Sportswashing and the Police State

We talk about how governments use sports to launder their both reputation abroad and provide cover for their crimes at home

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's sports. We're doing touch five yard penalty that the
Angels have become the Mariners circles now body checking? Yep,
this is the sports episode. Welcome to it could happen here,

(00:26):
your favorite sportscast. I'm not the host of this episode,
but I'm talking for some reason. Uh, James and Chris?
Why are we talking about sports? To distract us from
the crumbling of society around us? But more specifically to
talk about how sports I used to launde other reputations

(00:48):
of dictatorial regimes. And I know Chris has got some
interesting stuff on Balsonaro's Brazil and sports. This is this is,
this is the way before that. Sorry, yeah, I should
measure this. This is okay, like this is, this is,
this is, this is some wonderful pet era of vintage crimes.
Oh good stuff. Okay. I love a Brazilian crime, no

(01:10):
matter what the vintage. So I'm excited to learn about
the how the NFL legitimizes the military police state anyway,
um ye, and it's not even football, is it? So
multiple things they're doing wrong. I want to talk first
about like the original instance of what we're going to
call sports washing, because everyone else calls it sports washing too,

(01:32):
So it's like using these big global mega events to
laund it the reputation of a pretty questionable regime. So
the o G instance of this is the nineteen thirty
six Olympics which were held in Berlin. You'll probably be
familiar with who was in charge in Berlin. In n
it was the Nazis. That's a spoiler, and the Nazis

(01:54):
were actually given the Olympics. The Olympics were given to
bind by Germany, which was considerably less ship than the Nazis,
but the Nazis took them on and they're really around
with them, and lots of the symbology that we associate
with the Olympics today, that the raising of flags during
the medal ceremony, the playing of national anthems, parade of
flags are the opening ceremony, the torch relay, right, the

(02:15):
torch relay goes from o g Olympia in Greece to
wherever the Olympics are being held. It's it's this big
ceremonial thing, right that all of these things were created
by its guy called Carl D. M who was a
Nazi to draw stronger links between the Nazi Party and
the ancient Greeks and position the Nazis the inheritors of

(02:37):
this classical legacy, right, and the civilized people in the
barbaric world, like the Greeks saw themselves. And obviously the Olympics,
if you aren't familiar, draws its legacy from a largely
mythical construct of a games that did actually happen in
ancient Greek Right, So they claimed to be like a
reconstruction of this Greek tradition, except in the Greek truition
everyone was naked, which I think would make the Olympics

(03:00):
much more watchable. We could, yeah, it's that is one
of the things. I would watch the male gymnastics way more,
not just naked but oiled. Yeah, honestly, then's men's swimming
would be a lot more interesting. Yes it would. Yep,
naked Olympics we can get behind. But they didn't bring

(03:21):
that back. Nazi didn't bring that back. They didn't have
some naked statues, but they weren't big into nudity. But
they fused a whole lot of fashy eugenic shit, right.
So the reason that they started having these medal tables
was very much to reinforce their idea of the superiority
of one race over other races, right, didn't really work
out for them in ninety six because Jesse Owens turned

(03:43):
up and owned them lots of different events and g
o into being of course of black American sprinter and
long jumper, and it didn't well. The Natics Olympics did
exist to did help significantly in laundering the Nazi and
they hit away a lot of their bullshit like they
for instance, like all the Nazi Party newspapers like weren't

(04:06):
distributed for the time that foreigners were in the country. Right,
They hit away anti Semitic slogans. They even had a
Jewish woman on the German Olympic team, because there was
lots of sort of faster and and sort of they're
like neo liberal liberal complaining. I guess about like, oh, no,
you're being anti Semitic or you shouldn't. Oh look there's
a Jewish person on your team. It's fine. You guys

(04:27):
are great. You guys aren't anti Semitic at all. It's good.
We're sorted. And the US did nearly boycott the Olympics,
but they decided not to. And that this guy called
every brandage who went on to be a piece of
ship of some right now. So like this Olympics, I
guess set the tone for the use of these massive
events to put on a show to the world and

