|
 Brazilians have promoted several meetings and engaged in lots of talks trying to convince the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to vote for the city of Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Olympics. Among some illustrious Brazilians in charge of this mission were writer Paulo Coelho and soccer hero Pelé.
Very popular in Europe, the author of The Alchemist had lunch with the wives of the IOC members. After the encounter, he revealed that he made a promise in case Rio wins the dispute:
"I made the public promise that, if I am alive at the time and if you have the Games in Rio, I will go to Copacabana Beach to do a headstand, with almost 70 years, to demonstrate the transformation capacity the Games can bring to Rio," Coelho said.
And he assured them: "We are able do dream, but also to deliver," adding:
"The Olympic Games are not only sports. Pierre de Coubertin (the founder of the modern Games) devised them thinking they would be a transforming engine. 'Mens sana in corpore sano', commented the best-seller writer quoting the Latin saying for 'A healthy mind in a healthy body.'
"These Olympic Games in Rio will mean a lot in terms of sport, but also of transformation. This candidacy is the symbol of a whole continent because there were never before Games in South America," he added.
"Each Olympic ring stands for a continent and we have to get our ring. We want to show the world that we work hard, despite the fact that we are dreamers at the same time. We can overcome the hardships, we are fighters, hard working people, and finally we are here."
King Pelé had the same task as his writer countryman. He spent the whole day in the Copenhagen's hotel where the IOC members are housed. Throughout the day there was a big demand to talk to him, get his autograph and take pictures at his side.
Brazil's Sport minister, Orlando Silva, believes the strategy is working. and the message that the Olympics are going to impel the Brazilian development and transform Rio de Janeiro was understood. "The talks, the contacts with the international Olympic community increased our optimism and our enthusiasm regarding Rio de Janeiro's victory possibility."
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plagiarized president Barack Obama's winning slogan to defend Rio's candidacy during his contacts throughout Copenhagen this Thursday, October 1st.
"Yes, we can! That coming from the mouth of an American is very beautiful, but we never said that because in Brazil we were used to say that we cannot, that we are poor, as if we were inferior citizens. This time, we want to look at the world and say: "Yes, we can and we are going to hold these Olympics," Lula said.
The statement was made a day after the vice president of the Spanish Olympic Committee, José María Odriozola, said that Rio's candidacy had the worst presentation of all and was just the product of marketing and feelings.
Without naming names, Lula commented that he does not agree with campaigns based on criticism of other cities. "I do not find it ethically correct to talk badly about other cities. I want to talk well about Rio de Janeiro and proudly state that the city is ready," he told reporters.
In defense or Rio's candidacy, the president said that he is going to use Brazil's future as the big argument to make the city a winner, especially the country's economy.
"Everybody that keeps an eye on the economy knows that Brazil today is in a more favorable situation than many developed countries (...) Everybody knows the meaning of the pre-salt discovery and what this represents for the possibility of investments to improve the Brazilian infrastructure and, therefore, I can assure you that there is no country in the world today that has so much certainty about its future as Brazil," he went on.
Lula compared the number of new jobs created during the world financial crisis by Brazil and by developed countries. "While some rich countries are still experiencing a situation of very heavy unemployment, last month in Brazil we created 242,000 new formal jobs and we are going to reach 1 million this year, compared to millions of unemployed people in the European world."
The name of the city that is going to host the Olympic Games of 2016 will be announced this Friday, October 2. Rio is one of the finalists together with Tokyo (Japan), Madrid (Spain) and Chicago (United States).
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Admiration:A feeling of wonder, pleasure, approval
If each of the countries that have hosted the games in the past, earned the kind of respect and admiration that Lula is proposing would befall Brazil, than he, and all the people he has coerced into weaving this fairy tale, are truly delusional. But then I don't expect that Lula knows much about having the cart before the horse. Respect and Admiration.....They have to come FIRST.....First you are respected, and Brazil cannot be respected when it ignores treaties, and keeps children away from their parents...Justifying a crime by saying others do it, or giving it a respectable pseudo name like "custody battle" "family spat" or "domestic disagreement does not change what it is.....It's child abuse, Its inhumane, and It's a crime even in Brazil...The word spin does not earn respect....Brazil may have shot at a hog and uncovered some black gold, "texas tea" but Brazil is still no smarter, or civilized, cultured or respected than Jed, Jethro, Ellie and Grandma. You can't buy admiration, respect, or acceptance, no matter how much money or oil or pre-salt oil you have. Sure, everybody wants to be Brazil's friend now. Too bad Brazil mistakes greed that for friendship. Too bad they have mistakenly thought that envy was camaraderie. Lula thinks all you have to do is host an international event and you will have the respect of the world. Too bad the good people of Brazil believe Lula's delusion that all you need to do is host an international event, and it will change your life for the better. Ask the poor of all those other Olympic countries if their life has changed one iota. I dare say you will find one. The rich invest and prosper, the poor stay poor and ignorant. . For all of Lula's claims of what the Olympics will bring them, it won't bring respectability to a country that continues to lay blame for the world state at the feet of one "race", the blue eyed, whites, while Lula's government from the bottom to the top is corrupt as the day is long. It won't make millions of potential spectators from feeling comfortable bringing their children, especially the more press coverage this gets around the world.
I'm truly sad to see the revered author Paulo Coehello buying into the illusion and fantasy that hosting the Olympics will better life for the citizens. Self-worth is necessary, before respect can be given. Self-worth can't be transfered simply by being in a country that hosts the Olympics. But then, Lula hasn't shown himself to be introspective enough to truly understand that.Paulo, of all people should understand that