Good. This is by far the world cup I've been less excited about, both because it counts as whitewash for the Qatar government and for how corrupt FIFA is.
Plus the scam Qatar forced upon inBev, originally beer was suppose to be sold in the stadium, which they paid ~75m for, then in the last minute Qatar said "no beer sales in the stadium".
Now I have no issues with restricting alcohol and even banning it, but with that last minute about face after taking money from that company, I think they are at least do a refund plus interest.
I'm not shedding a tear for a gigantic corporation getting slightly screwed over . It would have been incredibly easy for them to not back the World Cup - it's in a country which is ideologically against their product, they had to go out of their way to be involved. But they they elected to go ahead, and took a (very minor) black eye as a result.
Beer lasts for a while. I don't see how there are damages and losses here. Inbev is a major supporter of Fifa. They did not give money to the Qatari govt. If anything, there is a more healthier society because kids can now go to games as well.
In fact they should have announced long time ago. More people would have attended the games.
> The vast majority of drinkers should be kept away from children.
So, no children in restaurants for dinner for example? Or family & friends barbecues? Or weddings? New Year's celebrations?
> The drinking brits would like to know how you came to that conclusion.
I live in the UK. Most people I know here drink, ranging from seldom and socially to frequent binges. I know perhaps one or two that I've seen become even slightly violent, and it's usually followed by an insurmountable amount of apologies and feelings of shame.
Seconded. I love soccer. I fondly remember waking up at 3:00 a.m. to watch many of the 1998 World Cup games. I think I have watched every single game since then. I know it is a small gesture, but I will not be watching a single match this go-round. The direct support of and kowtowing to such a corrupt government is disgusting.
with all the other issues in that country, I would like to see many teams hop back on the plane and say we will fly to another country, India, Australia, South America or somewhere else and compete there. Or at the very least withdraw.
How is this different from China hosting the winter Olympics or Russia before that? I fail to see how this is anything but arbitrarily treating others worse. The USA literally has an exception to the slavery amendment for prison labor
I don't like neither Chinese, neither Russian government. That said, unless we restrict such events to a very limited set of countries, we have to let a number of countries whose behavior we don't approve, as long as the event itself is properly handled.
Chinese Olympics where properly handled, ditto for Russian Winter Olympics (at least as far as I remember).
Qatar didn't at all. They promised a lot of things to FIFA and then went back on a lot of them.
Promised that the cup could be held in summer, we ended up doing it in winter (while forcing all the national and international competitions to adapt their scheduled.
They promised people could drink alcohol, went back on that two days before the beginning.
Promised proper accomodations for the fans, nope.
The list is longer but I think I gave the idea.
A world cup is not just the matches themselves. It's the fans, it's the atmosphere. It's the tradition. If you're not going to respect that, you shouldn't host them.
I don't blame only them though, half of the blame is of FIFA. I realize that there is always corruption going on in such events (although I don't like it), but I would expect the money not to be the ONLY thing that matters. Instead, this such a case.
How is this arbitrarily treating them worse? We have a reason to do so and we can if we wish. Justice is rarely ever applied evenly so should we not apply it at all?
In China people are put in concentration camps, but they hosted the winter Olympics without this much fuss, so that certainly qualify as arbitrarily treating them worse.
The Qatari debacle is more focused though, because the controversy is directly affecting the players and the spectators (in particular the schedule shift and the alcohol row)
There is definitely much more fuss about this across MSM esp. in Europe.
Being more upset at lacking alcohol at a sports event over being upset at the existence of concentration camps in China is quite something. There is some palpable hypocrisy that's apparent if one holistically compares the coverage.
Developed countries do not want to host the Olympics anymore. By the time the 2022 selection was over, the only other candidate was Almaty, which isn’t less problematic and had a protest violently suppressed by Russian forces in January right before the 2022 Olympics.
The World Cup had Australia, South Korea, Japan and the US bidding to host 2022.
There was no enthusiasm for this past Winter Olympics in the English-speaking West; the engagement numbers were pretty clear on that.
The "problem" story is much cleaner in Qatar though: the migrant worker abuses are alleged in building the venues.
In contrast, China and Russia have complicated problem stories about camps in places people can't visit, or about graft and murky military movements. Tougher for the public to get into. So maybe that's why you didn't see all the stories and posts about them.
Because the Olympics, since ancient Greece, served as a way of wnemies to come together. Which is, despite the rampant corruptuon in the IOC which is only surpassed by FIFA when it comes to sport, Olymics can be held in coubtries belonging to the "other side". That Olympic Games are sold the same way FIFA sells tournaments is even worse, because of the diplomatic angle of Olympic games.
