Back in my sighted life I always took in as much of the Olympics as I
was able, what with working and family. But for many years in my life
as a blind man, I have paid little attention to the very visual
events.
This year my wife and her sister are busy recording great gobs of the
Olympics and viewing them into the wee hours of the night. Both were
very athletic in their youth, and are big time supporters of women's
events. And despite my feelings about the over production, over
commercialization that has taken over this world-wide ammeter event, I
have to say that it is so very refreshing to hear the youthful
enthusiasm and exuberance of these young men and women. I marvel that
there are still such decent sounding people growing up among this crab
grass called World Politics. I watched/listened to the American
gymnasts as they laughed and shouted upon winning the Gold. I
actually had a silly grin on my face, and a tear of joy for them in my
eye.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/10/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
David Zirin's Brazil's Dance With The Devil is on Bookshare. It is
fascinating and disturbing reading. Thanks to whoever it was, on this list,
who mentioned it.
Miriam
Boykoff writes: "It might not be captured on primetime Olympic coverage,
but
Brazilians are welcoming the Games with mass protest."
Rio, Brazil. (photo: Jules Boykoff/Jacobin)
Brazil's Olympic Calamity
By Jules Boykoff, Jacobin
10 August 16
It might not be captured on primetime Olympic coverage, but Brazilians are
welcoming the Games with mass protest.
When Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer announced the opening of the
2016 Rio Summer Olympics on Friday, he was met with boos. Speaking as fast
as a voiceover at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial, it was an awkward
scene. The choreographers of the ceremony launched fireworks to mask the
crowd’s disdain, but discontent with the Olympics extends far beyond
Maracanã Stadium. While smiley-faced Games-goers fill the Olympic suites,
thousands of Brazilians are taking to the streets.
This was obvious as the Olympic torch made its way toward the ceremony. In
Angra dos Reis, protesters even managed to extinguish the flame, forcing
torchbearers to scurry to safer havens in a nearby van. In Duque de Caixas,
just north of Rio, demonstrators pelted torchbearers with stones before
cops
responded with rubber bullets and pepper spray.
Once the torch arrived in Rio, protesters came out in droves. So did the
police, who used tear gas and stun grenades to slice a route for it to
pass.
When the torch whisked past me at Praça Mauá, I could barely see it behind
a
wall of military police.
One torchbearer, Tarcisio Carlo Rodrigues Gomes, even used his moment in
the
spotlight to protest. After finishing his shift, he yanked down his shorts,
revealing leopard-print underwear and the words “Fora Temer” (“Temer Out”)
scrawled on his butt cheeks in bright white paint.
“Fora Temer” was the rallying cry of an enormous mobilization along
Copacabana Beach on August 5, the morning of the opening ceremony. Brazil’s
president is extremely unpopular in Brazil, with one recent poll putting
his
approval rating at 11 percent.
As Glenn Greenwald and Eric Lau recently pointed out in the Intercept,
Temer
is accused of a staggering array of bribery schemes — he couldn’t run for
president even if he wanted to, thanks to the recent ban he received for
violating campaign finance laws.
Protesters along Copacabana highlighted all this and more. Unions, workers,
students, pensioners, feminist organizations, housing activists, indigenous
peoples, and anti-Olympics stalwarts joined forces to create a massive
throng that pulsed with creativity. The protest, which drew fifteen
thousand
people, was coordinated by worker and leftist groups, including Brasil
Popular, Esquerda Socialista, and Povo Sem Medo.
The mood was festive. A small orchestra played a version of “Carmina
Burana”
with uproarious “Fora Temer” lyrics. Activists from the Comitê Popular da
Copa e das Olimpíadas (The Popular Committee of the World Cup and
Olympics),
who have long been protesting against the mega-event machine, carried a
banner reading “#CalamidadeOlímpica” (“#OlympicCalamity”). The Corrente
Socialista dos Trabalhadores, a socialist workers’ group, wielded a sign
that read, “Não a Olimpíadas” (“No to the Olympics”).
