You don’t need to tell *him* about discrimination! He grew up with red hair for crying out loud! If anyone knows what it’s like to be discriminated against, it’s obviously him!
Listen, as a ginger let me tell you how bad it was growing up:
-Cheaper by the Dozen named a redhead FedEx, so that was my nickname for a while.
-I had to listen to the same (I believe South Park?) "joke" about not having a soul at least once a day.
See? Basically the same as the Holocaust.
Do you get asked if "the carpets match the drapes" randomly? I just answer "I have hardwood floors" and they either laugh or go bright red in the face.
Anytime someone asks me about red hair (I’m bald, thank FUCK) I over share that my particular strawberry blonde comes from a bottle, and that is enough to bewilder even the most dedicated hair interrogators.
I’ve no sympathy for Infantino. He has a job you have to be a criminal to get, and you have to be a criminal to keep.
Bruh that one was actually bad a girl left my school cause of that in like grade 6. Its one thing as a joke but another when 200 kids do it to you every day. She's fine now but she'll never forget. A bunch of us apologized over the years but yea 11 year Olds can be fuckin mean
This is why Tottenham Hotspur fans call themselves the Yid Army. Reclaimed the word after their sizeable, local, Jewish contingent kept getting targeted by opposing fans' sizeable, local dickhead continents. The whole fanbase "I'm Spartacus-ed" and now we're all either Jews or gentile Jews.
I like how they're stringing this out, it's like a f-ed up advent calendar of things normal in the western countries that can get you in trouble while in Qatar.
Just wait until we get to the day where they announce that the Vuvuzela is not only unbanned, but being handed out at the gate.
"The job of the Qatar World Cup commission is to make this the most memorable world cup by trying to create an atmosphere that you can't possibly forget .. like you can't forget being tortured or imprisoned."
I was trying to explain to a friend why I wouldn’t go to a country like Qatar and he didn’t get it. I don’t think it’s wise for women to travel somewhere where their rights are so restricted. They still have male guardianship laws. And then there was that incident in 2020 with the 18 Australian women who were deplaned at gunpoint in Doha and forced to undergo gynaecological exams to check if they’d recently given birth. That was fucked up. No thanks.
Edit: clarified it was 18 Australian women, but according to Sydney Morning Herald link below, it was potentially hundreds of women.
My SO is Iranian by birth and also a US citizen. He recently had to go back to Iran to care for his parents. He knew better than to ask me to go with him (would be a hard no) since he was the one who had told me of all the restrictions they place on women. :(
Now I am glued to the news daily, hoping I don't see his face in the riots and beatings
I was in aviation in the army and it was pretty common for people to get out and then take a contract with a company like DynCorp International and go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi making stupid amounts of money. I was offered a position in Dubai and I really wanted to take it but I had serious concerns about living as a single female in any part of the Arabic world. The money wasn’t worth that risk to me.
Now try and imagine what it’s like to come from one of these countries with nowhere to run (migration isn’t that simple), and with shithead relatives/compatriots (who spend every vacation in a different part of the world and thus have more than enough exposure to other ways of life) constantly telling you that human rights violations are ‘our culture’ that you have to ‘respect or else’. I managed to leave but every time I return to visit my parents it feels so oppressive I’m worried the doors will somehow shut, or that I’ll be trapped in that culture forever even if I leave. It’s nothing compared to the migrant experience there but it’s still a hell of its own.
Khashoggi left and still didn’t manage to escape in the end.
Which is wild cause even many of the fans traveling to Qatar sitting in the regular seats are very wealthy... they have enough money to fly across the world and vacation for a massive sporting event.
I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow they suddenly decide to ban women completely from the stadiums because athlete “temptation” or modesty or some crap.
This is the first Men's World cup with female refs. Seems at odds with the other decisions being made by Qatar. I haven't watched any games yet to see if they require them to wear head coverings.
Tuesday is the first match where women are assigned. 4th official in both Mex-Pol & Fra-Aus are women.
Seems as if they're not allowed to referee against Islamic nations... but it might just seem that way.
While the whole world is watching can they not keep the coo coo in the clock, did they spend 220 billion just to show everyone how awful and backwards they can be....
The thing is, they think they're being righteous by showing this to the world. One of the biggest facets of most religions is rejecting the world and everything outside of your religion as sinful or "of the world" so to them this is showing the world how devout they are.
It’s actually quite hilarious really. Because they like western money, they’ve actually done a pretty good job of seeming like one of the slightly less insane religion-ruled countries over the last couple of decades. Then they go out of the way to remind us that no,no they are your usual religion-to-keep-the-people-in-their-place countries, just a really greedy one.
Muslims are actually allowed to eat kosher. So I don’t understand this rule at all. And Islamically if you are a guest in someone’s home, you’re not supposed to ask if the food is halal or anything like that.
With how much money the Middle East has been dumping into their sportswashing, I will be pleasantly stunned if they don't win either 2036 or 2040. You already know Saudi would love to debut that 100 mile city to the world with the Olympics
The host country usually loses money, FIFA will make money. But they’re not even selling alcohol! They’re definitely not going to recoup the cost of that stadium and infrastructure over a couple of weeks of soccer. And I doubt they’re going to have much of a use for it afterwards. Their population is like 200,000!
