Guilty, as not charged (volenti non fit iniuria)

To the chagrin of fans of justice everywhere it seems as if Ricardo Teixeira and João Havelange will shuffle off this mortal coil not having served a single hour in prison. Having read through the Canton of Zug’s judicial findings, I can report that the scandal is almost too scandalous. The 15 shades of details are too juicy not to share, so in what follows I provide some quotes from the document that more or less weave the story together. If you are pressed for time, here’s the summary:

Criminal proceedings against former CBF front man Texeira, ex-FIFA boss Havelange and FIFA itself for mismanagement, embezzlement and institutionalized bribery were dropped. All of these charges were documented vis a vis bank statements and contracts dealing with the marketing rights for the World Cups in 2002 and 2006 (among other things). The good Andrew Jennings has profiled these crimes in detail. The court ruled not to continue with prosecution, but considered the defendants guilty because they made partial repayment of the bribes they had received. The logic here: if they weren’t guilty, why would they have given back some of the money? This money was taken in bribes to award World Cup broadcast rights to ISL, a now defunct marketing company. At the end of the day, these criminals took bribes, made millions and then had to pay back a fraction in order to stop further prosecution, thereby stopping the investigation through a sideways admission of guilt. Along the way, they managed to come up with some defensive gems worthy of Michelle Prudhomme.  

From the Swiss Canton of Zug:

Ricardo Terra Texeira unlawfully used assets entrusted to him for his own personal enrichment several times. These commissions, which Ricardo Terra Texeira received due to his position in FIFA, were pocketed by him (for his own use), and he failed to disclose or hand over the payments to FIFA.

Joao Havelange unlawfully used assets entrusted to him for his own enrichmentseveral times. He acted with intent to enrich himself unlawfully.

 FIFA is accused of having a deficient organization in its enterprise

Blatter escapes responsibility:

The new provisions of the statute of limitations are, in principle, only applicable, with reservations for certain exceptions, if the criminal offence was committed after they came into force.

With  this, current president Blatter gets to wiggle his way out of things. FIFA released the most ridiculous interview I can remember, where Blatter had 5 very difficult questions put to him by the FIFA press office and published the responses on the website. Follow this link for a laugh. Ignorance is profitable bliss, ‘cuz you just ran out of time, biatch!

“concerning the question of a possible unlawful enrichment under a legal limitation of time aspect are obsolete. October 1, 2003, and thus FIFA cannot be criminally liable for acts carried out prior to this date.”

This witty riposte dealt with one of the off-side traps pulled by the Texeira-Havelange legal team:

The federal court rejected the argument that the assumption that the requirement to deliver had been waived suggested that corresponding agreements were customary (FCD 132 III 466,consid. 4.3). Customs may play a role in assessing the mental elements of an offence, however not when determining whether a duty to disclose or to surrender possession exists.

The defendants had argued that they did not have to return the bribe payments because in Africa and South America, bribing is a “customary” way of doing business. Not to have accepted bribes as part of the contract would not only have been bad form, it would have unduly cheated them of their rightful income. This is a lesson that has been well learned by Brazil Worker’s Party, that has in turn instructed the rest of us that corruption generates impunity.

A related argument for keeping the money was that there was not need to return the bribes to FIFA because FIFA would have had to surrender them to the Swiss bankruptcy court that dealt with the failure of ISL marketing (which had paid the bribes). Thus, it couldn’t be argued that the president and vice-president of FIFA had harmed the organization by taking money destined for it. Genius.

The news coming out of FIFA these days is that they are hotfooting it to institute some reforms. This week they appointed an independent ethics team to tell the fat vats at FIFA how to behave.

This is the crack team they hand-picked for the task (we’ll try to find out more about the massive experience that Messers. Torres, Jones and Abderrahmane bring to the table from their respective homelands):

Appointment of the following persons as members of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee until the 63rd FIFA Congress in 2013:

Chairman: Michael J Garcia (USA)

Mr Robert Torres (Guam)

Mr Les Murray (Australia)

Mr Ronald Jones (Barbados)

Mr Jorge Iván Palacio (Colombia)

Mr Noël Le Graët (France)

Mr Ahmed Ould Abderrahmane (Mauritania)

One of the reasons is that FIFA promised to do something about the institutional corruption and incompetence, which made them liable for the lunatics creating their own asylum is the Zug court’s finding that:

If a felony or misdemeanor is committed in an enterprise while exercising a business activity

within the scope of the enterprise and if, due to the deficient organization of the enterprise, the

act cannot be attributed to a natural person, then according to Art. 102 para. 1 PC, the act will

be attributed to the enterprise. In such case, the enterprise can be liable for a fine of up to 5

million francs.

5 million Francs to FIFA is bus fare.

With all the evidence mounted against them, we see the cleverness of the slippery, criminal mastermind at work:

Both for FIFA, Ricardo Terra Texeira and Joao Havelange, the fruits of criminal acts have to be discounted if there can never be the subject of a conviction due to the application of the statute of limitations and/or because they cannot be conclusively attributed to one Accused or the other.

This is the same way that the World Cup institutional architecture is constructed. No one has ultimate responsibility for anything, thus everyone is responsible for nothing, so anything at all can happen.

In the end, nothing more is going to happen to these crooks, but their names have been tarnished. Here is the naïve report by the Swiss judge:

It does not seem to be necessary to impose an unsuspended sentence in order to prevent the Accused from committing further felonies or misdemeanors. The current proceedings, the psychological stress connected therewith and ultimately also the surrender of not unconsiderable tangible assets should in future prevent the Accused from undermining the purposes of an association that is so clearly committed to activities that unite different peoples. If this finding applies to Ricardo Terra Texeira, then it is even more so the case with regard to Joao Havelange. This is not least of all due to his status as a retired person, which he has been for quite some time, and his advanced age, which will almost certainly preclude a criminal act.

And finally, the icing that should be written on a cake the size of Pão de Açucar:

It must be noted that none of the accused parties explicitly acknowledged a breach of the law; however, this finding is put in perspective by the fact that reparation has been paid in the amount of millions of francs, which can be considered as an implied confession of criminal conduct.

GUILTY, AS NOT CHARGED!!!!

Impunity and Continuity

Legal proceedings that deal with corruption and influence peddling don’t have much staying power in Brazil. 

