Re: [xmca] Olympics a mixed blessing anyhow

[Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca>]

Ditto for Vancouver, hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics. Everything is  
done to remove the homeless and drug addicts so that others can make  
thousands from renting (in many instances private people who want to  
make a big buck on the olympics). Michael


On 4-Oct-09, at 10:42 AM, Bruce Robinson wrote:

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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