The 2016 ISIL Games: Opening Ceremony Pt.6

This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 5; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-2016-isil-games-opening-ceremony-pt5.html

The Opening Speeches: It is a matter of IOC protocol that each Opening Ceremony must feature a speech by the head of the local organising committee and a speech by the head of the IOC. There must also be a speech by the Head of State of the host nation declaring the games open.

This round of speeches was opened by Carlos Arthur Nuzman - the head of the Rio 2016 organising committee. He began by welcoming more than a billion people from all five of the World's continents to Rio for the games. This was a reference to the five Olympic Rings which are said to represent the five continents.

The problem with this is that there are seven continents. As such this could be viewed as a little dig at the IOC. After all it would be interesting to hear them explain which are the two continents they don't think are important enough to be included in the Olympics.

Guzman went on to reassure the World the Brazil is most certainly not deeply ashamed to be hosting this celebration of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated Islamist terror groups. Well he told us how proud Brazil was to be hosting the games around 17 times in the space of a minute.

Finally Guzman moved to introduce Thomas Bach - the head of the IOC. Here Guzman suffered a terrible slip of the tongue. He meant to say that Bach has; "Always believed in the success of Rio." However what he actually said was; "Bach has always believed in the SEX of Rio."  This made Bach sound like some sort of predatory sex tourist.

A visibly shaken Bach used his speech to talk about the darkness to the World currently finds itself enveloped in. He claimed this darkness was being caused by people who believe in superiority and division.

This was a reference to the fact that these current ISIL games have frequently been likened to the 1936 Summer Olympics that were held in Berlin, Germany.

There the IOC flocked to celebrate Adolf Hitler and his Nazi ideology of racial superiority. They are probably most famous for American black athlete Jesse Owens. Unfortunately on this occasion the US sent Ibtihaj Muhammad in celebration rather than resistance.

I personally think that the better analogy is the Summer Olympics of 1940 or 1944. With the horrors of the Nazis genocide and ethnic cleansing as clear as ISIL's are at the moment and much of the World locked in battle against them it was impossible for the IOC to continue to celebrate their support for such things. As a result both of those games were cancelled.

Bach then tried to claim that the IOC is an alternative to such darkness stating that it was a movement based on equality. He was quite quickly picked up on this by a number of people who pointed out that the entire purpose of the Olympics is to promote the notion of superiority so the superior can be allowed to stand atop a higher platform than the inferior.

Bach proceeded to fully endorse the genocide and ethnic cleansing of ISIL and their associates by pointing out that the IOC was celebrating people being forced from their homes on grounds of race and religion by formalising the process with a refugee team.

Bach then went on to announce a new element of IOC protocol to be carried forward into all future Opening Ceremonies - the Olympic Laurel Award. 

This first Laurel Award went to Kipchoge Keino - a middle-distance runner who represented Kenya at the 1968 & 1972 Summer Olympics. He is a strange choice for such recognition because he is the current head of the Kenyan Olympic Committee (KOC). The KOC is currently mired in doping & corruption allegations.

Keino however received the Laurel Award for his charitable work operating a number of residential homes for Kenyan orphans.

In the year that "Spotlight" dominated the Oscars handing out awards for running children's homes would strike a lot of people as the IOC formally endorsing paedophilia and institutionalised child sexual abuse.

This is particularly true for viewers in the UK because the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal that broke just a month after the 2012 London Olympics ended the UK has become even more obsessed than usual with the sexual abuse of children.

For example we have the long running and remarkably ill advised Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). This hit the headlines again just four days before the Opening Ceremony when its Chair Justice Goddard resigned. The sexual abuse of children in residential homes has also been a major theme in many BBC dramas this year - most notably "Line of Duty" and "Peaky Blinders."

The issue of child sexual abuse and in particular child prostitution has been a long running one in the build up to both the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil and these Rio games.

That is because at the time it was awarded the World Cup back in 2007 Brazil has no legal age of sexual consent. That meant that sex with a child of any age was legal within Brazil provided violence was not used to rape them in the same way that rape amongst adults is defined. As a result child prostitution was rife within Brazil with the nation being a popular destination for paedophiles across the globe who wished to legally have sex with children.

