Speaker 1: It's sports. We're doing touch five yard penalty that the
Speaker 1: Angels have become the Mariners circles now body checking? Yep,
Speaker 1: this is the sports episode. Welcome to it could happen here,
Speaker 1: your favorite sportscast. I'm not the host of this episode,
Speaker 1: but I'm talking for some reason. Uh, James and Chris?
Speaker 1: Why are we talking about sports? To distract us from
Speaker 1: the crumbling of society around us? But more specifically to
Speaker 1: talk about how sports I used to launde other reputations
Speaker 1: of dictatorial regimes. And I know Chris has got some
Speaker 1: interesting stuff on Balsonaro's Brazil and sports. This is this is,
Speaker 1: this is the way before that. Sorry, yeah, I should
Speaker 1: measure this. This is okay, like this is, this is,
Speaker 1: this is, this is some wonderful pet era of vintage crimes.
Speaker 1: Oh good stuff. Okay. I love a Brazilian crime, no
Speaker 1: matter what the vintage. So I'm excited to learn about
Speaker 1: the how the NFL legitimizes the military police state anyway,
Speaker 1: um ye, and it's not even football, is it? So
Speaker 1: multiple things they're doing wrong. I want to talk first
Speaker 1: about like the original instance of what we're going to
Speaker 1: call sports washing, because everyone else calls it sports washing too,
Speaker 1: So it's like using these big global mega events to
Speaker 1: laund it the reputation of a pretty questionable regime. So
Speaker 1: the o G instance of this is the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six Olympics which were held in Berlin. You'll probably be
Speaker 1: familiar with who was in charge in Berlin. In n
Speaker 1: it was the Nazis. That's a spoiler, and the Nazis
Speaker 1: were actually given the Olympics. The Olympics were given to
Speaker 1: bind by Germany, which was considerably less ship than the Nazis,
Speaker 1: but the Nazis took them on and they're really around
Speaker 1: with them, and lots of the symbology that we associate
Speaker 1: with the Olympics today, that the raising of flags during
Speaker 1: the medal ceremony, the playing of national anthems, parade of
Speaker 1: flags are the opening ceremony, the torch relay, right, the
Speaker 1: torch relay goes from o g Olympia in Greece to
Speaker 1: wherever the Olympics are being held. It's it's this big
Speaker 1: ceremonial thing, right that all of these things were created
Speaker 1: by its guy called Carl D. M who was a
Speaker 1: Nazi to draw stronger links between the Nazi Party and
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks and position the Nazis the inheritors of
Speaker 1: this classical legacy, right, and the civilized people in the
Speaker 1: barbaric world, like the Greeks saw themselves. And obviously the Olympics,
Speaker 1: if you aren't familiar, draws its legacy from a largely
Speaker 1: mythical construct of a games that did actually happen in
Speaker 1: ancient Greek Right, So they claimed to be like a
Speaker 1: reconstruction of this Greek tradition, except in the Greek truition
Speaker 1: everyone was naked, which I think would make the Olympics
Speaker 1: much more watchable. We could, yeah, it's that is one
Speaker 1: of the things. I would watch the male gymnastics way more,
Speaker 1: not just naked but oiled. Yeah, honestly, then's men's swimming
Speaker 1: would be a lot more interesting. Yes it would. Yep,
Speaker 1: naked Olympics we can get behind. But they didn't bring
Speaker 1: that back. Nazi didn't bring that back. They didn't have
Speaker 1: some naked statues, but they weren't big into nudity. But
Speaker 1: they fused a whole lot of fashy eugenic shit, right.
Speaker 1: So the reason that they started having these medal tables
Speaker 1: was very much to reinforce their idea of the superiority
Speaker 1: of one race over other races, right, didn't really work
Speaker 1: out for them in ninety six because Jesse Owens turned
Speaker 1: up and owned them lots of different events and g
Speaker 1: o into being of course of black American sprinter and
Speaker 1: long jumper, and it didn't well. The Natics Olympics did
Speaker 1: exist to did help significantly in laundering the Nazi and
Speaker 1: they hit away a lot of their bullshit like they
Speaker 1: for instance, like all the Nazi Party newspapers like weren't
Speaker 1: distributed for the time that foreigners were in the country. Right,
Speaker 1: They hit away anti Semitic slogans. They even had a
Speaker 1: Jewish woman on the German Olympic team, because there was
Speaker 1: lots of sort of faster and and sort of they're
Speaker 1: like neo liberal liberal complaining. I guess about like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you're being anti Semitic or you shouldn't. Oh look there's
Speaker 1: a Jewish person on your team. It's fine. You guys
Speaker 1: are great. You guys aren't anti Semitic at all. It's good.
