Geostadia or the Geography of the Obvious

The Center of the Universe

2012-01-19T12:37:00.000-02:00

One of the nice things about living in the Center of the Universe is that there is a continual stream of VVIPs coming through town and sometimes they stop to chat. Such was the case yesterday when the Secretary General of FIFA, Jerome Valcke, took a few hours out of his busy schedule to do some much-needed PR with the international press corps.

FIFA, as we know, has had its share of really, really bad news lately. Corruption scandals emanate from this self-styled guardian of the global game as easily as no-bid contracts to Joseph Blatter’s family. Andrew Jennings is well on top of the legal proceedings against FIFA, recording his findings at www.transparencyinsport.com. In Brazil there is a strong and growing movement to get rid of Ricardo Teixeira, erstwhile president of the CBF and the 2014 Organizing Committee. This fight is being led by the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores e Torcedoras and can be accessed at www.torcedores.org.br.

Valcke is making the rounds of politicians and cities to get a few things done: 1) get the Law of the Cup passed. This has so far taken five years and will likely take a few more months to get through congress. In play are issues dealing with financial incentives, ticket prices for the elderly, students, indigenous, and the tens of millions of Brazilians who would like to see a World Cup game but can’t afford US$50 to do so. 2) Check on the progress of stadiums and infrastructure in the host cities. 3) Get some PR work done to polish the image of an institution that is under justifiable pressure to become more transparent and to leave more lasting benefits than the mere acceleration of brutalizing regimes of accumulation.

Stadiums are massively over budget, but this should come as no surprise. Many of them will be white elephants. With maintenance costs typically running about 10% of initial construction, the public will pay for the Cup, again, in ten years. But, you say, this is what the privatization schemes are for! So the public won’t have to assume the costs! Perhaps, but as with the public private partnerships that structure Rio de Janeiro’s transportation system, the companies are guaranteed profit and have no incentive to improve service, just to make more money. As we found out in Brasilia, the privatization of stadiums will depend on attracting shows, making the interior of the stadium a shopping mall, and charging astronomical sums to see mediocre football. As I talked about last week on Faixa Livre, Rio de Janeiro’s privatization contract for the Maracanã has just been published. Come on Eike Batista! I want you to determine how I experience professional football for the next 30 years!

The following is a semi-official table showing the vertiginous increase in construction costs for the 12 World Cup stadia that will then be handed over to private interests for profit and shopping center fun.

2010-11 Data taken from UOL online on 18.01.2010. 2009 data from various sources.

Costs in millions of R$ (1.76 = 1USD)	Jan 2009	Jan 2010	Jan 2011
Itaquerão (SP)	NA	NA	890
Maracanã (RJ)	500	828	931
Arena Fonte Nova (BA)	400	592	597
Arena Amazônia (AM)	300	533	532,2
Arena Pantanal (MT)	342	597	597
Estádio Nacional (DF)	520	671	846
Estádio das Dunas (RN)	300	413	417
Castelão (CE)	300	452	518,6
Beira-Rio (RS)	378	154	290
Arena da Baixada (PR)	250	185	234
Arena Pernambuco (PE)	500	491	532
Mineirão (MG)	427	684	695

My questions to the Secretary General (I did not have a recorder, so quotes should not be taken as direct but as very accurate transcriptions from my notes):

CG: Mr. Valcke, given that the 2014 World Cup will be the most expensive in history…

JV (interrupting): More expensive than Russia?

CG: Well Russia hasn’t happened yet.

JV(irritated): Neither has Brazil.

CG: Yes, but we already know the estimated costs of the Brazilian stadiums will be more than 7 billion Reales, and that the infrastructure projects will run tens of billions more. Given that this World Cup will be more expensive to host than all other World Cups combined, even though many of the construction costs are choices made by the cities and states, does FIFA also expect to make a record profit from the event?

JV (irritated): You are confusing one thing with another. FIFA is not responsible for the construction projects. We make suggestions but do not ask for specifics. [the Anexo 19: Football Stadiums Technical Recommendations and Requirements is 125 pages long. The bidding documents published here give insight into the lack of demands made by FIFA]

Brazil

decides how many cities they want, Brazil decides what infrastructure projects they want to develop. The lack of facilities is

Brazil

’s reality, and has nothing to do with FIFA.

JV: FIFA is not a private organization; we are not in the business of making money. Decisions are made by the 208 members of the FIFA congress and all money is put back into the organization. We depend on the World Cup for 85 to 90 % of our operating budget for the next four years and with this money we run all of the other World Cups, give millions to the smaller federations who get 80% of all operating surplus…

I think we will make between US$3.3 and US$3.5 billion on the 2014 World Cup.

CG: What is FIFA doing to counter the perception that the World Cup, and in particular the stadiums, are being financed with public money and are targeting the interests of national and international business in one of the most unequal societies in the world?

JV: Most of the companies that will receive our hospitality packages are Brazilian. We have 300,000 hospitality tickets that we use which is the same number of category 4 tickets that we have reserved for the Brazilian public, so it is not fair or accurate to say that we are privileging corporations over the people. We are also giving 100,000 tickets, for free, to low income Brazilians, indigenous people and others. Tickets that are reserved for corporations but are not used will be put on sale for the public. (end).

As I have explained before, no one is ultimately responsible for what happens with the World Cup. FIFA positions itself as a kind of victim that is trying to work within a slow and opaque governmental structure in order to carry off the tournament which they claim is their principal source of revenue for the following years. The cities and states are to be blamed for the mind-bogglingly stupid projects underway but should we really accept at face value the idea that FIFA just makes “suggestions”?

FIFA cannot be blamed for the murder of the Maracanã, but they’re also not complaining about the loss of culture, the forced evictions underway to make room for parking lots, or the destruction of a global icon . Nor will they be responsible in any way for the maintenance costs of the publically funded stadia that will be privatized for more than the length of the tournament in order to maximize the profits for the tournament to which they have exclusive commercial rights. Tudo bem, if Brazil wants the World Cup, they have to play by FIFA’s rules. But this is far from “Fair Play” as FIFA has very strategically created a monopoly condition for which we can point the finger at a few Brazilians.

Is it necessary to spend R$2 billion on World Cup security? Why should Brazil be held financially responsible for damages caused by natural disasters? Doesn’t FIFA have insurance for this? What ever happened to the relatively sane idea of regionalizing the World Cup ? Now, more than 50,000 people will have to travel to Cuiabá (or Manaus, or Natal) over a day or two in order to see, for example, England vs. Cote d’Ivoire in the first round. That’s a tenth of the city’s population. Can the airports handle that volume? Will foreigners be able to use their credit cards to purchase tickets on Brazilian websites? Will there be any English language signage to facilitate the flow of people that FIFA’s publically-financed event is generating?

As Valcke rightly pointed out, the World Cup cities will not be the same during the Cup. The opening concert in Rio is anticipated to draw between one and three million people to Copacabana. No one doubts that the Brazilians can pull the stadiums together in time. That was never the question. As in South Africa, the real issues are much more profound for the two most unequal countries in the G-20.

FIFA is very clever in indentifying their responsibility frontiers, massaging the Cup into shape, making money for themselves and others, and then heading on to the next tournament. What gets left behind will become the full responsibility of the Brazilians who are now in the process of choosing their future.

Prove me Wrong

2012-01-13T19:10:00.001-02:00

Everyone caught up on their 2011 posts? Good.

I have yet to hear negative responses or evidence to the contrary to my writings @ geostadia except for one guy that said “this blog is too negative, blah, blah, blah”. This either means that my observations are accurate (if not correct) or that I have amassed so much evidence en favore of my arguments that the task of refuting them has become Herculean, Sisyphonic, Odyssesan, Olympic and Pyrrhic. There are debates to be had, however, and I hope that those who disagree with what I write take up the task of convincing me that the World Cup and Olympics are not fully part of the brutalizing machine of rapacious capital accumulation.

McDonald's. Don’t like it, haven’t eaten it in years. My grandfather used to take us boys there after a game of tennis for a milkshake and cheeseburgers. He would eat two or three ravenously while we crammed sugar-laden, highly subsidized potato and corn products (including the meat) down our pre-pubescent gullets. I am probably no worse the wear for my McDonald’s eating in my youth. That sugar high is just what I needed after running around, apparently. But to suppress the irony of McDonald’s supporting athletic competitions to show some corporate responsibility adds a twinge of sadness and despair to an already shite and contradictory state of affairs.

I’m glad that McDonald’s has some CPR programs (uh, Corporate Public Responsibility, not heavy breathing and chest pounding though they probably have those too). I don’t know if they do any good, I haven’t investigated them. I hear they’re lovely but I doubt their motivations. Where are the independent journalists and academics talking about how much good McDonald’s is doing in the world so I can more fully inform myself about this wonderful company?

I am speaking from a place of ignorance regarding the flowering of humanity that results from McDonald’s generosity but in my estimation, the world would be WAY BETTER OFF if no one ever ate another bite of McDonald’s food or slurped another dose of entrenched and misguided public policy down their throats. Go on, please, convince me otherwise. While you’re at it, tell me why the Brazilian public needs to pay for McDonald’s VIP suites, hotels, limos, stadiums, advertising platforms, etc. for the World Cup and Olympics? Tell me about all of the great jobs created, the valuable experience of working with a team in a concrete box to deliver quality service to trusted customers. Tell me about the net positive effect tens of thousands of drive thrus have and how many trees were planted in the pqp (bfe) to offset childhood diabetes.

Usain Bolt apparently ran his world record 100 and 200 times after eating Nuggets? I want some of that sauce but don’t want to play a game of chicken.

There is a great talk radio show in Rio de Janeiro called Faixa Livre. Today, 13.1.12, there was a healthy discussion about the ongoing Macaranã tragedy (again, convince me). This is the link to the program: http://www.programafaixalivre.org.br/?id=1187. In the discussion leading up to the Maraca (rip) discussion the host, Paulo Passarinho, makes some very interesting about the two pillars of

USA

foreign policy: the flexible and continual use of the military to secure its interests and the inflexibility regarding the use of the dollar as the world’s currency. The show could be a useful exercise for you Portuguese language teachers and learners looking for a listening comprehension and critical thinking exercise.

In Rio, it’s a lovely afternoon of intermittent and dramatic rain that followed a lovely sun-drenched morning. From my perch in Flamengo I can see the Niteroi-Praça XV ferrys, imagining their putrid smell of half-burnt pão-de-queijo and feeling the push of thousands of people anxious to get home. The Charitas ferry isn’t moving at all, probably waiting for an opening at the dock. Does no one ever think about expanding and improving the use of water transportation? It’s a staggering collective myopia in transportation planning fronted by incompetence at all levels of public and private administration. Nossa, só no Rio.

Next up: A VERY IMPORTANT VISIT from a VERY VERY IMPORTANT PERSON. Let’s see how the VERY DIFFICULT questions bounce off him.

End of Year Report

2011-12-21T14:08:00.000-02:00

2011 comes to an end without the promised bang of divulged documents, lawsuits, popular uprisings (though there was an excellent dossier detailing abuses), gnashing of teeth and death by papercut. Maybe at this time next year we can all get our millennial dander up as high as the notes on the Legadômetro, but for this year everything in Brazil is sliding relatively quietly into the delicious do-nothing months between xmas and Carnaval. There is no shortage of material to comment on, however, and I’ll use this last post of the year to properly shut things down.

Transportation. It’s a mess and getting messier. The city is in a permanent state of near-paralysis and has one of the most fragile transportation systems in the world. In early December, a bus caught fire in the Linha Amarela tunnel which links Barra to the Zona Norte and shut down traffic in both directions for more than three hours. There continues to be no map of the city’s bus system and one never knows when a bus is going to arrive or if it will stop to let you on. It frequently takes me an hour and a half to travel from Rio to Niterói, 3 km as the papagaio flies.

The smallest accident on the Rio-Niteroi bridge or on the perimetral clogs the city like a vegan after eating a cheesesteak. The projects underway in the Zona Portuaria have made the main transit avenues so unreliable that the ferrys have received a 50% increase in traffic. This is unfortunate because they are not equipped to handle the volume. The concessionaire, Barcas S.A., can’t manage to train pilots or maintain the boats with the inevitable result: two weeks ago a fully loaded ferry crashed full-steam ahead into the docks injuring more than a hundred people. As if to reward the company, the state government approved a massive increase in the fares. The state secretary of transportation really should be made to water-ski behind the ferry for a day and then to eat a kettle of raw Guanabara Bay mussels.

Air travel is quickly becoming the only viable means of transport in

Brazil

, even within the cities themselves. Rio’s proposed BRT lines will not attend current or future demands, nor reduce the need or desire for cars which are the principal problem. The innumerable construction projects are detonating what mobility there was. If one has the luxury to be strategic about where, when, and how one moves about the city, then bicycle is by far the best option except that one inevitably takes fantastic risks in doing so. The city just put in, for the third time, one of those bike share programs and people seem to be using them, but without a larger bike-orientated transportation plan what’s the point? Ah yes, it looks good and Barcelona does it.