Many activists connected the Olympic dots between the wider political
crisis
and the Olympic Games. Some wore t-shirts bearing the Olympic rings filled
in by the letters G-O-L-P-E (C-O-U-P). Numerous flags read “Fora Temer”
with
the Olympic rings standing in for the “o” on “Fora.”
One man held a cardboard sign with the handwritten phrases “Rio2016 Coup /
We’re Not Happy / Fora Temer” written on it. Another activist walked around
with homemade Olympic rings connected with metal wiring featuring a photo
of
Temer and the moniker “golpista.” At one point protesters took over the
site
of the official Olympic rings on Copacabana Beach, snapping photographs
with
their “Fora Temer” signs in hand while Olympic tourists stood by in
bewilderment.
Other activists seized the Olympic moment, writing signs in English for the
global media to read. One said, “We don’t want a torch / We want out
homes!”
The lack of housing in Rio, as well as the brass-knuckle evictions that the
Games galvanized, were major themes. On the beach, protesters from Jogos da
Exclusão (Exclusion Games) set up a shrine highlighting displacement, with
messaging in both Portuguese and English.
Standing nearby, one demonstrator told me it was ironic that while the team
of Olympic refugee athletes was being widely celebrated, the Rio Games had
created numerous internal refugees, displaced in the name of five-ring
profit-making.
Later, as the opening ceremony unfolded, Bloomberg journalist Tariq Panja
put a fine point on it, tweeting: “Perhaps the former residents of Vila
Autodromo will be invited to join the Olympic Refugee Team at Tokyo 2020.”
Vila Autódromo is one favela community that found itself in front of the
Olympic steamroller.
The afternoon brought another sizable mobilization, this one more focused
on
the Olympics under the banner Jogos da Exclusão. Around a thousand
activists
gathered at Praça Sáenz Peña, located close to the Maracanã. During the
2014
World Cup final, the same square was the site of brutal police repression
of
protesters who raised questions about hosting the world’s soccer jamboree
on
the public dime.
Urban geographer Chris Gaffney attended both mobilizations. Crystallizing a
critique bubbling through the afternoon protest, he told me, “As Rio is
glittering before the world, it has handed over the city to the
International Olympic Committee [IOC] and private interests at the expense
of taking care of the basic needs of the population.” He added, “The
Exclusion Games protest was a clear note in a cacophonic symphony of
destruction that has defined Rio’s mega-event preparations over the past
decade.”
Whereas the police presence at the Fora Temer protest was relatively light,
it was unmistakably intense in the afternoon event. Emerging from the metro
station and into the praça, I was met with a wall of police decked out in
riot gear. Periodically they would move about in lockstep formation, an arm
latched to the shoulder of the cop in front of them. Other security
officials encircled the square. Later, busloads of additional riot police
arrived. At one point a police helicopter circled overhead.
When the protest transformed into a street march, cops created a tight
envelope around the marchers, keeping a special eye on activists using
black-bloc tactics, who at one point burned a flag bearing the Olympic
rings. Halfway through the march, a squadron appeared on horses, channeling
the flow of the protest march.
Police presence in Brazil is no trivial matter. Amnesty International
recently reported that in the months leading up to the Games, Rio de
Janeiro
has seen a 103 percent increase in police killings. Since Rio was awarded
the Games back in 2009, security officials in have killed more than 2,600
people. Ahead of the Games, activists delivered a strong message to Rio
organizers, placing forty body bags on their front stoop, reflecting the
number of people killed by police in May alone.
A majority of the victims of police violence are young cariocas of color.
Amnesty International found that between 2010 and 2013, 79 percent of those
killed by on-duty police officers in Rio were black and 75 percent were
young, between fifteen and twenty-nine years old.