(04:48):
bring the world's press and show them what you want
them to see and hide the stuff that you don't
want them to see, which I think is a nice
transition to talking about Brazil. Yeah, so we'll sort of
about that factive. Their sports has a second sort of
incredibly important internal political effect, which is that when when
when you have a sports thing that's large enough, like

(05:12):
when you have you know, like we have a World Cup,
you have the Olympics show up, you have even to
sometime the Super Bowl, Like you what what it basically
creates is this like like it basically creates a temporary
sort of state of state of exception where just like
the sort of sort of normal functional society stops right
and you know, this can go. This can go in

(05:33):
a number of different ways. Like and anyone who ever
lived in Philadelphia, like okay, there there there's a version
of this in Philly where like after after the Eagles win,
like for like fifteen hours, there are no laws like
when they just killed like thirty people. Yeah, well hundred
ye was a yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got ahead

(06:04):
at the sports for killing tons of people. I think
that's likely to blame where the cops if we're having sports.
But I mean, but that, but this, this is the
thing about sports, right, is that in order to sort
of like do security blah blah blah blah blo exceter etcetera,
in order to make sure the game's work, you can
do fucking anything. Yes, right, justifies nasty s. Yeah, And
you know what, one of one of the things, one

(06:24):
of the sort of like examples that I wanted to
talk about about this happening is one that is really
not talked about that much, which is the two fourteen
World Cup in Brazil, which wound up i think, actually
having a pretty big impact on the way Brazilian politics
went and also just destroying the lives of unfathomable numbers

(06:44):
of people. So okay, so this whole thing, like I've
been in since it's happening to fourteen, It's been in
the works since like Lula was in office in like
the late twenty like late late two thousand's right, Um,
this is this is like this is like one of
this is like one of the workers parties like big
things is that they're they're they're they're gonna have this

(07:06):
World Cup. Um, they've taken a ship ton of corporate
money to do it. They've taken you know, they've they've
they've spent they spent enormous about a political capital making
sure this is gonna happen, and the consequences of it
are just like astronomic. Something like two fifty thousand people
like lost their homes in order to like make way

(07:26):
for like the fucking stadiums and the fields and like
all of the sort of like bullshit around like all
the sort of security, theater stuff, all of like just
like debated. Yeah, and this is something that happens with Olympics,
is to more famously, but like whenever you have a
sports event like this, there's just this giant cleansing that
happens of like anyone who's like onto the street, who's homeless, right,

(07:47):
anyone who's just sort of like doesn't look right, particularly
anyone who's black just sort of like suddenly is like
disappeared by the police from this area. Um. But this,
this this particular one in in in Brazil was interesting
because this is happening to just in fourteen, so and
she dozen thirteen, there were like enormous protests in Brazil

(08:09):
and actually there there's been another like set of soccer
events there in just thirteen then like something like eight
hundred thousand people were in the streets across Brazil like
protesting it. But yeah, there there were these like there's
enormous street movements. Is like like six percent of the
entire Brazilian population was in the streets. Um they were
like basically started as sort of like antiosterity protests because

(08:30):
cities were sort of like we're increasing the price of
like farris for stuff, and it gets it gets the
protest get kind of weird very quickly because on the
one hand, so like you have the Workers Party in power, right,
and like the Workers Party has been sort of sliding
right by this point, but you have a sort of
like you have like a really bilitant left that's in
the street. You have a bunch of anarchist, you have

(08:51):
a bunch of autonomist or sort of like doing stuff.
But then also right wingers start showing up because it's
a protest against the governments and the government's like nominally
a left government. And yeah, this leads to just a
really confusing stative affairs. But but you know the next year,
this like and the protest like keep going for like

(09:12):
a long time, and there's still like even after like
the largest ones are kind of pee doing out, there's
still purchas happening. But when the World Cup hits, like
the World Cup is that like is one of this
sort of like like the arth, like the law suddenly
doesn't work anymore. Like in orders to do this, you
have to sign, like there's something called the General Law

(09:33):
of the World Cup, which is like a bunch of
like laws that you have to sign that like physically
change what your laws are like in order to have
this event magnificent. I mean that's actually that's actually great.
You should do more of that. The great thing about
FIFA is that they've sharing a commitment to human rights,
to quality and democracy, and so I'm sure there's rules

(09:54):
are good rules, and you know, so so there are
fun things like like it literally like parts of the
zillion Constitution are suspended. What parts like well, so physically
a bunch stuff about the right to strike, Like there's
a special court that's set up that like it like
that within forty eight hours like like decide on whether
a strike is legal or not and what the thing
is going to be like, So that's not very good.

