Tag Archives: Olympics

China’s Olympic image makeover redux

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Beijing 1989 Tiananmen Square
I replaced the dancing figure in China’s Olympic emblem with the red motorcycle crushed by tanks at the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The heavy red outline around the figure above the official Beijing 2008 logo resembles a Chinese written character, but it could also be blood pooled around the chalk outline of a body.
beijing-olympic-tibet-shame.jpg
Here’s what some activist artists conceived for an Olympic logo to commemorate the Chinese repression of Tibet. They placed massacred Buddhist monks around the red seal. They could just as easily be referring to the monks killed in Burma by the authoritarian military junta which is supported by China.

The ideal soldier shoots for Beijing gold

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pentathletes garden of the gods
The Olympic Games are almost upon us. Which contests are you most looking forward to? I tend to like them all, even the events that aren’t immediately understood as sport, like table tennis, rhythmic gymnastics and archery.

One event that dates back to ancient Greece is the pentathlon. In its modern incarnation, athletes must excel at five separate sports: horse-jumping, fencing, shooting, swimming and running. All of these are part of the Olympic Games already, so why the odd amalgamation of seemingly random events?

Isn’t it obvious? The five events paint a romantic vision of a military liaison on horseback. When his mount is brought down behind enemy lines, he must fight with pistol and sword, swim across a raging river and deliver his message on foot. The pentathlete is the ideal soldier.

It begs the question, which country can offer the world this soldier? Which military superpower has dominated Aristotle’s beloved pentathlon?

After a century of Olympic contests, there are two countries in a dead heat, with medal counts that far exceed the nearest competitor. You probably guessed it — Hungary and Sweden.

“The most perfect sportsmen, therefore, are the pentathletes because in their bodies strength and speed are combined in beautiful harmony.”
Aristotle

Olympic audience cheers for Americans will be canned and jeers will be caned

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Oh my goodness, I know why the 2008 Olympics are being hosted in China! If Beijing was decided in July 2001, the globalization overseers were certainly showing their forward thinking, knowing the imperial oil wars they were about to unleash, and acknowledging that American villainy was about to drop its humanitarian pretense in exchange for unapologetic carpet bombing of uncooperative peoples. Had the deciders previsioned Americans becoming so unpopular in the world that international audiences would boo US athletes at every chance? Of course the bid applications for hosting the Olympics would have been prepared long before I’d be comfortable to predict the Bush/CIA coup plan was hatched. Anyway, booing is easily masked for American TV viewers by interposing prerecorded cheers. It worked in Athens.

Although in Athens, the hatred of Americans wasn’t yet a rolling boil.

In 2004 the American public was still seen as a victim itself of the Florida coup. In August 2004 we had yet to RE-ELECT George the War Criminal. Later in November Americans showed the world our doofus mettle, proving to be a mass of reckless morons worse than Bush. The world could see Bush stole the 2004 election too, but to their horror the American public did not object, nor intervene to prevent US imperial aggressions from continuing unabated.

At the Athens Olympics there was also a greatly reduced turnout of international attendees. The terrorism threat had been amplified so that fewer travelers showed up. Olympic organizers had to discount the tickets and open the doors to the locals in an effort to fill the stadiums. TV cameras kept their shots closely cropped to avoid featuring the empty bleachers.

But really, how fortuitous that America’s Olympic athletes will be facing a predominantly Chinese audience. The Chinese are no friends of ours, certainly, but they will be the most gracious of hosts. How face-saving for us that the Chinese are the only thoroughly polite/subservient population one could entrust not to heckle the American team to tears. Westerners sitting among them will be those affluent enough to travel to China, putting them among the multinational profiteer class who knows on which side its bread is bloodied. If there are any regular sports fans in the crowd we’ll have a bedlam of jeers, but stateside who’ll know, because our television soundtrack will echo only the cheers.

US athletes know it already when they tour outside the homeland. The Stars and Stripes are reviled. The American team need only get possession of the ball and crowds boo. In this New American Century of US military supremacy, it’s all onlookers can do.

