Violence flared on the streets of Sao Paulo on Saturday after more than a 1,000 demonstrators protested in against Brazil's hosting of the football World Cup later this year.

Waving flags, carrying banners and chanting "there will be no Cup", the demonstrators took to the streets in what the Anonymous Rio protest group billed as the first act in its "Operation Stop the World Cup" campaign.

The event was largely peaceful but police later clashed with some protesters.

During the demonstration several protesters chanted: "If we have no rights, there will be no Cup."

"By rights we mean the people's right to decent public services," said university student Leonardo Pelegrini dos Santos. "We are against the millions and millions of dollars being spent for the Cup. It is money that should be invested in better health and education services and better transportation and housing."
Fellow student Juliana Turno said "this is a small sample of the protests that will happen when the World Cup begins."

Brazilian football journalist Tim Vickery (via ESPNFC.com) explains how the infrastructure improvements that were supposed to be a part of this hosting process have fallen by the wayside and why the Brazilian citizens are so upset:

"Being so slow out of the blocks inevitably meant that costs would rise, and the list of infra-structure projects would be reduced. When it comes to the way they are ruled, the Brazilian population has a great deal to protest about.

The fact that the stadiums turned out to be so impressive only made matters worse. Who wants first world stadiums and third world public services? And so a phrase caught on in the hand-made placards of the protestors - 'FIFA standard'. If we can have FIFA standard stadiums, they asked, why can't we have a FIFA standard country?"

Even with all of that time, Brazil have let things run right up until the last minute. Stadiums aren't complete, and as a result, more money is having to be spent, which means cost overruns and hazardous work environments as construction workers hurry to build everything in time.

And as Vickery points out, the money allocated for infrastructure improvements is funneled to the stadiums.

In short, it's all a mess.

A dozen houses in the Mangueira slums of Rio de Janeiro have been demolished, and residents have been removed at gun point by the government of Brazil in order to build a parking lot for the upcoming World Cup.People who were living in these homes were targeted by militarized riot cops, sent in by the government to push them into the streets. They were not even allowed to gather their personal belongings.

Riot cops are an occupying force, while people from Brazil fight FIFA and their government for targeted attacks on indigenous people, pregnant women and black people.

Faced with another episode of brutal oppression in the name of the World Cup and FIFA (an organisation which has kept silent about crimes, and racist/social abuses committed by the government of Brazil), activists from Rio de Janeiro organised to help people in the slums resist the governments violent gentrification attack.