Is this the same BBC that's quick to whitewash Israeli apartheid policies? The corruption of FIFA was apparent for a long time, yet it's only now that certain governments seem to loudly voice their criticism.
Don't get me wrong, some of the criticisms of Qatari policies esp. regarding migrant workers is perfectly valid, but seeing the criticism coming from certain groups that are actively being apologetic for worse crimes[0] reeks of dishonest motivations.
No, people raised concerns about the Qatari selection almost immediately. It’s just come up in the news cycle again because it is now actually happening.
Most of the FIFA officials involved have been indicted for a while.
I don't think that he was necessarily talking about the timing of the criticism but the target that triggered it while the groups that are now preaching certain values when they are actively betraying those values in action and coverage in similar scenarios.
Let's hope this peak of FIFA corruption and unabetted greed will result in some changes in football. The Premier League already lost a couple of rich Russians, if we now see less oil money "investors" buying a whitewashed reputation through sports, maybe just maybe, athletes can critisize countries like Qatar or China. Would only be good.
That being said, I don't care who will be World Champion 2022. Nor will I watch a single match.
every non-white country needs whitewash, because whites control the world. It is a fact. That's the reason countries bid for these events, olympic or world cup or any international events. It is sad that many years after colonism ended, developing world still have to put on these acts.
Is this a play on words?
At least how I understand the word, "whitewash" doesn't have a racial reference.
The countries that need a whitewash are the ones that have really bad human rights abuse (or, in this case, a country that let tens of thousands of people die building the very same stadiums that are being used). That's not related to being white in any systematic way
The fact is the system is designed by white countries (previous colonizers), they control the voice people hear, how the money flows, and how countries are manipulated. It is a large system. Developing countries have to play the same game.
Why would a country build stadiums to whitewash the deaths of labours during the construction of stadiums?
It is the same system British designed to control colonies: carrot and stick, weaken them, make sure they are dependent on you, and then you control it. Would west boycott energy from the middle east? Almost all resources in middle east are controlled by western companies one way or another. The media and government play different roles to serve the same purpose, to control the world.
Much of the news you have been getting is promoted by the enemies of Qatar which include UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and all of their allies including Israel and the US.
More accurately, people did die and they made changes to work force labor Practices. In their parliament, they noted that despite acknowledging some of the criticisms were valid and having made corresponding changes, they still faced even more severe criticisms, of which some were incredible exaggerations bordering in lies. And realized that this was a targeted media attack motivated by their enemies.
Good for them. Not that it's bad to talk about it, and we have the BBC, The Guardian, and other investigative journalists to thank for bringing this out into the light for the past decade, but the time for action was actually a decade ago when the stories were breaking,[1] when it became clear that migrant workers were dying from heat stroke. There are probably other insidious practices, but funny thing is the public was not talking about it. When did football as an establishment grow a conscience? Has it really? When did it become fashionable to talk about FIFA's corruption? Are we prepared to actually dissolve that organization in a vat of acid and start from scratch?
But really, what the hell took us so long to get fired up about this situation? Does it really take beer sales to get people invested in human rights abuses? It feels like the controversy is just another batch of rotating clickbait that will get flushed down the memory hole in a few weeks, and the systemic rot will remain.
For me, the entire sport lost a lot of its glamour when the amount of money involved came to the fore. Most clubs vying for the Champion's League trophy are too big to fail now, and with it comes all the problems of economic institutions. The advertising, the scandals, the enormous egos of players and coaches alike. It's gross. In France, the national team's coach was asked why the team flew in private jets from Paris to another city in France when the high-speed trains would have sufficed. It could've been a good PR opportunity for the country since these athletes -- no, people -- are revered. The coach scoffed and joked they would row to the next tournament abroad. These people are detached from reality, and it is because society elevated these personalities to demigod status. Football has become simply one more utopian refuge of escape.
I remember the sport in a purer form from 20 years ago. Maybe that is nostalgia, and maybe I'm foolish for remembering the innocent form of the sport. Sure, the biggest European clubs were already approaching billion dollar values, but now it feels filthy and sick. Clubs are like mercenary squads, and the sport feels like a convenient advertising and money-laundering vehicle for oligarchs and authoritarians.
The worst bit is that football is literally poor people's sport around the world. FIFA has a responsibility to bring the popular sport everywhere , especially in the developing world. This is bringing it to a petrocountry taking advantage of the poor.
The worst defense of Qatar that i 've heard was defending the uber-rich country on grounds of anti-europeanism.
To be honest the Swiss are pretty clear that they care mostly about keeping neutrality and money.
