By Marcel Woland
Followers of mass media in the West may be forgiven for not noticing that the Olympic movement has been severely damaged by the recent weaponization of the Olympics.
What the average Western viewer was expected to take away from the much-reported ‘Russian doping scandal’ was that Russia is indeed a lawless, sinister entity and that the Fu Manchu-like Putin has his finger in every pie. Many believed it.
Luckily, the propaganda coup against the Olympic movement failed and saner, more ethical heads prevailed. More importantly, the presumption of innocence and condemnation of collective punishment was upheld. For those were the principles under attack. So were the Russians of course, but they are used to it by now, being blamed for everything from the corruption of the US Democratic Party, to the selection of the candidate for the Republicans, to Brexit.
I need to backtrack. The plotters’ timing was such that the main attack on Russia, through the International Olympic Committee (IOC), occurred in the last two weeks before the start of the Rio Olympics, even though the information used in the attack had been available for almost two years. Publishing deadlines made it hard to report, let alone analyze the unfolding events, in real time. Conspiracies use three elements to succeed: chronology, complexity and concealment. All those were working full-time as the final coats of paint and last pours of concrete were going on in Rio.
Two weeks before the Olympics were to begin, I received a petition to reinstate ex-Russian athlete, confessed doper and now, the petition alleged, ‘whistle-blower’ Juliya Stepanova. I already knew Stepanova to be a second-rate athlete, and a convicted doper, so I was skeptical, to say the least.
This meant re-examining the demand for a total ban against the Russian Federation in which Stepanova had played a key role. The call for a ban was rejected less than two weeks before the Olympics by the IOC (International Olympic Committee), just days before the petition to reinstate her began to circulate.
As a Canadian, who remembers the Pearson to Chretien years of relatively independent foreign policy, I was appalled to uncover the conspiratorial atmosphere enveloping the Montreal head-quartered WADA (World Anti Doping agency) and the CCES (Canadian Center for Ethics in Sport) where the plot was concocted, using Stepanova’s former drug-supplier, Grigory Rodzhenkov’s, unsubstantiated claims. These led directly to the quick-and-dirty McLaren report.
Within hours of the release of that report, Paul Melia, head of CCES, gleefully assuming that the collective punishment of Russians demanded by his organization and WADA was assured, wrote:
“His [fellow-Canadian McLaren’s] report lays out a narrative befitting a Hollywood thriller, implicating the highest levels of government, the secret Russian police and virtually every sport on the Olympic roster.”
The real ‘Hollywood Thriller’ it turns out, is not anything that may or may not have happened in Russia, but the the report itself, with its fantastic claims, and the hidden motives for them. All the claims it made and the witnesses it cited, including Stepanova, were rejected by the IOC as being without merit.
The problem, that the McLaren report likely ‘leaked’ to WADA and CCES in advance, is devoid of evidence. At the press conference, McLaren said that he had evidence, but was not going to publish it. With zero evidence, the report had to refurbish Cold War memes: FSB agents emptying urine samples by moonlight and substituting them with clean urine, “through a mouse-hole”. But, most importantly, he had a Russian, who had defected to the USA and who was willing to turn on his state and tell ‘the whole truth’ about it.
The ‘Russian’, Grigory Rodchenkov, is the chief and only witness in McLaren’s Report, a report which owes a ‘tip of the hat’ to the late Colbert Report for its sophisticated use of ‘truthiness’. (Truthiness is a quality characterizing a “truth” that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively “from the gut” or because it “feels right” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. -Wikipedia)
Rodchenkov is the disgraced former head of RUSADA (Russian Anti-Doping Agency). This agency, located in Moscow, was the only WADA-accredited agency in Russia. In other words, WADA explicitly endorsed the methods, standards and authenticity of the results of that lab.
The plot of the real thriller thickens: Rodchenkov was kept on at the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, with the tacit approval of WADA, even after he was charged in 2011 by Russia with selling banned, performance-enhancing substances to his sister, for resale to athletes. She was charged, convicted and jailed in Russia in 2013. Her brother got off the charge by claiming a ‘personality disorder’. Yet, in spite of all the above, WADA kept him on.
