There is zero chance that President Joe Biden will pardon Donald Trump just to get him to go away. That’s not a thing Biden would do to begin with. And with Trump having now declared a candidacy, there’s no way to trust that Trump would even honor an agreement to drop out in exchange for a pardon, even if it were legally binding. Trump is so far gone, he might just decide to “run” anyway for attention (which come to think of it, isn’t much different than what Trump is doing right now).

But by even so much as calling for Biden to pardon Trump, right wing pundits are giving away that they know that the DOJ is indicting Trump. We’re now at a point where Trump’s impending indictment is obvious enough, and inevitable enough, right wing pundits aren’t even bothering to try to deny that it’s coming.

So let’s take this for what it is. Even if the media latches onto the hypothetical idea of Biden pardoning Trump and tries to milk it for ratings by presenting it as something that is actually on the table, it’s still not going to be a real thing. What is real is that even right wing pundits are now de facto admitting that the DOJ is going to indict Trump, and that Trump will not be an actual participant in the 2024 election when we get to it.

The post Beg your pardon appeared first on Palmer Report.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, was rocked by shelling on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog who said such attacks risked a major nuclear disaster. Moscow and Kyiv both blamed the other for the shelling of the facility.

* Ukrainian electricity supplies are under control despite Russian attacks on power-generating infrastructure and there is no need to panic, the energy ministry said on Saturday, a day after authorities in Kyiv warned that the capital could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.

* Hundreds of Kherson residents flocked to buy groceries at the first Ukrainian supermarket to open since the city was retaken by pro-Kyiv forces earlier this month. Earlier on Saturday, jubilant Ukrainians rolled into Kherson by train on Saturday for the first time in more than eight months.

* Citing damage done by Russian forces, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced on Saturday that evacuations of people who want to leave Kherson and the surrounding areas would soon begin.

* Russian forces are pounding Ukrainian positions with artillery fire and in the eastern region alone launched almost 400 strikes on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.

* Around 60 Russian soldiers were killed in a long-range Ukrainian artillery attack this week, Kyiv said on Saturday, the second time in four days that Ukraine claimed to have inflicted major casualties in a single incident. The Russian defence ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

* Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports.

* Britain’s new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made his first visit to Kyiv on Saturday, pledging to continue the firm support for Ukraine that was a focus of his predecessors, and providing a new air defence package to help shoot down Russian drones.

* Russia’s surge in missile strikes in Ukraine is partly designed to exhaust Kyiv’s supplies of air defenses and finally achieve dominance of the skies above the country, a senior Pentagon official said on Saturday.

* European traders are rushing to fill tanks in the region with Russian diesel before an EU ban begins in February, as alternative sources remain limited.

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When selecting a President of the United States, it is rather important to select a person who does know the meaning of Double Jeopardy. I say this because there is a former President who appears NOT to understand what Double Jeopardy actually is. That person is Donald Trump.

The chief operating officer of insurrections appears red-faced and drooling with rage. And this is because of double Jeopardy. Ah, Donald, there is so much to teach you — if only you would listen. On Friday, Trump went wild, as maniacs tend to do.

And he loudly proclaimed that he couldn’t be held responsible for January 6 because of double jeopardy. What on earth could our coward mean? Was there a trial that we somehow all missed? Was Donald John Trump tried over the January 6 terrorist attack that he created? No.

You see, Trump appears to be talking about his impeachment. He is confusing impeachment with criminal trials, causing us to ask the question: just how dumb can one man be? At Mar-a-Lago during a party on Friday, Trump said he “thought this was all done.”

“I was tried on the fake impeachment hoax on January 6,” he wailed. “We won.”

“We went through the whole process, so wouldn’t this sort of be a — and then you take a look at the other” he went on.

“Isn’t this sort of like double jeopardy?”

Sigh. It sounds like the insurrectionist needs a legal tutorial, does it not? Double Jeopardy means the prosecution of a person twice for the same crime. So, for example, if someone steals Matt Gaetz’s hair gel and is tried on stolen hair gel charges and found not guilty, they cannot be tried again for this crime.

But that does not mean Trump who was impeached twice — even if not convicted — can’t be tried in a court of law. Where on earth is Donnie getting his information? Please don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

So in the future, let’s make sure we choose a president who understands the meaning of double Jeopardy. Donnie doesn’t. And he does not appear to understand that the argument he is making has about as much weight as a grain of sand.