The Metrô linha 4 project is taking more form and looking more and more idiotic as time goes on. There are reports that the recently opened General Osorio station will have to be closed for 8 months for reforms. Most ridiculously, in order to convince the wealthy residents of Leblon to go along with the project, those who have their garage parking eliminated during construction will have personal, public servants to park their cars, carry their groceries, and generally help out with their lives. In addition to closing multiple public spaces indefinitely, the project is going to make traveling by metro even more difficult for those who live in the Zona Sul. Why? The Trans-Oeste BRT is going to pack the new metro line full in Jardim Oceânico in Barra in the direction of the center, so that by the time the trains get to Leblon-Ipanema-Copacabana-Botafogo, they will look like sleek sardine cans.

Sport. João Havelange was forced to resign from the IOC before he was kicked out. Despite his shame, he received standing ovations at soccerex and is still viewed as some kind of cantankerous, a-political saint. He’s an embarrassment to sport and society and should be prosecuted to the full extent of national and international law. His favorite phrase had long been, “I don’t do politics, I do sport.” This rang particularly hollow when he was running around the world courting votes or when he was glad-handing with dictators. Now his favorite phrase is, “just leave me in peace.” Sorry João, let’s hope those ISL documents come out before you exit through the trapdoor. I think Nem is looking for a roommate.

Tricky Ricky Teixeira has caught some of the same bug that his ex-father in law has, and has relieved himself from various CBF and World Cup duties until the end of January. While one has to admit that he doesn’t and has never looked particularly well, the “health reasons” excuse just before incriminating documents were meant to be released is pathetic at best. The vice-president of the Piauí Football Federation has called for his imprisonment. Let’s hope that gets some legs.

The Brazilian Olympic committee decided to make the fort at the end of Urca the base for the Brazilian Olympic Team for 2016. I wonder if anyone asked the residents’ association of Urca what they thought about having their principal access to their neighborhood clogged with news trucks, security forces, athletes’ buses, VIP limos, etc. for the months leading up to and during the Olympics. Don’t want the Brazilians to arrive at their events? It would be almost as easy as shutting down the Linha Vermelha.

The gap between the best football in the world and what we see in Brazil was exposed in stark detail in Barcelona’s 4-0 thrashing of Santos in the final of the World Club Championship. Brazilian football is decades behind in management practices and mired in the export-minded political economy of a banana republic. Barcelona’s total football is not just about football, but about the creation of a life-world for its players. While the players are perhaps savagely competitive, there is an educational and social structure at Barcelona that does not throw their injured or less-talented prospects back into the murky waters of the labor-market like so many ill-caught fish. Of course F.C. Barcelona has its problems, but one cannot argue with the beauty and dynamism of what they produce on the field. The most disappointing part of the game was seeing the line of FIFA safados handing out the trophies. A gaggle of corpulent, self-important stuffed shirts, smirking all the way to the bank. You too, Platini, shame on you.

Model of Brasilia's LEED certified stadium

The Cup. This is the official line of thinking regarding the stadium projects. 1) Stadiums are not viable economic projects because ticket prices in Brazil are too low, therefore, 2) The “only way” to sustain stadiums is through international shows and increased points of sale, turning fans into clients and stadia into shopping malls 3) though being over built for the World Cup, don’t worry, the stadiums are now being planned for use after the events to guarantee their economic viability 4) the stadium projects should be constructed to attain the highest possible LEED certification to highlight Brazil’s commitment to “sustainable development” (even though Brazil doesn’t have a company that manufactures the technology required to attain the certification and all of the contracts will have to go to foreign companies) 5) the most important thing that the stadiums will do will be to project the city to international audiences therefore the cost isn’t entirely relevant. Booooooo, hisssss. How are those stadia in South Africa doing? Useless. White. Elephants. Unless, of course, you believe the NYTimes which had the gall to show the Green Point stadium in Cape Town as a symbol of that city’s creative economy. Bullocks, bullocks, bullocks.

Brasilia's Mane Garrincha taking form

The naming of Ronaldo Fenômeno as the mouth piece of the World Cup is meant to attract investments and divert attention. As was to be expected, Ronaldo knows how to use his foot, putting it squarely in his mouth by saying “You host a World Cup with stadiums, not hospitals”. Nice one. Actually, Ronaldo, hospitals are a major component of a World Cup, but let’s leave that for next year.

The Law of the Cup that has been such a bone of contention between FIFA, the federal government, and civil society was not voted on, again. The details of the law are of interest to those of us working on the structure of the event, and once it is passed we’ll give it a good look and analyze the conflicts, delays, and players that brought it into being. For now, FIFA is going to have a big, empty stocking that may not be filled with as much money as it would like in 2014. Does anyone actually think that FIFA needs more money or that it is an effective steward of football? Que se vayan todos.

Brasilia's aborted VLT project

After a visit to Brasilia, I was both relieved and saddened to learn that Rio de Janeiro is not the only city that is going through some major problems with transportation, stadium construction, corruption, and incompetence. The World Cup organizing committee in Brasilia is going to put a few leisure-oriented bike paths along the axis monumental but will put the bike racks about a kilometer away from the stadium, in the middle of a grass-covered open space. The proposed light rail system linking the airport to the stadium (more or less) went ahead without approval, destroying an existing traffic interchange. There are no plans to either fix the interchange or to complete the rail project, which was very, very poorly designed in the first place. As I wrote earlier this year, the World Cup was born in obscurity, is being run out of a black box, and is going to end up in the courts. It will be a hell of a party.

UPPs, Milicias, Traficantes, oh my. Rocinha and Vidigal were occupied / pacified without so much as a “by your leave”. As ever, real-estate has boomed and people are trying to make sense of the new dynamics. The circumstances under which these two critical neighborhoods were occupied were strange in the extreme. It appeared as if the either the entire architecture of the drug trade in the Zona Sul was dominated by one person (Nem) and that he had a critical, unimaginable security and information meltdown or that the new boss is just like the old boss but with weapons and training paid for with public money. The security situation in Rio continues to boggle my mind. It’s big business, unevenly distributed, unequally applied, and a determining factor in just about everything that happens in the city. The milicias in the Zona Oeste continue to have a fantastic and phantasmagoric influence on the city and state governments, whose levels of depravity, arrogance, and misanthropy are reaching ever greater heights. It’s not safe to sit around in public space where the UPPs are active. There are always fingers on high-caliber triggers. This link is to a story of a man shot while in playing samba in Mangueira, just across from the Maracanã.

Meanwhile and perhaps encouraged by the marketing of the illusion of security, record numbers of foreign tourists are coming to

Brazil

. How many? 7 million in 2011. That is around 600,000 a month, exactly the number that is expected for the 2014 World Cup. How is it again that the World Cup is going to increase Brazil’s tourist numbers and establish tourism as the ever expanding base for urban economies? It’s not and it won’t. As I have repeated time and time again, international tourism in Brazil is not a major source of revenue or employment. 7 million tourists is only slightly more than the Dominican Republic receives. This is an insanely expensive country, there is little or no tourist information (for instance, the last time I came through Galeão in Rio the only English language tourist information was produced by “Rio for Partiers”), and mono-lingual gringos are going to have a tough go of it. Not to say that Brazil isn’t wonderful or that tourists shouldn’t come, just that it is neither easy nor cheap nor close to the major centers from which international tourists depart.

Brazil

, the myth of emergence. Brazil’s actual economic growth has not been that dynamic in the last few years. While it is true that the economy has expanded the state controls on the economy are so great and the protectionist measures so strong that the opening of Brazilian markets that would really cause the economy to take off simply hasn’t happened. There is little to no competition in the Brazilian marketplace for essential goods and services, which makes quality low, prices high, and service terrible. The re-distribution of income that supposedly took place under Lula via the Bolsa Familia program appears to have been a token gesture that has had the very positive effect of removing millions from absolute poverty and pushing them into the lower classes or into plain ol’ poverty. Indeed, there has been a general improvement on the national scale towards a more equitable distribution of income, but Brazil remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. This was highleghted by the release of the IBGE report detailing the increase in the percentage of Brazilians living in favelas and informal settlements. Rio de Janeiro, sadly, has been the one state in Brazil that has seen income disparity increase over the last ten years and is the city with the highest percentage and overall numbers of people in favleas. One well-known effect of these dang mega-events (that don’t exist, remember) is that they increase inequality while brining in a large, sophisticated, and permanent military apparatus that acts to preserve and re-enforce the accumulation of capital in its various guises. The more we can pull back the curtain, open the black boxes, say nay to the Trojan horse, and demand information, the more likely it will be that these events can be used as opportunities to propose and impose alternatives to the current paradigm.

Felizes festas e nos veremos em 2012!

end of year experiment

2011-12-12T14:40:00.001-02:00

Letters from Rio

I went, for the first time, to Vidigal. Vidigal is a neighborhood perched on a lovely slab of granite rising out of the South Atlantic. It was recently occupied by the Rio de Janeiro State Military Police, effectively and immediately removing the presence of the drug trafficking factions. The intersection and meshing of the human and the physical defies neat or facile description, so excuse my failure to convey the totality of the reality, as it were.

Vidigal is large and in an extremely beautiful, strategic, and increasingly lucrative spot. Sitting between Ipanema-Leblon, São Conrado (a very wealthy beach neighborhood) and Barra de Tijuca (where the Olympics will be), Vidigal had been under the control of Nem. Nem lived in Rocinha, and was the most wanted drug lord in Rio, if not all of Brazil. After openly directing the drug trade in both Rocinha and Vidigal, Nem was arrested a few weeks ago , found hiding in the trunk of a car. There was something very strange about the way Nem went down and the Military Police occupied the hills. Even stranger to think that one person had controlled so much territory and kept the state from providing basic services. Nem, the film, coming soon. (I think I could have shown him a better way to get out of town before the police arrived, but that’s another story).

A few hours prior to heading to Vidigal, I had done some facebook, web-interface, electronic guest list trickery to print out some tickets from a website hosted in San Francisco. I had heard about the “thing” ( I wasn’t sure what it was), from the ragazzi italiani. The tickets told me I was going to a place called Alto Vidigal. From the Praça Vidigal to Alto Vidigal it was suggested to take a combi (VW van taxi) or moto-taxi.

While waiting in line to get the motor taxi, heavily, heavily armed PMERJ forces patrolled the principal street while the party rolled at the Praça de Vidigal, opening onto the Avenida Niemeyer. Death by machine gun was walking around. This is not a light-touch security solution, but rather a full military occupation of urban space: foot patrols, stationed cars, tactical deployments, air support, central command and control. Big dudes, big guns. I didn’t take pictures.

I hadn’t been to Vidigal before the installation of this UPP, the 14^th or 15^th in Rio. The “Police Pacification Units” have been occupying favelas in Rio for about two years. Their actions quickly change the security dynamics, which had been previously controlled by drug gangs, City of God-style. They give notice of the occupation some weeks before they roll in, in order to give the bad guys time to skedaddle. Why? If they came in without warning, the gun battles would be pretty extreme and a lot of innocents would get hurt. There haven’t been as many bloodbaths as there could have been.

On the other hand, where are the bad guys going to? There are reports citing an increase in violence in other parts of the Rio Metro Area and in Rio de Janeiro state. Are the bandidos just heading to other parts of the city to continue their trades? Is there going to be a dis-proportional increase in number of bandidos per 100,000 people in non-occupied favelas? Will the relative value of a bandido be less as there is a glut in the labor market? How does the occupation shift the dynamics of the drug trade? When the Complexo do Alemão was occupied last year, the police found around 40 tons of marijuana. To what degree these disruptions have influenced the price of drugs in the city, I cannot say, but it has certainly changed the dynamics of sale and distribution in Rio.

A big party wound up in the Praça: very loud, live music sprayed through speakers wholly unequipped to handle the tone or volume. Saturday night festa, military occupation rolling, a lot of people standing around watching the scene, everyone probably wondering what changes had been put into motion. On a more banal level, the moto-taxi ride was fantastic, the motoristas are top notch mountain riders, highly skilled. My first impressions flying by on a motorcycle were that Vidigal is relatively wealthy, with some big apartment buildings, established grocery store and small commerce…a big, vibrant, complex place. I won’t pretend to know much more about it than that, otherwise I’d run the risk of having this piece published in the NYTimes. The roads were vertical, and well paved. It’s no joke getting trucks and cars up and down. It’s an ever-shifting obstacle course and a nice little adventure on a moto. Arriving at our destination, there was a hand painted sign pointing the way to Alto Vidigal. R$2 for the moto-taxi.