Speaker 1: We're sorted. And the US did nearly boycott the Olympics,
Speaker 1: but they decided not to. And that this guy called
Speaker 1: every brandage who went on to be a piece of
Speaker 1: ship of some right now. So like this Olympics, I
Speaker 1: guess set the tone for the use of these massive
Speaker 1: events to put on a show to the world and
Speaker 1: bring the world's press and show them what you want
Speaker 1: them to see and hide the stuff that you don't
Speaker 1: want them to see, which I think is a nice
Speaker 1: transition to talking about Brazil. Yeah, so we'll sort of
Speaker 1: about that factive. Their sports has a second sort of
Speaker 1: incredibly important internal political effect, which is that when when
Speaker 1: when you have a sports thing that's large enough, like
Speaker 1: when you have you know, like we have a World Cup,
Speaker 1: you have the Olympics show up, you have even to
Speaker 1: sometime the Super Bowl, Like you what what it basically
Speaker 1: creates is this like like it basically creates a temporary
Speaker 1: sort of state of state of exception where just like
Speaker 1: the sort of sort of normal functional society stops right
Speaker 1: and you know, this can go. This can go in
Speaker 1: a number of different ways. Like and anyone who ever
Speaker 1: lived in Philadelphia, like okay, there there there's a version
Speaker 1: of this in Philly where like after after the Eagles win,
Speaker 1: like for like fifteen hours, there are no laws like
Speaker 1: when they just killed like thirty people. Yeah, well hundred
Speaker 1: ye was a yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got ahead
Speaker 1: at the sports for killing tons of people. I think
Speaker 1: that's likely to blame where the cops if we're having sports.
Speaker 1: But I mean, but that, but this, this is the
Speaker 1: thing about sports, right, is that in order to sort
Speaker 1: of like do security blah blah blah blah blo exceter etcetera,
Speaker 1: in order to make sure the game's work, you can
Speaker 1: do fucking anything. Yes, right, justifies nasty s. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know what, one of one of the things, one
Speaker 1: of the sort of like examples that I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about about this happening is one that is really
Speaker 1: not talked about that much, which is the two fourteen
Speaker 1: World Cup in Brazil, which wound up i think, actually
Speaker 1: having a pretty big impact on the way Brazilian politics
Speaker 1: went and also just destroying the lives of unfathomable numbers
Speaker 1: of people. So okay, so this whole thing, like I've
Speaker 1: been in since it's happening to fourteen, It's been in
Speaker 1: the works since like Lula was in office in like
Speaker 1: the late twenty like late late two thousand's right, Um,
Speaker 1: this is this is like this is like one of
Speaker 1: this is like one of the workers parties like big
Speaker 1: things is that they're they're they're they're gonna have this
Speaker 1: World Cup. Um, they've taken a ship ton of corporate
Speaker 1: money to do it. They've taken you know, they've they've
Speaker 1: they've spent they spent enormous about a political capital making
Speaker 1: sure this is gonna happen, and the consequences of it
Speaker 1: are just like astronomic. Something like two fifty thousand people
Speaker 1: like lost their homes in order to like make way
Speaker 1: for like the fucking stadiums and the fields and like
Speaker 1: all of the sort of like bullshit around like all
Speaker 1: the sort of security, theater stuff, all of like just
Speaker 1: like debated. Yeah, and this is something that happens with Olympics,
Speaker 1: is to more famously, but like whenever you have a
Speaker 1: sports event like this, there's just this giant cleansing that
Speaker 1: happens of like anyone who's like onto the street, who's homeless, right,
Speaker 1: anyone who's just sort of like doesn't look right, particularly
Speaker 1: anyone who's black just sort of like suddenly is like
Speaker 1: disappeared by the police from this area. Um. But this,
Speaker 1: this this particular one in in in Brazil was interesting
Speaker 1: because this is happening to just in fourteen, so and
Speaker 1: she dozen thirteen, there were like enormous protests in Brazil
Speaker 1: and actually there there's been another like set of soccer
Speaker 1: events there in just thirteen then like something like eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people were in the streets across Brazil like
Speaker 1: protesting it. But yeah, there there were these like there's
Speaker 1: enormous street movements. Is like like six percent of the
Speaker 1: entire Brazilian population was in the streets. Um they were
Speaker 1: like basically started as sort of like antiosterity protests because
Speaker 1: cities were sort of like we're increasing the price of
Speaker 1: like farris for stuff, and it gets it gets the
Speaker 1: protest get kind of weird very quickly because on the
Speaker 1: one hand, so like you have the Workers Party in power, right,
Speaker 1: and like the Workers Party has been sort of sliding
Speaker 1: right by this point, but you have a sort of
Speaker 1: like you have like a really bilitant left that's in
Speaker 1: the street. You have a bunch of anarchist, you have
Speaker 1: a bunch of autonomist or sort of like doing stuff.
