Tag Archives | Olympics

Olympics Doping Scandals: From Raw Testicles To Cocaine

By on August 5, 2012 in News 2

If you think Olympic doping was limited to the likes of anabolic steroids, human growth hormones and testosterone, think again. Via Reuters:

Forget anabolic steroids in easy-to-swallow tablets, or EPO in clean syringes. Ancient Olympic dopers got their pre-Games hormone boost from chewing on raw animal testicles.

The problem of some Olympic competitors taking potions, medicines and supplements to boost performance is as old as the Games themselves.

Even athletes of the 19th century thought nothing of fortifying themselves with coca leaves, cocaine and alcohol. Thomas Hicks won the 1904 Olympic marathon with the help of raw egg, strychnine and shots of brandy given to him at regular intervals by his attentive coach.

“Doping has always been part of the Olympics, but drugs have not always been seen as a problem, they have become a problem,” Martin Polley, an Olympic historian at Britain’s Southampton University, told Reuters…

[continues at Reuters]… Read the rest

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Oh God Apparently I Said All These Things On Twitter About The Olympic Opening Ceremony – Warren Ellis

By on August 4, 2012 in News 4

Warren Ellis comments Olympics opening

I’m so sorry

Just thought it might be useful our entertaining for someone if I organized all the tweets Warren Ellis has published during the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, directed by Danny Boyle.

Via Storify and WarrenEllis.com

Read more at WarrenEllis.com… Read the rest

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Twitter Suspends Account Of Journalist Critical Of NBC And Olympics

By on August 2, 2012 in News 1

Twitter has since apologized and reinstated Guy Adams’s account. Still, the fact remains that use of social media may be conditional on not speaking ill of the corporations with which the platforms are aligned. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The first social media Olympics have become a minefield for the Olympic movement—and especially for Twitter Inc., which has trumpeted its tight connection to the London Games.

The biggest brouhaha so far erupted on Monday and Tuesday, when a finger-pointing spat emerged over a journalist getting booted off Twitter after he was critical of NBC’s Olympics coverage. The journalist was reinstated on the short-messaging service Tuesday—but not before the blogosphere lit up with criticism over whether Twitter was curtailing free speech.

Twitter was forced to admit it breached the trust of its users when it apologized for suspending the account of Guy Adams, a Los Angeles correspondent for the U.K.’s Independent newspaper.

… Read the rest

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Cosmic Symbolism in Olympic Ceremony: ‘The Opening of the Gate

By on August 1, 2012 in News 49

Via MegaRitual:

Dr. Mark Gray and Hillary Raimo of MegaRitual have written a occult interpretation of the Olympics opening ceremony:

The opening ceremony of the Olympics was very symbolic. Although for those who lacked the eyes to see and understand it, it was a boring show compared to past opening ceremonies. This is typical of inducing & using the occult symbols within something like this. It’s there but it’s hidden. The baby that showed up in the stadium egg was the sun/son rebirth we’ve been talking about for weeks.  All after the ‘exorcism’ of the scary nightmares from the minds and imagination of the children…orphans being tended to by nurses and such…symbolic of the human species being abandoned by their ‘gods’ in the myths and stories of our ancient origins.

 

Read more at MegaRitual… Read the rest

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Hundreds Of Olympic ‘Branding Police’ Begin Patrolling Britain Today

By on July 16, 2012 in News 12

The previously discussed purple-uniformed brand police have hit the streets, and will fine or jail those who violate the specially-legislated “rights” of companies which are official Olympic sponsors. The Independent writes:

Hundreds of uniformed Olympics officers will begin touring the country today enforcing sponsors’ multimillion-pound marketing deals. Wearing purple caps and tops… checking firms to ensure they are not staging “ambush marketing” or illegally associating themselves with the Games at the expense of official sponsors such as Adidas, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and BP.

[Drinking establishments] have been advised that blackboards advertising live TV coverage must not refer to beer brands or brewers without an Olympics deal, while caterers and restaurateurs have been told not to advertise dishes that could be construed as having an association with the event. At the 40 Olympics venues, 800 retailers have been banned from serving chips to avoid infringing fast-food rights secured by McDonald’s.

Marina Palomba, for the McCann Worldgroup agency in London, described the rules as “the most draconian law in advance of an Olympic Games ever”.

