr Thaksin Shinawatra. The alleged $2 billion he and his family pocketed from the sale of the Shin Corp telecom giant to Singapore's Temasek Holdings was a corrupt and nepotistic piece of rabidly non-democratic business while his psychopathic military campaigns in the south of Thailand against the Muslim minority must be setting alarm bells ringing in Longsight and Rusholme. Furthermore, Bangkok is one of the core hubs of the underground and illegal Far East football betting market circuit - markets where £1 million bets on individual English Premiership matches pass without the blink of an eye. Nothing but nothing that went on in Thailand during Shinawatra's elected dictatorship was unbeknown to him or his cronies. It is naivety of the highest level to make the assumption that this man has anything positive to bring to the Premiership other than greater levels of corruption and even closer links to the colossal pools of liquidity that control our game.
Fortunately, Monday's announcement that the takeover depended on a positive input from the Bank Of Thailand effectively torpedoed the whole bidding process although the decision by Thailand's Assets Examination Committee to withhold $1.5 billion of his allegedly stolen gains hardly helped his chances either.
Since being ousted by the military while he was hobnobbing with George W, Shinawatra has been conducting a political campaign in his native country from his English base. This is a tried and tested manner to campaign in territories where physical danger is the reality - think Bhutto with regard to Pakistan or spooky Russian mafia man Boris Berezovsky. Shinawatra has utilised the spectacular society stunt of buying into the English game to boost his popularity among the soccer mad rural voters that gave him his power foundation. No doubt, Shinawatra is interested in getting hold of a racehorse in the Premiership but we would suggest that this objective falls significantly lower on his hidden agenda than getting his hands on his cash and punishing the military in Thailand.
The hierarchy at City have been in headless chicken mode since the "rumours" first surfaced. "Proper money if we sack the manager" = sack the manager. "Claudio Ranieri is Shinawatra's number one target" which must have been news in Turin where it was common knowledge that Deschamps was to be replaced by Ranieri at the season's end. "The board notes the information emanating out of Thailand today in respect of Dr Shinawatra and the freezing of his assets" = oh shit!
Being up shit creek without a paddle (nor a manager, nor a Joey Barton), with players being questioned by Manchester police over training ground rumpuses just three weeks prior to the onset of pre-season training is about as destabilised as it can get. CEO Alistair Mackenzie had better develop a strategy... and soon.
Despite the general theme running throughout this post, we have to declare that last week's assertion by Dr Shinawatra that "he wanted to buy the team to inspire Asian children to seize their opportunities in life" almost convinced us as to the man's integrity.
The last word goes to Surayud Chulanont, his successor in Thailand, "the rule of law came under fierce attack from the powerful, the rich and their cronies" and "corruption washed through our government."
One can see why England is such a tempting base for the likes of Dr Shinawatra.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Saturday, 9 June 2007
One Swallow Doesn't Make A Summer
Following yesterday's news of the arrest of an individual on May 23rd under suspicion of money laundering related to the football industry, the Premier League (PL) CEO, Richard Scudamore, is coming under greater pressure than ever to make public the outcome of the Quest inquiry into bungs in English football. The arrest was undertaken by City of London's Police (Economic Crime Division) using information received from the Quest team.
There immediately has to be a far greater degree of openness related to this corruption. Scudamore should be releasing the details of the individuals and clubs under suspicion as happened to a far greater extent in the calciopoli crisis in Italy. Similarly to the reporting of the leak announcing the completion of Lord Steven's endeavours, the news of the arrest was delayed by over two weeks so that the tale could be spun out in the media after the completion of the season. We should exhibit some cautious optimism that this arrest is the first of many related to the case but one suspects that there will be merely a few lower level fall guys while the manipulators higher up the pyramid chuckle all the way to the bank.
Far more entertainingly, if the City of London's police are interested in money laundering, they could do far worse than checking out the Far Eastern trading operations of the major British and Gibraltan bookmakers. All firms to which Dietrological have consultative or service-based links trade on the Asian markets. We choose our business acquaintances carefully but it is a generally accepted fact within all the major trading rooms that much of this Asian trading is destined for the illegal underground Asian markets. Indeed even risk averse traders still take advantage of this systemic structure but choose to place a European broker in the chain between the analyst and the Far East market maker - here the broker is taking the illegal position and takes on the risk of non payment.
One tokenistic and media spun bailing of one peripheral individual hardly represents the upheaval to the corrupt inner machinations of the English footballing world that we might have been expecting.