(10:17):
It's really they're all not real very bad. Like like
there's there's the Brazilian government spans like seventy million dollars
buying basically police equipment and like from the U S,
from Germany and from Israel, which is like the holy
trinity of good normal countries where if you're buying shipped
from them, you're doing a good thing. See, I thought

(10:38):
we were going to talk about how you know, there's
moments in our society where the regular rules of engagement
are suspended, and in such we can use this moment
of extra opportunity to find new ways of liberatory of
experiencing liberatory freedom. People tried that, and and and and
instead a bunch of literally like they were driving tanks

(10:58):
through the street like into like like blockading off like
roads leading out of the favelos with tanks like it was.
It was nuts, like some incredible videos at this time. Yeah,
there were like laws in Brazil about child labor, right, um,
guess what doesn't apply to fifas you can so they
can have fucking ball boys. They basic child labor. They

(11:23):
also have they have these There are twenty thousand people
who are working for this event who are who are
classified as volunteers. You can just use them as basically
they started doing slave labor. Yeah, what's the what's the shocking? Yeah,
I know, are they forced into this or do they
actually volunteer? Kind of Okay, so sometimes the actual you

(11:47):
know what actual slavery because it's it's not actual, Okay,
the Brazilian government will do actual slavery, but like this
is yeah, this is not quite that, but it's a
bunch of people who are kind of yeah but yeah,
who have who have no labor rights, like, and the
everything happens is there's there are there are enormous crackdowns,

(12:10):
like they just start they start doing the thing that
like the US does it too, but I think I
think like Canada's is more than the U s where
it's like when when when they know a protest is
about to happen, they like go find the like six
people who they think are protest leaders just arrest them beforehand.
They started doing that. They there's a bunch of people
who get tortured. There's a bunch of like the police

(12:32):
are basically just going ape shit. They like, yeah, they
there are some like that. There's a point in this
where like the garbage workers go on strike and they
actually win because it turns out that if if in
the middle of the World Cup there's fucking garbage piling
up on the street, like it's really bad. But like yeah,
like this has like this has a just like absolutely

(12:58):
disastrous effects on like just just sort of what's like
everything is going on president in politics like um, one
of the things that Lula does. I'm gonna talk about
this more and in another Brazil episode, but Lula like
sent a bunch of Brazilian troops to invade haiti Um,
which fucking sucks. And then those troops came home and
they were used to occupy the favelas in real while

(13:21):
this was going on, and this kind of crushed like
what was left of the sort of left that had
been in the streets. Like they just got like they
just got they just got stomped because the Brazilian police
are on terrifying and like literally they're deploying colonial troops

(13:42):
like in the streets and and yeah, and so so
this this is the sort of second kind of thing
that you can get with sports, which is like on
the one hand they're used to start of whitewash regimes
and on the other hand they're used as as as
basically a way to like do fascism inside of a
state where you can you know, like you could you
could do a state of exception, right like the law
seas to a this uh, the state becomes like this

(14:03):
entity that can just sort of like do whatever it
wants to order to preserve itself. And it's a way
that you can just you know, you can socially cleanse
to ut people, in which something that would be like
you know, would genuinely be pretty difficult if you try
to do this in any other circumstance. But you know,
it's it's sports, so you can just basically do ethnic
cleansings and yeah, it sucks as sometimes you can do

(14:28):
it with the support of the other So like the
World Cup, it's going to your Qatar, right and and
they one of the things is happening gives its quote
unquote security consultant from the participating nations are coming. So
you have this like incredible situation where like a the
Qatari and like police chief I believe has been like, hey,

(14:53):
for your own safety, fans, if you do happen to
be gay and it's illegal to be gay right in Qatar.
Like just guys, just don't hold hands with your partner
because it's not us who's going to come and beat
you up. It's it's the regular qataris right like you,
you won't be safe and we can't protect you from
their violent homophobia. And then we've got like Britain's sending