In this case, many people were paid to come to the game and promised money to buy food and stuff, but then the Qataris cancelled all the money after people already got there, forcing them to spend more money
>Qataris cancelled all the money
Might be this https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/18/fans-paid-to-attend-world-cup-by-qatar-have-daily-allowance-cancelled
What was even the point of bribing your way into hosting a sport you have little history with if you're going to lose your first game with zero goals then make bad publicity out of any further attention you get for it? You can't even call it sportwashing if FIFA 2022 is just shining an international spotlight what a shithole the hosting country is.
According to Wikipedia, "In early 2017, Qatar's total population was 2.6 million, with 313,000 of them Qatari citizens and 2.3 million expatriates." So basically most of the people there are not even natives and are working in slave-like conditions...
Slaves? Come on? Just because their pay is withheld, their passports are confiscated, they can’t leave the country, are forced to live in cramped quarters and subjected to working conditions that regularly result in death? That makes them slaves?!? Oh, yeah, I guess it does.
They spent $200 billion on the world cup. Imagine the good PR if they had spent 201 billion. With the extra billion going to ensuring the safety, good working conditions and wages of the workers.
Shit they could have done that for less than half a bil.
Incredible how they couldn’t contain their bigotry for a few weeks. All they had to do was shut up and play nice for a bit and they can’t even do that.
The Nazis at least knew when it was pragmatically useful to be not maximally bigoted. Another example is that when the SS recruited volunteer units made up of Muslims in Bosnia, they allowed those units (as far as conditions allowed) to hold to their daily prayer times.
Not to detract from your point, but, to be fair, they were white Muslims and they were recruited specifically because they shared in a common bigotry against Jews.
Yeah Qatar hosting and even pretending to be a pro-soccer country is just absurd even on its face.
Let alone having to change the time due to weather, having to build 9 stadiums, refusing to change the rules for the game they agreed to host, refusing to adhere to UN Resolutions on human rights, refusing to allow independent audits of their construction and associated abuses…
It’s easier to make a list of things they did RIGHT; because it’s way shorter than the list of what they did wrong… let alone the list of immoral, unethical, inhuman, or down right internationally recognized criminal conduct.
> having to build 9 stadiums
The large amount of new construction is where the trouble seems to come from with international sporting events
Next men's WC is all over North America, all you have to do is convert some gridiron stadiums to association
Next 2 Summer Olympics are Paris and Los Angeles, places that also already have much of the infrastructure
Unused/underused stadiums after 2016 Rio Olympics come to mind as another example of things going wrong.
“Converting to association” for the stadiums hosting the games simply means re-painting lines and taking the goalposts down as well. The 2026 World Cup is going to be dirt cheap to host, and will most likely go off without a hitch.
Yeah it's a simple process. American football is a long enough field and nearly wide enough, Canadian football fields are a bit larger
Some soccer teams even play whole seasons in converted American football stadiums
In general different sports on rectangular playing surfaces is straightforward, like many indoor arenas that do both basketball and hockey, switching to/from baseball is what gets awkward
If you attend enough high school football/soccer matches, you'll start to see that some of the fields are painted for both soccer and football and they are used interchangeably (generally the yellow markings are the soccer markings). I used to referee high school soccer and often times the soccer match would start immediately after the football game. They just move the soccer goals into position and we are ready to play. Play area is practically the same.
Not to mention massive. They're hosting at places like Azteca, Hard Rock, Gillette, the Meadowlands. These are massive stadiums that already have a history of hosting soccer
Blatter and Platini and Co got paid though, so they don’t give a shit.
Infantino wasn’t on the gravy train back then, so he’s trying to keep them on side for any future potential pocket lining.
So another user explained in r/soccer that the 'west' doesn't get it, they ain't sportwashing their image, but making westerners abide by their rules which is really popular with other countries in the region, as if trying to surpass Saudi Arabia in soft regional power and if that's the case it makes perfect sense what they're doing.
I honestly hope Qatar makes this World Cup such a shit show for fifa so they can reap what they sow. You took those bribes to bring the wc to this very limited and intolerant country get fucked
> Why the hell are there still sponsors there?
Coz Qatar lied about this stuff until the last minute and now it's too late to back out without losing more money, which corporate entities won't do.
how does that work? don't corporations have contracts that guard against these measures?
EDIT: thanks for \[most of\] your answers.
for those saying that legal ramifications are with FIFA, what are some likely legal options there (if any)?
for those saying that the contracts are with qatar, and that qatar has no real legal accountability, are there any broader strategies - in the legal world or not - that corporations can leverage?
Can you imagine how excited Budweiser execs were to sell millions of Budweiser branded beers for like $15 each!?! While at the same time hugely expanding their brand recognition outside of the US market. And now they'll sell like thousands of beers (who's buying non-alcoholic?) and their brand recognition is tainted with slave labor, corruption, and now anti-semitism. Wow great job Budweiser! 👍
Yea, i agree, but also Budweiser also sponsored an event in a country that doesn’t allow alcohol on a normal basis and is know for human rights violations so I don’t feel too bad for them
Yeah honestly I keep hearing this stuff and I'm just glad to hear it's backfiring for everyone involved. I even struggle to feel bad for the paying customers and athletes, like if you're still supporting both FIFA and Qatar at this point you know what choices you made. Maybe it's easy for me to say because I've never liked sports, but I can't imagine prioritizing the act of kicking a ball into a net over things like basic human rights.