The parallels with the plight of Lewis "Scooter" Libby and the untouchability of Dickie Cheney spring to mind...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
There immediately has to be a far greater degree of openness related to this corruption. Scudamore should be releasing the details of the individuals and clubs under suspicion as happened to a far greater extent in the calciopoli crisis in Italy. Similarly to the reporting of the leak announcing the completion of Lord Steven's endeavours, the news of the arrest was delayed by over two weeks so that the tale could be spun out in the media after the completion of the season. We should exhibit some cautious optimism that this arrest is the first of many related to the case but one suspects that there will be merely a few lower level fall guys while the manipulators higher up the pyramid chuckle all the way to the bank.
Far more entertainingly, if the City of London's police are interested in money laundering, they could do far worse than checking out the Far Eastern trading operations of the major British and Gibraltan bookmakers. All firms to which Dietrological have consultative or service-based links trade on the Asian markets. We choose our business acquaintances carefully but it is a generally accepted fact within all the major trading rooms that much of this Asian trading is destined for the illegal underground Asian markets. Indeed even risk averse traders still take advantage of this systemic structure but choose to place a European broker in the chain between the analyst and the Far East market maker - here the broker is taking the illegal position and takes on the risk of non payment.
One tokenistic and media spun bailing of one peripheral individual hardly represents the upheaval to the corrupt inner machinations of the English footballing world that we might have been expecting.
The parallels with the plight of Lewis "Scooter" Libby and the untouchability of Dickie Cheney spring to mind...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 8 June 2007
Highly Quest-ionable
One day after the completion of the English domestic season and all footie fans take their collectives eyes off the balls and attempt to find something else to focus on for the two months until the whole charade starts again. No better day for the Premier League (PL) to leak selected updates to acquiescent journalists regarding the Quest report into illegal bungs in football then - despite the pertinent meeting having taken place on the day of the England/ Brazil game, public exposure was carefully delayed to reduce impact. The PL does spin as a basis of it's modus operandi.
So, where does this update leave us? Pretty much exactly where we were before. The ongoing saga regarding West Ham United and Tevez/ Mascherano is the latest flimsy excuse for avoiding letting the public know anything that might be of interest.
Several decades ago, Sven Goran Eriksson and Mike Newell separately highlighted the issue of illegal transfer activity in the English game and, as far as we are able to see, the sole impacts of their stance have been their removal from their jobs and the ensuing fact that neither of them will be involved in any capacity in English football again. None of the individuals fingered by the BBC Panorama programme have suffered any career setbacks and, indeed, Allardyce and Bond have been promoted up the footballing hierarchy. Additionally, as we have stated previously, the scope of Quest's inquiry was highly restrictive from day one as the window of investigation was kept deliberately brief as the bottom could have fallen out of the English game if the period had stretched back, say, ten years instead of merely two.
Richard Scudamore, the slippery CEO of the PL, is apparently considering IF he should make the report public rather than WHEN to make it public. The people who pay through the nose to watch our corrupted game deserve to be kept informed in real time of the developments that Quest have made and "if" and "when" should be undermined by an immediate release of proper information rather than sneaky leaks of snippets of spin.
The FA has been kept at the periphery of the process and, despite receiving regular updates from Quest and the Premier League, our sources suggest that these updates have been peripheral and general in form and, most definitely, not specific. Under normal circumstances, the whole inquiry would have fallen under the FA's remit but the English game could never have allowed this to occur and the choice of Quest effectively sidelined the whole process to a procedural route safe from prying eyes. The FA is apparently considering retaining Stevens to probe "even deeper" into suspected transfer market irregularities. Even deeper than what? A cover up? Can't wait...
Anyway, after fifteen months of inquiry, Lord Stevens has handed the Premier League a list of just seventeen transfers that remain under scrutiny which is exactly the position that was reached last December. Six months later and there are still no names, suspensions while inquiry continues or, in fact, anything that might suggest that due process is being undertaken here.
