Sleight of Hand
If you’re feeling critical, it’s easy enough to find problems in the preparations for a World Cup. In seemingly any host nation, journalists and academics alike find ripe fruit in bribery and corruption scandals, tales of misused funds and human rights violations, busted budgets, and the sad parade of white elephant stadiums. In this, unfortunately, developments in Russia for the 2018 World Cup are no exception. But what I find interesting in recent Russian news is a tricky maneuver that…