World Cup 2022 - Qatar (with SR Pick'Em league)
obviously Qatar did all this for the sportswashing
the irony is that they will come out of all this looking much worse in the eyes of most of the world than if they'd just kept quietly doing their qatar thing
Yeah, precious few knew they existed, and many of those felt some sympathy for the country MBS was trying to strong arm into subsurviance... if not directly take over.
In a region with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Isreal, Syria, etc... just keeping their head down would be enough to avoid most international scrutiny.
Seriously, if I listed the nations and their respective, very public violations of human rights and the soverignty of their neighbors, this might be my most long winded post ever.
For the money spent Qatar could have bought some key sports franchises for their "sportswashing" to try and build a crafted image, and maybe built some educational centers or invested in another way to diversify their economy beyond NG... not sure why the thought tourisim was a good play. All they did here was shine a spotlight on the darkest recesses of their society.
I will admit, the only reason I knew they existed pre-2018(MBS near invasion) is I once embarked on a examination of nations with the higher GDP/capita than the US, higher or comprable median income, and with a comprable or lower Gini coefficient(income equality). Qatar piqued my interest... then I discovered the numbers look really good when you can avoid counting 77% of the total population(95% of the labor force) because they are migrant workers and not citizens... and their near zero cost labor in the NG industry is why Qatari citizenry have the worlds highest GDP/capita and a comprable Gini score to us... they just dont count the grand majority of the people participating in their economy.