There is a little plaza in front of the Casa Alto Vidigal. Several big, camouflaged military police wielded around. Two Brazilians running the entrance found my name on a list that had been sent to them via my registration in San Francisco and with my printed out ticket, I got R$10 off the R$30 entrance (U$ 12). I handed my money to a young woman behind ceiling-high bars. As I was fitted with an armband, I was asked if I had any drugs with me, you know, marijuana, intimating the effervescent police presence outside. Three weeks ago, no one would have asked that question.

One of the undeniable outcomes of the UPPs is the explosion in real-estate values. Not only does the value of real-estate in the favela increase, but also in the areas around it, which have had a knock-on benefit of improved security. In some cases, there has been a 400% increase in real-estate values. When Rocinha was occupied, some house values increased 50% overnight. Alto Vidigal must have also seen an increase in its value as they pulled a large Saturday night crowd.

View of Vidigal with Leblon-Ipanema in the background

The crowd was predominantly young gringo, which is to say non-Brazilian. There was some Austrain bizarro that looked a mix between The Little Prince and Rod Stewart, here several months early for Carnaval. There was an Annie Lennox, a tight-jeaned German, a self-important and arrogant French film crew, packs of hipsters with their wry grimaces, a foreign professor or two, some gonzo journos, a live sax accompanying the dj, a packed dance floor, a chilly breeze and an incredible view. A third wave of partiers arrived at 3am. This is Gringolândia, a foreign outpost on foreign soil. We were there to consume, our privilege and safety now under the watchful eyes of the military police.

Mega-events don’t exist

2011-12-01T14:44:00.000-02:00

Mega-events don’t exist.

There is no point in using the term “mega-event” except as a convenient placeholder for the impossibly complex, intersecting, mutually dependent and independently functioning elements that come together to produce whatever the “mega-event” is.

Deconstructing the World Cup and Olympics and organizing them into intelligible, digestible bits that can be understood is, perhaps, within the realm of possibility. Understanding the hundreds of millions of moving parts and how they come together to give us something like the 2014 FIFA World Cup is impossible. Pulling on a loose thread may begin to unravel the general structure, but without understanding the whole at the end of the day you’re left with a pile of micro-fibers.

So, let’s stop talking about mega-events and start talking about “accelerated process of socio-spatial transformation punctuated by signature global events”. Not very catchy, I know. How about “vicious circles of creative destruction marked by overlapping sovereignties, deliberately vague responsibility frontiers, and the imposition of homogeneous and globalized consumer cultures”. Perhaps something more pithy? Hmmm…”the normalization of a condition of political exception that generates the compulsory acceptance of a consumptive ritual decoupled from its ontological moorings.” Hard to put an acronym on that. Oh well. Perhaps my degree in philosophy will come in handy while discussing the non-existent.

It must be because the mega-event doesn’t exist that no one can take ultimate responsibility for the processes it unleashes and the impacts it generates. FIFA can’t be blamed for the transportation infrastructures that cities choose to install. The cities can’t be blamed for wanting to host the World Cup. The state can’t take responsibility for the way that FIFA goes about its business, though they could refuse to get on their knees to bring the event. Sponsors can’t be blamed for the human rights violations that pave the way for their profits. The security demands of the event attend to the real and perceived risks that the event itself generates. No event, no risk? Or is the risk in not having the event?

I am not trying to hedge my bets here, but trying to make sense of the arguments, displays, discussions and presentations from Soccerex over the last three days. There are billions of dollars of public funds in play. This money, although also fictitious and conceptual, has very real effects and could be put to uses other than hosting a month long soccer tournament. Because no one has ultimate responsibility over the way in which this money is spent and the effect it has, before smashing the Cup on the ground to see what it’s made of we’ve got to continually step back to look at the Cup as an object: an object of desire, a goal in and of itself, a process, a social construction, a symbol, a moment, and a means to various, valorous and nefarious ends. In Brazil, this Cup runneth over with problems, contradictions, intransient bureaucracy, narrow political agendas, nepotism, corruption, graft, conflicting interests, ill-conceived projects, forced removals, rule by decree, a lack of effective urban planning and the funneling of public money to private hands in one of the most unequal societies in the world - quite a lot for something that doesn’t exist.

Checking in. Tudo bem? Key-toe'chimo, bri'gado.

2011-11-22T17:51:00.001-02:00

Checking back into the craziness of Rio and not too much has changed. The new Minister of Sport, Aldo Rebelo, has been given extraordinary powers and handed the circus over to his cronies ~~and family~~. Not only did he appoint his personal “people of confidence” , Dilma transferred the APO to the MdoE. That’s a Brazilian acronym to describe the Ministry of Sport, though it could also be MdoE/MoS, just to clarify things and ensure employment for stamp makers. The APO is the acronym for the Autoridade Público Olímpico. This is the body that is ostensibly in control of the R$30 billion budget and the agency that will direct all Olympic-related building projects. All of a sudden, it’s under the new minister. Here we go again, de novo.

FIFA goes along its way, keeping the idiots in charge as long as possible. Can someone please offer Sepp Blatter another job? How about washing dishes in a Brazilian prison? If you haven’t seen Andrew Jenning’s recent stuff, check out www.transparencyinsport.org. This part might anger Eike Batista, Brazil’s richest, though not most-flatulent man: Ol ‘ Sepp gave the 2014 ticketing contract to his nephew on a no-bid basis. This might rankle the Eikster who said not long ago that if we wanted to get a ticket to the World Cup we would “have to talk to him”. Let confusion reign.

Where does one begin to explain the differences between Rio de Janeiro and Vancouver? Winter and Summer? Canada and Brazil? South East Atlantic and North West Pacific? Sun People and Cloud People? How about the airports? Jumpin’ Jaysus. The 40 step escalators at Galeão don’t work. Walking into Vancouver, you passed through a Disney-landesque version of a Rain Forest, which was, despite and because of the Disney factor, impressive and well executed. I thought it was cool, and gave a sense of the natural world one is entering beyond the airport. At Galeão, one also gets an sense of the external, without having to leave the airport.

Vancouver

Rio de Janeiro

It is hard to say which city has a more or less spectacular setting. It’s staggeringly beautiful In either case, though one could argue that Vancouver has much better access to its environmental amenities. But please, Brazil’s beaches. The one beach I visited was clothing optional, very rocky, and with very cold water. Vancouver, where only the confident wade.

As pequenas barcas de Vancouver. Por que não na Lagoa ou Praca XV - SDU - Urca?

For public transport, is there a better central city area than Vancouver for bus and bike? Water Taxis? They’re as expensive and fancy as a gold tooth, but a great, efficient ride. Very nice, and even in wet, cold weather a good means to get about central Vancouver. I didn’t get to test the inter and intra city ferry system, nor the ferries out to Vancouver Island, but I have a sneaking suspicion that their bike policy compares favorably with that of Barcas S.A.

So, Rio has some serious work to do if it is going to make 50 years progress in 5, again. During my time in Vancouver, Rocinha was occupied by BOPE and MPERJ, OGlobo and Sky TV. Though of course too complex to completely wrap one’s head around, the occupation of Rocinha caused a jump in real-estate prices there and in neighboring São Conrado, an already wealthy enclave. It was widely reported that the marketing bobbleheads that pass for democratically elected leaders were well pleased with the international media attention. There’s no such thing as bad press, right? Not when OGlobo is on your team.

Things are too busy to do more than one or two more posts before the end of the year. One must feed the academic beast some tasty bits from time to time. If you’re just testing the cool waters of geostadia.com for the first time, starting from September 2009 you can find articles related to the Rio Olympics. I enjoy highlighting life’s absurdities and contradictions. Rio de Janeiro is a seemingly inexhaustible font of inspiration. I enjoy a good circus but don’t want to be a clown. For those who are interested in a sample of my soccer coverage from North Carolina, click here.

One question that I would like to pose to those who see (or saw) the Brazilian mega-events through the rose-tinted lenses of dispassionate reason: Why did anyone expect that the negative elements of the Olympics were going to be mitigated in a country and city known for huge socio-economic inequalities, weak democratic institutions, oligarchic business practices, and newly deep pockets?

Finados

2011-11-04T09:39:00.002-02:00

Orlando Silva is out of the Ministry of Sport and is under federal investigataion for shuffling cards under the table. Nothing surprising, but the top communist post in Dilma’s government appears to have been less than equitable in his redistribution of state funds. Silva has been replaced by Aldo Rebelo who was involved in some small scandals in the Lula government. Far from squeaky clean, Rebelo’s brother was named in the scandal that brought down Silva. It is unclear if Rebelo has ever kicked or thrown a ball in anger or what his qualifications are to head the government’s primary ministry that will deal with the World Cup and Olympics. More of the same, de novo.

After saying he was going to radically reduce the taxi fleet by some thousands of taxis (and had this put into the Master Plan) the Glorious Crown Prince of Rio has decided to increase it by six thousand. How does he do this? Executive decree. What is an executive decree? A handy tool taken from the box of authoritarianism. What is authoritarianism? The dominant regime in Rio.

Has there ever been a city preparing for mega-events, trying to sell itself to the world as a place of business and leisure that has an much violence and open gunfire in the streets as Rio? Yesterday, in Santa Teresa, there was a gun battle between traficantes and the Military Police after the latter arrested some of the former. The attack on Santa’s UPP is the latest in a series of battles between insurgents and the coalition forces and was probably related to the monthly payment scheme that the two sides had worked out (where the UPP bosses received R$50,000 a month from the traficantes). Last week in Maré, one of Rio’s biggest drug bosses was gunned down in an intense firefight. BOPE has been occupying a part of Maré for a couple of weeks as they prepare to install their headquarters in the region.

The state government appears to be massaging their homicide statistics to show that their public policies are working, but there has been a commensurate increase in “deaths by other causes” as well as disappearances. Between 2007 and April of 2011, 22.533 people disappeared in Rio de Janeiro.

One of the people who should not have disappeared from Rio is State Deputy Marcelo Freixo. Freixo has been under death threat by milicias for years, but recently those threats have escalated and he gone to London at the invitation of Amnesty International to give a series of lectures. Ever sympathetic to the allies of the Crown Prince, who had a sit-down meeting with the milicias about van transport last week, OGlobo mocked Freixo in today’s paper saying that Freixo really isn’t under threat but that his departure was “already scheduled”. From Freixo’s twitter page:

Não recebi qualquer contato de autoridade do gov do Rio para falar sobre as ameaças que recebi. Tratavam como se o problema fosse meu.

I have not received any contact from the Rio government to talk about the threats I have received. They are treating the problem as if it were mine alone.

Naked and repeated death threats to state representatives, open gun battles in some streets, a mayor that governs through executive order, insane traffic problems, rampant real-estate speculation… all made better by the announcement that FIFA is going to offer tickets for the first round of World Cup games between US$20 and US$30. The above link is an interview with FIFA VP Valcke, who is honest in his answers but after reading the interview I’m pretty sure that this is going to be a disaster of a World Cup in terms of mobility. His response to the reporter’s question about a Brazilian fan having to travel more than 10,000km to see the team play was “At least he will be able to say that he traveled.” As I described in an earlier post, the sheer number of air miles is going to overload the Brazilian system completely. My recommendation: stay in the north-east (Recife, Natal, Fortaleza) and paddleboard between the cities.

The Campeonato Brasileiro is headed to a dramatic conclusion. This is the most disputed title in some time with as many as 6 teams with a chance to win it. Happliy, Vasco da Gama is level on points at the top of the table (with Corinthians) four games to play. For the first time in recent memory all four of Rio’s big teams have a chance to win. Vasco’s path is the most difficult with games against Santos, Botafogo, Fluminense, and Flamengo.

Oh the Maracanã. The contract process for the area surrounding the stadium was just suspended. There are plans to privatize it before 2013 and Eike Batista wants to use his toupee to cover the stands. The final supporting beam of the old roof has been removed and with the implementation of the UPP in Mangueira, the stadium is completely surrounded, as if it had just robbed a case of beer and was running down the street into a BOPE nest. Hopefully the Policía Federal will have the courage to surround the band of crooks at the CBFdp, but they apparently weren’t able to get much out of Dr. Jowls when he talked to them the other day.

This is the last post for awhile as I will be attending Think Tank 2: Sport Mega-event Impact, Leveraging, and Legacies in Vancouver. The title of my paper for the think tank is The Mega-event city as neo-liberal laboratory. Here’s the abstract:

The production of sports mega-events in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is occurring within the context of profound political, economic, and social change. As

Brazil

’s economy and political structures have stabilized over the past quarter century, the country has assumed an increasingly important role in global affairs. The dominant trends towards neo-liberalism in the global political-economy are being reproduced within the context of a state structure that has traditionally occupied a central role in the national economy. While transitions to neo-liberalism at the national scale will take time to implement, it is within the urban context that agents of global capital are able to shape most effectively space and social relations to maximize accumulation strategies. In this sense, sports mega-events function as mechanisms for the implementation of neo-liberal modes of governance within urban contexts. This paper will examine the processes through which mega-events in Rio de Janeiro are using the city as an active laboratory for new models of neo-liberal governance that are accelerating the transformation of Brazilian society.

