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A honest opinion of a Brazilian about the World Cup


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It´s been a long time since I last checked these forums...

Not that I´m trying to be a troll or to start a pointless and sensationalist discussion, but this brazilian girl made this and she´s getting a quite good audience, because actually many, many brazilians, including me, agree with her statements

I thought this could be interesting for anyone who don´t know Brazil

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Speaking only for myself, I've gotten interested in learning more about Brazil over the past few years. I've got all these fun images of Brazil in my head that I probably want to go there more than anywhere else in the world right now. I cant be the only one that feels this way. The World Cup and Olympics probably have a lot to do with that. Now, I don't have the same feeling about Russia, even though they're hosting both too. This makes me think that the potential to market itself to the world is so great, greater than the UK, Russia, Korea, South Africa, Germany or any other recent Olympic or World Cup host I can think of.

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I love this video, & I love what this young Brazilian woman has to say. Thanks for posting it, Roger. Clearly Brazil, even though their economy seems to be doing well at the moment, has severe social issues of their own that their goverment should've taken care of first instead of wanting to host & show off to the world with the two biggest sporting parties on the planet. In the end, the Olympics (& the World Cup) aren't gonna do anything to help the average citizen of that country.

So the cynics always using that argument against a South African Games is moot to say the least, since this issue alone doesn't just gravely effect them. Even with Russia, spending all those Billions on Sochi 2014, could use all that money instead to better the lives of their average people. Not to sweep South Africa's problems under the rug, but as you can see with this video, these problems are just as big in countries like Brazil, Russia & China where the Olympics have already (or will be) visited/visiting soon. And after seeing this video, I wonder if Istanbul can come back to take the Games come September. Why should the IOC care, as long as the respective governments are willing to fork out the Billions it takes to make the IOC happy. So what's a few people being forced outta there homes, or some riots here & there, as long as the Games are of a "fabulous" nature.

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But isn't that the case even in the developed countries. In the lead-up to Sydney 2000 and London 2012 (or the bids by Chicago, Berlin et al), there's always plenty of people to pipe up that it's a waste spending money on games when it could be used to build hospitals, schools and what not. And that's a fair enough opinion. Few of us here would probably agree, but you can't ignore those who feel strongly that it's all a case of misguided priorities.

And in the lead-up to 2000 and 2012, there were plenty of Aussies and Brits who claimed no interest, or even weariness, with all the games preparations and talk and were saying how they'd pay no attention to the events or get out of town. And, hey presto! the carnival comes, everyone has a good time, and those who "boycotted" feel left out or deflated.

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One can at the very least hope that the money be spent wisely, and that the money be accounted for and documented. If the government is at least trying to make things better for the people, and has good intentions, then possibly it's worth trying to host events like the World Cup or the Olympics or both for developing countries.

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Yeah, but does Australia, Germany, the U.S. & the U.K. have the slums & the poverty of the magnitude the likes of Brazil, China, Russia & South Africa. I think thats the main difference here. One could argue that poverty is poverty, no matter what. But lets face it. I'd much rather be a poor sap in the U.S. or Australia, than in the likes of Russia or Brazil.

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Yeah, but does Australia, Germany, the U.S. & the U.K. have the slums & the poverty of the magnitude the likes of Brazil, China, Russia & South Africa. I think thats the main difference here. One could argue that poverty is poverty, no matter what. But lets face it. I'd much rather be a poor sap in the U.S. or Australia, than in the likes of Russia or Brazil.

Then there's the counter-argument, often used here. That the big events like the games are a catalyst to providing the social infrastructure improvements - like transport, roads, communications, housing, that just don't ever seem to happen without something like a big event to spur them on.

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I think I'd always just call it on a case by case basis. Brazil, IMO, is growing fast enough, and has a vibrant enough economy, to justify their coming festivals. Ditto I think China or Russia can afford it reasonably well. But I remember last year, when the subject of Kenya considering a bid came up, some people arguing that even bidding would help their social progress - while to me the mere thought of it was obsene considering their extreme social and economic problems.

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Let me add my two cents over the topic.

What I feel is: People is not complaining against the world cup or the olympics. Those are not the target. Brazilians are frustrated to see the potential of the country and see at same time that things could happen faster than the actual pace.

We're tired to see hospitals in ruins meanwhile government is building amazing stadiums. See, the problem is not to building stadiums, but why not use so-called "FIFA standards" to build and mantain the hospitals too or offer a Euro-like urban transportation system???

Brazil have plenty money to host World Cup and have a decent Health, Transport and Educational System. Maybe we get a very nice World Cup and probably not much will be worked in social and public services.

We are tired to see we could have everything in place and because stupid bureaucracy and a bunch of SOBs governing us we don't have it.

That's the point.

