World Cup in England?

John Brown

In what ways war and apartheid are comparable is a mat of matter of debate and opinion, however you stated "It's not up to FIFA to interfere with political disputes.", as they did interfere over apartheid it means your statement was in error as they clearly have made decisions on political grounds in the past.

Sheriff

'You're horribly distorting my comments.'

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I don't think I am. Your consistent line has been to focus on the perceived / presumed hypocrisy of people criticising Russia, rather than talking about Putin's regime itself. This seems to be all you are interested in.

I've often engaged with Putin-apologists (both Russians and Western fellow travellers) on the internet and consistently their MO is not to make a principled defence of his politics (though they often dispute well established, damning facts as propaganda) but to turn the conversation around along the lines of 'yeah, but what about Iraq?'

I'm not alleging you are an engaged Putin apologist but you are following the rhetorical path that his information warriors want.

Sane
It's amazing that even after Sheriff's explanation of the difference in the two cases, you are still on that.

Red Russian
You clearly miss the point peole are trying to make. If on a thread titled "World Cup in England" someone tries to say the WC should be taken from Russia and handed to England on moral grounds, how the hell would someone not try to bring out the hypocrisy and holier than thou b\s in all that. No one is saying Russia is perfect, that is not even the conversation here no matter how hard you try to make it so, but please refrain from putting England forward as a bastion of morality and impecable foreign poiicy

If Russia is not hosting 2018 World Cup then there wouldn't be any bribery cases registered in the US despite of Qatar buying FIFA.

Let's wait and see how Qatar will respond to these cases when they are buying half of the US arsenal.

I'm really not sure what Red Russian doesn't understand about my points. I feel like I'm going in circles.

Wumpatrol & Sheriff

Okay, I acknowledge the context of the OP. Possibly I should have made more of that when I qualified my remarks about agreeing the West has no right to grandstand. But as I see it, the ensuing discussion broadened in scope. Sheriff's remarks (particularly downplaying the seriousness of the plight of gay people in Russia, which has nothing to do with whether England should host the World Cup) in my view contributed to that widening. They struck me as performing the classic 'it would be hypocritical to dwell on that' role, which does so much to divert genuine progressives in the West from solidarity with their harassed counterparts in hard-right regimes such as Russia.

That said, Sheriff, I wasn't out to pick a fight and I apologise if I've misrepresented where you're coming from. I'm sure we agree a lot on the fundamental things. Russia is a sore spot for me and my reaction was probably conditioned by seeing too much online content produced by both paid Putin trolls and tribalistic types who have no space in their heads other than the idea that the West is the source of all evil. I'm not portraying you as one of these.

so.......England getting the World Cup aye!

Looks like Sheriff has lost himself on this thread.

Maybe this is not so far fetched after all.

It's coming home..........etc etc, and so on and so forth