Rotten to the Core

2011-10-25T23:04:00.000-02:00

Ok, so no one liked or got the Gangrene Cup pun. The 2014 World Cup is supposed to be the Copa Verde, playing on an erroneous perception of Brazil as a "natural paradise" while greenwashing the environmental destruction that more than two million km of air travel will wreak. So, perhaps a Shakespeare reference to get us going today, albeit an obvious one.

There is something rotten in the State of the Copa. Not only is the government forced to create a state of exception to allow the Trojan horses of FIFA and the IOC into the country, but the people who are opening the gates are as incompetent and corrupt as the fazenderos themselves.

Orlando Silva, who I have long criticized as an incompetent hack and an embarrassment to millions of communists both dead and alive, is struggling to keep his head above the turbulent political waters in which he suddenly finds himself. Last week, Veja (which is not so much a magazine as a blunt political instrument), published an exposé on the good minister and his shady relations with a Military Police officer that also ran some sport’s outfit sponsored by the Ministry of Sport’s Segundo Tempo program. Silva is not doing himself any favors by quoting Pablo Neruda in order to proclaim his “invincibility”, but at least he’s got a sense of humor (or is giving us a good laugh at his expense).

One of the reasons for this attack is that opposition parties are trying to get their hands on the Ministry of Sport’s top spot. The MoS has seen its budget increase by 63% in the last year, a greater percentage than any other ministry, reaching R$2,5 billion in 2011. This is likely to keep increasing as the mega-events go super nova and the state starts paying the orchestra to play even louder to drown out the screams coming from the stinking ship.

Another reason for the attack from Veja could be that Editora Abril, which publishes the rag, is an official sponsor of the 2014 World Cup. There has been open warfare between FIFA and the CBF against Silva who has failed to deliver on his promise to get World Cup legislation passed fast enough and with enough goodies for the Swiss-based gang’s pleasure. By undermining Silva’s already tenuous credibility, Veja has stimulated investigations into allegations of corruption and taken him out of FIFA’s hair. Dilma has responded by taking away Silva’s role as the primary interlocutor between the federal government and FIFA but has for the moment left him at the head of the MoS.

One of the main bones of contention between the Brazilian federal government and FIFA is so absurd as to be laughable, if it weren’t so pathetically base. In Brazil, students and kids under 12 get half-price admission to soccer games. FIFA wants to do away with this so they can make more money on ticket sales. The percentage of money FIFA makes on ticket sales for kids has to be so miniscule as to not even merit attention. This is not to even consider that most of the stadiums are probably going to be empty anyway, or that the percentage of Brazilians in the stadiums for the world up is likely to be lower than 50%. There’s also the question of beer sales but one can’t really expect national law to be respected in this regard especially as the Brazilian company AmBev owns Budweiser. In case you thought that Veja wasn’t in bed with FIFA, here’s their description of why Brazil absolutely has to give everything over to FIFA.

This is happening at the same moment that a federal inquisition is installing a commission to investigate Ricardo (Dr. Jowls) Texeira and the CBFdp. This investigation was given some propulsion by the news that FIFA is going to give access to long-entombed Swiss court documents that will likely name Texeira and the godfather João Havelange as recipients of bribes from the FIFA/ISL scandal in the 1990s. As Andrew Jennings has long said, this is an international, organized crime family that should be treated with all of the respect and deference given to common criminals. Jennings is headed to Brasilia this week to testify before the federal commission.

No one is sure how these events are being structured. A few weeks ago at a presentation given by the Rio 2016 organizing [sic] committee a vague and confusing diagram showed international journalists just how transparent things are going to be. Carlos Nuzman, in addition to heading up the Brazilian Olympic Committee is also the president of Rio 2016, and is also the head of the Rio 2016 Executive Committee and the General Assembly. Nuzman is also trying to get the IOC age-limit rules changed so he can remain in the circles of power past his 70^th birthday, the legal retirement age from IOC posts.

Sports mega-events cram Trojan Horses full of Black boxes, violating national sovereignty in order to turn public money into private profit within increasingly militarized and fragmented cities planned by public relations firms and directed by intentionally opaque and un-responsive parallel governance structures that act in the service of capital and at the expense of the citizenry. I sincerely hope that I will, one day, find evidence to the contrary. For now, that sentence sums it up.

A Copa Gangrenosa - The gangrene Cup

2011-10-24T11:08:00.000-02:00

The 2014 World Cup Schedule is out! I know you have all been waiting to hear what I think about it but I will let you make up your mind by showing you some data.

Group A cities	Games
São Paulo	BRA:A2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Natal	A3:A4	BRA	3127	2200	5327
Fortaleza	BRA:A3	A2	3971	5698	9669
Manaus	A2:A4	A3	537	800	1337
Brasilia	BRA:A4	A4	5985	3490	9475
Recife	A2:A3		13620	12188	25808

This is the table of games for Group A, which will be headed by Brazil. Each group in the 2014 Cup will play in six cities. The table above charts the cities, the teams that will be playing, and the travel distances for each team between those cities. If we follow Brazil (A1), they play in São Paulo, Fortaleza, and Brasília in the first round. The distance between São Paulo and Fortaleza, 3127 km. Between Fortaleza and Brasília is 2200km = 5327km. Team A4, will have to travel 9475km between the cities they play in (Natal-Manaus-Brasilia). the group as a whole, for six games will travel at least 25808km.

This does not, of course, take into account that Brazil will have their training center in Rio de Janeiro and will fly back and forth between games. Assuming that Brazil makes the semi-final, the team will travel 16,110 km. Brazil’s travel schedule is not as bad as it could be. For instance, whichever team has the misfortune to be G4 (in 2010 it was North Korea), the travel distance for two flights will be 11683km (Natal-Manaus-Recife).
Ok, so the teams have to travel a lot, an average of 3239km per game between the cities for the first round, or a total of 136,052 km. (Remember this does not take into account the distance for the 31 teams to get to Brazil, the return trips to training centers, or the movement of FeeFã people that accompany the games). If we even half-heartedly believe in the tourist numbers thrown about by the organizing committee and assume that the generalized financial crisis will have ebbed and that the Mayan calendar page turn isn’t a mega-event of its own, then we can add 300,000 tourists who will want to follow their teams around Brazil. Say, 5,000 people per game? That’s 20 flights x the average distance of 3,239 per game x 42 first round games = 2,720,760 km of air travel.

On the bright side, some of the stadium roofs will be designed so that they recycle rain water into the toilets. How quaint.

Other interesting tidbits of info that came out of the 2014 WC schedule: stadia that are being designed as white elephants will receive the fewest games. Cuiabá: 4; Manaus: 4; Natal: 4; Recife: 5. Combined, these cities are investing R$1,9 billion (so far) in stadium construction in order to host 17 games of football. That’s 2040 minutes of jogo bonito, or R$93,137 for every minute of World Cup action!!!! There are also huge discrepancies between the distances that teams will have to travel which will surely have an impact on fans and players. Here’s the full schedule, feel free to crunch the data and come up with your own conclusions:

Group A	Games
São Paulo	A1:A2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Natal	A3:A4	BRA	3127	2200	5327
Fortaleza	A1:A3	A2	3971	5698	9669
Manaus	A2:A4	A3	537	800	1337
Brasilia	A1:A4	A4	5985	3490	9475
Recife	A2:A3		13620	12188	25808

Group B
Cuiaba	B1:B2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Salvador	B3:B4	B1	2017	852	2869
Porto Alegre	B2:B4	B2	2206	1109	3315
Rio de Janeiro	B1:B3	B3	1678	429	2107
Curitiba	B1:B4	B4	3090	711	3801
São Paulo	B2:B3		8991	3101	12092

Group C
Belo Horizonte	C1:C2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Recife	C3:C4	C1	716	1133	1849
Brasilia	C1:C3	C2	2348	537	2885
Natal	C2:C4	C3	2135	2200	4335
Cuiabá	C1:C4	C4	298	3543	3841
Fortaleza	C2:C3		5497	7413	12910

Group D
Fortaleza	D1:D2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Manaus	D3:D4	D1	3127	2947	6074
São Paulo	D1:D3	D2	800	2061	2861
Recife	D2:D4	D3	3971	586	4557
Natal	D1:D4	D4	5698	298	5996
Belo Horizonte	D2:D3		13596	5892	19488

Group E
Brasilia	E1:E2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Porto Alegre	E3:E4	E1	1336	4036	5372
Curitiba	E1:E3	E2	1446	1678	3124
Salvador	E2:E4	E3	711	852	1563
Manaus	E1:E4	E4	3090	5009	8099
Rio de Janeiro	E2:E3		6583	11575	18158

Group F
Rio de Janeiro	F1:F2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Curitiba	F3:F4	F1	439	1712	2151
Belo Horizonte	F1:F3	F2	2017	2566	4583
Cuiaba	F2:F4	F3	1004	1372	2376
Porto Alegre	F1:F4	F4	1697	2206	3903
Salvador	F2:F3		5157	7856	13013

Group G
Salvador	G1:G2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Natal	G3:G4	G1	1389	800	2189
Fortaleza	G1:G3	G2	5009	3490	8499
Manaus	G2:G4	G3	537	2200	2737
Recife	G1:G4	G4	5985	5698	11683
Brasilia	G2:G3		12920	12188	25108

Group H
Belo Horizonte	H1:H2	Team	KM game 1-2	KM game 2-3	TOTAL KM
Cuiaba	H3:H4	H1	439	429	868
Porto Alegre	H2:H4	H2	1712	711	2423
Rio de Janeiro	H1:H3	H3	2017	852	2869
Curitiba	H2:H3	H4	2206	1109	3315
São Paulo	H1:H4		6374	3101	9475

Fat-Fingered Blind Parrots and a Hairless Canadian Monkey with Keys

2011-10-11T09:02:00.000-03:00

Back in 2004 when I was doing research for Temples of the Earthbound Gods I had an encounter with Eduardo Viana, then president of the Rio State Football Federation (FERJ). The now deceased Viana ran FERJ like Ricardo Teixeira runs the CBFdp, out of a black box. The only way I was able to get a list of the professional teams in the State of Rio was through the grace of a secretary who cobbled some documents together for me. No one in the institution, other than this secretary, had or was willing to give any information about anything. FERJ would be considered a throwback to an older way of running football, except in Brazil there has never been any modernization or modification from the times when fleshy men with fat, ringed fingers pulled levers behind closed doors. Viana’s descendents are still in control at FERJ and everyone was very excited to receive State Secretary of Tourism and Leisure Márcia Lins who finally reappeared in the media to open the new FERJ headquarters the other day. The news coverage of this non-event was confusing, as it conflated the rumors of the Maracanã`s future privatization with the opening of FERJ-lânida:

"O edital de concessão do Maracanã para a iniciativa privada deve ser lançado no segundo semestre de 2012, antes mesmo da conclusão do estádio, prevista para fevereiro de 2013.

A informação foi confirmada ontem pela secretária estadual de Esporte e Lazer do Rio de Janeiro, Márcia Lins, durante a inauguração da nova sede da Federação de Futebol fluminense (Ferj). Orçada em R$ 776 milhões, a obra é tocada com recursos do orçamento estadual."

"The information was confirmed yesterday by the State Secretary of Sport and Leisure of Rio de Janeiro, Márcia Lins, during the inauguration of the new offices of the Fluminense Football Federation. Budgeted for R$776 million, the project is funded by the state treasury."

We all know that the Maracanã is going to cost much, much more than that, hence I was confused about what project they were referring to. Finding how much public money went into the FERJ building will be difficult, but not nearly as difficult as untangling the rats’ nest that is the Maracanã. Here’s a question I posed to the fine folks at the State Secretary for Sports and Leisure:

Geostadia:Qual seria a diferença nos custos de manutenção pre e pós reforma? What will be the difference in the maintenance costs pré and post reform.

SUDERJ: Ainda não há previsão. There’s no projection.

Now wait just a minute. The stadium is undergoing a billion R$ reform and no one knows how much the stadium is going to cost in upkeep? This answer came on October 10^th in response to a question posed on September 6^th. That’s the answer in its entirety. They don’t know and apparently don’t care. The job of most Press Secretaries in Brazil is to tell you that people are busy or that no one has any information and that you should call back after lunch. We do know that stadiums cost approximately 10% of their initial cost in yearly maintenance, so we can project around R$100,000,000 per year. Thus in ten years, another billion will be spent on the Maracanã.