And last but not least is Juliya Stepanova herself, who has confessed to using banned substances and to paying Rodchenkov thirty thousand rubles ($1,000US) in 2010 to conceal her positive test results. Stepanova’s husband, Vitaly Stepanov, an anti-doping agent at RUSADA 2008-2011, knew of his wife’s and Rodchenkov’s practices, but told no one until 2015. In June 2016, the Stepanovs admitted receiving help to move to the USA and $30,000US in cash from WADA. Conspiracy at work: chronology, complexity and concealment!
In other words, Rodchenkov supplied banned substances to his sister, who sold them to athletes, from whom he then took bribes, in order to conceal the evidence of their drug use. But now Rodchenkov has a new role: he is the sole supplier of uncorroborated evidence to documentary film makers in Germany and the USA, whose so-called ‘investigations’ first stoked the fires of the conspiracy and, finally, to McLaren himself. Rodchenkov, is now wanted for questioning in Russia for the crimes he has confessed to. In fact, the highest official to be implicated in the alleged systemic doping in the Russian Federation, is Rodchenkov. Yet, McLaren states repeatedly in his report that Rodchenkov is “a credible and truthful source“.
McLaren’s fifty-seven day rush to judgment excluded interviews with The Russian Federation, its Olympic officials, and its athletes. His claim that he “had no time” to speak to the accused, while blithely using the information provided by a confessed criminal (Rodchenkov), is a violation not only of elementary jurisprudence, but of common sense and decency.
WADA too, who selected McLaren to investigate the most serious and pervasive problem in modern Olympics as an ‘Independent Person’, not only felt that fifty-seven days was ample, but that none of the accused had a right to to a hearing. In any event, McLaren clearly agreed to these terms. Two weeks before the Rio Olympics were to begin, WADA handed the McLaren report to the IOC for a decision, and waited.
The judgment came within days. WADA’s and McLaren’s claims had been rejected.
The character of the witnesses and absence of evidence had eviscerated the case against Russia. The chief ‘witness’ and his confederate, Stepanova, were more likely seen as opportunists and perjurers than ‘whistle- blowers’. The Olympic Ethics Committee judgment against Stepanova, following the submission of McLaren’s report, confirms this. Western mass media howled with impotent rage. (Blowback for WADA and their confederates and instigators is that the IOC has characterized their practices as a mess of ineptness and contradictions. IOC has demanded the reform and restructuring of WADA itself!)
Alexander Mercouris, international lawyer and journalist, says the following about the the banning of Stepanova, due to her admission to doping:
“…there is fury at the supposedly unfair treatment of Stepanova… It is being said this decision is bizarre given that she was supposedly instrumental in exposing the doping in the first place, and that by preventing her from competing the IOC is punishing a “whistle-blower”, which will deter other potential whistle- blowers from coming forward. All these claims and arguments are false and/or mendacious.”Why All Criticisms of the IOC’s Refusal to Ban Russian Athletes are Wrong – The Duran
A confessed doper, seeking exemption from the law, is not a ‘whistle-blower’. Whistle-blowers in the US are Snowden, Manning, Kiriakou, Assange (honorary) and many others. You can tell who they are by the way the state treats them. Prison. Torture. Exile. Persecution.
The judgment of the Olympic Ethics Committee on Stepanova is clear: “… the circumstances in which she denounced the doping practices which she had used herself, do not satisfy the ethical requirements for an athlete to enter the Olympic Games.”
The passion of young Olympic athletes must not become the plaything of old, resurgent, parasitic, Cold Warriors. They are all old and, almost all, male an aspect of the state-funded Olympics which needs serious investigation. The opportunities for sexual and psychological abuse abound. These WADA and CCES over-the-hill males, have already partially succeeded in damaging the Olympic Charter’s 6th Principle: non-discrimination of any kind, including nationality and political opinion. Since justice and doping practices were clearly not their real aims, what was? They have shown themselves capable of crossing all boundaries to achieve it. A scheduled press conference, no doubt prepared to celebrate their anticipated victory, was canceled. Clearly, as with any incompetent and compromised organization, they had no Plan B.
The IOC withstood a barrage of well-coordinated attacks from the uniformly on-message Western mass media, and the hatchet-job that is the McLaren Report. That report had reduced the huge problem of Olympic doping to a lurid, unsubstantiated harangue against Russia. The report and its sponsors have inadvertently swept the very real problem of doping under the rug once more. This weaponization of sports by the West has hurt Russia and its athletes, but it has also hurt all athletes and the Olympic movement itself. Proposing figures like Stepanova and Rodchenko as ‘whistle-blowers’ rather than the self-serving, disgraced and compromised characters they are, has demeaned real whistle-blowers, who have little enough protection as it is.
