polite_gandalf wrote on Nov 29
th, 2022 at 12:49pm:
LOL - spectators unable to buy beer at a football game.
HOW EVER WILL THE UNIVERSE SURVIVE SUCH A CATASTROPHE???
The corrupt Qataries lied to get the gig.
The only more corrupt player than the Qataris in this fiasco is FIFA itself.
Chuck Blazer. You may remember him from a few years back as one of the Fifa officials who was proved to have received bribes to arrange for the World Cup to go to any country that could line his voluminous pockets. For Mr Blazer was a big man. Indeed so morbidly obese was he that he had to move around in a mobility scooter. He had two apartments in Trump Tower, one of which was set aside for his cats. When the Feds came knocking, Mr Blazer was on the way to his favourite restaurant on his mobility scooter. And so the Feds caught the Fifa official fairly easily on Fifth Avenue in perhaps the lowest-speed chase in NYPD history.
The now sadly late Mr Blazer is memorable for many reasons. But chief among them is that only at an organisation as corrupt as Fifa could a man so obese that he needs a mobility scooter represent a sporting organisation. Which brings me to Gianni Infantino, the current head of the body.
Everybody in the world knows why the World Cup is taking place in Qatar. It is because the Qataris are very rich and bribed Fifa officials to have the competition in their inappropriately climated statelet. Many people have lamented this, but I think the whole thing has paid off. Rather than covering over the lamentable aspects of Qatari society, the World Cup has highlighted them – as it has also highlighted a range of people who are willing to say almost anything so long as they get to trouser a lot of cash. Chief among them is Infantino himself. He could have just come out and said: ‘Money speaks – indeed it sings.’ Instead he tried to respond to the very modern criticisms of Qatar in a very modern way. Since various people had highlighted the state of gay rights, migrant workers and suchlike in Qatar, Infantino clearly felt he had to say something ahead of the tournament. And so he gave a speech which I think will go down in history as one of those moments when our era almost stopped pretending.
In a rambling monologue with leaden pauses, he told 400 journalists: ‘Today I feel very strong feelings. Today I feel like a Qatari. Today I feel like an Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel dis-abled. Today I feel like a migrant worker.’ He left out whether or not he felt like a woman and when someone asked why, he immediately confirmed that he did indeed also feel like a woman.
...
He made one other effort at playing defence, which also failed to warm him to me. This was his claim that western criticism of Qatar is ‘pure hypocrisy’. Infantino said: ‘I think what we Europeans have done worldwide for the past 3,000 years, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before giving moral advice to others.’ I assume that he means that we Europeans should apologise for everything going back to the Ancient Greeks?
Well, thanks for the offer, Gianni, but personally I love the Ancient Greeks.
And in any case, I’m done apologising. Not another day. Certainly not another 3,000 years. But if that’s your best ‘out’ for trousering a pile of cash, then fine, game on.
Like I said, at moments such as this, one begins to see the end of the tunnel.
The beginning of the end of the era in which people kept pretending to believe the crap they have pretended to believe of late. At such moments we can all see that other realities are truly at play.
Douglas Murray
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