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Rio 2016 Olympics " welcome to hell "
POLICE OFFICERS AND firefighters in Rio de Janeiro protesting their lack of pay as the Olympics approach are engaged in “ethically reprehensible” actions “bordering on terrorism,” according to an editorial on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro’s largest newspaper, O Globo. The newspaper, a property of Grupo Globo, which is owned and controlled by the billionaire Marinho family, is Brazil’s dominant media conglomerate and a primary sponsor and beneficiary of the 2016 Summer Olympics.
In attacking the police, the paper was not criticizing the epidemic of police killings of black and brown youth, nor the militarized occupation of many of Rio’s slums that has failed to improve public security, nor the criminal gangs of off-duty and former officers, known as milícias, that violently control and extort vast swaths of the city. Instead, Globo’s indignation was targeted at public servants nonviolently demonstrating for a basic worker’s right — being paid — as part of a protest that happens to threaten Globo’s own business interests worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a fact the paper neglected to disclose to its readers.
“Welcome to Hell. Police and firefighters don’t get paid; Whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe,” read a sign in English held by disgruntled police officers in Rio’s international airport on Monday, just weeks before the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics. The state of Rio, after wasting billions on lavish corporate tax breaks and delayed, over-budget Olympic construction contracts with notoriously corrupt firms, has declared afinancial emergency, forcing it to cut benefits, postpone paying salaries and pensions to public workers, and slash operating budgets. Police and firefighters have for months been in conflict with the state over budget shortfalls. The state’s teachers union has been on strike for nearly four months.
Last week, the federal government announced an emergency cash injection of $890 million (2.9 billion reals) to help staunch the bleeding. Meanwhile, police units are running shortages on gasoline, printer ink, toilet paper, and even water, while violence surges out of control. Fifty-nine police officers have been killed in the state so far this year, and parts of the capital resemble low-intensity war zones as poorly trained, under-equipped police engage heavily armed criminal gangs in daily shootouts. Fed-up police officers, with support from their leadership, are threatening to go on strikeduring the Olympics if they do not get paid.
Demonstrators hold a banner reading “Olympics for whom?” next to a police officer during a protest against the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 5, 2015.
Photo: Tasso Marcelo/AFP/Getty Images
“To play against Rio-2016 is the irresponsible and counterproductive option,” wrote O Globo, while suggesting the police were politically motivated and “sponsored” by unions (a clear allusion to the union-backed Workers’ Party of suspended president Dilma Rousseff, against which all major Globo outlets have vociferously campaigned). “This should be handled domestically, within the appropriate sphere — never through blackmail against an event that will bring benefits to the state’s finances.”
What the scathing editorial fails to mention, however, is that O Globo is a major player in the Olympic Games, with a huge investment on the line: Its parent company, the sprawling Grupo Globo media empire, is an official supplier and sponsor of the 2016 Olympics, and, along with two other networks, it paid the International Olympic Committee $190 million for nationwide television broadcast and streaming rights to the 2014 and 2016 games. Globo has an additional exclusive broadcast contract for 2016 through 2032 for an undisclosed amount.
According to AdAge, the Globo network has sold $420 million in an Olympics package “that includes a vast number of ads and mentions on TV and Globo.com” to other official sponsors like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Bradesco bank, and the wireless telecom company Claro.
“The editorial calls it ‘irresponsible’ to ‘play against’ the Olympic Games, as if we should all be proud to host an event that supposedly benefits all citizens indiscriminately,” Sylvia Moretzsohn, a journalism professor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, told The Intercept. “It is the same old trick: Speak in the general interest to erase the existence of very particular interests,” she continued.
Disclosure of conflicts of interest — real or perceived — is a basic principle of journalistic ethics.
Last year, Grupo Globo, Latin America’s largest media conglomerate, saw gross revenues of nearly $5 billion (16 billion reals) and banked just under $1 billion (3 billion reals) in profit. Each of the three Marinho brothers who control it has an estimated net worth of $5.2 billion. The salary of a new recruit in Rio’s military police amounts to a little more than $800 a month(2,726 reals); a civil police investigator’s salary is slightly less than $1,300 (4,190 reals) a month.
O Globo and its parent company did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
“This is not the first time that O Globo replaced journalism with propaganda,” notes Moretzsohn. “But I recognize that it is difficult to create propaganda when the country is going through its biggest political crisis since the end of dictatorship, and is being closely monitored by the foreign press.”
CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Andrew Fishman✉fishman@theintercept.comt@AndrewDFish
font redaction https://theintercept.com/2016/06/30/razils-globo-protects-huge-olympic-payday-by-attacking-police-protest-over-unpaid-wages/
font redaction https://theintercept.com/2016/06/30/razils-globo-protects-huge-olympic-payday-by-attacking-police-protest-over-unpaid-wages/
Mutilated Body Parts Wash Up on a Rio Beach Designated for Olympic Volleyball
THE GRUESOME DISCOVERY IS THE LATEST IN A LONG LIST OF SCANDALS
Mutilated body parts washed upon Rio de Janeiro’s famed Copacabana Beach on Wednesday, just meters away from where the Olympic beach-volleyball competitions will be held in August.
Police told media that a severed foot and other parts of the body were found. Their provenance is unclear, but the Independent
reports that the discovery came after a period of lethal gun battles in Rio’s slums as authorities attempted to recapture the notorious drug trafficker Nicolas Labre Pereira. Pereira had earlier been freed in an audacious and bloody breakout from a hospital where he was a patient that led to the death of a patient and injuries to several nurses. The hospital that will be used to treat athletes and tourists in August.
The gruesome discovery on Copacabana Beach is only the latest in a long list of scandals that has beset the Rio Olympics in the months leading up to them.
The city is home to both widespread crime and an indigent police force, which recently protested at the local airport, informing visitors that they were not safe.
On Tuesday, Jason Day, the world’s No. 1 golf player, announced he would not compete in the games out of fear of the Zika virus. Brazil has been an epicenter of the virus, which has been linked to birth defects; some experts have ventured that the virus necessitates the cancellation of the Olympics.
font redaction http://time.com/4388926/rio-olympics-copacabana-beach-volleyball/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - EXTREME VIOLENCE
Girl is the 12th bullet victim lost in RJ in nine days
12 years child was shot in front of the house you live in Morro Chapadão in Costa Barros. Taken to the hospital, she has stable framework
< the violence in rio is killing our children >
Protest the NGO Rio de Paz by children killed by stray bullets, on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro - 01/25/2015 (Murilo Rezende / Futura Press)
A 12-year-old girl was the victim of a stray bullet early on Monday in Rio de Janeiro - the 12th event of its kind in less than ten days. The child was shot in front of the house where she lives in Morro Chapadão in Costa Barros, in the North Zone of Rio. She was rescued and taken to the Hospital Albert Schwitzer, in Realengo, according to the Military Police. According to the state Department of Health, the health status of the child, who entered the hospital at around 0h30, is considered stable. The PM said that made no operation on site and not get involved in any shooting at the time of the incident. Rival gangs face off for control of the selling points of Plain drugs.
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