Here's an idea -- hold the Olympics in Greece every four years and avoid the geopolitical wrangling.
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Immovable Feast
13 Apr 2008 11:18 am
Comments (32)
Or hold it in cities and countries nobody's got an issue with.
Nobody seems to have had any issues with Barcelona '92 or Sydney '00, and I guess if you go that far back, Montreal '76 is probably in that category.
Here's a better idea, just make an informal rule of 'no dictatorships'.
Both Paris and Toronto were finalists perfectly good choices, and I'm pretty confident there would have been no execution of protesters in the months before by either county.
Here's a better idea, just make an informal rule of 'no dictatorships'.
Both Paris and Toronto were finalists perfectly good choices, and I'm pretty confident there would have been no execution of protesters in the months before by either county.
What both Don and JRVJ said. The IOC would never dream of holding it in North Korea, Cuba or Burma, so why hold it in China? China also isn't on the verge of democracy like South Korea was when the Olympics were held in Seoul. If the IOC had adopted this rule, China wouldn't have a leg to stand on if it felt snubbed for not getting the Olympics. In such a scenario, if China really cared about hosting the Olympics, it could become more liberal or shut up. Why not use it to reward countries that have become more democratic in the past couple of decades, like Mexico, South Africa, Ghana, Chile, Argentina, Poland, Turkey, etc.?
I dunno. You'd be denying sleazy politicians the world over a golden opportunity to whore out their city budgets.
Holding the games in their original birthplace is an excellent idea. It'd also be nice if they dispensed with the national flags and national contingents. Maybe they could describe each athlete as hailing from city such-and-such, instead of nation?
Reality Man: You may be interested to know that Istanbul, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires are on the list of cities the International Olympic Committee has said "spend some more dough on this project and we'd like to give you an Olympics." Of course, none of these countries have the money to spend on such a frivolous project.
China does. That's why it got a Games. That, and the fact the IOC is so self-important it actually believed all the nonsense the Chinese told them about cleaning up their human rights act for the Games.
Why not use it to reward countries that have become more democratic...?
Here's a wild idea: Why not make the Olympics about the actual games themselves rather than the politics of the host country? The idea of always holding the games in Greece sounds pretty good to me. Failing that, maybe the host country could be chosen by a random draw among qualified applicants.
This is based on the weird idea that Greece has no political significance. Globally it doesn't, but regionally it very much does. A Games based in Greece would be yet another way for Greek nationalists to make spurious connections between modern and classical Greece and thereby write the Slavs and the Turks out of their history. Greece is *not* a politically neutral choice.
I'm with Don. I like the idea of no dictatorships for the Olympics. Greece every four years is not bad either.
Um, Matt, there's more to the Olympics than just the summer games, you know. Where are we going to put the winter games? Greece's climate isn't exactly conducive to holding contests that require sub-zero temperatures.
For that matter, is a country physically and economically capable of handling this kind of huge investment every two (or four) years? Are there any relevant comparisons out there?
"Here's a wild idea: Why not make the Olympics about the actual games themselves rather than the politics of the host country? The idea of always holding the games in Greece sounds pretty good to me. Failing that, maybe the host country could be chosen by a random draw among qualified applicants.
Posted by James Gary | April 13, 2008 12:03 PM"
If the Olympics were just the international snooker and curling finals, no one would care. Hosting the Olympics brings a lot of prestige and pride with it on the host city and country, especially if that city or nation is developing and / or has never hosted the games before. The IOC thus decides to bestow prestige on whichever city and nation it chooses. The Beijing municipal government responded to the Games by evicting thousands, (by some accounts millions) of people from their homes without due compensation for construction purposes. This means that the IOC's decision had political consequences that were bad for a lot of poor people. China and Beijing are simply not ready for this. Living in Beijing, the preparations for the Olympics have just been a pain to deal with, both because of the weird political questions that get posed to me (and that I can't answer honestly without the person 1) going off into some nationalist rant that I don't need to hear or 2) becoming curious and wanting to know more, which can often get them in trouble), increasingly annoying police that are increasingly suspicious of foreigners and how annoying all of the construction is that makes getting around a pain.
For that matter, is a country physically and economically capable of handling this kind of huge investment every two (or four) years? Are there any relevant comparisons out there?
See that's the funny thing, if you reused the stadiums every four years, they would be a much better investment.
Agreed. The Summer Olympics have grown to be a big pain in the ass. Let the world subsidize Greece to host them every 4 years and modify the qualifying so other countries can still have fair sized regional qualifiers focused on sport, not corporate whoring and politics.
