At the Wall Street Journal, "President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s newly elected government says supporters of former leader Jair Bolsonaro tried to overthrow it."
Also, at the BBC, "Brazilian forces regain control after Congress stormed," and Memeorandum.
And Sky News, here:
‘Socialism just didn’t work out around here.’ Brazil wants to try something new, writes @MaryAnastasiaOG https://t.co/TQ6IhZ1aDH
— MaryAnastasiaO'Grady (@MaryAnastasiaOG) January 7, 2019
In the days after Jair Bolsonaro won the October runoff contest to become president-elect of Brazil, I received some notable mail from supporters offended by the negative media coverage of their choice for a new chief executive.Still more.
A letter from a man in São Paulo, who described himself as “a gay person,” read: For the “first time in my life I voted [with conviction] . . . on both the first and the second round. I woke up 6AM on two cold Sundays happily doing it. I voted for Bolsonaro emotionally and with gratitude in my heart.”
Behind the emotion there was reason. This is “the first time a government [will provide] freedom of market and freedom of choice to us. . . . By that I mean understanding that’s what people want and realizing that’s what will drive the economic direction in this new administration.”
On Tuesday the center-right Mr. Bolsonaro became Brazil’s 36th president. As I read inauguration coverage here in the south of the country I wondered if the new president grasps the soaring expectations he has created. Brazil has let go a primal scream for freedom.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s critics claim that his “right wing” views, shaped by his experience in the military, will put Brazil’s liberal democracy at risk. In the lead-up to the vote, this media hysteria reached a fevered pitch.
It hasn’t diminished. But it has lost its force, in part because it has exposed the bias of the chattering classes, at home and abroad. Brazilians rightly ask where these champions of democracy were when the Workers’ Party governments of former Presidents Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and Dilma Rousseff were financing the Cuban military dictatorship and its satellite Venezuela.
Brazil’s institutions have matured in the 30-plus years since the end of its own military government. This has been a democratic process, driven by civil society’s thirst for pluralism, tolerance and self-government.
The judiciary and federal law enforcement are increasingly independent. Proof of progress is the federal investigation dubbed Operation Car Wash, which exposed the corruption of a range of powerful business executives and high-ranking politicians in a landmark bribery case. So blind was Lady Justice that even the popular Mr. da Silva couldn’t escape responsibility for his role in the scheme. He’s now in jail.
The same institutions are more than likely to check a power-hungry president on the right. It won’t take as long either. The establishment fawned over Lula. Mr. Bolsonaro will be on a short leash.
The legitimate concern is whether the new president can deliver on his promises to better protect human life and to shrink a monster state that devours dreams.
The São Paulo letter-writer put it bluntly: “Socialism just didn’t work out around here.” Another letter came from a man in Europe who had emigrated seven years ago because Brazil was a dead end.
New @radiology_rsna study details 45 Brazilian babies whose mothers were infected with #Zika during pregnancy. https://t.co/Dciw2NCRhm
— Radiology (@radiology_rsna) August 23, 2016
Zika's calamitous attack on the brains of babies — as seen from the inside https://t.co/8JJug37KV1
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 24, 2016
More than anything else, what surprised me during my first Olympics was the sheer scale of the bubble the IOC has made for itself. After arriving at the airport, members and assorted apparatchiks were ushered into private cars, ferried along exclusive highway lanes—look out the window, and there were Rio 2016-branded walls to mask the favelas—and dropped off at their exclusive hotels ringed by security, so only those with credentials could enter. They then took the same private cars to all of their events. Some even got motorcades. Once they got to the various sports venues, they went in the Olympic Family entrances, passed through the Olympic Family security lines, mingled in the Olympic Family club lounges, and watched athletes compete from the Olympic Family seats. When they were hungry, they surely put their $900 per diems to use at the city's most exclusive restaurants and bars, never risking having to interact with anyone who wasn't wealthy. Except, perhaps, for the people serving them.Rather than bring development and prosperity, the games will increase economic inequality and social division.
Yes, the Olympic Bubble is so all-encompassing that the IOC has convinced itself that it doesn't exist. "These games have not been organized in a bubble," IOC President Thomas Bach told reporters on Saturday as he made other demonstrably false claims, such as the Games not using any public money and Brazilians being "united behind these Olympic Games" despite the fact that half of them weren't. Bach ended his press conference by no-commenting almost every question, but adding that if the Olympics can happen in Rio, they can happen anywhere.
