HAH!

http://www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/blog/?p=2367

Ah, Polakite my friend.....

That's like saying Auschwitz was a "flaw" in Nazi Germany's governance..........

And you wonder why games oppnents lack credibility...

Anti-Semitic comments like RickW's speaks volumes about the mindset of the ORN.

UBC Outdoor Pool

I hate to dishearten everyone further, but the UBC Outdoor Pool will be sacrificed to join the plethora of vastly overpriced condos that now blight the once-beautiful UBC campus. Yet one more reason why I'm glad I retired early.

leftofcentre

Oh my lord, please tell us what RickW said that was "anti-Semitic".

It ain't over 'til it's over.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-cranston/climate-change-plus-west_b_449928.html?view=print

Ed

Please define a "real democracy" just so we know for sure what you're talking about.

snert

I imagine Ed's "real democracy" is one where all legislation has the support of the majority.

because WE will

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centre/newsid=33417.html?cid=rss

self-of-centred

"Anti-Semitic comments like RickW's...."

You wouldn't recognize an anti-Semitic comment if it bit you in the ass. So let me help you out.

From Ljubodrag Simonovic's book "The Olympic Deceit of The Divine Baron - Pierre de Coubertin":

"...that de Coubertin had specially paid tribute to his friend Carl Diem for organizing the "magnificent celebration" of the opening [of the Berlin Olympiad]. What did this magnificent celebration look like in fact? This is how Richard Mandell described the occasion:

"The most famous living German musician Richard Strauss, dressed in white, conducts the great orchestra and chorus of three thousand voices performing "Deutschland uber alles" and "Horst Wessel Lied" ...

...And these are the words of the most popular march of the time, "Horst Wessel Lied"...

"Wenn das Judenblatt vom Messer spritzt, dann geht's nochmal so gut"
[While the Jewish blood pours under a knife, everything goes on much better."]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/236259/Olympism-and-fascism

Or how about Samaranch, a mid-level party leader in the Spanish fascist organization Falange, whose Cedade publications included such themes as the focus on the Jewish conspiracy to control the world, and undermine European society through drugs, pronography and communism, and to control this "Jewish problem", the Jews " must be shut off from white people" and "punished without mercy". The fascist whose crackdown on socialists in Cataluna included the killing of Jews, among others.

http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/15spain.html

Gawd, the anti-Semitism of the Olympic movement continues to this day, and you want to call RickW on "anti-Semitism"?

I'm calling bullshit on you, and punching the "offensive" button. First time ever for me. How's it feel to know that you've achieved a low, lower even than Ron Irwin/IAMC?

tossing about the term anti-Semitism

is like that particular axiom about invoking a Nazi comparison.

Basically, the person invoking said term(s) has lost the argument and the discussion is over.

snert......I grew up under

snert......I grew up under fascism and was educated as a fascist, so I need no instructions on what dictatorships are. Then my years in England opened my eyes and made me a fighter against any forms of dictatorship, whether the dictators gain power, or are elected.

What I can see around the world now, and after 55 years in this country, is the creeping approach and forced acceptance of dictatorial rule, or fascism, under the guise of "competition".

The communists achieved the collectivization of the economy with bayonets, the capitalists with the perceived power of imaginary money, created from the air.

Which one is the biggest fraud and crime?

Having lived under every known ideological system, I can assure you that it makes no difference whether the predators call themselves "right" or "left". They're always the same people under every flag.

Had Harper and Campbell been born under communism, they would be the biggest red flag wavers to enforce their sick policies putting the biggest criminals in control over people's lives. Under internationalist communism they were called "politbureaus", under capitalist globalization the same gang is now "boards of directors", working on the enslaving, and the stealing of people blind.

In the past 35 years since we're under the yoke of the neoclassical market capitalist theory, taught in our corporately owned and controlled universities, our cost of living inflated by over 1,000%, executive wages by also about the same, but wages of the vast majority perhaps doubled, or remained stagnant. Millions have been forced into minimum wage part time jobs, lining up at the food banks that didn't exist until about 1980, when this criminal system really kicked in. .

