World Cup Commentary, Iran-Style
By Simon Turner
Whole countries are brought into view by their national sports teams. But, though it’s a chance to zoom in, as on Iran when its team faced the US, don't bland generalities mainly come to mind?
Inspired by the US-Iran soccer match, here is a rundown of countries in these last championships on vital but little-known or obscured points.
Soccer commentary, as follows:
Host QATAR: The main sponsor, along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, of ISIS.
SOUTH KOREA: If the USA declares "OPCON 3," they have total control of the South Korean army: 600,000 regular forces, 3.5 million reservists (near China).
POLAND: The Polish Foreign Ministry's recent official written declaration demands $1.3 trillion from Germany for World War II reparations. The Polish government is, itself, so far to the right, it has systematically undermined the independence of the country's judiciary.
SERBIA: US-led NATO war in 1999: The US offered Serbia to be occupied or be attacked (Appendix B Rambouillet text). The CIA worked with the Kosovo Liberation Army, which provoked fighting with the Serbs that was called genocide and given as the reason (but was the pretext) to bomb.
COSTA RICA: Since 2015, more than 98% of electricity comes from its hydro, geothermal, solar, and wind. The country beats the USA in life expectancy despite 80% less GDP per capita thanks to its universal healthcare program.
SPAIN: Dozens of migrants were killed by Moroccan security forces trying to enter the Spanish colonial enclave of Melilla from Morocco. The Spanish government's PM, Pedro Sanchez, congratulated the authorities.
NETHERLANDS: Has long-time cells operating in Iran; semiconductors Biden wants China not to get; US B61 nuclear bombs; a tribunal to prosecute Russians (but not other wars, like the US/UK on Syria); and helped with the US/UK war on Syria.
AUSTRALIA: The US is preparing to station multiple nuclear-capable B-52 bombers for China in northern Australia. The US regime changed Australia when it didn't toe the line—in the 70s, PM Gough Whitlam was going to talk about the big CIA base in Pine Gap.
URUGUAY: From 2004-2014, the rates of poverty and extreme poverty fell from 39.9% to 9.7% and from 4.7% to 0.3%, respectively, under leftist presidents, Tabaré Vázquez and José Mujica.
BELGIUM: Little Belgium has 11 US military bases. But Belgium doesn’t now allow products from the occupation in Palestine—the illegal Israeli "settlements”—to be labeled as "originating from Israel."
MOROCCO: The International Court of Justice said Western Sahara is not Moroccan, so Morocco invaded. By Nov 2021, Morocco had made $6.45 billion from West Saharan phosphate deposits used to manufacture fertilizers. The Sahrawi people live in camps dependent on aid.
The US is the one country to formally recognize the Moroccan annexation (and without a referendum) of Western Sahara.
CANADA: Little North America working for big North America: has spy planes around China, took Meng Wanzhou hostage for years due to Huawei's better tech, didn’t recognize the (3) Cuban COVID vaccines, and calls Venezuela a dictatorship.
SWITZERLAND: Last year, only the US and Ukraine voted against the annual UN resolution to condemn Nazism. This year, 52 countries voted against it because of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis. In Europe, only Switzerland and Serbia abstained.
ARGENTINA: Vulture funds bought the country’s huge defaulted debt bonds at bargain prices. The funds went to court to get paid for debt that hadn't been owed to them. And in 2018, the US-dominated IMF gave the notoriously corrupt president, Mauricio Macri, its biggest loan ever.
MEXICO: President AMLO called the US's Cuba blockade, "a kind of genocide." He offered Assange ("the best journalist of our time”) asylum and gave refuge to US-backed coup victim, Bolivian leader Evo Morales. AMLO has also renationalized oil and nationalized lithium.
GHANA: Had legendary figure, socialist President Kwame Nkrumah writer of the 1965 book, “Neo-Colonialism —The Last Stage of Imperialism.” Overthrown in a CIA coup. In 2010, 36 states met in Ghana for "Africa Endeavor" led by Africa's US military "command," AFRICOM.
JAPAN: Occupied by the US military since the end of WWII, now with 120 bases: Japanese soil administered by the US-Japan Joint Committee. Economically, the US Plaza Accord ended the rise of Japan—a "threat" to the US, like China now.
GERMANY: Bilateral trade prosperity with Russia via Nordstream 2 (Biden: "We will bring an end to [Nordstream]) was prevented. Germany's Merkel bought time for war (NATO trained 10,000 Ukrainian forces annually from 2015) rather than de-escalating, like Putin, from whose refusal to annex the Donbas came the Minsk Accords.
Last month, German business clamored to join PM Scholz, who took the heads of the 12 largest firms with him to China ("the most serious threat to long-term world order" - Blinken), the remaining secret to Germany's success after sanctioning itself off cheap Russian energy.
CAMEROON: The US, France, the UK, and Israel support the ruthless Rapid Intervention Battalions (BIR) of dictator President Paul Biya, 89. Cameroon is one of the largest recipients of US Security Force Assistance (SFA) aid in sub-Saharan Africa.
