Saturday, February 13, 2010

Vancouver Winter Olympics: A festival of corporate greed

posted on the International Journal of Socialist Renewal website.
The two-week Olympic spectacle will leave in its wake a legacy of financial debt, deepening impoverishment, violations of civil and social rights, and a significant reinforcement of the tools and weapons of the national security state. What’s more, five weeks before the games’ opening came news of yet another Olympic spending boondoggle in the making – Intrawest Corporation, the owner of the Whistler ski resort where most of the games’ downhill events will take place, located 100 kilometres north of Vancouver, is in financial default and may require hundreds of millions of dollars of emergency bailout.