This alone is a clear example of dictatorship and fascism, or if you like, communism that also thrived on exploitation and flashy show extravaganzas to keep people shut up.

What is real democracy? When governments do not consider themselves licenced dictators, who can do anything and serve special interests for the term of their offices.

Wacky Bennett was a capitalist "right winger", but he did a lot of good, like the 5% SS&MA tax so we could have hospital treatments for $1. day, the nationalization of BC Electric and the ferries etc. etc. to serve people and improve conditions, but the present gang, waving the same flag, is stealing us blind.

Do you think it is right to force little 5-6 year old kids to sit in school buses for up to 5 hours per day, because their schools were closed, or people forced to wait months and years for medical treatment, so that we can pay for this Olympic hysteria and that executives can steal multimillion salaries and take billions out of BC and Canada as "wealth creating foreign investors"

Anybody who follows any of these criminal ideologies is either a fool, or a crook. Politicians and governments not excluded.

Ed Deak.

with you all the way Ed

(except maybe mentioning Wacky Bennett and his merry band of crooks without saying they should have all stood trial)

WHY did it all go to hell around the start of the eighties? What tipped us over the edge?

Takuan

Ronald Reagan? Brian Mulroney? New Wave music?

I don't know; must be one of those.

Neither....It was the

Neither....It was the Bilderbergers and the Trilaterals et al, who took control of the university economics departments and forced the Friedmanite, Chicago School economic fraud on the world in the early 70s. Reagan and Thatcher just used their sick theories to legalize colonization, enslavement and grand theft.

Then came the deregulation of the banks by Reagan and in 1991 by Mulroney, permitting them to "create" unlimited amounts of imaginary monies to
colonize the world, take control of all resources and collectivize industries and economies.

The world's food supply is now controlled by 2-3 corporations who are destroying the most efficient food production, the family farm system etc. etc.under the fraud of "globalization", starving 30 million, mostly little children to death.

Haiti that once was a self sufficient country is a very good example of what colonization by capital can do. .

Wealth can not be created, only taken from other sectors, the environment and the future.

The same for "cost cuttings", transferring real cost on others.

The main culprits are the fraudulent definitions of economic efficiency as the "biggest profits for the least monetary inputs", the GDP that accounts the worst damages as benefits, the "growth and productivity" figures that could never stand up in any business accounting system, because our present economic calculations, taught in our universities, have no debit columns.

Everything is counted as assets and benefits by the Priesthood of the Money God, falsely called "economists"

Until that bunch is questioned and wiped out, politicians are going to use their scriptural legalization to commit grand theft and mass murder.

Ed Deak.

another take

Quote: "WHY did it all go to hell around the start of the eighties? What tipped us over the edge?"

I choose to think that by the eigthies the average wage-earner had accumulated so many toys that he no longer felt a need to worry about the future of the planet, in other words: "I'm allright Jack!"

That state has always been the goal of capitalism, give the poor saps enough little toys and they will happily work and ask no questions!

Look around you! People no longer even know what the basic necessities are; they think they need all these gadgets and frills.

Because they need them, they keep struggling to acquire whatever new gimmick is advertized on TV, and look up to those who have the most toys!

The end result is that they also vote as if they were actually well-off people! exactly as planned.

These idiots forget that some day they may need doctors care or some sort of social assistance. they forget because they are too busy watching silly stuff like the olympics.

The schadenfreude is in full effect today...

Wait wait let me summarize a certain someone's comments to help focus the anti-Games schadenfreude:

"Oligopolistic sham of a spectacle... yar grumpf harumpf... extracting the wealth from our land and no real benefit... phony elections...harumpf rarf... tin pot dictators... Vancouver's a disgrace... rumpf rarr... fascist corporatization..."

I'm starting to think there is a Tyee forum bot that automatically populates these comment spaces.

Really... is protesting the Games going to raise electoral turnout? How about electoral reform? Oh wait... we tried that. Is protesting going to raise awareness for addictions services cuts? Homelessness? Nope. Not one bit. Not now. Lazy advocacy in my opinion. But very self-congratulatory and self-righteous.

