the Olympics are awful. i realized today though that there are plenty of people who have the wool pulled over their eyes.in chatting up a couple of guys at work about the Olympics and the scandals that had gone on with bids to host them, i was asked if i "had any other conspiracies".i'll get into the allegations and such in a second but i'll just start with the facts:
with china's long history of abuse of human rights, why would the interrnational olympic committee "reward" them with all of this attention? the IOC says it's because china has played a meaningful role in the games. if it weren't for the long history of bribe scandals with the IOC and those deciding who gets to host the games, i'd more readily accept that just for argument's sake.
here is a portion of an article from one of those issues (full article here):
so, there's plenty of money in the pot here... there are hundreds, if not thousands, of unpaid athletes, and there are corrupt governments who shell out millions to step out and put on a show like all is well. oh and we're not innocent here either- the US atheltes, even if they wanted to protest or make any sort of statement, have to sign a waiver saying they won't or they can't compete.
the olympics was something we were always told was this wholesome, amateur competition of goodness, when its actually a seedy big-business exploitation. let's just have it every dozen years instead of every 4 :-)
