ThomasGOAL
Retired Footballer
- 15 March 2003
Great game by Japan versus ultra realistic Italy
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Are you talking about these riots?What kind of news you guys are getting outside of Brazil?
I wanna know, cause some friends of mine are all speculating how the foreigners are seeing all this, I wanna know from some of you if you don't mind.
Are you getting only football related stuff?
Julio Cesar's wife too.or about the fact that the spanish national team were robbed??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/20/brazil-saying-dont-want-costly-olympicsOn Tuesday evening a loud noise engulfed Parliament Square: a demonstration of flag-waving Brazilians. I asked one of them what he was protesting. It was, he said, the waste of money on the Olympics. I told him he was in the right city but the wrong year.
Here we go again. Brazil has been bamboozled into blowing $13bn on next year's football World Cup, and then on a similar sum to be later extorted by the International Olympic Committee to host the 2016 Games. Brazil's leftwing leader, Dilma Rousseff, was bequeathed the games by her populist predecessor, Lula da Silva. She has desperately tried to side with the protesters, but she is trapped by the oligarchs of Fifa and the IOC.
Brazil's citizens are being hit with higher bus fares and massive claims on health and welfare budgets. Up to half a million people may take to the streets this weekend to complain of "first world stadiums, third world schools". What is impressive about the demonstrators is that they appear not to be against sport as such, but against the extravagance of their staging. They are talking the language of priorities.
The World Cup is an ongoing scandal run by Fifa's unsackable boss, Sepp Blatter, on the back of ticket and television sales and soccer hysteria. Having bled the Brazilian exchequer of billions for new stadiums, he has the cheek to plead with demonstrators that "they should not use football to make their demands heard". Why not? Blatter uses football to make his demands heard.
The Olympics are likewise sold by the IOC to star-struck national leaders as offering glory for political gain. Their purpose-built stadiums, luxurious facilities, lunatic security and lavish hospitality are senseless, yet are backed by construction and security lobbies and a chorus of chauvinist public relations. If the cost is bankruptcy, as in Montreal and Athens, too bad. The golden caravan can move on to trap some new victim.
The World Cup and the Olympics are television events that could be held at much less expense and ballyhoo in one place. As it is, host nations are deluged with promises of "legacy return" that everyone knows are rubbish. Costs escalate to an extent that would see most managers in handcuffs, but gain bonuses and knighthoods for Olympic organisers.
Sport is not alone in this addiction to the jamboree. The London Olympics last year morphed into politics, as diplomacy, culture and trade were conflated in an outpouring of nonsensical rhetoric about £13bn in contracts. A summit used to be a meeting ad hoc to resolve a crisis in world affairs. It is now a Field of Cloth of Gold, a continuous round of hospitality, rest and recuperation, flattering the vanity of world leaders.
This week's G8 shindig in Northern Ireland was pointless – a night and two days on a bleak Irish lough at a cost to taxpayer of £60m and a deployment of 1,000 policemen per delegate. It was held in Fermanagh to be as far as possible from demonstrators and "real people". The sole outcome was modest progress on tax avoidance, but that cannot have required two days in Fermanagh. Could they not have used Skype?
The survival of the G8 is extraordinary, based on the pretence that the second world war protagonists are still major world powers. When Vladimir Putin refused to attend the 2012 summit in Washington, there were hopes that it might disappear. Putin was back this week, though his face suggested he regrets it.
In his iconoclastic study of postwar summits, David Reynolds remarked that they are based on hope over experience. Most are either pointless or disastrous. Reynolds compared Tony Blair's Iraq meeting with George Bush in January 2003 with Chamberlain and Munich. Their high point was during the cold war, yet it is only since then that summits have become fixed in the political year. David Cameron's diary is crammed with G8s, G20s, UN, EU and Commonwealth conclaves. The elephantine G20 has become a carnival of obsessive security. The 2012 gathering in Toronto was newsworthy only for a policing bill close to $1bn for two days. It did nothing for the poor but devastated the local economy for a year.
Power craves authenticity. On his way back from the G8 to America, President Obama stood in Berlin at (or near) the Brandenburg Gate where Kennedy delivered his freedom address 50 years ago. A special stadium had to be built for him, and a wall of bullet-proof glass. He gave a hand-picked audience a welter of platitudes and went home.
Technology has moved on since 1963. Obama could have copied Kennedy on Facebook. Yet he had to be in Berlin in person, as he was in Ulster in person. The whole thing could have been staged for television, but television needs some contact with reality. Electronics can create these events and disseminate them. But nothing can replace the chemistry of the live presence.
Futurologists of the internet used to claim that electronics would render obsolete such sporting, political, even musical events. Human avatars would cruise cyberspace and engage with their audiences at the touch of a button. Leaders would communicate with each other from their desks in real time on giant screens. Contact would be digitised. We could experience each other's presence without the need for flesh-and-blood exchange. There would be huge savings in plane tickets.