Quest is questionable. The company claims to work at uncovering corporate malpractice but has previous history of delay, spin and disguise in inquiries into the death of Princess Diana and security breaches in the six counties. Investigative market analysts also base our skills on the detection of corporate malpractice but it is at this point where any similarity is discarded. Quest does indeed focus on the malpractice but merely from the perspective of tightening up the hierarchical infrastructure so that the weaknesses being addressed (ie the death of a princess or state death squads roaming the streets of Belfast in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries) is secured for the future. Basically, Quest's role is to plug loopholes at speed while releasing public information at their leisure. "As with all investigations I shall go where the evidence leads," said Stevens. "I can assure both the Premier League and you [the public] that Quest will not be distracted or diverted from whether or not irregularities exist and, if there is evidence of wrongdoing, it shall be highlighted." That was last December so we have to ask "when?". Quest only works with the FA to the degree that it must do so and the recommendations released to date have all targeted the FA and it's role in the game. As Brian Barwick has stated "while there was little detail concerning irregular transfer activities, Lord Stevens highlighted various criticisms of the FA and its compliance department" and "he also made certain recommendations. The overwhelming majority of these recommendations had already been formulated by the FA prior to his inquiry."
Apparently, August is the next likely date for a meaningless update from the copper's copper (surely that cannot be intended as a recommendation of Lord Steven's suitability for the job in hand). No doubt such release will be secreted away on a pre-season Tuesday or Thursday and then we can all get on with the enjoyment of the 2007/08 version of the beautiful game.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
So, where does this update leave us? Pretty much exactly where we were before. The ongoing saga regarding West Ham United and Tevez/ Mascherano is the latest flimsy excuse for avoiding letting the public know anything that might be of interest.
Several decades ago, Sven Goran Eriksson and Mike Newell separately highlighted the issue of illegal transfer activity in the English game and, as far as we are able to see, the sole impacts of their stance have been their removal from their jobs and the ensuing fact that neither of them will be involved in any capacity in English football again. None of the individuals fingered by the BBC Panorama programme have suffered any career setbacks and, indeed, Allardyce and Bond have been promoted up the footballing hierarchy. Additionally, as we have stated previously, the scope of Quest's inquiry was highly restrictive from day one as the window of investigation was kept deliberately brief as the bottom could have fallen out of the English game if the period had stretched back, say, ten years instead of merely two.
Richard Scudamore, the slippery CEO of the PL, is apparently considering IF he should make the report public rather than WHEN to make it public. The people who pay through the nose to watch our corrupted game deserve to be kept informed in real time of the developments that Quest have made and "if" and "when" should be undermined by an immediate release of proper information rather than sneaky leaks of snippets of spin.
The FA has been kept at the periphery of the process and, despite receiving regular updates from Quest and the Premier League, our sources suggest that these updates have been peripheral and general in form and, most definitely, not specific. Under normal circumstances, the whole inquiry would have fallen under the FA's remit but the English game could never have allowed this to occur and the choice of Quest effectively sidelined the whole process to a procedural route safe from prying eyes. The FA is apparently considering retaining Stevens to probe "even deeper" into suspected transfer market irregularities. Even deeper than what? A cover up? Can't wait...
Anyway, after fifteen months of inquiry, Lord Stevens has handed the Premier League a list of just seventeen transfers that remain under scrutiny which is exactly the position that was reached last December. Six months later and there are still no names, suspensions while inquiry continues or, in fact, anything that might suggest that due process is being undertaken here.
Quest is questionable. The company claims to work at uncovering corporate malpractice but has previous history of delay, spin and disguise in inquiries into the death of Princess Diana and security breaches in the six counties. Investigative market analysts also base our skills on the detection of corporate malpractice but it is at this point where any similarity is discarded. Quest does indeed focus on the malpractice but merely from the perspective of tightening up the hierarchical infrastructure so that the weaknesses being addressed (ie the death of a princess or state death squads roaming the streets of Belfast in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries) is secured for the future. Basically, Quest's role is to plug loopholes at speed while releasing public information at their leisure. "As with all investigations I shall go where the evidence leads," said Stevens. "I can assure both the Premier League and you [the public] that Quest will not be distracted or diverted from whether or not irregularities exist and, if there is evidence of wrongdoing, it shall be highlighted." That was last December so we have to ask "when?". Quest only works with the FA to the degree that it must do so and the recommendations released to date have all targeted the FA and it's role in the game. As Brian Barwick has stated "while there was little detail concerning irregular transfer activities, Lord Stevens highlighted various criticisms of the FA and its compliance department" and "he also made certain recommendations. The overwhelming majority of these recommendations had already been formulated by the FA prior to his inquiry."
