Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 25, 2001, Winnipeg, Manitoba Focus Rin i do any 2001 do carnival in Rio four Days of madness take months to plan slice of life Nei Besner Rio de Janeiro starting in the beginning of Winter tens of thousands of Cario cans As the inhabitants of Rio Are known begin to in an intricate and Man faceted collaborative toward the four Days of Midsummer madness at the end of february that continue to define their lives this some tourists Are coming to Rio de Home of brazils most celebrated to or simply to watch an elaborate spectacle that has evolved Over hundreds of brazils version of Mardi gras is at once bacchanalian and a Long labour of love and Art for the Samba schools that have worked so hard for Many months to compete for top honours a coveted and much disputed this years carnival season is bursting into Flower in the midst of the hottest summer in five and after the warmest january in 17 years the temperature has held steady at a steamy 35 c and above for some eight and the climate is being matched by the political rhetoric the newspaper headlines lambaste Canada daily for its intransigence in the current embargo of brazilian beef there is no from clerk to president of the re pub who is not firmly convinced that the beef is about the Bombardier Embrer subsidy War and nothing while billboards Pillory canadians at barbecues eating mad brazilian restaurateurs cheerfully pour Seagram into the sink and toss Canadian ducks into the garbage and stevedores in one of brazils most important blockade Cana Dian one of the featured pre carnival Block Sambas last week gatherings at which up to people move Down the Street in loud slow Walls of singing and drum Ming is called the mad cow i have not waved Many Canadian flags in recent but the mainstays of carnival Are the performances of the Samba the Escolas de some 25 of them will make it to the grand Competition for the Best in the they will strut their splendid stuff in the Samb Dromo a designed by Oscar brazils most eminent architect and the planner of Brasilia in the late 50s and Early 60s Down town on Sapu Cai you can buy or rent a costume and accompany although prices Are Steep or you can pay up to about for what amounts to a guest Box for 12 people in the but Many Cario cans these Days prefer to accompany the Street Samba which Are and and then watch the grand the defiles on there is simply nothing like the spectacle of a Samba school in full dress coming Down the the costumes Are exuberant and and the con Stant movement of the dancers battalions of intoxicated disciples rolling Down the Street in rhythms at once abandoned and choreographed to the Hal step is Mes the dancers and performers Are accompanied and sur rounded by a wailing wave of grounded by the grape shot of hundreds of stepping in perfect casual the result of months of behind them comes each Samba school float each is an allegory in a Story about the its a theme this one school had to revise its because one of its lines depicted natives As incarnations of the vice the schools plea that this was All in Good fun did not on each a dancer at the top will be performing As the whole school and dances its Samba for the the tunes Are themselves the final products of intense Competition Between nationally famous and each years lyrics pass into cultural where they Rise in new and Richer variations decades what is easy to in the Gener Al air of riotous is that these elaborate performances have Only Dario Lopez Mills associated press a dancer celebrates during the carnival Parade at the become possible by virtue of Many months of arduous Long hours of deft sewing and painstaking craftsmanship a collaborative virtuosity among Many hundreds of dancers and musicians above an almost total surren Der of any idea of individual artistry or autonomy to the greater Good ser vice of the the Samba school rolling Down the Avenue in full ceremonial procession is a magnificent spectacle that can Only come alive through a supreme collective enactment of a shared goal to be the Best most most most visually captivating live theatre and to do so in front of delirious pretending because it is so that the sheer eroticism of the bar breasted rolling and floating at the top of her Samba schools wholly Given Over to the repeated lyrics of her Samba echoing in 500 with the syncopated pulse of her band of drum mers shaking the is nothing nothing less than everyone secret dream made Public Here is the Centre of carnival for All to and for As Long As the Samba schools shake up the the next morning will never come to As everyone in the procession Nei Liesner teaches Canadian Litera Ture Al the University of letters to the editor the free press welcomes letters from they must include the authors address and Telephone letters May be letters to the 1355 Mountain r2x fax email president shows Hes the Boss the most powerful military nation in the free world has demonstrated once again that while it has the it will use the latest attack on Iraq engineered by the United states Satis fies the hawkish members of govern ment that the most unimpressive Simpleton Ever to hold the office of the president is not afraid to show who the Glenn Matyas Winnipeg distance Canada from attacks serious thought needs to be Given to How to totally distance Canada from the children starving sanctions against Iraq and the marked increase in the British and Bellico sity toward sad dam Hussein and by proxy the iraqi can there be any doubt that a major military engagement will be contrived in the near future Over Iraq the Economy