Canada said this morning that it won’t participate in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. Now watch Japan announce to the world that the Olympics are postponed.
The 1980 Olympic Games was a controversial one, but one thing is for certain: the opening ceremonies have always been a show of impressive skill and beauty.
The doping scandal that keeps many Russian athletes from competing in top events, including the ongoing Winter Olympics, was just part of the West’s devious strategy against Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister has said.
Sergey Lavrov said barring dozens of Russians from the games was “part of this unfair competition, because the Americans apparently can no longer beat us in a fair fight. They believe that taking back and preserving uncontested leadership in global sports requires sidelining the competition.”
The assertion came in an interview the minister gave to Rossia-1 news channel, aired on Sunday. Lavrov said in other areas he saw the same approach, “the use of unilateral, coercive, illegitimate, unlawful actions to obtain the advantage.”
Lavrov believes that the US and other Western powers are now fighting dirty because they cannot deal with the fact that Russia resurged after a low point in the 1990s, when much of its government was influenced by various foreign advisors pushing the agendas of their native countries. Russia has since realized it was “not a newborn country but a nation with a thousand-year long history” that its citizens should be proud of.
“This was a shock for the people who falsely thought they could act with impunity against Russia. I believe they still cannot deal with this shock,” he added, saying the symptoms of the condition included the “Russiagate” scandal, an allegation that Russia somehow attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election. Lavrov says there will never be proof of such interference.
“They have been investigating this for a year and not a single fact has surfaced to corroborate these speculations,” he said. “If there were any facts, they would have been leaked by now. I know this is how the US system works. Everything gets leaked with so many people involved in all those hearings and investigations.”
The Russian minister said Moscow saw the current state of relations with the US as abnormal and expected it to be fixed in time. For its part, Russia will not take hasty action in retaliation to US moves like anti-Russian sanctions, to avoid fueling the hysteria and giving leverage to people wishing to escalate the tensions, he said.
Lavrov said he personally was “indifferent” to being listed on Washington’s latest list of Russian citizens who may be subjected to further sanctions. But he said he was initially baffled by the way the anti-Russian panic affected people in the US.
“I could not believe my eyes and ears, seeing and hearing many officials in Washington, in the administration and Congress, whom I knew personally — quite serious and smart, rational people. I was amazed to see them being stripped of every bit of sense by this mass psychosis,” he said.
North Korea can counter any nuclear threat, its representative told a conference on disarmament in Geneva. He warned the US against bringing its strategic assets to and around the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea said it had made “absolutely the right choice” by boosting its nuclear capabilities.
Pyongyang’s representative has urged the US to completely stop joint exercises with South Korea and “all nuclear war drills” in the region and has spoken out against US’s military presence on the Korean Peninsula “under the pretext of the security of the Olympic Games.“
“This is a dangerous act of throwing a wet blanket over the current positive atmosphere of inter-Korean relations,” the representative said.
The US disarmament ambassador at the talks advocated for North Korea’s denuclearization and further pressure on Pyongyang, saying “The US will not recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapon state.”
Last week, Seoul and Pyongyang agreed on the North Korean team’s participation in the Olympic Games, where the two neighbors will also have a joint hockey team. The move was discussed during the first bilateral talks in two years, widely seen as a positive sign amid heightened tensions in the region.
This will prevent war, not sanctions, not threats, not foreign interference. If you are not Korean, this conflict has nothing to do with you. Go home and fix your own countries, and take all them hypocrites pontificating in Vancouver with you.
Announcement comes as 2 sides hold rare talks ahead of Games in Pyeongchang next month
The head of North Korea’s delegation, Ri Son Gwon, left, shakes hands with his South Korean counterpart, Cho Myoung-gyon, after their meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, on Jan. 9. (Reuters)
The rival Koreas have agreed to form their first joint Olympic team and have their athletes march together during the opening ceremony of next month’s Winter Olympics in the South, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.
The ministry said the two sides reached the agreement during talks Wednesday in the border village of Panmunjom.
Athletes from the two Koreas will march together under a “unification flag” depicting their peninsula during the opening ceremony and will field a women’s ice hockey team, according to a joint statement released by the ministry.
The measures require approval by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The South Korean ministry said the two Koreas will consult with the committee this weekend.
North Korea will send a delegation of about 550, including 230 cheerleaders, 140 artists and 30 taekwondo players for a demonstration, the statement said.