This week, the former Ministry of Sport Orlando Silva was fortunate enough to have been out of the national and international spotlight for long enough that the President’s Ethics Commission decide to end the investigation into his involvement with a mutli-million dollar corruption scheme. Not having been close to the proceedings, it is impossible to say whether or not there really was a lack of evidence to proceed or if the ethics commission was late for lunch or if this was another example of the press acting as a political bludgeon. Either way, there is no information available on the commission’s website as to the investigation, just some small news pieces saying the Silva is clean. I am not suggesting that the Ethics Commission doesn’t do a fine job of rooting out corruption, just that there appears to be a pattern in Brazil of people getting involved in corruption scandals, losing their jobs, and then being cleared of any wrongdoing. Then, to maintain the status quo, another person just like them, or at least from the same party (in this case the Brazilian Communist Party, PCdoB), is put into power to continue with the same policies.

Take the case of our favorite gout-ridden sycophant, Ricardo Texeira. One year ago, he was riding high in the inner sanctum of FIFA even though he bet on the wrong horse in FIFA’s farcical elections. He had thoroughly dominated Brazilian football for nearly two decades, having ridden to power on the strength of a good marriage. However, he and the ex-father in law had been involved in some shady dealings with FIFA’s now defunct marketing arm and the FIFA president Blatter threatened to divulge documents exposing their (and likely his) involvement. To avoid the gallows before shuffling off the mortal coil, J. Marie Havelange resigned from his honorary post at the IOC and Texeira was forced out of FIFA and the CBF. Where is he now? Living the Latin American millionaire exile life in Florida. Where are the legal proceedings?  None. What has happened with the CBF? Tricky Ricky’s loyalists were stuck into power with the full and obsequious approval of the feudal overlords that control the clubs. What happened with his position on the executive committee at FIFA? Another fat-fingered patsy was put in his place to keep the ball rolling for the “good of the game.” The media naturalizes this process, letting the air out of what should be an expanding balloon of collective, righteous indignation. In the meantime we can be sure that Texeira and the CBF and FIFA are as clean as Byron Moreno’s whistle.

The lesson here is that one can engage in corrupt practices, or be associated closely enough with shady dealings to arouse the sleepy dogs of justice, lose position and power, but keep the money and rest comfortably knowing that the dogs will be thrown some other bones to chew on. Corruption and impunity and forgetting are the pistons that drive the World Cup forward and as long as we keep lubricating the machine with public money and collective passivity, nothing will save us from hurtling over the cliff while 1% of the passengers smugly don their golden parachutes. 

Tchau Vasco

I became Vasco when researching Temples of the Earthbound Gods. In the 1910s and 1920s, Vasco fought the elite clubs of Rio so that the working class, illiterate and sub-altern could play football and receive something for their labors. The all-white clubs of Botafogo, Flamengo, America and Fluminense did not have to pay their players because they were daddy’s boys exercising their right to exercise vigorously. They had sponsors but instead of wearing the names of companies on their shirts, they carried their wealth in their names and residential addresses. The smaller teams from the suburbs paid their players a bicho, an animal, sometimes a leg of a cow, or a chicken, or some eggs – something to pay them back for the energy and time expended on the field of play. This was unacceptable to the nascent Rio football federation which disguised its racism and classism behind statutes of amateurism.

When Vasco won the second division in 1922, the big four of the time decided that they wouldn’t play against the blacks, mulattos, Portuguese and poor whites from São Cristóvão, forming a separate league that lasted for TEN YEARS. This apartheid system was only resolved with full professionalization in 1933, six years after Vasco had built a monument to its project of social inclusion, the São Januário. Vasco’s role in opening football to all social classes, the beauty and symbolic power of the stadium and a wealth of other non-rational reasons made me Vasco. That’s over.

I have long argued that if there is going to be any meaningful change to and in the world of football, we have to start understanding the acts of fandom as political. Putting on a team jersey is never neutral but rather an incorporation of one’s self into a larger community, a larger historical trajectory, a complex of actors and agents that are invariably connected to political economies and urban spaces that make one sleepy imagining their extent and intricacy. Nonetheless, they exist.  I would never, ever pull on a shirt that had the letters CBF (the Brazilian football confederation) on it because of all of the reasons I have explained ad nauseam in these pages. If there are to be political consequences that result from our individual actions, football is a fine place to start thinking more deeply.

São Januário loses his head. It appears not much has changed.

The report that Vasco has maintained a secret training ground where its young, poor, semi-literate players are kept in conditions of slavery, with the full knowledge and consent of the board of directors, after a year of negotiation with public prosecutors after a 14-year old boy from Minas Gerais died because there was no medical staff on site…it makes me sick. 

Vasco has turned away from everything that it stood for while at the same time using the words “inclusion” and “democracy” to promote their brand on a uniform. In short, Vasco is selling its history as a hollow commodity while at the same time exploiting the very people this history pretends to connect with. I repeat: Vasco was trying to hide their “slave-like” training camp for more than a year after one of their youth players died from the conditions at a different site. The board of directors smiles and struts around repeating the old mantras while marching to the drum of maximum exploitation.

We know that Vasco is not the only Brazilian team that engages in these kinds of practices. Brazilian teams make 28% of their profits from the sale of players, most of them never play a full professional season in their native land. The global political economy of football begins with the pipe-dream of becoming Dani Alves or Ronaldinho Gaucho, passes hopefully through concentration camps where swarms of piranha-like agents and coaches break and bend Brazilian adolescents to be fit for export while neglecting human rights and individual dignity. When those unpaid, ill-treated adolescents do actually break, or don’t bend enough, they are discarded on the scrapheap where tens of thousands just like them squirm and cry, their young lives already wrecked by the impossibility of their own dream that may not have even been theirs to begin with. 

We prop up these dreams every time we pull on that shirt.

I am saddened, horrified and angered.

I am not this Vasco.

I reject this club.

.

Going, going, nearly gone

There have been some big shakeups in the world of Brazilian football and more are about to happen. Today, or yesterday, it doesn’t matter, Ricardo Texeira, Mr. Jowls, Sickly Ricky, resigned from his post on the FIFA executive council. FIFA says they want an “immediate replacement”, ostensibly before anyone can notice that R.T. will be replaced with someone just like him, only healthier.