It's the impression that the rest of the world wants to imprint unto their idea of Switzerland that gets usually shattered, they're a pretty insular country and society that just want to be kept alone and make money as best as they can.
You might not realise it but this is a classist argument.
It was very popular at the beginning of the 20th century. That’s why the olympics were strictly limited to amateurs and why professionalism was banned in France during the nazi occupation.
What happens when you ban professionalism is that the rich who have time to seriously train get good at sports and the poor are excluded.
> You might not realise it but this is a classist argument.
I know that. Rugby Union, amateur and posh, Rugby League professional and for the working class.
> What happens when you ban professionalism is that the rich who have time to seriously train get good at sports and the poor are excluded.
What I am against is the spectacle. I loved playing sport back in the day (I am old and bent now, so want opportunities for my children and grandchildren). Fun. Joy. The feeling of giving your all physically.
The spectacle ruins all that. Professional sports people are unhealthy in all other ways than the performance at their sport. What is the point? Selling sugary or alcoholic beverages to people sitting down watching?
I am not for banning professionalism but to make sure you can get everything from it. Allow doping so that we get really everything from the people who decided to turn their body into a machine anyway.
I do not understand why we are such hypocrites and talk about "purity" for an activity that has nothing normal in it.
As for non-professional sports - I play mixed volleyball with friends and it is great. the level is average, there are very good players (who tone down their capacities) and less good ones (that try hard). We have fun and we get a beer afterwards.
We even play in a business league where we are systematically last and somehow a mascot of the league. Since we will lose anyway, the other teams play fair and let us play (and try risky combinations on their side for the fun).
I watch these matches with a lot of pleasure because everyone is there for the fun and get exactly nothing out of the game - except pleasure and friends.
> I do not understand why we are such hypocrites and talk about "purity" for an activity that has nothing normal in it
It's nothing to do with purity. If you allow doping, that means doping becomes mandatory to participate at any high level. Amateur levels will be messed up as well, because all the people that dream of going pro will dope as well.
It's similar (but not the exact same) as helmets in hockey. When they weren't mandatory, nobody wore them because not having a helmet provided an advantage (better visibility). The downside was that it was easy to get a head injury and ruin your life. Unfortunately, since some were ready to take that risk, everyone was forced too.
> If you allow doping, that means doping becomes mandatory to participate at any high level. Amateur levels will be messed up as well
Today in order to get to pro level you need a staff, special nutrition, etc. This is a commercial investment. It starts at amateur level (for those who want to go pro)
What we allow today is not far from doping - but we still pretend to look for "forbidden" substances because we arbitrarily said that they were bad.
Allowing doping would level the game: today there is so much research on how to hide the "unorthodox" substances players use and this is a cat and mouse game. Once you say "go for it" at least there will be no cheating in this area.
The only thing that bothers me is that this will quickly hit children who are not aware of the consequences. My wife was a European level champion in the junior league and when she was offered to join the national team, she refused because this would mean abandoning studies and get into a really unhealthy mode of life. She was lucky to have reasonable parents and friends - not everyone was that lucky and the ones who failed failed really really hard.
I think this is an entirely different argument than what is being made. If people enjoy watching the best of the best play we should likely support that. I don’t think we can go back at this point to just watching amateurs play it’s honestly just not that fun.
> . If people enjoy watching the best of the best play we should likely support that.
Really? Why?
Given the distortions it creates in the economy, the terrible effects on the player's health, the deleterious effects of sitting watching eating potato chips and drinking beer... Why?
I agree that at its best professional sport is a glorious spectacle. But throwing people to lions would be too, and less hypocritical.
Are you by any chance from the former eastern block? When you complained that a policeman beat you at a demo, the authority replied "Hmmm and they beat the black people in the US of A".
Same here -- all countries have problems, but this is about Qatar and no one else.
BBC has a duty to cover the human rights issues, but to ignore the opening ceremony seems like they are going past the line of reportage into controlling what people can choose to watch.
The opening ceremony and the matches aren’t part of the news organisation though? The BBC paid for broadcasting rights but they can still choose what to broadcast. I suspect that people are more interested in the games than the opening ceremony and the BBC made the right call (in so far as broadcasting the things people want to watch).
I hope someone organizes a counter-WorldCup with local teams and amateurs, because this stinks so much that it will be the worst possible epilogue to a horrible year.
I dislike this argument because people find it so compelling. As if we should share an enormous guilt for the crimes of the elite who ruled our ancestors.
The people in any place now are not the people in that place in the past. And for the most part, the only thing the masses are able to change is common thinking. Therefore, if you feel you're from a now enlightened society that once was bad, then you absolutely can criticise a society currently doing the same bad things.
