This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 1; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-2016-isil-games-closing-ceremony.html
Carmen Miranda: With the Brazilian flag raised the arena floor was thrown open to Brazilian popstar Roberta Sa in the guise of Carmen Miranda.
A long time before to the song "The Girl From Impenema" which featured in the Opening Ceremony Carmen Miranda was many people's only introduction to the strange and exotic land of Brazil.
After becoming one of the first recording and movie stars in the Brazil in the late 1920's Carmen Miranda moved to the US first performing on Broadway in the show "The Streets of Paris" in 1939. She made her first Hollywood movie "Down Argentine Way" in 1940 and appeared in 26 other US & TV Shows making the highest paid woman in all of America in 1945. Just ten years later she died at the age of only 46.
One of Carmen Miranda's most famous movies is 1943's "The Gang's All Here." The Dropkick Murphys' song of the same name does not appear on the soundtrack.
However if you were to watch videos by that Massachusetts based band on Youtube I'm sure that eventually you'd catch sight of Boston City Hall. This rather neatly combines the natural, flowing libertarian lines of the Modernist movement that famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer helped found with the ruler straight, authoritarian Brutalist designs that followed.
Carmen Miranda of course collaborated with the Brazilian composer Ary Barroso. His song "Isto Aqui, o que É?" was used in one of the final sequences of the Opening Ceremony adding a nice symmetry to proceedings.
Famously Carmen Miranda's signature was an elaborate hat made up of all sorts of brightly coloured and exotic fruit. This itself was a reference to the common practice at the time of Brazilian women - often widows - who would sell fruit they kept balanced on their heads. If you could wink in the right way pineapples weren't the only type of exotic fruit some of these women were prepared to sell. If you get my meaning.
In American pop-culture there is a long-standing joke about Mexican immigrants selling oranges of freeway on ramps. As we all know everything south of Texas is just Mexico.
As Roberta Sa danced images of Carmen Miranda's famous bowl of fruit was projected on to the arena floor around her. This video projection also included a representation of her shadow that seemed black, inky and blotish.
This was a reference to the famous "Rorschach" inkblot tests that were used in early psychology. This seemed to be a warning that unlike the Opening Ceremony which told a story this Closing Ceremony would instead show a series of random images and ask the viewer to interpret them. This was a technique that was used extensively during the 2012 London Olympic ceremonies.
In writing about the Rio Opening Ceremony I talked about how the athletes were asked to plant their seed in giant seed banks as a way to unsettle them and put them on edge. Far from being something unique to Brazil this type of mild hazing is considered an accepted part of the home advantage that comes as reward for going to the effort of staging the games.
During the 2012 ceremonies the UK used a combination of fire, explosions, smoke and discordant medley's of seemingly random musical genres. This bordered on the type of psychological disorientation techniques used in enhanced interrogation/torture. By comparison Rio's seedbanks were laid back and quite harmless.
At times the inkblots surrounding the Carmen Miranda dancer seemed to very closely resemble the animation projected onto the back of the stage during Iceland's 2016 Eurovision Song Contest entry "Hear Them Calling" by Greta Salome.
Amongst Eurovision watchers that was widely viewed as a passionate support of the US' decision to re-open the Cold War Keflavik Air Base in Iceland in order to "keep Europe safe from the ever growing threat of Russian aggression." It was so passionate you began to wonder whether it was all just sarcasm.
Although they were dumped out of the Song Contest in the first semi-final the entire World sort of fell a little bit in love with tiny Iceland during June's Euro2016 football tournament. Their fans terrifying Thunderclap chant seems to have been copied by football fans the World over.
Particularly by Brazil fans who changed the grunt to a shout of "Zi-Ka!" to freak out mad as a box of frogs Team USA goalkeeper Hope Solo.
For those familiar with Eurovision Sweden's shock victory over Hope Solo's women's football team may well have seemed like an effort to keep Europe safe from the ever growing threat of American aggression. We wish the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) the best of luck.
To add insult to that injury it seems that Hope Solo may now have a rival in the "Just say the first thing that comes into your head" stakes in the form of China's 'Human Emoji' - swimmer Fu Yuanhui.
However at around 20:35 on 23/8/16 (UK date) I feel I'm definitely going off on a tangent. I'll pick this up tomorrow.
Edited at around 18:45 on 26/8/16 (UK date) to add above and below;
Parade of Nations: Rather than leaving the stage the Carmen Miranda tribute simply melted into the background to help set the mood during the Parade of Nations.
As with the Opening Ceremony it is a matter of International Olympic Committee (IOC) protocol that the Closing Ceremony must feature the flags of the competing nations along with athletes from those nations being paraded in the arena.
However it is traditional that whereas the Opening Ceremony is a formal introduction of the host nation and the competing nations to the World the Closing Ceremony is a much more informal celebration of what has just taken place. For example the Closing Ceremony for the 2012 Para-Olympics was in many ways just a free Coldplay concert for the athletes.
As such it is normally only the flags of the nations that are paraded. The athletes are allowed to sort of meander in as they like in no particular order. The spectacle of athletes from different nations mixing freely together is to promote the notion of sportsmanship - that after the contest is over both winners and losers shake hands and remain friends.
Brazil very much kept with this tradition. In order to accommodate the athletes who were brought in early to watch the rest of the ceremony fold up chairs were arranged for them around the arena floor. This obviously reduced the amount of the arena floor that could be used as a stage. With the athletes not being obligated to actually sit in these chairs this did have the effect of making it look as though there were thousands of empty seats for at least half the ceremony.
This obviously raised the issue of the thousands of empty seats that had been display in the arenas at what had been far from a sellout games. The situation for the upcoming Para-Olympics looks like it will be much worse. At the time of the Closing Ceremony they were talking in terms of only 12% of Para-Olympic tickets being sold causing a massive budget shortfall and the possible cancellation of the event entirely.
However all these empty seats also promoted discussion about Olympic legacy.
The Rio games are rather picking up the conversational baton from the 2012 London Olympics. Having built a massive 80,000 athletics stadium in east London to host the games London quickly discovered that there is absolutely no other use for an athletics stadium in east London. Eventually it was agreed that the Olympic stadium which is officially known as; "The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park" would become the home of West Ham Utd football club.
West Ham played their first game at their new home on the day of the Closing Ceremony against Bournemouth. They played their last game at their old home of the Boleyn ground against Manchester Utd on May 10th (10/5/16) during the Eurovision Song Contest's first semi-final. Kick-off in that match of course had to be delayed due to what I would term comedy levels of crowd violence that saw the windows of the Manchester Utd team coach smashed in.
What made the Boleyn ground so legendary was that the crowd was sat right up alongside the pitch creating a fantastic atmosphere. I once explained this to a Manchester Utd "supporter" who'd never been to a live match by saying; "It's great. You can call a player a w*nker. And they'll hear you."
Originally designed as an athletics stadium the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park of course has this great big running track between the stands and where a football pitch would go. This created a lot of concern that this would ruin the atmosphere if it were to be used as a football stadium.
In order to solve this they've added temporary seating over the running track that can be folded away should it ever be used as an athletics stadium again. This is what the temporary seating during the Closing Ceremony was supposed to represent.
Although they were free to mingle amongst themselves rather than being ordered in national formation the athletes still arrived in the stadium along the ruler straight runway/landing strip lined by stewards that was used in the Opening Ceremony. This spectacle of a disorganised rabble dressed in casual sportswear trampling all over what would be the playing area gave the entire parade the air of a pitch invasion by football hooligans.
The crowd trouble at the closing of the Boleyn ground was to some extent staged as a reference to the April 26th (26/4/16) ruling that the 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster had been unlawfully killed. Although it took 27 years for British Courts to finally deliver justice the Hillsborough disaster almost immediately saw standing terraces banned in the UK and all seater stadiums introduced.
The principle of all seater stadiums is not really that everybody has to sit down. Instead its to ensure that everyone has an assigned roughly 1 metre/yard^2 in which they can watch a match without being crushed to death. The problem is that all seater stadiums do rather spoil the atmosphere during matches. As a compromise the Scottish Football Association is trialling a new form of terraces in which everyone has an assigned roughly 1 metre/yard^2 area to stand.
During the Closing Ceremony enough seats were provided for the athletes and they were each assigned a numbered seat. However they were under no obligation to actually sit in that seat or indeed sit at all. This was the Closing Ceremony's take on the terracing issue.
So basically even during the Closing Ceremony the Brazilians got bored and started talking about football instead.
With the athletes parading down this runway/landing strip before being channelled to their seats along with the sheer number of athletes involved it did take rather a long time for the Parade of Nations to end.
With hindsight of what followed I did slightly get the impression that this was deliberate in the hope I would get bored and go to bed. After all nothing spoils a Rorschach test like someone shouting out the answers.
Unfortunately my preparations for the Closing Ceremony went to the extent of taking an early evening nap so I'd still be wide awake at 3AM. However as a compromise I did start rather making up my own ceremony. Seriously it wasn't until the following day that I realised Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an appearance. Let alone that he came dressed as one of the Super Mario Brothers.
In order to keep the atmosphere flowing during the parade a series of performances took place on the stage adjacent to the runway/landing strip.
The Carmen Miranda dancer was of course the first of these. She was replaced by a - I assume - Brazilian band whose name and setlist continue to elude me. I did notice though that they featured an accordion player. This struck me as a reference to Russian Polka music
As I've mentioned the London 2012 ceremonies employed extensive psychological disorientation techniques in attempt an unsettle those attending. However by not deploying Polka during the 2014 Sochi ceremonies Russia declined to use similar techniques despite clearly having the tools to do so.
That obviously says a lot about British aggression versus Russian hospitality.
Although this apparently nameless band never really left the stage the focus soon shifted to a demonstration of the traditional Brazilian "Frevo" style of dance. This actually has something of an interesting history.
The Opening Ceremony featured a short reference to Capoeira. This is often mistaken for a form of dance. However it is actually a type of combat sport like Karate or Judo.
Around the start of the 19th century rival gangs would fight each other during Rio's famous Carnival using a mixture of Capoeira and knives/swords. When the police started cracking down on this the gangs would disguise their weapons as umbrellas and their Capoeira as dancing. Thus Frevo was born.
Following the principle that you can crowbar pretty much anything into discussion of these type of ceremonies I'm sure that during this spectacle of umbrellas being waved about during a parade I could make some reference to Northern Ireland's Orange Order. They're the guys who like to march along places like Garvaghy Road in their uniform of bowler hats, sashes and umbrellas.
After the Frevo demonstration the band were joined on stage by DJ Mika Mutti who is a famous Brazilian electronic music DJ. However rather than being trapped behind turntable he likes to play his music from a brightly coloured electronic almost accordion strapped to his chest. I though felt it also resembled the "Simon" electronic game from many 1980's childhoods.
The use of an electronic accordion onstage alongside a traditional accordion raised the contrast between old and new. Within the Olympic movement there is a bit of a rivalry between the traditional sports such as gymnastics and skiing and the new sports like snowboarding and sports climbing.
The wearing of a brightly light electronic device also brought in this issue of smart fabrics that is very fashionable at the moment.
If it is a nation that is in love with its gadgets it is Japan. Not only does Brazil have a very large ethnically Japanese population Japan is the next summer Olympics host. This ceremony may have mentioned that once or twice.
Finally it fell to the band with no name to play mood music until all the athletes had found their seats and the Parade of Nations drew to a close.
21:00 on 26/8/16 (UK date).
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Monday, 22 August 2016
The 2016 ISIL Games: Closing Ceremony.
When they're allowed to take place the Olympics are never about sport. Instead it is to provide a forum to gather all the nations of the World together to discuss political issues they consider important.
This means that during the Olympics itself there are a huge range of topics being pitched by different nations that consider them important. These then are normally streamlined down to a handful of issues that are discussed in detail during the Parallel or "Para-Olympics."
This year though a handful of nations led the USA and the UK decided to hijack the Olympics and turn it into a celebration of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated radical Islamist terror groups. This was primarily done by trying to get Russia - as a longterm opponent of ISIL and associates - banned from the games.
The problem was that of the 207 delegations at these games only around a half-dozen such as the US, the UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar support ISIL. As a result rather than being a vast range of topics being discussed it was really a case of everybody sitting there twiddling their thumbs whilst watching the US and the UK have some sort of psychotic episode.
Through the Opening Ceremony and stunts like the diving pool turning green with algae the Brazilian hosts did try to present an alternative topic in the form of the environment and the battle against Climate Change.
The problem is that back in April 2016 almost all of the Olympic nations signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) so-called "Paris Agreement."
As a result no-one was really in much of a mood to discuss how being weaker than the Kyoto Protocol it replaces the Paris Agreement actually sets back efforts to combat Climate Change by some 20 years.
Also unlike the Kyoto Protocol the Paris Agreement has no expiry date. As a result it is far from clear when we will be able to start work on recovering from the set-back.
One issue that did gain a degree of traction during the games was that of Cybersecurity or computer hacking. This was primarily due to the major effort the US put into hacking absolutely everyone.