Apparently, August is the next likely date for a meaningless update from the copper's copper (surely that cannot be intended as a recommendation of Lord Steven's suitability for the job in hand). No doubt such release will be secreted away on a pre-season Tuesday or Thursday and then we can all get on with the enjoyment of the 2007/08 version of the beautiful game.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Some Words Some Wise Some Foolish
A devotion to the horizontal means fewer postings and a more creative use of time so today's rant is a reply sent to an email I received regarding how a thirty year old might consider spreading his assets.
"1) Most honest brokers/market analysts believe that there are investments (non short selling) that are valid both outside the mainstream systems in the US and Britain and also elsewhere on the planet. For example, there is a vegan organic supermarket in Manchester called Unicorn that is immensely successful, political, and has achieved this with simply a great idea and hard work. When they began, they required start up capital. The green sector is bound to advance due to climate change concerns and slick people supported the project. This form of environmental micro investment is positive so long as one monitors the impact of the bigger operators eg Tesco as they muscle into the field. Generally though green is good for the foreseeable future. Close personal monitoring of such opportunities is key.
2) Young markets are also reasonably straight although investing in such areas is tricky without knowledge of the science behind a sector. However, a portfolio of minor investments in start-ups with great ideas and/or a technological edge is an earner. Obviously, these investments have a higher risk and are longer term but the rewards are significantly higher than markets where the info is already in the price.
3) Trading mature markets is also financially rewarding (whether football markets or financial). The advantage of these types of trades is that your money isn't tied up for so long. Dietrological Bronze clients traded on 5 games in this recent round of Internationals. Every trade won. The return on investment was 56%. If, for example, they had invested £2000 on each of these games, their £10K investment returns £15600. Compare with what this money could have achieved elsewhere and it is clear that professional trading in short-term truncated mature markets is very positive. Short selling mature stocks is also profitable but, unless you possess a proprietary analytical edge, I would advise extreme caution here. For instance, I believe the FTSE and Wall St are overpriced. I wish to sell but I have to remain patient with a percentage of my potential trade as the turning point is driven both by aggregate market group psychology and the wishes of the power loci people. Amateurish short selling is a very dangerous trading strategy.
4) Arbitrage trading and trading football in-running are two other very fast moving profit opportunities. The former is really only for trading organisations but the latter is easy money. Once a football match starts, all factors that were merely probabilities prior to the game become more concrete - eg motivation, the attitudes of corrupt players and officials etc. The markets can reveal significant inefficiencies in these cases.
5) Avoid any investments where you have to trust a psychopathic structure. The risk simply isn't worth it unless you are a greed merchant who thrives on shifting sands.
6) Mimic the successful - Goldman Sachs, Warren Buffett etc
7) Property is an earner as the system is set up for the power operators. Increases in house prices (prior to any housing bubble) is a one-way bet and represents an abusive redistribution of wealth from the poor without houses to the middle and upper classes with houses (as I have said before this is absolutely not wealth creation).
8) Without coming across as a luddite, control of overheads is a buzz. Every pound saved equals a pound earned with the added feelgood factor of denying a system it's slice of YOUR action. It helps you to feel more grounded too which enables clearer trading strategies to be developed overall. Take mobiles. Let's face it, they're all totally crap early stage of development consumerist items. I've got five and I occasionally use one. Try checking out the internet on a blackberry!? How much am I paying for sending a wind up photo back to Manchester of me lying on a yacht (not a true instance, by the way)? Why am I using this thing anyway? Next year, mobiles will go broadband when Wi-Max hits the ground running and, a few years later, broadband coverage will reach mountain tops. At that point, I'll get involved.
Without knowing more about your specific circumstances, it is tricky to suggest what a reasonable portfolio of these investments might look like. Obviously, children, family money, partner, current liabilities and savings are all valid inputs to a proper decision. Also, I do not know really where you place your personal risk threshold or where your ethical horizon might lie.
It is tempting to suggest that you purchase info from Dietrological and actively trade football markets as a part of your investment strategy but I would prefer that you consider your own life aims and goals holistically and reach the decision that is best for you and your family.
Remember i) that you don't really need that much to be safe and self-sufficient ii) I've never met a rich person who is happy iii) you can't take money and property to the grave iv) there's very few things that one actually needs.
Finally, be wary of systemic risk. For example, climate change may be addressed strategically by the planet's elite and all might be cool! But there is a long tail on the distribution of potential outcomes to the current climatic instability and, whether sceptics like it or not, on an atmospheric physics level there are some extreme potential futures when one undertakes scenario analysis. What is the use of a piece of paper in such circumstances? Think of what you would have preferred to have had your cash in in, say, 1929 with hindsight!"
