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

Fri Jul 6 00:16:16 CEST 2012

But you are not disputing their facts, I take it.

j

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Michael Carson <mcarson029 at comcast.net>wrote:

> Alain,
>
>
>
> I agree.  This op-ed is just that - the opinion of two individuals.
>
>   Michael Carson
>
> YMCA of the USA
>
> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Alain Berranger" <alain.berranger at GMAIL.COM>
> *To: *NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> *Sent: *Thursday, July 5, 2012 3:55:09 PM
> *Subject: *Re: NYTimes: International Olympic Committee - "elitist,
> domineering, and crassly commercial at its core"
>
>
> 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
>
>

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/attachments/20120705/e1133bba/attachment-0001.html>