The World Cup in (European) football starts tomorrow, in the desert, in Qatar. It is sponsored by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). See https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/sports/soccer/world-cup-qatar-2022.html and
https://www.nytimes.com/?campaign_id=279&emc=edit_ntwc_20221119&instance_id=78089&nl=world-cup-briefing®i_id=62336293&segment_id=113736&te=1&user_id=5f3f77d15a5fbafad6b75861a9a31a43.
Qatar is a very small nation, and Saudi Arabia is its northern neighbor, but it is extremely rich in natural resources, including petroleum and natural gas.
Through a series of noticeably corrupt practices, FIFA, the sponsor, led by its infantile president, Gianni Infantino, who is now a resident of Qatar, with his children in private schools there, decided to award the venue for the 2022 World Cup to the most unlikely and most inappropriate venue, that is, the desert, where the heat in Qatar is intense.
Qatari citizens are paid $134,620 per year just for being Qataris.
To get anything done there, the Qataris import people from vey poor countries, such as Nepal, to build their soccer stadiums and do everything that the Qataris don’t want to do themselves.
Yesterday on PBS, a human rights group told the world how the Qataris promised workers from Nepal thousands of dollars to build the football stadia for the Cup; but they were cheated by Qatar and were not paid what they were promised, and that violates Qatar’s agreement with the International Labor Organization.
So Qatar has, according to our Chief International Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, annexed Nepal, to share the wealth, among other reasons.
Theis, who at one time was an expert in miracles, insists that it is perfectly feasible for Qatar to annex Nepal. An expert in world history, Theis reminded us that in 1947, because of the Partition of India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan were formed as one non-contiguous nation, and East Pakistan became a province of Pakistan; therefore, Theis says, there is no legal impediment to Qatar and Nepal becoming one nation.
In other news, Donald Trump/s syntax got unusually complicated yesterday when he insisted that he won’t “partake” in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of his numerous crimes
(https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/18/trump-special-prosecutor-00069498).
And since your solitary reporter takes an appropriately dim view of the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine that only Catholics may be allowed to partake in the Eucharist, and since Donald Trump is noticeably anti-religious, Special Counsel Smith has informed all Trump’s hundreds of lawyers that since Trump is not Catholic, he is not allowed to partake in the Eucharist, but he is allowed to claim that he should, under a necessary revision in Catholic views of the Eucharist, be allowed to partake. That said, Trump will be required to participate in Smith’s far-flung investigation.