Paulo Coelho

Stories & Reflections

Tony Blair x Rio 2016 (final)

Author: Paulo Coelho

The tweets above were posted in Feb 02, 2010, the beginning of a long battle to avoid the presence of this person in my country. I am using an RT (Retweet) instead of my original post, to demonstrate that people started to participate in the campaign. I was sure I was going to win because I was fighting the Good Fight

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FINAL UPDATE, OCTOBER 05, 2010
(Folha de Sí£o Paulo newspaper )
The hiring of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a consultant to the 2016 Olympic Games, to be played in Rio, was held in January by Brazilian politicians and leaders. Eight months later, the Govt of Rio gave up the idea of hiring the former British prime minister.

The hiring of Blair was questioned by writer Paulo Coelho, who joined the Brazilian delegation in Denmark, where Rior was chosen to host of the Games in October last year.

The writer made the criticism in his personal Twitter page. Coelho called Blair called “irresponsible” and “murderer” and that he felt ashamed at seeing former Prime Minister receiving the shirt of the Brazilian team.
“We are paying for Tony Blair to be a consultant in Rio-2016? An irresponsible who declared an illegal war? What is this, governor?” asked Coelho.

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UPDATE FEBRUARY 21
We still have 9 days to go. I asked my office to call the office of the Governor of Rio de Janeiro, and their answer was: “we still don’t have anything concrete, as soon as we have Paulo Coelho will be informed”. I hoped this was just a nightmare that now is already forgotten by everybody – except myself. If we arrive to the end of May without this dark cloud visiting my country, the nightmare is over, and the world will see that Brazilians are capable to organize the Olympic Games 2016 without the help of a person who has his hands tainted with innocent blood, who left by the back door after his deposition for the Commission which is investigating the participation of UK in the invasion of Iraq (to understand the post below, you need to use Google Translator, but there is a short explanation at the end)

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FEBRUARY 2, 2010

This Sunday, returning from Davos, I was appalled to see that Tony Blair was invited to be consultant of Rio 2016 Olympic Games. I immediately posted in Twitter that I don’t want a person who has lied to his country and to the world, who has blood in this hand, to participate in an event where peace and healthy competition is to be celebrated.
My tweets reached the mainstream media in Brasil and UK. An online survey by the major portal O Globo shows right now that 83.86% support my position. At this stage I hope this was a bad nightmare, and the Brazilian private sector will not sponsor his participation. Let’s wait until May and see.

To see the original post and updates, click here

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