It’s Putin again… Or, is that just an echo from up yonder? This time athletes doping to win Olympic medals is all because of the arch villain, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Yep, expect to read soon how the Russian president owns stock in a growth hormone factory hidden in subterranean installation deep beneath Yamantau Mountain, in the Urals. Well, I for one am not buying it. And neither should you. Here’s why.
First off, don’t take my word for it, read this brilliant Guardian piece by Marina Hyde. Not only is Putin the hero of Olympic cheating, he’s the Dr. Evil of the International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) Austin Powers (ish) dog and pony show. Yes, when you’re done having your mind numbed by entertaining bullshit, read below.
Late last year I performed my own Olympic sports autopsy to get early proof rich bastards in Britain had utterly ruined athleticism. The preliminary result was the discovery of battalions of ne’er-do-well banksters, lords and ladies, middlemen, and of course some desperate and misguided hurlers and Lance Armstrong wannabees. If I sound cynical, it’s because sport everywhere is rigged, sold out, bullshit, a mess. But somehow Russia gets all the blame. Here we are folks, back in the Cold War where the Queen Mother and the people who killed Kennedy remain hidden, whilst a game of three-card monte is played out before our eyes. In Hyde’s sideshow at The Guardian Putin teams up with running legend, Lord Sebastien Coe, arguably Britain’s greatest ever track and field athlete. Oh boy, what a can of worms.
For those unfamiliar, Lord Coe was head of the London 2012 organizing committee, and he’s President of the IAAF. Now the legendary runner is taking sizzling heat over being blind as a bat to seeing obvious doping infractions at London 2012. But stop right here. All of sport is not on the credibility chopping block because of Coe, Putin, or muscled up female athletes. Get ready for the shocker of modern history – somebody’s out to reset everything, not just sport. In my other story on Olympic doping a main character appeared, a man named Ed Warner, UK Athletics Chairman. Just recently Warner met with Lord Coe to discuss nothing less than the end of amateur and professional athletics as we know it. This Irish Examiner story tells us the people behind this latest witch hunt are out for more than demonizing Russia – their plan is retroactive world record reshuffling. Digest that for a moment. Ed Warner, the energy and investment titans he’s in bed with, their aim is to build a sport time machine in order to ferret out all past cheaters. That’s right, sports heroes from Hercules to the world record holder at coconut chunking may soon come under scrutiny. My tongue firmly jammed into my cheek here, I am wondering if Little League baseball is safe from being upset? Whoever is behind Warner, he World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Dick Pound, and the rest of the vampire slayers in this charade, it’s clear they’re aligned with the new world order (NOW) deconstructing political systems, democracies, and regimes near you.
Maybe it’s just me, but do you feel like somebody is trying to tilt this pinball machine we live in? It cannot just be coincidence, that the man (Pound) who single handedly transformed the IOC into a multibillion-dollar enterprise, has been elevated to the chairmanship of the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), which since 2008 has overseen what hits the airwaves from the games. Dick Pound’s (I cannot get over the name) IOC resume is perfect fodder for a potential film titled “Lords of Sports – The Business Vendetta.” Pound lost out in an IOC presidency bid to first runner up, jailed Salt Lake City scandal top-dog Kim Un Yong, and the biggest hypocrite in Olympic history, later President Jacques Rogge. The point I am making here is, NONE of these people have any room at all to point a discus or javelin, not even a starter’s gun, at any other official. At this juncture, allow me to offer a brief “most wanted” poster of the IOC and sports overall, at least the executive handling mechanism, that is.
- South Korea’s IOC delegate, Kim Un-Yong was found guilty of corruption and embezzlement and sentenced to prison.
- The Salt Lake City bribery scandal involved 10 IOC members ousted for receiving improper inducements.
- Former IOC Vice President, Kevan Gosper faced an inquiry for breaking IOC rules and publicly endorsing Dick Pound for the International Olympic Committee presidency. (imagine)
- The London games were the scene for the biggest ticket scalping mess sport has ever seen. Some 1.2 million tickets were sold at drastically escalated prices as much as 10 times face value.
