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A CLEVER FREE CARTOONIST NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO JUMP INTO THE FRAY — AGAINST THE CURRENT CRASS "THINKING" (IF WE CAN CALL THIS, THINKING) OF THE ESTABLISHMENT. WE NEED TO GO BEYOND THE FAÇADE OF THE OBVIOUS RUN OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE. IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT DUTY OF THE MODERN IDEALIST. WE KNOW THE AMERICAN EMPIRE WANTS TO DESTROY RUSSIA AND CHINA BY WHATEVER MEANS: AS CARTOONIST WE DON'T NEED TO ADD TO THIS WORLD DOMINATING FASCIST CONCEPT.

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS IS WHAT THE "INDEPENDENT ALWAYS" SYDNEY MORNING HERALD IS NOT —IT IS NOT INDEPENDENT, BUT HIGHLY DIRECTED TO PROTECT THE EMPIRE.

ITS CARTOONISTS LIKE BADIUCAO ARE CAUGHT IN THE NET OF THE FASCISTS: RUSSIA IS BAD BECAUSE OF UKRAINE, WHILE ELIMINATING THE REALITY THAT THE RUSSIANS WERE FORCED INTO THIS SAD ADVENTURE BY THE DEVIOUS TACTICS OF A NEFARIOUS AMERICA...

THUS IT IS WITH AN ANNOYED "PEN" (COMPUTER), THAT I HAD TO REVISE THE CARTOON OF 30 JULY 2024 IN THE SMH BY BADIUCAO, A "DISSIDENT CHINESE CARTOONIST", NOW DOING THE BIDDING FOR THE AMERICAN EMPIRE...

 

 

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SEE THE ORIGINAL AT THE SMH.... IF YOU WISH....

 

GUS CARTOON AT TOP, USING THE ICONS OF FRENCH "LITERATURE" (MODERN CHILDISH DIVISION), HAS TRIED TO ERASE THE BAD TASTE OF THE ARTISTS WHO THOUGHT THAT MAKING A "WOKE" PARODY (NOT A SATIRE MIND YOU) OF THE LAST SUPPER WAS A GREAT IDEA...

The TV rights bonanza has stalled, the frenzy to secure hosting rights is a thing of the past, and the Olympic’s political relevance has been reduced to who can be the most outraged over the artistic merits of the opening ceremony. Kim Wingerei and 360Info ask, what’s next?

Some Russian athletes are competing in Paris, but not under their own flag. Along with Belarus, Russia was banned from participating because of its invasion of Ukraine. Israel, on the other hand, was the first boat on the Seine at the opening ceremony in Paris last Friday, despite its invasion and mass murder campaign in Gaza.

The International Court of Justice – a UN body – declared that Israel had committed numerous violations of international law during its 57 years of occupation, ordering Israel to stop. It echoes the March 2022 ruling of the ICJ for Russia to cease its attacks on Ukraine.

To add insult to injury, at least 30 Israeli Olympians have publicly supported the Gaza war. Some have even served as IDF spokespeople, according to Karim Zidam – a New York Times and The Guardian commentator on the politics of sport.

 

Olympic politics

The modern Olympics have always been a platform for political statements. In 1936, it was Adolf Hitler presenting the splendour of his Germany to a world mostly unaware of the horrors to follow. In 1968, it was the Black Power salute that took centre stage; four years later, the Munich Massacre diverted all attention away from the athletes.

In 1980, 67 countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet block and some of its African vassal states retaliated and boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics.

Since then, actual boycotts and exclusions have been rare, too much money at stake, perhaps. But that, too, may be changing. As the games ventured into the new millennium, support for the games has waned.

Olympic TV right$

The enormous TV contracts that buttress the billion-dollar industry of the International Olympic Committee now seem incongruous with the reality of a broadcast market in terminal decline, while the sheer scale of the cost and logistics involved in putting on these events continue to soar.

As Alexander Faure from L’École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales, Paris writes:

The way cities host the Olympic Games is changing. Staging the event has become such a burden, fewer cities are interested in going to the trouble.

While Tim Harcourt from the University of Technology Sydney believes that “a country doesn’t host the Olympic Games to make a profit”. Instead it places nations in the world’s shop window.

The 2024 Olympic Games were handed to Paris in a brokered deal with the next games in Los Angeles in 2028, but these two cities were the only true contenders, just like the 2032 games in Brisbane, which had no competitor for the hosting rights.

Olympic relevance

It begs the question of what relevance the Olympic movement still holds as we lurch deeper into the 21st century. If the once peripheral exploits of political posturing, national brand management, and grand advertising plays from major sponsors to captured audiences have lost their lustre, is it anything more than just the world’s largest sports carnival?

Emma Sherry from RMIT University, Melbourne, sees the opportunity for the Olympic Games to reimagine what they stand for, saying that “by providing a platform for athletes to advocate for positive change, the Olympics can reinforce their role as a force for good, promoting not just physical excellence but also social progress”.

This can be seen through Australia’s skateboarding teenagers.

