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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBegging Beijing to host 2022 Winter Olympics bad sign for IOC: Arthur
http://www.thestar.com/sports/amateur/2014/10/01/begging_beijing_to_host_2022_winter_olympics_bad_sign_for_ioc_arthur.htmlSo now the IOC has to drag their big beautiful TV show somewhere regrettable. Beijings air pollution has actually worsened since 2008, and the human rights arent any better. But Kazakhstan would mean humping this show into the wilderness, to the borders of civilized possibility, and the IOC would have to bet that the president-for-life wouldnt get toppled between now and then.
So unless they can roust a ringer Vancouver! Calgary! St. Moritz! itll be back to Beijing, and a special sort of humiliation. It wont just be that the IOC was reduced to peddling the Olympics to autocratic, anti-democratic regimes, where the Games ballooned into a colossal, theatrical grotesquerie. It will be that they had to go slinking back to one of them twice.
It says a lot about the Olympics that they have to be held somewhere where a friendly regime can make people disappear. It is sad, because whatever you may say about Western democracy, the Chinese and Russian do not offer much in the way of hope for humanity, despite the fact, in deed, in spite of the fact they have learned to use capitalism to give their elites new toys. Kudos to Oslo for not capitulating to the IOC, but the idea of seeing another Olympics in Beijing, with it's hyper coordinated fascist pageantry right out of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, will ensure I keep my TV off that year.
amandabeech
(9,893 posts)There have been many threads here at DU recently about this, but since I'm home sick with a nasty bug, I'll just try from memory.
1. IOC officials get their own traffic lanes around the host city with traffic lights synchronized so that they never have to wait for a light.
2. All rooms into which they may walk must be at a consistent 68 degrees all the time.
3. Lots of fancy booze, lots of fancy food and face time with the local monarch.
4. Their own arrival and departure location at the airport.
5. 50 luxury vehicles with drivers.
AND THE BIG ONE
They want new facilities, not the refurbishment of existing facilities.
In other words, the IOC have been being pigs for a long time, and finally their arrogant ways have come home to roost, as it were.
No government that has to answer to its voters is going to go along with all this nonsense.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)Lillehammer is not going anywhere, but no, that is not good enough I suppose.
cali
(114,904 posts)I'm in the minority who preferred it to the summer games, but now? Fuck the Olympics whatever the season. Disgusting, corrupt and commercial.
end the Olympics.
malaise
(269,024 posts)Some of the greedy 1% enrich themselves and corporations make a bag but the host country gives up way too much and still ends up with millions of dollars of debt...the numbers have been in for a while. Add to that the corruption, the doping, the demands of the entitled pricks from the IOC, broadcast rights holders and sponsors and it won't take a Theodosius II to end the spectacle. Greed is leading to self destruction.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)does not take a bath, actually, because of the way they acted in the world cup,part of me does, but then I remind myself it will not be the ruling elite that take a bath.