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[xmca] Olympics a mixed blessing anyhow
While I don't want to take anything away from Rio's deserved win of the 2016
Olympics, all the indications are from London 2012 that they are at best a
mixed blessing. Large areas of East London are being remodelled so that, for
example, the much used football pitches on Hackney Marshes and local
people's allotments disappear beneath concrete and the whole area is being
santised and 'securitised'. It is unclear that the promised 'legacy' /
benefits will occur - at least for the local people. The costs are
constantly rising and more and more coming out of the public pocket as
private firms withdraw from their commitments as a result of the recession.
The original plans are being drastically scaled back.
All in all if I were a Chicagoan without an overwhelming interest in two
weeks of sport in 2016, I would heave a sigh of relief.
Bruce
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Whitson" <twhitson@UDel.Edu>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 04, 2009 3:21 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] schools kill creativity?
I don't know how widely this was publicized outside the US, but for the
Atlanta Olympics substantial numbers of homeless people were driven from
the streets just so Atlanta, and the US, would not look bad.
And in Beijing entire neighborhoods were razed and people driven from
their homes to put a more modern face on that city.
These seem more like Public Relations than political ideology but of
course that in itself is political ideology.
On Sat, 3 Oct 2009, David Preiss wrote:
Indeed, violence in the favellas will produce a crude contrast with the
olympics mania that I am sure will distort whatever means the olympic
spirit.
But the olympics have never been so clean and they have been always been
more about politics than pure sportsmanships, haven't they? Just remember
the nazi olympics of Berlin 1936, the Munich massacre in 1972, or the
Tlatelolco massacre just a few days Mexico 1968 started, not to mention
more recent polemical venues.
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