The 2016 Sultan Mehmed Games: Closing Ceremony Pt.5

This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 4 http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-sultan-mehmed-games-closing.html

With the protocol out of the way we returned to the concert.

Saulo: To give him his full name Saulo Jorge Fernandes Navarro de Oliveira is originally from Bahia state. The most southern of what are considered the Northeastern states sits on the Atlantic coast on almost exactly the opposite side of the country from Mato Grosso state where Vanessa da Mata is from. It is to the south of Pernambuco state where Nação Zumbi are from.

Saulo is famous for being one of the early pioneers of a type of music known as "Axé" which originated in the Northeastern region. It mixes traditional Brazilian styles of music such as Frevo with Caribbean styles of music such as Reggae and Calypso.

The word Axé is from the Yoruba language were it is used as a religious greeting where it means the good vibration of a soul of spirit. Yoruba speakers generally live in west Africa specifically around Nigeria, Benin and Togo. Strangely the Yoruba religion actually developed in the Americas - particularly Brazil - and the Caribbean before being exported back to Africa. This raises the point that despite the common misconception the African slave trade was far from all one way with many African tribes happily participating in it.

To look at him Saulo seems gaunt, a bit scruffy and not particularly mentally alert. Being more experienced in this sort of thing than most it's clear to me that Saulo smokes a lot of Marijuana and has smoked a lot of Marijuana over a great many years. However those with less experience may well have mistaken him for a Heroin addict.

This obviously brings up the issue of drug policy. Particularly the way that different drugs are policed.

This was a particular feature of the original Opening Ceremony feature with the Olympic rings being formed by what could well be mistaken to Marijuana plants.

Prior to the US teaming up with Pablo Escobar to fund their Contra death squads in the 1980's the majority of Latin America's illegal drug production was Marijuana. It was the US that switched it to Cocaine. This is particularly true in Brazil's neighbour Columbia.

Today the Colombian government is scheduled to sign a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) finally bringing an end to the US Cold War policy in Latin America some 37 years after is started and 27 years after the Cold War ended.

The challenge now will be to stop the drug Cartels which funded the Contras moving in to take over the Cocaine plantations that FARC used to fund themselves. Moving back to legalised Marijuana production would certainly help a lot.

However the US seems to remain extremely opposed to this. During the ISIL games it announced that it will continue to classify Marijuana as an illegal drug alongside Heroin and Cocaine. Both Heroin and Cocaine are physically addictive and toxic to the body so either an overdose or long term use will kill the user. Marijuana is not physically addictive and is not toxic. Therefore to classify it alongside Heroin and Cocaine is without any scientific basis.

The US itself is itself currently going through something of a Heroin epidemic.

Just today I'm reading a report of seven people dying of overdoses in Cuyahoga County, Ohio just on Saturday (24/9/16). This brings the total for this small county to 357 overdose deaths so far in 2016. This problem is far from unique to Cuyahoga County. Over five days in August 90 people died people died of overdoses in near-by Hamilton County.

Yet Ohio is still only the state with the second highest rate of overdose deaths. Nationally you're talking about one overdose death every 17 minutes or. However I should point out that most of these are from synthetic Opioids like Oxycontin rather than drugs like Heroin that is produced naturally from the Opium poppy.

This epidemic of drug deaths is almost entirely the fault of US President Barack Obama and his Obamacare policy. This allows for patients to review their doctors. Doctors that score highly receive extra funding while doctors who score poorly in these patient reviews are stripped of funding. A lot of weight in these reviews is given to pain management.

So basically Obama has created a system which allows drug addicts to impose financial penalties on doctors who refuse them access to the Opioids that they then go on to overdose on.

It's just a further indication that Obama is utterly obsessed with Hashtags and slogans while having absolutely no interest in the details nor the disastrous effects of getting those details wrong. In short Obama's just not a serious President. The fact that Hillary Clinton is now running for President suggests that under Obama America has stopped being a serious country.

What is interesting though is that states such as Colorado which have legalised Marijuana have significantly lower rates of Opioid addiction and overdose deaths.