The translation of

The translation of "Schadenfreude" is "rejoicing over somebody's hurt, or damage"

Anybody who does this is a nutcase, or an economic competitor.

Many people have known since the beginning that this Olympics showbiz is going to cost far more than we were told, as it turned out 10 times more than the original estimates, and are pointing it out that the pushers of this extravaganza were either stupid, or lying, while transferring costs on others. Macdonalds and Coca Cola are not going to pay the excess costs, neither will any of the child labour clothing factory owners.

The pushers will be rewarded with directorships and fancy monies, but the little kids on the school buses will only suffer.

Also, the people of BC will pay big in taxes and far worse, with the loss of human rights and services

There's nothing to be jubilating about this, as we'll be groaning under the transferred costs for many years.

Ed Deak.

so unless capitalism lifts us off this planet

and disperses our basket of eggs, we're done.

Of course

Any comment thread left alone will go back to 1940s' Europe.

No wonder I look at anti-Olympics people with scorn.

Back to some secret operation to fly cover for Fraser Valley hot shot MLA.

raising awareness

"Really... is protesting the Games going to raise electoral turnout? How about electoral reform? Oh wait... we tried that. Is protesting going to raise awareness for addictions services cuts? Homelessness? Nope. Not one bit. Not now."

It might. Given the endless protestations (pun intended) that it's a pointless exercise... and the accompanying exhortations that staying home on the couch in front of the TV is some kind of twenty-first century recipe for national pride, I find myself wondering if the denigrators of Olympic critics fear effective protests and engaged, aware citizens more than they might care to admit.

Re: never-ending

never-ending:

"I remember sharing space in an old building downtown with the "directors" of a then one week event at the beach.
I found it hard to believe, but those people had full-time jobs with all the perks, by "managing" that one event!

People are gullible: make an event where they can guzzle beer at the beach, and they will support you."

I wish that were true because, if it were, most of the arts and festival groups in this city would not be teetering on the brink of insolvency. As someone who has worked for more than 20 years "managing" events like the one you describe I can say that, except for a lucky few, "perks" that other workers take for granted, not to mention living wages, are hard to come by.

You clearly have no idea how much work and organization it takes to get tens of thousands of people and hundreds of performers, infrastructure support staff, production staff and equipment, vendors, and volunteers, among others, in one place, on time, and paid for their efforts. By virtue of their experience many of those same people were hired to form the backbone of the Olympics and its related events. Your snide dismissal of their skills and value do all of them a grave disservice.

@ Ed Deak

The Olympics dooby went by my home yesterday. It was really rather embarrassing. Nonetheless, I think you would have been interested to witness this bit of ersatz pseudo-nationalism in practice.

The first particpant to pass by was the RBC float/truck with go-go dancers and loud rockish music (ROFL) advertising the idea that to make Canada a better place all we need to do is give all our money to the RBC! Utterly and hilariously idiotic and sad at the same time.

The next two participoants were both Coke floats/trucks (snicker snicker) advertising how Coke makes Canada, and everything else of course, better. Eventually some tired, fat, old guy slumped by carrying the giant dooby, which blew out.

All in all, it was quite a sight to see. I felt both ashamed and angered that my taxes went to pay for this piece of nonesense.

Chris Keam: Bingo

You hit the nail on the head with a very, very funny, yet apt, comment:

"... the accompanying exhortations that staying home on the couch in front of the TV is some kind of twenty-first century recipe for national pride...."

Thanks for that.

:)

Canada's Olympic Harpocrisy

In 1980 Canada boycotted the Olympics in Moscow in order to protest the Soviet War in Afghanistan. Thirty years later, we are the hosts and invaders. Once again western hypocrisy takes center stage during the 2010 Corporate Games.

Canada's Olympic Harpocrisy

In 1980 Canada boycotted the Olympics in Moscow in order to protest the Soviet War in Afghanistan. Thirty years later, we are the hosts and invaders. Once again western hypocrisy takes center stage during the 2010 Corporate Games.