Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
On the World Cup
In the fallout from the 2010 bidding round, the Qataris complained that they were taking the heat for a process that had also rewarded Putin and his kleptocratic regime. Why weren’t the Russians the ones in the firing line? Part of Qatar’s problem was that the Americans, from whom they had effectively stolen the tournament, began shortly afterwards to look into Fifa’s finances. A US Department of Justice inquiry into Warner, which ended up charging him with ‘wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering’, triggered the exposure of a whole raft of dodgy practices, including a proposed payment of $2 million from Fifa’s chairman, Sepp Blatter, to his deputy and anointed successor, Platini, which eventually led to the resignation of both men.