Speaker 1: But then also right wingers start showing up because it's
Speaker 1: a protest against the governments and the government's like nominally
Speaker 1: a left government. And yeah, this leads to just a
Speaker 1: really confusing stative affairs. But but you know the next year,
Speaker 1: this like and the protest like keep going for like
Speaker 1: a long time, and there's still like even after like
Speaker 1: the largest ones are kind of pee doing out, there's
Speaker 1: still purchas happening. But when the World Cup hits, like
Speaker 1: the World Cup is that like is one of this
Speaker 1: sort of like like the arth, like the law suddenly
Speaker 1: doesn't work anymore. Like in orders to do this, you
Speaker 1: have to sign, like there's something called the General Law
Speaker 1: of the World Cup, which is like a bunch of
Speaker 1: like laws that you have to sign that like physically
Speaker 1: change what your laws are like in order to have
Speaker 1: this event magnificent. I mean that's actually that's actually great.
Speaker 1: You should do more of that. The great thing about
Speaker 1: FIFA is that they've sharing a commitment to human rights,
Speaker 1: to quality and democracy, and so I'm sure there's rules
Speaker 1: are good rules, and you know, so so there are
Speaker 1: fun things like like it literally like parts of the
Speaker 1: zillion Constitution are suspended. What parts like well, so physically
Speaker 1: a bunch stuff about the right to strike, Like there's
Speaker 1: a special court that's set up that like it like
Speaker 1: that within forty eight hours like like decide on whether
Speaker 1: a strike is legal or not and what the thing
Speaker 1: is going to be like, So that's not very good.
Speaker 1: It's really they're all not real very bad. Like like
Speaker 1: there's there's the Brazilian government spans like seventy million dollars
Speaker 1: buying basically police equipment and like from the U S,
Speaker 1: from Germany and from Israel, which is like the holy
Speaker 1: trinity of good normal countries where if you're buying shipped
Speaker 1: from them, you're doing a good thing. See, I thought
Speaker 1: we were going to talk about how you know, there's
Speaker 1: moments in our society where the regular rules of engagement
Speaker 1: are suspended, and in such we can use this moment
Speaker 1: of extra opportunity to find new ways of liberatory of
Speaker 1: experiencing liberatory freedom. People tried that, and and and and
Speaker 1: instead a bunch of literally like they were driving tanks
Speaker 1: through the street like into like like blockading off like
Speaker 1: roads leading out of the favelos with tanks like it was.
Speaker 1: It was nuts, like some incredible videos at this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were like laws in Brazil about child labor, right, um,
Speaker 1: guess what doesn't apply to fifas you can so they
Speaker 1: can have fucking ball boys. They basic child labor. They
Speaker 1: also have they have these There are twenty thousand people
Speaker 1: who are working for this event who are who are
Speaker 1: classified as volunteers. You can just use them as basically
Speaker 1: they started doing slave labor. Yeah, what's the what's the shocking? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, are they forced into this or do they
Speaker 1: actually volunteer? Kind of Okay, so sometimes the actual you
Speaker 1: know what actual slavery because it's it's not actual, Okay,
Speaker 1: the Brazilian government will do actual slavery, but like this
Speaker 1: is yeah, this is not quite that, but it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who are kind of yeah but yeah,
Speaker 1: who have who have no labor rights, like, and the
Speaker 1: everything happens is there's there are there are enormous crackdowns,
Speaker 1: like they just start they start doing the thing that
Speaker 1: like the US does it too, but I think I
Speaker 1: think like Canada's is more than the U s where
Speaker 1: it's like when when when they know a protest is
Speaker 1: about to happen, they like go find the like six
Speaker 1: people who they think are protest leaders just arrest them beforehand.