(15:14):
soldiers to be like, yeah, let us help you with
your security consultations. Guys, we need to keep this country safe.
Oh god, okay, so did you do you know what
else does violent security consultations? Is it Britain? Yes? Yeah,
we were now sponsored by the Nation of Britain. Is
better help, better help online counseling. If you don't sign
up for therapy, a military a military team will break

(15:37):
through your windows and force you to go to therapy
with a car. That's that is that is the better
health guarantee. And we're back and I am not thinking
about people who I know who we're physically dragged by

(16:00):
cops in the therapy. It's great, it's a great never happened,
never happened. No one's ever been forced to go to
therapy non consensually. It doesn't have Yeah, so yeah. Other
things that don't happen include include sports. Yeah, sports aren't
real their fingent of our imagination if we simply the

(16:23):
ontology of sports is fatally flawed. One might say that's
sports are a way of teaching people to be complying
with rules and to be administrators in the colonial empire.
Or people can argue that sports offer a gamified version
of the world that allow you to recognize problem solving
in fun and creative ways and encourage team building. So

(16:48):
I don't actually like sports very much. And the other hand,
do quite like sports, but I'm aware of the role
they play. Okay, so this is like a big thing
that the Gulf States do you um is particularly do
this sports bullshit? And Carter, I think, usually is smarter
about it than like Carter just has better pr People

(17:10):
in the saudiast do, and I mean they're they're slightly
helped by the fact that they are marginally less bad
than Saudi Arabia, like marginal, like this is a this
is a this is a this is a fucking a
bar that is so low you can trip over it,
like I think we can just say both bad. Yeah,
So should we talk about the Catholic system a little bit. Okay,

(17:33):
So the Gulf States have this thing called the catholicis
now and there have been some alterations to it and
something that made it less bad in the last few years.
But basically this is a system that lets Okay, so
there's a bud there's a lot of mirket workers, particularly
from Southeast Asia that like take jobs in the Gulf

(17:54):
because they pay they have The Gulf States have a
like a obscene, fanatical, like world rending amount of oil money, um.
And so people you know, come seeking these jobs because
they need to feed their families, and you know, there's
a huge amount of oil money here, like they have
just every petro dollar um. But the way this labor

(18:16):
system basically works is that like, in order to like
be in the country, you have to have a job,
right you like, you like very specifically have to have
a job, and your employer has to be there. And
so very very bad things start to happen when you
have a group of people who you can just like
instantly destroy the life of and so these will happen

(18:37):
where for example, like so you okay, so you show up,
you show up to Carter right, and your boss will
just take your fucking passport and it's just gone, right,
And you know, it's like, okay, if if you don't
do literally everything they tell you, like you, you're not
gonna get you hastrot back. You're just fucked. And this
creates a like a genuinely like very close to slavery

(19:02):
has a lot of the fucking horrors. Like you, there
have been a bunch of stories people like fucking jumping
out of buildings trying to escape and then like being
dragged back Like it's fucking horrifying labor conditions. Um, and
it's not not indentured servitude. Yeah, absolutely is. It's yeah,

(19:23):
it is. It is one of the worst. It's it's
one of the worst labor regimes on earth that is
not literally slavery. It is. It is. It is in
the category of technically not slavery, but like very horrific close.
Yeah it is. It is. It is one of the
worst things that exists. A serious and genuine solution to

(19:44):
if you want to solve like a bunch of the
problems of all of the bullshit that's happening in the
Gulf region. If you gave every single one of these
migrant workers like several artillery batteries and a bunch of
assault rifles like instantly, like so many of the problems
of this region would be solved. Yeah. So I was
just looking up statistics. Six thousand, five hundred of these

(20:05):
workers have died in cutters since it was awarded the
World Cup. Like that's that's uh, that's that's a pretty
alarming um number of Like so it's from India, Bangladesh,
no pause forri Lanka prices like that, right, I think, Yeah,
these people have absolutely no rights and they have incredibly
dangerous working conditions. And also we got about like people

(20:28):
are super fucking racist, Like yes, like that it's it's
it's the kind of racism that you get when you
have literally like basically pure absolute power over someone. It
is a it is a fucking trip. Yeah. People will
literally have to pay off the debts that they include,
like you pay a recruitment trophee or a travel fee

