I'm sorry, who did they hire to design Qatar's World Cup facilities? pic.twitter.com/iMaUL00kG6
— ?????Adam (@ChalicothereX) April 3, 2022
*Someone*’s gotta do the job, and the Qatar oligarchs are big believers in the virtues of nepotism…
When you need an army of slaves to build a triumphalist sports monument on short notice to impress the global community, there's only firm with the experience for the job.https://t.co/FEjB9K2Rf6
— Hunter Pauli (@paulimeth) April 3, 2022
Note that the use of slave labour was one of the crimes Albert Speer Sr was convicted of in Nuremberg.
— Trantigone ??? (@2damntrans) April 3, 2022
How did I not know that Qatar hired the son of Hitler’s architect to design their WC stadiums? I’m not a big “sins of the father” guy, and Jr. has renounced his father’s legacy, but this isn’t a good look in an already bad situation.https://t.co/5HGMT2SGFW
— Al (@albertjschulman) April 4, 2022
Who’s got Meteor strike on their 2022 World Cup bingo card?…
Alison Rose ???
Oy gevalt.
Roger Moore
The writers for this season are just plain lazy.
Baud
I might actually watch this year. Something extraordinarily bad is bound to happen.
Sure Lurkalot
@Alison Rose ???:
What my mother would say if she was still here!
Quaker in a Basement
Hard to understand why that guy has not changed his name.
Alison Rose ???
@Sure Lurkalot: I find myself saying it a lot these days. Or really, these past 6+ years.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Meh, we all already at reruns.
Roger Moore
@Quaker in a Basement:
You’d think so, but maybe there are enough people who see his family history as a reason to hire him that it’s good to keep it. Some of Benito Mussolini’s descendants have run for office in Italy under their family name, which still gets votes in some quarters.
Betty
Can you someone explain what all that is going on outside the actual stadiums, or should I should day stadia?
trollhattan
@Quaker in a BasementBert Lance might work, but that name’s not clean as a whistle either. Al Javelin?
trollhattan
@Betty:
I’m going with withering heat.
WhatsMyNym
From the article –
Who even noticed/remembered what the stadiums looked like.
frosty
@Roger Moore: You’re absolutely right. First the repeat of the missing Watergate tape, now this. Sheesh! Lazy writers indeed!
Baud
@trollhattan:
Almost 100 every day
Betty
@trollhattan: Maybe the water in the first one is intended to have a cooling effect.
Dan B
@Betty: Haging been in Costa Rica on the beach when the air temperature was 95 and the water 90 there’s not much cooling going on except psychologically.
West of the Cascades
@WhatsMyNym: Bribes to FIFA officials are the primary reason Qatar was awarded this year’s [Men’s] World Cup.
Roger Moore
@WhatsMyNym:
If the stadiums are obviously the most expensive designs possible, it’s a sign the organizers are rich enough to pay big bribes to FIFA members to get the Cup. Priorities!
trollhattan
@Betty:
SWAG is it’s built jutting into the Gulf. They seem fond of that.
SpaceUnit
Could be worse. At least they didn’t hire Frank Gehry.
Old School
@Quaker in a Basement:
I’ve come across people with the last name of Hitler. I’ve wondered about why they have kept the name.
I’ve also been amazed that someone willingly married into the Hitler family.
Nutmeg again
@SpaceUnit: Far as I can remember, Gehry wasn’t a, you know, Nuremberg convict like Pops there. Even if some of his buildings look like crumpled tin foil.
Kuhlio
Architect here, who did a huge project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia nearly 15 years ago: Let me just say that architects typically have NO input on the Contractor’s means and methods, and how something typically gets built and by whom.
My project (and almost ever mega-project in that part of the world) was built with labor imported from Africa and Asia – usually India, Pakistan, etc…
I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that we as Architects had no say on the labor used to build the projects.
Cut Jr. some slack on this.
dc
The 2nd stadium looks like a vulva. I think that should be spread around. I’m sure they will like that in Qatar.
gene108
Can someone explain to me why I’m supposed to be outraged?
Persian Gulf country builds gaudy stadiums doesn’t seem like something to be outraged about. Almost all their big architectural projects are gaudy.
Baud
@dc:
They know.
gene108
@Kuhlio:
From what I read about workers’ conditions building the World Cup stadiums, it doesn’t seem to be any different than the conditions of workers working on any other projects that in that part of the world.
