Fifa should ban Israel and Russia

Now that the World Cup is no longer transfixing our goldfish brains, we all have enough time and mental disk space to notice that the world is going to hell at a rather brisk pace.

The Israeli state is murdering children and civilians in Gaza, unable to see and think beyond its bloodstained lens of fear. (Hamas, let it be said, is just as trapped in primitive, reactive thinking.) Down the road, Syria and Iraq are gripped by sectarian barbarism. Pan to the north and you see the revolting spectacle of Russian President Vladimir Putin washing the hands of his regime's role in the MH17 attack. Not since George W Bush has such a flagrant liar wielded so much power.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama lopes around smugly, doing little of value, unable or unwilling to replace the military assaults of his predecessors with even an attempt at peacefully transformative leadership.

So it's not been an encouraging month for humankind. With leaders like these, who needs zombies?

You may laugh at my naïveté, but football and Fifa should really be fighting back against the world's villains and warmongers. Once upon a time, the sports boycott played a pivotal role in dramatising the world's abhorrence of apartheid. It forced many white South Africans to examine their racism, and its lifting sowed a beautiful crop of binding, redemptive sporting stories.

But these days, under the immortal reign of a Swiss moral vacuum in a suit, Fifa refuses to wield such power for democracy. Instead it cravenly licks the feet of rich, rotten regimes in Russia and Qatar and flogs them World Cups.

Israel and Russia both deserve sporting sanctions after recent atrocities - but they won't face any. Nor will other violent and/ or repressive states such as North Korea, Egypt and Uganda. Everybody gets to play nicely. All you have to do as a forward-thinking, footie-loving tyrant is let local FA kleptocrats go about their business without interference, and you're in the clear.

The limit of Fifa's collective conscience, it seems, is the important struggle to stop Mexican fans shouting "puto" (male prostitute) at opposition keepers, and the similarly noble fight to protect its valued sponsors from the sins of ambush marketing.

When asked recently whether Israel could be sanctioned by Fifa, Sepp Blatter remarked: "I separate politics and sport."

If that rings a bell, it's because it's the sentiment spouted by the brain-dead defenders of apartheid. The zombies have taken over the movie.