The next Olympic venues are safely scheduled within the empire’s anti-immigrant walls, London 2012 and Chicago 2016. By 2020 we will parade our athletes safely in Uzbekistan, where our regents there will boil hecklers in oil.

In the meantime the Chinese will play supplicant hosts, their polite culture several millennium ahead of the west in valuing saving face. Bush can keep politics out of the Olympics, where sweatshop gulags await Chinese dissenters.

The Gay Marriage election year bugaboo

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Some things come around every four years like leap years. The Olympics, US presidential elections, and the Gay Marriage wedge issue bugger-boo.

I remember in the deluge of election 2004, feeling a nagging frustration that the preoccupation of gay and lesbian Americans over the right to wed might have contributed to George W. Bush gaining his second term. As a heterosexual white male it was easy for me to consider their sexual equality struggle ill-timed. Was I right? Of course not. The quest to legitimize gay unions is doubtless as old as [gay] man and has been gathering steam in modern times just as its foes are running out of excuses. In America religious bigots against gay unions, abetted by insurance companies who don’t want to pay partner benerfits, catch their wind ON ELECTION YEARS apparently, and stage their outcry before November elections, whether the candidates at hand are divided on the issue or not.

One gold equals 1,000 silvers

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Chinese Olympic rowing teamNevermind that gold and silver are often separated by a hundreth of a second. Chinese statistics reflect adherence to this depressing credo. In the 2004 Summer Olympics, the USA reigned with 102 medals. China was a distant third with 63. Gold told a different story. China was second with 32, four behind the United States. “Silver? It means nothing here; you might as well finish last,” says former Soviet coach Igor Grinko. “Coaches like me come, help them win gold medals, or we are fired.”

As China prepares its debut as Olympic host, it has ramped up its effort to win gold. The strategy is to focus on sports that offer many opportunities for gold, like rowing. Rowing. Crew. Such a long Chinese tradition, right? No, of course not. But the sport offers 14 separate events, 14 chances for gold, unlike basketball or volleyball — sports that have a rightful place in Chinese culture — that offer only 1 or 2.

In China, very young children are evaluated for potential athletic prowess and shipped off to distant locales to train, train, train. Seven days a week for years, separated from family and community, they are cogs in the Chinese wheel. They head out every morning, shoulders slumped, exhausted, unmotivated, to play a sport that is meaningless to them. Great financial gain at one end, prison (for doping) at the other end, they work toward a predestined fate.

I am sure that the Chinese will fare well in Beijing. They have to. But the glory will be reserved for the athletes that defy fate. Just as computers will never outshine humanity’s best and brightest, so the Chinese machine will fall short. The 1980 Miracle on Ice — the US hockey team that defeated Cold War Russia to go on to win the gold — was not about raw talent, or national financial support, or intense training regimens. The Miracle on Ice was about the human spirit, about love of sport, reverence for tradition, synergy above all else.

Passion defies logic. Love, dedication and athletic brilliance will always trump mechanization. Even when it wears a human skin.

I can not wait to see the US kick China’s autocratic ass on its home turf.

Recreate-68 versus the City of Denver

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Preparing for police brutality
DENVER- Glenn Spagnuolo of RECREATE-68 held his own against Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown at a symposium held today at the University of Denver about the upcoming DNC in August. Asked whether providing instruction for the use of shields truly constitutes advocating non-violent protest, Spagnuolo told of the permanent injuries which Police inflicted at previous demonstrations like the FTAA, and he described Denver’s newly requisitioned equipment such as shotguns which fire long distance tasers (XREP) and ear-piercing weapons systems (LRAD). Councilman Brown stressed the importance of protecting the upcoming DNC, its delegates, its protestors, the people of Denver, and the reputation of Denver, from the threat of terrorism.

The City of Denver refuses to release its security plan, to preempt a timely legal challenge. According to Spagnuolo, the city is considering a mile wide perimeter around Pepsi Stadium. Spagnuolo also clarified that Recreate-68 is not calling for repeating the violence of the 1968 Chicago convention, but instead hopes to re-activate the public to the level of engagement it exhibited in 1968, when the same Democratic Party refused to heed the will of the people to stop funding the illegal war in Vietnam. As history repeats itself forty years later, the anti-war movement has yet to summon the courage of the American people.