Indigo Willing from the University of Sydney writes about Arisa Trew and Chloe Covell who, at just 14, are both aiming to become the youngest Australian gold medallists in a sport once dominated by hyper masculine men. Skateboarding at its second Olympics offers the opportunity for change.

One aspect that has always assumed importance with the Olympics is security. As Marco Lombardi and Maria Alvanou from the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan argue, these games could be at a higher risk from terrorism than any other.

The task is now to see if the Olympic spirit that enraptured generations to create this force for global citizens, coming together to celebrate sporting excellence and togetherness, can reimagine itself for a new age, with new heroes and iconic moments to bookmark the lives of those who witness it.

A version of this article originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/no-to-russia-yes-to-israel-but-are-the-olympic-games-still-relevant/

 

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MEANWHILE:

Olympics organisers ‘hopeful’ triathlon races will go ahead after issues with Seine’s water quality
Competitions boss said concern was bacteria E.coli, which can cause serious illness by disrupting normal intensines function...

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/2024/07/30/olympics-organisers-hopeful-triathlon-races-will-go-ahead-after-issues-with-seines-water-quality/

 

 

The Paris Olympics are the most French thing ever – for better or worseFrom the outrageous opening ceremony to the organizational screw-ups, the games will surely go down in history for all the wrong reasons... BY Rachel Marsden 

 

French culture isn’t just about masked balls at Versailles anymore. As the Paris Olympic Games have proven, it’s now also debating whether drag queens’ balls were adequately masked. 

Looks like Thomas Jolly, the Games’ Opening Ceremony director, is just now coming to the realization that the entire world doesn’t function like Paris Left Bank intellectuals. He bit off more than he could chew by transmitting a French art house vibe to every country around the globe, some of which – from Morocco and Algeria to China and the US – straight up censored parts of the show that perhaps should have come with a disclaimer in the same way that risqué French films do.

Because it turns out that kids – and even some adults – weren’t quite ready to witness a giant Smurf rolling around in a fruit bowl in front of a bunch of drag queens re-enacting what appeared to be the Last Supper. And the fact that French blasphemy laws were abolished two years after the French Revolution, enshrining a right that became a cornerstone of French free speech, didn’t matter to those who felt offended, which included everyone from religious figures to left-wing France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon.

France has defended religious satire as free expression, even when cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed led to a terrorist massacre in January 2015 at the Parisian headquarters of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published them. So this is just France being France, which wasn’t very well received, including by some of the most progressive-minded French officials.

One US-based advertiser – the wireless company C Spire – has already said it was yanking their Olympic advertising. Guess there’s a dice roll with the risk that your product might end up somewhere in the vicinity if a clip or screencap of a bunch of drag queens, or a saucy Papa Smurf, and that wasn’t quite the vibe that you were going for when you signed up for high-level sports sponsorship.

There was also an onslaught of reports of X (former Twitter) social media users being hit with copyright takedown notices for posting some of the controversial scenes from the opening show for debate and discussion. Not surprising that the International Olympic Committee, guardian of the Olympic brand, might not want the images etched into history of these Games, to be dominated by things like closeups of drag queens' crotches for the purpose of debating whether the world actually witnessed some fruit tumbling out of a pair of plum smugglers in a wardrobe malfunction – or whether it was just an everyday pantyhose rip. You know, the kind of thing that could happen to any dude in an average day at the office.

The Games have really showcased that world-famous French rigor.

Whoever was in charge of the anthems for the men’s basketball games apparently saw that South Sudan was playing and just figured that the national anthem for Sudan would do. It’s like during the opening ceremonies when South Korean athletes were introduced as North Koreans. Same thing, really.

One of the best things about these Games are the adorable mascots, the Phryges, based on the French Revolutionary hats of the same name. But at this point, can we get these little bright-red cuties to amp up the Gallic shrugging? Because that’s what’s really now become the main vibe of these Games.

No air conditioning amid 33C heat in the Olympic village or athletes’ rooms because the French greenwashed their cheapness as “eco-friendly”? Shrug. Competitors complaining about the lack of high protein eggs and meat at the village chow halls because Games organizers figured that elite athletes could just eat like rabbits for the sake of the planet (and of profit margins, no doubt)? Shrug. The world is now discovering the kind of reception that I get at my local gym when they block whatever climate control exists at 26C in the middle of summer. That would be a “you” problem. Shrug. Some countries’ delegations took the initiative of supplying their own air conditioners, just as Team Great Britain ended up bringing over their own chefs so their athletes could be properly fed for high performance.

The trains stopped running last week around France due to sabotaged lines. Israel has already blamed that on Iran. The average French person’s mind just went straight to everyday, garden variety French incompetence – the kind that would also would explain all the heavy-handed “security theatre” during the Games.