Activists taking to the streets during the opening ceremony were fully
aware
of this history. Numerous chants alluded to police violence. One massive
banner read, “Abaixo o massacre olímpico!” and then in English, “No to the
Olympic massacre!” Although some minor skirmishes emerged, and cops used
pepper spray and tear gas on protesters at Praça Afonso Pena, the march
went
relatively smoothly.
At the protest Brazilian human rights lawyer Andrea Florence told me, “The
Olympic Games promised to promote a peaceful society, social inclusion, and
human dignity. What we have seen in Rio is the complete opposite . . . The
protest highlights what happens when the Olympics come to town.”
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valid.
Rio, Brazil. (photo: Jules Boykoff/Jacobin)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/olympics-protests-rio-temer-coup-brazil/h
ttps://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/olympics-protests-rio-temer-coup-brazil/
Brazil's Olympic Calamity
By Jules Boykoff, Jacobin
10 August 16
It might not be captured on primetime Olympic coverage, but Brazilians are
welcoming the Games with mass protest.
hen Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer announced the opening of the
2016 Rio Summer Olympics on Friday, he was met with boos. Speaking as fast
as a voiceover at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial, it was an awkward
scene. The choreographers of the ceremony launched fireworks to mask the
crowd’s disdain, but discontent with the Olympics extends far beyond
Maracanã Stadium. While smiley-faced Games-goers fill the Olympic suites,
thousands of Brazilians are taking to the streets.
This was obvious as the Olympic torch made its way toward the ceremony. In
Angra dos Reis, protesters even managed to extinguish the flame, forcing
torchbearers to scurry to safer havens in a nearby van. In Duque de Caixas,
just north of Rio, demonstrators pelted torchbearers with stones before
cops
responded with rubber bullets and pepper spray.
Once the torch arrived in Rio, protesters came out in droves. So did the
police, who used tear gas and stun grenades to slice a route for it to
pass.
When the torch whisked past me at Praça Mauá, I could barely see it behind
a
wall of military police.
One torchbearer, Tarcisio Carlo Rodrigues Gomes, even used his moment in
the
spotlight to protest. After finishing his shift, he yanked down his shorts,
revealing leopard-print underwear and the words “Fora Temer” (“Temer Out”)
scrawled on his butt cheeks in bright white paint.
“Fora Temer” was the rallying cry of an enormous mobilization along
Copacabana Beach on August 5, the morning of the opening ceremony. Brazil’s
president is extremely unpopular in Brazil, with one recent poll putting
his
approval rating at 11 percent.
As Glenn Greenwald and Eric Lau recently pointed out in the Intercept,
Temer
is accused of a staggering array of bribery schemes — he couldn’t run for
president even if he wanted to, thanks to the recent ban he received for
violating campaign finance laws.
Protesters along Copacabana highlighted all this and more. Unions, workers,
students, pensioners, feminist organizations, housing activists, indigenous
peoples, and anti-Olympics stalwarts joined forces to create a massive
throng that pulsed with creativity. The protest, which drew fifteen
thousand
people, was coordinated by worker and leftist groups, including Brasil
Popular, Esquerda Socialista, and Povo Sem Medo.
The mood was festive. A small orchestra played a version of “Carmina
Burana”
with uproarious “Fora Temer” lyrics. Activists from the Comitê Popular da
Copa e das Olimpíadas (The Popular Committee of the World Cup and
Olympics),
who have long been protesting against the mega-event machine, carried a
banner reading “#CalamidadeOlímpica” (“#OlympicCalamity”). The Corrente
Socialista dos Trabalhadores, a socialist workers’ group, wielded a sign
that read, “Não a Olimpíadas” (“No to the Olympics”).
Many activists connected the Olympic dots between the wider political
crisis
and the Olympic Games. Some wore t-shirts bearing the Olympic rings filled
in by the letters G-O-L-P-E (C-O-U-P). Numerous flags read “Fora Temer”
with
the Olympic rings standing in for the “o” on “Fora.”