Putting aside Bach's sportocrat snobbery, there is a critical lesson here. The Olympic Bubble's comprehensiveness illustrates just how little the IOC is concerned with anyone but themselves—and how blithely, even happily indifferent the entire Olympic "movement" is to the waste and corruption it fosters, and the human wreckage it leaves in its wake...
Does Ryan Lochte owe Rio and the #Olympics an apology? @cbrennansports says yes! https://t.co/RMYsuxtK8J pic.twitter.com/TWaZIx57VK
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) August 19, 2016
Here’s #RyanLochte statement on Twitter pic.twitter.com/LWIvrLQf2e
— Ryan Smith (@ryansmithtv) August 19, 2016
Dafne Schippers
— Telly Lad (@TellyLad) August 5, 2016
Netherlands 🇳🇱
Sprinter
Twitter: @dafneschippers
Insta: dafne_schippers#Rio2016 #OnesToWatch pic.twitter.com/aTGCp8lLnP
The Dutch athlete is disappointed in second place. “I hate this very much. I came here to get gold, and I didn’t do that”, she said to broadcaster NOS after the race. “I can’t enjoy this. Horrible.”Also, from last week, at USA Today, "New kid in blocks: Dutch sprinter Dafne Schippers eyes gold."
Thompson finished with a time of 21.78 seconds, Schippers finished at 21.88 seconds. Third place went to American Tori Bowie.
"Daily Beast's #Grindr-Baiting Is the Worst Invasion of Privacy" https://t.co/AZGMQ5Wlk4 By @dnlreynolds #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/0Tkh0qw6jQ— The Advocate (@TheAdvocateMag) August 11, 2016
Rio 2016: The Green Water Spreads to Water Polo Pool - WSJ https://t.co/x5isF39taJ
— SnewsHound (@SnewsHound) August 10, 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO—The Rio Olympics’ green-water crisis claimed another victim: the water polo pool.Well, maybe not.
Officials scrambled to contain the new embarrassment, which shocked television viewers and spectators Tuesday when the pool hosting the women’s 10-meter synchronized diving finals turned a deep, bright green. Wednesday, even as officials insisted they had the problem under control, they acknowledged that the problem was also affecting the adjoining water polo pool, which also displayed a greenish tint.
“Yesterday mid-afternoon there was a sudden decrease in the alkalinity of the pool,” said Mario Andrada, spokesman for the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee. “Obviously, the people in charge of maintaining the pool and of checking could and should have done more intensive tests.”
Andrada said the pool color would get back to normal “very shortly.” However, he added, Wednesday’s rain in Rio was complicating things.
Several possible explanations emerged on Wednesday, though not all seemed to fit together.
FINA, swimming and diving’s world governing body, said the change occurred, because “the water tanks ran out of some of the chemicals used in the water treatment process. As a result the pH level of the water was outside the usual range, causing the discolouration.”
FINA also added that its sport medicine committee had deemed the water safe for competition...
Why is the diving pool water green? @vickihallch tries to get to the bottom of it. (The question, not the pool.) https://t.co/9BQv44wiXL— National Post (@nationalpost) August 10, 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO — An unsettling thing happened at the Olympic diving pool on Tuesday: the water inexplicably turned green, just in time for the women’s synchronized 10-meter platform diving competition.More.
Officials said they did not know what caused the trouble, exactly. But they declared the water had been tested and was not dangerous. It was an unsettling sight, appearing to become greener and murkier as the day went on, having been a lovely light blue on Monday.
The British diver Tom Daley, who won a bronze medal in the same pool the day before, posted a photograph on Twitter showing the contrast between the colors of the pools. “Ermmmm – what happened?” he said.
The adjoining pool at the aquatic center, used for synchronized swimming and water polo, remained its normal blue color, which made the extreme greenness of the diving pool all the more striking.
Meanwhile, diving practice went on as planned, and so did the women’s synchronized event. Competitors generally said that the swampiness of the water did not put them off their form, although they found it weird and puzzling.
“I’ve never dived in anything like it,” said Britain’s Tonia Couch, who finished fifth, along with Lois Coulson.
The situation overshadowed the news conference after the event, with reporters more interested in the state of the water than in the quality of the diving. Officials released a brief statement that did not address the main questions: what had happened, why had it happened so quickly, and why wasn’t there a simple explanation, given that this is the sort of thing that commonly happens to swimming pools?
