Boycott The Qatar World Cup?

Yet some do, isn't in a bit dangerous to make assumptions? And even more dangerous to silence them based on your assumptions?

The idea that a voice from Sweden is more worthy than a voice from Israel is bizarre. Swedes has Neo Nazis and Israel has pro Arab sections. The world is a bit more complicated than you are allowing for.
The word is media.
Official media outlet in Sweden does not support new nazism, how is that even comparable?
The media outlet in these countries are by no means comparable in this regard, Israeli media are just a tool of the state.
 
The word is media.
Official media outlet in Sweden does not support new nazism, how is that even comparable?
The media outlet in these countries are by no means comparable in this regard, Israeli media are just a tool of the state.

You contradict yourself so much its ridiculous.

Firstly you have no idea that there is no right wing sympathy in the Swedish media. The results of the last election wouod suggest otherwise.

The idea that media is Sweden is suddenly the only bastian of journalism left is very convenient. Is that what makes your criticism of Qatar more valid than the rest of us? The rest of us are hypocrites because we're not in Sweden?

What about the Irish media, quite a large amount of thd posters you are dismissing as hypocrites are Irish?

There is a free press in Israel by the way.
 
You contradict yourself so much its ridiculous.

Firstly you have no idea that there is no right wing sympathy in the Swedish media. The results of the last election wouod suggest otherwise.

The idea that media is Sweden is suddenly the only bastian of journalism left is very convenient. Is that what makes your criticism of Qatar more valid than the rest of us? The rest of us are hypocrites because we're not in Sweden?

What about the Irish media, quite a large amount of thd posters you are dismissing as hypocrites are Irish?

There is a free press in Israel by the way.

The original post I posted was post was about an Israeli media outlet trying to pressure a singer on why he did not boycott the WC. Not an ordinary Israeli person in the streets, MEDIA. How is that difficult to understand? I would absolutely not accept that from an Israeli media that spends days and nights trying to justify their crimes in Gaza and other parts of that land.
There is a controlled "free press" in Israel. I have nothing but respect for the Irish media and official government takes on international conflicts.
 
The original post I posted was post was about an Israeli media outlet trying to pressure a singer on why he did not boycott the WC. Not an ordinary Israeli person in the streets, MEDIA. How is that difficult to understand? I would absolutely not accept that from an Israeli media that spends days and nights trying to justify their crimes in Gaza and other parts of that land.
There is a controlled "free press" in Israel. I have nothing but respect for the Irish media and official government takes on international conflicts.

The majority of the press is definitely anti Arab and pro Israel, but there is a free press in Israel with the predictable and disgraceful control placed on Arab journalists. Most countries national press is blindly nationalist for obvious reasons.

I am a massive opponent of Israel, and I don#t hesitate to crticise and protest but its not as cartoonishly simple as you would like it to be. I don't discount a journalist I don't know because he is an Israeli, I think judging someone by their nationality is absurd.
 
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The majority of the press is definitely anti Arab and pro Israel, but there is a free press in Israel with the predictable and disgraceful control placed on Arab journalists. Most countries national press is blindly nationalist for obvious reasons.

I am a massive opponent of Israel, and I ding hesitate to crticise and protest but its not as cartoonishly simple as you would like it to be. I don't discount a journalist I don't know because he is an Israeli, I think judging someone by their nationality is absurd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kan_11

Here 11 (Hebrew: כאן 11) is an Israeli state-owned free-to-air television channel.

The channel doing the interview. Should I say more?

I think I will take a break from this thread.
 
It's just for the German market, so not necessarily representative, but:

6.21 million viewers for the opener, down 34% from the 9.48 million, who watched Russia vs Saudi-Arabia (:nervous:)
In the 14 to 49 year old demographic viewers have pretty much halved from 3.3 million to 1.64 million.

It could always be more (less), but it's a sizeable dent.


source [German]:
 
Im boycotting - feck em! For me Man Utd precede all forms of football even my sons team. England now appear to backing down over the one love armband - its just incredible what money can buy these days - it can buy your right to protest! UEFA should hang their heads in shame.
 
It's just for the German market, so not necessarily representative, but:

6.21 million viewers for the opener, down 34% from the 9.48 million, who watched Russia vs Saudi-Arabia (:nervous:)
In the 14 to 49 year old demographic viewers have pretty much halved from 3.3 million to 1.64 million.