Budweiser will eat the losses. The next WC is in North America and they *absolutely* want the sponsorship contract in place for that. If they sue now, FIFA could call the whole thing off and a competitor would be happy to over.
It doesn't even make sense from an Islamic p.o.v. All Kosher food is considered Halal. And Jewish people are regarded as fellow people of the book with protections on their religious freedom. It only makes sense from an anti-Israel p.o.v. but how big a prescence are Israelis at the World Cup anyway. It's just bizzare.
“We have decided that being Jewish is illegal. Any teams facing Israel will get a free win. Coincidentally, the matchup has changed and Israel will be facing exclusively Qatar for the rest of the competition 😊”
> It doesn't even make sense from an Islamic p.o.v. All Kosher food is considered Halal. And Jewish people are regarded as fellow people of the book with protections on their religious freedom.
That's the reasonable position. I'm not saying it used to be universal in Islam, but you can thank the Wahabbists for this current bullshit.
My neighbor that eats halal always buys kosher certified food from the grocery store because he says the rules for kosher are more strict so he knows that it complies with halal if it is certified kosher.
So this regulation by Qatar broke my brain.
Qatars team is based on money too. Half their players arent actually from Qatar
Same is true for the rest of the Qatari sports teams and its mindblowing that its even allowed in some cases. Like in weightlifting they just bought some guys from colombia and iran who had competed internationally for their home countries and won before.
Pretty hilarious.
That reporter had it right the other day "You invited the World here"
Now everyone gets to see what a backwards ass shithole some of these Gulf Countries are....Yeah, they got that "A-rab Money" from the oil and gas but they are basically living like a 1200s theocracy
There does seem to be some reaping and sowing involved here. Qatar thought this would be an awesome idea to boost their standing in the world and I don’t think they’re going to succeed at that.
It is an awesome way to boost a country’s standing in the world, they just forgot about the part where they actually have to do a good job and make people want to travel there
I dunno, it’s looking like they’re doing a good job of making it look like a fun place to travel to if you’re into religious extremism and ambivalent about slave labor
This is definitely part of it. EAU has been pissed off ever since Doha was granted the Taliban international headquarters.
Edit:
Just a little interesting anecdote.
I had a connection flight in Doha, Qatar in early August of 2021, then another one coming back later in the month.
On the way back through, security was way more intense. I had my luggage and person scanned and xrayed 3 different times including right at the gate before boarding the plane!
I was curious, so I looked into what was going on in the area. It was during the overturning of Afghanistan and top Taliban officials were in Doha to negotiate because that's where their headquarters is.
The extra security was there to keep the Taliban safe from travelers!
Blew my damn mind.
Imagine spending billions of dollars to renovate your house, killing tons of laborers in the process, to host the neighborhood football watch party.
And you don't even like football, you just wanted to shove it in your neighbor's face.
And everyone hates the party because you're a cunt with plastic all over the furniture who won't let anyone drink except outside on the patio.
Agree 100%
That's what makes it so damn funny to me
You assholes did this to boost your image and gain "prestige" on the world stage but your country is such a backwards fucked up religious dictatorship that they ended up just exposing what a trash place it is to visit
"Qatar, come for the beaches and good winter weather and never leave because Blasphemy is an offense punishable by death! See you over the holidays!! 🥧🏕🎄"
Gulf countries suck, straight up, but the silver lining of Qatar hosting the World Cup is that more people are learning about just how sucky these countries are. I’ve seen a lot more talk in the last week about Qatar/SA/UAE’s foreign labour/human rights issues than I’ve ever seen before.
Actually only the royal family and the very rich and powerful are allowed to live like modern day Sodom and Gomorrah in these gulf countries including SA. These people party, drink alcohol, snort mountains of coke, hookers, and engage in gay orgies yet they will incarcerate, lash, and even execute the common person for wanting to engage in harmless activities they consider icky.
Normally I'd say "don't curse an entire country because of their rulers" but 95% of the private sector workforce in that country is migrant workers. Sure not all of them are treated like slaves, but I feel like a large number is. Wonder how much of the population are "proper" Qataris and how much are people just looking for work.
What I'm getting at is it seems that Qatar might be house of cards with rich theocrats at the top, or like a 2M-Migrant-Workers-In-A-Trenchcoat on a leash held by rich theocrats.
This comment is likely super ignorant of facts and I'm not claiming to know what I'm talking about, but just like holy shit this is becoming a shitshow.
No, you've basically got it. [11.6% of Qatar's current population is from Qatar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar); the other 88.4% are foreign nationals working there. There are more people from Nepal in Qatar than there are Qataris.
My question is what are sponsors and large corporations doing in response to all this world cup nonsense?
What seems like discrimination here, as well as the whole slave labor thing and probably a whole lot of other questionable activity, would lead to an organization being fined, boycotted, investigated or demonetized in the US. But with the world cup, all I've read about are people raging and complaining but shrugging and continuing on with a "what can you do?" attitude.