PS: Rogerio Andrade always showing the dark side of Brazil -in this very case, you got the exact time, but I do hope you can write something good about YOUR COUNTRY someday here.

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PS: Some numbers said by the beautiful girl in the youtube video are wrong, but this is common in this kind of videos, still, their point is totally valid...

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It doesn´t appear that she´s using wrong numbers on her video. The values she used are the ones that have been widely stated by media and by our government.

The point is that our government often announces mannipulated data. At a certain point she said that illiteracy can be between 21% or 10 %, because for the Brazilian government a person who can at least (or only) write its own name is not considered to be illiterate, even if she/he can´t properly read.

And, Danny, our country has a lot of good things, specially natural beauties, cuisine, music, arts......but as long as Brazilians keep distracted by parties and football and our Goverment keep ignoring our real problems we will never been a modern country. We will never achieve our full potential, either economic, educational or social.

It´s great to have the World Cup, it´s not a bad thing, but remember that we had a promise from the Organizing Committee that we wouldn´t have public money spent on stadiums - these would be built through partnerships - but guess what ? Only two of those stadiums are following this, and I´m not talking about São Paulo. And the necessary infra-structure works are not counted on that $ 30 billion bill, maybe a few very small improvements here and there, but not all that is necessary and that was promised.

With so many structural problems, this is the least thing Brazil should care about now. We could be better prepared, we could prepare better our cities and our people for that and staging the WC later not worried about proving anything to the World, but proving to ourselves that we can do it.

But no, we need the WC to prove to the developed countries that we´re developed too (and we are not). It´s a shame. The WC is nothing more than a distraction. It won´t change our situation, it won´t change our education, our security, our transportation, bureaucratic, healthy problems, like the government wants people to believe.

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But isn't that the case even in the developed countries. In the lead-up to Sydney 2000 and London 2012 (or the bids by Chicago, Berlin et al), there's always plenty of people to pipe up that it's a waste spending money on games when it could be used to build hospitals, schools and what not. And that's a fair enough opinion. Few of us here would probably agree, but you can't ignore those who feel strongly that it's all a case of misguided priorities.

And in the lead-up to 2000 and 2012, there were plenty of Aussies and Brits who claimed no interest, or even weariness, with all the games preparations and talk and were saying how they'd pay no attention to the events or get out of town. And, hey presto! the carnival comes, everyone has a good time, and those who "boycotted" feel left out or deflated.

Yes, spending money on big events will always be an issue for some people, wherever they are.

The problem is that Brazil still has a long way to go in its social conditions. Countries like Uk and Australia are better prepared and have way better health, security, educational and social conditions than Brazil. Brazilians pay around 37% of their wages in taxes and don´t see improvements in any area. So the issue is even bigger

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Lets be real about this. While we can question Brazil on its lavish spending on stadia and all other related amenities, the blame should begin and end with Fifa! Fifa awarded Brazil these championships without a proper bidding process.

These protests that are now becoming more organized, and seem to be growing, are a response from a developing class who are finally saying enough, to both their govt and to Fifa.

I said the same thing regarding the world cup in South Africa 2010 in these forums; the decision to award South Africa the world cup only gave that nation a morale boost, while it channeled funds away from projects that should have been more important - incl poverty prevention and basic medical help for South Africa's abundant poor.

These decisions to award counties these vast world tournaments can inspire, but when the local people do not see any real benefits, we must ask questions, and the bodies that award the rights have just as much to answer as the governments themselves.

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The protests actually started due to the raise on public transportation fees, but people started to protest against other things too.

The funny thing is that this girl actually made this video many weeks before the protests started, and the day she finally had the video edited and published coincided with the day of the 5th protest in Sao Paulo

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Roltel is forgetting that the UK and Australia has world class hospitals and schools, and to equate them to those in Brazil or the like is utterly ridiculous. It seems many here throw their hands up and say "hey you'll stage a great party, smile and pay the costs".

Seems the Brazilian populous ain't buying that rhetoric.

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The sad thing about Brazil is that in a few weeks all this will be forgotten, I hope the people won't and will keep fighting for improvements. It's a Corrupted government how do we change that(?) its not possible.

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In the lead-up to Sydney 2000 and London 2012 (or the bids by Chicago, Berlin et al), there's always plenty of people to pipe up that it's a waste spending money on games when it could be used to build hospitals, schools and what not.

Did people in Australia or the United Kingdom invade their parliament buildings in Camberra or Westminster? Did 100 thousand people march on the streets of Sydney, and hundreds of thousands in several other cities?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah4TrfZoclQ

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Yes, spending money on big events will always be an issue for some people, wherever they are.