A couple of Recreate-68 innovations: Doc’s Place, a 24-hour people’s health clinic, to provide free conventional and alternative medical care for all for the duration of the DNC, “to deliver the promise no candidate has: Healthcare for all.” AS WELL, Recreate-68 is planning large FOOD NOT BOMBS events, to feed the homeless of Denver, to counter the efforts of the city to sweep its streets of the homeless in advance of the convention.

There did appear to be a conflict about how best to secure Denver’s image with the eyes of the world upon it.

Glenn Spagnuolo comes to Recreate-68 with experience leading to arrest and acquittal in demonstrations in 2005 and 2007 against the Columbus Day parade. He’s worked with the South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, ACT-UP, and against the FTAA in Florida.

Most recently, Denver held a lottery to allocate the choice protest venues for the duration of the DNC. Recreate-68 received some locations and time slots, but lost the prime spot and prime time to another candidate: the Democratic Party! Oddly, although the Democrats are going to be center-stage at the convention hall, they applied, and won, the right to occupy the main protest stage adjacent the Pepsi Center on the first evening of the convention.

The mixed up Peace Community

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The Peace Community is just plain mixed up. They are always ‘commemorating’ false anniversaries, and have a great ability to count by thousands (though not by hundreds of thousands, or millions). ‘This is the 5th year of The War, and this is 4,000 down, etc. and yada, yada, yada’ …, however, they don’t really seem to have even a clue.

What I am getting at, is that The War date to remember really is January 17, 1991. That’s when the US went to war with Iraq. That’s the date the Peace Community should be commemorating, but doesn’t, simply because most of those years the so called Peace Community was MIA, or advocating even a US war against Yugoslavia. Congratulations, People, you are really on the ball! You were to busy with the Rush Limbaugh War those days, I guess?

Even now, many of the clueless people want to go campaigning to stop the Olympics, save the Fur people and give them a Dar, and to chop off a fifth of Chinese territory and make a new country out of it. Whoopeee!!!!!

Let’s think about the US some more, shall we? When did the US government go to war with the Afghan people? Come on, Peace Buddies! Hey, was it way back when Osama was still considered a Freedom Fighter? You guys are really quite clueless! Even today, you hardly are campaigning for America to end that war, now are you?

And when did the US go to war against Iran? Hey, wasn’t that back when Saddam Hussein was our government’s good friend? See the Wikipedia some about our history here… The Gulf War

Shoot, that was when most of the Peace Community was part of the porra (cheerleaders) for Daniel Ortega and team. They didn’t really have time to think about how Saddam was being backed by the US government to wage war on the Iranian people. They didn’t have time, as they took their revolutionary vacations elsewhere.

Yes, the Peace Community is just mixed up most of the time. So this election year, we’ll keep that in mind. Americans are always on Cloud Nine…. for an eternity it seems. And that includes the Peace Community. If I they didn’t forget to oppose the Drug War so much even, they might not be so drugged out? Who knows?

I guess what I am saying with this rambling rant, is that it is so sad that much of the Peace (and Justice, too) Community misses about 99% of what goes on around them, about 99% of the time. The corporate media just screws with their minds too much for most to follow what goes on in the world. The Peace People can see that in the conservative element of the population, but is quite oblivious to their own propensity to be manipulated, and about 99% of the time.

It certainly is frustrating to try to work with these people. It might be easier to work with Jehovah’s Witnesses, or some other hard-to-have-success project? Lord only knows? But I continue to work with Unitarians instead. It’s a Unitarian Peace Community.

Peace.

Mentally challenged unfit for insurgency

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Indignity at the barrel of a gunUS disinformation forces in Iraq pointed recently to an insurgency so in its last throes, that it was desperate enough, and dastardly, sure enough, to press mentally retarded girls into service as suicide bombers. Soon enough our military was forced to recant that report. The young Iraqi women may have been bipolar, or depressed, but they didn’t have Down Syndrome, as cranial deformities caused by the bomb blasts had led the US forensics to conjecture. But the false accusation had its desired effect and there was worldwide condemnation of the Iraqi resistance. This story has irked me in both incarnations.