(20:50):
to get these jobs. Like we're not messing around when
we say it's an indentured certitude. Yeah, and it's very
hard to do that. Your your your employees can just
you know, like they can just withhold your pay eight
for whatever the fun reason, because yeah, because it's absolute power.
There's like a few should I read. There's one that's
an example of one of these deaths that I could
read if we want so. This guy, um Madhubal Apoly

(21:13):
I think his name. He's from India. He was forty three.
He left his wife and his thirteen year old son,
Rejesh in India to take a job in catering, and
they never saw him again. One late night, when his
roommate returned to his dorm, he found Bullapai's body on
the floor. Like thousands of other sudden and unexplained death,
it's passing was recorded his heart failure due to natural causes.

(21:35):
Despite working for his employer for six years, his wife
and son received a hundred and fourteen thousand rupees it's
about a thousand pounds about a thousand dollars now, as
well in compensation and unpaid salary. Jess had no idea
why his father died. He had no health problems, he said,
there was nothing wrong with him. Yeah, pretty, there's I'll
will link the Guardian story. But there are dozens of

(21:57):
these stories of people who die working in extra heat
for long hours and no breaks and terrible conditions. It's
pretty terrible shit. Yeah, and a lot of these And also,
and this is the only thing we should point out,
is a lot a lot of people have died directly building, yes,
the stadium stadium, Yeah, which is like just like the

(22:19):
absolute human horror of why on why are we using
Like why are we building a giant fucking soccer stadium
in the middle of like in the fucking desert, Like, yeah,
Jesus Christ, in a place with no endemic soccer culture.
It's not like the stadium is like, you know, going
to be packed week in and week out with the
Qatari Altra is doing teapots and ship like it just

(22:40):
exists for people to come once to watch this spectacle
and then leave again. I mean, it's the same thing
with all the Olympics stuff, right, Like they like tank
a city's economy to build a whole like basically miniatured
like village in town that then becomes useless after like
a yeah, some of them will just get turned into

(23:02):
like I don't know, that's what the Olympics are for.
The Olympics are like a gathering place for a transnational
bourgeoilie and they have always been there right like they
when they started. For a very long time, the Olympics
had an amateurism clause which meant that like quote unquote,
professional athletes couldn't take part, which was designed such that
like Bosua, people who had enough leisure time to train

(23:23):
could compete, but working class people who needed to take
time off to train couldn't be compensated for that time off, right,
they couldn't even be compensated for their time off taken
to travel and compete at the Games. So like, the
Olympics are doing what they're supposed to do, which is
is bringing these elite people together, but a Coca Cola
benefits more from every Olympics in the city that hosts it. Yeah, yeah,

(23:46):
I mean, and obviously that's the Olympics are heavily tied
to nationalism. UM that has a whole bunch of you know,
not great a munch of the national symbology comes from
the Nazis direct like that, yeah exactly. But also on
the flip side of that, there's other stuff like UM
have like Taiwan having to compete compete as Chinese Taipei

(24:09):
and not use their actual flag, which is other like, yes,
the alternative would be more, you know, embracing the country
as like as a nationalist thing, like as it's as
its own nation. But still it's it is, it's still
not great that they can't they can't compete under their
actual you know, it's like a name and yeah, and

(24:30):
and and and you know and like and then this
is like Carter's kind of Weirdly, this is slightly backfire
on Carter a little bit because, like Carter, Carter works
the best as a sort of diplomatic power when nobody
pays attention to it. And then the like absolute fucking
brain geniuses at the Guitari Roule elite were like, what

(24:51):
if we fucking drew attention to ourselves? And that everyone
was like, wait, hold on, this place is fucked, but
this has not stopped it. FIFA is like maybe the
only ruling sports body more corrupt in the Olympic Committee.
Like it is is incredibly staggering, like a group of
people who have figured out a way to just like
help a city ethnically cleanse a bunch of its population

(25:14):
and then extract enormous amount of wealth and then look
good while doing it. Yeah, it is. It's it's an
exercise and like pointing, pointing over there while you steal
someone's wallet, you know. Yeah, So I think that the