Grondona, a virile physical specimen

Nice medal, but who ate all the pies?

CONMEBOL, the South American football confederation, has three members on the FIFA executive committee. The remaining two are old school gangsters – Nicolás Leoz, a Paraguayan strongman, and Julio Grondona an Argentine snake in the grass. Both have been in power since the 19^th century and are long overdue for one way tickets to Miami via Devil's Island. That nothing ever changes in South American football while the quality of play is detonated by the export of the best talent to Europe should concern the continent’s sporting press. The only voices in the shiny, happy wilderness of increased consumer consumption continue to come from the good lads at ESPN Brasil. I keep wondering how much longer it will take for ESPN’s parent company, Disney/ABC, to figure out that their mouse ears are being continually tweaked by Júlio Cruz and Juca Kufuri.

On a lighter note, João Havelange has been hospitalized with what appears to be a serious infection. Incredibly, unbelievably, yet predictably, I received an email yesterday citing this criminal mastermind for the Nobel Peace Prize!!! Havelange’s family fortune came from made millions dealing arms between Belgium and Brazil and then from building bus companies. Havelange coddled dictators and murderers throughout his career always asserting, “I don’t do politics I do sport.” He was cozy with the military regimes in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay and was constantly re-elected to the top spot of FIFA by greasing the palms of Asian and African dictators. Since 1974 he has been pulling the strings at FIFA. Blatter is his creation. Sickly Ricky was his son-in-law.

When the 96 yr old Havelange shuffles off this mortal coil in the next days or weeks, it’s only a matter of time, get ready for a white-washed version of his “grand contribution” to global sport. Nobel Peace Prize, indeed! The man should be tried at the Hague! Nuzman, head of the Brazilian Olympic Committee and Rio 2016, went to kneel at his bedside yesterday, like a loyal godson gathering a few more pearls of raspy-throated wisdom. I am going to make myself preemptively sick so that I can pick up the obituaries with something approximating calm.

Was it something they ate? Go get 'em Andrew!!!!!

This may be the physical end of the Havlange-Texeira era but their legacies have created a scoliosis-ridden sporting body that will take the rest of us decades to correct. All it will take to rub the shine off these Teflon-coated gangsters is the release of those Swiss court documents that chronicle the extent and depth of the corruption scandals that these two were involved in.

For those of you that missed it, Romário, the former world player of the year and now state deputy for Rio said that Texeria’s removal from positions of authority at the CBF was akin to “removing a cancer from Brazilian football.” Touché, my good deputy.

Texeria Fora! E Daí?

Yesterday, an axe fell on the head of the serpent. Ricardo Texeira, the president of the Brazilian Footbal Confederation (CBF) for 26 years resigned less than a week after he was given a unanimous vote of confidence by Brazil’s 27 state football federations. Texeira came to power by virtue of his marriage to the daughter of João Havelange, president of FIFA from 1974-1998. The old man was probably controlling most of the big decisions of little Ricky but then he too came up against corruption charges and was forced to resign his position at the IOC a few months ago. Two of the biggest names in Brazilian sport have fallen in the past three months. What this means is unclear as João H. is still held in absurdly high esteem and R.T. is bound for the land of fugitive Latin American criminals, Florida.

We have Andrew Jennings to thank for much of these developments. Andrew has been tireless in his investigations into FIFA corruption. Once he started pulling on some threads it wasn’t long before he found the Havelange-Texeira clan knee-deep in merda. We can also point to petitions circulated by the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores e Torcedoras (ANT, www.torcedores.org.br), which called for the head of Texeira throughout 2010, collecting thousands of signatures. The combination of rigorous investigative journalism and civil society activism is powerful – let’s hope that the documents being released by the Comitês Populares in Brazil will have similar effects on the abusive and opaque reign of Carlos Nuzman at Rio 2016 and the Brazilian Olympic Committee.

The loss of Texeira will not, unfortunately, change much about the fundamental structure of the World Cup. His daughter, Joanna Havelange, is the Secretary General of Brazil 2014. Her qualifications for this job were the same as her dad's, none. The rest of the executives for the World Cup are the same people that helped stuff the workings of the CBF inside a black box for so many years. It is important to remember that just last week Sickly Ricky received a unanimous vote of confidence. This allowed him the chance to maintain the power structure through the next CBF election. The acting president of the CBF is 78 years old and recently stole a winner’s medal at a juniors' tournament. The Brazil 2014 Local Organizing Committee has no president yet, but Ronaldo Fenômeno will likely step into that role as a figurehead.

This is a chance to start pulling on even more threads, unraveling the Indonesian-stitched fabric of Brazil’s canary-yellow shirt. I do not have much confidence that the Brazilian media will do this as they are focused on the serpent’s head lying on the ground as the rest of the snake slithers back into its hole to shake off the hangover. This saga has long felt like something out of The Open Veins of Latin America: occasionally a coronel gets shot in his office, but the power structure remains the same. As the Minister of Sport showed the other day, even when the Communists get into positions of power, nothing much changes. 

Kicks in the Arse

Last week, Jerome Valcke finally said what we know to be true regarding Brazil’s World Cup preparations – “they need a kick in the ass”. Nonplussed, the Minister of Sport replied that the Brazilian government would no longer deal with Mr. Valcke as an interlocutor. Irritated, Valcke called the Brazilian reaction “puerile” adding that Brazil appeared to be more interested in winning the world cup than hosting it. Sadly for the Brazilians, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of that either.

At the same time, the CBF gathered together the whimpering dogs of the 26 state football federations at the feet of Ricardo Teixeira. Tricky Ricky left the meeting with his power intact. Faced with allegations of international money laundering, receiving bribes, and other malfeasances, Mr. Jowls has an amazing ability to hold on to the reigns of Brazilian football. Let’s not forget that this is the first time that the president of a national football federation is also the president of the World Cup organizing committee. How Teixeira has kept afloat is beyond me.

During Lula’s good-ol-boy government, Teixeira had some solid political coverage. Dilma has changed things somewhat, refusing to meet with him. The president of FIFA has worked to distance himself from this dough-faced dandy leaving a politically isolated figure that somehow convinced the presidents of Brazil’s federations to prop him up through 2014. As I mentioned a post or two ago, I think that FIFA was waiting to see what happened in this meeting to determine what they were going to do with the documents from the ISL money-laundering case. Does FIFA delay releasing the ISL documents in order to preserve the World Cup in Brazil as they look for plan B?

