Begging Beijing to host 2022 Winter Olympics bad sign for IOC: Arthur

[DonCoquixote]

http://www.thestar.com/sports/amateur/2014/10/01/begging_beijing_to_host_2022_winter_olympics_bad_sign_for_ioc_arthur.html

So now the IOC has to drag their big beautiful TV show somewhere regrettable. Beijing’s air pollution has actually worsened since 2008, and the human rights aren’t 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 wouldn’t get toppled between now and then.

So unless they can roust a ringer — Vancouver! Calgary! St. Moritz! — it’ll be back to Beijing, and a special sort of humiliation. It won’t 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]

1. Actually, the IOC is making ridiculous demands that no sensible country would want to satisfy.

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]

5. the big one

Lillehammer is not going anywhere, but no, that is not good enough I suppose.

[cali]

2. I used to love watching the winter olympics

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]

3. No country that hosts international sporting events makes money

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]

6. I really hope Brazil

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.

[AngryAmish]

4. How can you say "Go Pound Sand" in Mandarin and Kazach?