In protecting its own integrity, the IOC has delegated the power to ban Russians without evidence or the possibility of self-defense to the separate athletic associations. Thus, although not banned by the IOC, only athletes of the Russian Federation can still be banned – without cause. Elena Isinbayeva, two-time Olympic Gold Medal Track-and-Field winner and undisputed world champion of the pole vault, who has never doped, was banned by the IAAF; while several multiple-doping convicted members of the US and UK were not. On August 7, the entire Russian Paralympic team was banned.
For their partial victory, the IOC has been maligned in the Western media. But, by remaining above the fray, it has potentially positioned itself to reform the excesses and incompetence of WADA. The Olympics may not be dead yet, but they are on life-support.
Great article – thank you very much Marcel Woland.
Once again, the Zionist forces are succeeding in sowing destruction and chaos amongst anything that has ever stood for genuine human endeavour, in this case – the Olympics.
Well, maybe it’s for the better, after all – the Zionists might actually be doing humanity a favour without even realising it – a veritable phoenix arising out of the ashes for the Olympics – an ideal which has been compromised for a long time owing to Zionist/Western-style greed and corruption.
It is only the beginning for the ordeal by fire that the West needs to undertake.
Russia and China have already had theirs.
I would agree to ‘Anglozionist Empire’. There are too many old Anglos involved to see this as a Zionist-run initiative. Though Rodzhenkov is a Jew and likely at least a part-time zionist, Stepanova, McLaren, Melia, Reedie and Pound are not.
“The passion of young Olympic athletes must not become the plaything of old, resurgent, parasitic, Cold Warriors. They are all old and, almost all, male an aspect of the state-funded Olympics which needs serious investigation.”
Maybe, then, their ranks need to be invigorated by someone young, female, knowledgeable in Olympic matters, and energetic – someone like Elena Isinbayeva, say, who must have time on her hands these days.
I watched Andre Bresson’s Trial of Joan of Arc a few days ago. The parallels to Isinbayeva, while not perfect, are intriguing all the same. The conspiracy by the English to kill her comes to mind. And so does the court of compromised French sellouts (think Rodzhenkov) all male and mostly old. Sado-Masochism in the Olympics must be a great turn on – most of the Sadists are of course on top.
So I looked on the IOC executive roster and, lo and behold, two names pop up:
Sergey Bubka and Sir Craig Reedie. Reedie is head of WADA. And Bubka coached Isinbayeva when she left her current coach for awhile. She started to lose and left Bubka. The more you look the dirtier it gets.
You do realize that Joan of Arc is just a myth and it never happened in the Past? Although it passes as a fact in the History.
I could as easily claim that you are a myth “which never happened”.
In fact, Andre Bressan’s entire script is taken verbatim from the preserved transcript of the ecclesiastical court proceedings against Joan (Jehanne) of Arc. The English were the power behind the curtain in that trial. They obviously had scores to settle with now ‘Saint Joan’. Clearly, the Catholic Church also attests to her existence as does Wikipedia and every encyclopaedia ever written.
I wonder what scores you have to settle with history, or with La Pucelle herself, to make such an outrageous and ill-considered claim?
From New Chronology project
А.Т.Fomenko, G.V.Nosovskiy, WESTERN MYTH
Comparison of the history of Joan of Arc and the history of Biblical Deborah discovers bright parallelism.
‘Truthiness’ is a technique for perverting the course of justice and flaunting the ‘rule of law’ of which the West makes so much fuss. It is the primary technique used by demagogues since the invention of ‘democracy’ in Ancient Greece for swaying the ignorant masses into actions contrary to the law, by ‘perception management’, by crooked defense lawyers for exonerating obvious criminals, by crooked prosecutors to incriminate obvious innocents. It is ingrained in the pseudo ‘legal system’ of the ‘common law’.
It is falsehood pretending to be the Truth, a weapon for the destruction of societies, of the ‘continuous Revolution’.