The post Double jeopardy appeared first on Palmer Report.

WALTHAM, Massachusetts (JTA) — The days before Thanksgiving break were supposed to be packed at Brandeis University’s Hillel: There was a talk on Sunday about sexuality in Judaism, a ceremony for students who participated in a study program and a forum for candidates running to help lead the campus Jewish center.

Instead, Hillel canceled everything and instead threw open its doors for students and faculty in need of comfort and support after one of their classmates was killed and dozens more injured in an accident involving a shuttle bus many of them take regularly.

The crash occurred at 10:45 p.m. Saturday only a half mile from campus, sending shockwaves through the Brandeis community. 

Rabbi Seth Winberg, the executive director of the school’s Hillel and the university’s senior chaplain, said scores of students have reached out to his organization since the deadly accident, unsettled after learning about it from communications from the college and in text messages from friends. He said he has also heard from parents and alumni, from as far away as Israel.

“We are trying to help students process and grieve,” Winberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

That was the theme on campus Sunday, as details emerged about the crash and its aftermath. The bus, operated by a contractor who provides transportation services to Brandeis, was returning students to campus from a hockey game at Northeastern University, according to the local district attorney’s office, which is investigating the accident. 

BREAKING: Bus crash on South St in Waltham near Brandeis University. #wbz pic.twitter.com/A3DFnqwc6o

— AndreaWBZ (@AndreaWBZ) November 20, 2022

Images and video posted to social media showed that the bus was heavily damaged, its front end virtually disintegrated, its roof shredded after a rollover and all windows broken. Debris was still piled at the South Street crash site Sunday afternoon.

One student died at the scene. Vanessa Mark was “an active and cherished member of the Brandeis community” who was on leave but living in Waltham, according to an announcement by the school’s president, Ron Liebowitz, on Sunday.

By early Sunday afternoon, 17 people had been released from the hospital and 11 were admitted for further care, Julie Jette, Brandeis’s assistant vice president for communications wrote in an email. Jette cautioned that the information was fluid because of the severity of the crash and the complexity of the situation.

“Given the number of injured people and the different hospitals to which they were transported, it is taking time to determine the status of everyone involved,” she said.

Liebowitz announced in a message to the community Sunday that classes would be canceled on Monday and Tuesday and counseling services would be made widely available. 

“This will enable some students to return to family and friends sooner than the normal holiday schedule would have allowed,” he wrote. “For students who will remain on campus, we will have additional opportunities to gather and receive support.”

Liebowitz outlined the resources available to students at a community meeting Sunday morning, where hundreds of students crowded into the campus center for a community-wide gathering about the accident, Winberg told JTA.

Students remained after the gathering for up to an hour, according to Samantha Brody, a junior from Deerfield, Illinois, who is the president of Hillel’s student board.

Students “want to reach out and see each other,” Brody said. “There were lots of hugs.”

She added that both conversation and quiet contemplation were called for: “Everyone needs something different.”

Brandeis, a nonsectarian college, has its roots in the American Jewish community, which founded the liberal arts institution in 1948 at a time when Jews were often restricted in student admissions and in faculty appointments to competitive colleges. Today, just over a third of  undergraduates self-identify as Jewish, according to various published reports.

Students active in Hillel and its leaders quickly came together to organize gatherings to offer support. The Brandeis Orthodox student group scheduled an afternoon prayer service, while the Brandeis Reform Chavurah and Masorti (Conservative) student groups jointly organized a service of their own. On Sunday evening, the community planned to come together to sing niggunim, or wordless melodies, as a quiet way to offer comfort.

“These are examples that show how everyone wants to be together, in person,” Brody told JTA.

Brody said on Sunday afternoon that she did not know anyone who was on the bus but knows people whose friends were. She said she has taken the shuttle bus before.

“Most people on campus have. It’s the easiest way to get to Boston. Everyone is thinking, ‘it could have been me,’” she added.

That was true for Draken Garfinkel, a Jewish senior from the Washington, D.C., area who was not on the bus. “I use it every week to see my brother,” a student at another college in Boston, he said.