Namely, why in the name of the Special Olympics is it alright to presume the mentally handicapped could not rise to the challenge faced by their fellow insurgents?

That there would need to be suicide bombers is sad for anyone to contemplate. But a people oppressed by overwhelming military dominance have little recourse. The US drove the Japanese to resort to recruiting Kamikazis. The French pushed the Algerians to the most desperate efforts. The Soviets, the US and Israel have since left Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians no option but “terrorism.” We don’t label carpet-bombing, detainment or torture as “terrorism,” but freedom fighters and their asymmetrical warfare is enough to terrorize us.

And so, to many Iraqis, maybe especially those orphaned by our invasion and occupation, to be a suicide bomber is to be put to the only strategy which may yet prove effective. Rocks thrown against tanks do nothing. Shots fired against armor-clad troops yield naught but a hail storm of higher caliber bullets. IEDs are now up against heavier mine-resistant vehicles. Civilians without access to artillery or high-tech triggering remotes have no choice but to deliver their angry message in person, guided and detonated by their brave partisan selves prepared to pay the price with their lives.

Of course a mentally disabled person cannot reasonably be considered to have understood enough to make such a profound sacrifice. But I’m surprised the PC crowd wouldn’t allow them the dignity to aspire to contribute to the cause of their fellow Iraqis. I’d venture to ask if their lives could have served a more honorable service. It must suck to be mentally handicapped in Iraq, considering the US has destroyed every semblance of health care service, and refuses to rebuild it. The US is killing the health-needy of Iraq, even as they accuse the insurgency of the exploitation/murder.

And which side cannot deny preying upon the retarded from which to recruit its troops? With casualties on the rise, American motives unmasked, the timetable interminable, and the prospect of surviving intact virtually null, who but the mentally challenged are signing up to “defend freedom” for Uncle Sam?

Go Team Tibet!

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Beijing 2008 Game Over Free TibetI love love love the Olympics. The Olympic Games epitomize humankind’s best and highest physical achievement, our ability to live in peace with other countries, to ignore race and to play fair, if only for a time. Sitius, altius, fortius indeed!

Historically, because the International Olympic Committee has avoided entanglement in world politics, the Olympics have had a larger number of team participants than there are UN-recognized countries. Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Taiwan have been allowed to send teams to the Games despite their status as possessions of other nations. Even during the Cold War, athletic contests leading up to the Olympics took place behind the Iron Curtain. Talk to any Olympic athlete. They’ve been places that were off-limits to the rest of us. International sport transcends politics. And so it should.

This month the International Olympic Committee betrayed egalitarian tradition and denied the nation of Tibet a place at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Tibet, illegally-occupied by China since 1949, will not be allowed to field an Olympic team because China claims ownership of their land and their people. To add insult, China has plans to take the Olympic torch to the top of Mt. Everest, a mountain that rightfully belongs to Tibet and Nepal, to solidify its “ownership” of Tibet in the eyes of the world. China has already stepped up its presence at Everest, an easily identifiable landmark to Westerners, in anticipation of the propaganda campaign to come.

China should never have been chosen to host the Olympics in the first place. Countries with a history of egregious human rights violations have traditionally been disqualified as potential Olympic hosts. China bullshitted the IOC with progress and promises. We’re different now! Look how far we’ve come! And for whatever reason, monetary or political gain, good television potential, or maybe just plain old ignorance, the IOC bought the lie. And now they’ve become complicitous in Tibet’s oppression.

So when you see that beautiful Olympic torch, that symbol of good fellowship and unity, carried up Mt. Everest in May by the Chinese, remember that the Tibetan people have been denied their land, their identity, their religious and cultural practices, and a place at the Beijing games. You’ll have to count on memory, because you won’t see any protests during the climb. China has already warned foreigners about engaging in activities concerning the sovereignty and unity of China. Tibetans and Chinese won’t dare make a public spectacle; they know they’ll be shot on sight. Even now, four American citizens are being detained by the Chinese government for unfurling a banner calling for Tibet’s independence during a recent torch relay assessment.