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
"1) Most honest brokers/market analysts believe that there are investments (non short selling) that are valid both outside the mainstream systems in the US and Britain and also elsewhere on the planet. For example, there is a vegan organic supermarket in Manchester called Unicorn that is immensely successful, political, and has achieved this with simply a great idea and hard work. When they began, they required start up capital. The green sector is bound to advance due to climate change concerns and slick people supported the project. This form of environmental micro investment is positive so long as one monitors the impact of the bigger operators eg Tesco as they muscle into the field. Generally though green is good for the foreseeable future. Close personal monitoring of such opportunities is key.
2) Young markets are also reasonably straight although investing in such areas is tricky without knowledge of the science behind a sector. However, a portfolio of minor investments in start-ups with great ideas and/or a technological edge is an earner. Obviously, these investments have a higher risk and are longer term but the rewards are significantly higher than markets where the info is already in the price.
3) Trading mature markets is also financially rewarding (whether football markets or financial). The advantage of these types of trades is that your money isn't tied up for so long. Dietrological Bronze clients traded on 5 games in this recent round of Internationals. Every trade won. The return on investment was 56%. If, for example, they had invested £2000 on each of these games, their £10K investment returns £15600. Compare with what this money could have achieved elsewhere and it is clear that professional trading in short-term truncated mature markets is very positive. Short selling mature stocks is also profitable but, unless you possess a proprietary analytical edge, I would advise extreme caution here. For instance, I believe the FTSE and Wall St are overpriced. I wish to sell but I have to remain patient with a percentage of my potential trade as the turning point is driven both by aggregate market group psychology and the wishes of the power loci people. Amateurish short selling is a very dangerous trading strategy.
4) Arbitrage trading and trading football in-running are two other very fast moving profit opportunities. The former is really only for trading organisations but the latter is easy money. Once a football match starts, all factors that were merely probabilities prior to the game become more concrete - eg motivation, the attitudes of corrupt players and officials etc. The markets can reveal significant inefficiencies in these cases.
5) Avoid any investments where you have to trust a psychopathic structure. The risk simply isn't worth it unless you are a greed merchant who thrives on shifting sands.
6) Mimic the successful - Goldman Sachs, Warren Buffett etc
7) Property is an earner as the system is set up for the power operators. Increases in house prices (prior to any housing bubble) is a one-way bet and represents an abusive redistribution of wealth from the poor without houses to the middle and upper classes with houses (as I have said before this is absolutely not wealth creation).
8) Without coming across as a luddite, control of overheads is a buzz. Every pound saved equals a pound earned with the added feelgood factor of denying a system it's slice of YOUR action. It helps you to feel more grounded too which enables clearer trading strategies to be developed overall. Take mobiles. Let's face it, they're all totally crap early stage of development consumerist items. I've got five and I occasionally use one. Try checking out the internet on a blackberry!? How much am I paying for sending a wind up photo back to Manchester of me lying on a yacht (not a true instance, by the way)? Why am I using this thing anyway? Next year, mobiles will go broadband when Wi-Max hits the ground running and, a few years later, broadband coverage will reach mountain tops. At that point, I'll get involved.
Without knowing more about your specific circumstances, it is tricky to suggest what a reasonable portfolio of these investments might look like. Obviously, children, family money, partner, current liabilities and savings are all valid inputs to a proper decision. Also, I do not know really where you place your personal risk threshold or where your ethical horizon might lie.
It is tempting to suggest that you purchase info from Dietrological and actively trade football markets as a part of your investment strategy but I would prefer that you consider your own life aims and goals holistically and reach the decision that is best for you and your family.
Remember i) that you don't really need that much to be safe and self-sufficient ii) I've never met a rich person who is happy iii) you can't take money and property to the grave iv) there's very few things that one actually needs.
Finally, be wary of systemic risk. For example, climate change may be addressed strategically by the planet's elite and all might be cool! But there is a long tail on the distribution of potential outcomes to the current climatic instability and, whether sceptics like it or not, on an atmospheric physics level there are some extreme potential futures when one undertakes scenario analysis. What is the use of a piece of paper in such circumstances? Think of what you would have preferred to have had your cash in in, say, 1929 with hindsight!"
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
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