When he learned about the crash early Sunday morning, from the university’s communication and from text messages from friends, Garfinkel immediately wanted to do something to help others — especially those on the bus who were hospitalized, he told JTA in a phone conversation.

One of those students is a friend, a foreign exchange student, he said.

He and others who are part of an activist student group helped organize sending text messages to students they knew were in the hospital as a way to express concern for their well being.

It’s important for all students to be aware of counseling services that are available, he emphasized, adding, “One of the worst things is when people don’t know don’t how to deal with grief.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Brandeis U reeling after bus accident leaves 1 student dead, dozens injured; Jewish students hold vigils appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Elon Musk bantered with Kanye West and trolled the Anti-Defamation League this weekend, signalling the no-bigots-barred free-for-all he apparently hopes the platform will become.

The rapper and designer who also goes by Ye was banned last month from Twitter for threatening Jews, and then freed from Twitter jail on Nov. 4 for a day only get banned again the same day after he launched a new round of anti-Jewish invective.

“Testing Testing Seeing if my Twitter is unblocked,” West said midday Sunday. It’s not clear if Musk, who finalized his purchase of Twitter last month, okayed West’s return, but about five hours later he appeared to be welcoming West, punning on his more recent name.

“Don’t kill what ye hate Save what ye love,” Musk said in reply to West’s query. West’s next tweet was simply “Shalom” followed by a smile emoji.

The exchange came after Musk responded to criticism from ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt with a tweet saying “Hey stop defaming me!”

Musk on Friday restored to Twitter former President Donald Trump after an unscientific poll. Trump had been banned from the platform since Jan. 6, 2021, after his incendiary tweets helped spur the deadly riots seeking to keep Congress from  certifying Joe Biden’s election as president. (Trump for his part was blase about his restoration, saying he preferred Truth Social, the small social media platform he launched after being banned from Twitter.)

Trump’s restoration drew a rebuke on the platform from Greenblatt, who had led an effort by civil rights groups to engage with Musk after he purchased the platform to ensure he maintained strictures against incitement and harassment.

“For @elonmusk to allow Donald Trump back on Twitter, ostensibly after a brief poll, shows he is not remotely serious about safeguarding the platform from hate, harassment and misinformation. That drew Musk’s jokey reply about Greenblatt “defaming” him.

Greenblatt’s engagement with Musk seemed to go well at first; Greenblatt praised the industrialist known for revivifying space travel and popularizing electric vehicles as a once in a generation innovator. Musk posted about the a meeting with the groups which and said “Twitter will continue to combat hate and harassment and enforce its election integrity policies.”

But as Musk instituted changes, firing or encouraging to quit hundreds of staffers, including the executives responsible for ensuring that the platform is free of hate, hateful language and harassment spiked on the site.

The coalition Greenblatt initiated, Stop Hate For Profit, called on advertisers to quit Twitter until Musk makes changes.

But a review of Musk’s more recent tweets suggested he was enjoying the free for all. He mocked his critics, saying they were driving eyes to Twitter, joked that he hoped Twitter would induce a greater dopamine rush and then posted what he framed as a statement of his philosophy: “The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Welcome to the new Twitter: Kanye West is back and Elon Musk trolls the ADL appeared first on The Forward.

It’s estimated that more than 1,300 people die every year from the direct effects of global warming. So far. I don’t think anyone would argue, if that statistic is true, that the actual death rate is much higher. After all, it should be obvious that there are other lethal effects of climate change that are simply too subtle to detect. Whichever the case, every year at least thirteen hundred people haven’t had to wait for the world to come to an end because of climate change. The world already ended for them.

Before you get too comfortable with the idea and compare climate change deaths with deaths due to, say, Covid-19, remember that we are only seeing the tip of a rapidly melting iceberg. Things are going to get far worse and they are going to get worse rapidly.

In April of this year we were told by the United Nations climate report that It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade. We were told we have eight years left to prevent climate change from turning into an irreversible global disaster. We now have a little more than seven years. And counting.

The problem isn’t “just” devastatingly hot summers, melting polar caps, more frequent and intense droughts, category 5 hurricanes, heat waves, rising sea levels, mass migrations, food riots and warming oceans. The problem is also what those effects, devastating all by themselves, are going to do to us in combination.