Heck, why not go farther and hold the Olympic Games in Cyprus, in between the Greek and Turkish zones? Just clear out the land mines and it'll be hunky-dory.
Better yet, give the OOC its own state, like the Vatican. They already have a flag, a national anthem (the Chariots of Fire theme, of course, written by a Greek!) and everything.
It could be alternated between Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. As far as I know those countries don't have any major enemies except each other.
Yes!!!
And then I read some of the comments...
Matt's point is just stop moving the fucking thing around. The choice is political once, and then it's never an issue again. And cities/countries will stop doing asinine things trying to woo the IOC.
I can't believe the arrogance of you people.
The next Olympics take place in China and there is nothing you can do about it.
The controversy makes it that more interesting. And seeing neocons whining because they don't get their way, is pure *gold*.
Reason #1 why no Greece-always Olympic scheme:
BO-RING
And really, I think one of the most interesting things about holding the Olympics in China has been that instead of them becoming just a love-fest for the Chinese government, holding the Olympics has shone a spotlight on China's problems. The only example I can think of where isolating a country helped liberalize it was South Africa, vs. the glaring counterexamples of North Korea, Cuba, etc. It can be argued that the difference with S.A. was that it was, at least partially, a representative democracy.
I'm not saying that Pyongyang should be the next host city, but China is (a) the biggest country on earth, (b) one of the countries with the longest and most important histories on earth, (c) a country that's made significant progress in the last decade. Do we wait until they're on par with Sweden before we let them sit at the table? I think having the Olympics in China can be a force for good.
This idea gets taken out for an airing every four years and then put back again until the next time we get wearied of all the politicking.
I don't think it will ever fly. Too many people have far too much to lose from the current arrangements.
Here's an idea: be really careful about awarding no-bid contracts to companies closely linked to weird patriarchal religious sects within the U.S. which may be encouraging widescale statutory rape and / or child abuse. (Regional caveat added simply to distinguish domestic angle of this story versus all too commonly known such angles of foreign policy.)
Polygamist sect gets millions from U.S. government
By Jack Douglas Jr. | McClatchy Newspapers | Saturday, April 12, 2008FT. WORTH, Tex. _American taxpayers have unwittingly helped finance a polygamist sect that is now the focus of a massive child abuse investigation in West Texas, with a business tied to the group receiving a nearly $1 million loan from the federal government and $1.2 million in military contracts.
The ability of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, to operate and grow is largely dependent on huge contributions from its members and revenue from the businesses they control, according to a former accountant for the church, and government officials in Utah and Arizona, where the sect is primarily based.
One of those businesses, NewEra Manufacturing in Las Vegas, has been awarded more than $1.2 million in federal government contracts, with most of the money coming in recent years from the Defense Department for wheel and brake components for military aircraft.
A large portion of the awards were preferential no-bid or "sole source" contracts because of the company's classification as a small business, according to online databases that track federal government appropriations.
NewEra, previously known as Western Precision Inc. and located in Hildale, Utah, also received a $900,000 loan in 2005 from the federal Small Business Administration, the data show.
The president and chief executive of the company is John. C. Wayman, identified as an FLDS leader and a close associate to Warren Jeffs, the sect's "prophet," who was convicted last year as an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.
When Jeffs, who was one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the summer of 2006, he was driving Wayman's late-model red Cadillac Escalade, government officials say.
Wayman did not return phone calls seeking comment.
On NewEra's Web site Wayman says the company is "an honorable and valuable asset to our country" in helping build military and commercial airplanes that carry people throughout the world. He does not mention its ties to the FLDS.
A Games based in Greece would be yet another way for Greek nationalists to make spurious connections between modern and classical Greece and thereby write the Slavs and the Turks out of their history. Greece is *not* a politically neutral choice.
I don't understand the obsession some have to draw a distinction between ancient Greece and modern Greece. The "spurious connections between modern and classical Greece" are based on this simple fact: It's the same freakin' place.
Now, if you want to go down the DNA route to argue that the Greeks of antiquity are somehow different than modern Greeks, that would be indeed a spurious argument since there's no ethnic identity or even race that's the same currently as any ethnic group from thousands of years ago. I think even Greek nationalists would not be stupid enough to argue that the DNA of the ancient Athenians or Spartans or Thebans somehow survived unalloyed. Modern Greeks are obviously an amalgam of their progenitors, plus definitely Slavic, Turkish, and even Frankish and Venetian genes, as well as who knows what else (and who cares, except racists?). If Greeks are proud of their illustrious ancestry, that's should be as unobjectionable as a Greek-American being proud of the US founding fathers. It's not the genetic connection that's important, it's the cultural.