Lying is the way of life in the morally poisonous West. Every day innumerable politicians and business parasites and MSM hate-mongers lie through their teeth. Exposure makes NO difference-they just repeat the lies until, under their exemplar Goebbel’s dictum, it becomes accepted as truth. Once upon a time, to be caught out lying ended or severely wounded a career, but not any more.
The rot really began with the USA and Israel, who share the Nessianic delusion of supremacy over all the lesser breeds, although it was always incipient among the worst types in every society. In recent decades we have had the cover-ups and concerted lying concerning the murders of JFK, MLK, RFK in the USA and the assassinations of Lumumba, Hammarskjold, Diem, Allende et al, and The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, ‘yellow rain’ in Indochina, the KGB plot to kill Wojtyla, KAL 007, Lockerbie, MH17, etc. And the intensity, audacity and impudence has only grown.
Obama lied about ALL his intentions. The Israelis lie about everything. Cameron lied about his intentions in 2010. Western liars lie about Georgia’s aggression in 2008, and the Nazi putsch in Ukraine. You could go on ALL day. And the complicity of the Western MSM sewer, as evil a cabal of liars, hypocrites and grovelers to power as you could ever imagine, is crucial. And the lower depths of Western society, stupid, brainwashed, ignorant and arrogant despite their rapid descent into serfdom, are ever ready to find scape-goats to hate. It makes them feel powerful, when, in fact, they are impotent drones. Still, screeching at Putin, the Evil ‘Yellow Peril’ of China, or Trump, makes them feel tough. Hatred short-circuits any mental process that might identify the real cause of their economic and social decline-the ruling parasite class.
Mulga M
“Lying is the way of life in the morally poisonous West” Yes, and they do that mostly smiling. Trying to convince some people (majority) about this “disease” is proven to be a very difficult task, if not impossible.The wake-up will be miserable.
What’s really hard in ‘the West’ these days is being an honest person.
The Western world is so dominated and controlled by liars that one almost has to lie to even get anything done. I’d guess that lying in the West is about a common, day-by-day, survival technique as standing in line used to be in the old Soviet Union.
Did you see how that ugly U.S. swimmer, Lilly King, after she won the gold in the 100M Breaststroke, harrassed and condemned Yulia Efimova, who came in second?
But today, just a few hours ago, Lilly King failed to qualify in her heat for the 200M, while Yulia has.
Isn’t that funny that she’s now living in Los Angeles, where she was trained by David Salo?
CNN interviewed the parents of Lilly King later yesterday after her win against Efimova. Her father said something like this ” my daughter showed the way on how could be a clean swimmer and win “
When you consider the record of US doping, Marion King, Flo Jo, Carl Lewis et al, and the absolute tsunami of drug use in US sports, college sports and even ‘recreationally’, the arrogance of Yanks abusing others is typical. And when you are expected to believe that Phelps, like Lance Armstrong, is so far beyond all his contemporaries, everywhere on Earth, just because he is ‘Exceptional’, that also defies belief.
Absolutely defies belief. For years, all media, cycling publications, sportscasters, etc. repeatedly described Armstrong’s superior physiology, training regimen, enlarged heart pumping more blood, super-lung capacity, ad nauseum.
Despite Ressiot’s ingenious and diligent ‘real investigative reporting’ (where has that endeavor vanished among our media these days?). That should have been the decisive blow to those lies. Irrefutable, with bright red lines and circles even a child could follow: https://www.scribd.com/document/108996769/ChamporCheat-August28-2005-LST
Yet despite even that, back in 2005, the “exceptional Lance” story continued unabated. Despite our other ‘American Heroes’ proving dirty, doped, cheaters: Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis…add the others you already mentioned, and tack on many more. Eventually even the Yellow Shield (a.k.a. LiveStrong Foundation used for deflection…”He does so much good…”) could not prevent the eventual truth of Armstrong’s lies eclipsing the Big Delusion.
Yet today, Lance is still a hero to many, and that unbelievable story, that the American Hero Athlete, pure as the driven snow, inexplicably overcomes all the other dirty rotten dopers/cheaters of the world, because USA!
Cathy Freeman, Ian Thorpe? Remember how Marie-Jose Perec the was ‘eliminated’ from the games because Cathy Freeman had to win? How the little Andreea Raducan was stripped of her gold medal because she took Nurofen before the competition at which all three medals have been won by the Romanian team? And although the Court of Arbitration for Sport exonerated her of any wrongdoing, it upheld the IOC’s decision with much posturing “in the belief that the Anti-Doping Code of the Olympics had to be enforced ‘without compromise’, regardless of the intentions or age of the athlete”?