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that they will be holding a briefing which is designed to instruct the public on how to prepare for a nuclear war. A post on the agency’s website said that the briefing will be taking place on January 16th at the Alexander D. Langmuir Auditorium in Atlanta Georgia. The briefing will be hosted by a number of CDC representatives including Dan Sosin, Robert Whitcomb, and Betsy Kagey.
Some examples of the presentations that will be given are “Public Health: Preparing for the Unthinkable”, “Using Data and Decision Aids to Drive Response Efforts”, “Public Health Resources to Meet Critical Components of Preparedness” and “Roadmap to Radiation Preparedness.”
“While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps. Despite the fear surrounding such an event, planning and preparation can lessen deaths and illness. For instance, most people don’t realize that sheltering in place for at least 24 hours is crucial to saving lives and reducing exposure to radiation. While federal, state, and local agencies will lead the immediate response efforts, public health will play a key role in responding. Join us for this session of Grand Rounds to learn what public health programs have done on a federal, state, and local level to prepare for a nuclear detonation. Learn how planning and preparation efforts for a nuclear detonation are similar and different from other emergency response planning efforts,” a statement from the agency read.
This statement is ominous not only because of mushroom cloud photo featured in the post but also because it comes it the midst of escalating hostility between the U.S and North Korea. For months now President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been exchanging threats, and this week Trump made a tweet suggesting nuclear force against the country.
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” his tweet read.
However, despite all of these harsh words that are heavily reported in the mainstream media, there have been some positive developments recently on the Korean peninsula. This week it was reported that a line of communication was opened between North and South Korea and that peace talks have been scheduled between the two countries.
Kim Jong-un has expressed interest in making peace before the coming Winter Olympic games to be hosted in South Korea.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the North Korean regime’s establishment, and the South will host the Winter Games. This year holds significance for the two Koreas.
“The Winter Games to be held in South Korea will be a good occasion for the country. We sincerely hope that the Winter Olympics will be a success. We have the readiness to take various steps, including the dispatch of the delegation,” Kim Jong-un said.
As TFTP recently reported, China has made similar moves to prepare their citizens for the prospect of a nuclear holocaust.
Revealing the extreme direness of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, a state-run Chinese media outlet based in a province bordering North Korea and Russia — the Jilin Daily — published a “common sense” guide for surviving a nuclear war, according to Reuters.
Although the full-page article of guidelines doesn’t specifically mention North Korea, the warning was clearly a result of the increasing tensions between a nuclear-armed DPRK, and the United States.
The influential Chinese state-run Global Times described the article as a public service announcement due to the situation on the Korean peninsula.
Make no mistake that the world is teetering on the brink of an extreme nuclear catastrophe.
It’s definitely time to pay attention!
John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page.John is currently battling cancer , and will be working to help others through his experience, if you wish to contribute to his treatments consider subscribing to his podcast to support . This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.
The 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil cost Brazilian taxpayers $4.6 billion, conservative estimates show. But once related expenses covered by the Brazilian government are factored in, the overall costs hit the $12 billion mark, which equates to about 0.72 percent of Brazil’s national budget.
Prior to the Olympics, however, the Brazilian government had already spent BR$39.5 billion on infrastructure, or about $12 billion. Stadiums and urban projects designed to ensure the country was ready for the sports event were built, but aside from the events scheduled for 2014 and 2016, there seemed to be little to no demand for such public investments, which prompted the country to wonder whether the expenses were worth the trouble.
Now, as these same structures are left to rot, the documented decay becomes a symbol of government waste, not only because the investments weren’t meant to stand the test of time, but also because the Brazilian government’s lack of concern for the taxpayer is not the main story. It is, in fact, just a footnote.
Like many others, the government ignored the economic realities of the country, betting on inflation and cronyism in order to throw an unforgettable party.
A Party Worth Going Broke For: How Brazil ‘Paid’ The Olympic Bills
Due to backlash over former President Dilma Rousseff’s economic policies, a nationwide movement supporting impeachment targeted her for, among many other things, raising government spending without accounting for the increases.
Due to the government’s lavish spending prior to the World Cup and Summer Olympics, Rousseff was afraid of suffering the consequences for increasing spending without hurting other government projects as a result, which would have forced the president to be upfront about her expenses. This led to a move that provoked chaos among consumers simply because banks were forced to put money into circulation that wasn’t backed by anything.
