A Key Moment in the Debate Over Various Models of World Order

Fancy Bear, a democratic coalition of independent hackers, had only just cracked open the truth about doping in American athletics when a chain reaction of self-revelation occurred.

Western officials and the unmasked athletes themselves admitted to the use of banned substances and acted like it’s normal.

Moreover, using the tactic “the best defense is a good offense,” Western and some Russian media outlets have taken to arguing that the illegality of the doping is justified by the illegality of the hackers’ actions.

In other words, the truth is declared a lie because it contradicts the rules accepted by international criminals. This is now far from being an athletics issue. Rather, it’s a key moment in the debate over various models of world order.

On Sept. 13, 2016, the myth of a prohibition against doping in professional athletics was buried together with the myth of athletics itself.

In response to the hackers’ disclosure of World Anti-Doping Agency material, international officials admitted that one might dope at leisure and still win medals at international competitions and the Olympics.

We’re not talking about using mere meldonium either, but the strongest stimulants over the course of several years. One need only obtain permission from WADA officials — under the pretext of treating a disease and in secret from the public.

The Williams sisters, whom Tarpischev called “brothers,” evidently for good reason, said they had followed the rules established under the tennis anti-doping program in applying for, and being granted, therapeutic use exemptions.

And four-time Rio Olympic champion Simone Biles alleged that the banned substances had to do with treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Don’t be surprised if, before long, it turns out that the entire U.S. Olympic team, together with the players of the NHL, NBA and other leagues, are without exception ill people — send them to the Paralympics if you like.

An astounding thing has been revealed: it’s enough merely to obtain WADA’s permission under the pretext of disease and you become a “law-abiding” doper — a user of strong drugs for several years in a row.

Yet at the same time, the permission is secret, unknown to other athletes or to the public. Considering WADA’s dependence on the United States, it’s clear to whom they grant (and to whom they do not grant) such permissions — to U.S. athletes and those loyal to the U.S.

And no one from the outside can verify or monitor just how valid such permissions are. Until yesterday, nothing whatsoever was known about such “exceptional” athletes.

Those who pointed to such a possibility were attacked with accusations of inventing a conspiracy. But thanks to a group of independent hackers the truth came out, and that itself has even become the target of retaliatory accusations.

The key argument of the defenders of those caught engaging in authorized doping has been the fact that the medical records were obtained illegally by hackers, which means they can’t prove the illegality of the athletes’ actions.

You know, that’s some wonderful logic: A crime (and doping is precisely that) is legal since it’s committed according to the West’s rules, while the disclosure of the truth about the crimes is illegal, since it was technically committed by means of unauthorized hacking.

The Williams sisters and Biles are injured, ill ladies; their documents were stolen by the Kremlin’s terrible hackers while they themselves come out in favor of clean sport. Their understanding of “clean sport” is when they gulp down amphetamines and win medals while others are disqualified over some harmless meldonium.

Not that it’s anything new for the policy of American exceptionalism. The NSA’s spying and wiretapping throughout the entire world are legal, but Snowden and Assange and the facts they published about the spying are criminal.

Terrorists that cut off children’s heads are legal and moderate since they’re fighting against a tyrant, while those who are fighting against them are choking the sprouts of freedom and must be destroyed. And so on and so forth.

The moment has simply come when the manifestation of the American world order in athletics has encountered the resistance of an alternative world order, as has happened previously in Syria at the political and military level.

But before the Syrian campaign, in which the Russian force set out openly and on a large scale, there were more modest operations that showed the truth about the injustice of American globalism.

Let those who are now shaming Russia for using supposedly ugly means involving hacking servers (by the way, has it been proven somewhere that the hackers were in fact Russian?) tell of the prettiness and legality of the very same McLaren from WADA, or Secretary of State Colin Powell, who defamed Iraq, or Blair, who participated in its destruction, or Sarkozy, who oversaw Gaddafi’s murder.

Hacking is ugly and illegal?

But the four Olympic gold medals won in Rio by a U.S. gymnast who for years used psychotropic substances whose sale is banned in Russia, for example, are legal and beautiful?

Or are they proposing that we wait for 20 years until the retired WADA officials themselves admit there was no evidence of doping by Russian Paralympians, and the U.S. Congress releases a report about how American athletes doped in the past?

No, no one is going to wait for American bureaucrats, themselves drowning in corruption and drug use, to take away the medals from the Olympics in Sochi and the right to the 2018 World Cup.

We ought to have begun to reveal the truth about doping by Western athletes in an amicable way immediately after the first wave of fraudulent accusations against Russia. But then we were hoping that Western officials would come to their senses and that the U.S. wouldn’t go to extremes; that the United States wouldn’t dare go so far as to destroy the Olympic movement and to humiliate Paralympians. Our hopes were in vain.

The disclosure of documents by hackers is perhaps the most harmless of the illegal means that could be used in the fight against America’s hegemony in athletics, hegemony concealing its machinations involving doping.

New dumps of information should be accompanied by demands for a real reform of the international anti-doping system, reform in which all countries should participate on an equal footing.

If you agree, we’ll begin hours-long negotiations based on the example of the Syrian Lausanne-1-2-3, in which we’ll come to a compromise. If not, you’ll get new scandalous reports about the reality of the athletics industry in the United States.

After all, it’s entirely possible, gentlemen of WADA and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, that soon some honest American bureaucrat or athlete will appear on TV to personally attest to all your machinations and dirty practices.

And then the question that will arise won’t be about reforming the existing system, but will be about the creation of an absolutely new one — perhaps without the United States.