Speaker 1: They started doing that. They there's a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who get tortured. There's a bunch of like the police
Speaker 1: are basically just going ape shit. They like, yeah, they
Speaker 1: there are some like that. There's a point in this
Speaker 1: where like the garbage workers go on strike and they
Speaker 1: actually win because it turns out that if if in
Speaker 1: the middle of the World Cup there's fucking garbage piling
Speaker 1: up on the street, like it's really bad. But like yeah,
Speaker 1: like this has like this has a just like absolutely
Speaker 1: disastrous effects on like just just sort of what's like
Speaker 1: everything is going on president in politics like um, one
Speaker 1: of the things that Lula does. I'm gonna talk about
Speaker 1: this more and in another Brazil episode, but Lula like
Speaker 1: sent a bunch of Brazilian troops to invade haiti Um,
Speaker 1: which fucking sucks. And then those troops came home and
Speaker 1: they were used to occupy the favelas in real while
Speaker 1: this was going on, and this kind of crushed like
Speaker 1: what was left of the sort of left that had
Speaker 1: been in the streets. Like they just got like they
Speaker 1: just got they just got stomped because the Brazilian police
Speaker 1: are on terrifying and like literally they're deploying colonial troops
Speaker 1: like in the streets and and yeah, and so so
Speaker 1: this this is the sort of second kind of thing
Speaker 1: that you can get with sports, which is like on
Speaker 1: the one hand they're used to start of whitewash regimes
Speaker 1: and on the other hand they're used as as as
Speaker 1: basically a way to like do fascism inside of a
Speaker 1: state where you can you know, like you could you
Speaker 1: could do a state of exception, right like the law
Speaker 1: seas to a this uh, the state becomes like this
Speaker 1: entity that can just sort of like do whatever it
Speaker 1: wants to order to preserve itself. And it's a way
Speaker 1: that you can just you know, you can socially cleanse
Speaker 1: to ut people, in which something that would be like
Speaker 1: you know, would genuinely be pretty difficult if you try
Speaker 1: to do this in any other circumstance. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's sports, so you can just basically do ethnic
Speaker 1: cleansings and yeah, it sucks as sometimes you can do
Speaker 1: it with the support of the other So like the
Speaker 1: World Cup, it's going to your Qatar, right and and
Speaker 1: they one of the things is happening gives its quote
Speaker 1: unquote security consultant from the participating nations are coming. So
Speaker 1: you have this like incredible situation where like a the
Speaker 1: Qatari and like police chief I believe has been like, hey,
Speaker 1: for your own safety, fans, if you do happen to
Speaker 1: be gay and it's illegal to be gay right in Qatar.
Speaker 1: Like just guys, just don't hold hands with your partner
Speaker 1: because it's not us who's going to come and beat
Speaker 1: you up. It's it's the regular qataris right like you,
Speaker 1: you won't be safe and we can't protect you from
Speaker 1: their violent homophobia. And then we've got like Britain's sending
Speaker 1: soldiers to be like, yeah, let us help you with
Speaker 1: your security consultations. Guys, we need to keep this country safe.
Speaker 1: Oh god, okay, so did you do you know what
Speaker 1: else does violent security consultations? Is it Britain? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were now sponsored by the Nation of Britain. Is
Speaker 1: better help, better help online counseling. If you don't sign
Speaker 1: up for therapy, a military a military team will break
Speaker 1: through your windows and force you to go to therapy
Speaker 1: with a car. That's that is that is the better
Speaker 1: health guarantee. And we're back and I am not thinking
Speaker 1: about people who I know who we're physically dragged by
Speaker 1: cops in the therapy. It's great, it's a great never happened,
Speaker 1: never happened. No one's ever been forced to go to
Speaker 1: therapy non consensually. It doesn't have Yeah, so yeah. Other
Speaker 1: things that don't happen include include sports. Yeah, sports aren't
Speaker 1: real their fingent of our imagination if we simply the
Speaker 1: ontology of sports is fatally flawed. One might say that's
Speaker 1: sports are a way of teaching people to be complying
Speaker 1: with rules and to be administrators in the colonial empire.
Speaker 1: Or people can argue that sports offer a gamified version
Speaker 1: of the world that allow you to recognize problem solving
Speaker 1: in fun and creative ways and encourage team building. So
Speaker 1: I don't actually like sports very much. And the other hand,
Speaker 1: do quite like sports, but I'm aware of the role
Speaker 1: they play. Okay, so this is like a big thing
Speaker 1: that the Gulf States do you um is particularly do
Speaker 1: this sports bullshit? And Carter, I think, usually is smarter
Speaker 1: about it than like Carter just has better pr People
Speaker 1: in the saudiast do, and I mean they're they're slightly
Speaker 1: helped by the fact that they are marginally less bad
Speaker 1: than Saudi Arabia, like marginal, like this is a this
Speaker 1: is a this is a this is a fucking a
Speaker 1: bar that is so low you can trip over it,
Speaker 1: like I think we can just say both bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So should we talk about the Catholic system a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the Gulf States have this thing called the catholicis
Speaker 1: now and there have been some alterations to it and
Speaker 1: something that made it less bad in the last few years.
Speaker 1: But basically this is a system that lets Okay, so
Speaker 1: there's a bud there's a lot of mirket workers, particularly
Speaker 1: from Southeast Asia that like take jobs in the Gulf
Speaker 1: because they pay they have The Gulf States have a
Speaker 1: like a obscene, fanatical, like world rending amount of oil money, um.