Instead of giving the money to banks so they could then cover social projects, pensions, and welfare programs, Brazil’s Treasury Department simply promised banks they would pay them back down the road. Thus, money meant for other projects remained in the treasury, allowing the federal government to spend it with other matters. This move guaranteed that financial institutions keeping an eye on the government’s budget wouldn’t know that banks hadn’t been using the money coming from the Treasury. This allowed banks to distribute sums associated with welfare and other social programs without depleting the government’s funds. As more cash was put into circulation by the banks and the federal government due to the World Cup and Olympics-related expenses, the value of Brazilian money tanked. To the consumer, that translated into lower purchasing power, making it more difficult for the poor to stock their pantries.
With the government’s out of hand expenses prior to the World Cup and Olympics, the Brazilian people suffered the ultimate blow because the government robbed them of their money’s purchasing power, all because the president didn’t want to admit she had gotten out of hand.
Now that the structures built for the world to see are rotting away, the low-income Brazilian continues to suffer. The only solution to this matter is to unleash currency control from the Brazilian central bank, removing its responsibility for financial policies from the hands of the federal government. Only then will the federal government be powerless in creating more debt and inflation, keeping it from playing with the Brazilian taxpayer’s hard-earned money.
The 31st Olympic summer games are underway in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and thousands of athletes and spectators from around the world have gathered for the event which will serve as prime time entertainment for the next couple of weeks. Every four years an insane amount of money is dumped into the spectacle as host cities and the Olympic committee construct arenas, stadiums and press quarters, leaving megalithic ruins in their wake.
Most of the news coverage about the events in Rio are centered around the pomp and splendor of athleticism, hoping to portray the affair as an opportunity for the world to feel united in sport, yet the truth is always hidden from the highlights and coverage: the world is suffering from terrible inequality and the fallout of economic tyranny, and the divide between the haves and have-nots is now greater than it has ever been.
Rio de Janeiro is an increasingly troubled city, known for its sprawling favelas, where the poor live in zinc-roofed shacks, rivaled only by the slums of India. Yet some $4.6 billion has spent already in creating the facilities for the 2016 summer olympics, which will be used for just two weeks, then forgotten, and when all other expenses are factored in, some $12 billion dollars will be spent on the show. Meanwhile, the average monthly salary in Brazil is around $778, which explains why so much of Rio is so desperately poverty-stricken.
“If the economics of huge sporting events is the same in Brazil is it is everywhere else it has been studied, then the Olympics will do nothing for the economy of Brazil, and nothing for the taxpayers there who were forced to pony up the cash to pay for it all.” [Source]
The world is fracturing at the seams at present, and in this recent photo from Rio, the stark contrast between manufactured reality and truth is clearly visible. Thousands of people are starving just outside of view of the cameras, poor people are being violently hustled out of sight by riot police, and crimes of desperation of rocking the city, yet, in the Olympic arena, paid security is doing its part to shelter event-goers from the harsh reality of life in one of the world’s most troubled cities.
This photo truly is like a scene from the popular movie Hunger Games, where an insanely wealthy and oppressive world elite live in stupendous luxury amongst a world packed with second class citizens who are deliberately kept poor by the vampiric economic policies of the rich and powerful.
Mainstream media coverage of the events does a fabulous job of hiding reality from those of us who watch in the comfort of air-conditioned homes, restaurants and bars around the first world, but the truth is out there for those who have eyes to see. Yet, as the world faces ever-increasing troubles initiated by a global banking elite, it is becoming more and more difficult to conceal the cracks developing in society. Events like the Olympics are a wake up call to all middle class people of compassion and concern.
Waking Times is an independently owned and operated online magazine that seizes on the transformational power of information to trigger personal revolution and influence humanity’s evolution.
Lecturer in Exercise Physiology and Nutrition, Nottingham Trent University
Veg loading. pinkomelet/Shutterstock
The Olympics are now in full swing, with more than 10,500 athletes from 205 different countries in Rio de Janeiro for the summer games. At this elite level the winning margins are increasingly narrow – and when all else is equal the difference between gold and silver may come down to something as seemingly simple as what an athlete eats. But of course, what’s on the menu is far from simple, and in the athletes village in Rio a team of 2,500 will be working around the clock to serve 60,000 meals a day.
At this level, elite athletes are likely to take a personalised approach to their nutrition – with their diets meticulously planned, tested, and often underpinned by the latest research – which has exploded over the past few years and continues to grow at a rapid rate.