An interesting analogy is a medical condition known as polypharmacy. Polypharmacy is a condition that can be caused by the ingestion of multiple medicines, prescription or otherwise. While side effects of such medicines are known and can even be relatively benign, what’s not known is how they will behave in combination. In combination the side effects can be and often are lethal. The possibilities are almost infinite and hence unpredictable. Elvis Presley, Heath Ledger and the pianist Glenn Gould all died young due to polypharmacy, just to name three people.

Similarly, we don’t really know what the individual effects of global warming are going to do to us in combination. But scientists can just about guarantee that those effects will not be isolated. They won’t be standalone effects like the proverbial 10 plagues of Egypt. It will be much, much worse, and feedback loops from the interactions of different catastrophes happening on different parts of the globe will make it devastating in unpredictability and murderous in consequence.

One thing we are fairly sure of, scientists predict that if we maintain our current greenhouse gas emissions trajectory, climate change will cause more than a third of the Earth’s species to face extinction by the year 2050. In other words, in just a little over 27 years from now, 3 million species will become endangered and quite probably go extinct. That number of extinctions could include human beings. By the end of the century, 95% of all species on earth will face extinction. And we’re guaranteed to have loads of fun along the way.

So while we’re clapping ourselves on our collective backs about the results of the midterm elections, let’s not forget that Republicans, who narrowly recaptured the House, are going to demonstrate just how committed they are to curbing inflation by wasting more of our precious time cruelly persecuting Joe Biden’s chemically-addicted son in the name of cheap and partisan vengeance.

Meanwhile the world is going to hell and representatives of many nations are flying their private jets to meet up at COP 27 to play virtue-signalling games with the life of our planet. They are there not to solve the problem. They are there to greenwash the whole thing right under the rug and congratulate themselves with photo-ops and fine speeches while they do it.

Now, I’m going to use a rude word. Hide your eyes and skip this paragraph if you’re offended by rude words. But it needs to be said loud and rudely because many of us need to be shocked into attention: we don’t have time to fuck around anymore.

I’m going to use another rude word. That word is greed. But it’s a special kind of greed for which evil is too soft an adjective. It’s greed caused by people who already have plenty of money, enough to last them several lifetimes. But they want more, and they don’t care if they come by it at the expense of our planet. Where does evil like that come from? What new word can we devise that can possibly do justice to the depths of that kind of depravity?

We can only shake our collective heads and move on. We all need to do our part to save our planet. We need to start today and we need to get serious. Each of us is responsible for saving the planet the same way each of us was responsible for turning the much-ballyhooed “red wave” into a pink puddle. Our little votes really do count in a big way when all of us “snowflakes” come together and form one huge collective avalanche.

So speak up about global warming every chance you get. Don’t be obnoxious about it, be rational, be compassionate, but be effective. Learn as much as you can about climate change so you can speak about it knowledgeably. Boycott offending companies, companies with poor or egregious ratings. Recycle. Wean yourself away from gasoline powered transportation. Make living green the new guiding principle of your lives.

If you can’t bring yourself to become vegan then at least stop discouraging and making jokes about those of us who are. Encourage, don’t discourage. If we make saving the planet popular and profitable and destroying it embarrassing and ruinous we might just pull it off. We might just save the planet and thereby save ourselves.

I don’t know what’s going to happen and neither do you. But I do know this: if we don’t do everything we possibly can — right now — to save our home and the animals who dwell here, we will live to regret it. One day we will wish pitifully and hopelessly that we had and it will be too late. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

The post The elephant is in the room again appeared first on Palmer Report.

Kyrie Irving, the NBA star who caused an uproar by posting a link to an antisemitic movie and then refusing to disavow it, rejoined the Brooklyn Nets Sunday in his first game since his suspension by the team earlier this month.

Irving’s return followed a series of apologies he made on social media and in the press for hurting the Jewish community and for not clarifying sooner his stance on certain offensive claims made in the movie, “Hebrews to Negroes,” including that the Holocaust was a hoax. 

Irving said that he wanted to “apologize deeply” in an interview published on Saturday. “I’m not antisemitic,” Irving said. “I never have been. I don’t have hate in my heart for the Jewish people or anyone that identifies as a Jew. I’m not anti-Jewish or any of that.” 

But as he took his warmup shots inside the Barclays Center before the game against the Memphis Grizzlies, an organized rally that appeared to be in his defense was dominating the scene outside. 