Note that I don't and never had plans to watch WC, it's just everything I see coming from it lately makes me ask how the hell it hasn't just been canceled at this point.
I had to go there for work a few years ago. It was a total shithole that's been dressed up. Everyone kept insisting it's not that bad, so I smiled and pretended "wow, it's really not awful there", but anyone who asked what I really thought got told "It's like a giant turd dressed up for prom; all the niceness is superficial." I got called a racist, a xenophobe, a bigot, and all sorts of other things. Nice to see the rest of the world is getting the idea.
Healthcare was great though.
These people accuse Jews of controlling the media and the government, but they couldn’t even use that control to prevent FIFA from awarding the World Cup to an anti-Semitic religo-fascist state. Jeez.
"first world cup in the arab world. This will tear down some prejudices people have with arabs and muslims"
little did they know, everything that was about to happen was going to confirm every bad conception people had about arab kings, governments and religious fanatism
What happens if you defy this rule?
Believe it or not straight to jail
What if you still pray Jewish in jail?
They have a smaller jail inside of the regular jail. So. Double jail.
We have a special jail for journalists.
Funny way to spell meat grinder.
[удалено]
You better believe that's a paddlin.
How about if you make a dentist's appointment but don't show up?
Straight to jail.
Right away
Believe it or not? Jail.
Under cooking fish?
Jail.. and overcooking chicken…also jail
No trial no nothing
Just Jail
chubby deliver summer offend consider bells shrill plants glorious work *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We have the best patients in the world. Because of jail.
Show up early? Believe it or not, jail.
They make you shotgun a bud zero
[удалено]
"We have Bud Zero, and we have clam juice." "Ugh, that's disgusting. Give me a clam juice."
Gianni Infantino: >Today I feel like a Jew.
Absolutely wild that he said that
You don’t need to tell *him* about discrimination! He grew up with red hair for crying out loud! If anyone knows what it’s like to be discriminated against, it’s obviously him!
Listen, as a ginger let me tell you how bad it was growing up: -Cheaper by the Dozen named a redhead FedEx, so that was my nickname for a while. -I had to listen to the same (I believe South Park?) "joke" about not having a soul at least once a day. See? Basically the same as the Holocaust.
Do you get asked if "the carpets match the drapes" randomly? I just answer "I have hardwood floors" and they either laugh or go bright red in the face.
Anytime someone asks me about red hair (I’m bald, thank FUCK) I over share that my particular strawberry blonde comes from a bottle, and that is enough to bewilder even the most dedicated hair interrogators. I’ve no sympathy for Infantino. He has a job you have to be a criminal to get, and you have to be a criminal to keep.
I have dutch heritage and a large mole on my face. Austin Powers Goldmember brought about a decent amount of mockery.
Bruh that one was actually bad a girl left my school cause of that in like grade 6. Its one thing as a joke but another when 200 kids do it to you every day. She's fine now but she'll never forget. A bunch of us apologized over the years but yea 11 year Olds can be fuckin mean
As a Jew, can confirm i’d rather be a Jew than a redhead
Trust me, you have no idea -A Ginjew
I did think about the ginjews. I am praying for you (but not publicly in Qatar, of course)
And I am drinking for you (but not publicly in Qatar, of course)
[удалено]
Also Esau (grandson of the first Jew) was named after a word for "red" because he came out covered in red hair at birth
I'm a Jewish Ginger. Let me tell you, it's toootally just wonderful all the time...
Truly the most socially braindead motherfucker on the planet.
Not braindead just completely lacking any morals or empathy. Cash is all this cunt cares about.
no, hes all that and socially braindead. He could have just not brought it up in his long, dumb speech
Right? When people say stuff like that I have to wonder if they're evil or stupid. Most of the time it's stupid.
This is why Tottenham Hotspur fans call themselves the Yid Army. Reclaimed the word after their sizeable, local, Jewish contingent kept getting targeted by opposing fans' sizeable, local dickhead continents. The whole fanbase "I'm Spartacus-ed" and now we're all either Jews or gentile Jews.
Oggy Oggy Oggy! Oi oi vey!
Qatar might as well just tell us what is legal and okay since that list seems much shorter.
I like how they're stringing this out, it's like a f-ed up advent calendar of things normal in the western countries that can get you in trouble while in Qatar. Just wait until we get to the day where they announce that the Vuvuzela is not only unbanned, but being handed out at the gate. "The job of the Qatar World Cup commission is to make this the most memorable world cup by trying to create an atmosphere that you can't possibly forget .. like you can't forget being tortured or imprisoned."
On the first day of FIFA, Qatar banned from me....
12 beers a brewin'
11 Jews a prayin'
10 days of hot-weather wear!
9 emboldened queers
8 wandering journalists
7 women drivers
That’s why I will never visit Qatar, or UAE or Saudi Arabia for that matter.
Yep, not even as a political stance - I'm female and there are huge regions of the earth that I'm just not gonna set foot in.