But the meticulous approach to food and diet taken by modern day Olympians is in stark contrast to some of the earliest ancient Greek athletes. Take Charmis, the Spartan winner of the Olympic short sprint in 668BC, who is reported to have eaten a special diet of dried figs throughout the games. While other typical early Olympians lived sparingly on barley bread and cheese.
How to eat like an Olympian?HandmadePictures/Shutterstock
The ancient Greek trainer Pythagoras – not to be confused with the famous Greek philosopher and mathematician – then introduced the concept of eating meat into the diets of athletes in the middle of the fifth century. And from there athletes didn’t look back and one of the first to incorporate meat into his training diet was middle distance runner Dromeus of Stymhalos. He had two victories in the dolichos (long-foot race) at both Olympia and the Pythian Games, three at Isthmian, and five victories at the Nemian games – which led to meat being seriously considered as a nutritional strategy.
Modern methods of eating
The first detailed recording of dietary intakes during the modern Olympic games didn’t appear until the 1936 Berlin Games. Here, a study of athletes’ diets found that many would dine on two steaks a meal, and sometimes poultry – with nearly half a kilogram of meat eaten daily – while pre-event meals consisted of three steaks, eggs and meat extract.
The study also found that other athletes would stress the importance of high carbohydrate intake with the Brits consuming large quantities of porridge and the Italians pasta. This was further supported with reports that some athletes would eat diets so high in carbohydrate, that they consumed 6,700-7,300 calories a day. Perhaps this was the first indication of sport and event-specific nutrition, but sadly neither of the studies correlated food intake with sporting event or performance outcomes.
A winning start to the day?Flaffy/Shutterstock
It is now known of course, that one of the most significant ways to enhance endurance performance – such as marathon running – is indeed by eating carbohydrate before a race. This is because during exercise, the body’s carbohydrate stores can be diminished, and carbohydrates are important to athletes because they can help to improve endurance performance for events of 60 to 90 minutes. So because of this, elite endurance athletes are now often advised to eat carbohydrates 24 to 36 hours before competition. For a 65kg athlete this would work out at 650 grams a day, and would be spread across multiple meals from a variety of carbohydrate sources – such as bread, potatoes, rice or pasta.
In relation to exercise training, however, it is now thought that strategic periods of reduced carbohydrate and elevated protein intake may actually be more beneficial.
Event specific diets
For modern athletes, events with higher exercise intensities and short durations – such as track sprint cycling – can also be enhanced by nutritional strategy. Athletes will often take the naturally occurring amino acid beta-alanine – as a nutritional supplement. This is because it can enhance high-intensity exercise by balancing the muscle pH which naturally drops during this type of exercise. Put simply, a drop in muscle pH is a major contributor to muscle fatigue. And by supplementing with beta-alanine it stops this fatigue from happening so quickly.
Beetroot juice has also received substantial recent interest due to its possible performance enhancing effects. Drinking it both before – usually up to 2.5 hours – and after (more than six days) may improve exercise capacity by decreasing the “oxygen cost” – which is basically the amount of oxygen used in exercise. So by drinking beetroot juice an athlete can become more economical in their performance.
Beetroot juice boosts stamina by making muscles ‘more efficient’.verca/Shutterstock
Specific performance nutrition can also help to prevent illness by providing the correct amount of energy and macronutrients to match the energy needs of training, and to prevent fatigue. Recent research also suggests that probiotic and prebiotics might also be beneficial to athletes because they can help to enhance the immune system – reducing the number of upper respiratory tract infections during a winter period of training and competition – when these types of infections are more prevalent.
But in the pursuit of Olympic glory ultimately nutrition is just one component in the arsenal that athletes have. Since ancient Greece, food has been seen as integral to performance, and with a growing body of evidence showing that performance nutrition can be the difference between places on the podium, it makes sense for athletes to carefully consider what they are putting into their bodies. Because after all, the saying goes, you are what you eat – and it seems this couldn’t be more true for our world class medal winners.
Okay, maybe not everybody. Not the movers and shakers who profit from the Games’ intricacies, not the brokers, not the travel agencies, not the gougers, swindlers and parasites who come out of the woodwork, and certainly not the swinish IOC sycophants whose snouts are buried so deep in the money trough, they have to force themselves to come up occasionally for air.
Ask the 4,200 families in Rio de Janeiro who were forcibly removed from their modest homes in order to make room for Olympic venue construction. Ask them in Portuguese if they are “proud” to see Brazil host the Games (the first South American country to be so honored), and ask if that “pride” offsets being uprooted and discarded.