These men are wearing shirts with the logo of Israel United In Christ, one of the country’s largest antisemitic and extremist Hebrew Israelite groups. pic.twitter.com/lgsXKvb48O

— Louis Keene (@thislouis) November 20, 2022

The men, appearing to number in the hundreds and wearing matching purple shirts with the logo of Israel United In Christ, a group identified by the ADL as “one of the country’s largest antisemitic and extremist Black Hebrew Israelite groups,” marched from a park near the arena to its front gate, then surrounded it.

Among their chants, booming out in call-and-response, sounded as if they were saying, “We are the real Jews.”

Though some close to Irving, including NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Nets owner Joe Tsai, have said they do not believe he is antisemitic, his apologies — on Instagram hours after his suspension was announced Nov. 3, in a one-on-one interview Saturday and finally in a media scrum before Sunday’s game — left questions about both what he believes and what he believes he did wrong.

During his eight-game suspension, which was announced as a minimum of five games with a required “series of objective remedial measures,” Irving also became a cause celebre for NBA players who felt the rumored list of requirements – including meeting face-to-face with Jewish leaders – demanded too much. In an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said he had spoken with Irving’s relatives, but not the NBA star himself.

Jaylen Brown, an All-Star for the Boston Celtics who, like Irving, is a vice president of the NBA players’ union, appeared to tweet his support for the group rallying outside the arena.

Energy https://t.co/MkVCW3Wfwi

— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) November 20, 2022

Others expressed disappointment in Brown’s tweet.

“Jaylen Brown has spoken so passionately about equality and systemic injustice, and it’s so disappointing to see this kind of rhetoric amplified,” wrote ESPN staff writer Joon Lee.

The post As Black Hebrew Israelite group gathers outside arena, Kyrie Irving returns to NBA court appeared first on The Forward.

Russian forces launched almost 400 strikes in Ukraine’s east on Sunday, Volodymyr Zelenskiy says; UN nuclear watchdog to assess Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after renewed shelling

• See all our Ukraine coverage

Russian forces launched almost 400 strikes on Sunday in Ukraine’s east as part of a campaign of artillery fire, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Sunday night address. “The fiercest battles, as before, are in the Donetsk region. Although there were fewer attacks today due to worsening weather, the amount of Russian shelling unfortunately remains extremely high,” Zelenskiy said. “In the Luhansk region, we are slowly moving forward while fighting. As of now, there have been almost 400 artillery attacks in the east since the start of the day.” Russia has moved troops to reinforce positions in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions after withdrawing from Kherson.

The UN nuclear watchdog will conduct an assessment of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Monday after the site was shelled more than a dozen times over the weekend. The blasts damaged buildings and equipment, though none had been “critical” for nuclear safety and security, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. Its head, Rafael Grossi, said the forces behind the shelling were “playing with fire”, adding that “it must stop immediately”.

Germany has offered Poland the Patriot missile defence system to help it to secure its airspace after a stray missile crashed in the country last week, the defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, said. “We have offered Poland support in securing airspace – with our Eurofighters and with Patriot air defence systems,” Lambrecht told the Rheinische Post and General Anzeiger. Ground-based air defence systems such as Raytheon’s Patriot are built to intercept incoming missiles.

Ukraine has denies its forces executed Russian prisoners of war, arguing its soldiers were defending themselves against Russians who feigned surrender. The Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights responded on Sunday to videos circulated on Russian social media this week purporting to show the bodies of Russian servicemen killed after surrendering to Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said “excerpts” of a video showed that Russians “using a staged capture … committed a war crime by opening fire on the Ukrainian armed forces”. This means the soldiers “cannot be considered prisoners of war”, he said. A UN spokesperson told AFP it was “aware of the videos” and was “looking into them”.

Negotiating with Russia would be “capitulation”, a key adviser to the Ukrainian presidency has said. Mykhaylo Podolyak said attempts by the west to urge Ukraine to negotiate with Moscow were “bizarre” given a series of major military victories by Kyiv. He added it would mean that a country “that recovers its territories must capitulate to the country that is losing”. The comments come after recent US media reports that some senior officials were beginning to encourage Ukraine to consider talks.