In American sports, to be successful, one has to include some form of ‘doping’ into the training. The trick is to do it ‘just right’ so that its either a ‘new’ thing or you do it so the test don’t detect you. But, I find it very hard to believe that ANY professional or Olympic athlete in America is what I would call ‘clean’.
What is officially called ‘clean’ is what Lance Armstrong used to claim … that is that he hasn’t failed a test. And he never did. Not one.
I write from New Zealand. Our loudmouth officials jump whichever way the wind blows. They don’t seem to realise how vulnerable such a small country as ours is to retaliation.
However, I do think Canadians ought to demand the dismissal of Professor McLaren from Western University. He has obviously conspired with fugitives from justice in the greatest match-fixing scandal of our times. He has no understanding of the rules of evidence. He has no grasp of the concept of natural justice. Given the way such Canadians as Louise Arbour have corrupted international law, and the way plea-bargaining has eclipsed jury trial over the border, he is a clear and present danger to all Canadians.
Good points. Louise Arbour has been a disaster of IL, in her eagerness to embrace the dark side, just as McLaren did – and so many others. But those who stand on the side of right are strong, and will win the day, and save the Olympics, IL and the world itself.
Canada has long had a large and powerful Ukrainian fascist emigre community, many of whom reached Canada after WW2, and were open fascists, many butchers of the worst kind. McLaren, like most of the Canadian ‘elite’ would not dare to upset those thugs. And the Canadian elite are also beholden to the USA and to Israel, to an amazing extent.
Canada has certainly slipped into Fascism easily. Having the USA (long-since Fascist) as a neighbour and a large Fascist Ukrainian community has helped. Western Capitalism is not a good rallying cry for Cold or Hot War. But the four tenets (Horsemen) of Fascism are. I give them to you as I learned them from a Viet Nam Draft Resister living in Canada many years ago:
Fascism = Nationalism + Militarism + Racism + Corporatism.
The ‘racism’ which the West came up with is of course Anti-Arab antisemitism.
The other three categories are self-explanatory.
Great article. As it is now, the western media and their Anglozionist political masters have only succeeded in further eroding their own credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of those still naive enough to believe them and anything they say as they persecute innocent Russian athletes for short term political objectives. More and more people in the west are getting to see the horrible moral decadence of their so called leaders, and there will be serious consequences soon enough for that. Truth is like jelly, you can’t nail it to the wall or hide it; it always gradually comes out.
Interesting info about the scum involved with wada and the ioc. I think the author is much too kind with the ioc’s role, though. Those sods did what they thought they could get away with against the Russians. They were simply more hamstrung by the need to seem “fair” to a world audience and to history. Unless there is a major outside imposed purge at the ioc, don’t expect them to reign in the zionasties playing dirty politics.
Your criticism is well-taken. I felt that an article with nothing but villains in it, and all on the same side, would strain credulity. And I was happy to recently get the comment and link below which describes the truly principled actions of Pat Hickey, Irish OC.
Proof of which are his targeting by the now angry-as-hornets WADA/USADA/CCES.
There are fault-lines in the bureaucratized and sanitized malice of the West. They ought to be encouraged.
I am a Canadian who publishes https://amateursport.wordpress.com (though not as often as I would like!). Marcel Wooland is right on about the so-called “rush to judgement” – an imperialist version of a game-ending full court press organized through the Anglo-American Olympic associations in which the world is reduced to being a spectator of the blitzkrieg. The unsavoury background of Richard Pound, WADA head and Montreal corporate lawyer, with his claim of high ideals, merits attention: a crony of the Spanish fascist Juan Antonio Samaranch, he was the chief point man in (1) the commercialization of the modern Olympics and the monopolization of world sport through negotiating billion dollar sponsorships with global monopolies and TV networks; and (2) awarding the 1994 Coca Cola games to Atlanta and covering up the Salt Lake Winter Olympics scandal. How did this make for “clean games”? And this is only part of the story. Those who live in glass houses. . .
