Fifa Mafia Parasites: The Enron of Sport...
- 'Fifa is an organised crime setup', Cape Times
- The World Cup: We Don't Need It!, APDUSA
- The Big Five: Stadiums could become white elephants, Earth Times
- R4.5bn stadium to let for R1/yr, IOL
- Caviar, FIFA and Media Corruption, Mail & Guardian
- Blatter & the Serial Murderer, Transparency in Sport
- Politics and Corruption in FIFA, Play the Game
- Mugabe's nephew in Fifa deal, Cape Times
- How many 2010 WC fans will leave SA burned, duped, fooled, conned, scammed and screwed over by Proudly SA Lies?, White Refugees
'Fifa is an organised crime setup'
April 27 2010 at 10:34AM
Craig McKune, Cape Times
Seventy-five days from now, when the World Cup is over, the international football federation's officials will be flying away with bags of money, saying: "Bye! Suckers."
This is the view of British investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, who says Fifa has banned him from its press conferences so that its president Sepp Blatter would not have to answer potentially revealing questions about corruption in the organisation.
Jennings, who authored a book on Fifa, Foul! The secret world of Fifa: Bribes, vote rigging and ticket scandals, spoke at a Cape Town Press Club lunch on Monday.
He is in town to launch a new book, Player and Referee: Conflicting interests and the 2010 Fifa World Cup, published by the Institute for Security Studies.
The book includes six World Cup case studies, written by investigative journalists, exploring conflict of interest between the public and private sectors that fuel "manipulation through the use of influence, political pressure, bribes, fraud and extortion".
According to Jennings, who calls Fifa "an organised crime setup", his exposes on various alleged cases of corruption by senior Fifa officials had never been legally challenged.
"They won't sue me because Herr Blatter cannot go into court, because if you go into court, you have to be cross-examined," he said.
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In Foul!, Jennings details how a Swiss marketing company, ISL, which previously managed Fifa's marketing and broadcast rights, apparently paid "industrial scale" bribes to top officials.
Documentation made public in a Swiss criminal court, Jennings said, suggested Blatter himself could have accepted a bribe.
The Cape Times has asked Fifa many times since February to confirm whether Jennings was banned from its press conferences and why, but it did not answer.
Jennings said it was "remarkable good luck" that, because of mismanagement of the ticketing process, ordinary South Africans will be able to afford tickets.
"They were never intended to have tickets, not if they were living on the lower end of the economic scale," he said.
He said South Africans would pay taxes to cover World Cup expenses for years to come, but at the end of the tournament, "that's the day they're going out through OR Tambo with their bags of money saying: 'Bye. Suckers'."
This article was originally published on page 3 of Cape Times on April 27, 2010
Player and referee: Conflicting interests and the 2010 FIFA World Cup™
Wednesday 28th April - 2010
Institute for Security Studies
Player and referee: Conflicting interests and the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ deals with conflict between public and private interests is today recognized as one of the biggest risk areas at all levels of public life in South Africa. Mega events, like the FIFA 2010 World Cup™, provide fertile ground for this. The event is a catalyst for competition – not only among football stars – but among the many contenders in the private and public sectors who seek to benefit from multiple state tenders that flow from these highly financed events. Outcomes are vulnerable to manipulation through the use of influence, political pressure, bribes, fraud and extortion. This publication presents readers with six detailed case studies that explore the dynamics that give rise to conflicts of interest. It also provides South African policy makers an opportunity to reassess the integrity of mega-event governance and reflect on weaknesses in the country’s anti-corruption framework. It is also hoped that this will provide invaluable reading for other countries set to host future mega-events.
Keynote Speakers were:
- Andrew Jennings: award-winning British investigative reporter and author of Foul! the secret world of FIFA.
- Rob Rose: award-winning investigative journalist with the Sunday Times
- [Chair] Collette Schulz Herzenberg: Senior Researcher, Corruption & Governance Programme, ISS Cape Town.
» » » » [IOL] [Transparency in Sport] [ISS]
The World Cup: We Don't Need It!
Christopher Merrett, Politics Web
11 November 2009 (Excerpts)
Next year's Football World Cup is a classic example of international capitalism in action. FIFA is one of several branches of the sports department of globalisation, each of which wields the political and economic power of a small nation. It has hired South Africa as a theatre upon which to stage a highly lucrative media event and already departed with the profit.
The Cup is about a great deal more than sport, the crowds simply part of the backdrop - the cost of their tickets is almost irrelevant. But the political dividends for the ANC are significant and the nation's new elite will be disporting itself in front of the world's cameras. The rest of the country will be enjoying a long holiday and the brief opportunity to forget South Africa's enormous burden of socio-economic problems.
There is no evidence from previous mega-events, or South Africa's current circumstances, that the World Cup will deliver any major benefit. Politicians traditionally lie about the projected economic and social outcomes of such events in order to requisition the resources required for their own political ends. The best guess is a pitiful 50 000 jobs and growth of 0.94% of gross domestic product. The World Cup was never intended for the benefit of township or suburban residents.