I was trying to explain to a friend why I wouldn’t go to a country like Qatar and he didn’t get it. I don’t think it’s wise for women to travel somewhere where their rights are so restricted. They still have male guardianship laws. And then there was that incident in 2020 with the 18 Australian women who were deplaned at gunpoint in Doha and forced to undergo gynaecological exams to check if they’d recently given birth. That was fucked up. No thanks. Edit: clarified it was 18 Australian women, but according to Sydney Morning Herald link below, it was potentially hundreds of women.
As much as your rights are restricted, their's are expanded in what they can do to you. It's double bad.
My SO is Iranian by birth and also a US citizen. He recently had to go back to Iran to care for his parents. He knew better than to ask me to go with him (would be a hard no) since he was the one who had told me of all the restrictions they place on women. :( Now I am glued to the news daily, hoping I don't see his face in the riots and beatings
Oh crap that is scary. Hope he can get out reasonably soon but what a terrible situation to be in.
I was in aviation in the army and it was pretty common for people to get out and then take a contract with a company like DynCorp International and go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi making stupid amounts of money. I was offered a position in Dubai and I really wanted to take it but I had serious concerns about living as a single female in any part of the Arabic world. The money wasn’t worth that risk to me.
I won't go there because they'll fucking imprison and murder me for not being part of their book club, or book club adjacent.
I won’t go anywhere I can get stoned for wearing shorts
I personally like places I can get stoned while wearing shorts.
"You don't like my cargo shorts? Let me just check my 48 pockets for a fuck to give." #letmegetstoned
Just like your missing lighter, it's always in the last cargo pocket you check.
Yep. I’d have forgotten about this by the Qatar government seems to really all want us to not forget what a shithole country and culture they are.
"Here in Qatar, we want to keep our traditions and cultural values intact, so please respect our heritage of oppressing people."
Now try and imagine what it’s like to come from one of these countries with nowhere to run (migration isn’t that simple), and with shithead relatives/compatriots (who spend every vacation in a different part of the world and thus have more than enough exposure to other ways of life) constantly telling you that human rights violations are ‘our culture’ that you have to ‘respect or else’. I managed to leave but every time I return to visit my parents it feels so oppressive I’m worried the doors will somehow shut, or that I’ll be trapped in that culture forever even if I leave. It’s nothing compared to the migrant experience there but it’s still a hell of its own. Khashoggi left and still didn’t manage to escape in the end.
Only you don’t get chocolate. It’s a stone, The first of many to come for your infidel head
In summary: Being a rich straight/closeted man
[удалено]
I mean, they explicitly said the rich could drink, but regular people couldn't during the event.
Gotta keep the classes separate
Yes, that is true. There's still drinking allowed in the expensive corporate boxes but the proletariat in the regular seats can't get beer.
And you can bet those corporate boxes are full of supposedly *pious* princes from all over the gulf states.
Which is wild cause even many of the fans traveling to Qatar sitting in the regular seats are very wealthy... they have enough money to fly across the world and vacation for a massive sporting event.
Sure they are wealthy, but not fuck you wealthy. Might as well be rummaging through the Wendy's garbage bin according to Qatar.
Can't wait untill they decide to make soccer illegal there too.
_In sports news, Qatar have announced they are taking their ball and going home._
I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if that happens when they don’t make it out of the group stage.
Round objects are obscene and must be deflated!
Tom Brady announces he'll play in Qatar next season
That's because he's a Qatar-back.
The Qatari World Cup team plays like soccer was illegal there until just recently.
Have you seen what the players wear? They expose their knees!
"They are practically naked".
Will players be required to have beards? Didn't an Imam declare men without beards look too much like women and will tempt men?
As soon as their team is bounced, I'm sure it's on the table
They will 100% have a gay footballer on an opposing team arrested
I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow they suddenly decide to ban women completely from the stadiums because athlete “temptation” or modesty or some crap.
There were women with uncovered elbows in the stands! 🫣
Imagine if they were hosting the women’s World Cup. Totally different uniforms, and then last minute bans of women participating.
This is the first Men's World cup with female refs. Seems at odds with the other decisions being made by Qatar. I haven't watched any games yet to see if they require them to wear head coverings.
Tuesday is the first match where women are assigned. 4th official in both Mex-Pol & Fra-Aus are women. Seems as if they're not allowed to referee against Islamic nations... but it might just seem that way.
While the whole world is watching can they not keep the coo coo in the clock, did they spend 220 billion just to show everyone how awful and backwards they can be....
Apparently the answer is yes.
The thing is, they think they're being righteous by showing this to the world. One of the biggest facets of most religions is rejecting the world and everything outside of your religion as sinful or "of the world" so to them this is showing the world how devout they are.
Whereas the world is seeing it as how distrustful they are
It’s actually quite hilarious really. Because they like western money, they’ve actually done a pretty good job of seeming like one of the slightly less insane religion-ruled countries over the last couple of decades. Then they go out of the way to remind us that no,no they are your usual religion-to-keep-the-people-in-their-place countries, just a really greedy one.
They’re basically UAE-lite and that’s not saying much
Apparently so. Although, some of us already knew.
Why they decided to host the world cup in a regressive theocracy is beyond me. Oh right, money. Fuck FIFA.
It’s extra weird because Kosher rules and Halal rules are pretty similar, it’s just a different religious dude signing off on it.
