January 21, 2010

Nice work if you can get it

A fascinating article by Laura Robinson at the Literary Review of Canada on the corruption and mismanagement that follows any International Olympic event.
A Shameful Track Record
Chris Shaw is a bit of a nebbish, a Woody Allen�esque guy who researches Parkinson�s disease for a living. He has two ex-wives and a fuel-efficient car, but in the winter-of-discontent narrative that has enveloped the Vancouver Olympics, he has a different passion. In 2008, Shaw wrote Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, a thoughtful book exposing the current Olympic underbelly, from cost overruns to the destruction of pristine Eagle Ridge to make way for a widened Sea-to-Sky Highway, to the death of Tsimshian elder Harriet Nahanee from pneumonia, days after she was released from two weeks in detention for camping on Eagle Ridge and facing down bulldozers.

In his introduction, Shaw acknowledged that he had been opposed to and protesting against the 2010 Winter Olympics ever since 2002. But did he ever imagine that the Integrated Security Unit, a nearly $1 billion combination of 7,000 Vancouver City Police and RCMP, 4,000 military and 5,000 private security personnel responsible for keeping the games �safe,� would be tailing him to his local caf� on June 3, 2009, interrupting his walk from the caf� to work and, in their polite plainclothes way, telling him they did not like what he had written? Or that they would knock on the door of his ex-wife and try to pry damaging information out of her? Did he imagine the same thing would happen in the same week to other anti-Olympics activists, as police went to neighbours looking for information about the shady person next door who had the audacity to speak out against the games? Or that a week later he would land at Heathrow Airport, on his way to the University of Coventry for a sports conference, and airport security would hold him in solitary with no explanation for 40 minutes? Shaw had not imagined any of this. He was under the impression that Canadian law enforcers understood the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that our right to freedom of expression was sacrosanct.
It is a long and interesting read -- I'll just excerpt a few items that caught my eye:
Given the all-powerful and monopolistic role it plays in international sport, the International Olympic Committee has come under little scrutiny in North America. This is partly because it and the international sport federations that make up much of its ranks choose to base themselves in Lausanne, Switzerland, where everything�especially bank accounts�is a secret. But the International Olympic Committee�s Olympic Marketing Fact File numbers from 2001 to 2004 show the IOC brought in a total of US$4,189,000,000 in revenue. Broadcast rights accounted for US$2,232,000,000 and domestic sponsorships brought in US$796,000,000, and licensing another $87,000,000. The Olympic Partner (TOP) sponsorship brought in US$663,000,000. Included in TOP are McDonald�s, Coca-Cola, Visa, Samsung, GE, Atos Origin, Panasonic, Acer and Omega�the latter six of which are in the military and/or surveillance business.
Emphasis mine -- yes, that is US$4 Billion with a B And the Committee Members are just real peaches:
By focusing a magnifying glass on some of the IOC�s members, a portrait of the movement and its values begins to emerge more clearly. Look, for instance, at General Lassana Palenfo, a member of the IOC Women and Sport Commission. He is from the Ivory Coast but now lives in Paris. Why? Because, according to two stories in the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet this past October, he was sprung from an Ivory Coast prison in 2000 by an envoy sent by then IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. Palenfo was told, according to the paper�s confidential source, he would be released from prison as long as he voted for Beijing to host the 2008 Olympics.

And why was the general in jail in the first place? He was second in command after being part of a 1999 Ivory Coast coup masterminded by junta leader Robert Guei, who later suspected him of plotting an assassination attempt and had him thrown in jail. This was ironic given that Palenfo was very good at throwing others in jail as head of the PC Crise�or Crisis Patrol�which �was a kind of death squad,� journalists Sverre Quist and Bo Elkjaer from Ekstra Bladet were told by an informant still in the military who met secretly with them last fall.
Some other stories too -- the history of the IOC is a bit chilling:
In fact, it is salutary to remember how the Olympic torch got its start. Despite what Canadian journalists might write and broadcast about the torch relay being a symbol of peace and international understanding, its roots are steeped in one of the best propaganda exercises ever perpetrated on this planet. In the prelude to the Berlin Olympics of 1936, Carl Diem came up with the idea that Germany should send 3,422 Aryan runners to start at Mount Olympus and end 3,422 kilometres later at the Berlin stadium. Diem, the games� organizer, later became a vicious Nazi military commander who ordered his young soldiers to �die like Spartans� in the war to uphold the Aryan nation.

In the 1988 The Olympic Flame, an official IOC publication written by Conrado Durantez, founder of the Spanish Olympic Academy, the chapter on the Berlin Games begins: �The 1936 Olympics went down in the annals of sport as among the most perfect ever organized, as those which were steeped in the greatest Olympic sense and essence and where the public turnout was the most enthusiastic, boisterous and numerous.� There are large photos of Nazi parades with the torch and a banner reading �Germany Awake��the title of a popular Nazi song. More photos show Hitler with the IOC president at that time and massive columns of soldiers and swastikas. The text under a group of runners doing the Heil Hitler salute reads, �The team of runners who will execute the first phase of the journey to Athens swear an oath, raising their right arm� but not one word of the text even hints at the political reasons Hitler wanted the Olympics in Germany.
It gets better:
The political lines of the Cold War were soon drawn as Germany was divided into west and east, with Manfred Ewald becoming head of East German sport. He was the mastermind behind decades of doping that put East German athletes on the Olympic podium, as he experimented on female athletes, injecting them with doses of steroids so high many became caught in a nightmarish existence, not female and not male.

And how did Ewald manage to come to the prestigious position of head of the country�s sports organizations? His r�sum� included joining the Hitler Youth in 1938, becoming a member of the Nazi party as an adult and organizing the very street gangs he once ran in as a young brown shirt. Ewald�s past was known to the IOC, but it did not keep Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the very august and male organization from 1980 to 2001, from awarding him, in 1985, the Olympic Order, seen as the Nobel Prize of sport.
There is a lot more in the article -- well worth reading. The authors creds are pretty good too:
Laura Robinson is a former member of the national cycling team, former Canadian rowing champion, and Ontario Nordic ski champion. The Vancouver Olympics will be her fifth to cover as a journalist.
She should know what she is talking about. The book referenced: Five Ring Circus is available at Amazon. I'll have to see if the local library can get a copy. Posted by DaveH at January 21, 2010 1:35 PM
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