Speaker 1: And so people you know, come seeking these jobs because
Speaker 1: they need to feed their families, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a huge amount of oil money here, like they have
Speaker 1: just every petro dollar um. But the way this labor
Speaker 1: system basically works is that like, in order to like
Speaker 1: be in the country, you have to have a job,
Speaker 1: right you like, you like very specifically have to have
Speaker 1: a job, and your employer has to be there. And
Speaker 1: so very very bad things start to happen when you
Speaker 1: have a group of people who you can just like
Speaker 1: instantly destroy the life of and so these will happen
Speaker 1: where for example, like so you okay, so you show up,
Speaker 1: you show up to Carter right, and your boss will
Speaker 1: just take your fucking passport and it's just gone, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like, okay, if if you don't
Speaker 1: do literally everything they tell you, like you, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get you hastrot back. You're just fucked. And this
Speaker 1: creates a like a genuinely like very close to slavery
Speaker 1: has a lot of the fucking horrors. Like you, there
Speaker 1: have been a bunch of stories people like fucking jumping
Speaker 1: out of buildings trying to escape and then like being
Speaker 1: dragged back Like it's fucking horrifying labor conditions. Um, and
Speaker 1: it's not not indentured servitude. Yeah, absolutely is. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is one of the worst. It's it's
Speaker 1: one of the worst labor regimes on earth that is
Speaker 1: not literally slavery. It is. It is. It is in
Speaker 1: the category of technically not slavery, but like very horrific close.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It is. It is one of the
Speaker 1: worst things that exists. A serious and genuine solution to
Speaker 1: if you want to solve like a bunch of the
Speaker 1: problems of all of the bullshit that's happening in the
Speaker 1: Gulf region. If you gave every single one of these
Speaker 1: migrant workers like several artillery batteries and a bunch of
Speaker 1: assault rifles like instantly, like so many of the problems
Speaker 1: of this region would be solved. Yeah. So I was
Speaker 1: just looking up statistics. Six thousand, five hundred of these
Speaker 1: workers have died in cutters since it was awarded the
Speaker 1: World Cup. Like that's that's uh, that's that's a pretty
Speaker 1: alarming um number of Like so it's from India, Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: no pause forri Lanka prices like that, right, I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: these people have absolutely no rights and they have incredibly
Speaker 1: dangerous working conditions. And also we got about like people
Speaker 1: are super fucking racist, Like yes, like that it's it's
Speaker 1: it's the kind of racism that you get when you
Speaker 1: have literally like basically pure absolute power over someone. It
Speaker 1: is a it is a fucking trip. Yeah. People will
Speaker 1: literally have to pay off the debts that they include,
Speaker 1: like you pay a recruitment trophee or a travel fee
Speaker 1: to get these jobs. Like we're not messing around when
Speaker 1: we say it's an indentured certitude. Yeah, and it's very
Speaker 1: hard to do that. Your your your employees can just
Speaker 1: you know, like they can just withhold your pay eight
Speaker 1: for whatever the fun reason, because yeah, because it's absolute power.
Speaker 1: There's like a few should I read. There's one that's
Speaker 1: an example of one of these deaths that I could
Speaker 1: read if we want so. This guy, um Madhubal Apoly
Speaker 1: I think his name. He's from India. He was forty three.
Speaker 1: He left his wife and his thirteen year old son,
Speaker 1: Rejesh in India to take a job in catering, and
Speaker 1: they never saw him again. One late night, when his
Speaker 1: roommate returned to his dorm, he found Bullapai's body on
Speaker 1: the floor. Like thousands of other sudden and unexplained death,
Speaker 1: it's passing was recorded his heart failure due to natural causes.
Speaker 1: Despite working for his employer for six years, his wife
Speaker 1: and son received a hundred and fourteen thousand rupees it's
Speaker 1: about a thousand pounds about a thousand dollars now, as
Speaker 1: well in compensation and unpaid salary. Jess had no idea
Speaker 1: why his father died. He had no health problems, he said,
Speaker 1: there was nothing wrong with him. Yeah, pretty, there's I'll
Speaker 1: will link the Guardian story. But there are dozens of
Speaker 1: these stories of people who die working in extra heat
Speaker 1: for long hours and no breaks and terrible conditions. It's
Speaker 1: pretty terrible shit. Yeah, and a lot of these And also,
Speaker 1: and this is the only thing we should point out,
Speaker 1: is a lot a lot of people have died directly building, yes,
Speaker 1: the stadium stadium, Yeah, which is like just like the
Speaker 1: absolute human horror of why on why are we using
Speaker 1: Like why are we building a giant fucking soccer stadium
Speaker 1: in the middle of like in the fucking desert, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, in a place with no endemic soccer culture.