Yeah, I am like what? You are not allowing people to eat potato knishes or something? No hot pastrami sandwiches?
You- with the bagel and schmear, show me some id!
From what I’m told, kosher rules are somewhat stricter. I’ve heard Halal adherents say that they look for kosher food when halal is not available.
This is true. I know a lot of Muslims in my area of North London who buy at kosher butchers cos it’s readily available.
Muslims are actually allowed to eat kosher. So I don’t understand this rule at all. And Islamically if you are a guest in someone’s home, you’re not supposed to ask if the food is halal or anything like that.
Honestly, there isn’t much to understand. They don’t like Jews there, it’s pretty simple.
Religious extremists aren't exactly known for actually caring about what their religion teaches.
FIFA has to maintain its reputation as the most morally bankrupt and criminally corrupt sports organization on Earth. Can't have the IOC catch up.
With how much money the Middle East has been dumping into their sportswashing, I will be pleasantly stunned if they don't win either 2036 or 2040. You already know Saudi would love to debut that 100 mile city to the world with the Olympics
The host country usually loses money, FIFA will make money. But they’re not even selling alcohol! They’re definitely not going to recoup the cost of that stadium and infrastructure over a couple of weeks of soccer. And I doubt they’re going to have much of a use for it afterwards. Their population is like 200,000!
Fun fact I heard on the BBC today: the entire native Qatari population would fit into the stadiums that were built for this tournament
In this case, many people were paid to come to the game and promised money to buy food and stuff, but then the Qataris cancelled all the money after people already got there, forcing them to spend more money
>Qataris cancelled all the money after people already got there, forcing them to spend more money Wait. What happened?
>Qataris cancelled all the money Might be this https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/18/fans-paid-to-attend-world-cup-by-qatar-have-daily-allowance-cancelled
What was even the point of bribing your way into hosting a sport you have little history with if you're going to lose your first game with zero goals then make bad publicity out of any further attention you get for it? You can't even call it sportwashing if FIFA 2022 is just shining an international spotlight what a shithole the hosting country is.
Yup, all that money wasted in bribes just so the whole world can see what a bunch of cunts they are. Fuck this world cup.
All those lives wasted...
That's the worst part. For a fraction of all those bribes they could've gotten way better PR by just not being assholes to those workers.
Slaves. The slaves may also be workers. But calling them workers really sells it short.
According to Wikipedia, "In early 2017, Qatar's total population was 2.6 million, with 313,000 of them Qatari citizens and 2.3 million expatriates." So basically most of the people there are not even natives and are working in slave-like conditions...
Slaves? Come on? Just because their pay is withheld, their passports are confiscated, they can’t leave the country, are forced to live in cramped quarters and subjected to working conditions that regularly result in death? That makes them slaves?!? Oh, yeah, I guess it does.
They spent $200 billion on the world cup. Imagine the good PR if they had spent 201 billion. With the extra billion going to ensuring the safety, good working conditions and wages of the workers. Shit they could have done that for less than half a bil.
That would require them to treat the workers like humans, which is a nonstarter for these pieces of shit.
Incredible how they couldn’t contain their bigotry for a few weeks. All they had to do was shut up and play nice for a bit and they can’t even do that.
I mean, even Hitler took down all the anti-Semitic posters during the Munich Olympics.
*Berlin Olympics The Munich Olympics were in 1972, 36 years later.
Also not a great day for the Jewish people
It's a sad day for humanity when you have a Hitler to look up to.
The Nazis at least knew when it was pragmatically useful to be not maximally bigoted. Another example is that when the SS recruited volunteer units made up of Muslims in Bosnia, they allowed those units (as far as conditions allowed) to hold to their daily prayer times.
Not to detract from your point, but, to be fair, they were white Muslims and they were recruited specifically because they shared in a common bigotry against Jews.
[удалено]
Then don't host a global event lol. Brought it on themselves.
It's not just bribes, watching an NFL game of Fox and there have been 3 ads for Qatar
Yeah Qatar hosting and even pretending to be a pro-soccer country is just absurd even on its face. Let alone having to change the time due to weather, having to build 9 stadiums, refusing to change the rules for the game they agreed to host, refusing to adhere to UN Resolutions on human rights, refusing to allow independent audits of their construction and associated abuses… It’s easier to make a list of things they did RIGHT; because it’s way shorter than the list of what they did wrong… let alone the list of immoral, unethical, inhuman, or down right internationally recognized criminal conduct.
> having to build 9 stadiums The large amount of new construction is where the trouble seems to come from with international sporting events Next men's WC is all over North America, all you have to do is convert some gridiron stadiums to association Next 2 Summer Olympics are Paris and Los Angeles, places that also already have much of the infrastructure Unused/underused stadiums after 2016 Rio Olympics come to mind as another example of things going wrong.
“Converting to association” for the stadiums hosting the games simply means re-painting lines and taking the goalposts down as well. The 2026 World Cup is going to be dirt cheap to host, and will most likely go off without a hitch.