In the mid-1950s, people rightly complained and protested when a few hundred Mexican-American families were evicted from Chavez Ravine to make room for Dodger Stadium. While this was undeniably an unvarnished power-play orchestrated by the money boys, compared to the international-scale mischief being done in Rio de Janeiro, that Ravine debacle, disgraceful as it was, barely moves the needle.
Also, consider the Big Picture: If we look solely at the net effects on a host country’s economy, the Olympic Games, historically, have been notoriously disruptive. The last Games that didn’t plunder the economy was the 1984 Games, held in LA, and the fact that they managed to come out ahead was largely the result of luck.
Didn’t it take Montreal (site of the 1976 Olympics) something like 25 years to pay off the debt they incurred? Didn’t the good people of Quebec go ape-shit over getting stuck with that monumental tab? In truth, hosting the Games is nothing more than a vanity move done in the service of a miniscule percentage of the population.
Moreover, whatever “purpose” the Olympics once served, it has long since been erased, if not flouted. The world is infinitely smaller than it was in 1896, the year of the first Games—back when it took Americans two weeks to cross the ocean to compete on foreign soil, and when only a handful of people (mainly students and teachers) could even locate Ethiopia on a map, much less claim to have met a citizen.
Today there are two Ethiopian restaurants in Los Angeles. One of them is right down the road from a Somali cafe, not far from the Ukrainian deli and a Thai take-out that used to be a Turkish coffeehouse.
Alas, the Olympic Games are an anachronism, a throwback to another era. All good things must end, including the Soap Box Derby, the Pillsbury Bake-Off, and the swimsuit portion of the Miss America Beauty Pageant. The world has shrunk. For crying out loud, I get e-mails from Africa. I correspond with wealthy Nigerian widows asking me to help them recover money (“Dearest Beloved”). I’m still weighing their offers.
Maybe the best argument for abolishing the Games is the fact that so many events now feature professional athletes. How repugnant and self-destructive is that? The one aspect that made the Olympics watchable—its amateurism and “innocence”—is now gone. Does anyone honestly get a thrill from watching a group of NBA all-stars demolish a team from Mongolia by 44 points? (“USA! USA! USA!)
And speaking of money, there’s the $1.2 billion that NBC paid for rights to broadcast the 2016 Games. $1.2 billion?? Holy decimal point, Batman! If we wonder why there’s so many commercials, that’s what you get when the network needs to sell $1.2 billion worth of air time to advertisers in order to recoup its investment.
This whole thing disturbs me. It bugs me. I think maybe I need a drink. I prefer Reyka vodka. It’s from Iceland.
A former Olympic gold medalist reflects on his own financial struggles as he trained and competed for the 1984 Summer Games. Thirty years later, not much has changed for many Olympians.
Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology, West Virginia University
Aug 8, 2016
Last week, while sitting in traffic, I noticed a weathered bumper sticker with a little acoustic guitar on it that said: “Real musicians have day jobs.”
I presume most of us do have real day jobs, but as the Rio Olympic Games begin, for some reason – maybe because I’m an ex-Olympic shooter – I wondered about the hundreds of young women and men who have tried (with many failing) to represent the United States in the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Real musicians and Olympians seem to have a lot in common. They have ambition and enthusiasm for their craft. But like musicians, these talented young people have to pay their electric bills too. How do they support themselves and their families, all while having to diligently train, often several hours a day over the course of years? How did I pull it off?
The haves and haves nots
Many might assume that since athletes are at the pinnacles of their respective sports, they’re all able to live comfortably, either from endorsements or competing professionally. After all, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps’ estimated net worth is about US$55,000,000.
But most who do make it to Rio receive very little funding, and most don’t make a lot of money off their sport outside of the Olympics, either. For example, two-time Olympic javelin thrower Cyrus Hostetler recently told The Washington Post that the most he’s ever earned in a year is $3,000.
Sure, there are many celebrity athletes who are professionals, have corporate endorsements and have their airbrushed faces on a Wheaties box. NBA stars like Kevin Durant and Jimmy Butler will take a hiatus from their NBA training camps, compete in the Olympic Games and then return to a life of material comfort. But these folks are few and far between.
The average U.S. Olympian simply does not live in the highest level of the financial stratosphere. According to the Track and Field Athletic Association, there’s a “steep pyramid of income opportunities” for track and field athletes, with only a “select few” able to earn a very good living. Fifty percent of track athletes who rank in the top 10 in the U.S. in their event earn less than $15,000 annually from the sport.