Although I was never taken offline throughout the games the traffic between my computer and my Internet server has been slowed down dramatically. At times if often felt as though I was operating on an old fashioned 28k dial-up modem. Due to all the extra reading I have to do during an Olympics that was extremely annoying.
The Russian news broadcaster RT was subjected to mass and repeated Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attacks throughout the games. Making the wild assumption that everyone shares the radical Islamist agenda it's been pumping out to its citizens beyond raising the general topic the US thought that launching this anti-Russian attack would boost its popularity during the games.
Back on August 13th (13/8/16) it was announced that the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) Anti-Doping Administration & Management System (ADAMS) had been hacked to find the location of Russian athlete Yuliya Stepanova. With Stepanova being central to their efforts to have Russia excluded from these games in carrying out this hack the US were hoping that Russia would be blamed further smearing their reputation.
On August 11th (11/8/16) the Australian Swimming team claimed that its website had been hacked. This came in the midst of a rather spectacular feud between Australia and China with Australia's Mack Horton accusing Sun Yang of being a drugs cheat.
At one point China responded by calling Australia a vast offshore prison. A particularly sensitive topic with Australia being forced to close its off-shore immigration detention centres in Papua New Guinea.
The feud between China, Australia and Brazil's Japanese population really served to highlight the problem with the BBC's - the British Olympic broadcaster - coverage of the games.
Simply put they didn't cover the games. Instead they covered the British athletes, their relatives, friends, neighbours, dogs etc. Therefore if it didn't involve a British athlete the big stories of the games were completely ignored by the BBC.
The most important thing to remember about the Closing Ceremony though is that it took place during a horrid rainstorm. As a result all the performers in the open roofed Maracana Stadium got absolutely drenched and the audio kept getting drowned out and carried away by the wind.
The Video Countdown: It is a tradition that all Olympic ceremonies begin with a short video sequence which prominently feature a countdown from 10 to 1.
The purpose is to allow all the local broadcasters who are taking the official International Olympic Committee (IOC) video feed to co-ordinate their coverage so they don't miss the start of the ceremony itself.
During the Opening Ceremony though Brazil broke with that tradition by showing a video without a countdown and then having the countdown projected onto the arena floor as part of the ceremony.
This was done to promote discussion about the way that broadcasting technology has progressed making the need for this type of countdown obsolete. In turn that prompted discussion about whether the Olympics themselves have become obsolete.
During the Closing Ceremony Brazil continued with this break with tradition. Although there was a short video sequence it was followed by the countdown being video projected onto the arena floor.
The video sequence featured actual archive footage of Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. This was interspersed with modern aerial footage of Rio which had been digitally aged to make it appear as though it was archive footage.
This was obviously a little nod to the sequence in the Opening Ceremony in which Santos-Dumont took us on an aerial tour of Rio during a video sequence. It also helped emphasise the passage of time.
That was further emphasised when the action moved back into the arena. Before the countdown was projected onto the arena floor first an old fashioned pocket watch was projected with its hands spinning forward at alarming speed. Officially this was a reference to how Santos-Dumont had to use his pocket watch to navigate after the instruments on his prototype plane failed.
Unofficially though it was intended to pose the question of whether the Olympics time has passed. After all due to things like the development of aviation the World is a much more globalised place. As a result there doesn't seem to be any need to gather nations together every four years for an Olympics to have the political discussions that take place at a host of dedicated political summits every year.
Although he made his first flight some three years after the American Wright brothers claim to have made the first powered flight in 1903 Santos-Dumont is still recognised as the first man to fly. That's because unlike the Wright brothers his flight was witnessed and verified by an independent and competent governing body - the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
This issue of verification by an independent and competent governing body is a hugely important one at these games.
In their effort to punish Russia for its opposition to ISIL by banning them from the games a number of governing bodies - particularly the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) who govern track & field events and swimming's Fédération internationale de natation (FINA) - introduced a presumption of guilt for Russian athletes.
This was challenged in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which ruled that this was wholly unfair. Particularly as it held Russian athletes to a completely different standard to all other athletes. As a result if any governing body continued using this standard they could not be considered to be either independent or competent.
FINA did reverse its policy to an extent. However the IAAF adamantly continued to apply a presumption of guilt to Russian athletes banning them from the games.
Therefore if the results of the track & field events were challenged CAS seems to have little option other than to completely dissolve them stripping athletes of their medals and any World or Olympic records they may have set.
Quite why the IAAF has been prepared to tolerate the corrupt and incompetent leadership of Sebastian Coe for this long remains something of a mystery to all.
Rio - The Movie: The Closing Ceremony proper began with a performance by "Barbatuques" who are something of a Brazilian musical collective who specialise in lighthearted and comedy songs. Globally they are probably most famous for appearing on the soundtrack of the 2011 animated movie "Rio."
If you have young children or have friends who have young children I am sure you are more than familiar with the movie Rio. For many people it is their first introduction to Rio de Janerio where these games are being held.
The fact that Rio is an animated movie also brought what was a big theme from the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest. I think that people who put on Olympic ceremonies outside of Europe are secretly very jealous of the fact they don't get to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest. Perhaps rather than putting up with all this tedious sport we could replace the Olympics with a Global Song Contest.
Although I think it took me two days to discuss all the ways animation was discussed at Eurovision a particularly important contribution came from Israel.
In discussing racial integration as a way to combat terrorism the Israelis highlighted that foreign movies tend to be dubbed into Hebrew and then subtitled in Arabic. When it comes to children's movies such as Rio this is hugely discriminatory against Israeli Arab parents who can't take their children to see those movies because they can't yet read.
As Barbatuques were performing on stage a group of brightly coloured performers took to the arena floor. With the help of video projection they arranged themselves in a series of complex formations to tell a story.
This combination of performers in tight formation and video projection onto the floor was technique that was employed extensively during all the ceremonies at the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia.
Following the Opening Ceremony the UK complained that this made it difficult for people in the arena to follow what was going on. This led to something of a feud with the Russian organisers making the video projections progressively and sarcastically bigger and clearer in each ceremony.
Obviously the UK wasn't actually complaining about the Opening Ceremony being hard to understand. Instead they were simply exploiting it like the gay-rights issue to damage Russia's reputation in response to its long standing opposition to ISIL and associates. That the Brazilians made such use of the Russian technique could be viewed as a sign of support to Russia.
The story the performers in this ceremony were trying to tell was of Rio and its famous landmarks. This began with the sun, sea and sand of the Rio's famous beaches such as Copacabana and Ipanema.
They then moved on the the Arches of Lapa or Carioca Aqueduct. This is an 18th century aqueduct that runs through the centre of Rio. It was built to carry water from the Carioca River to the city's residents. This is obviously highlights the importance of water for life which in turn touches on the issue of Rio's water pollution.
However as with all the other locations mentioned it can trigger discussion about any one of array of memories someone watching might have associated with that location. For example I seem to remember hearing somewhere that every weekend people gather at the Arches of Lapa to join in a mass line-dancing party of the sort seen during the Opening Ceremony.
The next landmark referenced was the Christ the Redeemer statue. This obviously triggers discussion about religion - particularly Catholicism.
However you could also use it as an opportunity to start talking about the unofficial 2014 World Cup song "Jungle" by Jay Z which references the statue. In the song Jay Z also boasts he's going to drink Champagne out of the World Cup. As the World Cup isn't actually a cup this had roughly half the World's population shaking their heads and quietly muttering; "Idiot."
The performers then arranged themselves into the SugarLoaf mountain and its cable cars. The only reference that triggers in me is the "Blame it on Lisa" episode of the TV show "The Simpsons" in which the Simpson family visit Rio.
Throughout all this the performers were dressed in colourful feathers like some extremely exotic birds. The main plot of the movie Rio is a love story between two Spix Macaws and their avian friends.
The video projection made frequent reference to the blazing sun. This was often represented by an orange or yellow circle. This was a little nod to the fact that Brazil is now handing the Olympics over to Japan for the 2020 Tokyo games. The Japanese flag is the red circle of the sun against a white background. Also on occasion the projected circles seemed to radiate out from a central point. This was a reference to Japan's devastating 2011 earthquake.
The final landmark if you can call it that was the tropical Rainforest. During this phase the video projections showed multi-coloured lines. Officially these were meant to be tree branches. However they also seemed to resemble the "Agitos" logo of the Para-Olympics as a reminder that the games are only half-way through.
The sequence ended with the performers forming the famous Olympic rings.
At around 17:55 on 22/8/16 (UK date) I'll pick this up after dinner. I'm really not planning on spending two weeks on it.
Edited at around 19:15 on 22/8/16 (UK date) to add;
Tender Affection: Following Barbatuques onto the stage was famous Brazilian musician and political activist Martinho da Vila. He performed a song called "Carinhoso." This is a famous Brazilian torch song that is known by everyone and sung by many. The title roughly translates as; "With tender affection."
Apart from introducing the World to another aspect of Brazilian culture this seemed also to be a reference to Brazil's large ethnically Japanese population and the fact that Japan is the next summer Olympic host.
One thing that many visitors to Japan are going to have to get used to is their Logographic written language. Here hundreds of thousands of different symbols or pictures are used to form words and phrases. You could almost say that the pictures tell the story.
For example in written Japanese you can't simply write that you love someone. Instead you have to write the symbol for the person you love such as a father, another symbol indicating the type of love it is. However the one constant is a symbol roughly meaning "Tender Affection."
In preparation for the games the British hired sports journalist Charlie Webster to cycle to Rio to act as an ambassador for the games. During that trip Ms Webster contracted Malaria and was taken seriously ill in hospital on the day of the Opening Ceremony.
In order to reassure people she was recovering Ms Webster published a picture on social media of herself in hospital. In that picture you can clearly see the Japanese symbol for Tender Affection tattooed on her arm.
I of course have similarly grammatically nightmarish tattoo. I must say that I didn't particularly enjoy watching this ceremony because it did seem to turn into yet another tour of my tattoos, battle scars and distinguishing features.
Alongside da Vila on stage two performers made small, see-through glass balls dance on their hands and arms. On the floor of the arena were video projected images of space such as stars. Towards the end of the song a small group of children entered the arena wearing clothes made of smart fabrics that lit up.
As the technology has progressed to make them possible this type of smart fabric has become something of a fashionable talking point recently. At the May 2016 Met Gala in New York City, US the actress Claire Danes wore a Zac Posen designed gown that incorporated fibre optic cabling in the fabric to make it light up.
It's claimed that Team USA's dress uniforms featured a similar technology although I can't say I've seen it in action. Then of course there were the light-up shoes Team GB wore to the Closing Ceremony. But more of that later.
With it being such a fashionable topic light-up smart fabrics were used throughout the Opening Ceremony and elsewhere in this Closing Ceremony. However in this particular sequence along with the projections of space they were intended as a reference to the launch by China on August 16th (16/8/16) of the Quantum Science Satellite (QUESS). The first of its type.
I can't pretend that I fully understand the science of quantum communication. However it is based on using sub-atomic particles such as photons to transmit data. Basically it's like fibre optic technology just without the cabling. Apart from the vast amounts of data it can carry the main attraction is that it is extremely secure. If you attempt to hack into the signal the photons simply destroy themselves.
China has obviously taken great pride in launching the first ever quantum communications satellite. It claims that it marks the shift between China being a nation that simply uses technology that other people have invented to a global leader in technological development.
The fact that China is now billing itself as one of the most developed nations on earth further underlines the failure of the Paris Agreement which still classes and will forever class China as "developing" and therefore free to grow its Greenhouse Gas (ghg) emissions as much as it likes.
Brazilian Flag & National Anthem: Seamlessly this sequence progressed into that bit of IOC protocol - the raising of the national flag of the host and the singing of the host nation's national anthem.
The children who had emerged during da Vila's performance quickly formed into a choir to sing the national anthem.
Apart from containing smart fabrics the children's costumes were virginal white. Possibly being the same choir that sang the Olympic anthem during the Opening Ceremony this was another reference to that ceremony's theme of child sexual abuse and child prostitution.
As the flag was being raised another Brazilian flag was video projected onto the arena floor. As the sequence ended this flag made of light broke apart into hundreds of pieces.
Rather like the photons in a quantum communication system would do if you attempted to hack into it.
20:30 on 22/8/16 (UK date).
This means that during the Olympics itself there are a huge range of topics being pitched by different nations that consider them important. These then are normally streamlined down to a handful of issues that are discussed in detail during the Parallel or "Para-Olympics."
This year though a handful of nations led the USA and the UK decided to hijack the Olympics and turn it into a celebration of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated radical Islamist terror groups. This was primarily done by trying to get Russia - as a longterm opponent of ISIL and associates - banned from the games.
The problem was that of the 207 delegations at these games only around a half-dozen such as the US, the UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar support ISIL. As a result rather than being a vast range of topics being discussed it was really a case of everybody sitting there twiddling their thumbs whilst watching the US and the UK have some sort of psychotic episode.
Through the Opening Ceremony and stunts like the diving pool turning green with algae the Brazilian hosts did try to present an alternative topic in the form of the environment and the battle against Climate Change.
The problem is that back in April 2016 almost all of the Olympic nations signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) so-called "Paris Agreement."