Taxpayers will pay dearly for this act of national prostitution destined to bequeath a clutch of expensive, white elephant sports stadiums. Health, education, police and local government infrastructure budgets will continue to suffer. This is a new form of colonialism - never mind the Chinese, Sepp Blatter's FIFA has got here first with commodified sport on a grand scale. And to keep visitors safe, a new form of apartheid will have to be erected to protect them from the violence that prematurely ends the lives of 30 000 South Africans every year.
Excerpt: A Noble Cause Betrayed – Commodification and Politicisation of SA Sport by the ANC, by Christopher Merrett in APDUSA Views, November 2009
» » » » [Excerpts: Soccer as a Tool of Oppression]
ANALYSIS: The Big Five: Stadiums could become white elephants
Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:22:23 GMT
Earth Times
Johannesburg - Are the new stadiums built for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, a country where football jostles with rugby and cricket for audience, destined to become white elephants after the month-long tournament? That's the 12.1-billion-rand, or 1.57-billion-dollar question - the cost of five new stadiums in Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Nelspruit and Polokwane.
The "white elephant" spectre is one that has come to haunt World Cup and Olympic Games hosts.
» » » » [Excerpts: Meet SA's New Big Five...]
R4.5bn stadium to let for R1/yr
Julian Rademeyer
2009-10-04 16:33
Cape Town is set to sign away the R4.5bn Green Point super-stadium - for just R1 a year.
Despite fears the stadium will become a costly "white elephant" after the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the city is pushing ahead with a controversial deal with a French-South African consortium. The city hopes to receive a 30% share of the after-tax profits from the SAIL Stadefrance Operating Company.
But if the operator does not make a profit, however, the city will recover just R1 a year in rent while spending millions more on maintaining the stadium. To be viable the stadium will have to host between 20 and 40 events a year.
The city's 2010 officials are hopeful that the lease will be endorsed by the city council when it meets on October 28.
The deal is heavily skewed in favour of SAIL Stadefrance, represented by Springbok rugby great Morné Du Plessis - so much so that one independent legal expert said this week: "The only reason a landlord would concede so much is because they know they have a white elephant on their hands and they don't know what to do with it."
But Ralph Malan, a retired engineer and vehement opponent of the stadium, says the project has been "bedevilled from start to finish with official deception of the public".
"The stadium is going to haemorrhage money."
» » » » [Excerpts: Meet SA's New Big Five...]
Caviar, FIFA and Media Corruption
Guy Berger, Mail & Guardian
Nov 25 2009 15:27
 The interviews show some evidence for the "spiral of silence" explanation: many interviewed reporters felt that population is a hot issue, better left unmentioned.... Thus a spiral of silence about population growth may be maintained by determined pronatalists, immigration advocates, and intimidated journalists. |
VIP views of the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium and fancy foodstuffs were the order of the day at a media accreditation briefing in Port Elizabeth last month.
It's not often that scribes get plied with caviar, but then not every media briefing is on behalf of the World Cup.
The occasion was one of several around the country convened by the Local Organising Committee (LOC). The aim was to get journalists to apply early for accreditation to cover the mega-event.
But behind the scenes, the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) is somewhat edgy about the process getting under way while there are unresolved issues around media rights.
The problem came to light last week at a workshop in Stellenbosch, organised by the German embassy in South Africa.
Sports promotion rather than journalism
Their criticism is that most sports journalism today ends up doing sports promotion, rather than serious reporting, investigation or analysis.
Critics like them point to a study in 2005 of 10 000 sports articles found that although sports is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide, only 6% of the articles look at the economic aspects. The bulk of coverage is limited to match reports and previews.
But there are sometimes tensions in the media-sports relationship. The Stellenbosch meeting heard that the South African Rugby Union is taking Die Burger to task. The newspaper had run a wrap-around photospread of rugby, which was underwritten by a company that does not sponsor the Rugby Union.
In response, the paper argues that it does the Rugby Union a favour by providing free publicity with photos that include the association's sponsor banners in the images.
How to keep a distance from these kinds of considerations is one of the biggest challenges for sports journalism. The field seems especially prone to being compromised by commerce or embeddedness with sources, as well as even formal or informal corruption.
» » » » [Excerpts: Is Fifa blackmailing SA Media Editors?]
Blatter & the Serial Murderer
Andrew Jennings
Transparency in Sport
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Monrovia, 23 November, 1999. FIFA President Sepp Blatter pays respect to Liberian President Charles Taylor – currently on trial at The Hague for human rights abuses.
Taylor is accused of murder, mutilation, torture, human sacrifice, cannibalism, using women and girls as sex slaves, abducting adults and children, forcing them to perform forced labour and fighters . . . and burying a pregnant woman alive in sand.
Taylor was so grateful to be honoured by anybody that he immediately awarded Liberia’s highest honour, The Humane Order of African Redemption to Blatter – who omits this from his ridiculous list of honours.
At the time of President Blatter’s trip to Liberia, President Taylor’s horrific record was well-known. That didn’t worry Blatter; he will take votes from anybody, anywhere.
» » » » [Excerpts: Is FIFA blackmailing SA Media Editors?]