Romário continues his roundhouse kicks to the heads of the government brain trust in charge of the World Cup preparations. He’s part of the Fórum Legislativo da Copa de 2014 which is in Rio this week poking around. Romário is calling people out, stating the obvious: “It’s sad to see the Maracanã like this, it’s totally disfigured, it’s no longer the same stadium…When we see the projects on powerpoint, everything looks marvelous, but the reality is very different…The World Cup is a great event, but it only lasts one month. We have other priorities.” Thank you, Romário. Stating and explaining the obvious is the most complicated thing to do.

Trash, trash, trash. If it’s a big problem with mega-events, it’s a total nightmare in Rio. Last week, I attended a public hearing about the redesign of the city law that grants permits for events to occur. One of the most serious public servants I have encountered, Gustavo Puppi, explained the disaster that mega-events of all kinds bring to the administration of COMLURB (the city’s trash collection service). In addition to generating thousands of extra tons of garbage per year, COMLURB has to reduce service in the Zona Norte to clean up the increased mess in the Zona Sul. The effects of these parties radiate unevenly through the city. At the Rock [sic] in Rio party, there was almost no coordination between the event producer and COMLURB, making their task doubly difficult. Worse, the Municipal and State governments can’t get organized enough to figure out how to deal with all the trash generated by the city. Between the closing of the Gramacho aterro and the opening of the dump in Seriopédica (which will not allow for catadores, the subject of Wasteland), more than 80% of Rio de Janeiro’s trash goes to informal dumps. Go on, tell me another one about mega-event sustainability.

At the same public audience, headed up by city councilman Messina, were representatives from RIOTOUR, SETRANS (state transportation), and the Bombeiros (state fire dept). The opening salvo from the RIOTOUR representative dealt with the importance of Formula One racing to the city of Monaco, comparing the impact of a once yearly event in an isolated European tax-haven and principality with the role of mega-events in a city of 13 million in Brazil. This paradigm of clear thinking then recited the usual litany of tired Barcelona comparisons. Where is this inexhaustible fountain of kool-aid that these blind parrots keep drinking from? I’m thirsty from shouting them down. The SETRANS fellow was well- satisfied with the special transportation system that brought the adoring 40,000 Justin Beiber fans to the Engenhão (aka Stadium Rio, ex-Estádio Olímpico João Havelange), but couldn’t explain why there was no special transportation scheme for football matches. This is clearly no longer the pais do futebol, but rather a country in which a pre-pubescent Canadian gets the key to the city while ordinary people are treated like cattle. If that key opens one of El Principe’s black boxes, that’s cool with me, but Justin Bloody Beiber!?!?!?!? The kid is not even old enough to drive, what’s he going to do with a key to the city?

The handing of the key to the young Bieber puts this macaco pelado canadense in the mixed company of recent key recipients: the Mexican band Maná, Joseph Blatter president of FIFA, the promoter of Rock [sic] in Rio Roberto Media, Rei Momo Milton Junior, Blu (?), and Apostolo Renê Terra. I am taking bets on the next round of key distribution, giving three to one odds on IOC president Jacque Rogge and million to one odds on a certain gringo professor.

And to round off a spectacular post, even more interesting facts about the Maracanã. In addition to reducing the capacity by 42%, the size of the field is getting whacked by 16%. This will forever impact the kind of football played at the stadium. As a mode of comparison, check out the following table which lists the sizes of the notoriously small English grounds (in square yards) with the sad trajectory of the Maracanã. Not only are the stadiums para ingles ver, but they are increasingly para jogar como os ingleses. No more time on the ball, no more jogo da cintura, no more individualism. Tight marking and long balls, yes sir mister sir.

Maracanã 2009, 120.3 x 82.02 yards, 9867
1. Manchester City, City of Manchester Stadium, 116 x 77 yards, 8932
2. Manchester United, Old Trafford, 116 x 76 yards, 8816
3. Blackburn Rovers, Ewood Park, 115 x 76 yards, 8740
4. Everton, Goodison Park, 112 x 78 yards, 8736
5. Aston Villa, Villa Park, 114 x 75 yards, 8550
6. Middlesbrough, Riverside, 114 x 75 yards, 8550
Maracanã 2013, 114.8 x 74.3 yards, 8529
7. Arsenal, Emirates Stadium, 114 x 74 yards, 8436
8. Derby County, Pride Park, 114 x 74 yards, 8436
9. Reading, Madjeski Stadium, 111 x 76 yards, 8436
10. Sunderland, Stadium of Light, 114 x 74 yards, 8436
11. Wigan Athletic, JJB Stadium, 114 x 74 yards, 8436
12. Portsmouth, Fratton Park, 115 x 73 yards, 8395
13. Chelsea, Stamford Bridge, 110 x 75 yards, 8250
14. Fulham, Craven Cottage, 110 x 75 yards, 8250
15. Liverpool, Anfield, 110 x 75 yards, 8250
16. Birmingham City, St. Andrews, 110 x 74 yards, 8140
17. Newcastle United, St. James’s Park, 110 x 73 yards, 8030
18. Tottenham Hotspur, White Hart Lane, 110 x 73 yards, 8030
19. Bolton Wanderers, Reebok Stadium, 110 x 72 yards, 7920
20. West Ham United, Boleyn Ground, 110 x 70 yards, 7700

Banal idiocy on a bike

2011-10-10T13:45:00.002-03:00

The banal occurrences of daily life in Rio flit between the poles of the annoying and ridiculous. If it were almost any other city in the world, Rio de Janeiro would be completely impossible to aguentar (deal with), but because it’s so staggeringly beautiful, we accept and even encourage the magnificently wrongheaded race to the bottom that qualifies as public policy and urban planning. Comparable to an airbrushed super-model, Rio looks great and is seductively pouty but it’s a fragile image that belies serious eating disorders, exploitation, macho blinkeredness, and complicit consumers who fail to question a system that sends millions of women to the gym to reduce their bodies while their male counterparts get their vanity muscles inflated to cartoonish proportions.

An example, if I may. The ferry that crosses Guanabara Bay is run by a private company via a concession given by the State Government. This is also known as privatization. Recently, the same idiot who was responsible for the bonde disaster in Santa Teresa (State Secretary of Transportation Júlio Lopes) allowed Barcas S.A. to eliminate night-time service because the company was not making enough money. There is virtually no bus service after mid-night so if you’re caught on the wrong side of the bay, the only practical solution is taxi: R$40 – 50. In this instance, the idiocy is allowing the incompetent state secretary of transportation to act on behalf of the private company.

Last week, I attempted to go by bicycle from Rio to Niterói. Arriving at Praça XV was a challenge because there is no bike path that links anything in the center of town to anything else. One has to brave the inferno of Rua Primeiro de Março where there is an excellent chance of becoming another statistic: one cyclist is killed every ten days in Rio de Janeiro. Once to the ferry, in addition to the R$2.80 passenger fee, the intrepid cyclist must pay an additional R$4.70 for the bike! R$15 for a two way passage. Ridiculous and illegal according to a judgment handed down in June.

To make the ridiculous something else, in order to take one’s bike onto the ferry I was told I had to roll through the disembarkation where I fought against a literal human tide in order to put my bike on the waiting platform. After parting the crowd, I arrived on the platform and handed my baggage ticket to security. Just then, the bell signaling immediate departure tolled, but not for me. I had my boarding ticket in hand and wanted to take my bike and enter the ferry. In an amazing leap of logistics, I proffered said ticket to the security guard but in an equally stunning leap backwards he told me that I had to leave my bike with him, return to the front of the terminal, pass through the turnstiles, go back to where I was at that very moment, hand over my ticket stub, and then take my bike onto the ferry. I argued. The Napoleonic supervisor arrived, chest inflated with absolute rules to follow, absolutely. I huffed and puffed while the boat left without me.

Is there a greater dis-stimulus to riding a bike in this city than charging more than twice as much to bring a bike across the bay? To make matters worse, riding a bike in Niterói is far more dangerous than it is in Rio. As I was formally complaining to Barcas S.A., I was told that this dance-around-the-turnstile practice was formalized after some idiot decided to ride his bike onto the ferry and ended up hurting someone. This is the problem: the policies and rules of most public spaces and entities in Brazil are designed to attend to the lowest possible level of human decision making, that is, the idiots rule or the rule of the idiots. To wit, one idiot does something idiotic with a bike, the rest of us are treated like idiots who have to follow idiotic and inflexible rules designed to relieve anyone who receives a salary from having to take any responsibility for what happens under their watch.

Idiotic transportation practice #2: the new BRT lines will have no bicycle lanes. Even though the Glorious Prince of Rio de Janeiro likes to show off on his bike and skateboard from time to time, there is no safe, functional way of getting around this city on a bike, nor will there be, even though it is in practice much faster to go between most of Rio’s Zona Sul neighborhoods by bike than it is by bus, metro, or car. The OGloBobo reports about the city being “disposed” to bike traffic only showed pictures from the bike path in Botafogo and Flamengo. They must take us for idiots, which I suppose we are. The only days that you can put a bike on the Metro are Sundays and feriados and there is no bus in the city that has the capacity for bikes, nor will there be. This idiotic lack, combined with the increasingly insane and maddening traffic situation in the city, will eventually clog the city so tightly that not even Dick Cheney’s heart surgeon will be able to fix the problem.

Next up: more idiocy from RIOTOUR, the FERJ pigs at the trough, Orlando Silva in the crosshairs.

Para além de Ricardo Teixeira, por Marcos Alvito

2011-10-03T15:22:00.003-03:00

~~With apologies for English-only readers.~~ This text speaks to the growing movement to get rid of Ricardo Teixeira, the doddering, tottering head of the CBF(dp). It is not enough to cut off the head of the snake, but to undertake a radical reformation of Brazilian football in general. The negotiations going on today in Brussels between Dilma (Brazilian President) and FIFA represent a small effort to maintain some national dignity in the face of the parasitic demands that FIFA make on their hosts. In question, retaining the half-price tickets for students, state employees, and those over 60 as well as maintaing the ban on alcohol sales in stadia during the World Cup. Gulp. Or rather, not gulp. Get your flasks ready people! Swig. [Just after posting this, Dilma caved into FIFA's demands, eliminating the half-price tickets for students and kids under 12 and allowing the flow of Budweiser in the WC stadia. Bud is owened by Brazilian AmBev and we are starting to see a massive media campaign to promote it.]

If there are any willing translators out there I will gladly post a translated version of Marcos Alvito's text. Viva o Formigueiro!

Para além de Ricardo Teixeira – uma proposta para o futebol brasileiro

Imaginemos o futebol brasileiro sem Ricardo Teixeira, para além de Ricardo Teixeira. Será que isso bastaria para democratizar a nossa estrutura de clubes que tem milhões de torcedores e meia dúzia de eleitores? Ou a carcomida organização das federações estaduais, que há mais de duas décadas prestam vassalagem ao presidente da CBF? Será que isto faria com que a CBF deixasse de ser um gigolô autorizado da seleção brasileira, tornando-se uma entidade preocupada efetivamente com o futebol brasileiro? Será que isto diminuiria o preço absurdo dos ingressos, trazendo de volta as classes populares aos estádios? Será que isto reverteria a destruição da geral do Maracanã, da Coréia do Internacional e de muitas outras áreas onde o povo brasileiro criou uma forma original e carnavalesca de torcer? Será que isto cessaria a exploração da mão de obra infantil pelas escolinhas dos clubes e a transformação destes meninos em mercadorias negociadas por empresários? Será que isto faria com que houvesse maior estímulo à prática do futebol por meninas e incentivo às mulheres que corajosamente praticam um esporte que as exclui sistematicamente? Será que isto barraria o processo de criminalização inconstitucional das torcidas organizadas? Será que isto acabaria com o lucrativo negócio dos cambistas em dias de jogos, permitido nós sabemos por quem? Será que isto retiraria de uma determinada rede de televisão o controle das tabelas e dos horários, fazendo dos jogos uma sobremesa das novelas e impondo riscos e sacrifícios aos torcedores? Será que isto faria com que torcedores fossem tratados com respeito pela polícia e pelas autoridades, ao invés de serem vistos como animais irracionais? Será que isto faria com que o potencial do futebol como instrumento educativo e de conscientização seria finalmente compreendido?

