An appropriate article to reprint from 2023

I wrote this article on February 2nd of 2023 and offer it again as the FIFA Football World Cup draws to a close in Qatar.

Qatar’s Killer Builders

A very interesting juxtaposition slid across my attention today regarding sports-events in a Middle-Eastern nation I only know from its airport. One article suggested a beach volley-ball protest because the Islamic nation would not allow women contestants to wear bikini’s.

The second claimed 6,500 foreign-worker deaths in the construction run-up to the 2022 football World Cup. Speculation is that the death-count is wildly undercounted and is merely one of the human rights complaints. According to an investigation by The Guardian newspaper, many workers have been denied food and water, had their identity papers taken away from them and had not been paid on time (or at all), making some of them in effect slaves.

Score so far: Bikinis 1, worker-deaths 0

The FIFA World Cup football tournament will be held in Qatar on the twenty-eight days between 21 November and 18 December, 2022.

Just for the hell of it, let’s put some numbers to those dates. Each day essentially celeb…