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

Fri Jul 6 00:34:08 CEST 2012

I have said this once: The Olympic Committee has a budget that is bigger
than many nations' budgets. They can afford not  to be for-profit. The same
goes for other organizations.

And some statements are pure intellectual arrogance.

Best,

Nuno Garcia

On 5 July 2012 23:16, Joly MacFie <joly at punkcast.com> wrote:

> 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
> --------------------------------------------------------------
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