Throughout his performance Saulo wore a simple, loose-fitting tunic, simple, loose-fitting trousers and a Sarong or "Man-Skirt." This is actually a very common style of dress in hot and humid countries such as Brazil. After all the condition "Crotch Rot" is about as charming as it sounds.

However the dark red/maroon colour is associated with Buddhism which even if you don't realise it makes you think of South East Asian nations like Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia etc. These nations all have extremely strong penalties for drug smuggling including life long prison sentences and the death penalty. The so-called "Bali Nine" being a particularly high profile case along with the 14 people Indonesia executed just in July 2016.

You have to wonder whether these harsh penalties actually do anything to stop the illegal drugs trade. After all hundreds have people have been executed and the illegal drugs trade doesn't seem to have stopped yet.

In fact it's reasonably common for drug cartels to team up with local authorities to sacrifice some low level smuggler to be executed. Then with the public being convinced the authorities are taking a tough line against drugs those authorities just go back to helping the cartels smuggle more drugs.

A South East Asian leader who has taken this war on drugs policy to extreme lengths recently is Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Not only has he ordered the police to murder drug dealers and drug users in the streets he has also set up civilian death squads to help the police carry out these masses of extra-judicial killings.

Duterte has very much modelled himself on the military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos who ruled the Philippines between 1965 and his death in 1986. Marcos was installed into power and backed by the US and was very much part of the US' Cold War strategy that saw the US impose a military dictatorship on Brazil between 1964 and 1985.

In his earlier appearance Saulo wore a t-shirt emblazoned with an anatomically correct human heart. This was a reference to the sequence in the Opening Ceremony that paid tribute to the more than 80,000 people that were disappeared across Latin America by US backed death squads.

So at the moment Brazil and the Philippines seem to be heading in completely opposite directions from each other.

However beyond acknowledging that the Duterte story had been in the headlines during the games - particularly at the G20 and ASEAN Summits - the ceremony didn't make any great statement about it.

Nego do Borel: The original Opening Ceremony featured a sequence in which it paid tribute to the Favelas or slums of Rio de Janerio. Particularly the "Passinho" style of dance they produced. Although I'm sure his rivals will disagree when people dance in the Passinho style they often do it to the songs of Nego do Borel.

Nego do Borel is firmly a native of Rio being born in its slums. As if to prove Nego do Borel is the authentic voice of the favelas just before his performance the quality of the stewards by the stage improved dramatically. After all one of Nego do Borel's associates MC Daleste was shot and killed during a similar free concert in São Paulo back in 2013.

For the rest of the ceremony as it had been throughout the games all the stewarding had been done by the Games Makers volunteers. They're just normal members of the public who are mostly concerned with making sure you've got the right ticket or pass and that you can find your way to your seat. During Nego do Borel's performance those stewards had been replaced by much more solid looking men.

Due to it being raining heavily and everyone being wrapped up in ponchos it was hard to tell exactly who they were. However initially I thought that they were members of the Brazil's Military Police.

Over the weekend of the Closing Ceremony the US was struck by a wave of terrorist attacks. These included bomb attacks against a charity run in New Jersey and the nightlife in New York City. Those were very much inspired by the 2013 attack against the Boston Marathon. That attack was carried out to threaten the 2014 Sochi games over Russia's opposition to ISIL and the associated Sultan Mehmed divisions.

So despite Russia being banned from these games during the marathon event that took place on the day of the Closing Ceremony Brazil's Military Police were very much on display. In fact at many points during the race there seemed to be many more Military Policemen in attendance than spectators let alone competitors.

However at one point I seemed to glimpse that one of these guys wearing a jacket reading "Polícia Civil" which would indicate that they were members of the local or municipal civilian police. Others though seemed to be wearing jackets indicating that they were simply private security guards. I suppose though that they could be a mixture of all three.

Policing has been a big talking point in Brazil in the run-up to the games and just generally. Through its Neighbourhood Pacification program Rio in particular has been trying to move away from using the Military Police towards the Civil Police particularly in the favelas. In the meantime those who can afford it have taken to relying on private security guards.

However as with everything else in this ceremony this sequence didn't seem to make any particularly point other than acknowledging the topic. 

In fact it may not even have been intended as a talking point so much as a necessity.

17:10 on 26/9/16 (UK date).