“To ensure a high quality field of play is mandatory to the Rio 2016 organizing committee,” the statement said. “Water tests at Maria Lenk Aquatic Center diving pool were conducted and found to be no risk to the athletes’ health. We’re investigating what the cause of the situation was.”
The statement also said, “We’re pleased to say the competition was successfully completed.”
Officials at the news conference declined to take questions from the news media about the water.
Steve Henderson, who owns AAA Pool Service in Santa Rosa, Calif., said that although he was not an expert on Brazilian swimming pools, there were two likely causes: a sudden algae bloom, which could be eradicated by zapping the pool with extra chlorine overnight; or a chemical reaction between chlorine and a metal in the water, most likely manganese.
“If they have manganese in the water, you will get a reaction depending on level of chlorination,” Henderson said. He said that it was a normal occurrence, as even a slight imbalance can cause a violent color change, and not a cause of alarm.
Still, he said, he found it puzzling that officials at the Games did not have a better explanation...
See the exact moment Chad le Clos regretted provoking Michael Phelps https://t.co/nYxAkCQekn via @mashable #Olympics2016
— Cece (@CeceCalabrese) August 10, 2016
The 2016 Olympic Games kicked off in Rio de Janeiro on the weekend without major incidents. That seemed a near miracle after weeks of grim reports about shoddy construction, an unprepared security detail and monstrous traffic jams. Whether the athletes, visitors and Cariocas (as Rio residents are known) can get through the next two weeks without a catastrophe remains an open question.Still more.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Then again, when Rio won the competition in 2009 to host these games, Brazil wasn’t forecast to look like it does today—with a budget deficit equal to some 8% of gross domestic product, inflation near 10%, two years of economic contraction and a cesspool of corruption scandals.
In 2009, President Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT) had been at the helm for more than six years and was somewhat of a world rock star. His hip rhetoric denigrated the economic liberalism of the 1990s while hyping a new and improved brand of socialism with a samba twist.
Much of the region bought Lula’s 2.0 version of big government. Concerns about the return of left-wing Latin populism and its potential damage to entrepreneurship and economic growth were met with assurances that this time would be different.
Lula was a man of the left but he wasn’t Hugo Chávez, conventional wisdom explained. A November 2009 Economist magazine cover story was titled “Brazil takes off.” It cited a forecast by the consulting firm PwC that by 2025 São Paulo would be the world’s fifth-wealthiest city. Most of punditry agreed: Brazil was on course to take its rightful place as a world economic superpower.
Lula stepped down after two terms in 2011, handing power to his PT successor, President Dilma Rousseff. The 2016 Olympics were supposed to showcase the socialist paradise he had cultivated: an urban utopia mixing affordable housing, national industrial champions and orderly public-transportation networks to provide a tranquil—and environmentally approved—living experience.
Instead, at the Olympic Village, just weeks before the opening, sinks fell off the walls and there were various other plumbing disasters. The Australian national team fled from its quarters upon arrival because it found, among other things, exposed electrical wires next to indoor puddles of water. Guanabara Bay, the venue for open-water swimming and sailing races, is a giant petri dish of bacteria. A new metro line that was supposed to take visitors to the games ends eight miles short of its promised destination.
The Rio security company that was hired to screen spectators was fired 10 days ago for noncompliance with its contract. Organizers scrambled last week to hire and train a replacement team.
The world seems stunned. It shouldn’t be. Rio is a microcosm of Lula’s Brazil, where bureaucracy runs things from the top down and human beings are an afterthought. The only thing missing in this Rio analogy—so far—is the corruption that flourished at the federal level during 14 years of PT government...
The Produnova vault is a gamble only a handful of women’s gymnasts are willing to make https://t.co/fX092NX1GJ #Rio2016
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 7, 2016
Hi guys, let’s talk about the most important part of the opening ceremony.Also, at London's Daily Mail, "Gisele uses her final catwalk to honor Brazil at #Olympics #OpeningCeremony. Woah."
REVIEW: Brazil Boring... https://t.co/As9nPCVdsX— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) August 6, 2016
.@giseleofficial is “The Girl From Ipanema” in Olympic #OpeningCeremony: https://t.co/otphOCsXvH pic.twitter.com/xqSR0vbzBJ— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) August 6, 2016
.@rogerlsimon That's why I never bothered to watch in the first place. Revolting politics and PC inanity. #ThirdWorldGames #Rio2016
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 6, 2016
