Clearly you didn’t get at all what I was trying to say. It was obviously irony, at least I thought it was obvious. Probably my fault.
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Aye. Accepting you as an individual are powerless by yourself to turn the tide is one thing. That doesnt necessarily follow that you are justified when you take actions that actively make the situation worse.
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yep… u all must be bored… gone all politik in this bitch
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Yeah, let’s just keep the heads, sorry, I mean ball rolling
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So, wtf is happening?
I do find it funny to see many English and Americans in this thread decrying Saudi Arabia for its human rights violations. You could stack up every single person killed by that fucker MBS and it would look like a speck of dust by comparison to the war crimes committed by the UK and USA in the Middle East, let alone in the rest of the world. That’s not to mention the fact that the Al Saud family - along with many other regressive regimes in that region of the world - are in power in part because of the support of the USA and UK both economically and militarily.
Besides, I do not see the same criticism of Robbie Keane and Yossi Benayoun for their role in sportswashing with respect to their careers in Israel. Keane took a job in Israel, a country that is actively practicing apartheid. Benayoun cannot be faulted, of course, for being born in Israel, but he can absolutely be criticized for his choice to play for and now work for a club associated with some of the worst anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry you’ll see (putting aside his horrible personal views). And yet you see people still waxing poetic about him.
Putting aside that cognitive dissonance for a moment, there’s another important point.
The Saudis are not sportswashing. They don’t care what the rest of us think of their regressive regime or their human rights violations. This is about business. About trying to diversify their holdings. About trying to establish long term footing as the world (too) slowly moves towards renewable energy. Sports is generally seen as a reliable investment in that regard and has seen unfathomable economic growth over the past 30 years.
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I can’t wait for the season to start.
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yep!!!
And can we finally start talking about football?
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And I do find it funny that people act as if US, UK and other countries’ foreign poltics aren’t criticised here on this forum constantly. Probably the same people that complain about too much talk about politics.
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Are Jib Jab and Jabu the same person?
First the dodos died, then Di and Dode died. I’m really worried about Dido.
Disagree entirely with this. This is a country which has been single handedly responsible for
a) funding uber right wing islamism across the world(from wahabbism to what not)
b) insistent on having sharia law enforced
c) funding mosques which were directly responsible to having radicalists produced
d) funding militants with the help of USA for Al Qaida (which OBL was a founder, but let’s not digress)
e) beheading LBTQ persons
f) beheading reporters/journalists like Kashoggi
g) destabilizing countries across the world
Yep , They’ve got nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing. I’m pretty sure that people here can fill up the points I) to Z) and you’ll still have no reason to say that their sports attempt isn’t whitewashing.
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And if people think that PR isn’t an element of good business or of whitewashing ?
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Yeah, no one is spending 700k on Hendo on the basis of it being a good business decision, unless that business decision is a loss leader intended to buy goodwill and intertwining yourself so completely in the society of other countries that they are forced to deal with you. When you use sports for that purpose, that is sportswashing.
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I just put this in the Henderson thread but the same discussion applies here i think:
There is nowhere else to put this point but maybe the mods can point me in the right direction, but S.A are going hard now on recruitment i see on sky sports they are offering Marco silva 40 mill a year for 2 years! Who would realistically turn that down? They are obviously scooping up all of the older world stars but i feel that was the start of their project, they will become a serious threat to premier league/European football at this rate, we have had false dawns before i.e China offering buckets of money beforehand but this certainty feels more prominent and real, my question is: we was all against the european super league but the way this is going maybe a form of that would soon be needed to save the european competition, i say this because I at first thought well if any player has any ambition they would want to compete in the champions league, but i am starting to doubt this now due to the vast amounts of money S A are offering to throw at this and how aggressively they are doing it.
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No one has said that the Saudis haven’t done terrible things. My point is that their investment in sports isn’t designed to hide any of that. It’s for economic and business reasons.
The proof for my point is seen directly in the commentary associated with the players who have signed abroad. No one is overlooking their horrific human rights history. If anything, the signings have only highlighted it. But they move forward anyway, as their is a clear economic incentive for them to diversify their business holdings.
It’s the cost of trying to rapidly develop a sports industry. The same was seen in the US with the MLS, where the clubs pay extraordinary sums for players well beyond their primes. They do so to try to attract interest to their clubs for the purposes of expanding the sport, attracting investors, and raising the valuation of their league. Yet no one accuses the US of sportswashing.
No one is going to have greater goodwill for the Saudi government as a result of Jordan Henderson playing for Al-Ettifaq. And the intermingling of business interests with foreign investment only enhances their stability and viability.
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Start a ‘What happened to Dido’ thread.
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ditto
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