Once the Games end, the Team USA basketball players don’t have to worry about paying the bills. For other athletes, uncertainty looms.USA Today Sports/Reuters
Unlike many other countries, the United States federal government doesn’t fund Olympic programs, though some athletes get special funding from their national governing bodies. For example, USA Swimming reportedly provides approximately $3,000 to national team members of its top 16 ranked athletes. But other aspiring athletes are actually unemployed and need to be supported by their families – and some families have even gone bankrupt trying to support their son’s or daughter’s Olympic dreams. Leading up to the 2012 Games in London, US News reported that gymnast Gabby Douglas’ mother had filed for bankruptcy, in part due to “the high cost of her daughter’s training, which involved living away from home for two years.”
A number of aspiring Olympians – like decathlete Jeremy Taiwo and swimmer Chuck Katis – have resorted to the crowdfunding website GoFundMe to help finance their training and various travel costs.
Scraping by to chase a dream
In reality, countless hopefuls and current Olympians hold down real jobs working all shifts. You name it, they do it: waiter, teacher, coach, construction worker, public speaker, janitor and many other jobs. For example, swimmer Amanda Beard has worked as a model and as a public speaker to earn a living.
Many are undergraduate and graduate students who train at their universities. Some serve in the military. Several fortunate athletes live and train at regional Olympic training centers like those at Colorado Springs, Chula Vista and Lake Placid.
The U.S. Olympic Committee has created athlete employment programs that offer some support and employment opportunities. For example, the Team USA Athlete Career and Education Program (ACE) exists to link aspiring athletes with organizations like Coca-Cola and Dick’s Sporting Goods, among others, that provide full- and part-time employment.
In my case, I recall preparing over two Olympic quadrennials to get ready for the boycotted 1980 Moscow Games (a team I did not make) and the 1984 Los Angeles Games (which I did make and medal) as a shooter. It was not a financially comfortable time in my life.
I supported myself with a mix of funding from the G.I. Bill, a graduate assistantship teaching physical education classes and work as a shooting coach. I also served part-time as a member of the U.S. Army Reserves. All told, from working three jobs, I earned $500 a month (around $1,500 today), plus the cost of tuition.
In fact, I just received a Social Security statement of earned income during those eight years. It doesn’t reflect the wages of a rich man during my Olympic quest – and even so I was probably one of the lucky ones. Many more fail in the dream to make an Olympic team than those who actually get to walk behind the flag in the opening ceremonies.
Chasing the Olympic dream can be exhausting. It’s not a straight path. There are skilled athletes who had to drop out of their chase for a medal because of finances.
So when you watch the Olympics, consider the personal stories of the 2016 U.S. Olympians who might be making less than $12,000 a year.
I can tell you from personal experience it’s not easy. But I can also tell you it can be quite rewarding.
The heart-warming image of the Olympic Refugee Team entering the Maracana Stadium last Friday was a special moment, but 77,000 Brazilian residents have themselves been displaced as a result of the Games.
The Rio 2016 Games are the first to have a team of refugees compete, in recognition of the 60 million refugees around the world.
Athletes from Syria, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo were chosen to represent the refugee team, which has been handed a group of coaches and support staff to help them during the Games.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach heralded the refugee team.
“These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem,” he said.
“We will offer them a home in the Olympic Village together with all the athletes of the word. The Olympic anthem will be played in their honor and the Olympic flag will lead them into the Olympic Stadium.
“This will be a symbol of hope for all the refugees in our world, and will make the world better aware of the magnitude of this crisis. It is also a signal to the international community that refugees are our fellow human beings and are an enrichment to society.”
Although the Olympics may offer a handful of refugees a temporary home in Brazil, the event itself has directly forced around 77,000 Brazilian natives from their homes to make way for infrastructure.
As was the case in the football World Cup in 2014, protesters opposed the hosting of a major sporting event in Brazil – mainly due to the country’s dire economic situation and the social issues that ravage the nation.
One of the main reasons for opposition to the 2016 Olympics has been the creation of IDPs, internally displaced persons, in Brazil.
Among the worst-affected areas was the poverty-stricken Rio suburb of Vila Autodromo, where residents were forcibly removed from their homes.
The infrastructure upgrade to Vila Autodromo will drive development projects including plush apartment buildings, but serves as a sardonic reminder to poor families that they have been forced out of their homes.