One man held a cardboard sign with the handwritten phrases “Rio2016 Coup /
We’re Not Happy / Fora Temer” written on it. Another activist walked around
with homemade Olympic rings connected with metal wiring featuring a photo
of
Temer and the moniker “golpista.” At one point protesters took over the
site
of the official Olympic rings on Copacabana Beach, snapping photographs
with
their “Fora Temer” signs in hand while Olympic tourists stood by in
bewilderment.
Other activists seized the Olympic moment, writing signs in English for the
global media to read. One said, “We don’t want a torch / We want out
homes!”
The lack of housing in Rio, as well as the brass-knuckle evictions that the
Games galvanized, were major themes. On the beach, protesters from Jogos da
Exclusão (Exclusion Games) set up a shrine highlighting displacement, with
messaging in both Portuguese and English.
Standing nearby, one demonstrator told me it was ironic that while the team
of Olympic refugee athletes was being widely celebrated, the Rio Games had
created numerous internal refugees, displaced in the name of five-ring
profit-making.
Later, as the opening ceremony unfolded, Bloomberg journalist Tariq Panja
put a fine point on it, tweeting: “Perhaps the former residents of Vila
Autodromo will be invited to join the Olympic Refugee Team at Tokyo 2020.”
Vila Autódromo is one favela community that found itself in front of the
Olympic steamroller.
The afternoon brought another sizable mobilization, this one more focused
on
the Olympics under the banner Jogos da Exclusão. Around a thousand
activists
gathered at Praça Sáenz Peña, located close to the Maracanã. During the
2014
World Cup final, the same square was the site of brutal police repression
of
protesters who raised questions about hosting the world’s soccer jamboree
on
the public dime.
Urban geographer Chris Gaffney attended both mobilizations. Crystallizing a
critique bubbling through the afternoon protest, he told me, “As Rio is
glittering before the world, it has handed over the city to the
International Olympic Committee [IOC] and private interests at the expense
of taking care of the basic needs of the population.” He added, “The
Exclusion Games protest was a clear note in a cacophonic symphony of
destruction that has defined Rio’s mega-event preparations over the past
decade.”
Whereas the police presence at the Fora Temer protest was relatively light,
it was unmistakably intense in the afternoon event. Emerging from the metro
station and into the praça, I was met with a wall of police decked out in
riot gear. Periodically they would move about in lockstep formation, an arm
latched to the shoulder of the cop in front of them. Other security
officials encircled the square. Later, busloads of additional riot police
arrived. At one point a police helicopter circled overhead.
When the protest transformed into a street march, cops created a tight
envelope around the marchers, keeping a special eye on activists using
black-bloc tactics, who at one point burned a flag bearing the Olympic
rings. Halfway through the march, a squadron appeared on horses, channeling
the flow of the protest march.
Police presence in Brazil is no trivial matter. Amnesty International
recently reported that in the months leading up to the Games, Rio de
Janeiro
has seen a 103 percent increase in police killings. Since Rio was awarded
the Games back in 2009, security officials in have killed more than 2,600
people. Ahead of the Games, activists delivered a strong message to Rio
organizers, placing forty body bags on their front stoop, reflecting the
number of people killed by police in May alone.
A majority of the victims of police violence are young cariocas of color.
Amnesty International found that between 2010 and 2013, 79 percent of those
killed by on-duty police officers in Rio were black and 75 percent were
young, between fifteen and twenty-nine years old.
Activists taking to the streets during the opening ceremony were fully
aware
of this history. Numerous chants alluded to police violence. One massive
banner read, “Abaixo o massacre olímpico!” and then in English, “No to the
Olympic massacre!” Although some minor skirmishes emerged, and cops used
pepper spray and tear gas on protesters at Praça Afonso Pena, the march
went
relatively smoothly.
At the protest Brazilian human rights lawyer Andrea Florence told me, “The
Olympic Games promised to promote a peaceful society, social inclusion, and
human dignity. What we have seen in Rio is the complete opposite . . . The
protest highlights what happens when the Olympics come to town.”
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
