Rio

Here’s How Much Michael Phelps Might Have to Pay the IRS for Winning Olympic Medals

(ANTIMEDIA) ‘You didn’t win that‘ might as well be the U.S. government’s official congratulatory platitude to American Olympians who succeed in Rio this summer.
This year, the IRS will impose a nearly 40% “victory” tax on athletes who take home gold, silver, and bronze medals for the United States.

SPORTS AND POLITICS

By: Marek Glinka
Katehon Think Tank
International sporting events have a clear political nature: nation-states enter the stadium under their national anthem, represent their countries, and, in the case of victory, their rank increases. In other words, sports is an instrument of “soft power” if we use Joseph Nye’s term. Moreover, the country hosting a sporting event can improve its image, as was the case with the Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

Collective Punishment against the Russian People

To the professor’s question concerning what a teacher should do to bring control to a classroom, a would-be teacher proffered: tell the students that if anyone disturbs the class, then the entire class will have a detention.
“That’s collective punishment,” I responded, to which I added with a tongue-in-cheek, hyperbolic flourish, “and it’s a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.”
Nonetheless, why should innocent people be made to pay for the mistakes of others?

Researchers to Monitor Zika Virus in Olympic Athletes

With the Olympics taking place in Brazil, one of the hotbeds for Zika activity, researchers will be monitoring exposure on a small sample of Olympic and Paralympic athletes participating in the games as well as staff members accompanying them. Funded by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the study hopes to help researchers understand why some people are infected with Zika, while others are not, in addition to the various effects that take hold in different people’s bodies.

Keeping pace: the Rio residents fighting to keep their communities

For Rio’s favela dwellers the story of the 2016 Olympics has been one of disbanded communities, demolished homes and broken promises of urban renewal. But, as Ben Whitford finds, the determination of one community offers hope for other ongoing strugglesThe post Keeping pace: the Rio residents fighting to keep their communities appeared first on Positive News.

The Crisis of Democracy

This week we look at the current turmoil in South America, where the so-called “pink tide” is beginning to recede in Venezuela and Brazil as the United Snakes seeks to exploit political and economic crises for its geopolitical gain.
For the musical break, we’ve got Calle 13, with La Bala.
Next up, we pay homage to the Oaxaca Commune, ten years later…. and finally we wrap things up with an interview with Cesar Chavez, a teacher from Oaxaca from Section 22 of the CNTE.