McDonalds Olympics

According to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author".

Consider for a moment the moral and material interests of the people of Olympia and the games they devised. The games at Olympia – a festival in honour of Zeus that attracted the best athletes from all over Greece who would come to the Olympia games to compete in a range of events, long distance running, sprint races, horse racing, pentathlon, discus, javelin, jumping, boxing, wrestling and so on, in the hope of winning the highest accolade available to an athlete. The Olympic title. The games would close with the presentation of the olive leaf crowns.

These events began around 760 BC and took place every four years, growing in popularity to peak around 500 BC, after which time increasing Roman influence in Greece led to a decline in their popularity and their pagan origins became a target for authorities to eliminate. Around 400 BC  Emperor Theodosius destroyed many Greek temples in a purge of Pagan custom, and the Olympia Games ended.

Years later in 1821 after Greece emerged from the 400 year nightmare of Islamic subjugation, Greek interest in reviving the Olympic Games began. The poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his 1933 poem "Dialogue of the Dead" recorded the intention for Greece to return the tradition of Olympic games. 

Evangelis Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece, in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games. Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in an Athens city square. Athletes participated from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games. The Panathinaiko Stadium hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875. Thirty thousand spectators attended the Games in 1870. The legacy of Evangelis Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas, was also used to fund the Olympic Games of 1896.

In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat, former pupil at Rugby and academic, was ‘inspired’ to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This in no way might be misinterpreted as seeing a good idea and stealing it because there was then no idea of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or even consideration for the value in an intellectual property. Or to put it another way; Intelligent rich Frenchman sees huge reputation building opportunity and very successfully puts one over Greek chaps of less fortunate education and means, to secure for himself and his own name an idea that was not his, creating ownership of copyright to a name that is not his with the intention of generating commercial gain out of the new copyright without including the creative originators of the various constituent parts of the copyright, including the owners of the name Olympia. 

Bearing in mind at that time Greece was only a few decades out of the 400 year Muslim oppression which had suppressed education, and as a result there were not many highly educated Greeks able to negotiate at the same level as the better qualified French.

Coubertin built on the ideas and work of Brookes and Zappas with the aim of establishing internationally rotating Olympic Games that would occur every four years. A quite brilliant innovation given that the original games took place every four years. Coubertin presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee. This meeting was held from 16 to 23 June 1894, at the Sorbonne University in Paris. On the last day of the Congress, it was decided that the first Olympic Games, to come under the auspices of the IOC, would take place in Athens in 1896. 

The IOC elected the Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas as its first president. Vikelas was known for translating Shakespeare into Greek and for opening the first Greek school in London. Vikelas’s wife Kalliope was at this time suffering mental problems and being treated in Paris, where he lived for 15 years and where Kalliope would die round about the time the Games were being held. Vikelas held the Olympic role briefly, resigning from the IOC after the games, to be replaced as a member by the Count Alexander Mercati, a golf playing Greek Royal, and as president by Coubertin.

And that’s how the games were hijacked by a smart rich Frenchman and turned into a copyright protected trading company, without paying a penny in royalties to the rightful owners of the idea. Just by placing a token literate Greek in a nominal position and awarding the first games to Athens.

The first IOC Games in Athens were a success, largely as a result of Greek Government funding, building a stadium and proper facilities, while hoping to recoup their outlay through ticket sales. Although the games ran at a loss, establishing a position that would visit the taxpayers paying for every subsequent games, the success of the games generated strong feeling in Greece that Athens should host the Olympic Games on a permanent basis. The IOC with its French leadership declined this request and promptly scheduled the next games for – wait – surely not – Paris.  

Paris was not properly prepared as a host City and the experience almost killed off the Games. The tax payers of France were not stupid enough to underwrite the cost of a stadium and so the games went ahead without one. The next games of 1904 were in America and were even more of a misinterpretation of the Olympic ideal, featuring 650 athletes of which 580 were Americans.

But by now the games, the intellectual property of the Olympian ideal, had been removed from Greece and rebranded as something completely different. Was it less than the theft of a national artifact.

When I visited Olympia in 1971 I was struck by how clearly the events the ruins display resembled today’s Olympic program. In terms of a business idea, the model that is the Olympic formula was clearly completed there. I was ten at the time and my first comment was, ‘Why do they not hold the Olympic games here.’ It seemed so obvious. Build a permanent centre here and every four years invite the worlds best to compete in the tradition that was devised in Olympia for their games.

Then there’s the issue of the name. Olympia is a place that started Olympic Games. Why does this current corporate behemoth known as the Olympic games not pay a royalty for the exploitation of an idea which belongs to Olympia. The structure, the idea, the spine of the events, the recognition of triumph, the sporting ethos, all of which the IOC claim as their Olympic Games, rely on a stolen set of ideas and benefits no one excepting corporate sponsors whose profits invariably arise from the tax payers in the host cities left paying bills for years after the corporate sponsors have paid out their executive bonuses.

