Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/08/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Olympic games, and sports in general, have been abused since long, not only 1936 and now. Commercially and politically, from all blocks if west or east. Moscow '80 and L.A. '84 were similarly abused for political statements, boycots and cold war sabre rattling. The chinese just come a bit later. So, not the fact of abusing the games is the issue, but, actually, the chinese dictatorship itself is it. While I share Nathan's opinion about the chinese government for 100%, I think also about those many regular, innocent, hard working chinese people, who are, nevertheless, proud of being an olympic host for the world - because they are chinese, and because they are patriots. I am far away from putting these people in the same pot as their dictators, and I would not affront them by claiming a tv boycott, which is anyway useless. I guess, if there's something they like even less than their governement, it is paternalism and moral instructions from europeans and north-americans. What concerns the sport itself, my prefs are, like Nathan's, more focused on football tournaments (Fifa, Uefa, CL) than olympic games with their medals inflation and doping-suspected disciplines like track athletics, weight lifting and others, but that's another story. Though, a swiss compatriot, Fabian Cancellara, just won gold in such a category, bicycle time trial... :-) Didier At 07:32 13.08.2008, Nathan Wajsman wrote: >Well, once again, the 2008 Olympics, just like the 1936 ones, are >being held in the wrong place and are designed to allow a dictatorship >to present a sanitized image to the world while the dissidents are >locked up and ordinary people herded like cattle. My own take on it is >here: >http://www.fotocycle.dk:80/blog/?p=190 >Nathan