As a result no-one was really in much of a mood to discuss how being weaker than the Kyoto Protocol it replaces the Paris Agreement actually sets back efforts to combat Climate Change by some 20 years.
Also unlike the Kyoto Protocol the Paris Agreement has no expiry date. As a result it is far from clear when we will be able to start work on recovering from the set-back.
One issue that did gain a degree of traction during the games was that of Cybersecurity or computer hacking. This was primarily due to the major effort the US put into hacking absolutely everyone.
Although I was never taken offline throughout the games the traffic between my computer and my Internet server has been slowed down dramatically. At times if often felt as though I was operating on an old fashioned 28k dial-up modem. Due to all the extra reading I have to do during an Olympics that was extremely annoying.
The Russian news broadcaster RT was subjected to mass and repeated Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attacks throughout the games. Making the wild assumption that everyone shares the radical Islamist agenda it's been pumping out to its citizens beyond raising the general topic the US thought that launching this anti-Russian attack would boost its popularity during the games.
Back on August 13th (13/8/16) it was announced that the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) Anti-Doping Administration & Management System (ADAMS) had been hacked to find the location of Russian athlete Yuliya Stepanova. With Stepanova being central to their efforts to have Russia excluded from these games in carrying out this hack the US were hoping that Russia would be blamed further smearing their reputation.
On August 11th (11/8/16) the Australian Swimming team claimed that its website had been hacked. This came in the midst of a rather spectacular feud between Australia and China with Australia's Mack Horton accusing Sun Yang of being a drugs cheat.
At one point China responded by calling Australia a vast offshore prison. A particularly sensitive topic with Australia being forced to close its off-shore immigration detention centres in Papua New Guinea.
The feud between China, Australia and Brazil's Japanese population really served to highlight the problem with the BBC's - the British Olympic broadcaster - coverage of the games.
Simply put they didn't cover the games. Instead they covered the British athletes, their relatives, friends, neighbours, dogs etc. Therefore if it didn't involve a British athlete the big stories of the games were completely ignored by the BBC.
The most important thing to remember about the Closing Ceremony though is that it took place during a horrid rainstorm. As a result all the performers in the open roofed Maracana Stadium got absolutely drenched and the audio kept getting drowned out and carried away by the wind.
The Video Countdown: It is a tradition that all Olympic ceremonies begin with a short video sequence which prominently feature a countdown from 10 to 1.
The purpose is to allow all the local broadcasters who are taking the official International Olympic Committee (IOC) video feed to co-ordinate their coverage so they don't miss the start of the ceremony itself.
During the Opening Ceremony though Brazil broke with that tradition by showing a video without a countdown and then having the countdown projected onto the arena floor as part of the ceremony.
This was done to promote discussion about the way that broadcasting technology has progressed making the need for this type of countdown obsolete. In turn that prompted discussion about whether the Olympics themselves have become obsolete.
During the Closing Ceremony Brazil continued with this break with tradition. Although there was a short video sequence it was followed by the countdown being video projected onto the arena floor.
The video sequence featured actual archive footage of Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. This was interspersed with modern aerial footage of Rio which had been digitally aged to make it appear as though it was archive footage.
This was obviously a little nod to the sequence in the Opening Ceremony in which Santos-Dumont took us on an aerial tour of Rio during a video sequence. It also helped emphasise the passage of time.
That was further emphasised when the action moved back into the arena. Before the countdown was projected onto the arena floor first an old fashioned pocket watch was projected with its hands spinning forward at alarming speed. Officially this was a reference to how Santos-Dumont had to use his pocket watch to navigate after the instruments on his prototype plane failed.
Unofficially though it was intended to pose the question of whether the Olympics time has passed. After all due to things like the development of aviation the World is a much more globalised place. As a result there doesn't seem to be any need to gather nations together every four years for an Olympics to have the political discussions that take place at a host of dedicated political summits every year.
Although he made his first flight some three years after the American Wright brothers claim to have made the first powered flight in 1903 Santos-Dumont is still recognised as the first man to fly. That's because unlike the Wright brothers his flight was witnessed and verified by an independent and competent governing body - the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
This issue of verification by an independent and competent governing body is a hugely important one at these games.
In their effort to punish Russia for its opposition to ISIL by banning them from the games a number of governing bodies - particularly the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) who govern track & field events and swimming's Fédération internationale de natation (FINA) - introduced a presumption of guilt for Russian athletes.
This was challenged in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which ruled that this was wholly unfair. Particularly as it held Russian athletes to a completely different standard to all other athletes. As a result if any governing body continued using this standard they could not be considered to be either independent or competent.
FINA did reverse its policy to an extent. However the IAAF adamantly continued to apply a presumption of guilt to Russian athletes banning them from the games.
Therefore if the results of the track & field events were challenged CAS seems to have little option other than to completely dissolve them stripping athletes of their medals and any World or Olympic records they may have set.
Quite why the IAAF has been prepared to tolerate the corrupt and incompetent leadership of Sebastian Coe for this long remains something of a mystery to all.
Rio - The Movie: The Closing Ceremony proper began with a performance by "Barbatuques" who are something of a Brazilian musical collective who specialise in lighthearted and comedy songs. Globally they are probably most famous for appearing on the soundtrack of the 2011 animated movie "Rio."
If you have young children or have friends who have young children I am sure you are more than familiar with the movie Rio. For many people it is their first introduction to Rio de Janerio where these games are being held.
The fact that Rio is an animated movie also brought what was a big theme from the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest. I think that people who put on Olympic ceremonies outside of Europe are secretly very jealous of the fact they don't get to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest. Perhaps rather than putting up with all this tedious sport we could replace the Olympics with a Global Song Contest.
Although I think it took me two days to discuss all the ways animation was discussed at Eurovision a particularly important contribution came from Israel.
In discussing racial integration as a way to combat terrorism the Israelis highlighted that foreign movies tend to be dubbed into Hebrew and then subtitled in Arabic. When it comes to children's movies such as Rio this is hugely discriminatory against Israeli Arab parents who can't take their children to see those movies because they can't yet read.
As Barbatuques were performing on stage a group of brightly coloured performers took to the arena floor. With the help of video projection they arranged themselves in a series of complex formations to tell a story.
This combination of performers in tight formation and video projection onto the floor was technique that was employed extensively during all the ceremonies at the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia.
Following the Opening Ceremony the UK complained that this made it difficult for people in the arena to follow what was going on. This led to something of a feud with the Russian organisers making the video projections progressively and sarcastically bigger and clearer in each ceremony.
Obviously the UK wasn't actually complaining about the Opening Ceremony being hard to understand. Instead they were simply exploiting it like the gay-rights issue to damage Russia's reputation in response to its long standing opposition to ISIL and associates. That the Brazilians made such use of the Russian technique could be viewed as a sign of support to Russia.
The story the performers in this ceremony were trying to tell was of Rio and its famous landmarks. This began with the sun, sea and sand of the Rio's famous beaches such as Copacabana and Ipanema.
They then moved on the the Arches of Lapa or Carioca Aqueduct. This is an 18th century aqueduct that runs through the centre of Rio. It was built to carry water from the Carioca River to the city's residents. This is obviously highlights the importance of water for life which in turn touches on the issue of Rio's water pollution.
However as with all the other locations mentioned it can trigger discussion about any one of array of memories someone watching might have associated with that location. For example I seem to remember hearing somewhere that every weekend people gather at the Arches of Lapa to join in a mass line-dancing party of the sort seen during the Opening Ceremony.
The next landmark referenced was the Christ the Redeemer statue. This obviously triggers discussion about religion - particularly Catholicism.
However you could also use it as an opportunity to start talking about the unofficial 2014 World Cup song "Jungle" by Jay Z which references the statue. In the song Jay Z also boasts he's going to drink Champagne out of the World Cup. As the World Cup isn't actually a cup this had roughly half the World's population shaking their heads and quietly muttering; "Idiot."
The performers then arranged themselves into the SugarLoaf mountain and its cable cars. The only reference that triggers in me is the "Blame it on Lisa" episode of the TV show "The Simpsons" in which the Simpson family visit Rio.
Throughout all this the performers were dressed in colourful feathers like some extremely exotic birds. The main plot of the movie Rio is a love story between two Spix Macaws and their avian friends.
The video projection made frequent reference to the blazing sun. This was often represented by an orange or yellow circle. This was a little nod to the fact that Brazil is now handing the Olympics over to Japan for the 2020 Tokyo games. The Japanese flag is the red circle of the sun against a white background. Also on occasion the projected circles seemed to radiate out from a central point. This was a reference to Japan's devastating 2011 earthquake.
The final landmark if you can call it that was the tropical Rainforest. During this phase the video projections showed multi-coloured lines. Officially these were meant to be tree branches. However they also seemed to resemble the "Agitos" logo of the Para-Olympics as a reminder that the games are only half-way through.
The sequence ended with the performers forming the famous Olympic rings.
At around 17:55 on 22/8/16 (UK date) I'll pick this up after dinner. I'm really not planning on spending two weeks on it.
Edited at around 19:15 on 22/8/16 (UK date) to add;
Tender Affection: Following Barbatuques onto the stage was famous Brazilian musician and political activist Martinho da Vila. He performed a song called "Carinhoso." This is a famous Brazilian torch song that is known by everyone and sung by many. The title roughly translates as; "With tender affection."
Apart from introducing the World to another aspect of Brazilian culture this seemed also to be a reference to Brazil's large ethnically Japanese population and the fact that Japan is the next summer Olympic host.
One thing that many visitors to Japan are going to have to get used to is their Logographic written language. Here hundreds of thousands of different symbols or pictures are used to form words and phrases. You could almost say that the pictures tell the story.
For example in written Japanese you can't simply write that you love someone. Instead you have to write the symbol for the person you love such as a father, another symbol indicating the type of love it is. However the one constant is a symbol roughly meaning "Tender Affection."
In preparation for the games the British hired sports journalist Charlie Webster to cycle to Rio to act as an ambassador for the games. During that trip Ms Webster contracted Malaria and was taken seriously ill in hospital on the day of the Opening Ceremony.
In order to reassure people she was recovering Ms Webster published a picture on social media of herself in hospital. In that picture you can clearly see the Japanese symbol for Tender Affection tattooed on her arm.
I of course have similarly grammatically nightmarish tattoo. I must say that I didn't particularly enjoy watching this ceremony because it did seem to turn into yet another tour of my tattoos, battle scars and distinguishing features.
Alongside da Vila on stage two performers made small, see-through glass balls dance on their hands and arms. On the floor of the arena were video projected images of space such as stars. Towards the end of the song a small group of children entered the arena wearing clothes made of smart fabrics that lit up.
As the technology has progressed to make them possible this type of smart fabric has become something of a fashionable talking point recently. At the May 2016 Met Gala in New York City, US the actress Claire Danes wore a Zac Posen designed gown that incorporated fibre optic cabling in the fabric to make it light up.
It's claimed that Team USA's dress uniforms featured a similar technology although I can't say I've seen it in action. Then of course there were the light-up shoes Team GB wore to the Closing Ceremony. But more of that later.
With it being such a fashionable topic light-up smart fabrics were used throughout the Opening Ceremony and elsewhere in this Closing Ceremony. However in this particular sequence along with the projections of space they were intended as a reference to the launch by China on August 16th (16/8/16) of the Quantum Science Satellite (QUESS). The first of its type.
I can't pretend that I fully understand the science of quantum communication. However it is based on using sub-atomic particles such as photons to transmit data. Basically it's like fibre optic technology just without the cabling. Apart from the vast amounts of data it can carry the main attraction is that it is extremely secure. If you attempt to hack into the signal the photons simply destroy themselves.
China has obviously taken great pride in launching the first ever quantum communications satellite. It claims that it marks the shift between China being a nation that simply uses technology that other people have invented to a global leader in technological development.
The fact that China is now billing itself as one of the most developed nations on earth further underlines the failure of the Paris Agreement which still classes and will forever class China as "developing" and therefore free to grow its Greenhouse Gas (ghg) emissions as much as it likes.
Brazilian Flag & National Anthem: Seamlessly this sequence progressed into that bit of IOC protocol - the raising of the national flag of the host and the singing of the host nation's national anthem.
The children who had emerged during da Vila's performance quickly formed into a choir to sing the national anthem.
Apart from containing smart fabrics the children's costumes were virginal white. Possibly being the same choir that sang the Olympic anthem during the Opening Ceremony this was another reference to that ceremony's theme of child sexual abuse and child prostitution.
As the flag was being raised another Brazilian flag was video projected onto the arena floor. As the sequence ended this flag made of light broke apart into hundreds of pieces.
Rather like the photons in a quantum communication system would do if you attempted to hack into it.
20:30 on 22/8/16 (UK date).
Thursday, 18 August 2016
The 2016 ISIL Games: Opening Ceremony Pt.7
This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 6; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-2016-isil-games-opening-ceremony-pt6.html
The Lighting of the Olympic Cauldron: Probably the most exciting bit of IOC protocol is that every Opening Ceremony must feature the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. This marks the end of the Olympic torch relay in which the Olympic flame is brought from Greece where it is lit by the sun.
