The Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh won the right to host the Expo 2030 world fair, vote results showed on Tuesday, in another diplomatic victory for a Gulf country after last year's soccer World Cup in Qatar.
Sadly, SA has fuck-you-money to blow for this and it will most possibly work shaping their image on the international stage. It worked when they had the Football Worldcup with only minimal consequences in echo. It worked when they went on a shopping spree around the world (mostly the US) to buy up sport events too. I guess the backlash for the World Fair will not be too big. What it needs are activist unrolling banner at the fair (and then getting imprisoned or executed), people protesting and condemnation by leaders of other countries for the act of SA on the human right level. We seen none of that regarding the other events in the past and there is no organized front against the whitewashing of the SA image in the general discourse. So I think they will not burn the billion, but found a good investment by that, to fool the people into thinking SA is a beacon of modernity, while it is in reality a beacon of patriarchy, dictatorship, human-rights-violation, and dismembering a journalist with a bone-saw after trapping him in the embassy in a foreign country.
Sadly, SA has fuck-you-money to blow for this and it will most possibly work shaping their image on the international stage. It worked when they had the Football Worldcup with only minimal consequences in echo. It worked when they went on a shopping spree around the world (mostly the US) to buy up sport events too. I guess the backlash for the World Fair will not be too big. What it needs are activist unrolling banner at the fair (and then getting imprisoned or executed), people protesting and condemnation by leaders of other countries for the act of SA on the human right level. We seen none of that regarding the other events in the past and there is no organized front against the whitewashing of the SA image in the general discourse. So I think they will not burn the billion, but found a good investment by that, to fool the people into thinking SA is a beacon of modernity, while it is in reality a beacon of patriarchy, dictatorship, human-rights-violation, and dismembering a journalist with a bone-saw after trapping him in the embassy in a foreign country.