It could always be more (less), but it's a sizeable dent.


source [German]:

I don't know how much to read into the viewing figures, given the opening fixture was so turd. We'll find out soon enough when the bigger teams get started.
 
I don't know how much to read into the viewing figures, given the opening fixture was so turd. We'll find out soon enough when the bigger teams get started.

Russia vs Saudi-Arabia didn't exactly promise to be spectacular football either, but it's of course a fair point and numbers could very well normalize over the course of the tournament.
 
Im boycotting - feck em! For me Man Utd precede all forms of football even my sons team. England now appear to backing down over the one love armband - its just incredible what money can buy these days - it can buy your right to protest! UEFA should hang their heads in shame.
Apparently FIFA have threatened to book the captains who wear them… which could make the difference between a suspension at some point in the tournament or not. Basically threats and blackmail… wouldn’t expect anything else from FIFA and “today I am gay” Infantino.

Hopefully Kane and Bale wear them and take the booking.
 
Hopefully England and other teams with PL players will be swiftly eliminated so they can get back injury free, to play in an actual competition instead of whatever this is.
 
Apparently FIFA have threatened to book the captains who wear them… which could make the difference between a suspension at some point in the tournament or not. Basically threats and blackmail… wouldn’t expect anything else from FIFA and “today I am gay” Infantino.

Hopefully Kane and Bale wear them and take the booking.
You have 11 players on the pitch. You can simply give the armband to whatever player isn’t on a ban. If you need an armband to lead then you clearly aren’t any kind of leader anyway.

A suspension means feck all.
 
You could argue that distinction. However, the figure of worker deaths I quoted refers to people that perished in the 10 years since Qatar was announced as the host. And when Qatar was announced as the host, you'll recall that there was plenty of human rights related controversy then, before
much of the construction even started. So it's really about the conception of Qatar being a 'bad' country rather than the specific stadium related deaths, i think. My point is that it has been awarded to many 'bad' countries before (including Western ones: what is a 'bad' country after all?), and I wonder if there is anti-Arab sentiment that subconsciously underpins the discourse. Of course, many of the people dying are South Asian, so I recognise the lack of agency of those benighted economic migrants v the filthy rich Qataris. But why are that minority wealthy? Here's where it gets complicated.

I just bristle at the West lecturing non-Western nations about human rights when the West is behind most of the injustices in the world, hence the massive disparity in living standards in the West v nearly everywhere else. It's no coincidence for me that a lot of the most criticised non-Western nations are those that have some kind of power and/or agency (e.g. China) that threatens Western hegemony, which we've been taught should be the natural order of things. I can't expect people on here to see things from the perspective I'm outlining but there you go.

You're stuck on a false binary - 'western governments commit human rights abuses, therefore it's wrong to criticise non-western governments for human rights abuses'.

I don't think anyone is blaming qatari people *generally* for the human rights abuses committed by its government. They are criticising the government for the abuses committed by the government. That has got to be acceptable, right?

British people criticise the British government all the time for atrocities it has committed both recently and historically. And the modern state of Qatar was pretty much an invention of the British Empire (1970, when the British left the region and made the al-Thani family sovereign), so it is not inconsistent to criticise the British and the Qatari governments at the same time.

Orientalism and anti-Arab sentiment in the West is a real thing, but when you conflate islamophobia with criticism of Qatari politics you are quoting from the Israeli playbook (in which criticism of the Israeli government's actions is dismissed as motivated by antisemitism). People have the right to criticise governments that treat others badly without being accused of racism.

Qatar being a bad country isn't about racism, it's because it is an obscenely wealthy absolute monarchy with a lot of restrictive, prejudicial laws that is currently making itself incredibly visible through a propaganda offensive.
 
Breaking: England and Wales have decided not to wear One Love armbands.
 
Breaking: England and Wales have decided not to wear One Love armbands.
Sky’s take on this is so bad. They describe the ‘impossible situation’ of choosing to show support to the LGBT community versus Harry Kane getting a yellow card.

Oh my goodness, what a hard decision! So glad I didn’t have to make it, I wouldn’t have known what to do.
 
If they aren't prepared to wear the armband in Qatar they don't deserve to wear it back home in the UK either. Pathetic.
 
A booking is such an insignificant punishment, there's no excuse not to do it.
 