The Olympic torch relay has its origins in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was invented by Adolf Hitler as a way to demonstrate the way the Nazi Reich would stretch across Europe. As with so many things from that games the IOC liked the idea so much they decided to keep it.
This final leg of the torch relay was begun by Gustavo Kuerten a famous Brazilian tennis player who won the French Open three times in 1997, 2000 & 2001. He is commonly known by the nickname "Guga."
Halfway across the arena floor Guga handed the torch to Hortência Marcari.
Sometimes known as "The Queen" Marcari is regarded as possibly one of the greatest female basketball players of all time. For Brazil she won the Silver medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002.
It then came time for Marcari to hand the torch to the person who would light the cauldron itself.
Initially this was supposed to be Brazilian footballing legend Pele. However like all men of conscience and substance he decided to boycott the ISIL games.
As such dubious honour fell to Vanderlei de Lima a Brazilian long distance runner.
Vanderlei de Lima is probably most well known for the time he was leading the marathon at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Suddenly he was attacked by reasonably well known attention seeking Irish irritant Cornelius "Neil" Horan - the former Priest rather than member of the band "One Direction."
Unable to recover following the attack de Lima could only manage a third place finish securing himself the Bronze medal.
In response to the good grace in which he took the attack that ruined his Olympic dream de Lima was also awarded the "Pierre de Coubertin" or "True Spirit of Sportsmanship Medal."
At the risk of giving away all of the Olympics' secrets the Olympic cauldron is actually fuelled by natural gas. This is of course a fossil fuel the burning of which releases Greenhouse Gases contributing to Climate Change.
With the need to defeat Climate Change being a key theme not only of this ceremony but these games the Rio cauldron was noticeably much smaller than any that has been used before. This was done intentionally to reduce the amount of fuel needed to keep it burning thus reducing the Greenhouse Gases it emits.
The cauldron itself resembled literally a cauldron or cooking pot. This was an intentional reference to the efforts that developing nations are making to reduce their Greenhouse Gas emissions.
In many developing nations it is common that people will live in a single roomed hut. At the centre of that hut you will a large wood burning fire both to heat the hut and to cook on. In an effort to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions there is a big effort to provide each household with a metal stove.
These work by using a small amount of fuel to heat the metal of the stove which in turn heats the room and provides a cooking surface. By reducing the amount of wood needed to produce the same effect these stoves reduce deforestation and Greenhouse Gas emissions.
After it had been lit the cauldron was lifted up to form the centrepiece of a vast golden kinetic sculpture by American artist Anthony Howe. This sculpture was intended to represent the sun.
The contrast between the fossil fuel burning cauldron and the natural energy of the sun was intended intended as a plea for the World to move away from Greenhouse Gas emitting fossil fuels towards non-polluting, renewable energy sources such as solar.
I have seen many pleas of this type in my time. This was by far the most beautiful.
Through its use of circles and orbs of different sizes the sculpture was also in keeping with the ceremony's central theme of geometry. Particularly the environmental impacts of Brazil's Brutalist system of economic and dormitory cities.
Constantly moving this kinetic sculpture also invoked a "Hypnowheel." This was a reference to the 2012 London Olympics from which Rio was picking up the baton.
The London Olympic cauldron was supposed to resemble a campfire the sort of which you can spend hours hypnotically staring at. Throughout the host broadcasters studio coverage this campfire cauldron was shown constantly burning in the background.
This was intended to promote discussion about the way the TV has replaced the traditional fire around which families gather for social warmth. I think it was Winston Churchill who referred to TV as; "The idiot lantern."
Rio's cauldron sculpture picked up on this idea and used the contrast between families in developing nations gathering around a fire in single room huts and families in developed nations gathering around TV's to promote discussion about the ways in which we use energy and how that energy is produced.
The ceremony then ended with a mass firework display.
20:15 on 18/8/16 (UK date).
The Lighting of the Olympic Cauldron: Probably the most exciting bit of IOC protocol is that every Opening Ceremony must feature the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. This marks the end of the Olympic torch relay in which the Olympic flame is brought from Greece where it is lit by the sun.
The Olympic torch relay has its origins in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was invented by Adolf Hitler as a way to demonstrate the way the Nazi Reich would stretch across Europe. As with so many things from that games the IOC liked the idea so much they decided to keep it.
This final leg of the torch relay was begun by Gustavo Kuerten a famous Brazilian tennis player who won the French Open three times in 1997, 2000 & 2001. He is commonly known by the nickname "Guga."
Halfway across the arena floor Guga handed the torch to Hortência Marcari.
Sometimes known as "The Queen" Marcari is regarded as possibly one of the greatest female basketball players of all time. For Brazil she won the Silver medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002.
It then came time for Marcari to hand the torch to the person who would light the cauldron itself.
Initially this was supposed to be Brazilian footballing legend Pele. However like all men of conscience and substance he decided to boycott the ISIL games.
As such dubious honour fell to Vanderlei de Lima a Brazilian long distance runner.
Vanderlei de Lima is probably most well known for the time he was leading the marathon at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Suddenly he was attacked by reasonably well known attention seeking Irish irritant Cornelius "Neil" Horan - the former Priest rather than member of the band "One Direction."
Unable to recover following the attack de Lima could only manage a third place finish securing himself the Bronze medal.
In response to the good grace in which he took the attack that ruined his Olympic dream de Lima was also awarded the "Pierre de Coubertin" or "True Spirit of Sportsmanship Medal."
At the risk of giving away all of the Olympics' secrets the Olympic cauldron is actually fuelled by natural gas. This is of course a fossil fuel the burning of which releases Greenhouse Gases contributing to Climate Change.
With the need to defeat Climate Change being a key theme not only of this ceremony but these games the Rio cauldron was noticeably much smaller than any that has been used before. This was done intentionally to reduce the amount of fuel needed to keep it burning thus reducing the Greenhouse Gases it emits.
The cauldron itself resembled literally a cauldron or cooking pot. This was an intentional reference to the efforts that developing nations are making to reduce their Greenhouse Gas emissions.
In many developing nations it is common that people will live in a single roomed hut. At the centre of that hut you will a large wood burning fire both to heat the hut and to cook on. In an effort to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions there is a big effort to provide each household with a metal stove.
These work by using a small amount of fuel to heat the metal of the stove which in turn heats the room and provides a cooking surface. By reducing the amount of wood needed to produce the same effect these stoves reduce deforestation and Greenhouse Gas emissions.
After it had been lit the cauldron was lifted up to form the centrepiece of a vast golden kinetic sculpture by American artist Anthony Howe. This sculpture was intended to represent the sun.
The contrast between the fossil fuel burning cauldron and the natural energy of the sun was intended intended as a plea for the World to move away from Greenhouse Gas emitting fossil fuels towards non-polluting, renewable energy sources such as solar.
I have seen many pleas of this type in my time. This was by far the most beautiful.
Through its use of circles and orbs of different sizes the sculpture was also in keeping with the ceremony's central theme of geometry. Particularly the environmental impacts of Brazil's Brutalist system of economic and dormitory cities.
Constantly moving this kinetic sculpture also invoked a "Hypnowheel." This was a reference to the 2012 London Olympics from which Rio was picking up the baton.
The London Olympic cauldron was supposed to resemble a campfire the sort of which you can spend hours hypnotically staring at. Throughout the host broadcasters studio coverage this campfire cauldron was shown constantly burning in the background.
This was intended to promote discussion about the way the TV has replaced the traditional fire around which families gather for social warmth. I think it was Winston Churchill who referred to TV as; "The idiot lantern."
Rio's cauldron sculpture picked up on this idea and used the contrast between families in developing nations gathering around a fire in single room huts and families in developed nations gathering around TV's to promote discussion about the ways in which we use energy and how that energy is produced.
The ceremony then ended with a mass firework display.
20:15 on 18/8/16 (UK date).
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).
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).
Wednesday, 17 August 2016
The 2016 ISIL Games: Opening Ceremony Pt.5
This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 4; http://watchitdie.blogspot.in/2016/08/the-2016-isil-games-opening-ceremony-pt4.html
The Olympic Rings: It is a matter of IOC protocol that each Opening Ceremony must feature the ceremonial unveilling of the five Olympic rings.
In dealing with this sometimes tedious bit of protocol the Brazilian Opening Ceremony was particularly creative.
As is tradition the Brazilian team as hosts were the last to arrive in the arena in the Parade of Nations. They were immediately followed by a parade of 12 Samba schools from the annual Rio Carnival that Brazil is particularly famous for. The Samba schools were followed by the silver seed banks that had been used during the Parade of Nations.
Amid the organised chaos this created in the arena the seed banks suddenly took centre stage and from their tops suddenly appeared the Olympic Rings in the form a plant leaves.
This could obviously be interpreted as a reference to the environmental theme of the ceremony. Particularly the Amazon Rainforest and the reforestation efforts that led to the athletes being invited to plant seeds in the seed banks.
However it could also be interpreted as a reference to another type of plant. The Marijuana plant.
Attitudes towards Marijuana use is currently a big talking point across North, Central and South America. A number of US states such as Colorado have completely legalised the recreational use of Marijuana while around 25 others have legalised the medical use of Marijuana.
The picture is similar across much of Central and South America. Argentina, Columbia, Ecuador and Mexico along with the hosts Brazil have all decriminalised the personal use of Marijuana. Guatemala has called for the legalisation of all drugs at the United Nations (UN).
Uruguay which never made Marijuana use illegal has even go so far as to legalise the production of Marijuana. Columbia seems to be following suit issuing export licenses for commercial Marijuana export even if it has yet to legalise commercial Marijuana production.
This new trend towards Marijuana legalisation across Latin America is driving largely by a desire to free the region from the grip of the drug cartels.
Prior to the US' CIA teaming up with Pablo Escobar to fund the Honduran Contras Marijuana was the main illegal drug being produces across Latin America. It was only the CIA's decision to open the US market to Cocaine in the 1980's that saw production shift dramatically towards Coca.
The hope being that legalisation of Marijuana will shift production back from Coca. Even if this doesn't completely remove the influence of the cartels it should help reduce the levels of violence.
After all it is widely accepted that Marijuana users and dealers are significantly less violent than Cocaine users and dealers. Crack Cocaine dealers are of course the absolute worst.
The main barrier that Latin American nations face in trying to remove the destabilising influence of the drug cartels is US President Barack Obama.
Through the migration policy that Donald Trump has helped put a stop to Obama and the Democrats of course aimed to partner with the drug cartels in their people trafficking efforts. Thus boosting their profits and influence.
As part of his commitment to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Obama has made a point of commuting the sentences of predominately Crack Cocaine dealers. Anyone who has any experience with both drugs, their users and the people that sell them knows that Crack Cocaine is a far more serious drug than Powder Cocaine.
Therefore any discussion of drug policy in Latin America only serves to further underline that Obama cannot be considered a serious President and the Democrats cannot be considered a serious party.
Marijuana use is also something of a hot topic within the Olympic movement itself. Particularly as it tries to welcome in some of the newer sports such as Surfing, Skateboarding and Snowboarding.
Although I don't want to stereotype participants in those sports have a reputation for using Marijuana recreationally. Particularly as global legislation has moved towards decriminalisation this has led to people arguing that Marijuana should no longer be on the list of drugs that are banned by the IOC.
The problem with this is that Marijuana has strong performance enhancing, medical properties. For example it acts as a powerful muscle relaxant and anti-inflammatory. This means that it cuts athletes recovery times and allows them to build more muscle faster.
Therefore even if they are only using recreationally Marijuana users will gain an unfair advantage over athletes that do not use Marijuana.
One of the most controversial athletes when it comes to discussions of Marijuana is Team USA's Michael Phelps. He is the US' most decorated Olympian with some 23 Gold medals and was selected as the US' flag bearer at these games.
The problem is that Phelps is a serious and habitual drugs cheat. In 2004, 2009 and again in 2014 Phelps was found to have been using Marijuana. However rather than being stripped of his medals and banned from all future competitions Phelps simply got off with repeated warnings because the US falsely claimed that Marijuana was a recreational rather than a performance enhancing drug.
At the swimming events that almost immediately followed the Opening Ceremony Michael Phelps and many of his teammates appeared sporting this strange geometric red circles on their bodies.
These were the result of an ancient Chinese therapy known as "Cupping." Its purpose is to relax muscles and cut inflammation in order to reduce recovery times enhancing athletic performance. The jokes about Phelps once again falling asleep on his Marijuana bong pretty much wrote themselves
On Monday (15/8/16) the US Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced that it is going to continue classing Marijuana as a dangerous illegal drug alongside Heroin and Crack Cocaine. Their reasoning being the false claim that Marijuana has no medical or therapeutic benefits.
This was rather like the US saying it would rather see Latin American burn than admit that Michael Phelps is a drugs cheat who along with all of Team USA should be expelled from the Olympics.
Just like the US has been trying to have the entire Russian team banned.
17:15 on 17/8/16 (UK date).
The Olympic Rings: It is a matter of IOC protocol that each Opening Ceremony must feature the ceremonial unveilling of the five Olympic rings.
In dealing with this sometimes tedious bit of protocol the Brazilian Opening Ceremony was particularly creative.
