Once upon a time, the 'Olympics' were an occasion for amateur sportsmen to gather and compete for simple athletic glory. No more.
The fast approaching 'London Olympics', or 'London 2012' as the media likes to call it, is set to be a vast extravaganza, costing a fortune to stage and at which an array of professional athletes will dominate. These athletes will all be competing under the banner of their country, in many cases not the country of their birth but an adopted country because either a) their original country has too many better athletes or b) their adopted country offered them money to switch allegiance. That this runs counter to the Olympic ideal should be clear to all but, sadly, it is not.
Another lunacy is the existence of an ever-burgeoning 'Paralympics'. This travesty is designed for all those who are simply unable to compete at THE 'Olympics' due to some disability, which would be fine if they all just competed against each other, but they don't. Instead, competitors are divided into lord knows how many categories depending on the precise nature and severity of their disability and, when the 3 athletes in category XX2U7, or whatever, have finished their downhill rhythmic juggling, all 3 get medals - Hooray ! What utter nonsense, and yet another total denial of the Olympian spirit.
Putting aside all this and being forced to accept the modern Olympics as the travesty that they are, it now seems that staging them is as much a military event as a sporting one. In recent weeks we have learnt that there will be warships in the Thames and surface-to-air missiles on nearby rooftops; today it's become known that something called a 'Long Range Acoustic Device', an American crowd control weapon, will be made available in the event that crowds get out of hand. With such a name, this really only could be an American instrument - call it anything but what it actually is, '1984' style. This 'device' will apparently be deployed by the MoD, adding to the already frightening vision of a nation under military control for the period of what are still, laughably, called 'THE GAMES'.
We've previously heard that there will be thousands of armed police on our streets and what Government people love to call 'enhanced security measures' during July and August, just in case any nasty terrorists should try to blow anything up, shoot anyone, or do anything equally horrible. Am I alone in wondering what kind of world we are living in ? All of this is being put into place at what is meant to be a time of peace, National joy and International celebration, and yet our rulers are so terrified that they feel it necessary to deploy the most extreme security measures.
What is going on and why ? More importantly, where will it all end ? No doubt, with a Gold Medal for the winner of the 800 metres, small bore, terrorist shooting event.
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