Boycott Qatar? Not now they won't

The Football FIFA World Cup will be held in Qatar in November/December of this year. We are still missing a few teams whose presence will be decided in upcoming playoffs.

This World Cup has been rife with controversy from the moment Qatar was given the hosting privilege. There was talk of bribes (wouldn't doubt it, FIFA is not the most honest of organizations, in fact two Honduran FIFA executives were extradited to the US on bribery and corruption charges, one of them died in the USA), but the biggest problem has been human rights.

Qatar has a large amount of its work force made up mostly of persons from Africa and the poorer Asian countries. They are said to work in inhuman conditions and have no rights. Personally I have known two Africans who work in Dubai, and they had no problems with conditions and were quite happy with what they earned there. They had to be, these two guys were vacationing in Honduras and they were from Nigeria, so I guess they really were making good money.

Of course I don't know if the same holds true for Qatar perhaps workers face different conditions there, but I doubt it, both the UAE and Qatar are Arab countries so the culture has to be very similar. I know some people have died in the construction of the stadiums and that is terrible, but at least in Latin America safety in the work place is also far from optimal. Yes, it would be better if these people who have to go to Qatar for work could find good paying jobs at home, but what can you do? That is the way the world works.

In any case, the Russian invasion of Ukraine I think has come as a God send for FIFA, I no longer hear of boycotting the World Cup and in fact Europe is cozying up to Qatar, you know you can't upset a possible supplier to go to if Russian gas is cut off. And this is permanent, Europe will always need fossil fuels, nuclear is the only option for now but they have to build the reactors. As for renewable energy, let's be serious, this has been a talking point for 50 years and little has come of it, it can help out but it is no substitute.