… Read the rest

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Cloned Horses Allowed To Compete In The Olympics

By on July 8, 2012 in News 8

It won’t be long before the basketball championship consists of an American squad of Michael Jordan clones squaring off against a foreign squad of Michael Jordan clones with pencil mustaches. Slate reports:

Reversing an earlier ban, the international governing body for equestrian sports has decided that cloned horses can compete alongside their traditionally bred counterparts.

“The FEI will not forbid participation of clones or their progenies in FEI competitions,” the Federation Equestre Internationale said after its June meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, according to The Chronicle of the Horse. “The FEI will continue to monitor further research, especially with regard to equine welfare.”

That’s good news for two companies—ViaGen in Texas and Cryozootech in France—that have successfully cloned champion horses, mainly for breeding purposes. Cryozootech has produced two clones of the American show-jumping champion Gem Twist. ViaGen, which owns the rights to the technology that produced the famous cloned sheep Dolly, has cloned several horses.

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Olympics Struggle With ‘Policing Femininity’

By on June 12, 2012 in News 12

In a potential move which seems both startlingly futuristic and archaic, the Olympics may require some of the world’s top female athletes to alter their natural bodies through surgery or hormone therapy to become more similar to what the Olympics imagines a “woman” is, if they wish to compete. Time to scrap the outdated two-gender sporting system and experiment with three or more classes? The Toronto Star writes:

There are female athletes who will be competing at the Olympic Games this summer after undergoing treatment to make them less masculine. Still others are being secretly investigated for displaying overly manly characteristics, as sport’s highest medical officials attempt to quantify — and regulate — the hormonal difference between male and female athletes.

Caster Semenya, the South African runner who was so fast and muscular that many suspected she was a man, exploded onto the front pages three years ago. She was considered an outlier, a one-time anomaly.

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A ‘Sonic Weapon’ Can Be Deployed At the London Olympics (If Needs Be)

By on May 12, 2012 in News 2

LRADReports Gavin Thomas for BBC News:

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed a device which can be used as a “sonic weapon” will be deployed in London during the Olympics.

The American-made Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) can be used to send verbal warnings over a long distance or emit a beam of pain-inducing tones.

The equipment was spotted fixed to a landing craft on the Thames at Westminster this week.

An MoD spokesman said it would be used “primarily in the loud hailer mode”.

Royal Marines operating in patrol craft from HMS Ocean are also heavily armed with conventional firearms.

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Britain To Install Missiles In Apartment Complexes For London Olympics

By on May 5, 2012 in News 9

London 2012More 2012 Olympics dystopianism as a dense East London neighborhood will be turned into a military base, in the name of pole-vaulting. Robert Booth writes in the Guardian:

The Bow Quarter complex of more than 700 apartments is the first of a handful of housing developments close to the Olympic Park chosen by military planners to host high velocity rockets aimed at preventing an airborne terrorist attack on this summer’s Games.

Ministry of Defence officials will this week inform a number of other residents that their homes have been selected to become part of London’s military lockdown. The missile units will be installed and armed with dummy rockets in time for a national Olympic security exercise starting on Wednesday. The test of the government’s £1bn security plans will see RAF Typhoon fast jets and military helicopters operating above London and the home counties.

“It is rather surreal,” said Nathan Lewis, a software developer who lives in the block beneath where the weapons will be located.

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‘Branding Police’ Will Patrol 2012 Olympics

By on April 30, 2012 in News 20

Olympics---Team-GB-Kit-Un-007Are we headed for a future in which people are jailed for “branding crimes”? A special set of laws passed by British Parliament, at the behest of the International Olympic Committee, criminalizes “brand violations” related to sponsors of the London Olympics. It will be illegal for local businesses to publicly display words such as ‘twenty-twelve’, ‘medals’, and ‘London Games’. Athletes are banned from publicly mentioning companies or products that are not sponsors. Crack teams will patrol Olympic Village bathrooms, taping over manufacturers’ logos on soap dispensers and toilets. The Guardian writes:

With just a little more than three months to go until the opening of the London 2012 Games, attention is increasingly turning to what many legal experts consider to be the most stringent restrictions ever put in place to protect sponsors’ brands and broadcasting rights, affecting every athlete, Olympics ticket holder and business in the UK.

It is certainly very tough legislation,” says Paul Jordan, a marketing specialist at law firm Bristows, which is advising both official sponsors and non-sponsoring businesses on the new laws.

… Read the rest

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