Dave Zirin looks at Brazil's infamous World Cup

Guy Baldwin
   The topic of public spending on the Olympics and World Cup events that serve the note rests of the global elite rulers is a book written by Dave Zirin. He has written a book called "Brazil's Dance With The Devil" and in it he talks about how Brazilians resisted these projects and money diverted towards them as people protested in the streets.  Dave is the premier sports socialist of our times and his excellent progressive writing in the sports environment is a welcome change from the other sports writers who work for publications that are funded by the corporate media. Dave gives a good history of Brazil and the special role soccer has in this country being a more cultural influence in all quarters of Brazilian society. Dave brings up the various neoliberal Trojan horses that the Olympics and big special events have become in displacing people and creating big money projects that benefit the very few in the host countries of these sporting spectaculars. The World Cup was a huge controversy and few sports writers were really willing into question the validity using public money to build stadiums when you have so much poverty in these countries. The amount of corruption in deciding where to have these mega events and what companies will profit from building the projects and stadiums that will be little used after the games is an underestimated fact that is reason enough to squash the future ability of elites to continue to take  hand out for their nonsense. Brazil has so long been an exploited region and Zirin shows how foreigners and the worlds elites continue to exploit this country despite the many years it has been independent and things will not change until Brazilians get as enthusiastic about social justice as they get excited for soccer. 

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