One never really has to make fun of Sepp Blatter the top man in the morally bankrupt Fifa. You don’t have to, because he does it himself.
And lo and behold he’s just done it again.
It seems that a book of satirical drawings of a character who looks like Blatter and has the title The Platter Cartoons’, has been produced by former footballer Olé Andersen. So what has Mr Bean sorry Blatter done? He’s gone to court to get the book banned.
That’s amusing enough – and leads to the speculation that if Private Eye runs extracts from the book he might try to get Private Eye banned too.
But even more amusing is what the Blattarian legal team came up with in court. It is that “Mr Blatter has a good reputation and if the cartoons were published he would never be able to repair the damage.”
Andrew Jennings in the Transparency in Sport blog picked up on this and wrote,”Many months ago I had the privilege of seeing some of the cartoons and I understand why Blatter hates them: their sin is not to take the emperor of world football as seriously as he takes himself.”
Blatter and Jennings are old adversaries as Blatter had a bash at stopping the 2006 publication, ‘Foul! The secret world of Fifa: bribes, vote rigging and ticket scandals’. But when the publisher said it would challenge the injunction Blatter backed down.
However this time it looks a bit as if Blatter and Fifa have persuaded Switzerland to abandon the sort of liberal publishing laws that we are used to in England, for the Swiss Court seems to have announced that if any of the cartoons are published anywhere in the world, Jennings could be fined up to 10,000 Swiss Francs.
However newspapers in Denmark and Switzerland are making fun of Blatter, without actually publishing the cartoons. It’s easy to do of course, but is still fun.
Meanwhile it is not looking too good in Brazil…
This comes from The Shin Guardian
While the clock is counting down to the 2014 World Cup, Brazil hurries to get the necessary infrastructure in place to host the tournament.
A recent report by the Tribunal das Contas da Uinão (TCU, Brazil’s Federal Accounting Authority) has indicated that many of Brazil’s World Cup projects are being conducted with a gross lack of transparency, a lack of concrete planning, and exploding budgets.
The main targets of the TCU report are Rio’s Maracanã and Salvador’s Novo Fonte Nova, stadium projects which have jumped into the billions.
The report was firm in declaring that the Maracanã stadium’s contract process was completely opaque and that the budget “borders on complete fiction”.
It was ever thus.
“Making fun of”… I actually want to burst into tears.
Blatter is, most probably, one of the most corrupt individuals on the planet, in charge of a rotten organization.
However, I sadly believe that these revelations are the consequence of us living in the information era – and not something that has anything to do with him specifically.
International organizations – not only sports oriented ones – are basically sucseptible to corruption. I’m talking about the Olympic Committee, I’m talkig about the UN, I’m talking about any organization that gives “an equal vote” to countries, with no transperancy, with self-regulated and self-juidiciary systems.
The fact that so many of those organizations are located in Switzerland, is no coincidence. The Swiss have an outstanding reputation in supplying the veil between criminal activity and so called legitimate business activity. Talking about hiding Nazi gold, drug cartel bank accounts, and generally any service that a rich criminal would be in need of (as long as they are “neutral…”).
I’m sick of this shit.
Oh, and am I the only one who finds similarities between this latest crap and the Cartoons published in that Danish newspaper?
@TommieGun,
I agree with you entirely. There is nothing amusing about FIFA OR Blatter.
One day someone brave and lucky will be responsible for the ultimate come-uppance of both.
Evil and corruption cannot continue for ever.
The sad news at the end of 2013 is that we cannot yet see that “someone”.
If it wouldn’t be so sad, it would be funny. But as he is untouchable the only thing we can do is making fun of him. And even that seems to be getting more difficult…
They are more or less acting as new roi du soleil persons…
Who is actually speculating that Private Eye is considering publishing extracts? I doubt if they would, but if they did (and they don’t give a fuck about who challenges them) and Sep took them on then I fear a Blatterballs appeal would be the sorry outcome.
Seriousely let’s look into the case. The defending side could take a few stances.
1) Its satire. Its a joke. Its obvious and no one really regard it as presenting something bad about him so its ok.
2) The cartoon says something that is real. So if it gives a bad name to the subject, then its only because the subect is doing something bad.
3) While the cartoon might be somehow damaging to Blatter and the defendant found guilty but since Blatter has no reputation what so ever and his name is very bad, saying bad things about him does not damage anything at all.
For the good of football we want them to go no. 2 and talk about how badly he doing but the most dramatic would be number 3.
Actually 2 and 3 are contradicting each other anyway.
TommieGun,
Re your last sentence, that’s exactly what popped into my head whilst reading.
Nicky,
U r wrong. There is always someone who did absolutely everything righteous about everything unrighteous. They are now called activists, extremists, terrorists, prisoners, enemy of the state, outcasts, weirdos, mentally ill patients, nikola tesla n arsene wenger. A big price to pay to challenge the self claimed lords of the world. I know cause im personally labelled as one in my own birth country. A victim of my own society’s inept.