The treatment of alcohol sounds a lot like the way medical marijuana is treated here in CA. They always staple the bag shut with a little printed note on the outside that says to hide it in the trunk of your car until you reach your destination.
The Vuvuzela is in fact a part of Qatar's soccer culture and it will in deed be prominent.
This event will be poorly attended in terms of successful World Cups. I don't anticipate an awful lot of arrests or problems though.
I think there will be stories of bummers had from aggressive warnings about illegal activity surfacing on the internet but never in major media outlets.
I sort of got the impression that FIFA is secretly hoping to westernize Qatar with the World Cup. 12 years is a long time for a country seeking international approval to bend a little on its alcohol laws, if for no other reason than for the tourism dollars.
They can ram together tens of thousands of angry, drunk fans from different nations into big outdoor holding pens -- maybe they should build an extra stadium just for this. It'll be a social experiment -- maybe the shared experience of brutalization will lead the drunk Englishmen and drunk Serbs to stop fighting each other and turn en masse against their Qatari masters. Since it's unlikely that the few native Qataris will be interested in serving as prison guards, these jobs will be held by Bangladeshi slaves, who will perhaps not be overly effective at their jobs, especially given the unprecedented numbers of prisoners.
More likely, everybody will stay home and watch on TV. You couldn't get me to visit Qatar in 130-degree June (or any other month, really). FIFA doesn't give a shit; the money comes from TV. By 2012 they'll be able to digitally insert full crowds; maybe they can just simulate the games themselves and have the Cup contested by teens playing Xbox back in their home countries.
I think it's amusing that Sepp Blatter, who is surely one of the world's most repulsive figures, thinks that gay/straight is the same as left/right. But then, the only gay people he ever sees are the waiters serving his usual luncheon of ortolans with truffles and foie gras.
@13, 85% of those people aren't Qataris, they're slaves from other countries. The per-capita wealth doesn't count them. You've got a handful of ultra-rich sheiks, and the rest slaves. Not a recipe for progressive anything except architecture.
The CIA says they've got 37 years of oil left; 25 after the World Cup. They're trying to build a post-oil future, but they're severely handicapped by their godawful location and medieval cultural norms. Will the World Cup make them reluctantly modern? Heh.
Perhaps the Qatari World Cup will be the lowest-attendance World Cup ever... that's make the job of the police easier. It'll be interesting to see how often the Embassies will need to step in to free their nationals from detention.
It is a horrible location, but the alcohol thing is going to go one of two ways. Either the laws stay in place with an uneven enforcement (depending on whether the tourist board/FIFA or the imams are holding sway) or they're going to liberalize like Utah did for the Olympics. Even if they liberalize the alcohol laws I don't see too many people getting behind this World Cup. They may as well park some barges in the middle of the Ocean and have it there.
[I]t's not illegal to drink, per se, but you can only drink at licensed hotels, restaurants, or in your home. If you want to buy bottles of booze yourself, you have to visit one of two liquor stores (in the entire [state])... Once you get your booze, you must hide it in your car and transport it home immediately. Drinking in public is illegal and being drunk in public is illegal.
Qatar 2022 will likely be pretty miserable, but there's a silver lining: Quite a few FIFA execs are probably now anticipating a much more comfortable retirement than they were just a few weeks ago.
@29, welcome to Will in Seattle. Soon he'll be back with a rejoinder about how they're Bangladeshi, they deserve it. Unless he needs them as props in his phony outrage tableau.
@23: My thoughts exactly. Will places that rely totally on air-conditioned, flown-in, oil and desalinized-water guzzling, well, everything, even exist in 2022?
Mass arrests? Has that country when they've had events ever signaled they would lighten up?
Then there's this.
This event will be poorly attended in terms of successful World Cups. I don't anticipate an awful lot of arrests or problems though.
I think there will be stories of bummers had from aggressive warnings about illegal activity surfacing on the internet but never in major media outlets.
Hiring SPD officers to moonlight?
Is Cienna whining about her vagina. again?
Yeah, tell that to black soccer players in Europe, where the most disgusting racial taunts are openly tolerated.
More likely, everybody will stay home and watch on TV. You couldn't get me to visit Qatar in 130-degree June (or any other month, really). FIFA doesn't give a shit; the money comes from TV. By 2012 they'll be able to digitally insert full crowds; maybe they can just simulate the games themselves and have the Cup contested by teens playing Xbox back in their home countries.
I think it's amusing that Sepp Blatter, who is surely one of the world's most repulsive figures, thinks that gay/straight is the same as left/right. But then, the only gay people he ever sees are the waiters serving his usual luncheon of ortolans with truffles and foie gras.
The CIA says they've got 37 years of oil left; 25 after the World Cup. They're trying to build a post-oil future, but they're severely handicapped by their godawful location and medieval cultural norms. Will the World Cup make them reluctantly modern? Heh.
Those ski slopes are fun. One of my friends, who grew up in the Rockies, was raving about going on ski trips with her students in Dubai.
Wait, are you talking about Washington State?
Too bad it's soccer, though.
Bad idea. Period.
I puke a little in my mouth every time someone I know talks about how wonderful Dubai is, they always track pieces of guest worker onto my rug.