05 August 2016

End Games

Yet again, the oba oba around the Olympic Torch resulted in it being extinguished, robbed, and harassed. This is perfect metaphor for what the Games themselves have done to the city with the mayor suggesting that Cariocas stay at home so as not to get in the way of the IOC, tourists, and the military. The city feels as if it has undergone a military coup and the government has upped their estimates of security forces at Rio 2016 to 100,000. Gente, the USA invaded Iraq with 150,000, precisa de tudo isso?

The Games are over. They have no credible leadership, the competitions themselves are not between human competitors on a level playing field, but between cyborgs sent out by nation-states to wage proxy wars through their bodies. The business interests behind the spectacle are more rapaciously evident than ever, and the façades of sustainability have melted into the fetid lagoons of Barra da Tijuca. 

One month from now, this may be known as the "I told you so" Games. The city has said that it doesn't have money to finance the Paralympics, which is the only shred of decency left in this spectacular failure of a global party. The IOC has constantly rejected all calls to put the Paralympics before the Olympics, a position that is consistent with its cloistered, and tone deaf politics.   

The ongoing military operations in the city are primarily directed against favelas and the black, brown, and poor of the city have been excluded from this five ring party from the beginning. This is nothing new to the Games as this also happened in London, Sochi, Vancouver, Atlanta, and Beijing, but in Rio, a city defined by a lack of access to the basic rights of housing, air, water, sewage, safety, recreation, transportation, etc. the Games have doubled down on repression, despite the flowery rabbit-out-of-the-hat legacy tricks of paid consultants and other institutional puxa-sacos. 

This blog has been categorizing the abuses and insanities of this mega-event decade for a very long time. Back in 2010, I wrote:

the Olympics become a mechanism for transforming the space of the city while at the same time acting as a platform to project those transformations to the international community. The public investiture in mega-events is intended, on one hand, to provide world class facilities that cater to an international tourist class. On the other hand, it is a mechanism for accelerated infrastructural development wrapped in the politically neutral and universalistic discourses of sport. The transformations that mega-events wreak are permanent, impose temporary forms of governance that elide democratic institutions, install new and enduring surveillance and disciplinary mechanisms, while both creating and exacerbating unequal geographies of power within the city at large. This process will most likely mirror the urban reforms undertaken at the beginning of the 20th Century which "…never resolved the issue of social control entirely; instead, they merely introduced a new set of antagonisms and changed the contours of the struggle between those who were benefiting from the new Rio and those who were not" (Meade 1997: 122)

Sadly, this has played out even more poorly than I could have imagined. As the major global television networks turn to the geopornography of Rio's natural landscape to stuff their viewers with eye-candy and human interest stories, those very journalists who are parachuting in here on a fun junket are contributing to the problem that these events generate. NBC has reported record profits because viewers are interested in the problems of Rio, but without that network, the IOC would whither on the vine. 

These are, truly, the Exclusion Games, and this business model must end before it can carry on with its scorched earth policy, heralded by an Olympic Torch ritual invented by Nazis. 

No comments:

free counters

Labels

2014 World Cup Rio de Janeiro Maracanã FIFA 2016 Olympics 2016 Summer Olympics Eduardo Paes CBF Copa do Mundo 2014 Rio de Janeiro Olympics Ricardo Texeira World Cup 2014 Vasco da Gama 2010 World Cup White Elephants mega-events APO UPP BRT Brazil football Flamengo Lula Orlando Silva violence ANT Aldeia Maracana Carlos Nuzman Dilma Eike Batista Rio 2016 Sergio Cabral 2007 Pan American Games Campeonato Carioca Corruption IOC Jerome Valcke Novo Maracanã stadiums BOPE BRASIL 2016 Brasil 2014 Engenhao Joao Havelange Maracana Policia Militar Vila Autódromo Aldo Rebelo Botafogo Henrique Meirelles Medida Provisoria Metro Revolta do Vinagre Sao Paulo Sepp Blatter World Cup 2010 forced removal Carnaval Elefantes Brancos Fechadao Marcia Lins Minerao Morumbi Odebrecht Porto Maravilha Rio+20 Romario Security Walls South Africa South Africa 2010 TCU Transoeste protests public money public transportation slavery transparency x-Maracana Andrew Jennings Argentina Audiencia Publica Barcelona Brazil Carvalho Hosken Comitê Popular Confederatons Cup Copa do Brasil 2010 Cost overruns Crisis of Capital Accumulation EMOP FERJ Favela do Metro Fluminense Fluminese Fonte Novo IMX Jose Marin Leonel Messi London 2012 Marcelo Freixo Maré Museu do Indio Olympic Delivery Authority Perimetral Rocinha Soccerex Transcarioca bicycles consumer society debt idiocy militarization transportation 1995 Rugby World Cup 2004 Olympics 2015 Copa America Banco Imobiliario Barcas SA Belo Horizonte Bom Senso F.C. Brasilerao CDURP CONMEBOL Champions League. Mourinho Complexo do Alemão Copa Libertadores Cupula dos Povos ESPN England FiFA Fan Fest Istanbul 2020 Jogos Militares John Carioca Kaka Manaus McDonald's Obama Olympic Village PPP Paralympics Providencia Recife Russia Salvador Soccer City Taksim Square Tatu-bola Urban Social Forum Vidigal Vila Olimpica War World Cup Xaracana attendance figures cities corrupcao drugs estadios football frangueiro futebol mafia planejamento urbano police repression porn privitization reforms shock doctrine taxes 201 2010 Elections 2010 Vancouver Olypmics 2013 2018 World Cup 2030 Argentina / Uruguay ABRAJI AGENCO ANPUR ANT-SP Amazonia Ancelmo Gois Andrade Gutierrez Anthony Garotinho Arena Amazonia Arena Pernambucana Athens Atlético Paranaense Avenida das Americas BID Barra de Tijuca Blatter Brasil x Cote d'Iviore Brasileirão 2013 Brasilia Brasilierao Bruno Souza Bus fares COB COI COMLURB CPI CPO Cabral Caixa Economica Canal do Anil Cantagalo Celio de Barros Cesar Maia Chapeu Mangueira Chile 2015 Choque do Ordem Cidade da Copa Class One Powerboat Racing Clint Dempsey Comite Companhia das Docas Copa do Brasil Corinthians Cuiabá Curitiba Dave Zrin David Harvey Der Spiegel Eastwood Edge of Sports Escola Friendenrich Expo Estadio Expo Urbano FGV Fonte Nova Gamboa Garotinho Geostadia Ghana Globo Greek Debt Crisis Greek Olympics HBO Hipoptopoma IMG IPHAN ISL Iniesta Internatinal Football Arena Invictus Istanbul Itaquerao Jacque Rogge Jefferson John Coates Jose Beltrame Julio Grondona Julio Lopes Julio de Lamare Knights Templar Korea Lei Geral da Copa MAR MEX Manchester United Mangabeira Unger Maracanã. Soccerex Marina da Gloria Mexico Milton Santos Molotov Cocktail Mr.Balls Neymar Nicholas Leoz Nilton Santos Olympic Flag Olympic Park Project Oscar Niemeyer Pacaembu Pan American Games Parque Olimpico Pernambuco Plano Popular Plano Popular do Maracana Plano Popular do Maracanã Play the Game Pope Porto Alegre Porto Olimpico Porto Seguro Portuguesa Praca Tiradentes Preview Projeto Morrinho Putin Qatar Quatar 2022 RSA Realengo Regis Fichtner Roberto Dinamite Russia 2018 SETRANS SMH Santa Teresa Santos Sao Raimundo Sargento Pepper Security Cameras Smart City Sochi 2014 South Korea Stormtroopers São Januário São Paulo Teargas Templars Tokyo 2020 Tropa do Elite II Turkey UFRJ/IPPUR URU USA USA! Unidos da Tijuca United States government Urban Age Conference VVIP Via Binário Victory Team Vila Autodromo Vila Cruzeiro Vila do Pan Vilvadao Vivaldao Volta Alice Wasteland Workers' Party World Cup 2018 Xavi Zurich apartments atrazos barrier beer bio-fuels bonde capacities civil society comite popular copa sudamericana crack crime dengue dictatorship estádios favelalógica feira livre fiador flooding freedom of information furos geral graffiti guarda municipal host city agreement identity infrastructure ipanema istoe labor rape riots schedule school shooting security segregation social movements stadium state of exception supervia tear gas ticket prices torcidas organizadas tourism traffic tragedy trash trem-bala velodromo wikileaks xingar