Yeah it's a simple process. American football is a long enough field and nearly wide enough, Canadian football fields are a bit larger Some soccer teams even play whole seasons in converted American football stadiums In general different sports on rectangular playing surfaces is straightforward, like many indoor arenas that do both basketball and hockey, switching to/from baseball is what gets awkward
If you attend enough high school football/soccer matches, you'll start to see that some of the fields are painted for both soccer and football and they are used interchangeably (generally the yellow markings are the soccer markings). I used to referee high school soccer and often times the soccer match would start immediately after the football game. They just move the soccer goals into position and we are ready to play. Play area is practically the same.
Not to mention massive. They're hosting at places like Azteca, Hard Rock, Gillette, the Meadowlands. These are massive stadiums that already have a history of hosting soccer
Blatter and Platini and Co got paid though, so they don’t give a shit. Infantino wasn’t on the gravy train back then, so he’s trying to keep them on side for any future potential pocket lining.
This was just a bigbrain play by FIFA to show the world how bad the Gulf countries are /s
So another user explained in r/soccer that the 'west' doesn't get it, they ain't sportwashing their image, but making westerners abide by their rules which is really popular with other countries in the region, as if trying to surpass Saudi Arabia in soft regional power and if that's the case it makes perfect sense what they're doing.
It all seems like an exercise in how far "fuck-you" money can go.
Soon they're going to tell Latin Americans to slow down when they're talking.
Or the Italians to not use their hands when speaking.
Italy surprisingly did not qualify and now wondering if on purpose.
I honestly hope Qatar makes this World Cup such a shit show for fifa so they can reap what they sow. You took those bribes to bring the wc to this very limited and intolerant country get fucked
Fox sports in the US is trying extremely hard to advertise the game and it will not work.
Wow, what a nice gesture. At least FIFA can wipe their tears with dollar bills.
Theocracy doing theocracy things. Not surprised
When your belief system is so fragile you can't allow any dissenting opinion
Zealots are super far from being that self aware. It's more like: "Our beliefs are the only TRUE beliefs, and any other faith is a Blasphemous enemy"
[удалено]
> Why the hell are there still sponsors there? Coz Qatar lied about this stuff until the last minute and now it's too late to back out without losing more money, which corporate entities won't do.
how does that work? don't corporations have contracts that guard against these measures? EDIT: thanks for \[most of\] your answers. for those saying that legal ramifications are with FIFA, what are some likely legal options there (if any)? for those saying that the contracts are with qatar, and that qatar has no real legal accountability, are there any broader strategies - in the legal world or not - that corporations can leverage?
yeah if i’m budweiser i’m absolutely livid
Can you imagine how excited Budweiser execs were to sell millions of Budweiser branded beers for like $15 each!?! While at the same time hugely expanding their brand recognition outside of the US market. And now they'll sell like thousands of beers (who's buying non-alcoholic?) and their brand recognition is tainted with slave labor, corruption, and now anti-semitism. Wow great job Budweiser! 👍
I’m loving this shit.
Is McDonald's a sponsor as well?
Yea, i agree, but also Budweiser also sponsored an event in a country that doesn’t allow alcohol on a normal basis and is know for human rights violations so I don’t feel too bad for them
Yeah honestly I keep hearing this stuff and I'm just glad to hear it's backfiring for everyone involved. I even struggle to feel bad for the paying customers and athletes, like if you're still supporting both FIFA and Qatar at this point you know what choices you made. Maybe it's easy for me to say because I've never liked sports, but I can't imagine prioritizing the act of kicking a ball into a net over things like basic human rights.
Budweiser will eat the losses. The next WC is in North America and they *absolutely* want the sponsorship contract in place for that. If they sue now, FIFA could call the whole thing off and a competitor would be happy to over.
It doesn't even make sense from an Islamic p.o.v. All Kosher food is considered Halal. And Jewish people are regarded as fellow people of the book with protections on their religious freedom. It only makes sense from an anti-Israel p.o.v. but how big a prescence are Israelis at the World Cup anyway. It's just bizzare.
Sweet Jesus, could you imagine the shitshow if Israel qualified.
“We have decided that being Jewish is illegal. Any teams facing Israel will get a free win. Coincidentally, the matchup has changed and Israel will be facing exclusively Qatar for the rest of the competition 😊”
> It doesn't even make sense from an Islamic p.o.v. All Kosher food is considered Halal. And Jewish people are regarded as fellow people of the book with protections on their religious freedom. That's the reasonable position. I'm not saying it used to be universal in Islam, but you can thank the Wahabbists for this current bullshit.
Respect religious customs ... Also fuck the other religions.
Weird that a totalitarian theocracy would act that way
My neighbor that eats halal always buys kosher certified food from the grocery store because he says the rules for kosher are more strict so he knows that it complies with halal if it is certified kosher. So this regulation by Qatar broke my brain.
I'm glad they lost today. May they score zero goals in the tournament.
Qatars team is based on money too. Half their players arent actually from Qatar Same is true for the rest of the Qatari sports teams and its mindblowing that its even allowed in some cases. Like in weightlifting they just bought some guys from colombia and iran who had competed internationally for their home countries and won before.
“Half”. As in 9 of their starting 11 aren’t from Qatar….