This ignores the yearning of all people, leaders and led, rich and poor, to feel involved, to participate in some degree in a live experience. Nations want to be visited by political, sporting or artistic celebrities. They want football heroes, racing cars and three tenors on their soil. Leaders crave the status of "hosting" fellow leaders, of standing side-by-side with power. It is not the same on the web.
To this quest for authenticity Brazil's demonstrators offer a corrective. They point to its cost. The addiction to "eventism" can be so potent, so demanding of security and so expensive as to defy restraint. London's £9bn extravaganza was not necessary to host an international athletics show. It should have been the last such display of conspicuous consumption by the rich in the face of the poor. Yet Rio de Janeiro is now saddled with not one extravaganza but two.
So congratulations to Brazilians for saying what Britain last year lacked the guts to say: that sometimes enough is enough. If I were Blatter and his henchmen, I would get out of town fast.
actually u should be the one sharing your insight on the matter with usI'm talking about nothing specific guys, cause I don't want to influence the answers.
Just keep me showing stuff like these posts 3 above.
And, if you don't mind, give me opinions of what is your vision of the Brazil scenario.
I promise I won't judge or share anything with anybody else in particular. Some people around evo-web know I'm an open minded guy.
I just want information to make my own opinion.
Thanks in advance, I really appreciate it.
actually u should be the one sharing your insight on the matter with us
anyway the brazilian protests are definitely well covered on italian news (well, they're covered a lot, i can't tell if they're also covered well).
last updates report the first death (wich is crazy imo, because considering how long this crisis has been going on, the sheer size of this protest, the unbelievable number of people who are marching down the streets, i would have expected much more than just 1 casualty by now). i have to say 2 things scare me the most about this situation.
the first one is the fact that apparently the government has no idea how to handle this situation.... wich is sadly ironic, as when u look back at brazil's loudests protests over the last 20 years, the PT was always leading the vanguard (i guess it sucks to be "on the other side" for once).
the 2nd thing that scares me is the lack of direction of the whole movement. now that the free pass movement stepped back, it seems like this enormous wave of discontent has not a guidance anymore.
i do understand this was always about more than just the bus fare, that this situation has been building up for years and that right now there are many battles brazilians would like to fight.... but u gotta pick one. this movement needs direction, a common purpose (and i mean something more specific than a generic #mudabrasil).
u need leadership in order to organise this anger and discontent into specific demands. and u need to make specific demands if u want this situation to have a happy ending.
i have a feeling the government right now is desperate to negotiate, but from what i hear, there are no reliable interlocutors and no specific demands.... if this instability keeps going on for much longer and the government is left with no interlocutors to negotiate a peace.... then their only way out will be to "force peace" by stepping up their response...... and u certainly don't want that to happen.
my concern is that this wave of discontent might be too widespread now, to be "organised" in any way. is there someone charismatic enough to lead this "rebellion" and negotiate with the government on behalf of protesters? i mean someone who can pose as a reliable interlocutor, make clear and specific demands and then call the heat off, once those demands are met.
what can u tell us about what's going on?
Sorry for my curiosity, but you have seen it with own eyes?I think Venezuela, is much worse... on any given day a police road block stops and robs you in day light!!!! Now, that Chavez`s family took most of the money and head out of dodge. The next Dictator awaits
Maybe they should hold the next Copa América.
Sorry for my curiosity, but you have seen it with own eyes?
Okay, agree, thanks you for evidence.
yep. actually it's amazing the situation didn't degenerate already. theese huge crowds are usually very tempting for black block, anarchists and such, as theese sort of situations allow them to unleash their frustrations and cause destruction with impunity.Actually your view of the situation is pretty much mine as well, thanks to everybody that answered too, I could see the international media is doing a decent, not to say good job.
This is a very dangerous period for Brazil's fate now, since the protests can't figure out a solid reason, and most people are misinformed about the law and what can or can not be done. Just mad at random and non sense causes.
This is when people with the wrong intentions take advantage.
however, given italy's current state, tomorrow's game should be a walk in the park for you lot.
sorry for the ot. sauce is all at fault.
yep. actually it's amazing the situation didn't degenerate already. theese huge crowds are usually very tempting for black block, anarchists and such, as theese sort of situations allow them to unleash their frustrations and cause destruction with impunity.
so far instead brazil seems to be giving proof of amazing self restraint (on both sides; the protesters and the authorities).
anyway, getting back on topic....
how do u feel about this brazil team? how do brazilian people rate their current national team?
to be honest, i haven't been very impressed (although the ingredients are all there; some great players, a great coach, the right mixture of experience and youth).
however, given italy's current state, tomorrow's game should be a walk in the park for you lot.
leaving aside the evident form issue, de rossi is suspended and pirlo is injured...
... just when u think things couldn't possibly get worse