BBC ignores World Cup opening ceremony in favour of Qatar criticism | Hacker News Reader

BBC ignores World Cup opening ceremony in favour of Qatar criticism

theguardian.com

113 pointslastdong105 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kids could always go to games. The vast majority of people, even amongst the drinkers, are civil and respectful.

Episodes of violence in world cups are few and far between.

The vast majority of drinkers should be kept away from children.

The drinking brits would like to know how you came to that conclusion.

Interesting to mention Britain, where drinking in football stadia has not been permitted since the 1980s. Bit of an "own goal" so to speak :)

Haha. That owns everyone commenting here.

So the pictures of drinking brits fighting is actually from a rugby event? Who knew. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-59402277

There are no pictures of people fighting in that article. This thread is not going well for you :-P

> 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.

Think about all the shipping and logistics. How many tons of beers must be sitting there somewhere.

It should be refund + costs + damages.

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.

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

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.

There was definitely a lot of fuss around China and Xinjiang. The US did not send a delegation to the Olympics. https://www.csis.org/analysis/biden-boycott-2022-beijing-win...

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.

Probably the personal revolution of finding out that the game you love watching is actually quite boring unless you're pissed.

Also, the lack of appropriate alternate venues.

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.

> How is this different

Was it implied that it is different?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Don't be fooled.

So the tens of thousand of migrant workers didn't die?

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.

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.

[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apart...

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.

"But what about Israel" is literally whataboutism.

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.

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.

1- https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/07/s...

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.

EDIT: i got it mixed up, it was not from taleb but from Branko Milanovic: https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/1593479684754444288

I'd expect better from Nassim Taleb. He's lost the thread on this one.

I’ve seen the guy immediately insult and block people who disagree with him. Not surprising.

I've been complaining about FIFA for at least a decade, I don't see it as a new thing

How Switzerland continues to allow FIFA and friends to have not-for-profit status is baffling.

Switzerland puts on a very pretty face and provides a very safe space for the modern western corrupt.

Switzerland is neutral, both in war and in the face of corruption organizations like FIFA. Pretty consistent I would say.

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.

Good.

I am not a fan of professional sport - another brick in the wall.

Sport should be for fun IMO, not a profession.

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.

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 play mixed volleyball with friends and it is great.

There are "touch rugby" leagues here. Some get competitive and a bit yuck, but others are done for fun. Smoking dope, drinking beer.

My favourite used to be hacky sacky. When we played it we scored as a group (a "hack" when everybody in the group got to kick the sack). Pure fun.

> 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 an old man shouting at the clouds.....

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.

I like this action. I hope they mentioned people died while crossing to EU (and UK) too.

Why this whataboutism? This is completely orthogonal to what you mention.

Migration and work. Same problem, same system, two locations. So why pointing out whataboutortogonalism?

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.

If you open your eyes beyond the Eastern block, you will see deaths linked to migration and work in every continent.

Italy '90 was the last genuine World Cup, including an iconic logo.

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).

For the first time in my life I’m ignoring the World Cup. Fuck FIFA.

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.

This is most corrupted world cup ever, that's enough for me, I'll not watch it.

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