NYTimes: International Olympic Committee - "elitist, domineering, and crassly commercial at its core"

[Alain Berranger]

NPOC  really welcomes national Olympic committees as Members because they
are true notforprofit organizations...

Alain

On Thursday, July 5, 2012, Robin Gross wrote:

> As a commercial organization that tried to join NCSG, very relevant…
>
> No Medal for the International Olympic Committee says the New York Times…..
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/opinion/no-medal-for-the-international-olympic-committee.html?_r=3&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
>
>
> ------------------------------
> July 4, 2012
> **Olympian Arrogance****By JULES BOYKOFF and ALAN TOMLINSON****
> ****
>
> Brighton, England
>
> WHILE Europe roils in economic turmoil, London is preparing for a lavish
> jamboree of international good will: in a few weeks, the city will host the
> 2012 Summer Olympics.
>
> But behind the spectacle of athletic prowess and global harmony,
> brass-knuckle politics and brute economics reign. At this nexus sits theInternational
> Olympic Committee <http://www.olympic.org/>, which promotes the games and
> decides where they will be held. Though the I.O.C. has been periodically
> tarnished by scandal — usually involving the bribing and illegitimate
> wooing of delegates — those embarrassments divert us from a deeper problem:
> the organization is elitist, domineering and crassly commercial at its core.
>
> The I.O.C., which champions itself as a democratic “catalyst for
> collaboration between all parties of the Olympic family,” is nonetheless
> run by a privileged sliver of the global 1 percent. This has always been
> the case: when Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympics in the 1890s,
> he assembled a hodgepodge of princes, barons, counts and lords to
> coordinate the games. Eventually the I.O.C. opened its hallowed halls to
> wealthy business leaders and former Olympians. Not until 1981 were women
> allowed in.
>
> Even today, royalty make up a disproportionate share of the body; among
> the 105 I.O.C. members<http://www.olympic.org/content/the-ioc/the-ioc-institution1/ioc-members-list/> are
> the likes of Princess Nora of Liechtenstein, Crown Prince Frederik of
> Denmark and Prince Nawaf Faisal Fahd Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia. The United
> States has only three representatives, two of them former Olympic athletes.
>
> Then there are the excessive demands that the I.O.C. makes on host cities.
> For instance, the host cities have had to change their laws to comply with
> the Olympic Charter<http://www.olympic.org/Documents/olympic_charter_en.pdf>,
> which states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or
> racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other
> areas.” When Vancouver, British Columbia, hosted the Winter Games in 2010,
> the city passed a bylaw that outlawed signs and banners that did not
> “celebrate” the Olympics. Placards that criticized the Olympics were
> forbidden, and the law even empowered Canadian authorities to remove such
> signs from private property.
>
> The I.O.C. also makes host cities police Olympics-related intellectual
> property rights. So Parliament adopted the London Olympic Games and
> Paralympic Games Act of 2006<http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/12/contents>,
> which defines as a trademark infringement the commercial use of words like
> “games,” “2012” and “London” in proximity.
>
> Such monomaniacal brand micromanagement points to another problem: the
> I.O.C. has turned the Olympics into a commercial bonanza. In London, more
> than 250 miles of V.I.P. traffic lanes are reserved not just for athletes
> and I.O.C. luminaries but also for corporate sponsors. Even the signature
> torch relay has been commercialized: the I.O.C. and its corporate partners
> snapped up 10 percent of the torchbearer slots for I.O.C. stakeholders and
> members of the commercial sponsors’ information technology and marketing
> staffs. Michael R. Payne, a former marketing director for the committee,
> has called the Olympics “the world’s longest commercial.”
>
> Most worrisome, perhaps, is that the I.O.C. creates perverse incentives
> for security officials in host cities to overspend and to militarize public
> space. The I.O.C. tends to look kindly on bids that assure security, and
> host cities too often use the games as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to
> stock police warehouses with the best weapons money can buy.
>
> Visitors to London, where the games are scheduled to run from July 27 to
> Aug. 12, would be forgiven for thinking they had dropped in on a military
> hardware convention. Helicopters, fighter jets and bomb-disposal units will
> be at the ready. About 13,500 British military personnel will be on patrol
> — 4,000 more than are currently serving in Afghanistan. Security officials
> have acquired Starstreak and Rapier surface-to-air missiles. Even the
> Olympic mascots look like two-legged surveillance cameras.
>
> Let us be clear: the concern about ensuring a terror-free Olympics is
> tragically warranted. In 1972, members of the Palestinian militant group
> Black September killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Olympics in
> Munich — after which the I.O.C. president notoriously insisted that “the
> games must go on” — and in 1996, a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics killed a
> spectator and injured more than 100 other people. Yet there is such a thing
> as excess — and surveillance and weaponry are not a panacea.
>
> Security measures can also be counterproductive: London residents who
> learned that the Ministry of Defense was attaching missile launchers to the
> roofs of their apartment buildings can’t be blamed for wondering if they’ve
> unwillingly become a prime target for terrorists. And, symbolically, at a
> certain point it gets hard to square the image of the militarized state
> with the Olympic ideals of peace and understanding.
>
> What can be done? The I.O.C. has acknowledged that the escalating scale of
> the games — “gigantism” — is a real issue. Competitions drenched in
> privilege, like the equestrian events, should be ditched (with apologies to
> Ann Romney’s horse Rafalca, who will be competing in dressage in London).
> Pseudo-historical events like Greco-Roman wrestling, concocted in the 19th
> century, could also go. Events with high start-up costs could be swapped
> for those requiring fewer resources. Why not bring back tug-of-war (a hotly
> contested event in the early 20th century) and add more running events,
> like trail running and cross-country?
>
> Governance is another challenge. After the bribery scandal surrounding the
> selection of Salt Lake City to host the 2002 Winter Olympics, and under
> pressure from Congress, the I.O.C. created an ethics commission to monitor
> the bid process — but it reports to the I.O.C.’s executive board, which
> still has the final say.
>
> Other measures worth considering are to streamline committee membership
> and to provide greater representation for the international sports
> federations that administer athletic competitions — though either approach
> would continue to pose accountability problems.
>
> In these bleak economic times, the world could use a little athletic
> transcendence. Sadly, the arrogance and aloofness of the organization
> behind the spectacle are all too ordinary.
> **
> Jules Boykoff<http://www.pacificu.edu/as/politics/faculty/jules-boykoff.cfm/>,
> an associate professor of political science at Pacific University, is
> writing a book on dissent and the Olympics. Alan Tomlinson<http://alantomlinson.typepad.com/> is
> a professor of leisure studies at the University of Brighton.
> ****
> ******
> **
> MORE IN OPINION (2 OF 19 ARTICLES)Op-Ed Columnist: Doughnuts Defeating
> Poverty<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/opinion/doughnuts-defeating-poverty.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp>
>
> Read More »<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/opinion/doughnuts-defeating-poverty.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp>
> Close
>
>
>

-- 
Alain Berranger, B.Eng, MBA
Member, Board of Directors, CECI,
http://www.ceci.ca<http://www.ceci.ca/en/about-ceci/team/board-of-directors/>
Executive-in-residence, Schulich School of Business, www.schulich.yorku.ca
Treasurer, Global Knowledge Partnership Foundation, www.gkpfoundation.org
NA representative, Chasquinet Foundation, www.chasquinet.org
Chair, NPOC, NCSG, ICANN, http://npoc.org/
O:+1 514 484 7824; M:+1 514 704 7824
Skype: alain.berranger
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