Politics and Corruption in FIFA
Sport reporters Jens Weinreich and Thomas Kistner review the strange ways television rights are sold in FIFA, president Blatter's election in 1998 and the circumstances around the selection of Germany as host for the World Cup 2006.
By Jens Weinreich, Thomas Kistner; playthegame.org
Published 00:00, 15 November 2000
First of all a brief apology: The most competent speaker on this item, Politics and corruption in FIFA, can not be with us. Mr. Joseph Blatter, the president of FIFA and member of the IOC, has more urgent things to do these days.
In Brazil he has been invited to appear as a witness in a corruption inquiry being carried out by the Congress. The Senators and Congressmen are investigating the longtime-closest friends of Mr. Blatter: The honorary FIFA-president Joao Havelange and his former son-in-law, the FIFA Executive Member Ricardo Teixeira. In Brazil, it seems, nobody really knows what happened to the 400 million US$ from the world-famous Nike-contract.
In addition, Blatter has to raise the enormous sum of about 250 million US$. This is, as far as we can count, the money he promised to all national and continental federations to make him president in June 1998 at the FIFA congress in Paris. We will come back to this election later.
... What does it mean, when hours before the most important election in the world of football and, maybe, in the world of sport, dozens of delegates - all of them members of the so called FIFA-family - are running around talking about money, money, money.
.... But this can not be accepted as an accurate account of these events. Dempsey was not a private person in Zurich. He had to deliver the vote of his Oceanic confederation to South Africa. And this would have changed the result.
» » » » [Excerpts: FIFA & Politics of Corruption]
Mugabe's nephew in Fifa deal
By Craig McKune, Cape Times
February 22 2010 at 08:29AM
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In Zimbabwe, the exclusive and lucrative contract to sell Fifa's World Cup hospitality packages has been awarded to president Robert Mugabe's nephew, businessman and former Zanu-PF MP Philip Chiyangwa, who is the subject of international sanctions.
Chiyangwa's Native Investment Group (NIG) was hand-picked late last year to sell World Cup packages for Fifa.
While ticket prices are being slashed in South Africa to fill stadiums, and Zimbabwean fans had only bought 546 tickets by the beginning of this month, Chiyangwa has claimed his Native Investment Group, which he directs, is doing a rip-roaring trade.
Fifa's hospitality packages - including premium match tickets, catering, entertainment, "dedicated hostesses" and travel packages - are managed internationally by Match Hospitality, which appoints regional agents and sub-agents such as NIG.
Match Hospitality is run by Fifa president Sepp Blatter's nephew Philippe Blatter, through his sports marketing company Infront.
According to investigative reporter Andrew Jennings, who wrote the book Foul: The Secret World of Fifa, the football federation has been involved in several suspect relationships with rulers and their relatives.
Sepp Blatter was in 1999 awarded The Humane Order of African Redemption by then-Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. In 2002, Taylor's son-in-law Edwin Snow, head of Liberia's Football Association, campaigned for Blatter to be re-elected as Fifa president.
Blatter's presidency is meanwhile entering a critical phase as he campaigns for a fourth term, the success of which relies heavily on a successful tournament in 2010.
» » » » [Excerpts: FIFA's Waltz with African Banana Republic Dictators]
How many 2010 WC fans will leave SA burned, duped, fooled, conned, scammed and screwed over by Proudly SA Lies?
January 02, 2010
Andrea Muhrrteyn & Scott Ginsberg
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So it is that thousands of South African corporations use the words 'Proudly South African' in their literature; not because they are Proudly South African Patriots, whose identity is driven in terms of their commitment to a Constitutional Republic; but because using the words, will absolve them from the allegation of 'racist', or help them to get a goverment tender. IN their words, they say they are 'Proudly South African', but their actions to defend the Constitution, are non-existant. Actions speak louder than words.
And so life continues in South Africa; the country where millions of South Africans are too emotionally, psychologically, politically and spiritually insecure, to confront the reality that their 'Proudly South African' Emperor's are marching around buttnaked.
'Proudly South Africa' and 'Rainbow Unity South Africa' are staging the most spectacular fraud and self deception show of 'Orwellian Hypocrisy':"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their newspaper editors and schoolteachers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned... to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers."
-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
What is the Greatest Branding Secret in the History of Modern Marketing?
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Nope, it’s got nothing to do with Google.
It’s much, MUCH simpler than that.
The Greatest Branding Secret in the History of Modern Marketing boils down to one word:
Honesty.
Yep. That’s it. Honesty.
Call the Marketing Department for an emergency meeting. This is groundbreaking stuff.
“How are you branding your honesty?”
That’s the question you need to answer. Whether you’re a Fortune 1000 on Wall Street, a thirty-person pizza joint in Decatur or a one-man show working out of your living room alongside your snoring pit bull, you MUST brand your honesty.
For three reasons...
- People are tired of being lied to.
- People are sick of wading through the ever-rising tide of corporate and political bullshite.
- People are forever jaded from the countless times they’ve been burned, duped, fooled, conned, scammed and screwed over.
Like my friend Jeffrey Gitomer says, “If you lie to me, you LOSE me.”
LESSON LEARNED: Truth is currency.
» » » » [Excerpts: 2010 WC Fans screwed by Proudly SA Lies]
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