is slowing a military Dis traction will be and looking at the makeup of the Bush adm Nistra one Motif remains Clear it is payback time for against Saddam for sheer starting an imbroglio with Iraq now is Only exceeded by the lunacy of the Star wars Lite anti ballistic missile Only evil will come of both of these courses of Canada needs to say not in our name for these decisions for death by the mar Krogness Winnipeg time to end immoral sanctions your editorial Bush firm on 19 lauds the recent bomb attack on Iraq and suggests humanitarian agencies Are naively helping prop up Saddam Hussein regime by sending in Aid and calling for an end to Sanc humanitarian groups Arent the Only ones calling for an end to the sweeping in diplomats and numerous journalists who have visited Iraq also say the sanctions have created a humanitarian disaster while fail ing to meet the objectives the and in the sanctions Arent failing because humanitarian agencies Are lobbying against they Are failing because they have impoverished the iraqi peo enriched the elite they were meant o punish and provided the iraqi leadership with a convenient Scapegoat that has strengthened their grip on mennonite Central committee has sent humanitarian including Grain medical supplies and school to Iraq for the past nine years and will continue to support the iraqi Mcc also has person Nel placed in Iraq on a daily the effects of a life under the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of who have no control Over National or International is simply Ordinary iraqis continue to Bear the Brunt of an ill conceived sanctions regime that is running on Little More than face saving humanitarian organizations like Mcc Are responding in Iraq because the needs there Are its time for the current sanctions to Janet Ric Janzen program directors mennonite Central committee Middle East programs Winnipeg team Canada deals overstated the team Canada Trade Mission to China has been completed and Accord ing to reports from the prime minis ters office it was a huge Success with Over billion in sales and some enterprising reporters uncovered some interesting information while doing investigative followup with randomly selected companies listed in the government press some involved deals that were consummated Long before the Mission the value of others was grossly one involved two Canadian based companies and some were Mere a and Jassim Mohammed associated press demonstrators protest outside a in development program office in condemning policy toward by letters of anyone involved in International commercial business knows that substantive deals require months and often years of nothing is finalized in a few hours or even i suspect that the value of any real deals is less than the Cost of this Mission to Canadian this is another Chretien Snow what we need is an Independent ethics its obvious Why the prime minister Doest want Russ Hope pm must see link Between rights governments must take action to protect the most it sounds log ical Doest it prime minister Jean Chretien has demonstrated that he is in on the team Canada Rara conference in two student demonstrators were told to shut up and yelled at by team Canada Mem Bers to get your facts they were then forcibly removed from the area by chinese the demonstrators were members of a students for a free Tibet group from Canada and were protesting the pms refusal to meet with pro Tibet organizations while in the pm has stated that he hoped to do Good work while in China on this Trade what i dont think he understands is that his Good work is propagating the suffering of millions of people in and is far from Good for Ever since the administration relinked chivas Trad ing status from its human rights performance by granting China permanent Normal Trade or earlier last International human rights groups have been report ing increased imprison ment and both in China and occupied human rights defend ers in Tibet have been subjected to Tor or have just children As Young As nine years old have been put into dirt floored jail just because they Are this demonstrates to me that increased Trade does not Lead to an improvement in human in it does quite the according to the International com Mission of jurists in the Tibet is an Independent nation under illegal occupation by Cana Das official position is not to question chivas claim that Tibet is a part of the chinese in a recent 2000 Canada Tibet committee Survey of the five major political parties in Tibet support was Strong with the Canadian the bloc Quebe Cois and the less so with the progressive conservatives and nonexistent with the liberals seeing As the Liberal party is now in Power again for a third a firm position must be taken on the illegal occupation and mistreatment of Tibet by the and Freedom encouraged through any Means Neces including the continuation and Protection of the tibetan culture should take precedence Over our Trade policies with the prime minister must see the link Between deteriorating human rights and increased Trade and realize that while he May be helping one nation he May also be contributing to the cultural genocide of Lynnette Kathryn Putros students for a free University of Manitoba Dugald Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free presses 1872 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 vol 129 no 82 2001 Winnipeg free a division of newspapers division of Thomson Canada limited published seven Days a week at 1355 Mountain Manitoba r2x pm 6977000 a member of the Manitoba press Council Rudy email Nicholas Patrick Flynn Deputy editor ;