As to Greece not being a politically neutral choice, is there a country that is? Really. But the good news is that Greek nationalists are not as powerful in Greece right now as they used to be, and the Balkan countries, including Turkey, are on increasingly friendlier terms.
That said, even though I am Greek, I'd rather see the Olympics circulate among countries based on one single criterion: No nation that tortures should be allowed to host the Olympics, until it disavows torture and allows an international committee to investigate allegations of torture and arrest anyone who has ever authorized torture.
You get my drift, I trust.
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"And really, I think one of the most interesting things about holding the Olympics in China has been that instead of them becoming just a love-fest for the Chinese government, holding the Olympics has shone a spotlight on China's problems. The only example I can think of where isolating a country helped liberalize it was South Africa, vs. the glaring counterexamples of North Korea, Cuba, etc. It can be argued that the difference with S.A. was that it was, at least partially, a representative democracy.
I'm not saying that Pyongyang should be the next host city, but China is (a) the biggest country on earth, (b) one of the countries with the longest and most important histories on earth, (c) a country that's made significant progress in the last decade. Do we wait until they're on par with Sweden before we let them sit at the table? I think having the Olympics in China can be a force for good.
Posted by Adam Villani | April 13, 2008 1:04 PM"
This would be true if there were a free media market in China. While holding the Olympics here may get foreigners talking more about Darfur and Burma, nobody actually does anything about those places. Meanwhile, many of the most educated civilians here have no idea there is any controversy over Beijing's relations with Khartoum and many don't even know that genocide is taking place in Khartoum. The state media has been pushing the idea that the Dalai Lama (whom they refer to as the leader of an evil clique or cult) has been fomenting violent unrest. In response, the Chinese public seems to think that the government was too peaceful and lenient in putting down the protests. Not holding the Olympics in China wouldn't be isolating it because we still engage them politically (our leaders travel to each other's countries to discuss issues, we have embassies in each other's countries, etc.), economically and culturally (Zhang Yimou can release his officially-sanction and funded movies like "Hero" in the US and the US can release their movies in China as long as it gets passed state censors, which most don't). Engaging China doesn't mean we have to be open to them on everything (after all, it's the Chinese government that has decided to stay isolated in terms of censorship and not making the Renminbi tradeable on international money markets) and make sure that Chinese people never feel any shame or embarrassment about anything.
I'm not sure on what grounds anyone belives that liberal democracies, in general, are better than authoritarian states in general, and specifically that countries like China or Cuba would be better off ruled by liberal democrats (read: American collaborators and oligarchic elites).
Heck, why not go farther and hold the Olympic Games in Cyprus, in between the Greek and Turkish zones? Just clear out the land mines and it'll be hunky-dory.
Oh, looks like we've found a new sport!
Aris-
There are a lot of places that one can count as "Greek" for classical purposes that aren't in Greece. Think about Syracuse, for example. It gets even worse if we consider the Byzantine period. Constantinople and Nicaea and Adrianople were, by then, way more important than Athens, and all of those are in Turkey now.
i'd second making a permanent olympic site (or sites for the winter) so we could all just get to the games and stop any of these headaches.
Here's a better idea - cancel the stupid things. They haven't made any sense since Greece collapsed as a primary nation centuries ago.
Today they're nothing but an economic boondoggle so various corporations can make money, and political ideologues can make hay.
There are a lot of places that one can count as "Greek" for classical purposes that aren't in Greece.
Greeks indeed spread all over the Mediterranean with colonies all over the place, during the Hellenistic era Greek was the most common language of the area, and the Byzantine empire was considered an amalgam of Greek and Roman cultures. So? The original Olympics took place in Olympia, a specific place in Greece. The modern Olympics would not presumably take place in Olympia, which is now an archeologically significant site, but I don't see any connection between Syracuse or any Byzantine city and either the ancient or the modern Olympics (not to mention that under the Byzantines the Olympics were banned as a pagan event).
I find the attempt to deny Greece its essential Greekness very baffling.
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As someone who lives an hour from Seoul, I am profoundly glad that they were held here 20 years ago, or they would never have cleaned the place up.
Gheby, if you want a politically neutral permanent home for the winter olympics, why not Switzerland?
A little late to the party, but here's a more important (to me) suggestion. Let's hold the World Series in Hawaii every year. It can be played in warmer weather and in daylight and selling the tickets could be done in a leisurely and organized manner. The games would still be available for viewing in primetime back on the mainland.
Comments closed April 27, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
That's my idea. Besides the fact that the Turks will be pissed what's the downside?
Posted by rapier | April 13, 2008 11:29 AM