The first Ukrainian supermarket has opened in Kherson since the city was liberated earlier this month. ATB, a 24/7 shop in the city, had queues of people outside on Sunday as it welcomed customers back. Kherson remains without electricity, running water or heating, but residents found some relief in being able to purchase Ukrainian pickled gherkins, dumplings, horseradish and other favourites.

France has sent another two air defence systems to Ukraine, along with two multiple rocket launchers, according to an interview given by a French defence minister.

Emmanuel Macron has accused Russia of feeding disinformation to further its “predatory project” in Africa, where France has had military setbacks. In an interview with TV5 Monde on the sidelines of a conference of Francophone nations in Tunisia, the French president said there was a “predatory project” pushing disinformation into African countries, which was “a political project financed by Russia, sometimes others”. Macron said: “A number of powers, who want to spread their influence in Africa, are doing this to hurt France, hurt its language, sow doubts, but above all pursue certain interests.”

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AL KHOR, Qatar (AP) — Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman extended one yellow-gloved hand to a FIFA World Cup ambassador suffering from a rare spinal disorder in an image meant to represent inclusion in a country facing international criticism over its human rights record.

It wasn’t the biggest moment of Sunday’s seven-act World Cup opening ceremony ahead of the match between host country Qatar and Ecuador. The largest cheers were reserved for the Mideast and African leaders watching from their luxury suites in Bedouin-tent inspired Al Bayt Stadium.

In fact, it was Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani who drew a thunderous applause in a short speech delivered in Arabic from the suite.

“We have worked hard, along with many people, to make it one of the most successful tournaments,” he said. “We have exerted all efforts and invested for the good of all humanity.”

He was seated between FIFA president Gianni Infantino and his father, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who secured the World Cup for the tiny gulf nation 12 years ago.

“How beautiful it is for people to put aside what divides them in order to celebrate their diversity and what brings them together at the same time,” Sheikh Tamim said, his words translated into English on a video screen inside the stadium.

“I wish all the participating teams a magnificent football performance, high sportsmanship, and a time full of joy, excitement and delight for you all,” he continued. “And let there be days that are inspiring with goodness and hope.”

He then said, “I welcome you and good luck to all,” in his only words spoken in English.

Sheikh Hamad, viewed as the modernizer of Qatar during his 18 years as ruler, further delighted the crowd by autographing an official World Cup shirt handed to him by his son. He then held the shirt up to the crowd.

Qatar, home to 3 million people, most of them migrant workers, has spent more than $200 billion on preparation for the World Cup. Seven new stadiums were built, including the 60,000-seat Al Bayt Stadium north of Doha.

The opening ceremony was meant to introduce Qatar to the world through its culture with a theme of “bridging distances.” Creative director Ahmad Al Baker wanted the ceremony to signify “a gathering for all mankind, an invitation to come together as one, bridging all differences with humanity, respect and inclusion.”

“Finally, we have reached the opening day, the day you have been eagerly waiting for,” Sheikh Tamim said. “We will follow, and with us the whole world, God willing, the great football festival, in this spacious ambience for human and civilized communication.

“People of different races, nationalities, faiths and orientations will gather here in Qatar, and around screens on all continents to share the same exciting moments.”

His words hit the mark as Sheikh Tamim was joined in the stadium suite by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, two leaders who had boycotted Qatar for years. Not present were the leaders of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, the two other nations involved in the boycott.

There were no major Western leaders in attendance, as Qatar is under intense scrutiny for its treatment of the migrant workers who prepped the nation for the World Cup, as well as the LGBTQ community. Gay and lesbian sex is criminalized in Qatar.

But among those who did attend the opening match were U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Senegalese President Macky Sall, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Kuwait’s crown prince came, along with the director-general of the World Health Organization and Djibouti’s president. Also present was Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

They listened as BTS’ Jung Kook, while Qatari singer and producer Fahad Al Kubaisi debuted the single “Dreamers,” produced specifically for the World Cup.

Then came remarks from Infantino, who spoke in Arabic, Spanish and finally English to officially open the tournament.

“Dear friends, welcome, welcome, to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022,” Infantino said in English. “Welcome to celebrate football because football unites the world. And now let’s welcome the teams and let the show begin.”

As “The Business” by Tiesto blasted over the speakers, Qatar and Ecuador took to the field and the World Cup officially began.

© Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved.