Sport

World Cup begins with strikes and demonstrations

In the run up to the World Cup, the Brazilian city of São Paulo was rocked by demonstrations, riots and a subway strike. Striking workers successfully closed over half the subway stations in the city, and are threatening to strike again on the day São Paulo hosts the first match of the tournament. Angry that their wages have stagnated whilst the government spends billions on the World Cup, the strikers are demanding a 12% pay increase. With large parts of the subway closed down, congestion in the city has sky-rocketed. At its peak, it is estimated that up to 125 miles worth of traffic jams...

Sochi games: gay rights protestors arrested

On Friday 7 February, the Russian authorities arrested at least 61 people in the run-up to the Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony in Sochi. The arrests spanned from the Caucuses to the capital St Petersburg. The government is seemingly tolerating no dissent, even far away from the location of the games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. According to the New York Times, 19 were arrested near Red Square in Moscow at gay rights protests, including several foreign activists (pictured above). At least two of the activists report having been beaten and threatened with sexual abuse. In the capital...

Against anti-LGBT repression, equality now!

On 7 February, the Winter Olympics will begin in the Russian city of Sochi. The competition, which will be attended by athletes and sports fans from hundreds of countries across the world, will be overshadowed by the rise of homophobia and the persecution of LGBT people in Russia. This repression has taken both legal forms, proscribing the rights of LGBT people to demonstrate and agitate for their rights, as well as informal, “popular” forms, such as the harassment and assault of individuals by violent gangs. Homophobic laws are not new to Russia. Homosexuality was banned under the Stalinist...

Winter Olympics cast spotlight on bigotry

The staging of the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea city of Sochi has cast a spotlight on anti-gay bigotry in Russia — in its “legal” and “popular” forms. In June 2013, the Russian Duma (Parliament) unanimously voted through an amendment to Article 5 of the Federal Law on the “Defence of Children from Information Causing Harm to Their Health and Development”. The stated purpose of the amendment is to protect children from “information which propagandises a denial of traditional family values and non-traditional sexual relations.” Non-traditional relations are defined as “relations not...

2018 World Cup built on exploitation

The International Trade Union Confederation, with 315 national affiliates, representing 175 million workers, announced its support last week for campaigning by Russian trade unions against new laws attacking workers’ rights in the run-up to the 2018 World Cup. Five construction workers employed on building new football stadiums in Kazan and St. Petersburg have been killed in recent months as a direct result of inadequate health and safety protection. An inspection of the Kazan construction site found that half of the sub-contractors working on building the stadium had failed to provide proper...

Embassy protest begins solidarity campaign with migrant workers in Qatar

On 12 October members of the Nepali community in London and British labour movement and migrants' rights activists protested outside the Qatari embassy to protest against the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar. More than 700, mainly Nepali, workers have died in the last year, the majority as a result of heart failures or industrial accidents, as the Gulf dictatorship goes into a building overdrive in preparation for the 2022 World Cup. Protest organiser Shreya Paudel is on the right You can read more here . The protest was initiated by Shreya Paudel, a socialist student movement activist...

The “obscenity” of Gareth Bale?

“We speak the language that everybody understands. Instead of me saying somebody was avaricious, I’d say he was bloody greedy.” Bill Shankly This summer’s football transfer window was a real seller’s market. Clubs dug their heels in to keep their best contracted players, and mostly succeeded. Rooney didn’t go to Chelsea. Suarez didn’t go to Real Madrid. Rooney, Suarez, Benzema, Cabaye, and Higauin didn’t go to Arsenal. One player who did finally move, though, was Gareth Bale, whose transfer from Tottenham to Real Madrid made him the first €100m footballer in history. It was the most extreme of...

Football in our times

This book tells the story of the incremental implosion of Rangers Football Club and raises issues of greed, abuse of power, press complicity but also what campaigning using digital media can achieve. Rangers FC Chairman Sir David Murray, motivated by both year-on-year league success and the lucrative potential of the later stages of the European Champions League, borrowed heavily from banks at a time when banks were only too happy to lend to a big brand name like Rangers. Heavy borrowing combined with the illegal use of a tax avoidance scheme to play player’s wages and bonuses eventually led...

Sportswomen

Female weightlifting champion Zoe Smith at this year’s Olympics responded to sexist Twitter comments with: “We don’t lift weights in order to look hot… What makes them think that we even want them to find us attractive?” Sport can enable women to confront sexist objectification in a very direct way; by stating very forcefully that our bodies are ours, part of our identity, and their purpose is not the sexual gratification of men. Some sports lend themselves to sexist vilification, for the same reason that female construction workers get the rough end of workplace sexism: they step outside...

Hillsborough: state cover-ups and police corruption

Can any of us really believe the protestations of politicians and cops in the last week that they have been “shocked” by the findings in the Hillsborough report? If they were genuinely shocked at the changed statements, the catalogue of lies, the obstruction of justice, and so on, this points to a level of incompetence among them that is difficult to comprehend. If they are just saying it because it’s the right thing to say, and in fact knew about or suspected the extent of the cover-up, then we can only conclude that the go-to response of the British ruling class when the integrity of its...

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