Two days before start of football World Cup, host nation Qatar bans beer sales there

I think the humorless local security forces are going to have to deal with football hooligans that got drunk at hotel bars and restaurants before heading to the stadium.

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gonna have to pregame heavily before the match.
good times…

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When I was a baby lawyer just a couple of years out of law school, I worked for a partner who was on the FIFA Ethics Committee. He was exactly the kind of self-righteous prick you’d imagine was on the FIFA Ethics Committee (if you could imagine that there was such a thing as a FIFA Ethics Committee).

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Indeed: World Cup “fan village” being compared to disastrous Fyre Festival

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Wait until they get into the stadium and are told to remain silent through the game as a mark of respect.

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I don’t think the Qatari courts are likely to be receptive to such a case, so unless they have standing to initiate the suit elsewhere…

I guess someone on an oxymoronic committee like that must be one of those people who can believe six impossiblecontradictory things before breakfast.

But then again, that is increasingly all of us, these days. If you can’t cope with paradox, you’d go mad.

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If the contract was with FIFA…

(Such ‘sponsorship’ deals, involving exclusive access, often are.)

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You don’t think all those ethics are violated by accident, do you? You have to know the laws really, really well if you’re going to go out and break all of them.

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Stephen Fry had an interesting post on this. I’m hoping I’m not breaking any rules by posting it here. Be sure to watch 'til the end as he advises.

I’m just dipping my toe into Mastodon. Really confusing on how to follow others not on your own server. I keep think I’m getting my username/password wrong. The “Copy” button in the lower right corner is the answer.

I think this worked! I see the all-powerful “Onebox” in the preview.

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It’s probably just as well they no longer make them from pigs’ bladders.

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I got an error on that despite the one box. Can you please give a brief summary?

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Well its a joke video where an ‘expert’ is instructing LGBTQ folk to try being less gay in Qatar, maybe dial it down by 50%, or just try heterosexuality for a few weeks for funsies. But beer and alcohol consumption is a fundamental human right that must be stood up for

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Further to my earlier speculation

It was.

Multiple sponsors have raised concerns or issues with Fifa about their contracts at the Qatar World Cup, the Guardian can reveal. It gives football’s governing body another headache hours after it was forced to ban alcohol from stadiums by the Qatari authorities, a decision that complicated its $75m (£63m) contract with the brewer of Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

One representative of another major sponsor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that many partners had felt “let down by Fifa in lots of ways”. They also indicated there had been informal discussions about potential contractual breaches and reneging on deliverables.

“Everyone has a gripe in some way or form,” they added. “There is a lot of ‘regrouping’ going [on] to understand what the options are contractually speaking.”

What makes Qatar’s behaviour more remarkable is that usually in the buildup to a World Cup, the Fifa show takes over. Rules are introduced to ensure things are done a certain way, and that brands such as Budweiser who are paying $75m (£63m) are heavily promoted. Not here. Not now.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino has some explaining to do to Budweiser, who are paying $75m to have their beer promoted in Qatar. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

Instead the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, will spend Saturday morning answering searching questions about whether his organisation will face a massive lawsuit, which ensures the story will run for another 24 hours.

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Do try to figure it out - another browser perhaps? It’s only 59 seconds, but it’s priceless and summing it up cannot do it justice.

Does this work?

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It’s football. Mass fights will still break out in the stands… but instead the punches will actually land and they will be felt.

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I can only hope that the lawyers can devise a means by which the authoritarian petrostate with the lousy human rights record and the smarmy sports-branded transnational crime family can both lose over this affair.

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They plan to make it up with “fines”

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