As is tradition the Brazilian team as hosts were the last to arrive in the arena in the Parade of Nations. They were immediately followed by a parade of 12 Samba schools from the annual Rio Carnival that Brazil is particularly famous for. The Samba schools were followed by the silver seed banks that had been used during the Parade of Nations.
Amid the organised chaos this created in the arena the seed banks suddenly took centre stage and from their tops suddenly appeared the Olympic Rings in the form a plant leaves.
This could obviously be interpreted as a reference to the environmental theme of the ceremony. Particularly the Amazon Rainforest and the reforestation efforts that led to the athletes being invited to plant seeds in the seed banks.
However it could also be interpreted as a reference to another type of plant. The Marijuana plant.
Attitudes towards Marijuana use is currently a big talking point across North, Central and South America. A number of US states such as Colorado have completely legalised the recreational use of Marijuana while around 25 others have legalised the medical use of Marijuana.
The picture is similar across much of Central and South America. Argentina, Columbia, Ecuador and Mexico along with the hosts Brazil have all decriminalised the personal use of Marijuana. Guatemala has called for the legalisation of all drugs at the United Nations (UN).
Uruguay which never made Marijuana use illegal has even go so far as to legalise the production of Marijuana. Columbia seems to be following suit issuing export licenses for commercial Marijuana export even if it has yet to legalise commercial Marijuana production.
This new trend towards Marijuana legalisation across Latin America is driving largely by a desire to free the region from the grip of the drug cartels.
Prior to the US' CIA teaming up with Pablo Escobar to fund the Honduran Contras Marijuana was the main illegal drug being produces across Latin America. It was only the CIA's decision to open the US market to Cocaine in the 1980's that saw production shift dramatically towards Coca.
The hope being that legalisation of Marijuana will shift production back from Coca. Even if this doesn't completely remove the influence of the cartels it should help reduce the levels of violence.
After all it is widely accepted that Marijuana users and dealers are significantly less violent than Cocaine users and dealers. Crack Cocaine dealers are of course the absolute worst.
The main barrier that Latin American nations face in trying to remove the destabilising influence of the drug cartels is US President Barack Obama.
Through the migration policy that Donald Trump has helped put a stop to Obama and the Democrats of course aimed to partner with the drug cartels in their people trafficking efforts. Thus boosting their profits and influence.
As part of his commitment to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Obama has made a point of commuting the sentences of predominately Crack Cocaine dealers. Anyone who has any experience with both drugs, their users and the people that sell them knows that Crack Cocaine is a far more serious drug than Powder Cocaine.
Therefore any discussion of drug policy in Latin America only serves to further underline that Obama cannot be considered a serious President and the Democrats cannot be considered a serious party.
Marijuana use is also something of a hot topic within the Olympic movement itself. Particularly as it tries to welcome in some of the newer sports such as Surfing, Skateboarding and Snowboarding.
Although I don't want to stereotype participants in those sports have a reputation for using Marijuana recreationally. Particularly as global legislation has moved towards decriminalisation this has led to people arguing that Marijuana should no longer be on the list of drugs that are banned by the IOC.
The problem with this is that Marijuana has strong performance enhancing, medical properties. For example it acts as a powerful muscle relaxant and anti-inflammatory. This means that it cuts athletes recovery times and allows them to build more muscle faster.
Therefore even if they are only using recreationally Marijuana users will gain an unfair advantage over athletes that do not use Marijuana.
One of the most controversial athletes when it comes to discussions of Marijuana is Team USA's Michael Phelps. He is the US' most decorated Olympian with some 23 Gold medals and was selected as the US' flag bearer at these games.
The problem is that Phelps is a serious and habitual drugs cheat. In 2004, 2009 and again in 2014 Phelps was found to have been using Marijuana. However rather than being stripped of his medals and banned from all future competitions Phelps simply got off with repeated warnings because the US falsely claimed that Marijuana was a recreational rather than a performance enhancing drug.
At the swimming events that almost immediately followed the Opening Ceremony Michael Phelps and many of his teammates appeared sporting this strange geometric red circles on their bodies.
These were the result of an ancient Chinese therapy known as "Cupping." Its purpose is to relax muscles and cut inflammation in order to reduce recovery times enhancing athletic performance. The jokes about Phelps once again falling asleep on his Marijuana bong pretty much wrote themselves
On Monday (15/8/16) the US Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced that it is going to continue classing Marijuana as a dangerous illegal drug alongside Heroin and Crack Cocaine. Their reasoning being the false claim that Marijuana has no medical or therapeutic benefits.
This was rather like the US saying it would rather see Latin American burn than admit that Michael Phelps is a drugs cheat who along with all of Team USA should be expelled from the Olympics.
Just like the US has been trying to have the entire Russian team banned.
17:15 on 17/8/16 (UK date).
Monday, 15 August 2016
The 2016 ISIL Games: Opening Ceremony Pt.4
This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 3; http://watchitdie.blogspot.in/2016/08/the-2016-isil-games-opening-ceremony-pt3.html
The Climate Change Headbutt: In reading some of the coverage of the Opening Ceremony many people referred to it as making a nod towards Climate Change. Even I though found it to be much less subtle then that.
This sequence set out to inform the World of the dangers of Climate Change through three videos.
The first showed the concentration of Greenhouse Gases (ghg's) in the atmosphere and how they move about. The second showed how these ghg's are causing global temperatures to rise. The third showed how these rising temperatures are causing ice caps to melt raising global sea levels putting many coastal areas at increased risk of flooding.
Each video began with a stark description in black text against an orange background. These were intended to resemble a health & safety warning such as; "DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!"
The purpose of this sequence was to show these warnings to a global audience who may never have seen them before.
However having been heavily involved in the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations I have seen hundreds if not thousands of this type of video before. As a result I can assure you that their content is widely accepted and not really in dispute. Also they don't seem to have been designed to target particular nations.
The first video showing the global atmospheric concentrations of ghg's however does seem to have been included to emphasise that most ghg's are concentrated in the northern hemisphere. This is a result of developed nations in what is sometimes referred to in UNFCCC jargon as; "The Global North" starting to burn fossil fuels and emit ghg's far earlier then the developing nations in what is sometimes termed; "The Global South."
This historical disparity in emissions has been a key part of the developing nation's position during UNFCCC negotiations. Under the Kyoto Protocol it led to what is termed; "Binary Differentiation."
Essentially this means that only the 37 nations who are classed as "Developed" have to cut their emissions while the other 156 nations are free to grow their emissions by as much as the like.
It was extremely noble or perhaps extremely foolish of US President Obama to concede to China and allow Binary Differentiation to continue as the basis for the so-called "Paris Agreement" to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
After all with 156 nations being left free to grow their ghg emissions Obama's vanity project certainly won't do anything to combat Climate Change.
Following those stark and scientific videos the Opening Ceremony returned to a more artistic bent.
Within the arena a small boy found a sapling growing amid the concrete. We were then shown a video of people farming and generally interacting with the natural environment across Brazil and the World.
During this sequence we were read the famous poem "A Flor e a Neusea" (broadly; "A Flower Amongst the Chaos") by famous Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
On a very superficial level this poem tells the story being played out in the arena. A sapling is found growing amongst the grime and chaos of the city and passers-by are urged to protect the flower as it grows.
The Portuguese version of the poem was read by famous Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro. She is probably best known globally for the 1998 film "Centro do Brasil (Central Station)" for which she was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. The first Brazilian and the first Latin American actress to be nominated for the award.
The English version of the poem was read by equally famous British actress Dame Judy Dench. This seemed to be another reference to the 2012 Summer Olympics held in London, UK from which Rio was rather picking up the baton.
The London Opening Ceremony featured a sequence in which Daniel Craig in his "James Bond" character met with the British Queen to receive orders for a special mission. The two were then shown apparently parachuting from a helicopter into the stadium at the start of the ceremony.
Up until 2012's "Skyfall" Dame Judy Dench played James Bond's boss known simply as; "M." Even British people like myself occasionally confuse Dame Judy Dench with Dame Helen Mirren who played the British Queen in the 2006 film; "The Queen."
In that context the poem was not simply about a flower growing amid the chaos of the city. Instead it was Britain's assessment of me which formed such a large theme at the 2012 Summer Olympics. I being the strange flower of unknown origin that suddenly appeared.
The Parade of Nations: It is part of International Olympic Committee (IOC) protocol that each Opening Ceremony must feature the national flags of competing nations being paraded into the arena by members of the national team.
In many ways this is actually the most important part of any Opening Ceremony. It puts the athletes without whom there wouldn't be any games at centre stage providing them with the opportunity to make memories that will hopefully last a life time.
However in terms of writing it all up there's not really much I can add to; "Man/Woman Walks Forward Waving Flag. Doesn't Fall Over."
For example if you want to know why Tongan flagbearer Pita Taufatofua was such a big hit you'll probably need to ask a woman. Or a certain type of man. After all he certainly seems to need some advice on how much lube to use.
In keeping with the Geometry theme of the ceremony the Parade of Nations took place along a relatively short, ruler straight almost runway along the centre of the arena.
This runway was formed by hundreds of stewards/performers all wearing a tabard adorned with two arrows pointing from right to left. This design also paid reference to the blue & white stars and red & white stripes of the US flag.
In short the stewards had come dressed as the campaign logo of ineligible Democrat nominee for the US Presidency Hillary Clinton.
I suppose you could have viewed this as Brazil showing its full support for Hillary Clinton.
However you could also have viewed it as Brazil turning the Parade of Nations into a long list of countries that will be destroyed by a Hillary Clinton Presidency.
And my god. At almost two and half it was a long list of nations.
At around 20:45 on 15/8/16 (UK date) I'll pick this up tomorrow.
Edited at around 14:40 on 17/8/16 (UK date) to add;
That the Parade of Nations was agonisingly long was entirely the fault of the IOC. Despite there only being 193 nations the IOC decided to include 207 Olympic delegations.
Some of the these such as the Palestinian delegation helped represent what are termed UN Observer States which lack full nation status. However others were included as part of the IOC's own extreme political agenda.
For example athletes from Serbia's southern Kosovo province could compete for either Serbia or Albania. There is certainly no nation of Kosovo.
The much talked about extra delegation this year was the IOC's "Refugee Team." This is far from the first time that refugees have competed in an Olympics. However they normally appear as part of the "Independent" team under the IOC's flag.
This year the Independent team was made up exclusively of athletes from Kuwait. Due to forbidden government interference in its sporting federations Kuwait is currently not recognised by the IOC.
Quite apart from their desire to celebrate ISIL and their ethnic cleansing and genocide I think the refugee team was included this year because the IOC didn't want the refugees to be so publicly associated with the type of Gulf Monarchy that is creating all these refugees.
Due to these games being hijacked as a celebration of ISIL and associated Islamist extremists there was a particular problem with the delegation from Saudi Arabia.
In an effort to show their utter domination over the IOC after they arrived in the stadium the Saudi delegation kept trying to force its way through the stewards onto the runway and throw its flag into the path of the other delegations to pick up to give the nation maximum screentime.
When the delegation from Saudi Arabia's great regional rival Iran arrived in the stadium much later they too started throwing their flags around for all the see. This led to some very visible tension between the Saudi delegation, the Iranian delegation and the stewards.
The Opening Ceremony was attended by a number of World leaders including French President Francois Hollande.
France of course has suffered more than most at the hands of Islamist terrorists not least during the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) Paris Massacres and the July 16th 2016 (16/7/16) Nice terror attack.
Due to this substantial security threat France has been forced to cancel a number of traditional summer events over the threat to public safety. The traditional Catholic pilgrimage to Lourdes which began on Tuesday (15/8/16) has only been able to go ahead under military guard.
Despite France struggling to cope with providing security to its existing summer events Hollande still wants to see France host the 2024 Summer Olympics. Due in part to French foreign policy it is far from guaranteed that the war in Syria or the threat from ISIL and associated - French backed - Islamist terror groups will have ended by then.
As a result it seems that the French security establishment is in almost open revolt against Hollande.
During the Opening Ceremony news broke of a number of people being killed in a fire/explosion at a nightclub/bar in Rouen in the French province of Normandy. This of course is the same town in which a Catholic Priest was murdered by ISIL terrorists on July 26th (26/7/16).
Amid the initial chaotic reports of an explosion and a large number of casualties this obviously created a fear that France had once again come under terrorist attack. Even once it had been revealed to just be an accidental fire the spectacle of Hollande laughing, joking and generally enjoying himself during a significant national tragedy was not a good one.
It is also worth noting that the majority of the 13 killed not by the fire but from inhaling toxic fumes from Chloride based insulation. In short they died of Chlorine gas poisoning. That is normally all it would take for France and others to accuse the Syrian government of carrying out a Chemical Weapons attack.
The delegations came out for the Parade of Nations in alphabetical order according to their Portuguese names. This year that decision serves to illustrate the type of pressure that the host nation and the IOC often find themselves under.
NBC who are broadcasting the games in the US spent many weeks ahead of the Opening Ceremony locked in intense dispute with both the Brazilian hosts and the IOC.