No one has ultimate responsibility for anything related to the 2014 World Cup but that does not mean there aren’t things that need to be done. FIFA cannot be wholly blamed for the stadium cost overruns or transportation projects or the choice of 12 cities across a continent with shoddy airports and no ground transportation. They have a series of demands that they “need” met in order to extract the maximum amount of money in the shortest time frame. FIFA is a pimp for global capital interests, using the World Cup as the emotionally charged smack that blinds us to the accumulation of power and profit. The Brazilian government (at all levels) has used the World Cup preparations as a nominal way to “improve” cities but has repeatedly stepped on the ball in all the ways that I have documented over the last few years. Rio de Janeiro could not, today, handle the World Cup. Other than the completion of the destructive destruction of the Maracanã will that much really change?

With all of this infantile bickering, instead of focusing on the 12 White Elephants, forced removals, idiotic transportation projects, unnecessary hotels, the lack of inter-city transport, the privatization of airports, security, public space, and the massive transfer of public wealth, the media can pay attention to whether or not beer should be allowed in the stadiums or split hairs about whether or not 20,000 indigenous people will be able to watch South Korea x. Slovakia in Manaus. The issues really have nothing to do with Brazil’s ability to build stadia or media centers or airports, but what kind of society is being constructed, how, and for whom.

From a logistical perspective, FIFA is rightly chafed about the delays in everything. This process began four and a half years ago and the legal foundation is still being poured. The Brazilian government is overreacting to FIFA, launching bombast when a more sober consideration of real issues would help. There are major and massive issues to be resolved. Without the legal framework in place, there is nothing that FIFA can do. Without a working relationship between FIFA, the Local Organizing Committee, and the three levels of Brazilian government, this month long party won’t happen. The government isn’t talking to their partners and the communication between FIFA and the CBF/LOC is fractious. I am sure that Valcke and Blatter have thought on more than one occasion: USA 2014. 

Fora Teixeira!!!!

Fora Ricardo Teixeira! E daí?

It is long past the time when Ricardo Texeira should have been sent to Rio’s Bangu One prison where he could share a cell with the dozens of Military Police who were imprisoned for having the temerity to strike (albeit briefly) for higher wages. Incredible what happens in Rio when you take on the government:  só porrada.  It appears as if Mr. Jowls, as I like to call him, has finally run out of escape hatches and is going to resign from the CBF, some say today, maybe tomorrow, certainly before March.

Reports have R.T. literally hiding in his hotel room to avoid Herr Blatter at a recent CONMEBOL meeting in Buenos Aires. The man is not well, physically or mentally, nor has he been for some time. Romário is ramping up his criticisms of the feudal system that counts as professional football in Brasil, making it clear that Tricky Ricky (as our good friend Andrew Jennings calls him) is only a major figurehead in a very sick footballing world.

As Mr. Jowls flees to the dangling dongle of Florida (where he will no doubt be immune from prosecution and extradition – USAmericans please write your government asking that this misanthrope’s visa be revoked) what will be the implications for the World Cup? R.T. is the president of the Local Organizing Committee, his daughter is the Secretary General of the 2014 World Cup, his personal secretary director of communications. Will there be a house cleaning as FIFA tries to distance itself from the sordid legacy of João Havelange and his criado?

There are rumors floating about that FIFA is ready to cut one or two cities form the cup, or that they were waiting to see how they could appear to tidy house while maintaining the status quo before they suggested any major changes to Brazil 2014. Some rumors have suggested a re-working of the match schedule in order to regionalize travel. I won’t repeat the absurdities of the current scheme, check this old post if you don’t remember what the current plan is. There are some chairs being shuffled, but will they clean the stains?

Dilma should use the imminent fall of Dr. Jowls to nationalize the CBF. This would have various effects:

1. End the obscene and absurd position of FIFA that politics and sport are separate categories of human endeavor. FIFA cannot ban Brazil from international competition, in this regard, the government could immediately take the upper hand in negotiations over the World Cup Law. (Not that it really matters as the Worker’s Party is quickly privatizing everything in sight. For those gringos out there that have still have some romanticized vision of Lula’s lefty politics, the PT is about as progressive as the Obama administration on immigration). 
2. Reduce the influence of cartolas in the running of the game. The person who is taking control of the CBF in R.T.’s absence is an 80 year old who recently stole a medal from the winner’s stand at a junior tournament in São Paulo. The second-string keeper was the last one on the podium and got a handshake, nothing more. FDP.
3. Have concursos públicos to administer the positions in the CBF, hopefully professionalizing and making more transparent the running of football in Brazil.   
4. Pull the plug on OGlobo.

It won’t likely happen, but one year ago it didn’t seem likely that Teixeira would be facing criminal charges in Brazil and Europe and fleeing with his family to South Florida. Let’s keep up the pressure!!!! Fora a familia Teixeria-Havelange ! Nacionalize já a CBF!!!!

End of Year Report

2011 comes to an end without the promised bang of divulged documents, lawsuits, popular uprisings (though there was an excellent dossier detailing abuses), gnashing of teeth and death by papercut. Maybe at this time next year we can all get our millennial dander up as high as the notes on the Legadômetro, but for this year everything in Brazil is sliding relatively quietly into the delicious do-nothing months between xmas and Carnaval. There is no shortage of material to comment on, however, and I’ll use this last post of the year to properly shut things down.

Transportation. It’s a mess and getting messier. The city is in a permanent state of near-paralysis and has one of the most fragile transportation systems in the world. In early December, a bus caught fire in the Linha Amarela tunnel which links Barra to the Zona Norte and shut down traffic in both directions for more than three hours. There continues to be no map of the city’s bus system and one never knows when a bus is going to arrive or if it will stop to let you on.  It frequently takes me an hour and a half to travel from Rio to Niterói, 3 km as the papagaio flies.