The government required everyone to apply online for QR Codes if they wanted to even cross the downtown core, which was turned into a maze of 44,000 barricades days before the opening ceremony. And the excuse had to be a good one – like you lived there or had an appointment. And the Interior Ministry had already used the Games as a pretext for loading up on new high-tech surveillance systems, from surveillance drones and anti-drone systems to crowd scanners coupled with Minority Report style artificial intelligence algorithms. If all of it actually worked, then why give people the run-around? If their surveillance-industrial complex pals were going to stuff their pockets under the pretext of Games security, then couldn’t they just spy on us in peace without all the added bureaucratic nonsense?

Speaking of national security, a bunch of hackers leaked the military background of Israeli athletes, a country with mandatory service and currently involved in an active conflict criticized by the UN’s International Court of Justice and accused of apartheid – an offense that the IOC explicitly cites as justification for Games exclusion. Meanwhile Russian athletes who have never even been in the army can’t even compete in their country’s name. So what happens if a Russian wins a gold medal? The IOC created a special flag just for them, which looks like someone’s kid whipped it up in about five minutes on an app. They also made a new anthem with no lyrics for Russian athletes that sounds like the opening soundtrack for a make-believe fantasy movie. Which is really what all this is: one big Hollywood-grade fantasy that one of the top Olympic nations since forever doesn’t even exist now at the Olympics.

And remember those €1.4 billion to clean up the Seine River for the triathlon and open water events? The mayor of Paris and French sports minister rolled around in it for about a minute, gushing about how wonderful the water was.

Well, it turns out that triathlon practice was cancelled on Sunday and Monday. Too much fecal bacteria. Organizers had until Tuesday’s men’s race to figure it all out. Then, on Tuesday, at 4am,  they announced that the men’s triathlon would be postponed to Wednesday, right after the scheduled women’s race, with both triathlons “subject to the forthcoming water tests complying with the established World Triathlon thresholds for swimming.” 

The backup plan, which they had seven years to come up with? Just to have the running and cycling without the swimming. Which is a whole other sport called a duathlon. Close enough though, right?

As for the swimming, it turns out that they messed up and didn’t build enough seats into the Olympic pool venue for it to actually host the Olympic swimming, so they were forced to install a temporary swimming pool inside Paris La Défense Arena, where Taylor Swift recently performed. That pool is now the subject of much speculation among members of the sporting press and global swimming community, who are wondering whether the pool’s notable lack of depth or some other aspect of the makeshift construction is responsible for relatively slow swims at this meet. “Zero World Records have been broken at the 2024 Paris Olympics through two nights of competition in the pool. The last time that no World Record was broken after just one day of competition was 1992, but here we are, entering night three with zero,” one of the world’s leading swimming news and discussion outlets, SwimSwam, remarked in asking whether the Paris pool was just “slow”.

That world famous French discipline – really shining right now on the world stage. Thankfully, the athletes – in all their unforced diversity through meritocracy – have taken center stage despite being relegated to background actors in the opening show, having to share boats with other countries like they were Uber carpools. Except the refugees. Organizers gave them their own boat to sail down the Seine, smiling and waving. But with the way these Games are being run, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t just ended up in Britain.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/601830-paris-olympics-outrageous-opening-ceremony/

 

 

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Obese Olympic ‘Christ’ to sue critics
French DJ Barbara Butch has taken legal steps against online abuse after the opening ceremony of the Games sparked major controversy...

Barbara Butch, the French DJ who performed during the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony, has filed a legal complaint after receiving a wave of abuse online. The local LGBTQ community icon claims to have received numerous threats.

The activist at the center of the storm over the opening ceremony performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics that critics claim mocked “The Last Supper” took to Instagram earlier this week to announce having become “the target of yet another - particularly violent - cyber harassment.”

Butch’s lawyer, Audrey Msellati, issued a letter announcing the filing of “several complaints against these acts, whether committed by French nationals or foreigners.” Her client “intends to prosecute anyone who tries to intimidate her in the future,” the document reads.

The complaint was filed with the Paris prosecutor’s office, which is expected to decide whether a formal police investigation is warranted, The Associated Press first reported on Tuesday.

The prosecutor’s office reportedly confirmed receiving Butch’s complaint, and told the news agency that a police unit that specializes in fighting hate crimes was tasked to investigate the issue. The police probe is expected to focus on “discriminatory messages based on religion or sexual orientation that were sent to her or posted online,” the office said.

Butch, a self-proclaimed “love activist”, wore a silver headdress that resembled a halo while flanked by drag artists, dancers and others during the controversial opening ceremony scene alleged to have mocked “The Last Supper.”

Christians from across the world have protested against the Paris organizers’ decision to conclude the opening ceremonies with a scene resembling Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper.’ The Renaissance painter’s famous depiction of Jesus Christ and his apostles was seen as reimagined as a Bacchanalia involving drag queens, homosexuals and transsexuals.

https://www.rt.com/news/601918-butch-sue-abuse-olympic-paris/

 

MEANWHILE IN LUTECE (PARIS 2000 YEARS AGO):

 

BUT THE LAST IMAGE SHALL GO TO CHARLIE HEBDO WITH THE OLYMPIC CLOSING CEREMONY (TO COME)....

 

The Closing Ceremony will even be more BEAUTIFUL !....

 

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