I’m sure the worldwide media will honor the Chinese request for silence and make nary a peep about human rights violations in Tibet and elsewhere. And it’s going to make me sick sick sick.

Watching professional sports

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When did message crawls start happening to the bottom of TV screens? Whether for breaking news or a weather travel advisory or the upcoming televison series, I have noticed that they interrupt only programming, never the commercials. The National Weather Service may think a thunderstorm warning is important, but Chef Boyardee doesn’t.

I’m giving sports spectating a try. It’s the World Series, the Tigers are playing. If I had a team to cheer, it’s Detroit. For me the Old Ball Game was Tiger Stadium with my glove hoping to catch a foul ball.

I thought in any sport I’d be cheering the underdog or whoever was behind. I find in reality it’s hard not to cheer for the better team. You can wish your team was better, but it seems awfully odd to hope the better guy messes up so yours can win. The better player can be scrappy or inelegant, but somewhere before the game is over, you know who it is.

What if you’re attending the game dressed in your team’s colors, with pennants and team paraphenalia, and yours is not the best team? It’s one thing to cheer encouragement to little leaguers, or rival high schools, but teams which recruit their talent? Free agents? Pros?

I like the Olympics because the audience advocacy distinction, on television certainly, is clear. We cheer achievement.

The white Olympics

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Smokestacks of TurinToday I watched the opening ceremonies of the White Olympics in Torino.
 
Yes, White Olympics. Virtually all the athletes are white. White because winter sports take place in northern climes where most everybody is white. White because winter sports require equipment beyond what tropical non-developed countries can afford their athletes. White because that is the color of the world aristocracy.

But the Summer Olympics were very much the same. Compared to World Soccer, or the NBA, or the NFL, or the AFL-CIO, the Summer Olympics are lily-white.

So everyone at the Winter Olympics is white, the entire South African team is white. The few dark faces among the white are citizens of white countries who trace their roots elsewhere.

When the American team made its entrance, I wondered, where were the boos? The American athletes were smiling and waving, many were hamming for the camera, one was talking on her phone. An audience was never shown, either booing or applauding.

But there would not have been booing at this pageant. This was a fete for the developed countries, presently at war with darker skinned countries. This was a white man’s club. The few delegates from dark countries were vestiges of the old colonial representatives, cousins of the western nations, returned home having lost their lands and authority to land-reform and indigenous efforts to reclaim territorial autonomy.

So this celebration was the bi-annual gathering of the ruling class, their athletes who can afford to practice their athletics full time, and the spectators who can jet around the world and attend the events.

And the symbol of power from which the ruling classes owe their supremacy was visible in the Olympic flame. Some might also find it was appropriate for the industrial city of Torino.
 
I thought it looked right out of Antonioni’s stark 1964 film Red Desert about industrial ennui, the multiple-funneled smokestack that is this year’s Olympic cauldron.

Olympics politicized

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The Olympic looks like a rich man’s game.
An exclusive country club of photogenic faces,
the exceptions of which stand out rudely against
the art-directed scenes and so are avoided by the cameras.

In this age of Tiger Woods,
African physical prowess on white turf,
where are the black swimmers? black gymnasts?
black beach-volleyball stars?

And it’s all stars. I saw an unknown come in second
in the bike marathon. The news people didn’t know
anything about him, there hadn’t been a profile,
his win was unexpected, he was a Portuguese.
They ignored him. Perhaps he had not been vetted.
We saw him only in long shot.

And all those chances the athletes get
in front of the camera, to say something,
to speak out against what’s happening in the world.
The diciplined and obviously intelligent athletes
no doubt have an opinion, a normal average consciousness,
but nothing.

The Olympics should not be politicized?
But they are politicized with the Iraqi soccer team.
The Iraqi soccer team was a “Rocky Balboa story,”
overcoming the odds, flown in by British troops,
no longer in jeopardy of Uday’s wrath.

The Bush people are using the Iraqi team in ads,
and the media are using them to drive a point home.
I heard an NBC commentator say -actually say-
when contemplating the Iraqi team:
“It’s as if the world were at peace.”