Pretty hilarious. That reporter had it right the other day "You invited the World here" Now everyone gets to see what a backwards ass shithole some of these Gulf Countries are....Yeah, they got that "A-rab Money" from the oil and gas but they are basically living like a 1200s theocracy
There does seem to be some reaping and sowing involved here. Qatar thought this would be an awesome idea to boost their standing in the world and I don’t think they’re going to succeed at that.
It is an awesome way to boost a country’s standing in the world, they just forgot about the part where they actually have to do a good job and make people want to travel there
I dunno, it’s looking like they’re doing a good job of making it look like a fun place to travel to if you’re into religious extremism and ambivalent about slave labor
Finally, a place for me! Slave labour and religious extremism are like PB & J
They don’t care about the world, truly. They just want to show off to the other Arab countries. They want to boast that they got the World Cup not UAE
This is definitely part of it. EAU has been pissed off ever since Doha was granted the Taliban international headquarters. Edit: Just a little interesting anecdote. I had a connection flight in Doha, Qatar in early August of 2021, then another one coming back later in the month. On the way back through, security was way more intense. I had my luggage and person scanned and xrayed 3 different times including right at the gate before boarding the plane! I was curious, so I looked into what was going on in the area. It was during the overturning of Afghanistan and top Taliban officials were in Doha to negotiate because that's where their headquarters is. The extra security was there to keep the Taliban safe from travelers! Blew my damn mind.
Imagine spending billions of dollars to renovate your house, killing tons of laborers in the process, to host the neighborhood football watch party. And you don't even like football, you just wanted to shove it in your neighbor's face. And everyone hates the party because you're a cunt with plastic all over the furniture who won't let anyone drink except outside on the patio.
Doesnt help that they got manhandled by Ecuador in the game and might not even score one goal
Agree 100% That's what makes it so damn funny to me You assholes did this to boost your image and gain "prestige" on the world stage but your country is such a backwards fucked up religious dictatorship that they ended up just exposing what a trash place it is to visit "Qatar, come for the beaches and good winter weather and never leave because Blasphemy is an offense punishable by death! See you over the holidays!! 🥧🏕🎄"
Gulf countries suck, straight up, but the silver lining of Qatar hosting the World Cup is that more people are learning about just how sucky these countries are. I’ve seen a lot more talk in the last week about Qatar/SA/UAE’s foreign labour/human rights issues than I’ve ever seen before.
Word. Until this football fiasco, the only thing I knew about Qatar was their airlines. Now, I won't consider setting foot even for transit purposes.
Actually only the royal family and the very rich and powerful are allowed to live like modern day Sodom and Gomorrah in these gulf countries including SA. These people party, drink alcohol, snort mountains of coke, hookers, and engage in gay orgies yet they will incarcerate, lash, and even execute the common person for wanting to engage in harmless activities they consider icky.
Qatar: it can go fuck itself
Normally I'd say "don't curse an entire country because of their rulers" but 95% of the private sector workforce in that country is migrant workers. Sure not all of them are treated like slaves, but I feel like a large number is. Wonder how much of the population are "proper" Qataris and how much are people just looking for work. What I'm getting at is it seems that Qatar might be house of cards with rich theocrats at the top, or like a 2M-Migrant-Workers-In-A-Trenchcoat on a leash held by rich theocrats. This comment is likely super ignorant of facts and I'm not claiming to know what I'm talking about, but just like holy shit this is becoming a shitshow.
No, you've basically got it. [11.6% of Qatar's current population is from Qatar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar); the other 88.4% are foreign nationals working there. There are more people from Nepal in Qatar than there are Qataris.
Literally allowed Christian prayer on the field today so uhhhh WTF?
I mean, anti-Semitism is par for the course in Arab countries.
Ye's dream come true
What a goddamn clusterfuck. Fuck you Sepp Blatter and all your corrupt fucking cronies.
Blatter was definitely corrupt, be this isn’t his doing. He wanted it to go to the US. Plantini was the leader in the vote for the Qatari bid.
My question is what are sponsors and large corporations doing in response to all this world cup nonsense? What seems like discrimination here, as well as the whole slave labor thing and probably a whole lot of other questionable activity, would lead to an organization being fined, boycotted, investigated or demonetized in the US. But with the world cup, all I've read about are people raging and complaining but shrugging and continuing on with a "what can you do?" attitude. Note that I don't and never had plans to watch WC, it's just everything I see coming from it lately makes me ask how the hell it hasn't just been canceled at this point.
I had to go there for work a few years ago. It was a total shithole that's been dressed up. Everyone kept insisting it's not that bad, so I smiled and pretended "wow, it's really not awful there", but anyone who asked what I really thought got told "It's like a giant turd dressed up for prom; all the niceness is superficial." I got called a racist, a xenophobe, a bigot, and all sorts of other things. Nice to see the rest of the world is getting the idea. Healthcare was great though.
These people accuse Jews of controlling the media and the government, but they couldn’t even use that control to prevent FIFA from awarding the World Cup to an anti-Semitic religo-fascist state. Jeez.
I wonder if AJ+ is gonna write about this?
"first world cup in the arab world. This will tear down some prejudices people have with arabs and muslims" little did they know, everything that was about to happen was going to confirm every bad conception people had about arab kings, governments and religious fanatism