Firstly NBC wanted the entire Opening Ceremony moved back by a full hour so it would fit into the US Prime Time schedule. This is despite it being on at completely the wrong time for the entire rest of the World. Secondly NBC wanted the parade to take place in accordance with the English alphabet.
NBC were obviously defeated on both of these points. However the fact that the day after the ceremony the US swim team appeared sporting these strange geometric circles on their bodies from the ancient Chinese muscle therapy of "Cupping" makes you wonder whether these were serious requests from NBC. Or simply attempts to squeeze advance previews of the Opening Ceremony from the hosts.
As is traditional the delegation of the hosts Brazil were the last to arrive in the arena. In a break with tradition they were led out not by their flag bearer but by the Brazilian model Lea T who is probably most famous for being transgendered.
Transgenderism has been something of a hot talking point recently particularly in the US. However it was appropriate that the issue was referenced during the Opening Ceremony because the Olympics has played an important role in making it a global talking point.
This current round of discussion over transgenderism really began back in 2009 when South African athlete Caster Semenya won the women's 800 metres and 1500 metres at the athletics World Championship.
In response many nations disputed the result claiming that Semenya was in fact a man. This led to Semenya being subjected to lengthy and complex gender tests with resulted in doctors from all IOC nations agreeing that Semenya is neither male nor female but in fact transgendered. This production of scientific evidence has probably done more than anything to convince people that transgenderism is a genuine medical condition.
Semenya's participation in women's events including at these games continues to be hugely controversial. Following the 2009 enquiry Semenya began taking drugs that restricted her levels of the male hormone testosterone to the normal female levels. Whilst taking those drugs Semenya's performance as an athlete collapsed. Now Semenya is now longer taking those drugs and effectively competing as a man in women's events suddenly she's outstanding again.
While I don't want to prejudice wider discussions about transgender rights from a purely competitive standpoint that sounds a lot like cheating.
Also mentioning transgender issues provides yet another opportunity to mock US President Barack Obama.
After all Obama seems completely opposed to Binary Differentiation when it comes to the binary matter of gender but fully supportive of Binary Differentiation when it comes to the completely non-binary fight against Climate Change.
As they finished their parade the athletes were invited to plant an individual seed that was then placed in a number of seed banks. Those seeds will then be planted close to the athlete village to hopefully grow into a forest. That is obviously very in keeping with the ceremony's commitment to the environment. Particularly reforestation.
However it also provided the hosts the traditional advantage of slightly knocking the visiting athletes off balance. After all many of them had come to Rio to participate in their chosen sport. Not to do a bit of gardening.
Also I think it's widely accepted that semen is often referred to as; "The Seed of Man." As a result this seed planting exercise also carried with it an uncomfortable air of sexual innuendo.
15:55 on 17/8/16 (UK date).
The Climate Change Headbutt: In reading some of the coverage of the Opening Ceremony many people referred to it as making a nod towards Climate Change. Even I though found it to be much less subtle then that.
This sequence set out to inform the World of the dangers of Climate Change through three videos.
The first showed the concentration of Greenhouse Gases (ghg's) in the atmosphere and how they move about. The second showed how these ghg's are causing global temperatures to rise. The third showed how these rising temperatures are causing ice caps to melt raising global sea levels putting many coastal areas at increased risk of flooding.
Each video began with a stark description in black text against an orange background. These were intended to resemble a health & safety warning such as; "DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!"
The purpose of this sequence was to show these warnings to a global audience who may never have seen them before.
However having been heavily involved in the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations I have seen hundreds if not thousands of this type of video before. As a result I can assure you that their content is widely accepted and not really in dispute. Also they don't seem to have been designed to target particular nations.
The first video showing the global atmospheric concentrations of ghg's however does seem to have been included to emphasise that most ghg's are concentrated in the northern hemisphere. This is a result of developed nations in what is sometimes referred to in UNFCCC jargon as; "The Global North" starting to burn fossil fuels and emit ghg's far earlier then the developing nations in what is sometimes termed; "The Global South."
This historical disparity in emissions has been a key part of the developing nation's position during UNFCCC negotiations. Under the Kyoto Protocol it led to what is termed; "Binary Differentiation."
Essentially this means that only the 37 nations who are classed as "Developed" have to cut their emissions while the other 156 nations are free to grow their emissions by as much as the like.
It was extremely noble or perhaps extremely foolish of US President Obama to concede to China and allow Binary Differentiation to continue as the basis for the so-called "Paris Agreement" to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
After all with 156 nations being left free to grow their ghg emissions Obama's vanity project certainly won't do anything to combat Climate Change.
Following those stark and scientific videos the Opening Ceremony returned to a more artistic bent.
Within the arena a small boy found a sapling growing amid the concrete. We were then shown a video of people farming and generally interacting with the natural environment across Brazil and the World.
During this sequence we were read the famous poem "A Flor e a Neusea" (broadly; "A Flower Amongst the Chaos") by famous Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
On a very superficial level this poem tells the story being played out in the arena. A sapling is found growing amongst the grime and chaos of the city and passers-by are urged to protect the flower as it grows.
The Portuguese version of the poem was read by famous Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro. She is probably best known globally for the 1998 film "Centro do Brasil (Central Station)" for which she was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. The first Brazilian and the first Latin American actress to be nominated for the award.
The English version of the poem was read by equally famous British actress Dame Judy Dench. This seemed to be another reference to the 2012 Summer Olympics held in London, UK from which Rio was rather picking up the baton.
The London Opening Ceremony featured a sequence in which Daniel Craig in his "James Bond" character met with the British Queen to receive orders for a special mission. The two were then shown apparently parachuting from a helicopter into the stadium at the start of the ceremony.
Up until 2012's "Skyfall" Dame Judy Dench played James Bond's boss known simply as; "M." Even British people like myself occasionally confuse Dame Judy Dench with Dame Helen Mirren who played the British Queen in the 2006 film; "The Queen."
In that context the poem was not simply about a flower growing amid the chaos of the city. Instead it was Britain's assessment of me which formed such a large theme at the 2012 Summer Olympics. I being the strange flower of unknown origin that suddenly appeared.
The Parade of Nations: It is part of International Olympic Committee (IOC) protocol that each Opening Ceremony must feature the national flags of competing nations being paraded into the arena by members of the national team.
In many ways this is actually the most important part of any Opening Ceremony. It puts the athletes without whom there wouldn't be any games at centre stage providing them with the opportunity to make memories that will hopefully last a life time.
However in terms of writing it all up there's not really much I can add to; "Man/Woman Walks Forward Waving Flag. Doesn't Fall Over."
For example if you want to know why Tongan flagbearer Pita Taufatofua was such a big hit you'll probably need to ask a woman. Or a certain type of man. After all he certainly seems to need some advice on how much lube to use.
In keeping with the Geometry theme of the ceremony the Parade of Nations took place along a relatively short, ruler straight almost runway along the centre of the arena.
This runway was formed by hundreds of stewards/performers all wearing a tabard adorned with two arrows pointing from right to left. This design also paid reference to the blue & white stars and red & white stripes of the US flag.
In short the stewards had come dressed as the campaign logo of ineligible Democrat nominee for the US Presidency Hillary Clinton.
I suppose you could have viewed this as Brazil showing its full support for Hillary Clinton.
However you could also have viewed it as Brazil turning the Parade of Nations into a long list of countries that will be destroyed by a Hillary Clinton Presidency.
And my god. At almost two and half it was a long list of nations.
At around 20:45 on 15/8/16 (UK date) I'll pick this up tomorrow.
Edited at around 14:40 on 17/8/16 (UK date) to add;
That the Parade of Nations was agonisingly long was entirely the fault of the IOC. Despite there only being 193 nations the IOC decided to include 207 Olympic delegations.
Some of the these such as the Palestinian delegation helped represent what are termed UN Observer States which lack full nation status. However others were included as part of the IOC's own extreme political agenda.
For example athletes from Serbia's southern Kosovo province could compete for either Serbia or Albania. There is certainly no nation of Kosovo.
The much talked about extra delegation this year was the IOC's "Refugee Team." This is far from the first time that refugees have competed in an Olympics. However they normally appear as part of the "Independent" team under the IOC's flag.
This year the Independent team was made up exclusively of athletes from Kuwait. Due to forbidden government interference in its sporting federations Kuwait is currently not recognised by the IOC.
Quite apart from their desire to celebrate ISIL and their ethnic cleansing and genocide I think the refugee team was included this year because the IOC didn't want the refugees to be so publicly associated with the type of Gulf Monarchy that is creating all these refugees.
Due to these games being hijacked as a celebration of ISIL and associated Islamist extremists there was a particular problem with the delegation from Saudi Arabia.
In an effort to show their utter domination over the IOC after they arrived in the stadium the Saudi delegation kept trying to force its way through the stewards onto the runway and throw its flag into the path of the other delegations to pick up to give the nation maximum screentime.
When the delegation from Saudi Arabia's great regional rival Iran arrived in the stadium much later they too started throwing their flags around for all the see. This led to some very visible tension between the Saudi delegation, the Iranian delegation and the stewards.
The Opening Ceremony was attended by a number of World leaders including French President Francois Hollande.
France of course has suffered more than most at the hands of Islamist terrorists not least during the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) Paris Massacres and the July 16th 2016 (16/7/16) Nice terror attack.
Due to this substantial security threat France has been forced to cancel a number of traditional summer events over the threat to public safety. The traditional Catholic pilgrimage to Lourdes which began on Tuesday (15/8/16) has only been able to go ahead under military guard.
Despite France struggling to cope with providing security to its existing summer events Hollande still wants to see France host the 2024 Summer Olympics. Due in part to French foreign policy it is far from guaranteed that the war in Syria or the threat from ISIL and associated - French backed - Islamist terror groups will have ended by then.
As a result it seems that the French security establishment is in almost open revolt against Hollande.
During the Opening Ceremony news broke of a number of people being killed in a fire/explosion at a nightclub/bar in Rouen in the French province of Normandy. This of course is the same town in which a Catholic Priest was murdered by ISIL terrorists on July 26th (26/7/16).
Amid the initial chaotic reports of an explosion and a large number of casualties this obviously created a fear that France had once again come under terrorist attack. Even once it had been revealed to just be an accidental fire the spectacle of Hollande laughing, joking and generally enjoying himself during a significant national tragedy was not a good one.
It is also worth noting that the majority of the 13 killed not by the fire but from inhaling toxic fumes from Chloride based insulation. In short they died of Chlorine gas poisoning. That is normally all it would take for France and others to accuse the Syrian government of carrying out a Chemical Weapons attack.
The delegations came out for the Parade of Nations in alphabetical order according to their Portuguese names. This year that decision serves to illustrate the type of pressure that the host nation and the IOC often find themselves under.
NBC who are broadcasting the games in the US spent many weeks ahead of the Opening Ceremony locked in intense dispute with both the Brazilian hosts and the IOC.
Firstly NBC wanted the entire Opening Ceremony moved back by a full hour so it would fit into the US Prime Time schedule. This is despite it being on at completely the wrong time for the entire rest of the World. Secondly NBC wanted the parade to take place in accordance with the English alphabet.
NBC were obviously defeated on both of these points. However the fact that the day after the ceremony the US swim team appeared sporting these strange geometric circles on their bodies from the ancient Chinese muscle therapy of "Cupping" makes you wonder whether these were serious requests from NBC. Or simply attempts to squeeze advance previews of the Opening Ceremony from the hosts.
As is traditional the delegation of the hosts Brazil were the last to arrive in the arena. In a break with tradition they were led out not by their flag bearer but by the Brazilian model Lea T who is probably most famous for being transgendered.
Transgenderism has been something of a hot talking point recently particularly in the US. However it was appropriate that the issue was referenced during the Opening Ceremony because the Olympics has played an important role in making it a global talking point.
This current round of discussion over transgenderism really began back in 2009 when South African athlete Caster Semenya won the women's 800 metres and 1500 metres at the athletics World Championship.
In response many nations disputed the result claiming that Semenya was in fact a man. This led to Semenya being subjected to lengthy and complex gender tests with resulted in doctors from all IOC nations agreeing that Semenya is neither male nor female but in fact transgendered. This production of scientific evidence has probably done more than anything to convince people that transgenderism is a genuine medical condition.
Semenya's participation in women's events including at these games continues to be hugely controversial. Following the 2009 enquiry Semenya began taking drugs that restricted her levels of the male hormone testosterone to the normal female levels. Whilst taking those drugs Semenya's performance as an athlete collapsed. Now Semenya is now longer taking those drugs and effectively competing as a man in women's events suddenly she's outstanding again.
While I don't want to prejudice wider discussions about transgender rights from a purely competitive standpoint that sounds a lot like cheating.
Also mentioning transgender issues provides yet another opportunity to mock US President Barack Obama.
After all Obama seems completely opposed to Binary Differentiation when it comes to the binary matter of gender but fully supportive of Binary Differentiation when it comes to the completely non-binary fight against Climate Change.
As they finished their parade the athletes were invited to plant an individual seed that was then placed in a number of seed banks. Those seeds will then be planted close to the athlete village to hopefully grow into a forest. That is obviously very in keeping with the ceremony's commitment to the environment. Particularly reforestation.