(25:34):
last thing thing we want to talk about was talking
about what the specialities have been doing this two. Because yes,
one of the sport so I'm most familiar with obviously
is like cycling. It's the sport I competed in and
it's recently seen this influx of money from petrochemical states. Right,
so we have like you a E teen, we had
a Dubai team for a while. Um we there is

(25:55):
like a tour of Cutter and the Tour of Dubai.
Now that like, these are not places wants to go
ride about it, right, they're hot, they're flat, they're terrible.
But like bike races have always served as a way
to consolidate nations, right, That's why the Tour of France exists.
It's like it's literally a loop and being like, hey,
you're included in this, and like in in Europe, they're
often used to consolidate nations that exist outside of states, right,

(26:18):
like Flanders, Catalonia, the Basque country, Wallonia. All of these
places have bike races that delineate who belongs in and
who belongs out. Slightly different in these petrochemical economies because
more delineates a look at us. We're a great country
and totally normal, and you can come here and do
sports and and please don't look at the way that
we treat our workers from Southeast Asia, like um, it's

(26:41):
it's please ignore our seventeen wars, like all the school
bus full of children we've blown up. Do not look
at Yemens like yeah, which also, by the way, I
do want, I do want to just put this room.
And Carter also fucking involved in Yemen. Same with the UAE.
They nobody ever talks about it. They also fucking doing this.
Do not left him off the book for this bullshit.

(27:03):
H Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting to see it, Like it's
interesting to see some fan groups organizing like against this ship, right,
And chiefly I think it's gonna it's about stuff that
you're about to talk about, I think, which is the
purchasing of clubs by these these very wealthy interests. I
find it fascinating to see that there has always been
an anti fascist element in football actus right, There have

(27:25):
always been clubs that have been anti fascists. Those clubs
have always tended to oppose like ownership of the clubs
that they are fans of by finance capital. But it's
interesting to see that now articulated against these petrochemical regimes
in the Middle East, right Like its Keith from fucking
Bolton and his mates who go to the football match

(27:46):
every Saturday now and I'm fucking past because I allow
an lgbt Q rights in Qatar. But yeah, it's it's
very funny to see. And also it's nice to see, right, Like,
it's good see people sharing solidarity. Like you can't display
in theory, can't display pride flags in stadium or anywhere
else in Qatar right now. No people were talking about

(28:06):
taking them anyway. So maybe someone will do an epic
like Pride flag or TFO at the Olympics, which would
be uh, I don't know, I've never seen the World Cup.
Then they might all get disappeared, but yeah, then the
entire with caution. Yeah, then then the stadium collapses and
there we go. Okay. So the other thing that's sort

(28:26):
of been happening is that Staidly has been buying up
a bunch of clubs, but they brought Britain's Premier League
Newcastle United team. There's like bought it. They have they
they staides have this this thing called the Public Investment Fund,
which is like it's kind of like a sovereign wealth
fund kind of. They just use it to like it
buy ship and they've they've been doing a bunch of

(28:47):
sports stuff. They've also been pushing into the sports, which
is interesting the disasters. Yeah, so they bought the e
s L, which is the does it still stand for
Electronic Sports League especially? I think it still does, So
there doesn't Okay, you're about to be a biggest and

(29:08):
say sports on sports. No, they're video games. It's better
than actually better than regular sports. They're different chess. The
same ship is happening here. So the e s L
is like one of the it's it's it basically ate
a bunch of the other. So they used to be

(29:28):
a bunch of sort of circuits for a bunch of
different like E sports games, right, things like kind of
strikes seems like StarCraft, Um, those are those sort of
I think there's another what's the other big one that
s L does. Um seems to be most counts. Yeah,
it's it's mostly kind of striking. They basically consumed all
of the like StarCraft, so they used to be I

(29:49):
M and dream Hack that dude stuff, and they've eaten
them all. And the e s L just got like
bought out by like like the saudiastucking investment company, by
and by by by a new sort of like media
group thing at the Saudiast Forum that's headed by fucking
former Activision CEO Brian Ward. Actually unbelievable. Yeah, who who's

(30:10):
the guy who engineered the fucking Activision Blizzard merger and
is now going on to do this bullshit a savvy
games group. Yeah, I mean, like like like et sports
as always, there's funds always sucked, Like a bunch of
the stuff is funded by like fucking cryptocurrency. Right now,
I think the sports I just know, you can't take

