Brazil is
desperate for some good news that doesn´t come from its entertainment pages.
The economy has been sacked by Dilma and the PT, the “pacification” program in
Rio is proving that it does not, in fact, make sense to replace one arbitrary,
militarized system of justice with another, the World Cup organizers are
entering into full-scale damage control and the Olympic projects are so far
behind schedule before they even get started that Rio 2016 might change its
name to Rio Twenty Something.
The depressing
state of affairs in the run in to the World Cup is making everyone quite
anxious for the Cup to actually get going. It will be a huge relief to be able
to talk about football for a month, though of course there will be protests and
violence and human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, massive confusion at
the airports, teams getting lost on the way to their hotels and the trumpeting cacophony
of the world´s largest herd of white elephants.
We discovered this
week that airplanes will not be adding to this noise. As a “security measure”
all airports within
a 7 km radius of WC elephants will be closed for up to seven hours before
and during matches. Why 7 km? Surely it is not for security reasons as a plane could zip into a stadium as easily from 10 km as it could from 7 and there are
not yet plans to have anti-aircraft missiles on rooftops. No, the reason for
the cancellation of more than 800 flights is to prevent airplane noise from interfering
with game transmission. At least there won´t be long waits to get baggage.
The Lord Mayor
Eduardo II of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro decreed
public holidays on all WC game days, cancelled all permits for cultural events
between May 22 and July 18, and suspended
all public works projects for the same period. That means that there will
be no work done on any Olympic related projects, no improvements to city
infrastructure, no hammering of any kind for two months. While it will be
quieter, what will all of the workers do? Will they be receiving their salaries
for staying at home with their kids? The banishment of residents from their own
city is what is going to make the World Cup possible – just another form of accumulation by dispossession.
Has everyone
fully swallowed the bitter pill of the Sochi Games? Watching the closing
ceremonies of the Paralympic Games last night, I could envision the map of
Russia that served as the podium growing to
incorporate Crimea and eastern
Ukraine. Sochi 2014 has served as a delightful soft power cover for Putin to
pursue his hard power geo-politics. All the while the IOC sits on its pudgy
golden ringed fingers, extolling the hackneyed virtuosity of the European
aristocracy as a viable model for conflict resolution within the context of a
brazenly cynical political economy of global sport.
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| Putin´s message to the West |
The latest to
add his name to the increasingly long roll of kleptomaniac shysters in
Brazilian sport is Ary Graça, ex-president of the Brazilian Volleyball
Conferderation and ex-president of the International Volleyball Association. Graça
was caught out by
ESPN Brasil reporter Lucio de Castro to the tune of R$10,000,000. Graça
then renounced his two presidencies but will not likely face any kind of legal
action (of course). The person Graça had received his position from, 2016
President Carlos Nuzman, said he was “surprised” just before he took a position
on the ethics board of the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Asked what more he was surprised about that day, Nuzman revealed his pleasure
at seeing the sun rise in the East.
2 comments:
yeah, you're right. favelas were way better off with drug trafficking control. it doesn't make any sense to replace it by an attempt to implement regular policing. toning down your disposition to shout against everyone and everything would really add some credibility to your discourse and avoid this kind of non-sense.
Thanks for agreeing with me! They of course were not better off with drug traffickers, but the situation is clearly not improving tremendously without changing the military dynamics of the city. The drug trafficking is still there, btw, but it hasn´t been tamed quite enough to keep things flowing smoothly for the Cup. I use this as a bit of a platform for venting, that should not come as surprise to readers. I suppose that the shouting just makes more noise, but then again, I have a job where I lay these arguments out more calmly. Not that I feel that I need to justify the use of HWE as a place to release some of my frustrations with what is going on in my adopted city/country, but to suggest that UPP is "regular policing" is non-sense. If that´s what is getting to you about the latest post, then perhaps you´ve got some more reading to do. Please, if you want to engage in debate, put a name to your comments.
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