Then there’s the Nazis. Carl Diem was a great admirer of De Coubertin. Diem was instrumental in winning the Olympics for Berlin in 36. However in 33 Hitler came to power and his take on the Olympics was as “a project of Jews and Freemasons." Diem expected him to cancel the Olympics, but Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, convinced him that the games would be an excellent showcase for German organization and pride. At a March 1933 meeting, six weeks after taking power, Hitler informed Diem he would support the games. Six months later, after touring the construction sites for the sporting arenas, he told Diem that the German state would pay the bills. Diem in exchange did a bang up job of giving Hitler maximum value for money by introducing a new idea in promoting the games. The Olympic Torch, to be run around Germany to generate interest. Diem, originator of the Olympic flame worked closely with his Nazi paymasters, and in 45 with the Russian Army closing in on Berlin, returned to the Olympic stadium to address a crowd of thousands of Hitler youth, exhorting them to ‘fight to the death’. Which many of them did.  
   

In trying to understand why people support this heinous organisation and all that it represents I have devised a top ten list of  reasons why the Olympics are great. If you are:

• Royal or Pro Royal
• An admirer of corporatism
• An admirer of conformity
• A member of the armed forces
• A share holder in drug companies
• A profiteer in lowest common denominator shares
• Riveted by the diving board
• Mesmerized by hairy Bulgarians herniating in front of your very eyes
• Can’t get enough of hairy Bulgarians herniating in front of your very eyes
• A lover of supersized Big Macs with fries
• Untroubled by extraordinary and uncontained prestige visited on athletes for no more than athletic prowess

I see the Olympics as a series of thefts. Starting with the name. I haven’t followed Olympics since I was 13. I was watching news coverage of the Munich Olympics when the Israeli team were taken hostage and I saw the picture of an athlete sunbathing. In the background was the masked gunman in the window behind which the hostages must have shaking with terror. But none of that interfered with the athletes focus in getting some relaxation time in before the next event. And that got me thinking. These games are not about sport at all. The sporting ethos that underpinned an ethical code between all the original participants is no longer, replaced now by a selfish journey to personal greatness. If this event was played out in Olympia - where criminals captured athletes and held them at knifepoint - I strongly suspect all the other Olympians would have stopped whatever they were doing to offer support to their fellow athletes. Or at the very least, stopped playing games while lives were being threatened. The context is the clue. In the context of terrible atrocity - the idea of prioritizing winning in games over compassionate concern reveals a total abscence of a sporting spirit.

But these games are not about any of those ideals. They are no more than a controlling device enabling a small group to direct profits for their own benefit by playing on a lowest common denominator appeal - the sporting traditions devised in Olympia. These games – where guests can only pay with Visa and no other card, and only eat McDonalds and no other burger and only drink coke products – have nothing to do with sport. Entry to the grounds is equivalent to airport security with body scanners and no liquids allowed in.Visitors are warned to expect long delays being searched for entry.

Then there’s the bill. The Olympic charter places the costs of the event squarely in the hands of the tax payer.  Should these games be like all previous games – and leave a  behind a massive bill – then that cost is down to our tax dollars. Every dollar spent on these games is a dollar that wasn’t spent on education or policing, or establishing a working Health Service. Every dollar spent paying back the huge bills come out of budgets for Policing, education and establishing a working Health service.

Just have a look at the bill Athens paid for the 2004 Olympics. $11 Billion. Didn’t cause them any problems so why should we worry.

And what do the lowest common denominator succubi get for their participation? Here’s my speculative top ten:

• A chance to sing God save the Queen and wave flags.
• A chance to cheer the Carl Deim torch running past their window. (An celebrate those Hitler youth going off to certain death.)
• A chance to wonder whether that runner is really a man.
• A chance to admire the American Archer who honed his skills killing 300 pound bears.
• A chance to admire Olympian Cory Cognell, the American kill for fun hunter whose recreation is killing animals for fun and posing over their dead bodies with her beaming Kill Thrill grin.
• A chance to admire the Saudi flag being waved along with all that represents.
• A chance to enjoy all the free music by bands who aren’t being paid and who can never use the Olympic name to promote their participation.
• A chance to see Prince William carrying the flag, possibly even in his military uniform with the shiny buttons.
• A chance to watch Saudi Arabia play football against Yemen
• A chance to hear the McDonalds out of tune whistle every three minutes
• A chance to see the BBC – who have no advertisements because you pay a TV license, advertising Visa/McDonalds/Coke and whoever else tells them to run their ads.

My home is being barricaded up even as I write. Swarms of little Olympic workers are swanning around with steel barriers, blocking the roads. The roads we pay huge amounts in Council tax to use are not ours to use at all for three days. Nor are the sidewalks. Metal barricades everywhere to hold back the teeming hordes who will descend to watch the bicycle riders whizz past. The trees that stood on the riverbank facing my house all disappeared in one brisk day of tree surgery last Month.  I came out to enquire of the gang with chainsaws as I watched the trees that have stood here for longer than I have been alive coming down. 

‘For the Olympics mate. Clear shot for the camera.”

“But we need to get planning permission from the council to chop even a branch off a tree here. How can you remove every single tree from the riverbank without so much as a notice to the residents”.

“Olympics mate. Its their call.”

They own it all and we pay for it. That’s the Olympic spirit. Those able to travel will be out of the Country for the next Month.

For the rest of us the McDonalds Olympics present a great opportunity to enjoy a big mac and coke, supersized, while participating in one of the greatest ‘rich taking from the poor’ moments in modern history.

And they’ll be back to do it all over again in 4 years time.