(30:32):
it seriously. It's the best. But yeah, they the Saudis
have taken by beloved StarCraft League. I will be waging
an unending holy war against them until they fucking ceased
to exist. And yeah, yeah you become a stock Craft too. Again.
It sucks. All I know about East Sports is Sonic
Fox and Smash Brothers. That's all I know, because everything

(30:54):
else just seems like people who are having a fun
time playing video games. That's great. It was so my
my post dog was funded by the IOC, and like
at the time I was there, there was this massive
like first of all, there was like a lot of
boom iss discussing a v sports for sports and then
whether they should be incorporated in the Olympics, And it
was extremely funny to watch, like these people completely failed

(31:16):
to understand the fundamental like you know, sports of physical
contest with the metal element, right, doesn't matter if you're
moving a thumbs or your whole buddy. But it was
very funny towards these people. I want to say this
because this is okay, So it's just really funny. But
also people get like really seriously injured doing the sports ship,
like particularly Starker. There's a lot of Starker players who

(31:36):
like sucking paralyzed, who have like like serious year damage
of their spines. Yeah, because they have like StarCraft players,
like especially older days, you know, people like practicing sixteen
hours a day, right, and they're sitting in a chair
and they're they're fucking but you know they have like
four PM, right, so you're doing like like six hundred
actions in a minute, and people's people's risks just explode,

(31:57):
like people get fucking like damage their spines like a
nerve damage. Like it sucks. Um. I have a friend
who's a human physiologist who used to work for the
Department of Defense here and said, diego helping like you know,
like high speed m B people be better at killing people, uh,
Navy people, I guess in San Diego, and then left
to work for Red Bull in their sports to oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

(32:19):
to be the human physiologist who like, yeah, optimizes people
set up so that they're listed a angle and like guests,
I'm actually training, And I guess we won't be happy
until Taiwan is playing Fortnite in a democratized, decentralized East
Sports league that has union workers. And I guess that's

(32:40):
what we're advocating for now. Yeah, that's the one goal
of this podcast. There is a there's a MYANMA National
Unity Government e sports team, so actually that there was
actually a whole thing in competitive StarCraft where someone someone
held up someone held up a Hong Kong flag and
they fucking like they cut the stream and fired this
actually fired the two like like They not only fired

(33:02):
the guy who held the thing up, they fired the
two fucking casters who like who were just there. Well
it happens. Yeah, so critical respect that person is. See
the John Carlos, that's the raised fist moment of the sports.
Yeah so yeah, fuck sports do bad things. Make them
do good things overthrowing local governments. Yeah, I mean the

(33:25):
the revolutionary I mean this is this has been written
about by like actual academics, but the revolutionary but the
revolutionary potential of like soccer hooligans and football hooligans are
like it's massive, Like one on one thing, We'll do
an episode about the fucking the Turkish soccer ultras who
fucking stole a back hoe and we're driving it around Turkey.
Doesn't thirty destroying fucking police barricades with it, sick of

(33:46):
ship every lots of like into Rear Square. Their Egyptian
ultras were leading in the Maidan. It was Ukrainian nottras.
And there's a really good book called twelve which people
should read if they're interested in the polite to cool
uh potential of football ultras. We should we should do
something about like hooligans in general. But yes, this was

(34:08):
supposed to kind of be about the various ways that
there's sports things that are kind of messed up. Yeah,
maybe just regular one more thing, you can stop these
fucking giant mega events from happening in your city, like people,
people successfully do this. They've done this with the Olympics,
have done this sub lesser sound the World Cup. But yeah,
and if you can do that, like please do like

(34:30):
don't you don't have to let these fucking sports company
bullshit like exact ethnically cleanse your city. You just don't.
You can stop No Olympics l A is something that
people in the U should look at. Yeah, that is
That is your action item for today is look up.
I think we've talked about an Olympics before, but then

(34:51):
to Olympics on the park and the last thing I
will I will give an Easter egg. There's there's one
sport I actually like on ironically you enjoy curling. No not,
fuck you you racists. That's the episode. It could happen

(35:17):
here as a production of cool Zone Media. Well more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.