Hoppie
@frosty: History is rhyming much too closely these days.
Dan B
@Kuhlio: I apprenticed at an urban planning firm and drew five different options for a freeway location in Minneapolis. It’s one of the freeways that Buttigieg wants to ameliorate since it destroyed a black neighborhood.
Fond memories. //s
oatler
Albert Speer. One of our “good Nazis”.
Ken
“Mr. Speer, a hellmouth has opened in the middle of the field and legions of zombies in SS uniforms are marching forth, slaughtering everyone in their path. Is there something you want to tell us?”
“… I… I may have plagiarized the design slightly. More than slightly. It’s one of Dad’s that never got built. From the ‘Ahnenerbe’ folder.”
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
I have watched every minute I could of every World Cup since I was randomly living with a family in Badajoz in 1982 but I vowed long ago that I wouldn’t watch a second of the 2022 World Cup Final. Fuck these guys and fuck every country that doesn’t, at the very last second, decide to boycott this corrupted authoritarian monstrosity.
NotMax
FYI. And note this is not the Post but the Washington Times, a not exactly Republican-averse outlet.
Baud
@Ken:
Quick, everyone, only the vuvuzelas can force them back to the abyss! Start blowing!
Ken
@Baud: Er… You know, considering the alternative, maybe murderous Nazi zombies aren’t that bad.
Kuhlio
@gene108: Exactly. I was not a fan of how the labor was imported and treated. But in my case in the KSA, it seemed to be better than other areas – especially in the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, etc.., so I can’t speak to that specific part of the world.
Mike in DC
Is Leni Riefenstahl’s grand-niece directing the documentary?
Martin
@oatler: Reminder that Speer claimed to have left all of the speeches early that talked about exterminating the Jews. Ginni Thomas learned from the best.
mdblanche
@oatler: Yes, Albert Sr. is dead.
Kent
That’s what beer is for.
Martin
@Kuhlio: I don’t know. A friend of mine (civil engineer, PE) went over there to work on a big road project. Big money. On his 3rd day they hand him the design plans and as-built to sign off on. The project was half done.
He left the next day. Labor isn’t their only problem.
NotMax
@Kent
“Kickin’ back with a Corona” no longer carries the zing it once did.
//
Steeplejack
@mdblanche:
So is Albert Jr., as of 2017.
Kent
@NotMax: In Costa Rica it would be an Imperial, Pilsen, or Bavaria. Unless you were at some fru fru all-inclusive American-run resort in which case they would probably also have Bud Light and Heineken. I’ve never seen Mexican beer sold in Central America come to think of it.
gene108
@Kuhlio:
I did not mean to imply foreign labor is treated well by U.S. or European standards.
It’s just that the treatment of the foreign labor brought in to build these stadiums was in-line with their general labor practices for foreign construction workers from what I read and seen. Also I’ve heard stories from a couple of Indian former co-workers who had white collar jobs in KSA and one of the Gulf countries about how domineering the business owners were.
If people on Twitter are outraged by how these workers were treated building these stadiums, they should be outraged by every building that’s come up, road that’s been paved, etc. in the last 20-30 years.
There’s a lot of selective outrage out there that can’t really be sustained to address broader issues, and the construction of these stadiums is one of those cases.
Steve in the ATL
@Ken:
#DeepCuts
Well played!
oatler
@Mike in DC:
I thought of Riefenstahl the first time I saw “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. It’s morning in America!
Another Scott
ObOpenThread…
It’s all performance for rubes for them.
(via EclecticBrotha)
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
We were talking about nuclear plants in Germany recently.
(via dsquareddigest)
Cheers,
Scott.
Salty Sam
I lived and worked in that region in the mid 70’s. All construction labor was primarily Pakistani. I watched multi-story concrete buildings going up using human “bucket brigades”, skinny underfed men tossing buckets of concrete to the next guy up the scaffolding, in 100* plus heat. When the heat invariably took one of them out, they’d have a replacement right away, and the stricken worker would often just lay where he fell. It was pretty disgusting.
Mai Naem mobile
Is Dr Mengele’s son the official World Cup stadium physician?
BigJimSlade
@dc: It was supposed to be the eye of sauron, but they put the pupil the wrong way.