The smallest accident on the Rio-Niteroi bridge or on the perimetral clogs the city like a vegan after eating a cheesesteak. The projects underway in the Zona Portuaria have made the main transit avenues so unreliable that the ferrys have received a 50% increase in traffic. This is unfortunate because they are not equipped to handle the volume. The concessionaire, Barcas S.A., can’t manage to train pilots or maintain the boats with the inevitable result: two weeks ago a fully loaded ferry crashed full-steam ahead into the docks injuring more than a hundred people. As if to reward the company, the state government approved a massive increase in the fares. The state secretary of transportation really should be made to water-ski behind the ferry for a day and then to eat a kettle of raw Guanabara Bay mussels.

Air travel is quickly becoming the only viable means of transport in Brazil, even within the cities themselves. Rio’s proposed BRT lines will not attend current or future demands, nor reduce the need or desire for cars which are the principal problem. The innumerable construction projects are detonating what mobility there was.  If one has the luxury to be strategic about where, when, and how one moves about the city, then bicycle is by far the best option except that one inevitably takes fantastic risks in doing so. The city just put in, for the third time, one of those bike share programs and people seem to be using them, but without a larger bike-orientated transportation plan what’s the point? Ah yes, it looks good and Barcelona does it.

The Metrô linha 4 project is taking more form and looking more and more idiotic as time goes on. There are reports that the recently opened General Osorio station will have to be closed for 8 months for reforms. Most ridiculously, in order to convince the wealthy residents of Leblon to go along with the project, those who have their garage parking eliminated during construction will have personal, public servants to park their cars, carry their groceries, and generally help out with their lives. In addition to closing multiple public spaces indefinitely, the project is going to make traveling by metro even more difficult for those who live in the Zona Sul. Why? The Trans-Oeste BRT is going to pack the new metro line full in Jardim Oceânico in Barra in the direction of the center, so that by the time the trains get to Leblon-Ipanema-Copacabana-Botafogo, they will look like sleek sardine cans.

Sport. João Havelange was forced to resign from the IOC before he was kicked out. Despite his shame, he received standing ovations at soccerex and is still viewed as some kind of cantankerous, a-political saint. He’s an embarrassment to sport and society and should be prosecuted to the full extent of national and international law. His favorite phrase had long been, “I don’t do politics, I do sport.” This rang particularly hollow when he was running around the world courting votes or when he was glad-handing with dictators. Now his favorite phrase is, “just leave me in peace.” Sorry João, let’s hope those ISL documents come out before you exit through the trapdoor. I think Nem is looking for a roommate.

Tricky Ricky Teixeira has caught some of the same bug that his ex-father in law has, and has relieved himself from various CBF and World Cup duties until the end of January. While one has to admit that he doesn’t and has never looked particularly well, the “health reasons” excuse just before incriminating documents were meant to be released is pathetic at best. The vice-president of the Piauí Football Federation has called for his imprisonment. Let’s hope that gets some legs.

The Brazilian Olympic committee decided to make the fort at the end of Urca the base for the Brazilian Olympic Team for 2016. I wonder if anyone asked the residents’ association of Urca what they thought about having their principal access to their neighborhood clogged with news trucks, security forces, athletes’ buses, VIP limos, etc. for the months leading up to and during the Olympics. Don’t want the Brazilians to arrive at their events? It would be almost as easy as shutting down the Linha Vermelha.

The gap between the best football in the world and what we see in Brazil was exposed in stark detail in Barcelona’s 4-0 thrashing of Santos in the final of the World Club Championship. Brazilian football is decades behind in management practices and mired in the export-minded political economy of a banana republic. Barcelona’s total football is not just about football, but about the creation of a life-world for its players. While the players are perhaps savagely competitive, there is an educational and social structure at Barcelona that does not throw their injured or less-talented prospects back into the murky waters of the labor-market like so many ill-caught fish. Of course F.C. Barcelona has its problems, but one cannot argue with the beauty and dynamism of what they produce on the field. The most disappointing part of the game was seeing the line of FIFA safados handing out the trophies. A gaggle of corpulent, self-important stuffed shirts, smirking all the way to the bank. You too, Platini, shame on you.

Model of Brasilia's LEED certified stadium

The Cup. This is the official line of thinking regarding the stadium projects. 1) Stadiums are not viable economic projects because ticket prices in Brazil are too low, therefore, 2) The “only way” to sustain stadiums is through international shows and increased points of sale, turning fans into clients and stadia into shopping malls 3) though being over built for the World Cup, don’t worry, the stadiums are now being planned for use after the events to guarantee their economic viability 4) the stadium projects should be constructed to attain the highest possible LEED certification to highlight Brazil’s commitment to “sustainable development” (even though Brazil doesn’t have a company that manufactures the technology required to attain the certification and all of the contracts will have to go to foreign companies) 5) the most important thing that the stadiums will do will be to project the city to international audiences therefore the cost isn’t entirely relevant. Booooooo, hisssss. How are those stadia in South Africa doing? Useless. White. Elephants. Unless, of course, you believe the NYTimes which had the gall to show the Green Point stadium in Cape Town as a symbol of that city’s creative economy. Bullocks, bullocks, bullocks.

Brasilia's Mane Garrincha taking form

The naming of Ronaldo Fenômeno as the mouth piece of the World Cup is meant to attract investments and divert attention. As was to be expected, Ronaldo knows how to use his foot, putting it squarely in his mouth by saying “You host a World Cup with stadiums, not hospitals”. Nice one. Actually, Ronaldo, hospitals are a major component of a World Cup, but let’s leave that for next year.

The Law of the Cup that has been such a bone of contention between FIFA, the federal government, and civil society was not voted on, again. The details of the law are of interest to those of us working on the structure of the event, and once it is passed we’ll give it a good look and analyze the conflicts, delays, and players that brought it into being. For now, FIFA is going to have a big, empty stocking that may not be filled with as much money as it would like in 2014. Does anyone actually think that FIFA needs more money or that it is an effective steward of football? Que se vayan todos.

Brasilia's aborted VLT project

After a visit to Brasilia, I was both relieved and saddened to learn that Rio de Janeiro is not the only city that is going through some major problems with transportation, stadium construction, corruption, and incompetence. The World Cup organizing committee in Brasilia is going to put a few leisure-oriented bike paths along the axis monumental but will put the bike racks about a kilometer away from the stadium, in the middle of a grass-covered open space. The proposed light rail system linking the airport to the stadium (more or less) went ahead without approval, destroying an existing traffic interchange. There are no plans to either fix the interchange or to complete the rail project, which was very, very poorly designed in the first place. As I wrote earlier this year, the World Cup was born in obscurity, is being run out of a black box, and is going to end up in the courts. It will be a hell of a party.