> if you feel you're from a now enlightened society that once was bad, then you absolutely can criticise a society currently doing the same bad things.
This is exactly the cavalier attitude that caused colonialists to be colonialists. They called themselves ENLIGHTENED enough to go around colonizing the world and removing them from their "barbaric" cultures. We see the same behaviors and attitudes today.
Qatar has a rule against drinking and the western world does not like it. They have a rule against LGBT acts and the world doesn't like it. The Hypocrisy is not only they had the exact same rules less than a decade ago, but also they were far worse to LGBT individuals for centuries discriminating and treating them like less than human beings.
Not really a cavalier attitude. Quite a proportion of westerns would now see that colonialist behaviour as a bad thing. So are we forever to have it held against us that some of our ancestors did that? From an economic perspective that has as case, but from a moral one it doesn't.
Qatar wanted the World Cup knowing full well that these issues would come up. They wanted it so badly that they colluded with FIFA officials to get it, over places that the majority of fans would have preferred.
>>Quite a proportion of westerns would now see that colonialist behaviour as a bad thing.
Racism and Supremacist culture/politics literally exists because people today think their life got significantly hard since colonialism and slavery ended.
>>So are we forever to have it held against us that some of our ancestors did that?
Lets hold you to the present. Why is the west involved in so many invasions and intervensions almost on an every day basis even today?
>>Qatar wanted the World Cup knowing full well that these issues would come up.
They have local laws just like you do. Isn't crossing the road a punishable crime in the US? I think laws controlling alcoholism do make lots of sense compared to jailing people for crossing the road, or letting kids walk unattended.
Yeah I don't really care about the stuff you're arguing on. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, I think it's not relevant. My original point was to address the idea that we shouldn't be allowed to criticise a regime that commits abuses against people because our own nation did something in the past. This applies to you, your moral stance is of equal weight to mine regardless of what the previous generation in your place of birth did.
And the speaker making that comment missed a big point... Most fans of football didn't want this country hosting. None of this would have been a problem if they had rolled back that decision when the corruption was discovered.
I'm not from the US. I agree with your argument on local laws. Fans and players should have rebelled against the corrupt FIFA decision and forced change 10 years ago.
However, I disagree with being told we can't criticise due to the actions of others who happen to be our ancestors or even present day in my own country. I'm from the UK, I marched against the Iraq invasion, but the intimation here is that because the UK went to war anyway my voice is forever to be dismissed.
>>My original point was to address the idea that we shouldn't be allowed to criticise a regime that commits abuses against people because our own nation did something in the past.
Not past, those nations that are lecturing on morals are themselves accused of far worse as we speak. Either way if you are a net beneficiary(which you obviously are, as you are a UK citizen) of your ancestors having did all this, you have NO moral rights to lecture others. Or pay reparations and then speak.
>>I'm from the UK
Honestly, I think you really should lecture your own countrymen on countless things you guys continue to do till date. Iraq/Afghanistan is a strong example, but what happened after Arab Spring is another one. Whole countries flattened to the ground, because your prime minister apparently doesn't have good english reading/comprehension skills to read a simple report about the presence/absence of weapons in Iraq.
And for heaven's sake you are a democracy, which means you(the people) and only you(the people) are responsible for all the mess your government does(in your name).
Of all the ills that plague the world, not having the independence to drink beer for three hours isn't even in the vicinity of destroying whole countries. So please.
I would love to be a part of something like this. Heck most of us would love to be a part of something like this, where we can watch a game without worrying if the people next to us are engaging in debaucherous behavior.
I kind of envy those guys watching the game live in Qatar. I hope I was the one there.
Considering Fifa changed brazil rule to allow drinking when brazil hosted the wc, I doubt Qatar agreed to allowing drinking just to get the rights to host. It's more possible that drinking at a stadium is not a hosting requirement. And more of a pressure from the advertising sponsorship
> If you share the privilege and beneficial conditions, with that territory comes the guilt and responsibility too.
No, you don't. Nobody can control to whom they're born. Most people don't understand their privilege position. We can still develop and speak moral positions regardless.
I don't know you, you may live in pitiful conditions. But if you don't, then your wealth, large or small, is likely built on the blood and bad behaviour of your ancestors. Every single person would need to give up all and we start again?
> They literally are, given Western led invasions and interventions are happening almost on a weekly basis.
No there aren't. In any case, that doesn't mean that each and every intervention that has happened over the years has been a bad thing. I certainly support some and not others, and wished some to happen that did not. One can take a selective approach rather than a blanket view that is always wrong. Also ceding that we have little control anyway.
