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The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio are under two months away and, honestly, I’m pretty surprised we’re still all gung-ho in sending our athletes over there. First of all, apparently like hundreds of workers died trying to build these stadiums, which right there has to be some sort of human rights violation. For another, Zika is apparently running rampant over there. Rampant enough that I’m not convinced that a few super-condoms are going to do much to suppress the spread of it. And now, on top of all of that, we have footage of some crazy dude shooting up the only major highway in Rio that would get athletes, reporters and fans from their accommodations to the stadiums.
Via Daily Mail:
“The road is the Red Line, Rio’s main highway and the only route into Brazil’s Olympic city along which will every sports fan, athletics delegation and foreign dignitary will travel to get to the mega-event.
The 13-mile express way runs from Rio’s international airport into the city, and is in the most part lined with sprawling favela shanty towns which are dangerous no-go zones controlled by heavily-armed drugs gangs.
With just seven weeks to go before the Olympic party kicks off, the image – posted by bragging bandits on social media yesterday – shows that, despite promises to clean up the city’s crime-ridden slums, gangsters appear to be still firmly in control. Experts expressed amazement at how the gangs could get hold of what appears to be an AR-15 gun, complete with a state-of-the-art holographic sight, which even the Brazilian army don’t possess. Most alarmingly, though, with the favelas out of bounds, even for the police, the shooter and his powerful weapon may still be there when VIPs and sports stars start arriving for the Games.
In recent months, a sharp rise in violence in Rio’s favelas, fuelled by Brazil’s economic and political crisis, has increasingly spilled out onto the city’s main access road, which passes just metres from the slums on its way to the famous beaches and hotels. Several terrifying incidents along the Red Line in recent months are causing panic even among Rio residents used to high levels of violent crime in the city. They include car jackings and even hostage takings, while almost daily shootouts between rival gangs, or ferocious battles with the police, have left road signs and barriers pockmarked with bullet holes – and motorists fearing for their lives. Last month, a 17-year-old girl died after being hit in the head by a stray bullet as she sat in the back seat of a car being driven along the freeway to the international airport to meet her mother, who was arriving in the city on Brazil’s Mother’s Day. And earlier this month, 27-year-old psychologist Anna Paula Cotta was also shot in the head by gangsters robbing motorists on a slip road to the Yellow Line, another expressway which takes drivers from the Red Line to the Barra da Tijuca district, site of Rio’s Athletes Village and Olympic Park.”
Photo in question from the shooter:
Hot take: We really don’t need to be sending our athletes to Rio. Listen, I love the Olympics and America as much as the next bro. But you know what I also love? Not seeing my fellow Americans get shot in the head and/or getting Zika all up in their dickholes (if that’s even where Zika goes). Why are we sending them? Do we really have to further prove that America is the best country in the world? I understand that, for some athletes, this is their first and last opportunity to compete on an international level this storied, but also, is their desire for greatness blinding them to the dangers they are facing? Yes, gold medals are forever, but so are large holes in your face from high-caliber bullets. I guess really, the fault lies in the Olympic Committee for not finding a solution to these glaring problems before things got drug-lords-shooting-up-random-cars bad. So of course I’m going to watch but, you know, fingers crossed here that all our boys and girls make in home safely.