Although I still can't remember any of the important details such as the defendant's name one of the key cases that led to Brazil introducing age of consent legislation concerned a man who was convicted of rape after having sex with a prostitute of around 11 years old. He had his conviction overturned because with the prostitute having multiple sexual partners both before and after his encounter with her and no violence being used it could not be proved that the child had not given her consent.

It was one of those cases that sticks in the memory because nobody involved - including the law - was in the right.

Rather than hiding away from this unpleasant subject Brazil actually made it front & centre of discussion surrounding its hosting of the 2014 World Cup and these games. The purpose being to force the nations where the paedophiles and sex tourists were travelling from to help Brazil put a stop to child prostitution by cutting off the demand.

This is one of the issues I would have liked to have followed in detail in the build up to the Rio games. However 2012 Olympics ended with me picking up Rihanna. That lasted until the 2014 Olympics. Since then it's just been war. The same damn war.

As he was being presented with his award Keino was accompanied onto the stage by a number of extremely photogenic children dressed in virginal white. This was done to really underline the paedophilic undertones of the award.

It then fell to interim Brazilian President and Head of State Michel Temer to issue the declaration formally opening the games. This is all he did and despite speaking for all of ten seconds he was widely booed.

That is to be expected because amid growing discontent over the governments handling of the economy Temer has only become President after former Dilma Rouseff was impeached. Rouseff supporters are accusing Temer of mounting a 1964-style coup. Even if most Brazilians don't believe Rouseff's claim the unelected Temer still has to drive through a raft of deeply unpopular austerity measures.

The Olympic Flag & Anthem: It is IOC protocol that every Opening Ceremony features the parading and raising of the Olympic flag and the singing of the Olympic anthem.

The parading of the Olympic flag was particularly stripped back by the Brazilian organisers. It is something of a tradition that the flag is paraded by figures of significance.

I think in London 2012 this duty was carried out by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and prominent human rights lawyer Shami Chakrabarti. In Sochi 2014 it was carried out by the likes of Anastasia Popova - a journalist for the Russia-24 channel who made documentaries about the Syrian war and the rise of ISIL and Valentina Tereshkova - the first woman in space.

However in Rio the flag was simply paraded by prominent Brazilian Olympians.

The raising of the flag was similarly low-key. It was accompanied by the singing of the Olympic anthem by a children's choir to continue the paedophilic theme.

The Olympic Oaths: Again it is IOC protocol that each Opening Ceremony must feature the Olympic oath being recited by an athlete, a coach and an umpire on behalf of all athletes, coaches and umpires. In this ceremony there is really nothing more that I can say about this segment.

At around 16:10 on 18/8/16 (UK date) I'll back to pick this up after dinner.

Edited at around 18:35 on 18/8/16 (UK date) to add above and below;

Quick! Do Something Interesting: With the agonisingly long two and a half hour Parade of Nations being followed by almost an hour of tedious protocol and speeches it was unlikely that there was anyone in the World - let alone the stadium - still awake at this point.

Therefore it fell to the hosts to throw in a final creative sequence in order to wake everybody up for the end of the ceremony.

This began with an older man who I assume is a very famous Brazilian musician even if no-one seems to think he's worthy of naming teaching a young boy to Samba dance.

Samba is of course one of Brazil's most famous cultural exports. Although disputed it's claim that the word derives from the Angolan word "Semba" which further highlights Brazil's history and rich cultural diversity.

However this spectacle of an older man forcing this young street to dance and entertain him also carried with it references to paedophilia and child prostitution.

The young boy's Samba dance suddenly grew as he was joined by the Samba schools from Rio's globally famous Carnival returned to flood the arena.

In the middle of this mini-Carnival three very famous Brazilian singers - Anitta, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil - performed the song "Isto Aqui, o que É?" by very famous and Oscar nominated Brazilian composer Ary Barroso.

19:05 on 18/8/16 (UK date).