Por tudo isso, nós da ANT (Associação Brasileira dos Torcedores e Torcedoras) acreditamos que não basta o Fora Ricardo Teixeira. Fomos os primeiros a pedir a sua saída, ainda em 2010. Mas temos certeza de que é preciso ir muito além. É preciso que as “escolinhas” sejam transformadas em escolas profissionalizantes garantindo o futuro de milhares de jovens que acreditam no futebol como uma possibilidade de ascensão social. É preciso que ao menos 30% dos assentos dos novos estádios construídos com dinheiro público sejam reservados a ingressos populares, com uma fiscalização rigorosa para impedir os cambistas. É preciso que o futebol seja utilizado em campanhas pela igualdade de gêneros, contra o racismo e a homofobia. É preciso que as torcidas organizadas sejam entendidas como parte importante da cultura do futebol brasileiro, embora deva haver tolerância zero para a violência, quando ela vier a ocorrer. É preciso que a polícia pare investigue ao invés de bater. É preciso que haja um sistema de transportes eficiente, com esquemas especiais em dias de jogos. É preciso democratizar a estrutura do futebol brasileiro de alto a baixo. É preciso ouvir os torcedores e suas associações antes de empreender mudanças. E, por último, mas não menos importante: Fora Ricardo Teixeira!

Beyond Ricardo Teixeira (Translation by Paige Battcher, USC Graduate School of Policy, Planning, and Development (USA)

Can we Imagine football without Ricardo Teixeira, beyond Ricardo Teixeira? Will this be sufficient to democratize our Club structure that has millions of fans and half a dozen voters? Or the rotten organization of bureaucratic federations, which have provided more than two decades of servitude to the President of the CBF? Will this cause the CBF to stop being a gigolo to authorized squads, becoming an entity effectively concerned with Brazilian football? Will this decrease the absurd price of tickets, bringing back the popular classes to stadiums? Will this roll back the destruction of the geral of the Maracanã [stadium], Coréia International and many other areas where the Brazilian people created an original way and carnival-like twist [referring to the unique seating --rather standing --of the Geral]? Will this stop the exploitation of child labor by small schools of clubs and the transformation of these boys into merchandize traded by entrepreneurs? Will this cause there to be greater stimulus to the practice of football for girls and encouragement for women who courageously practice a sport that systematically excludes them? Will this ban the process of the unconstitutional criminalization in these crooked organizations? Will this end the lucrative business of scalping [tickets] on days of games, when we know by whom [the scalpers] are allowed to operate? Will this remove control of a particular television network over the show schedules, which have been depicting the games as sweet stories [one-sided] and imposing risks and sacrifices on the fans? Will this make it so that fans are treated with respect by police and authorities, rather than being seen as irrational animals? Will this cause the potential of football as an instrument of education and awareness to be finally understood?

For all of this, we at ANT (Brazilian Association of fans [men and women]) believe that it’s not enough to oust Ricardo Teixeira. We were the first to ask for his departure, back in 2010. But we have certainty that there is a need to go much further. It is necessary that the "football schools" are transformed into professional vocational schools ensuring the future of thousands of young people who believe in football as a possibility of social mobility. It is necessary that at least 30% of the seats of the new stadiums built with public funds are reserved for popular tickets [affordable and unrestrictive], with close monitoring to prevent scalpers. We need football to be utilized in campaigns for gender equality, and against racism and homophobia. It is necessary that fans organizations are understood as an important part of the culture of Brazilian soccer, although there should be zero tolerance for violence, when it occurs. It is necessary for police to stop to investigate instead of striking back. It is necessary to have an efficient system of transportation, with special arrangements on match days. There needs to be a democratization of Brazilian football from top to bottom. We must listen to the fans and their associations before undertaking changes. And last but not least: Oust Ricardo Teixeira!

Marcos Alvito é historiador e antropólogo, professor da UFF e membro da ANT (Associação Nacional dos Torcedores e Torcedoras)

A free, flowing conduit of useful information

2011-09-22T16:10:00.002-03:00

While reading the press releases and media reports about the Brazilian mega-event cycle, I have found it useful to keep on hand seminal works by (among others) Kafka, Machiavelli, Joseph Campbell, Sartre, Foucault, Agamben, David Harvey, John Horne, Naomi Klein, Chico Buarque, Fernanda Sánchez, Ruth Levy and Monty Python. The following video clip from The Life of Brian explains all one needs to know about the attempts of Rio 2016 and FeeFã to limit the use of particular words. Substitute “Olympic” for “Jehovah” and batons, shock troops, and Glocks for stones.

In addition to “being about” real-estate speculation as Chris Shaw poignantly demonstrates in Five Ring Circus, megas are also about the international arms trade. In August, the Military Police of Rio signed a contract with the Austrian arms manufacturer Glock to use the 9mm weapon as the “official” gun of mega-event security. This didn’t get much play in the media, but the link can be found here as well as on the LinkedIn Support the Organizing Committee group. Naturally, Glock flew the head honchos of the PM to Austria for a contract signing / head-in-a-bucket-of-vodka-and-red-bull party. Glocks do not have external safety mechanisms. Nice choice. Apparently, on exit, the bullets will leave five rings instead of one large hole. What’s next, a billy club that leaves the Olympic imprint on the skull? Five ring handcuffs? An Olympic drone-flying competition? My money is on the USAmericans there.

I can’t wait for the bloody Pope to get here in 2013 with his horde of young, brainwashed original sinners. The Lordships of Rio have literally taken things to the next level with the signing of a contract with the Vatican to bring the World Youth Day to Rio. This year, his holy-moly-ness extended the “fruits of divine grace” to Spanish youth that had had an abortion. Lovely of him to double down on that Catholic guilt, thanks. I wonder if there will be speculation about an increase in prostitution surrounding this event. With hundreds of thousands of affluent adolescents running about in a town known for its sexual tourism, there are sure to be some bottled up hormones in loose pockets. And as if to justify the event by connecting it to the already over-justified events that are siphoning off public money into private hands, the Holy See is going to “invest in sport”, whatever the hell that means.

Oh, the Cup. The World Cup. The Copa do Mundo. O Mundial da FeeFã. It’s wrong, all wrong. The wheels are coming off before they’ve been put on, which is a pretty accurate reflection of the way Rio de Janeiro functions, or not. It’s confusing and simple at the same time.

Let’s start with costs. According to the Folha do São Paulo, World Cup related projects have increased by R$ 27 billion in 8 months. It’s hard to convert that figure this week as the Real has jumped from US$1.60 to US$1.90 in two weeks. But if we project this increase forward 1000 days, that will be around a R$100 billion increase. Without question, the Brazilian 2014 World Cup will be more expensive than all of the World Cups combined. This is no joke. We will likely arrive at a number well above R$130 billion and the majority of the projects will still not be ready.

The slowness of the contracting process has been exacerbated by the lack of planning on the part of the organizers. The closer we get to the Cup, the more things will cost to construct. Also, because of higher than expected inflation, the weakening of the Real against the Euro and Dollar which is making imports more expensive, the scarcity of qualified labor, the increase in construction materials because of Brazil’s construction and economic boom, the structural corruption of the big civil construction firms and their friends in government and the lack of interest on the part of the CBFdp and FeeFã to do anything in the realm of transparency…you get the idea.

Not only have the stadium costs increased by 170% in three years but the maintenance costs will also see a commensurate increase. Typically, a stadium requires a 10% investment of the construction costs in yearly maintenance. The Maracanã will cost more than a billion. Thus, in ten years, another billion will be spent just to keep it standing. Remember, at least R$300 million of reforms were undertaken between 2005-2007 to reform the stadium for the Pan American Games. These were, naturally, poorly done as this photo demonstrates.

Add into the mix of confusion the strikes that have been occurring at several of the World Cup stadiums. Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Salvador have all had workers strike to improve working conditions. The latest stoppage at the Maracanã lasted nearly three weeks until the courts stepped in and sent the lads back to the job against their will. When Dilma went to Belo Horizonte to mark 1000 days until the 2014 kickoff the workers used the opportunity to strike. That didn’t make it into the press as Dilma and Pelé posed with some of the boys. According to the ever wise, always frightened Minister of Sport Orlando Silva (who certainly must be the least communist member of the Brazilian Communist Party), everything is on schedule. OGlobo is none too happy with the strikes, or the threat of strikes, suggesting that the “shadow” of work stoppages is slowing the country down.

The government presented an official balance of the World Cup projects last week. Notable was the fact that 51 or the 82 public works scheduled for the Copa have yet to begin. While I have always said that the question “Will

Brazil

be ready for the Cup?” is the wrong question, it is one that is getting plenty of negative answers.

Returning to the confusion that is Rio de Janeiro, it is worth noting that the city government continues to do everything it can to irritate residents in whatever form it can. Recently, an order was sent down to the Guarda Municipal to start cutting the locks of bicycles chained to signs, light posts, fences, and other logical places to lock a bike in the complete absence of bike racks. This has, with good reason, irritated those who try to get around the city by bike. In my visits to the Institute of Brazilian Architects, one of the institutions most involved with the “reworking” of urban space in Rio, there is nowhere to lock a bike. There are no bike racks at the vast majority of Metrô stations, and none at the train station. The city government claims that Rio has 150km of bike paths, but these are concentrated between the center and Leblon and maybe if you count the paths in both directions you could arrive at this number. Many of the city’s bike paths are painted onto sidewalks, end abruptly or are in terrible conditions. One of the headlines from OGlobo today was that the Day Without Cars will reduce by 2,000 the number of cars on Rio’s streets: a drop in the proverbial bucket. Cyclists are rightly upset about all of this and there is a protest getting underway tomorrow afternoon in front of the city council chambers.[editor's note: on Friday 23 Sept., the Mayor signed a decree legalizing the locking of bicycles to posts throughout the city. Well done! We hope that this is an indication of the power of public indignation.]

To magnify what is already a chaotic transportation scenario, work is beginning on the destruction of the elevated highway that runs around the center of downtown. Though a terrible idea to begin with, the elevated highway has become one of the principal arteries that link the Zona Sul, Zona Norte, and Niteroi. Whenever there is the most minor accident, traffic backs up for hours. Now, traffic will be blocked up for years. These are the kinds of costs that are never measured. Ostensibly, the highway is going underground in order to “renovate” the port zone, so that the real-estate speculators can cash in. This new system will in no way reduce traffic in a city that has long dedicated its urban planning practices to the private automobile. Having driven the length and breadth of this city, I can testify to the chaos and frustration that define the experience. As incomes increase, traffic is worsening in the suburbs as residents there buy the used cars from the wealthier regions. Riding past the port, one can see thousands of newly unloaded cars and trucks waiting to clog even further the streets of Rio. This is a global problem, of course, and one that the Day Without a Car will do absolutely nothing to resolve unless the urban planners working for the city recognize the need for alternative forms of transportation.

And finally, the Olympic governance structure continues to amaze and confuse. The Empresa Brasileira de Legado Esportivo Brasil 2016 erected to deal with the Olympic projects in Rio has been eliminated before it even began to function. This latest case of erectile disfunction is particularly troubling as the Empresa has already received around R$109,000 for its non-existent work, with money going to government officials including the above mentioned Orlando Silva. It will take some work to get a working knowledge of how the Olympics are going to be structured and this latest twist in the plot has not helped me wrap my head around it.

Here we go again, de novo

2011-09-22T11:00:00.001-03:00

Olympics, Olympics, Olympics. Copa, Copa, Copa. Rio 2016, Brazil 2014, Olimpiada, Brazil 2014, 2014 Brasil, World Cup FIFA,Mundial da FIFA, FIFA, FI-FA-FO-DA, FeeFã, Olympics, Olympics, ParaOlympics. O-limp-ics. Shout it from the rooftops, sing it in a taxi, whisper it while making love because EVERYTHING for now and forever is about the bloody mega-events: economy, politics, city planning [sic], health care, transparency, security[sic], media, and the pqp. But, if you happen to be whispering these sweet nothings into the hairy ears of Carlos Nuzman, Ricardo Teixeira, Jerome Valcke or their lawyers you are subject to criminal proceedings for copyright violation (and bad taste).

The “Law of the Cup” (LdC) emerged from its black box into the light of day this week, irritating everyone except the ruling party panderers. There are a number of items that are particularly noxious:

Chapter 2, Section 1 of the LdC deals with the protection and exploration of commercial rights for the Confederations’ and World Cup. The National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) is the target of the law as their existing statutes have to be bent over to FeeFã's whispering will.

In Article 5.1.1, the INPI will not require that FeeFã prove that a given item is associated with their events. This will allow just about any visual or textual reference to come under the aegis of copyright protection statutes, thereby eliminating the possibility of non-associated businesses and vendors to make money. Thus, using the “Brazil 2014” in any context could be considered a violation. Imagine a tourist agency’s ad: “Come to Brazil in 2014”. Illegal. Rio Copa, illegal. In article 10 of the same section, FeeFã will not have to pay any money to INPI regarding the processing of claims they make.

