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Originally Posted by ardecila
I don't think the IOC is having second thoughts at all. You're just feeling a little schadenfreude. Rio is a great world city and it will be a good host for the Games - I'm sure the IOC considered the possibility for corruption, displacement of the poor, etc and still deemed it worthwhile to bring the Games to South America.
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I'm not talking about corruption or displacing the poor, I'm talking about the reports that the venues for both the Cup and the Olympics are perilously behind schedule. Let's fact it, the IOC is just like any other NGO, they really don't actually give a crap about poor people in favellas or corruption (they held the games in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and most recently China for pete's sake). They care about furthering their own organization which means ensuring a successful Olympics every four years. You can have a mass displacement of poor people and still have a successful Olympics (you can have an embryonic holocaust and still have a successful Olympics).
What you can't have is incomplete or inadequate venues and a successful Olympics. That is the question I am raising here. I'm sure there is no chance they will relocate it, but after that crane collapse I really wonder what the IOC is thinking now. I definitely am feeling a little schadenfreude about the whole situation. It's kinda funny to me that both Chicago and Rio have been having problems with roving bands of thugs causing problems on their beaches lately though, lol.
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The Olympics are just an extension of the megaproject mentality gone awry; the same wasteful impulse that's leading the Braves to ditch their 15-year-old stadium and build new at taxpayer expense. Chicago doesn't need the Games to reshape our city. The Games are not the only way, and probably one of the worst ways, to "make no small plans". It's a political expedient and nothing more.
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I disagree with you on this, but that's an entirely different discussion and definitely off topic for this thread so I won't go there. It's a moot argument anyhow until Chicago decides to mount another run at the games (and who knows if that will ever even happen).