UPPs, Milicias, Traficantes, oh my. Rocinha and Vidigal were occupied / pacified without so much as a “by your leave”. As ever, real-estate has boomed and people are trying to make sense of the new dynamics. The circumstances under which these two critical neighborhoods were occupied were strange in the extreme. It appeared as if the either the entire architecture of the drug trade in the Zona Sul was dominated by one person (Nem) and that he had a critical, unimaginable security and information meltdown or that the new boss is just like the old boss but with weapons and training paid for with public money. The security situation in Rio continues to boggle my mind. It’s big business, unevenly distributed, unequally applied, and a determining factor in just about everything that happens in the city. The milicias in the Zona Oeste continue to have a fantastic and phantasmagoric influence on the city and state governments, whose levels of depravity, arrogance, and misanthropy are reaching ever greater heights. It’s not safe to sit around in public space where the UPPs are active. There are always fingers on high-caliber triggers. This link is to a story of a man shot while in playing samba in Mangueira, just across from the Maracanã.

Meanwhile and perhaps encouraged by the marketing of the illusion of security, record numbers of foreign tourists are coming to Brazil. How many? 7 million in 2011. That is around 600,000 a month, exactly the number that is expected for the 2014 World Cup. How is it again that the World Cup is going to increase Brazil’s tourist numbers and establish tourism as the ever expanding base for urban economies? It’s not and it won’t. As I have repeated time and time again, international tourism in Brazil is not a major source of revenue or employment. 7 million tourists is only slightly more than the Dominican Republic receives. This is an insanely expensive country, there is little or no tourist information (for instance, the last time I came through Galeão in Rio the only English language tourist information was produced by “Rio for Partiers”), and mono-lingual gringos are going to have a tough go of it. Not to say that Brazil isn’t wonderful or that tourists shouldn’t come, just that it is neither easy nor cheap nor close to the major centers from which international tourists depart.

Brazil, the myth of emergence. Brazil’s actual economic growth has not been that dynamic in the last few years. While it is true that the economy has expanded the state controls on the economy are so great and the protectionist measures so strong that the opening of Brazilian markets that would really cause the economy to take off simply hasn’t happened. There is little to no competition in the Brazilian marketplace for essential goods and services, which makes quality low, prices high, and service terrible. The re-distribution of income that supposedly took place under Lula via the Bolsa Familia program appears to have been a token gesture that has had the very positive effect of removing millions from absolute poverty and pushing them into the lower classes or into plain ol’ poverty. Indeed, there has been a general improvement on the national scale towards a more equitable distribution of income, but Brazil remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. This was highleghted by the release of the IBGE report detailing the increase in the percentage of Brazilians living in favelas and informal settlements. Rio de Janeiro, sadly, has been the one state in Brazil that has seen income disparity increase over the last ten years and is the city with the highest percentage and overall numbers of people in favleas. One well-known effect of these dang mega-events (that don’t exist, remember) is that they increase inequality while brining in a large, sophisticated, and permanent military apparatus that acts to preserve and re-enforce the accumulation of capital in its various guises. The more we can pull back the curtain, open the black boxes, say nay to the Trojan horse,  and demand information, the more likely it will be that these events can be used as opportunities to propose and impose alternatives to the current paradigm.

Felizes festas e nos veremos em 2012!

Rotten to the Core

Ok, so no one liked or got the Gangrene Cup pun. The 2014 World Cup is supposed to be the Copa Verde, playing on an erroneous perception of Brazil as a "natural paradise" while greenwashing the environmental destruction that more than two million km of air travel will wreak. So, perhaps a Shakespeare reference to get us going today, albeit an obvious one. 

There is something rotten in the State of the Copa. Not only is the government forced to create a state of exception to allow the Trojan horses of FIFA and the IOC into the country, but the people who are opening the gates are as incompetent and corrupt as the fazenderos themselves. 

Orlando Silva, who I have long criticized as an incompetent hack and an embarrassment to millions of communists both dead and alive, is struggling to keep his head above the turbulent political waters in which he suddenly finds himself. Last week, Veja (which is not so much a magazine as a blunt political instrument), published an exposé on the good minister and his shady relations with a Military Police officer that also ran some sport’s outfit sponsored by the Ministry of Sport’s Segundo Tempo program. Silva is not doing himself any favors by quoting Pablo Neruda in order to proclaim his “invincibility”, but at least he’s got a sense of humor (or is giving us a good laugh at his expense).

One of the reasons for this attack is that opposition parties are trying to get their hands on the Ministry of Sport’s top spot. The MoS has seen its budget increase by 63% in the last year, a greater percentage than any other ministry, reaching R$2,5 billion in 2011. This is likely to keep increasing as the mega-events go super nova and the state starts paying the orchestra to play even louder to drown out the screams coming from the stinking ship.

Another reason for the attack from Veja could be that Editora Abril, which publishes the rag, is an official sponsor of the 2014 World Cup. There has been open warfare between FIFA and the CBF against Silva who has failed to deliver on his promise to get World Cup legislation passed fast enough and with enough goodies for the Swiss-based gang’s pleasure. By undermining Silva’s already tenuous credibility, Veja has stimulated investigations into allegations of corruption and taken him out of FIFA’s hair. Dilma has responded by taking away Silva’s role as the primary interlocutor between the federal government and FIFA but has for the moment left him at the head of the MoS.

One of the main bones of contention between the Brazilian federal government and FIFA is so absurd as to be laughable, if it weren’t so pathetically base. In Brazil, students and kids under 12 get half-price admission to soccer games. FIFA wants to do away with this so they can make more money on ticket sales. The percentage of money FIFA makes on ticket sales for kids has to be so miniscule as to not even merit attention. This is not to even consider that most of the stadiums are probably going to be empty anyway, or that the percentage of Brazilians in the stadiums for the world up is likely to be lower than 50%. There’s also the question of beer sales but one can’t really expect national law to be respected in this regard especially as the Brazilian company AmBev owns Budweiser. In case you thought that Veja wasn’t in bed with FIFA, here’s their description of why Brazil absolutely has to give everything over to FIFA.