Section 2 dealing with “areas of restricted commerce and access routes” is the shortest and perhaps most worrying. All levels of Brazilian government will assure that FIFA is granted the exclusive right to sell everything in the “official event locations, their immediacies, and in the principal access routes.” Hmm. Let’s suppose that some lefty anarchist wants to take the Metrô instead of driving to the Maracanã to see a World Cup match. That means that every road leading to all of the Metrô stations in the city becomes a principal access route and that FeeFã could tell the city to police all of those routes for non-official commerce. What would happen to you if you decided to set up a t-shirt stand? Section 4 details your fate: three months to one year in prison or a fine. This is nothing short of the privatization of public space that is intended to maximize profits for FeeFã and their FeeFiliates.

So far, so bad, but nothing terribly surprising.

One of the elements that got Romário, yes Romário of the 1994 world cup winning side and now a federal deputy, up in a huff was the inclusion of a clause that would allow all levels of government to declare holidays during game days. The Rio de Janeiro state government has already altered the school calendar for 2014 to have the winter break occur during the World Cup. Now, any city can claim a holiday because a football game is going to happen. This is to reduce the inevitable traffic problems because the transportation projects are clearly not going to be finished on time,or as Romário said, "this will put makeup on the problems that we are going to have." More on that later. I personally think it’s great and that these special holidays will really generate some serious cross-cultural understanding. For example, the fine, yet perhaps sheltered, citizens of Cuiabá will have a holiday to celebrate the scintillating match between Ukraine and Cameroon, giving everyone a full day to find these places on a map. Jamaica x South Korea in Natal…feriado! Paraguay x Norway in Salvador…feriado! All of the Brazil games...5 national holidays in one month! Brilliant!

The freebies of the LdC are extensive. We know that the stadiums are all built with public money and that they get handed over to FeeFã for months. But FeeFã will also get free secutiry, health and medical services (read: termas), vigilância sanitaria (whatever that is), and will also slide through customs and immigration.

Article 8 describes in the most minimal details the development of a separate court system to process FIFA’s legal needs. Similar to the military tribunals in Guantanamo or

Iraq

, these will process and judge cases specifically related to FeeFã’s occupation of the country.

Chapter Three, Article 26, XI gives possible good news for those who decide to leave your conscience at home, overcome the global financial downturn and spend ten thousand dollars on a two week trip: “spectators who posses tickets…and individuals who can demonstrate official involvement with the events…considering a valid passport sufficient for the visa” will “have a visa issued without any restriction to nationality, race or creed.” This could mean that some visa fees will be waved, or not, I’m not sure and neither is anyone else.

Enough about the LdC. It’s more or less what we expected and somewhat less than FeeFã wanted. Next up, the strikes, increases in costs, and organizational nightmares for the Oh-limp-ics.

Burden of Proof

2011-09-14T15:23:00.000-03:00

The burden of proof of benefit for public works related to the World Cup and Olympics should fall on the government, not on civil society. What is happening in Brazil is that the master plans of cities have been altered to attend to the short term demands of Swiss-based NGOs, with the promise that the outpouring of tens of billions in public funds will generate short, medium, and long term benefits. Of course, the opening of public coffers for massive public project will inevitably generate jobs and secondary benefits for a limited range of social actors. However, the justifications (be they technocratic, economic, or geo-political/symbolic) for those projects and the ways in which they (ostensibly) fit into medium and long-term city planning mechanisms that will generate more just and livable cities are not in evidence at all. Herein lies part of the problem: mega-events, almost without exception, are predicated upon short term return on public investment for private industry – economic projections that indicate massive growth for small businesses are conducted by firms contracted to demonstrate just that. There is a farcical absence of independent economic analysis that justifies multi-billion dollar investments before these investments are made. The studies and reports that are coming out now about the World Cup and Olympics in Brazil are mechanism for justifying what is already underway. The inexorable, relentless carrying off of these projects at whatever cost, needs to be justified somehow. Much like the continual selling of various wars in the USA, the continual selling of mega-investment in

Brazil

is an exercise in public relations based in voodoo economics.

For readers new to this blog, I am attempting to cover the massive changes in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil from a perspective based in critical geography mixed with investigative journalism. That my comments here are almost wholly in opposition to the projects underway in Brazil is based on my decade of research into the ways that sports impact urban and social relations. There is a global tendency to de-politicize sports. No one likes to think of their leisure activity as yet another field of political action. However, everyone surely understands that the marriage of sports and nationalism in international competitions cannot be effectively separated from ideas of citizenship, notions of belonging, human rights, and the foundations of a global political-economy. The complications inherent to sport are multiplied and accelerated with the World Cup and Olympics, especially as they stimulate and accelerate myriad processes already present in the places / spaces in which they occur. Mega-events crystallize the articulations between the local and the national and the global wherever they occur, opening opportunities for the questioning of and resistance to the worrisome trends of social polarization and the implementation of ever more severe tactics of neo-liberal governance.

I changed the sub-heading of the blog to “Black Boxes and Trojan Horses” as an indication of the way I see these events unfolding. That the World Cup and (to a lesser extent) the Olympics operate in secrecy is no secret. We have yet to be presented with the governance structure of the 2014 World Cup. We don’t know how decisions are being made, just that there is little or no democratic input into the ‘system’ that is taking billions and restructuring cities and social relations, especially in relation to the use of public space, the installation of new security mechanisms, and the re-articulation of the right to the city. The Olympics have adopted a new governance mechanism that erects a non-governmental authority to direct the billions into project that are defined by the needs of the Games and not the city itself. That is to say, the city needs to be restructured to suit the Games, and not the other way around. I think there is something fundamentally wrong with this and am attempting to show how and where and when and why this is happening.

My comments are occasionally hyperbolic but always based in archival and field research that I am conducting. My interpretation of media reports and press releases is hopefully providing a different perspective into the euphoric vision of mega-events that dominates popular discourse. My ire and incredulity are not couched in anti-sport or anti-event rhetoric but rather come from my belief that the World Cup and Olympics are being used as opportunities to maximize capital accumulation opportunities in perverse and negative ways. The models currently being employed are simply not capable of bettering cities, making them more livable, more just places. Rather, the autocratic imposition of these events requires a restructuring of “democratic norms” in order to facilitate the transfer of public wealth to private hands. These are lost opportunities to implement projects that would bring lasting and not short term benefits.

These events need a massive restructuring, a dose of humility, and should attend to the demands of the places in which they are held. As it is, they are ever-larger, require ever-more public funds, and re-shape spaces and places to meet the exigencies of international sport federations and their corporate partners while stimulating real-estate speculation and re-enforcing false notions of “progress” and “social development”. Of course, the massive outlay of public money for these events is going to generate benefits, employment opportunities, and improvements in transportation, communication, etc. But shouldn’t these projects have long-term urban and social planning as their foundation? It is likely that without the events that the political consensus necessary for such a massive outlay would never be possible. However, the opportunity costs are extreme and rarely measured, if only because it is difficult to do so. But considering that the Brazilian federal government just cut R$50 billion from the education budget while it is projecting to spend at least R$60 billion on mega-events indicates that these costs are real and worth considering.

Mobility, Death, Stadiums, Strikes: Normalcy

2011-09-05T12:04:00.002-03:00

GEOSTADIA MILESTONE: 25,000 HITS!!!! 120 Countries!!! Thanks everyone!

Good news first – there is a plan to extend the Metrô across the bay to Niterói and São Gonçalo. The linha 3 project video link is here and is a much, much, much needed improvement in metropolitan mobility. No timeline has been set, but at least the state government has recognized the impossibility of transporting tens of thousands of people across a narrow bridge. There will even be a stop at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. Holding one’s breath for this project to be completed is not recommended.

Bad news. Really bad news. The quaint and picturesque bonde that shuttles people around Santa Teresa has had yet another accident. Remember that last year a bonde collided with a bus, crushing a woman to death. Last month a French tourist fell to his death off the aqueduct in Lapa. Ten days ago, five people died instantly and more than fifty were injured when the bonde brakes failed on its way down the hill. In most places in the world a major transportation line killing a handful of people and critically injuring others would be a major and permanent scandal – especially when the secretary of transportation blames the dead conductor instead accepting any kind of responsibility when only 7% of the maintenance budget had been spent. Apparently, instead of using nuts and bolts to secure the brakes, something else was used as a temporary fix. Rumor has it that instead of replacing the wheels of the trams with the same size, used wheels from the SuperVia trains were put on and these were perhaps too large for the bonde tracks. Who knows? What we do know is that the total disregard for public safety inevitably led to the evitable deaths of five people. There are some criticisms being launched in the proper directions but no real outrage, no one demanding the Governor’s head on a platter. The Transportation Secretary retained his post despite massive evidence of incompetence.

That there was a disaster waiting to happen is evidenced in this video that shows the bonde heading downhill against traffic.

More ridiculous news coming out of the Ministério do Esporte. The MoS, responsible for the governance of all sport in Brazil, paid R$6.2 million to register soccer fans. The money was delivered, the project never was. The problem is not only in that the project was not carried off or that the company hired to do it pocketed the money (at least temporarily) but that it never should have been considered in the first place. The Brazilian government has consistently and incrementally implemented a policy of criminalizing all football fans, but especially those who are members of the torcidas organizadas. The “registration” of torcidas organizadas is another step along the way to the hyper-surveillance of all fans and curiously one that the torcidas of Rio de Janeiro are willing to accept. For those interested in the minutiae of Brazilian football culture, the torcidas of Rio e Janeiro are the only torcidas in Brazil that are not affiliated with the national association. I’ll save the explanation for another post.

Not surprisingly, and as I predicted here, there is a shortage of qualified labor for the 2016 Olympic projects. It is a very good time to be a civil engineer in Brazil. The shortage of labor is being used as a justification by the Olympic Organizing Committee to elevate the salaries of the personnel that they already have under contract. This will also necessitate the imporation of more expensive experts from abroad, so those of you thinking of making the jump to Brazil , come on in, the water’s lovely, although you’re still likely to get your electronic goods stolen on the street (an Italian friend of mine was robbed twice yesterday, the second attempt, obviously, not as fruitful as the first as there was nothing left, coitados).

The general strike at the Maracanã continues! There was a brief resolution last week, but all work has stopped again and the Consorcio Maracanã (Odebrecht, Delta and Carioca) is making no attempt to re-start negotiations with the union. One of the major complaints of the workers is that they were being served rotten food and that even after the last round of negotiations, the food provider was not changed. There are likely two sides to this story, maybe even three, but serving rotten food to one’s workers is certainly not in the best interests of the nation. Come on Dilma, get your petit-bourgeois party back to the left it left ten years ago!

After strikes at the Maracanã and Minerão, threats of striking in Cuiabá, there is now the possibility of a strike at the Fonte Nova in Salvador. Salvage capitalism meets head to head with relatively strong syndicalism! Drama total!

In case you thought that no one in the government was watching what is going on with these insanely inflated budgets, the Tribunal das Contas Da União (TCU) identified some price inflation in the Maracanã project. The official cost is now around R$859 million, or R$11.300 per seat. By contrast, the new privately financed Grêmio stadium in Porto Alegre will only cost R$6.600 per seat and Palmerias’ Palestra Italia stadium in São Paulo will privately finance 45.000 at R$6.670 per seat. Corinthians’ publically financed stadium in São Paulo will cost at least R$12.000 per seat. Lesson: where public money and post-Cup privatization contracts are happening, the pigs are at the trough. Where the private sector is involved, costs are much lower. Does this mean that all the WC stadiums should be privately financed? No. But it does mean that there is a pervasive culture of getting hands in the till as often and as deeply as possible and that there is little or no control over public spending in the pursuit of mega-event legacies [sic].

Rio de Janeiro, August 2011

2011-08-26T11:33:00.000-03:00

This city is absolutely bonkers. The flow of information and the rate of change and exchange are overwhelming. This is counterbalanced by the mind-boggling geology and the historical trajectory of Brazil. Nothing new, I suppose, just saying.

Real-estate markets are booming. Since October 2009, when the Olympics were announced, prices have more than doubled across the city. Where UPPs have been installed, rates of accretion are much higher. There is a migration of foreign dollars and foreigners into the Olympic City and a migration of locals to the periphery. The currency is overvalued, we appear to be living in some kind of bubble but in a country mired in centuries of bureauctaric inefficiency the structural changes are slow in coming which may, ironically, save Brazil from the depredations being suffered in certain European and North American countries.

Three new transportation lines are getting crammed through the city of Rio without any democratic process or access to information, tens of thousands of people will be forcibly displaced with tens of billions of public funds while the metropolitan transportation plan continues to not exist. BRT é crime.

Last week, someone realized that he had taken the wrong bus but ended up on the Rio-Niteroi bridge. His attempt to get to the other side was woefully unsuccessful and his premature death caused a 12km traffic jam. People desperate to get to work flooded onto the ferry, which has recently reduced service. There are no plans to create more effective links across the bay. The Metrô doesn’t go to either airport and there are no plans to link the two.

