The massive hypocrisy of the West’s World Cup ‘concerns’

 Al Jazeera English

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently came out against a ban on rainbow armbands at the World Cup tournament in Qatar, which various European team captains had intended to sport in support of LGBTQ rights and against discrimination. Blinken flagged the ban as “concerning” and a restriction on “freedom of expression”.

The secretary’s scolding came on the heels of another rather “concerning” development on the world stage: a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in the US state of Colorado that killed five people and wounded 18 others. This, in a country that fancies itself the global role model in terms of respect for freedom of expression, human rights, and all that good stuff – and yet where it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to exercise their right to not be massacred at nightclubs, elementary schools, places of worship, shopping malls, and so on. . . .

Indeed, as this year’s World Cup host, Qatar has come under intense US and European fire on the issue of gay rights as well as migrant worker exploitation (not to mention the violation of the apparent human right to drink beer in sports stadiums). After all, Orientalism dies hard – and what better backdrop for the release of pent-up Western chauvinism than a football tournament in a bona fide Middle Eastern desert, enduring Orientalist symbol of Arab backwardness and resistance to progress? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

World Cup 2022: Capitalism can’t kill football — try as it might

 Al Jazeera English

A week or so before the kickoff of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, I was walking in the coastal city of Zihuatanejo in Mexico’s southern Guerrero state when I passed a group of children playing football with a plastic Coca-Cola bottle. They were as gleefully animated as any group of children playing football anywhere, while the Coke bottle was, I thought, regrettably appropriate in a world governed by corporate toxicity.

It was particularly appropriate, perhaps, given that Coca-Cola and football go way back. The company, which has been an official World Cup sponsor since 1978, entered into a formal association with FIFA in 1974 – although its logo has saturated World Cup events since 1950. The partnership was initially ostensibly meant to promote youth development programmes, since there is clearly nothing better for youth development than ingesting sticky brown liquid that is bad for human health.

Of course, that alliance is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of global capitalism’s efforts to suck the soul out of football and eradicate any remnants of primordial joy by monetising and commodifying everything on and off the field. Given the deluge of corporate propaganda that we call “sponsorship”, the uninitiated football spectator would be forgiven for thinking Adidas was a football team – or that matches are waged between Emirates and Etihad airlines. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

It’s time to call US democracy what it is — a failure

 Al Jazeera English

Polls closed on Tuesday evening in the United States’ latest democratic spectacle: the midterm elections — a topic the rest of the world has already had to hear far too much about and will continue to hear about, as some of the results may take days or weeks to confirm.

What we do know is that the “red wave” promised by Republicans did not exactly pan out; while the GOP is likely to take control of the House of Representatives, a deadlock looms in the Senate. The outcome of the crucial Senate race in Georgia will likely be postponed to a December run-off.

The delays and uncertainty mean the timing is ripe for a new cycle of election denialism, with growing mistrust in state institutions suggesting it will be increasingly difficult for the US to keep up democratic appearances.

In this year’s race for the Senate, House and other offices, a majority of Republican candidates have denied or cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. So we will likely see quite a lot of politicians triumph in an electoral system they themselves have denounced as fraudulent. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

US midterms: Why abortion never gets old as a hot election topic

Al Jazeera English

Fifteen years ago, I had an abortion in the southwestern Turkish town of Fethiye, where I had been intermittently residing as part of my self-imposed exile from the United States. The procedure was performed in a gynaecological clinic by a Turkish doctor who whistled, sang songs and joked about my distinct lack of fortitude compared with his patients from surrounding villages – who, he said, were in and out of his office with no anaesthesia or whining.

While this will not be music to the ears of the so-called “pro-life” crowd, the experience remains one of the high points of my entire existence – which would have undoubtedly gone swiftly downhill had I been forced to reproduce against my will.

Had I pursued the abortion in the US, the extraction of a blob of cells from my uterus would have entailed far more bureaucracy, stigma, and money (and probably no whistling). Still, I would have had it much easier than a poor woman, especially if she was not white. Such, after all, is the nature of “equality”, “women’s rights”, and similar empty concepts that the US specialises in.

Indeed, in the self-appointed land of the free, reproductive freedom was never fully born; you might even say it was aborted. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.