Wow, strong from a guy like Infantino to pretend to care about European colonialism, only to defend is cavalier attitude about human rights abuses, his greed and unfetted corruption.
What you’re referring to is the TV license fee and you’re not obliged to pay for it at all, you can simply opt out as outlined in the various letters you’ll receive if you don’t pay for it. It’s a deeply flawed system that many disagree with, but to say the public is forced to pay it is false.
Politicians put their positions on the BBC in their manifestos and you can pick a representative which has the views on the BBC most similar to your own. Just like almost all other issues.
I don't think it's unpopular enough yet to have any popular public outcry over the funding model large enough that it'd reach parliament. But BBC News has put their thumb on the scale a few times during the Conservative government, so there's a small but growing resentment of the org
And? Those retirees are "forced" to pay for roads they may not be able to drive on, research of all kinds they may not benefit from, education systems for children and grandchildren they may not have had, and all sorts of other things. All of those (BBC/news included) are very good things and it is insane to complain about them. Especially when the alternative is things like Fox News and Murdochs other trash propaganda companies.
It's interesting to see this comment about the BBC. It's eerily familiar to criticism of CBC in Canada, almost like a narrative is being pushed. Anyways, I trust them both way more than the junk produced by Rupert Murdoch or Conrad Black.
You need to pay a license for watching TV programs at the same time they are being broadcast on a channel or for using iplayer. I have a TV and watch Netflix, Disney+ etc. and don’t need a license.
You have to prove to the authorities that you are unable to receive a TV signal on any device in your house to avoid the BBC fee. It's not as easy as just "opting out".
You fill in a form online (I think you can do it by post as well) and it's done.
There is a small chance they send someone over to check. They normally show up between 9-5, so if you're at work, chances are you'll never see them to let them in.
If you are home and they knock, you don't have to let them in. You can politely tell them to leave.
Or you can show them your TV and that it's not hooked up to an aerial. They'll ask if you use iPlayer, you say no and they leave you alone.
Source: lived in the UK, never paid for TV license. I let them in once to see what would happen.
(I lived on the Isle of Man for a while, and the local newspaper would be alerted by the ferrymen when the van was shipped over, and run a warning for everyone to turn their TVs off for a few days).
It's only easier to evade now because flat-screen TVs don't emit radio signals they can detect from the street.
If enough people opt out then they'll do what they do in Germany: everyone pays it regardless of whether you have a TV or not.
The BBC has a viewpoint, and that viewpoint is very critical of its own government. If you want evidence but don't want to watch any of their news programmes, I highly recommend the series W1A, in which the BBC satirizes itself as a ineffective, out-of-touch, farce that wastes the public's fees.
"the force the public to pay for it or face jail time"
That is the premise of taxes, yes. I may not get sick enough to justify a hospital visit this decade, yet I contribute to socialized healthcare all the same.
> That is the premise of taxes, yes. I may not get sick enough to justify a hospital visit this decade, yet I contribute to socialized healthcare all the same.
Nobody should go to jail for refusing to contribute to the local "Pravda". Governments shouldn't be in that line of business at first place.
BBC is more than just BBC News. And while BBC News itself isn't perfect (in recent years under the Tories slipping to the right) it's streets ahead of the various Murdoch news outlets.
It's not perfect, but it's not Pravda and describing it as such is quite ridiculous
> It's not perfect, but it's not Pravda and describing it as such is quite ridiculous
Of course if you agree with the BBC editorial line, you'll find nothing wrong with the BBC. Just like Fox News audience don't see any problems with Fox News bias. What is ridiculous is thinking that only Murdoch controlled media lies.
I certainly don't always agree with the "BBC editorial line" - it has moved the needle against a few things that I've supported. However it is farcical to compare it to Pravda or even FOX, and I think you're showing how little exposure you've had to the BBC by doing so.
> thinking that only Murdoch controlled media lies.
I mentioned the various Murdoch properties because they're the most egregious and shameless. There's bias everywhere, and I never said there wasn't
And I think you're a reactionary fool if you sincerely believe BBC News belongs with Pravda and FOX. But I suspect you don't genuinely think that. I think you threw that line out as a cute little zinger and didn't believe anyone would call you out on it.
> And no one has to pay it since it's a license fee. There are ways to opt out if you don't have a TV. So stop being dramatic.
You still have to pay it IF you have a TV. That doesn't change my first point as there is absolutely nothing "dramatic" about pointing out the dangers of a media directly controlled by the government. Stop acting like government controlled press isn't prone to manipulating their audience.