It frequently takes more than an hour to leave the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, which also has no Metrô service. Two weeks ago, my excellent though crazy bus driver solved the puzzle by jumping a median, doing a u-turn and going the wrong way on a two lane road for about 3km, altering the bus’ normal route to go through the airport and then taking another u-turn to head south again. A brilliant move, but really? Those not as fortunate literally waited three hours. There is an entire traffic jam industry with people walking between lines of stopped cars selling snacks and drinks. There are massive stretches of highway that people avoid for fear of assault or the predictable insanity of Rio’s notorious traffic. Some days, the advertising section for cars in OGlobo is larger than the news section. Did I mention that there is no map of Rio's bus system, no way to tell when a certain bus is going to pass a certain point or where it will take you from there?

On Wednesday morning a group of foreign and Brazilian workers were followed from their hotel by two cars. At a certain point on the elevated highway their vans were stopped by 8 machine-gun wielding men who mistakenly robbed the Brazilians and not the gringos. The police are going to come to work a few minutes earlier now, as the assault happened before the shift started. The week before last, a bus was hijacked in front of City Hall. After the bus driver jumped out the calmest dude in the bus was forced to drive on until the Military Police shot out the tires. In the standoff, there was some shooting in which six people were wounded. All of the bullets found in the bus and in the people came from the Military Police. But don’t worry, these very same police are training to rappel down from stadium roofs in the case that someone gets the bright idea to attack a stadium full of people (which to my knowledge has never happened in the history of sport).

I took the following picture this week, there was no one around. This city is also incredibly calm and beautiful.

Yesterday, the Movement of Homeless Workers occupied the Ministry of Sport building in Brasilia demanding an end to the forced removal of people from their homes in preparation for the World Cup and Olympics. Their estimate is that at least 70 thousand people have been forcibly removed already.

In Niterói, a judge who had taken a very hard line against police corruption was shot 21 times as she parked her car in front of her house. She had received multiple death threats, had asked for police protection that was refused, and was about to sentence a high-ranking member of Niterói’s PM. All of the bullets found in the car and in her body belonged to the PM of Niterói. The news was published above the fold in Oglobo, but below were smaller articles detailing her past and present amorous relationships with police, as if these relationships were somehow complicit in her death. Common sense in Rio has is that “she was asking to be killed” as she had perhaps forgotten her place or did not understand that there are certain social and structural conventions (such as milicias being taken on by uppity female judges) that should not be messed with. Despite Carnaval and some progressive social policies, Brazil is a very conservative country.

The city finally took down the fences that surrounded the Praça Tiradentes in the center of town. It looks great. Fences around public space area sign that the government fears the public. Let’s hope they continue to make improvements like this to all of Rio’s plazas and not just those that come under the gaze of foreign architecture firms (and/or graduate programs in Architecture).

The Olympic Park Project is going to be very, very interesting and a big challenge. The project is handicapped by the location which doesn’t lend itself to integrated urbanism, but will certainly provide an opportunity for longitudinal studies into the ways in which discursive Olympism meets up with the actual needs of the cities in which the Games occur. The technical production of the project is amazing, though in the official release we are given a very limited geographic perspective (south-east to north-west) of the project as a whole. However, from the looks of it, the majority of the Vila Autódromo will be saved. El Principe did not want to comment about that.

This weekend, all of the torcidas organizadas in the entire country – with the exception of those in Rio de Janeiro (who are not integrated into the national federation of torcidas organizadas because they have a somewhat cozier relationship with the existing power structures) – will protest against Ricardo Teixeira’s reign at the CBF. The movement Fora Ricardo Teixeira has gained tens of thousands of supporters throughout Brazil. The ANT-RJ will be brining the fight to the mean streets of the Fechadão prior to Vasco x Framengo this Sunday and ANT-SP will be doing the same. There is significant attention being drawn to the endemic corruption at the CBF and FIFA. No less a figure than Romário, Brazil’s great striker of the 1990s and now a federal deputy, has launched criticisms in the direction of the 2014 World Cup saying that completing promises made to FIFA without respecting human rights and national laws simply will not be tolerated. This is an important figure saying important things that are going against the prevailing tide. It’s not too late to do things right.

2011-08-21T18:25:00.002-03:00

Lordy. When will the city government come to terms with the reality of how cities function? It’s a rhetorical question, the answer to which continues to shock and awe. Every day there is a new and more ridiculous edict intended to impose control on the uncontrollable. This week their Lordships launched the brave idea that all of the weekly ferias livres (open air markets) need to close promptly at 1pm. This un-loving squeeze (or the annihilation of space by time), which has also occurred in São Paulo, was met with an entertaining, effective, and important protest, photos and video of which are below. In the short movie, well worth watching, the crowd is chanting “Epa, Epa, Epa, Quero minha xépa! Epa, Epa, Epa, Quero minha Xépa!”

Xépa is the discount price given by merchants at the tail end of the feira. The forced closing of the market at 13hrs will change market logics and eliminate long-standing custom. This is exactly against the principals of a free-market economy. The easiest thing to do to preserve the Xépa and the discursive integrity of their Lordships would just be to back the f€©k off and let the feiras be.

Informality will not be tolerated in the Olympic City of Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics Jogos de Verão 2016 Host City Olimpíada 2016, 2016, 2016, ©,™,℠,℗,ⅎ,∩, ₭. According to the ill-logic of the current regime that governs this city, Rio de Janeiro functions Best and Only when all of its elements are formalized, social practices regularized, and social formations crystallized. In order to accomplish this Sisyphean and Kafkaesque task, to contravene the very nature of the city, their Lordships are applying an extensive series of Shocks. Some of these shocks are, perhaps, welcome – at first. I like a swept street and sanitary restaurants as much as the next flaneur. Shocks like the one being applied to the feiras are not only unnecessary, autocratic, and downright annoying, but contrary to principals upon which their Lordships depend for the continued accumulation of wealth and power. There is no Shock of Education, Shock of Health, Shock of Clean Air, Shock of Corruption – just the Schlock of Order.

The Saga of the Maracanã continues. This week, workers struck to protest the poverty of their wages and working conditions. The greve by the STRAICP union (Heavy Industry Construction) workers will continue into next week. After one of the workers was seriously injured by an on-site explosion, the workers walked out with a series of demands including an increase in the lunch allowance, safety inspections, and a health plan that is “equivalent to the directors’”. As the projects for the mega-events accelerate, the indices of accidents are bound to increase and workers' rights will be eroded. What is the highest blood/concrete ratio that Brazils’ major construction firms are willing to tolerate?

The Olympic governing structure is nearly erectus. It took awhile for their Lordships to figure out just where and how to pull and push and prod to get the juices flowing, but now that they’ve got it just about where they want it, the pistons of progress can lead us smoothly forward into a blissful, naturalized, and fully actuated future. Just check out how easily the BRT lines are going to slice through the urban fabric, leaving a silky trail of effervescent efficiency. It's hard to see the tens of thousands of disappropriations happening in this video, but if you listen closely, you can hear the screams.

The struggles to mount on Mount Olympus are the stuff of boring, though important tabloids. Henrique Mirelles has jumped out of the lower reaches of APO and moved to the Conselho Olímpico, a perch from which he will lend a certain sober credibility to the Herculean and Pharonic projects happening down below. The APO top spot belongs to Márcio Fortes de Almeida. The recent revelation was that he is willing to work with one third of the public functionaries that have been designated to work for him is a good indication of how much work the agency is going to do. Since Mirelles figured out where the real power lay and moved out, the APO has been stripped of nearly all significance. Remember, a few months ago the APO was going to have 484 positions. A senate committee hacked it down to 181 and now Fortes now only wants around 60. The APO will organize the spending of R$29 public billions. I don’t think everyone working at the APO will be an accountant, especially as the organization is charged with determining what is to actually be built. How many urban planners will the APO employ? My guess is ZERO. This year, the paper tells me, just putting the APO together is going to cost the tax-payer R$22 million. This is going to be a very expensive rubber stamp.

The other Olympic news of note was the announcement of the winner of the Olympic Park competition. AECOM of London (responsible for the London 2012 Olympic Park), in conjunction with Daniel Gusmão (DG)of Rio, carried home the R$100 thousand prize and the right to deliver on their proposal. Interesting, the proposal intends to preserve at least a part of the Vila Autódromo, urbanizing and integrating it into the larger urban context of the Olympic peninsula. Whether this will actually happen or if the Vila Autódromo will be used as a Potemkin Village is yet to be seen. Here’s the video of that incredibly bright and interesting and naturalized future:

Futebol Explanatório 102

2011-08-16T22:55:00.000-03:00

Barcelona 2 – Real Madrid 2, Spanish SuperCopa.

In Europe generally and Spain more specifically, the previous season’s winners of the national cup competition (Real Madrid and the King’s Cup in this case) play the winners of the national league (Barcelona) in a one off game, in the Spanish case, home and away. This is the SuperCupa, good for filling the trophy case and for rubbing it in the face of the Madristas.

Messi playing for Barcelona is the best player in the world. Messi playing for Argentina is not Maradona. Club teams are forced to release players who are called up for national team duty. Botafogo’s porteiro, Jefferson, is the third string keeper for Brazil. He’ll never see the field, yet he gets called up for every friendly and qualifying match and Botafogo have some mão de alface (lettuce hands, one of my favorite Brazilian football expressions) minding the net.

The clubs are not compensated for giving away their best players for days, weeks, or months at a time, nor are they compensated if the player returns injured, crippled, or drunk (as has recently been the case with Fred at Fluminense, not to mention Adriano, coitado). FIFA determines the days set aside for international matches (friendlies or qualifiers) and tournaments. The clubs are told by national federations which players they “have” to release and the players trundle off to do their duty. The players get paid by the national federation for international appearances and there are likely some tidy bonuses thrown about when medals get hung around sweaty necks.

FIFA controls this from their buzzard’s perch in Switzerland. If you’re reading this blog I’m going to assume that you know about FIFA. National Football Federations or Associations are given membership in FIFA based on a two year affiliation with a regional confederation (FIFA divides the world into six regions, Europe - UEFA, Asia - AFA , Oceania - BOTO, Africa - CAF, South America- CONMEBOL, North and Central America + Caribbean - CONCACAF). Then they have to write a letter to the Secretary General of FIFA who decides, alone, if a country’s association is worthy of FIFA membership. There are 207 current members, with one vote each, organized and orchestrated through FIFA’s regional divisions. This very structure is a machine that generates corruption.

There are 32 spots available for the Men’s World Cup, unevenly distributed. FIFA allots 13 World Cup berths for European nations. 53 teams are sorted into 9 qualifying groups, the winners of which qualify directly for the World Cup while the 8 best second place teams will play a home and away series with the aggregate winners coming to Brazil. Africa will have 5 teams for the 2014 Cup following two rounds of qualifying. The 24 lowest ranked teams will play each other in a group round robin format before being placed in five qualifying groups that the highest ranked teams will join in. South America and Asia receive 4.5 berths each. This means that the fifth placed teams in each region will play each other for the right to go to Brazil. The same hold true of North and Central America and the Caribbean which has 3.5 berths to Oceania’s .5. Since Australia defied geology by leaving Oceania and heading to Asia, FIFA took away the automatic qualifying from that region putting the winner of qualifying in a playoff against Honduras or Costa Rica (perpetual 3^rd or 4^th placers in the CONCACAF region). Boring if you already know it.

The Draw that took place in Rio on the 30^th of July, which met with a very healthy protest led by the Comitê Popular da Copa and the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores, defined the qualifying groups for the World Cup. But now, the European national leagues are starting up again while the Brazilian and North American leagues (among others) are in mid-season.

This of course, is only dealing with men’s football. Women’s football is similar, though on a much smaller scale. Brazil has no functional women’s league, though many women play and there are nascent professional structures. The USA has a women’s league that appears to be healthy, though limited in geographic reach. There are no doubt fine places to read about that and I welcome any sugestõezinhas.

Right, that’s it for the football. Here’s a list of some good books:

Brilliant Orange, David Winner

The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt

Inventing the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson

Foul!, Andrew Jennings

Would welcome additions for a reader bibliography that could be posted and shared on Zotero.com

Geostadia or the Geography of the Obvious

The Center of the Universe

Prove me Wrong

End of Year Report

end of year experiment

Mega-events don’t exist

Checking in. Tudo bem? Key-toe'chimo, bri'gado.

Finados

Rotten to the Core

A Copa Gangrenosa - The gangrene Cup

Fat-Fingered Blind Parrots and a Hairless Canadian Monkey with Keys

Banal idiocy on a bike

Para além de Ricardo Teixeira, por Marcos Alvito

A free, flowing conduit of useful information

Here we go again, de novo

Burden of Proof

Mobility, Death, Stadiums, Strikes: Normalcy

Rio de Janeiro, August 2011

A bright, beautiful, and naturalized future ©

Futebol Explanatório 102