However it also provided the hosts the traditional advantage of slightly knocking the visiting athletes off balance. After all many of them had come to Rio to participate in their chosen sport. Not to do a bit of gardening.
Also I think it's widely accepted that semen is often referred to as; "The Seed of Man." As a result this seed planting exercise also carried with it an uncomfortable air of sexual innuendo.
15:55 on 17/8/16 (UK date).
The 2016 ISIL Games: Opening Ceremony Pt.3
This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 2; http://watchitdie.blogspot.in/2016/08/the-2016-isil-games-opening-ceremony-pt2.html
The Girl From Impanema: Following Alberto Santos-Dumont's flight around Rio this next sequence began simply.
On a stage in the centre of the favela structure at one end of the arena Daniel Jobim sung his grandfather - Antonio Carlo's Jobim - famous song "The Girl From Impanema."
Essentially a song about watching a pretty girl walk along Rio's Impanema beach this became a massive worldwide hit back in 1964. Back when being a worldwide hit meant something.
In those days if a song was to be a hit across the globe it had to be pressed onto hundreds of thousands of individual vinyl discs. Those discs then had to be put onto ships and moved between countries. Once they arrived in port import taxes needed to be paid and they had to be placed on trucks to be taken to shops for people to buy. There was none of this streaming nonsense.
During this period the World was a much more isolated, less globalised place. International air travel was reserved for the select few and the Internet hadn't even been dreamt of. As a result The Girl From Impanema was many people's first taste of this strange land called Brazil and of this Bosa Nova, Jazz style of the song.
Therefore an entire generation of people have fond, often romantic memories associated with the song. That generation is I think best encapsulated by the US TV Show "Mad Men" with the Jazz/Beatnik generation making way for the so-called "Swinging Sixties."
Unfortunately that generation is very much before my time so I can't talk in much detail about it. However The Girl From Impanema was released in July 1964 just three months after the US installed a military dictatorship in Brazil as part of the "Brother Sam" operation.
As such the success of The Girl From Impanema could well have been part of a US-led public relations exercise for the Brazilian military dictatorship. The idea being to make ordinary members of the public look fondly on Brazil so they would support the dictatorship and pray the nation didn't fall under the evils of Communism.
As the song was being sung from the stage at one end of the arena at the other Gisele Bundchen entered from the other of the arena and proceeded to walk the length of the arena towards the stage. An internationally recognised supermodel and wife of American Football star quarterback Tom Brady Gisele Bundchen is probably the most famous non-footballing Brazilian in the World right now.
Bundchen also serves to further highlight Brazil's rich racial diversity. As the name suggests she is of German heritage and part of the roughly 5 million German Brazilians who migrated to Brazil towards the end of the 19th and start of the 20th Century.
There is of course a second period of immigration from Germany that Brazil is less proud of.
Despite Brazil officially being at war with Nazi Germany since 1942 some of Brazil's German population remained loyal to the Nazis. So much so that towards the end of the Second World War the Nazis dreamt up a plan to escape Europe and continue their Reich in the Amazon Rainforest on the border between Brazil and Guyana.
Although this plan for a Nazi colonisation of the Amazon Rainforest was always more pipedream rather than reality some 9,000 Nazi war criminals did succeed in fleeing Europe for South America using the so-called "Rat Lines." The most famous of these was probably Adolf Eichmann who was captured in Argentina in 1960.
However the Commander of the Sobibor and Treblinka death camps Franz Stangl was captured in Brazil in 1967. Gustav Wagner who was deputy Commander at Sobibor and nicknamed "The Beast" for his role in exterminating some 200,000 Jews was captured in Brazil in 1978. Obviously Brazil's 1964 to 1985 US-backed fascist dictatorship played a crucial role in sheltering Stangl, Wagner and others.
The UK commentator on the Opening Ceremony in particular was at great pains to make clear that Gisele Bundchen was not descended from that generation of German immigrants.
As Gisele made her extremely long walk across the arena very fluid, flowing, curvaceous lines were video projected onto the arena floor.
These were a reference to the visual style of that other extremely famous German Brazilian - architect Oscar Niemeyer. Who is not to be confused with current Brazilian football star Neymar. Niemeyer is widely considered to be the father of the "Modernist" architectural movement.
Although Niemeyer worked on the planned city of Brasilia the "Brutalist" style of that city is merely a sub-genre of Modernism. I'm sure you can see difference between Niemeyer designed buildings such as the Cathedral of Brasilia or the Brazilian National Congress building and the Brutalist Hubert H Humphrey Building in Washington D.C, US or the Unite d'Habitation building in Marseilles, France. Particularly if you make use of Google image search.
With the purpose of these ceremonies primarily being to promote conversation I'm sure you could find a talking point in the contrast flowing lines of Niemeyer's designs and the stark geometry of Brutalism as a metaphor for the difference between the libertarian Socialism of South America and the dour authoritarian Socialism of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Bloc.
During the dress rehearsal this sequence caused quite a bit of controversy because it feature Giselle being robbed by a favela kid. Primarily I think this was due to the intense focus the dress rehearsal comes under as people try and steal the secrets of the ceremony. Therefore the director simply threw in fake sequences to throw people off the scent.
However I would have been impressed if the robbery sequence had been included in the actual ceremony. All to often these ceremonies are used to portray the host nation as some sort of utopia where everything is happy, glorious and there are no problems. Therefore I think it would have been artistically brave to make reference to some of Brazil's problems. After all every Olympic host has its problems even if they try and pretend they don't.
That said with the favelas having previously been linked to crime and the pollution problems in the Rowing and Sailing venues I think a further reference to crime would have set the wrong tone for the next sequence.
At around 15:40 on 15/8/16 (UK date) I'm going to have a coffee break to order my thoughts slightly.
Edited at around 16:20 on 15/8/16 (UK date) to add;
The Voice of the Favelas: This sequence was intended as celebration of the favelas who'd been much maligned for their crime and pollution in an earlier sequence.
This began with a performance of "Passinho" dance. This is a style of modern, urban/street dance that was invented in Brazil's favelas. It has recently become popular in American hip-hop, black pop culture. It's inclusion here gave Brazil an opportunity to remind the World who invented it and who's just ripping it off.
The demonstration of Passinho dancing was accompanied by a performance by Brazilian singer Ludmilla who is dubbed "The Brazilian Beyonce."
Apart from showcasing another famous Brazilian this helped to serve as a timely reminder of the role that US ghetto culture has on Brazilian culture. After all the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that both US President Obama and Beyonce celebrate is the sort of thing foreign intelligence agencies do to nations that they hate.
The Passinho showcase made way for a small performance by Elza Soares. Born in Rio favela Soares was reasonably famous across Latin America and the US during the late 1960's and 1970's - the era associated with the birth of disco music. Crucially she was also married to star Brazilian footballer Garrincha.
Garrincha was part of that World captivating Brazilian national football squad of the 1970's that included players such as Socrates and Pele. Garrincha briefly played his club football alongside Socrates at Corinthians.
That Corinthians side very famously eschewed the traditional style of team management. Instead all decisions about how the team played were made by democratic votes amongst the players and their fans.
This helped teach a generation of Brazilians about democracy and show them that democracy was the key to success. In a country run by a military dictatorship at the time that was an extremely brave thing to do.
It stands in sharp contrast to all the cowardly Olympians who have swarmed the Brazil to selfishly celebrate the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated Islamist terror groups.
Playing up Soares' role in the birth of disco provided an excuse to break out the big Afro hairstyles that were popular at the time.
As I've mentioned Brazil is rather unique in its racial diversity having no dominant ethnic group. However that does not mean that Brazil is a nation completely free of racial tensions.
What is interesting though is that the racism that exists in Brazil is not based on skin colour. After all even the German Brazilians have very dark skin to go along with their fair hair. Instead racism in Brazil is focused on hair type with those who have curly Afro-style hair considered to be less attractive and worthy then those with straight Caucasian-style hair.
The big Afros of the disco era help highlight this uniquely Brazilian take on racism.
Throughout this sequence all the action took place on the physical favela structure at one end of the arena.
However brightly coloured graphics were video projected onto the floor of the arena in the geometric style of a graphic equaliser that you would find on a stereo. At one point performers on wheeled toboggans slide down from the favela onto the arena floor.
This was all intended to pay tribute to the favelas role as the cultural heart and soul of Brazil flooding the grey city with colour and life.
The cheapness of these wheeled toboggans seemed intended as contrast with the excess of the London 2012 ceremonies.
The London Para-Olympic Closing Ceremony featured performers riding these small motorbikes that appeared to be powered by giant fans on the back. Each one of these strange contraptions had been specially designed and built by a team of engineers just for the ceremony at great expense. The Brazilians simply used what appeared to be children's toys that had been brought cheaply and would no doubt be donated to the favela children after the ceremony.
Next tribute was paid to the influence of Caribbean culture on Brazilian life. This was done through a performance by Brazilian dancehall MC's Karol Conka and MC Sofia.
Part of the bundle of issues that Brazil inherited from the London 2012 games was the popstar Rihanna who of course is from the Caribbean island of Barbados.
Back in 2014 Rihanna did the song "Can't Remember to Forget You" with Colombian popstar Shakira. In promoting the single Shakira talked about choosing Rihanna because they were both girls from the Caribbean. This had even people like me who really should know better looking at a map and going; "Oh yeah. Brazil's neighbour Columbia sits on the Caribbean Sea."
As apparently the 2012 Para-Olympic Closing Ceremony was mine and Rihanna's wedding ceremony I also know that Rihanna's mother isn't from Barbados at all. Instead she's from Brazil's Guyana. As such it seems that Brazil has more legitimate claim to Caribbean culture than the US which is where a lot of people assume Rihanna is from.
The ceremony then paid tribute to the World famous Brazilian martial art of "Capoeira" by video projecting someone doing Capoeira onto the arena floor. Back in November 2014 Capoeira was recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was part of the World's intangible cultural heritage.
Next the ceremony went on to warn of the perils of racial discord and disharmony. These sequence began with fire dancers represented the flames of conflict.
Then from one end of the arena performers emerged wearing strange full-body furry red costumes. I'm assured that these costumes are an important part of Brazilian carnival culture. However the nearest thing I can compare them to are the "Elmo" the Muppet from the US TV Show "Sesame Street." These Muppets were each twirling a ball on a piece of rope as if preparing the hurl a rock from a slingshot.
The red rock throwers were supposed to represent Obama's Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. As they approached the centre of the arena they were meant by almost an opposing army made up of performers in similar full-body furry costumes. Some of the opposing army wore gold while other wore silver and others wore the same red as the stone throwers.
As the two armies lined up against each other they broke up into small square units and the lighting around them became very discordant constantly shifting and jumping in and out of focus.
This was intended to represent the pieces on a Chess board. The pieces on a Chess board are of course intended to represent soldiers in battle. In Chess there is a saying that you need to learn to think at least three of four moves ahead.
With US President Obama we wish he'd learn to think of the move he's actually making at the time.
After all as I write his Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement are tearing apart yet another US city let alone the influence it's having on the rest of the World.
This sequence ended with the multicultural army of golds, silvers and reds bitch-slapping - with the help of a little video projection - the stone throwing muppets and harmony was returned to the ceremony.
At around 17:40 on 15/8/16 (UK date) it's dinner time.
Edited at around 18:50 on 15/8/16 (UK date) to add above and below;
Having once again warning US President Obama against his attempts to spread racial disharmony and discord across the globe the Opening Ceremony returned to celebrating Brazil's racial diversity.
This involved famous Brazilian singer Jorge Ben Jor and famous Brazilian TV personality Regina Case leading the entire World in a rendition of the song "Pais Tropical (Tropical Country)."
This is massively famous song in Brazil that everybody knows the words to and can be relied upon to get any party started. For any visitors who didn't know the words they were shown on big screens around the stadium so absolutely everybody could join in.
The arena was then flooded by performers in colourful costumes all dancing and singing along. Particularly prominant amongst the costumes were Afro wigs in various garish shades. This again was a reference to Brazil's racial diversity and the rather unique hair based racism it has spawned.
At the centre there was the Brazilian pop group "Gang do Electro." This helped to further emphasise Brazil's links to Asia because Gang do Electro have a very furturistic style to them that is popular in Asian pop music. Plus if you're hearing it for the first time their name can easily be mistaken for "Guangdong" - the Chinese province.
The particular dance being performed was a form of Brazilian line dancing whose name completely escapes me. Some people may have found it surprising that a style of dancing more usually associated with US Cowboys and Country & Western music is acutally hugely popular in Brazil and other South American nations.
Cowboy culture however is far from unique to the US and is actually more common across South America. That is because cattle ranching is hugely important to the economies of many South America countries. I think Brazil in particular is the World's largest producer of beef.
The way that much of the Amazon Rainforest is being continually cut down to make way for cattle ranches is a big problem in the fight against Climate Change and one that comes up frequently in UNFCCC negotiations. After all it involves replacing trees that absorb Greenhouse Gases with cattle that emit Greenhouse Gases.
The shared Cowboy culture also serves to highlight the link between Brazil and the US that it born from many US Democrats picking up their slaves and heading south after they were defeated by the Republicans in the US Civil War.