BRAZIL: Returned president Lula’s policies last time helped lift 40 million out of poverty. Operation Car Wash, “a gift from the CIA,” put Lula in jail. The US-backed coup of President Dilma Rousseff preceded this. Lula intends to create a new “Sur” currency for trade within Latin America to “combat dependency on the dollar.”
CROATIA: At the start of February, 2022, Croatian President, Zoran Milanović, accused the UK government of “misleading Ukraine, inciting it, and holding it hostage to the relationship between London, which has become a second-order power, and Washington.” But the Croatian government disagrees.
FRANCE: Shut down the Ivory Coast economy via CFA franc control, then overthrew (with US & UK) Libya’s Gaddafi, who had planned a Gold Dinar pan-African currency instead of the dollar and CFA franc. Libya had the highest Human Development Index (health, education, income) in Africa.
DENMARK: In 2021, renewable energy sources made up 67% of the electricity supply. But the day after the Nordstream pipeline was sabotaged, the Baltic Pipe was opened, which will deliver gas from the North Sea off the Norwegian coast to Denmark through to Poland.
ECUADOR: 15 years of US USAID, NED, and embassy regime change operations to reverse Raphael Correa’s Citizen’s Revolution. USAID was ejected in 2014 but returned by turncoat PM, Moreno. In 2021, the US's candidate, unrepresentative of the indigenous vote, Jacu Perez, split the left vote for the win by banker, Lasso.
TUNISIA: After an extra-constitutional coup last year, President Saied rules in an autocracy, and everyone is happier minus the people’s will: the West and Gulf monarchies, other than Qatar as it's a secular autocracy. US-trained armed forces reinforce Saied’s power.
WALES: Welsh Labour is led by Mark Drakeford, a pioneering supporter of former Labour leader, Corbyn, thrown out of the party by the current head, Keir Starmer, who has purged supporters at all levels of the party. Starmer praises Welsh Labour. The pivot before the attack?
SAUDI ARABIA: Multipolar critical mass and respect or outdated US hegemony, Biden and his insults? Saudi Arabia and China will cooperate on oil stability and begin to fracture the petrodollar as the dominant global reserve currency due to the Saudis no longer accepting only USD for their oil exports.
PORTUGAL: The Socialist Party (SP), allied with the Communist Party and Left Bloc movement defeated the EU's push for austerity. SP now governs alone, minus the left’s force behind the minimum wage, pensions, and healthcare safety net, with an “Azores high” climate change backdrop.
ENGLAND: The right-hand imperialist to the US: on Iraq; the Syrian and Ukrainian proxy wars; UK courts ruling again not to return stolen Venezuelan gold; and mostly under Labour leader, Starmer, the Crown Prosecution Service destroying key Assange emails.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act can mean up to 10 years in prison for protest. The Nationality & Borders Bill criminalizes asylum seekers, while the National Security Bill would allow life in jail for publishers. In 2017, Labour, fronted by socialist, Jeremy Corbyn, lost by just 2,227 votes...
UNITED STATES: Under Bill Clinton, “full-spectrum dominance” got its policy name. The Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service lists over 250 military interventions since 1991, and the US currently sanctions 40 countries.
Gen. Wesley Clark described how a list of countries was to be attacked using 9/11 as the pretext, though the countries were known not to have been involved. Up to 6 million people are estimated to have lost their lives in this "War on Terror."
At home, 140m are in/near poverty, with 64% living paycheck to paycheck. 1-in-4 patients can’t afford prescriptions and 54% of adults can’t read to sixth grade. A country’s priorities can be judged by its budget: America spends $853 billion on its military.
The political system succeeds as a holding operation. Particular polarizing issues distract with what appears to be choice while serving to divide and conquer. Otherwise, alternating governments set worse precedents at home and abroad that neither party wants to squander, while a donkey-and-carrot social policy rallies Democrats.
The US is the only developed nation that doesn’t have universal healthcare.
Democracy in the US is represented by its end point, the vote. Without participation in the development of policy, people are otherwise outside the democratic process.
Financial backing for costly political campaigns is provided by the wealthy politicians' actual base and peer group: industries unwilling to change. The system then produces very wealthy people to represent the vast majority who aren't.
"Capital is the endless and limitless drive to go beyond its limiting barrier," as Karl Marx said.
Early capitalism’s taking of the land from the people in the United Kingdom with enclosure moved on through colonialism to the land of other countries. The US, in turn, requires an open-door for its market, which it ensures by war, sanctions, financial control, and regime change operations.
Enormous, sustained levels of propaganda and hypocrisy are then required for the US to still appear "well-meaning," a reputable country that can bring some order through moral authority and be there for oppressed peoples (at least in countries with natural resources they won't hand over or with other political systems that offer "the threat of a good example").
So, given the Iran treatment, that was a snapshot of this last World Cup's countries, though with anti-imperialist framing and emphasis rather than the mainstream media's imperialist kind.
Further on Iran, here.
Meet the Writer
Simon Turner is a part-time writer, cultural centre and squatted building film programmer, outsider environments witness and photographer, and self-taught world hitchhiker.