A booking is such an insignificant punishment, there's no excuse not to do it.
I guess the argument is that a single booking on it's own isn't, but if it contributes to a suspension and that leads to missing the final, then a player might consider it significant.
 
It is very easy to tell someone else to do something when they probably wouldn't do it themselves.
 
It is very easy to tell someone else to do something when they probably wouldn't do it themselves.
We’re playing Iran… I get the fear of if this was a good opponent or a knock out game that the pressure would be huge for players (i still think many would do it) but Kane can just play in a very chilled way and come off at half time or something. We should be winning this with a second team.

Or better yet, why can’t Southgate wear it, he can get booked and it makes no difference.
 
I guess the argument is that a single booking on it's own isn't, but if it contributes to a suspension and that leads to missing the final, then a player might consider it significant.
Yeah, so they could change the captain every game or so to avoid the suspensions. If a single yellow card proved to be a threat big enough for them to backtrack on their promise, it's a very bad look for England, Wales and the Netherlands. They've been so vocal in promises to deliver the message and to show their support for discriminated communities and it was so easy and simple to stop them. Embarrassing really and as a big fan of such symbols and statements in football, as I believe they're important and impactful, it's just ridiculous it took the smallest of blackmails to see the "allies" turn their back on discriminated groups. Cowardice, no other way to describe it, and it makes all the statements made in England much less significant.
 
It is very easy to tell someone else to do something when they probably wouldn't do it themselves.
There lays the problem with a Qatar WC, if they can’t make even the smallest of gestures without repercussions.
 
So disappointing that they're backing down when it actually means something. It just makes Lewis Hamilton and Seb Vettel look like even bigger legends for what they do in F1.
 
We’re playing Iran… I get the fear of if this was a good opponent or a knock out game that the pressure would be huge for players (i still think many would do it) but Kane can just play in a very chilled way and come off at half time or something. We should be winning this with a second team.

Or better yet, why can’t Southgate wear it, he can get booked and it makes no difference.

Yeah, so they could change the captain every game or so to avoid the suspensions. If a single yellow card proved to be a threat big enough for them to backtrack on their promise, it's a very bad look for England, Wales and the Netherlands. They've been so vocal in promises to deliver the message and to show their support for discriminated communities and it was so easy and simple to stop them. Embarrassing really and as a big fan of such symbols and statements in football, as I believe they're important and impactful, it's just ridiculous it took the smallest of blackmails to see the "allies" turn their back on discriminated groups. Cowardice, no other way to describe it, and it makes all the statements made in England much less significant.
How many yellows is it before you miss a game? Does it reset after the group stages?

Changing the captain could work – but then you are hoping that none of the stand-in captains picks up any other bookings (or too many bookings at least).

If we really wanted to make a statement then we should have boycotted the whole tournament.
 
So disappointing that they're backing down when it actually means something. It just makes Lewis Hamilton and Seb Vettel look like even bigger legends for what they do in F1.

Do they receive points penalties for what they do? (genuine question!)
 
I get people being upset about the whatabotsim argument being weak as hell.

However, this kind of scrutiny should be applied across the board to any hosting country going forward.

Also, can we please conisder what this means to most people in the region not only Qatar !!

Highlight the issues but celebrate it as well, talk of boycott is crazy to me. And to be honest you should look closer to home and boycott watching our games with two certain clubs playing in the PL, who are by all metrics applied here are way worse !

All i am saying is i get your gripes, but cant you just also highlight the positives of having the world cup only one hour 30 minutes away from where i grew up and live
 
How many yellows is it before you miss a game? Does it reset after the group stages?

Changing the captain could work – but then you are hoping that none of the stand-in captains picks up any other bookings (or too many bookings at least).

If we really wanted to make a statement then we should have boycotted the whole tournament.
Sure the whole boycott would make the most sense, but it was never going to happen. I am only disappointed that there was a promise, there were multiple interviews and statements made and there was a big PR activity around several countries having balls to oppose human rights abuse with this mere symbol of armband. Now, to backtrack only because of a single yellow card a game threat, is a big slap in the face for the LGBT community that was naïve enough to think the support and this statement matters.
 
That says more about England and Wales as a nation/nations than about Qatar.

All truths are coming out.
Muhammad Ali went to jail for his principles and values

Arry Kanes afraid of a yellow card