This is happening at the same moment that a federal inquisition is installing a commission to investigate Ricardo (Dr. Jowls) Texeira and the CBFdp.  This investigation was given some propulsion by the news that FIFA is going to give access to long-entombed Swiss court documents that will likely name Texeira and the godfather João Havelange as recipients of bribes from the FIFA/ISL scandal in the 1990s. As Andrew Jennings has long said, this is an international, organized crime family that should be treated with all of the respect and deference given to common criminals. Jennings is headed to Brasilia this week to testify before the federal commission.

No one is sure how these events are being structured. A few weeks ago at a presentation given by the Rio 2016 organizing [sic] committee a vague and confusing diagram showed international journalists just how transparent things are going to be. Carlos Nuzman, in addition to heading up the Brazilian Olympic Committee is also the president of Rio 2016, and is also the head of the Rio 2016 Executive Committee and the General Assembly. Nuzman is also trying to get the IOC age-limit rules changed so he can remain in the circles of power past his 70^th birthday, the legal retirement age from IOC posts.

Sports mega-events cram Trojan Horses full of Black boxes, violating national sovereignty in order to turn public money into private profit within increasingly militarized and fragmented cities planned by public relations firms and directed by intentionally opaque and un-responsive parallel governance structures that act in the service of capital and at the expense of the citizenry. I sincerely hope that I will, one day, find evidence to the contrary. For now, that sentence sums it up. 

Para além de Ricardo Teixeira, por Marcos Alvito

With apologies for English-only readers. This text speaks to the growing movement to get rid of Ricardo Teixeira, the doddering, tottering head of the CBF(dp). It is not enough to cut off the head of the snake, but to undertake a radical reformation of Brazilian football in general. The negotiations going on today in Brussels between Dilma (Brazilian President) and FIFA represent a small effort to maintain some national dignity in the face of the parasitic demands that FIFA make on their hosts. In question, retaining the half-price tickets for students, state employees, and those over 60 as well as maintaing the ban on alcohol sales in stadia during the World Cup. Gulp. Or rather, not gulp. Get your flasks ready people! Swig. [Just after posting this, Dilma caved into FIFA's demands, eliminating the half-price tickets for students and kids under 12 and allowing the flow of Budweiser in the WC stadia. Bud is owened by Brazilian AmBev and we are starting to see a massive media campaign to promote it.]

If there are any willing translators out there I will gladly post a translated version of Marcos Alvito's text. Viva o Formigueiro!

Para além de Ricardo Teixeira – uma proposta para o futebol brasileiro

Imaginemos o futebol brasileiro sem Ricardo Teixeira, para além de Ricardo Teixeira. Será que isso bastaria para democratizar a nossa estrutura de clubes que tem milhões de torcedores e meia dúzia de eleitores?  Ou a carcomida organização das federações estaduais, que há mais de duas décadas prestam vassalagem ao presidente da CBF? Será que isto faria com que a CBF deixasse de ser um gigolô autorizado da seleção brasileira, tornando-se uma entidade preocupada efetivamente com o futebol brasileiro? Será que isto diminuiria o preço absurdo dos ingressos, trazendo de volta as classes populares aos estádios? Será que isto reverteria a destruição da geral do Maracanã, da Coréia do Internacional e de muitas outras áreas onde o povo brasileiro criou uma forma original e carnavalesca de torcer?  Será que isto cessaria a exploração da mão de obra infantil pelas escolinhas dos clubes e a transformação destes meninos em mercadorias negociadas por empresários? Será que isto faria com que houvesse maior estímulo à prática do futebol por meninas e incentivo às mulheres que corajosamente praticam um esporte que as exclui sistematicamente? Será que isto barraria o processo de criminalização inconstitucional das torcidas organizadas? Será que isto acabaria com o lucrativo negócio dos cambistas em dias de jogos, permitido nós sabemos por quem? Será que isto retiraria de uma determinada rede de televisão o controle das tabelas e dos horários, fazendo dos jogos uma sobremesa das novelas e impondo riscos e sacrifícios aos torcedores? Será que isto faria com que torcedores fossem tratados com respeito pela polícia e pelas autoridades, ao invés de serem vistos como animais irracionais? Será que isto faria com que o potencial do futebol como instrumento educativo e de conscientização seria finalmente compreendido?

Por tudo isso, nós da ANT (Associação Brasileira dos Torcedores e Torcedoras) acreditamos que não basta o Fora Ricardo Teixeira. Fomos os primeiros a pedir a sua saída, ainda em 2010. Mas temos certeza de que é preciso ir muito além. É preciso que as “escolinhas” sejam transformadas em escolas profissionalizantes garantindo o futuro de milhares de jovens que acreditam no futebol como uma possibilidade de ascensão social. É preciso que ao menos 30% dos assentos dos novos estádios construídos com dinheiro público sejam reservados a ingressos populares, com uma fiscalização rigorosa para impedir os cambistas. É preciso que o futebol seja utilizado em campanhas pela igualdade de gêneros, contra o racismo e a homofobia. É preciso que as torcidas organizadas sejam entendidas como parte importante da cultura do futebol brasileiro, embora deva haver tolerância zero para a violência, quando ela vier a ocorrer. É preciso que a polícia pare investigue ao invés de bater. É preciso que haja um sistema de transportes eficiente, com esquemas especiais em dias de jogos. É preciso democratizar a estrutura do futebol brasileiro de alto a baixo. É preciso ouvir os torcedores e suas associações antes de empreender mudanças. E, por último, mas não menos importante: Fora Ricardo Teixeira!

Beyond Ricardo Teixeira (Translation by Paige Battcher, USC Graduate School of Policy, Planning, and Development (USA)

Can we Imagine football without Ricardo Teixeira, beyond Ricardo Teixeira?  Will this be sufficient to democratize our Club structure that has millions of fans and half a dozen voters? Or the rotten organization of bureaucratic federations, which have provided more than two decades of servitude to the President of the CBF? Will this cause the CBF to stop being a gigolo to authorized squads, becoming an entity effectively concerned with Brazilian football?  Will this decrease the absurd price of tickets, bringing back the popular classes to stadiums? Will this roll back the destruction of the geral of the Maracanã [stadium], Coréia International and many other areas where the Brazilian people created an original way and carnival-like twist [referring to the unique seating --rather standing --of the Geral]? Will this stop the exploitation of child labor by small schools of clubs and the transformation of these boys into merchandize traded by entrepreneurs? Will this cause there to be greater stimulus to the practice of football for girls and encouragement for women who courageously practice a sport that systematically excludes them? Will this ban the process of the unconstitutional criminalization in these crooked organizations? Will this end the lucrative business of scalping [tickets] on days of games, when we know by whom [the scalpers] are allowed to operate? Will this remove control of a particular television network over the show schedules, which have been depicting the games as sweet stories [one-sided] and imposing risks and sacrifices on the fans? Will this make it so that fans are treated with respect by police and authorities, rather than being seen as irrational animals? Will this cause the potential of football as an instrument of education and awareness to be finally understood?

