chapter 36: back on the pommel horse

so it's been a while. between seeing long lost friends, getting back to work, re-acclimatizing to life in canada and partying in pemberton, i haven't been thinking about the blog. but now it's time to get back on it.

work is crazy in the lead up to the beijing olympics. we're understaffed, and golobal national has asked me to pick up the slack by training to do practically everything on the show, from broadcast producing, research, story producing and web editing. oh yeah, and writing. by next week, i'll probably even be up on the desk! it's going to be a hellish next month or two, but at least i'll be making good cash.

speaking of the olympics, exactly what everyone knew would happen...has happened. china has completely ignored its bid promise to respect freedom of speech. it blocked journalists' access to websites critical of the regime, such as amnesty international and falun gong. it has arrested dissenters, destroyed people's homes with no compensation to make room for facilities, and cracked down hard on free speech.

as far as i'm concerned, the olympics, as a movement, is over. it's now just a big corporate gangbang. there are efforts afoot to backroom the whole deal to protect what's left of the olympic reputation as a uniting human force. and unfortunately, it's being spearheaded by canada's ioc member, dick pound. the torch relay is close to being eliminated because, counter to uniting people in the olympic spirit, the international portion united people in protest against tyranny, and we can't have the ever-so-shining olympic reputation tarnished, can we?

Pound said:

"The international leg of the Beijing Olympic torch relay was close to a disaster that was beyond the control of the IOC and the organising committee. My commission, which examined the issue, felt that there should not be an international relay, and my understanding is that the coordination commission was of the same view. The risks were obvious and should have been assessed more closely. The result was that there was a crisis.
"My view is that there should be an analysis of how this happened and a resolution to do away with the international portion of the torch relay ... the high risk and low reward of the international leg is now obvious."

the only thing that's obvious to me is that pound is not representing canada's values...he's representing the jackbooting thugs at the ioc who support the jackbooting thugs of beijing.

beijing has tried to change the focus, saying this will be the best olympics ever. but from where i sit, the only thing that can obscure this disgusting olympic farce is the even more disgusting blanket of pollution that 'doesn't' sit over the olympic city.