Speaker 1: It's not like the stadium is like, you know, going
Speaker 1: to be packed week in and week out with the
Speaker 1: Qatari Altra is doing teapots and ship like it just
Speaker 1: exists for people to come once to watch this spectacle
Speaker 1: and then leave again. I mean, it's the same thing
Speaker 1: with all the Olympics stuff, right, Like they like tank
Speaker 1: a city's economy to build a whole like basically miniatured
Speaker 1: like village in town that then becomes useless after like
Speaker 1: a yeah, some of them will just get turned into
Speaker 1: like I don't know, that's what the Olympics are for.
Speaker 1: The Olympics are like a gathering place for a transnational
Speaker 1: bourgeoilie and they have always been there right like they
Speaker 1: when they started. For a very long time, the Olympics
Speaker 1: had an amateurism clause which meant that like quote unquote,
Speaker 1: professional athletes couldn't take part, which was designed such that
Speaker 1: like Bosua, people who had enough leisure time to train
Speaker 1: could compete, but working class people who needed to take
Speaker 1: time off to train couldn't be compensated for that time off, right,
Speaker 1: they couldn't even be compensated for their time off taken
Speaker 1: to travel and compete at the Games. So like, the
Speaker 1: Olympics are doing what they're supposed to do, which is
Speaker 1: is bringing these elite people together, but a Coca Cola
Speaker 1: benefits more from every Olympics in the city that hosts it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and obviously that's the Olympics are heavily tied
Speaker 1: to nationalism. UM that has a whole bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: not great a munch of the national symbology comes from
Speaker 1: the Nazis direct like that, yeah exactly. But also on
Speaker 1: the flip side of that, there's other stuff like UM
Speaker 1: have like Taiwan having to compete compete as Chinese Taipei
Speaker 1: and not use their actual flag, which is other like, yes,
Speaker 1: the alternative would be more, you know, embracing the country
Speaker 1: as like as a nationalist thing, like as it's as
Speaker 1: its own nation. But still it's it is, it's still
Speaker 1: not great that they can't they can't compete under their
Speaker 1: actual you know, it's like a name and yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and and you know and like and then this
Speaker 1: is like Carter's kind of Weirdly, this is slightly backfire
Speaker 1: on Carter a little bit because, like Carter, Carter works
Speaker 1: the best as a sort of diplomatic power when nobody
Speaker 1: pays attention to it. And then the like absolute fucking
Speaker 1: brain geniuses at the Guitari Roule elite were like, what
Speaker 1: if we fucking drew attention to ourselves? And that everyone
Speaker 1: was like, wait, hold on, this place is fucked, but
Speaker 1: this has not stopped it. FIFA is like maybe the
Speaker 1: only ruling sports body more corrupt in the Olympic Committee.
Speaker 1: Like it is is incredibly staggering, like a group of
Speaker 1: people who have figured out a way to just like
Speaker 1: help a city ethnically cleanse a bunch of its population
Speaker 1: and then extract enormous amount of wealth and then look
Speaker 1: good while doing it. Yeah, it is. It's it's an
Speaker 1: exercise and like pointing, pointing over there while you steal
Speaker 1: someone's wallet, you know. Yeah, So I think that the
Speaker 1: last thing thing we want to talk about was talking
Speaker 1: about what the specialities have been doing this two. Because yes,
Speaker 1: one of the sport so I'm most familiar with obviously
Speaker 1: is like cycling. It's the sport I competed in and
Speaker 1: it's recently seen this influx of money from petrochemical states. Right,
Speaker 1: so we have like you a E teen, we had
Speaker 1: a Dubai team for a while. Um we there is
Speaker 1: like a tour of Cutter and the Tour of Dubai.
Speaker 1: Now that like, these are not places wants to go
Speaker 1: ride about it, right, they're hot, they're flat, they're terrible.
Speaker 1: But like bike races have always served as a way
Speaker 1: to consolidate nations, right, That's why the Tour of France exists.
Speaker 1: It's like it's literally a loop and being like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're included in this, and like in in Europe, they're
Speaker 1: often used to consolidate nations that exist outside of states, right,
Speaker 1: like Flanders, Catalonia, the Basque country, Wallonia. All of these
Speaker 1: places have bike races that delineate who belongs in and
Speaker 1: who belongs out. Slightly different in these petrochemical economies because
Speaker 1: more delineates a look at us. We're a great country
Speaker 1: and totally normal, and you can come here and do
Speaker 1: sports and and please don't look at the way that
Speaker 1: we treat our workers from Southeast Asia, like um, it's
Speaker 1: it's please ignore our seventeen wars, like all the school
Speaker 1: bus full of children we've blown up. Do not look
Speaker 1: at Yemens like yeah, which also, by the way, I
Speaker 1: do want, I do want to just put this room.