For all of this, we at ANT (Brazilian Association of fans [men and women]) believe that it’s not enough to oust Ricardo Teixeira. We were the first to ask for his departure, back in 2010. But we have certainty that there is a need to go much further. It is necessary that the "football schools" are transformed into professional vocational schools ensuring the future of thousands of young people who believe in football as a possibility of social mobility. It is necessary that at least 30% of the seats of the new stadiums built with public funds are reserved for popular tickets [affordable and unrestrictive], with close monitoring to prevent scalpers. We need football to be utilized in campaigns for gender equality, and against racism and homophobia. It is necessary that fans organizations are understood as an important part of the culture of Brazilian soccer, although there should be zero tolerance for violence, when it occurs. It is necessary for police to stop to investigate instead of striking back. It is necessary to have an efficient system of transportation, with special arrangements on match days. There needs to be a democratization of Brazilian football from top to bottom. We must listen to the fans and their associations before undertaking changes. And last but not least: Oust Ricardo Teixeira!

Marcos Alvito é historiador e antropólogo, professor da UFF e membro da ANT (Associação Nacional dos Torcedores e Torcedoras)

Here we go again, de novo

Olympics, Olympics, Olympics. Copa, Copa, Copa. Rio 2016, Brazil 2014, Olimpiada, Brazil 2014, 2014 Brasil, World Cup FIFA,Mundial da FIFA, FIFA, FI-FA-FO-DA, FeeFã, Olympics, Olympics, ParaOlympics. O-limp-ics. Shout it from the rooftops, sing it in a taxi, whisper it while making love because EVERYTHING for now and forever is about the bloody mega-events: economy, politics, city planning [sic], health care, transparency, security[sic], media, and the pqp. But, if you happen to be whispering these sweet nothings into the hairy ears of Carlos Nuzman, Ricardo Teixeira, Jerome Valcke or their lawyers you are subject to criminal proceedings for copyright violation (and bad taste).

The “Law of the Cup” (LdC) emerged from its black box into the light of day this week, irritating everyone except the ruling party panderers. There are a number of items that are particularly noxious:

Chapter 2, Section 1 of the LdC deals with the protection and exploration of commercial rights for the Confederations’ and World Cup. The National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) is the target of the law as their existing statutes have to be bent over to FeeFã's whispering will.

In Article 5.1.1, the INPI will not require that FeeFã prove that a given item is associated with their events. This will allow just about any visual or textual reference to come under the aegis of copyright protection statutes, thereby eliminating the possibility of non-associated businesses and vendors to make money.  Thus, using the “Brazil 2014” in any context could be considered a violation. Imagine a tourist agency’s ad: “Come to Brazil in 2014”. Illegal. Rio Copa, illegal.  In article 10 of the same section,  FeeFã  will not have to pay any money to INPI regarding the processing of claims they make.

Section 2 dealing with “areas of restricted commerce and access routes” is the shortest and perhaps most worrying. All levels of Brazilian government will assure that FIFA is granted the exclusive right to sell everything in the “official event locations, their immediacies, and in the principal access routes.” Hmm. Let’s suppose that some lefty anarchist wants to take the Metrô instead of driving to the Maracanã to see a World Cup match. That means that every road leading to all of the Metrô stations in the city becomes a principal access route and that FeeFã could tell the city to police all of those routes for non-official commerce.  What would happen to you if you decided to set up a t-shirt stand? Section 4 details your fate: three months to one year in prison or a fine. This is nothing short of the privatization of public space that is intended to maximize profits for FeeFã and their FeeFiliates.

So far, so bad, but nothing terribly surprising.

One of the elements that got Romário, yes Romário of the 1994 world cup winning side and now a federal deputy, up in a huff was the inclusion of a clause that would allow all levels of government to declare holidays during game days. The Rio de Janeiro state government has already altered the school calendar for 2014 to have the winter break occur during the World Cup. Now, any city can claim a holiday because a football game is going to happen. This is to reduce the inevitable traffic problems because the transportation projects are clearly not going to be finished on time,or as Romário said, "this will put makeup on the problems that we are going to have." More on that later. I personally think it’s great and that these special holidays will really generate some serious cross-cultural understanding. For example, the fine, yet perhaps sheltered, citizens of Cuiabá will have a holiday to celebrate the scintillating match between Ukraine and Cameroon, giving everyone a full day to find these places on a map. Jamaica x South Korea in Natal…feriado!  Paraguay x Norway in Salvador…feriado! All of the Brazil games...5 national holidays in one month! Brilliant!

The freebies of the LdC are extensive. We know that the stadiums are all built with public money and that they get handed over to FeeFã for months. But FeeFã will also get free secutiry, health and medical services (read: termas), vigilância sanitaria (whatever that is), and will also slide through customs and immigration.

Article 8 describes in the most minimal details the development of a separate court system to process FIFA’s legal needs. Similar to the military tribunals in Guantanamo or Iraq, these will process and judge cases specifically related to FeeFã’s occupation of the country.

Chapter Three, Article 26, XI gives possible good news for those who decide to leave your conscience at home, overcome the global financial downturn and spend ten thousand dollars on a two week trip: “spectators who posses tickets…and individuals who can demonstrate official involvement with the events…considering a valid passport sufficient for the visa” will “have a visa issued without any restriction to nationality, race or creed.” This could mean that some visa fees will be waved, or not, I’m not sure and neither is anyone else.

Enough about the LdC. It’s more or less what we expected and somewhat less than FeeFã wanted. Next up, the strikes, increases in costs, and organizational nightmares for the Oh-limp-ics.