Of course you point out a major concern of mine regarding the
pollution of worthy, fun events being corrupted by Greed.
Have you noticed how the professional teams stadiums have taken on the
names of Corporations, even though most of them were built with tax
dollars, and were built on land formerly occupied by low income
housing? When the 1962 World's Fair came to Seattle, the "City
Fathers" looked about and decided this would be a wonderful
opportunity to clear out a large section of low income and working
class housing. There was no effort to relocate the folks occupying
the homes and apartments. Of course with the coming event and the
shrinking of available housing, rents edged upward. Today the city is
replacing the old low income housing developments with a mixture of
low income, middle income and higher income units. This means that
many of the families who could barely afford the Project Prices, have
nowhere to go. Certainly not to Section 8. Section 8 has no
openings. But there are lots of overpasses...
So in this fucked up world I live in, my mind goes into a narrow focus
and I enjoy the excitement of the Olympic participants, knowing full
well that their very popularity will cause Greed to send in His army
of corporate goons.
Back before my time, most sporting events were done by ammeters,
groups of local fellows, some from the town and some from the mines or
factories, pitting themselves against one another as family and
friends gathered with picnic baskets, to watch. A golden opportunity
to be exploited by Greed. And look at where our fun and relaxation
has come to.
Little children, who once played a game for the fun of it, now dream
of becoming filthy rich and gloriously famous because of their great
talent. They are supposed to be playing a team sport, but they are
doing everything to be a standout star. Greed has made certain that
Team Work is not desirable.
It has become so corrupted that a team like the Seattle Sea hawks are
not owned by Seattle, nor do most of the players come from Seattle,
and it is only by accident if any of the coaches or management come
from Seattle. Even the stadium's name is paid for by a corporation.
The land for the stadium was condemned and bought with our tax
dollars, then more tax dollars to build the facility to be given over
to "Our Team" to play in. And for our generosity we get to pay rip
off prices to sit in very uncomfortable seats and pay unreal prices
for a hot dog and a cup of beer. By the way, as much as I've enjoyed
baseball over the years, and as many Spring Training games we've
attended in Arizona, I have never set foot in the new Mariner's
baseball park, or the Sea Hawk's stadium. But we do get out to watch
our grandchildren's soccer games, played on scruffy fields at the
public parks. So far no corporation has come slinking around
corrupting the children. But that day is coming.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/11/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wouldn't it be lovely if the athletes could play their hearts out without
being used as pawns for billionaires to make gobs of money and in the
process, move poor people out of their homes, arrest those who are
considered unsightly, and for countries to use money needed for public
services in order to build props and hire security for the Olympics, which
is needed for infrastructure, schools, and medical facilities?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2016 12:27 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Brazil's Olympic Calamity
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 isthe streets.
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
This was obvious as the Olympic torch made its way toward theTokyo 2020.”
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
Vila Autódromo is one favela community that found itself in front ofhelicopter circled overhead.
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
When the protest transformed into a street march, cops created a tightto town.”
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
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valid.
Rio, Brazil. (photo: Jules Boykoff/Jacobin)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/olympics-protests-rio-temer-coup-br
azil/h
ttps://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/olympics-protests-rio-temer-coup-bra
zil/
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
This was obvious as the Olympic torch made its way toward theTokyo 2020.”
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
Vila Autódromo is one favela community that found itself in front ofhelicopter circled overhead.
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
When the protest transformed into a street march, cops created a tightto town.”
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
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