Speaker 1: And Carter also fucking involved in Yemen. Same with the UAE.
Speaker 1: They nobody ever talks about it. They also fucking doing this.
Speaker 1: Do not left him off the book for this bullshit.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting to see it, Like it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see some fan groups organizing like against this ship, right,
Speaker 1: And chiefly I think it's gonna it's about stuff that
Speaker 1: you're about to talk about, I think, which is the
Speaker 1: purchasing of clubs by these these very wealthy interests. I
Speaker 1: find it fascinating to see that there has always been
Speaker 1: an anti fascist element in football actus right, There have
Speaker 1: always been clubs that have been anti fascists. Those clubs
Speaker 1: have always tended to oppose like ownership of the clubs
Speaker 1: that they are fans of by finance capital. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see that now articulated against these petrochemical regimes
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, right Like its Keith from fucking
Speaker 1: Bolton and his mates who go to the football match
Speaker 1: every Saturday now and I'm fucking past because I allow
Speaker 1: an lgbt Q rights in Qatar. But yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: very funny to see. And also it's nice to see, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's good see people sharing solidarity. Like you can't display
Speaker 1: in theory, can't display pride flags in stadium or anywhere
Speaker 1: else in Qatar right now. No people were talking about
Speaker 1: taking them anyway. So maybe someone will do an epic
Speaker 1: like Pride flag or TFO at the Olympics, which would
Speaker 1: be uh, I don't know, I've never seen the World Cup.
Speaker 1: Then they might all get disappeared, but yeah, then the
Speaker 1: entire with caution. Yeah, then then the stadium collapses and
Speaker 1: there we go. Okay. So the other thing that's sort
Speaker 1: of been happening is that Staidly has been buying up
Speaker 1: a bunch of clubs, but they brought Britain's Premier League
Speaker 1: Newcastle United team. There's like bought it. They have they
Speaker 1: they staides have this this thing called the Public Investment Fund,
Speaker 1: which is like it's kind of like a sovereign wealth
Speaker 1: fund kind of. They just use it to like it
Speaker 1: buy ship and they've they've been doing a bunch of
Speaker 1: sports stuff. They've also been pushing into the sports, which
Speaker 1: is interesting the disasters. Yeah, so they bought the e
Speaker 1: s L, which is the does it still stand for
Speaker 1: Electronic Sports League especially? I think it still does, So
Speaker 1: there doesn't Okay, you're about to be a biggest and
Speaker 1: say sports on sports. No, they're video games. It's better
Speaker 1: than actually better than regular sports. They're different chess. The
Speaker 1: same ship is happening here. So the e s L
Speaker 1: is like one of the it's it's it basically ate
Speaker 1: a bunch of the other. So they used to be
Speaker 1: a bunch of sort of circuits for a bunch of
Speaker 1: different like E sports games, right, things like kind of
Speaker 1: strikes seems like StarCraft, Um, those are those sort of
Speaker 1: I think there's another what's the other big one that
Speaker 1: s L does. Um seems to be most counts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's mostly kind of striking. They basically consumed all
Speaker 1: of the like StarCraft, so they used to be I
Speaker 1: M and dream Hack that dude stuff, and they've eaten
Speaker 1: them all. And the e s L just got like
Speaker 1: bought out by like like the saudiastucking investment company, by
Speaker 1: and by by by a new sort of like media
Speaker 1: group thing at the Saudiast Forum that's headed by fucking
Speaker 1: former Activision CEO Brian Ward. Actually unbelievable. Yeah, who who's
Speaker 1: the guy who engineered the fucking Activision Blizzard merger and
Speaker 1: is now going on to do this bullshit a savvy
Speaker 1: games group. Yeah, I mean, like like like et sports
Speaker 1: as always, there's funds always sucked, Like a bunch of
Speaker 1: the stuff is funded by like fucking cryptocurrency. Right now,
Speaker 1: I think the sports I just know, you can't take
Speaker 1: it seriously. It's the best. But yeah, they the Saudis
Speaker 1: have taken by beloved StarCraft League. I will be waging
Speaker 1: an unending holy war against them until they fucking ceased
Speaker 1: to exist. And yeah, yeah you become a stock Craft too. Again.