Helicopter overview with biologist Mario Moscatelli illustrates the extent of Olympic host city’s water pollution Click here for the full story:http://olympics.cbc.ca/news/article/r…
Washington and its Canadian vassal are trying to use a Western media-created Russian athletic doping scandal to ban Russian participation in the Olympic games in Brazil. Washington and Canada are pressuring other countries to get on board with Washington’s vendetta against Russia. The vendetta is conducted under the cover of “protecting clean athletics.”
You can bet your life that Washington is not motivated by a respect for fairness in sports. Washington is busy at home destroying fairness to the poor, and Washington, which disregards the sovereignty of countries and international law against naked aggression, is busy abroad destroying millions of lives for hegemonic purposes.
We could conclude that Washington wants hegemony in sports just as it does in foreign affairs and wants Russian athletes out of the way so that Americans can win more medals. But this would be to miss the real point of Washington’s campaign against Russia. The “doping scandal” is part of Washington’s ongoing effort to isolate Russia and to build opposition to Putin inside Russia.
There is a minority known as “Atlanticist Integrationists” inside the Russian government and in the business sector that believes that it is more important for Russia to be integrated into the West than to be sovereign. This minority of Russians is willing to trade off Russian independence for Western acceptance. Essentially they are traitors who Putin tolerates.
With the ban on Russia’s participation in the Olympics, Washington is attempting to strengthen this opposition to Putin. Now the opposition can say: “Putin’s intransigence has kept Russia out of the Olympics. Putin has isolated Russia. We must cooperate (a euphemism for giving in) with the West or become an outcast.”
This is Washington’s game. The Olympic ban is directed at undermining Putin among Russians. “He kept us out of the Olympics!”
The Atlanticist Integrationists are willing to betray either Assad or Crimea in order to gain acceptance by Washington. Thus, Washington is working to strengthen its Russian allies.
Europeans are disturbed by Washington’s politicization of the Olympics. European Olympic Committee President Pat Hickey objected to Washington’s attempt to impose punishment “before any evidence has been presented. Such interference and calls ahead of the McLaren Report’s publication are totally against internationally recognized fair legal process and may have completely undermined the integrity and therefore the credibility of this important report.”
Hickey said that it is clear from the Washington/Canadian effort that “both the independence and the confidentiality of the report have been compromised.”
Hickey goes on to say:
“It is clear that only athletes and organizations known to support a ban of the Russian Olympic Team have been contacted.
“I have to question on what authority the USA and Canadian anti-doping agencies prepared their letter and what mandate they have to lead an international call for a ban of another nation in the Olympic family.
Washington, of course, has no respect for due process in the United States itself, or in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine, Honduras, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, or Great Britain, a vassal state told by Obama that it would not be permitted to leave the EU. Why would Washington be concerned that Russia be permitted due process?
In its report, the New York Times, the madam of the American media whorehouse, did not mention Hickey’s concerns.
The McLaren Report is supposed to be an investigation of the charge that the use of drugs by Russian athletes to improve performance is widespread and supported by the Russian government. Washington has too much money and too many threats for any report that can be used to discredit Russia to be honest. Read my report today about MH-17, or remember Washington’s description of an independent election in Crimea, in which the voters almost unanimously chose to rejoin Russia where the province had resided since the 1700s, as “Russian invasion and annexation.”
It takes a very brave person, such as Pat Hickey, to stand up to Washington, and we don’t know whether Hickey will succumb to Washington’s pressures, which most certainly now will be applied to Hickey.
Washington will continue to demonize Russia until a war is provoked or until the Russian government capitulates and accepts partial vassalage, betraying either Assad or Crimea.
Perhaps Russia and China should organize the Eurasian Olympics and leave the Western Olympics. As Washington has restarted the Cold War and is intent on driving it to the hot stage, the competition can be over how Latin American and African countries align. If they are free to choose, it is unlikely that Africans and Latin Americans would join the racist Western white man’s games.
We must wonder when the point comes that Russia and China cease just sitting there absorbing for the sake of peace endless affronts and provocations. When, if ever, that point arrives, the West will cease to be the arbiter of human affairs.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments.
With less than 50 days before the Games are set to begin, a financial crisis is preventing the city from honoring its commitments to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The governor has said the crisis is so severe that it could eventually result in “a total collapse in public security, health, education, mobility, and environmental management.” [1]
These 2 Concerns are Growing
Athletes and visitors have 2 main concerns; one is security. After all, nary a day goes by that there isn’t a major terror attack somewhere in the world. UN Assistant Secretary-General Jean-Paul Laborde said July 5 that the risk of terrorist attacks at the Rio Olympics is still high.