The problem is that Brazil still has a long way to go in its social conditions. Countries like Uk and Australia are better prepared and have way better health, security, educational and social conditions than Brazil. Brazilians pay around 37% of their wages in taxes and don´t see improvements in any area. So the issue is even bigger

Roltel is forgetting that the UK and Australia has world class hospitals and schools, and to equate them to those in Brazil or the like is utterly ridiculous. It seems many here throw their hands up and say "hey you'll stage a great party, smile and pay the costs".

Seems the Brazilian populous ain't buying that rhetoric.

I also said in my original post that questioning the priorities of circuses over services is a justifiable opinion and one that can't be ignored, whether you agree with one side or not. It's certainly always worth discussing. And it's good when countries are democratic enough that such issues can be aired.

The thing is though, such events are easy symbols to use to publicise attacks on government policies or priorities.While they ARE expensive undertakings, in the wider picture they are but a drop in the bucket in terms of typical spending on public services. Greece is the classic example - their games were widely brought up as a potent symbol in all the coverage of their economic travails, but when accounted for against general spending, the Olympics were a tiny fraction of their spending and debts and in themselves didn't contribute much at all to their general financial woes. As someone else put it further up - it's not like Greeks would have been better of without staging their games, or that Brazilians would be better now of without the WC investments.

Did people in Australia or the United Kingdom invade their parliament buildings in Camberra or Westminster? Did 100 thousand people march on the streets of Sydney, and hundreds of thousands in several other cities?

How soon we forget. Less than two years ago from today:

2 Miles From Olympic Park, London Burns

I seem to remember much of the discussion in the aftermath of Britain's riots attributed it to a feeling of disempowerment by sections of the population who felt they were being hit by inequality of distribution of services and wealth: What caused the London riots?. Sounds comparable to me.

And while we in Oz were pretty well off in the run up to 2000, it still didn't stop the games being used as a protest touch point for what was probably seen as one of our biggest social challenges and disgraces in the 1990s - the social and services lag of our indigenous aboriginal population (who actually have long had protest tent embassies around various government buildings and sites).

I'll just state again that I'm glad that Brazilian society is democratic enough now that such protests can be made, that issues of concern can be publicly aired, and the government seems willing to at least listen to grievances. It doesn't seem like their going to provoke a reaction like Erdogan's in Turkey, or the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City '68.

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As a neighbor, all the protests being made for high taxes for the World Cup. At my point of view those are needed to ensure a succesful event, if other was the case then they would not have bidded to host those events. Succes is achieved mostlly by responsabilty and commitment.

But Brazilians will have the correct point of view, what is ypurs?

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Lucas, no higher taxes for World Cup... The protests are against the "system" at all... We already have huge taxes even before the announcement of the World Cup or Olympics.

What caused the protests was the bus fare in Sao Paulo... And somehow the protest grew up. A bit like in Turkey. The protest started with an urbanistic thing and become a contrywide issue.

World Cup costs and no real benefits unless for stadiums really made people in Brazil mad. Govt promised lots of nice and good infra structure plan. And most of them have been lost in bureaucracy or corruption. That made us mad.



And more, we all know the potential Brazil does have. And the slow pace of our development is really frustrating people.
Brazil could be in better position now if bureaucracy and corruption ruined our path...

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It doesn´t appear that she´s using wrong numbers on her video. The values she used are the ones that have been widely stated by media and by our government.

The point is that our government often announces mannipulated data. At a certain point she said that illiteracy can be between 21% or 10 %, because for the Brazilian government a person who can at least (or only) write its own name is not considered to be illiterate, even if she/he can´t properly read.

And, Danny, our country has a lot of good things, specially natural beauties, cuisine, music, arts......but as long as Brazilians keep distracted by parties and football and our Goverment keep ignoring our real problems we will never been a modern country. We will never achieve our full potential, either economic, educational or social.

The US$ 28, 30 bn is not the official number - first it would be R$ 30 bn like reported by ESPN Brasil and other media against the World Cup. The final number (that can be even higher) is not calculated yet, still, I think it will be around R$ 15 bn.

As I said before, this does not matter... The problem is not the price, it's the waste.

And, more than that, after spending all this sum of money, leading a movement to "boycott" the World Cup sounds even more stupid! This kind of proteste should be done BEFORE speding the money. The money is already gone. At least, let's make a decent World Cup and try to get the most of it.

As I told here before: Brazilians does not know how to protest, and worse, we never have good arguments.

And, about money... Our problems are not about lack of money because the World Cup. This sounds even ridiculous.

Yesterday, media made us know that Health Ministery have R$ 17 bn to spend and they didn't use the money!!!

So, is the World Cup the real problem for not good public services??????????????????????

Of course, no! The problem is bureaucracy, inefficiency and corruption.

We can easily have both: Good health, education and transportation system and some World Cup. Money is not the problem. The people who should spend and care about it who really is.

The points are valid, the arguments are not, the target is really out of place. But, at least, people seemed to wake up and wish a better Brazil for all of us. This is good.

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