Battleangel

Corporate fascism strikes at the heart of the Olympics. Again.

“The BBC reports that the proposed London 2012 Olympics Bill bans the use of words related to the Olympics by non-sponsors, including ‘Olympic’, ‘2012′, ‘gold’, ’summer’ and ‘games’, amongst others.

The bill is aimed at ensuring corporate sponsors, who have provided £790m of the IOC’s £2.25bn marketing revenue over the last four years, will not be deterred by ‘ambush marketing’ where rivals to the official sponsors try to take advantage, but businesses warn it could make it technically illegal for pubs to use chalkboards to flag up coverage of the Games.”

“The London 2012 website has already posted a warning listing a string of Olympic-related words and images that are off limits to all but official sponsors. And advertisers’ representatives have criticised the new Olympics bill because they believe it will make it almost impossible for most companies to even acknowledge that the Games are happening without getting into trouble. “

I vividly recall the Athens farce. Though it seems fair at first glance that sponsors aren’t going to be “ambushed”, the evidence suggests that it will in fact amount to a crackdown on audience and fans. Also it seems inconsequential to Coca-Cola, Visa and others if John Doe is selling Olympic hot dogs on the corner. The only ones with enough resources to ambush anyone are in fact the main sponsors. Those that are now in a psychosis, believing that they need to get their money’s worth and that this is the way to do it.

In Athens, the authorities erected a virtual barrier spanning almost the entire city center, where Olympic Corporate Gestapo agents cleaned up the streets from undesirables, shot stray animals, and controlled free expression as a favour to the corporate masters. Looking back further it’s quite easy to see the evolution to where we are at today, but that doesn’t make it right.

The Olympics these days, as with so many other sporting events, serves no purpose other than making a select few rich, being a Petri dish for curtailing civil liberties and to distract the public mind. Yet, it is being advertised as a pure and noble gathering of people in a friendly and almost mundane competition with historical precedence. I.e. the opposite of what is really the case.