Speaker 1: It sucks. All I know about East Sports is Sonic
Speaker 1: Fox and Smash Brothers. That's all I know, because everything
Speaker 1: else just seems like people who are having a fun
Speaker 1: time playing video games. That's great. It was so my
Speaker 1: my post dog was funded by the IOC, and like
Speaker 1: at the time I was there, there was this massive
Speaker 1: like first of all, there was like a lot of
Speaker 1: boom iss discussing a v sports for sports and then
Speaker 1: whether they should be incorporated in the Olympics, And it
Speaker 1: was extremely funny to watch, like these people completely failed
Speaker 1: to understand the fundamental like you know, sports of physical
Speaker 1: contest with the metal element, right, doesn't matter if you're
Speaker 1: moving a thumbs or your whole buddy. But it was
Speaker 1: very funny towards these people. I want to say this
Speaker 1: because this is okay, So it's just really funny. But
Speaker 1: also people get like really seriously injured doing the sports ship,
Speaker 1: like particularly Starker. There's a lot of Starker players who
Speaker 1: like sucking paralyzed, who have like like serious year damage
Speaker 1: of their spines. Yeah, because they have like StarCraft players,
Speaker 1: like especially older days, you know, people like practicing sixteen
Speaker 1: hours a day, right, and they're sitting in a chair
Speaker 1: and they're they're fucking but you know they have like
Speaker 1: four PM, right, so you're doing like like six hundred
Speaker 1: actions in a minute, and people's people's risks just explode,
Speaker 1: like people get fucking like damage their spines like a
Speaker 1: nerve damage. Like it sucks. Um. I have a friend
Speaker 1: who's a human physiologist who used to work for the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense here and said, diego helping like you know,
Speaker 1: like high speed m B people be better at killing people, uh,
Speaker 1: Navy people, I guess in San Diego, and then left
Speaker 1: to work for Red Bull in their sports to oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: to be the human physiologist who like, yeah, optimizes people
Speaker 1: set up so that they're listed a angle and like guests,
Speaker 1: I'm actually training, And I guess we won't be happy
Speaker 1: until Taiwan is playing Fortnite in a democratized, decentralized East
Speaker 1: Sports league that has union workers. And I guess that's
Speaker 1: what we're advocating for now. Yeah, that's the one goal
Speaker 1: of this podcast. There is a there's a MYANMA National
Speaker 1: Unity Government e sports team, so actually that there was
Speaker 1: actually a whole thing in competitive StarCraft where someone someone
Speaker 1: held up someone held up a Hong Kong flag and
Speaker 1: they fucking like they cut the stream and fired this
Speaker 1: actually fired the two like like They not only fired
Speaker 1: the guy who held the thing up, they fired the
Speaker 1: two fucking casters who like who were just there. Well
Speaker 1: it happens. Yeah, so critical respect that person is. See
Speaker 1: the John Carlos, that's the raised fist moment of the sports.
Speaker 1: Yeah so yeah, fuck sports do bad things. Make them
Speaker 1: do good things overthrowing local governments. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: the revolutionary I mean this is this has been written
Speaker 1: about by like actual academics, but the revolutionary but the
Speaker 1: revolutionary potential of like soccer hooligans and football hooligans are
Speaker 1: like it's massive, Like one on one thing, We'll do
Speaker 1: an episode about the fucking the Turkish soccer ultras who
Speaker 1: fucking stole a back hoe and we're driving it around Turkey.
Speaker 1: Doesn't thirty destroying fucking police barricades with it, sick of
Speaker 1: ship every lots of like into Rear Square. Their Egyptian
Speaker 1: ultras were leading in the Maidan. It was Ukrainian nottras.
Speaker 1: And there's a really good book called twelve which people
Speaker 1: should read if they're interested in the polite to cool
Speaker 1: uh potential of football ultras. We should we should do
Speaker 1: something about like hooligans in general. But yes, this was
Speaker 1: supposed to kind of be about the various ways that
Speaker 1: there's sports things that are kind of messed up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe just regular one more thing, you can stop these
Speaker 1: fucking giant mega events from happening in your city, like people,
Speaker 1: people successfully do this. They've done this with the Olympics,
Speaker 1: have done this sub lesser sound the World Cup. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you can do that, like please do like
Speaker 1: don't you don't have to let these fucking sports company
Speaker 1: bullshit like exact ethnically cleanse your city. You just don't.
Speaker 1: You can stop No Olympics l A is something that
Speaker 1: people in the U should look at. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: That is your action item for today is look up.
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about an Olympics before, but then
Speaker 1: to Olympics on the park and the last thing I
Speaker 1: will I will give an Easter egg. There's there's one
Speaker 1: sport I actually like on ironically you enjoy curling. No not,
Speaker 1: fuck you you racists. That's the episode. It could happen
Speaker 1: here as a production of cool Zone Media. Well more
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Speaker 1: for listening.