Media alarms about Zika make it easy to overlook persistent concerns about Brazil’s sewage-infested bays and lagoons, which expose locals, and will expose Olympic athletes, to MRSA and all kinds of other waterborne viruses.
(“Zika Virus: God Help the Children; Save the Olympics,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 3, 2016)
The stress of training for the Olympics is unnerving enough; therefore, exogenous worries about viruses must make that training a nightmare.
Add to this an unfolding saga of political corruption, which threatens to render the Olympics a frivolous sideshow. Then factor in the media covering this saga with such biased fervor, their reports seem intended more to incite than inform.
This is the untenable state of play as athletes train for the Rio 2016 Olympics, which are scheduled to get underway in a few months.
A defiant [President] Dilma Rousseff has insisted that there is no legal justification for her impeachment and warned that any attempt to remove her from power illegally would leave lasting scars on Brazilian democracy…
Huge anti-government protests that have shaken the country in recent weeks as revelations over the country’s worst-ever corruption scandal add momentum to an impeachment process that began in December.
The president’s attempt to appoint her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to cabinet last week – in what critics argue is a move to shield him from prosecution – added to widespread public outrage at politicians’ impunity and prompted calls for Rousseff’s resignation.
(London Guardian, March 24, 2016)
Mind you, Brazil is the banana republic whose leader, the allegedly corrupt Rousseff, cited reports about NSA spying when she rejected President Obama’s invitation for a state visit – complete with White House pomp and ceremony. Here, in part, is how I ridiculed her patently disingenuous snub:
Canceling a state visit to Washington smacks of a triumph of political posturing for her next election over political performance for the annals of history.
Not to mention that, if an Edward Snowden from any of the countries now hurling ethical indignation at the United States were to commit a similar betrayal, the world would find that they were/are doing the same thing; hence my July 2, 2013 commentary ‘I Spy, You Spy, We All Spy.’
(“I Said Putin Would Hand Snowden Over. I Was Wrong,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 23, 2013)
Sure enough, just months later, the New York Times treated the world to this bit of schadenfreude:
Brazil’s government acknowledged on Monday that its top intelligence agency had spied on diplomatic targets from countries including the United States, Iran and Russia, putting the Brazilian authorities in the uncomfortable position of defending their own surveillance practices after repeatedly criticizing American spying operations.
(November 4, 2013)
I piled on with “Germans Exposed as Spying Hypocrites, Others Will Too,” August 20, 2014. But I digress.
With respect to the allegations of corruption, I suspect Rousseff and Lula are as guilty as sin. Notably, though, their names have not been flagged in the “Panama Papers.” This suggests that, unlike President Mauricio Macri of Argentina and his predecessor, Cristina de Kirchner, they chose a more Anglo tax haven to launder their ill-gotten gains.
But the chaos in Brazil is not as black and white (or poor vs. rich) as it might seem; not least because unseen hands have been stirring it up for years. Those hands belong to corporate titans, media barons, and white elites who want to discredit anti-poverty programs, which Lula and Rousseff’s Worker’s Party (PT) has been implementing to help the poor, who are mostly black/mixed.
In fact, this chaos is not unlike that which unfolded in Haiti during the 1990s. The unseen hands back then belonged to (American) saboteurs and white/mulatto elites (aka Group of 184) who wanted to discredit similar programs, which President Aristide’s Lavalas Party was implementing to help the poor, who are mostly black. Alas, with respect to allegations of corruption, I suspect Aristide was as guilty as sin too. (I commented on the Haitian chaos in “What to Make of Last Week Elections in Haiti,” February 13, 2006, and “Aristide Returns to Haiti,” March 22, 2011.)
With respect to preparations to host this Summer Olympics, the IOC will work with local officials to ensure that Rio is ready in every respect, despite the political chaos and environmental hazards. I recall all too well the stress and worry that attended preparations for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Yet FIFA worked with local officials to ensure that Brazil was ready in every respect, despite the political chaos back then.
More to the point, I am convinced that neither the Zika virus nor political chaos will scare any patriotic contender away from the Rio 2016 Olympics.
So, let the Games begin!
Related commentaries:
Zika…
Snowden…
Panama papers…
Haiti…
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