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Prince Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud told LBC that "there's no alcohol at all" in Saudi Arabia and there would not be an exception when they host the World Cup.
It will not be allowed in hotels, restaurants or stadiums, he confirmed.
It comes despite alcohol being allowed in certain areas and restaurants during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
"At the moment, we don't allow alcohol," Mr al Saud said.
"Plenty of fun can be had without alcohol - it's not 100 per cent necessary and if you want to drink after you leave, you're welcome to, but at the moment we don't have alcohol."
He added: "Rather like our weather, it's a dry country."
Asked if that was a welcoming approach, he said: "Everyone has their own culture. We're happy to accommodate people within the boundaries of our culture but we don't want to change our culture for someone else."
"I mean, really? You can't live without a drink?" the ambassador jokingly added.
Saudi Arabia was formally confirmed as the host of the 2034 World Cup in December, despite a slew of human rights concerns.
Questioned over whether gay football fans would be able to safely attend in 2034, Mr al Saud said: "We will welcome everyone in Saudi."
He continued: "It is not a Saudi event, it is a world event. And to a large extent, we will welcome everyone who wants to come."
Hammad Albalawi, head of Saudi Arabia's bid, previously dismissed criticism from human rights groups.
"We have come a long way and there's still a long way to go," he said. "Our principle is to develop something that is right for us.
"Our journey started in 2016, not because of the World Cup bid.
"We've launched initiatives granting employees the freedom to move between employers.
"Documents of these employees are now uploaded into government systems, ensuring they have rights within their contracts."
The World Cup is expected to take place in autumn or winter due to temperatures reaching over 50C in summer, Mr al Saud said on Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia is also set to host football's 2027 Asian Cup, the 2029 Asian Winter Games and the 2034 Asian Games.
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This post rests on native land
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just click the lil 3 dots by a comment or thread and then click votes
find out who has the right takes and fall in love with them
find out who doesnt and is too afraid to say so outright and call that snake OUT
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- Hopalong_McGurk : obviously
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A recent discussion I had about AGP got me thinking about which fetishes cross the line into psychological disorders and it occured to me that every Masochist I've ever met has been self destructive outside of their BDSM shit and every sadist I've met has been sadistic outside of their s*x life too so the idea that the whole thing is a LARP isn't very convincing.
Granted, I'm working with a small sample size but the one hardcore sadist I met IRL was a huge bully in his teen years who did all his "roleplay" with severely depressed chicks and also liked hurting people or watching them get hurt for the fun of it outside of his s*x life and had other antisocial traits. He was also into the really extreme shit like crying and bleeding.
I've met several women into it and unsurprisingly all of them had really low self esteem and depression.
Thoughts?
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/doge-finds-47-trillion-virtually-untraceable-treasury-payments
mmt of this Sept 10th 2001 speech that Donald Rumsfeld gave as Sec of Defense early on in Bush's first term
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First, it is simply false to say that treasury payments do not have a "payment categorization code". It is notable, by the way, that he uses this completely invented phrase rather than the actual phrase "Treasury Account Symbol" (TAS). Indeed, it's impossible to find another use of this phrase using an internet search engine in any context, let alone the Treasury context. The far more limited "deficiency" pointed out by the Government Accountability Office report Krause referenced is that information about individual government transactions were recorded in multiple different account entries separately by some government agencies and thus individual transactions could not be readily traced through to all the accounting ledgers they effected.
No chud, the government doesn't need to note where it's spending your money and it was definitely working on a system to fix that by 2028 possibly
On to Musk's next claim: the need for "rationales". The idea of putting a "rationale" for each and every individual payment (or payment file) makes little sense in the context of how the system works. Think of this in your own life: do you fill out a little form that provides your "rationale" for purchasing an item every time you swipe your credit card? If you were required to do so, you would react very negatively for the same reason you should react very negatively here: if you had to put a rationale then someone could reject your spending requests on the basis of providing the "wrong" rationale.
Imagine the right wing uproar when the possibility emerged of restricting purchases of meat through such a "rationale for transaction" system. This should be seen as no different. The "Treasury Account Symbol" (TAS) provides the only rationale that should matter which is that congress appropriated the spending. Of course, if you want to abrogate congressional spending then that is obviously not sufficient and, in fact, counterproductive.
No chud, the government doesn't need to note why it's spending your money
Imagine if the government were buying some groceries and the government's credit card was rejected at the checkout, chud, that would be terrible. What if the government imposed fascist restrictions on you, chud, how would you feel?
This all goes back to Musk's tendency to think that there is, can be or should be a "button" that determines all of this and its corrupt, inefficient bureaucrats preventing this from happening. He simply doesn't understand how complex these systems are or why they are the way they are. Take the Treasury Offset Program (TOP) for instance. It is a Bureau of the Fiscal Service system for collecting delinquent federal or state debts. One former Bureau of the Fiscal Service employee explained to me that there are rules that determine:
Actually, chud, the bureaucratic tumour is a good thing and hasn't metastasized enough
To include my own editorial comment for a moment, this is why it's so alarming to see him talk about updating this list "weekly, or even daily". This strongly suggests to me that he is talking about arbitrarily and rapidly expanding the list of people and entities on lists such as the Office of Foreign Assets Controls (OFAC) list without any due process to block them from government payments. As I discussed the Wednesday before last, the apparatuses for capriciously destroying the financial life of disfavored entities and people has been constructed over multiple decades with active Democratic participation and support. Now they are in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Thus, again, Musk's comments hide a desire for unchecked power over others under a false narrative about governmental "inefficiency".
My sources are also very skeptical that any career Treasury employee told Elon Musk that half of the expenditures that constituted "entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN" were "unequivocal and obvious fraud". It's hard to say more without knowing the context. This is the difficult thing with government by the pronouncement of Elon Musk. He can say stuff without any corroboration much faster than anyone else can check facts or correct falsehoods.
There's no fraud chud, my sources are 'skeptical'
In the meantime, it is exhausting how much effort is required to deconstruct one Elon Musk tweet. He can lie about very complex and technical systems much faster than he can be answered, but nevertheless it's important to periodically critically assess what the richest man in the world is saying as he continually tries to justify chopping the government up and selling it for parts like this is a private equity takeover.
Actually Musk is just lying, chud
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— ๐ฌ๐ง ๐๐๐๐๐ผ๐ ๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐พ๐ ๐ฌ๐ง (@MythoYookay) February 17, 2025
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๐ฐ๐๏ธ pic.twitter.com/DZEWb0IhlV
โ Skittyๅก็น (@theskittycat) November 27, 2024
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https://chatgpt.com/share/67b665d5-bb54-800c-a791-3c9ab919223e
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To attract women you have to like women. Did you know that? Some people donโt know that.
— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) February 14, 2025
(Last Valentineโs Day post).
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for the lazy:
it's measles
a few score of confirmed cases
a few hundred likely cases
the mention one patient "traveled from another country" so it's gonna be mostly coming from Mexico
the vaccine doesn't prevent getting measles or spreading it, it only prevents symptomatic illness
vitamin
A causes it to be a very mild disease in almost every case
RFK vaccinated his own children and is pro-vaccine
RFK also barely took office, so obviously
This outbreak is the fault of RFK and (naturally) orangemanbad