Making matters worse is the fact that the state’s police officers haven’t been getting paid. Rio de Janeiro, which manages the region’s military police force, issued an executive order requesting emergency funds from the federal government in order to pay officers outstanding bonuses and overtime.
Rio’s police officers have warned that people heading to the Games won’t be protected because officers aren’t being compensated.
The second concern, which has been making headline news for months now, is the potential spread of the Zika virus. Brazil has been hit especially hard by Zika, and nearly 200 scientists have signed a letter stating that hosting the 2016 Games in Brazil puts the world at risk for a global Zika outbreak.
Enter a 3rd Issue for Rio
Rio is now facing a new potentially deadly hurdle: drug-resistant bacteria discovered growing off of the shores of some of Rio de Janeiro’s beaches by a group of Brazilian scientists.
“We have been looking for ‘super bacteria’ in coastal waters during a one year period in five beaches. We found that the threats occur in coastal waters in a variety of concentrations and that they are strongly associated with pollution.”
She explained:
“This bacteria colonizes the intestine and it goes along with feces to the hospital sewage. We believe that hospital sewage goes into municipal sewage and gets to the Guanabara Bay or to other rivers and finally gets to the beach.”
The bacteria were found at both Flamengo and Botafogo beach, which border the Guanabara Bay – where Olympic sailors are scheduled to compete.
German Paralympic sailor Heiko Kroger said of the grotesquely polluted bay during a recent visit to Rio:
“It’s a nice sailing area but every time you get some water in your face, it feels like there’s some alien enemy entering your face. I keep my nose and my lips closed.”
Source: The New Yorker – The filthy Guanabara Bay
Kroger believes a severe skin infection suffered by one of his teammates during recent training might have been caused by the drug-resistant bacteria.
Picao said she isn’t ready to go so far as to recommend changing the venues, but said that she and her colleagues were making the alert “because, if athletes get infected there is a chance this bacteria is multi-resistant and the physicians should know about this.” [2]
She went on:
“I don’t take my children to these beaches. We still need more studies to tell what would be the risk to human health of this exposure through the water.”
The venue is safe, say Rio organizing committee officials; however, independent studies by The Associated Press show high levels of pathogens in waters that Rio plans to use for sailing, rowing, canoeing, and open-water swimming.
The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro could spark a “full-blown public health disaster”, doctors have warned.
Since the Zika virus was first identified in Brazil in May 2015, the disease’s spread through Latin America has been declared a health emergency by the World Health Organisation and the number of suspected cases in Rio is the highest of any state in the country.
The continued presence of the virus ahead of the summer Olympics has caused athletes and health specialists to question the risks involved in allowing the Games to go ahead with hundreds of thousands of spectators travelling to the city.
Writing in the Harvard Public Health Review, Dr Amir Attaran said the Games could speed up the spread of the virus, and suggested the Games could be hosted by another city in Brazil where the illness is less of a threat.
Over the course of the upcoming summer months, the Japanese government will begin testing a new authentication system that will allow foreign tourists entering the Pacific nation to verify their identities using only the user’s fingerprint.
Travelers will register their fingerprints and provide an array of personal data about themselves — including credit card information — at airports upon arrival on the islands.
Once signed up, participants will be allowed to make purchases and conduct tax-exempt transactions by simply pressing two fingers gently against a device, which will be installed at various retail outlets. The technology will also allow foreign tourists to avoid previously mandatory requirements that they produce a passport while checking into ryokans (inns) or hotels. Instead, travelers will only need to produce their fingers.
With the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games only four years away, the Japanese government believes the system could alleviate travelers’ anxiety by eliminating their need to carry cash or credit cards at the event. If the test proves successful, the system will gradually be implemented throughout Japan by the 2020 games.
The initial rollout will include 300 different establishments that are popular with tourists, including souvenir stores, restaurants, and hotels.
A similar system has already been operational at Huis Ten Bosch theme park in Nagasaki, where visitors can make fingerprint-only payments at about 30 restaurants and shops.
“The system has been well received by customers, including those with children, since it saves them the trouble of taking their wallets out,” according to a theme park spokesperson.
Aeon Bank, based in Tokyo, plans to release an ATM as early as this month based on a similar model that will do away with the need for ATM cards.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 