It also seemed to serve as a little nod of support to the US state of Texas - home of the Dallas Cowboys American Football team - over their role in blocking US President Obama's corrupt and inhumane immigration reforms in the US Supreme Court.
19:10 on 15/8/16 (UK date).
The Girl From Impanema: Following Alberto Santos-Dumont's flight around Rio this next sequence began simply.
On a stage in the centre of the favela structure at one end of the arena Daniel Jobim sung his grandfather - Antonio Carlo's Jobim - famous song "The Girl From Impanema."
Essentially a song about watching a pretty girl walk along Rio's Impanema beach this became a massive worldwide hit back in 1964. Back when being a worldwide hit meant something.
In those days if a song was to be a hit across the globe it had to be pressed onto hundreds of thousands of individual vinyl discs. Those discs then had to be put onto ships and moved between countries. Once they arrived in port import taxes needed to be paid and they had to be placed on trucks to be taken to shops for people to buy. There was none of this streaming nonsense.
During this period the World was a much more isolated, less globalised place. International air travel was reserved for the select few and the Internet hadn't even been dreamt of. As a result The Girl From Impanema was many people's first taste of this strange land called Brazil and of this Bosa Nova, Jazz style of the song.
Therefore an entire generation of people have fond, often romantic memories associated with the song. That generation is I think best encapsulated by the US TV Show "Mad Men" with the Jazz/Beatnik generation making way for the so-called "Swinging Sixties."
Unfortunately that generation is very much before my time so I can't talk in much detail about it. However The Girl From Impanema was released in July 1964 just three months after the US installed a military dictatorship in Brazil as part of the "Brother Sam" operation.
As such the success of The Girl From Impanema could well have been part of a US-led public relations exercise for the Brazilian military dictatorship. The idea being to make ordinary members of the public look fondly on Brazil so they would support the dictatorship and pray the nation didn't fall under the evils of Communism.
As the song was being sung from the stage at one end of the arena at the other Gisele Bundchen entered from the other of the arena and proceeded to walk the length of the arena towards the stage. An internationally recognised supermodel and wife of American Football star quarterback Tom Brady Gisele Bundchen is probably the most famous non-footballing Brazilian in the World right now.
Bundchen also serves to further highlight Brazil's rich racial diversity. As the name suggests she is of German heritage and part of the roughly 5 million German Brazilians who migrated to Brazil towards the end of the 19th and start of the 20th Century.
There is of course a second period of immigration from Germany that Brazil is less proud of.
Despite Brazil officially being at war with Nazi Germany since 1942 some of Brazil's German population remained loyal to the Nazis. So much so that towards the end of the Second World War the Nazis dreamt up a plan to escape Europe and continue their Reich in the Amazon Rainforest on the border between Brazil and Guyana.
Although this plan for a Nazi colonisation of the Amazon Rainforest was always more pipedream rather than reality some 9,000 Nazi war criminals did succeed in fleeing Europe for South America using the so-called "Rat Lines." The most famous of these was probably Adolf Eichmann who was captured in Argentina in 1960.
However the Commander of the Sobibor and Treblinka death camps Franz Stangl was captured in Brazil in 1967. Gustav Wagner who was deputy Commander at Sobibor and nicknamed "The Beast" for his role in exterminating some 200,000 Jews was captured in Brazil in 1978. Obviously Brazil's 1964 to 1985 US-backed fascist dictatorship played a crucial role in sheltering Stangl, Wagner and others.
The UK commentator on the Opening Ceremony in particular was at great pains to make clear that Gisele Bundchen was not descended from that generation of German immigrants.
As Gisele made her extremely long walk across the arena very fluid, flowing, curvaceous lines were video projected onto the arena floor.
These were a reference to the visual style of that other extremely famous German Brazilian - architect Oscar Niemeyer. Who is not to be confused with current Brazilian football star Neymar. Niemeyer is widely considered to be the father of the "Modernist" architectural movement.
Although Niemeyer worked on the planned city of Brasilia the "Brutalist" style of that city is merely a sub-genre of Modernism. I'm sure you can see difference between Niemeyer designed buildings such as the Cathedral of Brasilia or the Brazilian National Congress building and the Brutalist Hubert H Humphrey Building in Washington D.C, US or the Unite d'Habitation building in Marseilles, France. Particularly if you make use of Google image search.
With the purpose of these ceremonies primarily being to promote conversation I'm sure you could find a talking point in the contrast flowing lines of Niemeyer's designs and the stark geometry of Brutalism as a metaphor for the difference between the libertarian Socialism of South America and the dour authoritarian Socialism of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Bloc.
During the dress rehearsal this sequence caused quite a bit of controversy because it feature Giselle being robbed by a favela kid. Primarily I think this was due to the intense focus the dress rehearsal comes under as people try and steal the secrets of the ceremony. Therefore the director simply threw in fake sequences to throw people off the scent.
However I would have been impressed if the robbery sequence had been included in the actual ceremony. All to often these ceremonies are used to portray the host nation as some sort of utopia where everything is happy, glorious and there are no problems. Therefore I think it would have been artistically brave to make reference to some of Brazil's problems. After all every Olympic host has its problems even if they try and pretend they don't.
That said with the favelas having previously been linked to crime and the pollution problems in the Rowing and Sailing venues I think a further reference to crime would have set the wrong tone for the next sequence.
At around 15:40 on 15/8/16 (UK date) I'm going to have a coffee break to order my thoughts slightly.
Edited at around 16:20 on 15/8/16 (UK date) to add;
The Voice of the Favelas: This sequence was intended as celebration of the favelas who'd been much maligned for their crime and pollution in an earlier sequence.
This began with a performance of "Passinho" dance. This is a style of modern, urban/street dance that was invented in Brazil's favelas. It has recently become popular in American hip-hop, black pop culture. It's inclusion here gave Brazil an opportunity to remind the World who invented it and who's just ripping it off.
The demonstration of Passinho dancing was accompanied by a performance by Brazilian singer Ludmilla who is dubbed "The Brazilian Beyonce."
Apart from showcasing another famous Brazilian this helped to serve as a timely reminder of the role that US ghetto culture has on Brazilian culture. After all the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that both US President Obama and Beyonce celebrate is the sort of thing foreign intelligence agencies do to nations that they hate.
The Passinho showcase made way for a small performance by Elza Soares. Born in Rio favela Soares was reasonably famous across Latin America and the US during the late 1960's and 1970's - the era associated with the birth of disco music. Crucially she was also married to star Brazilian footballer Garrincha.
Garrincha was part of that World captivating Brazilian national football squad of the 1970's that included players such as Socrates and Pele. Garrincha briefly played his club football alongside Socrates at Corinthians.
That Corinthians side very famously eschewed the traditional style of team management. Instead all decisions about how the team played were made by democratic votes amongst the players and their fans.
This helped teach a generation of Brazilians about democracy and show them that democracy was the key to success. In a country run by a military dictatorship at the time that was an extremely brave thing to do.
It stands in sharp contrast to all the cowardly Olympians who have swarmed the Brazil to selfishly celebrate the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated Islamist terror groups.
Playing up Soares' role in the birth of disco provided an excuse to break out the big Afro hairstyles that were popular at the time.
As I've mentioned Brazil is rather unique in its racial diversity having no dominant ethnic group. However that does not mean that Brazil is a nation completely free of racial tensions.
What is interesting though is that the racism that exists in Brazil is not based on skin colour. After all even the German Brazilians have very dark skin to go along with their fair hair. Instead racism in Brazil is focused on hair type with those who have curly Afro-style hair considered to be less attractive and worthy then those with straight Caucasian-style hair.
The big Afros of the disco era help highlight this uniquely Brazilian take on racism.
Throughout this sequence all the action took place on the physical favela structure at one end of the arena.
However brightly coloured graphics were video projected onto the floor of the arena in the geometric style of a graphic equaliser that you would find on a stereo. At one point performers on wheeled toboggans slide down from the favela onto the arena floor.
This was all intended to pay tribute to the favelas role as the cultural heart and soul of Brazil flooding the grey city with colour and life.
The cheapness of these wheeled toboggans seemed intended as contrast with the excess of the London 2012 ceremonies.
The London Para-Olympic Closing Ceremony featured performers riding these small motorbikes that appeared to be powered by giant fans on the back. Each one of these strange contraptions had been specially designed and built by a team of engineers just for the ceremony at great expense. The Brazilians simply used what appeared to be children's toys that had been brought cheaply and would no doubt be donated to the favela children after the ceremony.
Next tribute was paid to the influence of Caribbean culture on Brazilian life. This was done through a performance by Brazilian dancehall MC's Karol Conka and MC Sofia.
Part of the bundle of issues that Brazil inherited from the London 2012 games was the popstar Rihanna who of course is from the Caribbean island of Barbados.
Back in 2014 Rihanna did the song "Can't Remember to Forget You" with Colombian popstar Shakira. In promoting the single Shakira talked about choosing Rihanna because they were both girls from the Caribbean. This had even people like me who really should know better looking at a map and going; "Oh yeah. Brazil's neighbour Columbia sits on the Caribbean Sea."
As apparently the 2012 Para-Olympic Closing Ceremony was mine and Rihanna's wedding ceremony I also know that Rihanna's mother isn't from Barbados at all. Instead she's from Brazil's Guyana. As such it seems that Brazil has more legitimate claim to Caribbean culture than the US which is where a lot of people assume Rihanna is from.
The ceremony then paid tribute to the World famous Brazilian martial art of "Capoeira" by video projecting someone doing Capoeira onto the arena floor. Back in November 2014 Capoeira was recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was part of the World's intangible cultural heritage.
Next the ceremony went on to warn of the perils of racial discord and disharmony. These sequence began with fire dancers represented the flames of conflict.
Then from one end of the arena performers emerged wearing strange full-body furry red costumes. I'm assured that these costumes are an important part of Brazilian carnival culture. However the nearest thing I can compare them to are the "Elmo" the Muppet from the US TV Show "Sesame Street." These Muppets were each twirling a ball on a piece of rope as if preparing the hurl a rock from a slingshot.
The red rock throwers were supposed to represent Obama's Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. As they approached the centre of the arena they were meant by almost an opposing army made up of performers in similar full-body furry costumes. Some of the opposing army wore gold while other wore silver and others wore the same red as the stone throwers.
As the two armies lined up against each other they broke up into small square units and the lighting around them became very discordant constantly shifting and jumping in and out of focus.
This was intended to represent the pieces on a Chess board. The pieces on a Chess board are of course intended to represent soldiers in battle. In Chess there is a saying that you need to learn to think at least three of four moves ahead.
With US President Obama we wish he'd learn to think of the move he's actually making at the time.
After all as I write his Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement are tearing apart yet another US city let alone the influence it's having on the rest of the World.
This sequence ended with the multicultural army of golds, silvers and reds bitch-slapping - with the help of a little video projection - the stone throwing muppets and harmony was returned to the ceremony.
At around 17:40 on 15/8/16 (UK date) it's dinner time.
Edited at around 18:50 on 15/8/16 (UK date) to add above and below;
Having once again warning US President Obama against his attempts to spread racial disharmony and discord across the globe the Opening Ceremony returned to celebrating Brazil's racial diversity.
This involved famous Brazilian singer Jorge Ben Jor and famous Brazilian TV personality Regina Case leading the entire World in a rendition of the song "Pais Tropical (Tropical Country)."
This is massively famous song in Brazil that everybody knows the words to and can be relied upon to get any party started. For any visitors who didn't know the words they were shown on big screens around the stadium so absolutely everybody could join in.
The arena was then flooded by performers in colourful costumes all dancing and singing along. Particularly prominant amongst the costumes were Afro wigs in various garish shades. This again was a reference to Brazil's racial diversity and the rather unique hair based racism it has spawned.
At the centre there was the Brazilian pop group "Gang do Electro." This helped to further emphasise Brazil's links to Asia because Gang do Electro have a very furturistic style to them that is popular in Asian pop music. Plus if you're hearing it for the first time their name can easily be mistaken for "Guangdong" - the Chinese province.
The particular dance being performed was a form of Brazilian line dancing whose name completely escapes me. Some people may have found it surprising that a style of dancing more usually associated with US Cowboys and Country & Western music is acutally hugely popular in Brazil and other South American nations.
Cowboy culture however is far from unique to the US and is actually more common across South America. That is because cattle ranching is hugely important to the economies of many South America countries. I think Brazil in particular is the World's largest producer of beef.
The way that much of the Amazon Rainforest is being continually cut down to make way for cattle ranches is a big problem in the fight against Climate Change and one that comes up frequently in UNFCCC negotiations. After all it involves replacing trees that absorb Greenhouse Gases with cattle that emit Greenhouse Gases.
The shared Cowboy culture also serves to highlight the link between Brazil and the US that it born from many US Democrats picking up their slaves and heading south after they were defeated by the Republicans in the US Civil War.
It also seemed to serve as a little nod of support to the US state of Texas - home of the Dallas Cowboys American Football team - over their role in blocking US President Obama's corrupt and inhumane immigration reforms in the US Supreme Court.
19:10 on 15/8/16 (UK date).
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