- Dick Pound’s World Anti-Doping Agency was at the center of a Turin Games raid on the Austrian Biathlon Team for suspicion of doping. No real doping evidence was found, but investigators did suspect athletes of having blood transfusions to increase their oxygen infusion to enhance performance. It’s fair to note, Pound may have pulled a “Lord Coe” in overlooking cheating here.
- One of the world’s most powerful men, billionaire Lee Kun-hee, Chairman of Samsung Group and IOC member, was pardoned after having been convicted of financial wrongdoing and tax evasion, so that he could remain on the IOC. (Huh?)
- Prominent Australian IOC member, Phil Coles was investigated for his wife of the time having received expensive jewelry from and Athens games by an “unidentified” individual.
- Rhythmic gymnastics received a death spike to its graceful heart when the recent judging scandal his the New York Times. Apparently, the corruption in sport in fact does extend past Vladimir’s office door.
- Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. (son of the former IOC boss) is rumored to be the reason WRESTLING was dumped from the 2020 games in favor of Samaranch’s favorite sport, the modern pentathlon.
- Xiao Tian, deputy head of China’s General Administration of Sport, suspected of graft.
At a point one has to sum up reporting on corruption in anything these days. I looked up at the clock a moment ago, and I have already spent 4 hours reading, researching, and typing to get to my point on this doping mess. In the end, there is no end to the collusion, graft, rigging, and close associations with corporations, government, and even gambling, sport is all messed up. But we know this, we have known. Looking at the finger pointing, the politics, the utterly nonsensical drama of corporate sport today, it’s a mirror of international policy. The American leadership shovels money and twists arms to grab more assets for corporate denizens. The London and Frankfurt bankers use war to create a credit funnel to their coffers, and then they get the media they bought long ago to blame the victims. Volkswagen cars puke Earth killing levels of pollutants into the atmosphere, and executives there have the audacity to cheat. Monsanto and other mega-companies butcher the environment bastardize farming, poison human beings on a massive scale – and if they could, they’d blame Putin too.
What I am about to tell you, it’s not something you want to hear. All of sport, business, politics, human interaction for the most part – it’s rigged. What, you think Brazil could lose 7 to nothing to a German soccer team? Alex Rodriguez, do you figure he is really the reincarnation of Willie Mays, only better? Major League Baseball to boxing, horse racing to FIFA soccer, NFL footballs being inflated or deflated to gain an edge, the whole stinking mess of sport mimics dirty politics and pool hall etiquette. We’re undone, but the problem is not Vladimir Putin, he just plays in a game where the rules change every second. Russians are that way you see, adjusting rather than making the rules. Rule makers, those people come from the stiff upper lip club, the Londoners who never-ever-ever get implicated, let alone pay for crimes against sportsmanship.
Somebody reading this will comment to me later, “You are just defending your buddy Putin.” Well, maybe that is more true than not. But here’s the thing, Putin has been caught in one lie in the entirety of his leadership. One. He called Russian military in Crimea at the head of that crisis, “self-defence groups”. The so-called “Little Green Men” who helped secure that key region, they are the Russian president’s only damnable infraction I know of. This brings me to the point. Putin, he’s pretty busy keeping Russia out of World War III, while at the same time fencing with the biggest liars international politics has ever witnessed. Barack Obama, David Cameron, Merkel, and all the rest, they bat for the same team that runs the IOC. Please, give me and the world a break.
The Russia doping blaze, all the championship British sporting ethics mumbo-jumbo, it’s part and parcel foreign relations strategy. And as well all know by now, western bankers are “all in” against Putin and his team, the BRICS. Please do argue to me, how all the games are not rigged, please. The Russians are simply carrying the baton in a relay where the starter, the instant replay, and the judges are run by the other team. Doping, really? Right now there’s a UK secret facility doing genetics and plastic surgery to make a pasty white version of Usain Bolt, Britain needs a winner just that bad. Putin did not rig sport, we did.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.