Saudi Arabia wins bid for 2030 World Fair, beating Italy, S. Korea

alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 88 points –
Saudi Arabia wins bid for 2030 world fair, beating Italy, S. Korea
reuters.com
24

Let us celebrate the achievements of the world's nations, in the middle of one of the most oppressive, authoritarian dictatorships on the planet. But hey, they are the nice dictators, with oil. So, we'll overlook little things like murder.

I think the prerequisite is that you have to have done at least one 9/11 to be considered to host.

"And if any reporters have anything bad to say about it, we'll saw them into little pieces!"

Lmao, that entire peninsula needs to butt the fuck out of the world’s affairs. Sell your oil & shut the fuck up, you’ve got literally nothing else of value. Stop taking the world’s coolest events & holding them in the worst region of the entire planet. Also, y’all’s culture sucks ass.

Italy wanted to waste money again on this stuff??? It wasn't enough the 2015 disaster???

I'm so happy SA got the chance to burn billions on this white elephant instead of us

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.

It's funny how they "win" so many contest to have a chance to show off.. it sounds like buying their way to a win really

Their country is plaged with unemployment and low salaries. Engineers and doctors make as low as $1200 a month, and even less if you were a forigner or without contract. So many unemplyed people with degrees who can't find a job too

This is the best summary I could come up with:


South Korea's port city of Busan and Rome in Italy were also in the running to host the five-yearly event that attracts millions of visitors and billions of dollars in investment.

Riyadh won 119 votes, Busan 29 and Rome 17, results from 182 members of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) showed.

"This huge result for Saudi was unexpected in those proportions," Giampiero Massolo, head of the Italian Expo bid, told reporters.

However, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol congratulated Saudi Arabia for winning the bid, calling the Gulf state "a key partner", and adding that his nation would share the resources and experience gained to help Riyadh hold a successful event.

Riyadh had enlisted soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, who plays for the Al-Nassr Saudi club, to convince members in a video projected before the vote.

The win is the icing on the cake for de-facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's ambitious Vision 2030 program, which aims to wean the country off its oil dependency.


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My friend in Saudi is one of the consultants that helped the Prince to win this bid for Riyadh and he's told me all about this initiative.

We all know that Saudi Arabia, like much of the middle east, has got some atrocious human rights issues. However, the Prince is really try to herald a new age of diversity and tolerance and modernity in Saudi and I think that we should be optimistic about this gradual change of direction.

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