Further, the role of the CBC as a state agit prop centre in orchestrating disinformation merits attention: its chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault adopted Juliya Stepanova, who was presented as being allegedly “in hiding” in a series of “exclusive” reports, though not from this media. It is the Cold War disinformation about athletes as “defectors.” It feeds a narrative which claims these athletes are fleeing from oppression and torture to freedom and opportunity and presents the USA as the go-to country for any athlete or coach in the world who wants to excel in international competition. The aim was not only the exclusion of the Russian Olympic Federation and its athletes but the wrecking of public opinion. Never in the recent history of an international sports event has a country been brought under so much pressure with the aim of defeating its athletes and demoralizing its people.
The most amazing aspect of this never-ending IOC scandal – forget, for a moment the anti-doping fairy tales – might be the general capacity to feign shock and outrage that exists among the sports media.
Some historical context is needed. This is not the first crude and premeditated maneouvre that WADA has been involved in. WADA and the PASO Medical Commission (of the Pan American Sports Organisation) with the backing of the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sport manufactured anti-doping tests that implicated Cuban athletes and medical personnel in the 1999 Winnipeg Pan AM Games. To the very end of the games extremely strange and unexplained events occurred, including finding traces of cocaine in the urine sample of the Cuban track and field champion high jumper Javier Sotomayor whose reputation and integrity as a competitor were proven and beyond reproach. Furthermore, he had been tested for drug use 8 times in 1999 alone. The Cubans categorically denied any possibilities that Sotomayor himself took any prohibited substance. They have stood as one behind Sotomayor, taking a clear stand that attempts to sully the reputation of individuals like Sotomayor in order to demoralize the entire Cuban people would not be tolerated. (Once Sotomayor was stripped of the gold medal, it went to the two Canadians who tied for silver, Kwaku Boatang of Montreal and Mark Boswell of Brampton, Ontario.)
In that case, test B failed to provide results in the first place, which was unusual enough, and worthy of investigation. But the fact that test B failed to coincide with test A implied a much more serious fix, given that both tests were from the same urine, treated with the same instruments and techniques, and should have identical results. International Olympic Committee officials are extremely rigorous with these laboratories and practitioners and should have suspend their operations. Canadian officials and the Canadian monopoly controlled news media similarly tried to dismiss the serious charges Cuba was raising about the manipulation of the rules of the competitions and of the results of the competition in favour of Canada and the U.S., seeking to eliminate the ability of Cuban and other athletes to engage in fair competition.
The main catch phrase in besmirching Russian athletes has been “state sponsored doping.” This deception should be vigorously challenged and not from a defensive basis. Mention has been made in a comment about Lance Armstrong. He was initially sponsored by the U.S. Post Office, a state agency. George W Bush invited him to cycle with him on his Texas Ranch, though to his credit Armstrong refused to publicly endorse the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. His former girl friend. Cheryl Crowe, performed for John Kerry’s presidential election campaign and Kerry travelled to be seen cheering on Armstrong in the Tour de France. Doping, cheating and match fixing in the U.S. is according to the maxims of neo-liberalism: it has been privatized as part of reducing sport to a narcosis, as entertainment. It is instructive that the U.S. state, through the anti-trust exemption, has ensured that the major sports cartels in baseball, football and hockey act as a law unto themselves.
And there is no world outcry against the banning of the Russian Paralympic team? In what world does this make sense except as blatant attack on the rights of the disabled? The IOC’s power centre is the EU and its private sports empires such as adidas. The head of the Paralympic association is the British Michael Craven. It is collective punishment according to nationality, a Nazi ethic adopted from the British Empire.
We should be wary of can be called “spin and counter-spin.” This entire unprincipled maneouvre – as occurred in 1999 – is now aimed at Russia on a much vaster scale to be sure but far more than that. These are the latest attempts by US finance capital in a series going back many years against its rivals and competing capital to monopolize and control international sport in its own hands, as it seeks to do with every sphere of life, in violation of sports sovereignty.
Does not anyone remember U.S. Major League Baseball dressing up Jewish Americans as members of an Israeli baseball team to compete in the World Baseball Classic (WBC). Or Americans like Mike Piazza to represent Italy and Latinos to represent Spain? Not a single member of the Spanish baseball team came from Spain. Talk about “match fixing” and “clean games”!
The WBC was launched on a premeditated basis in 2005 when the IOC removed baseball (and womens’ softball) from the Olympics. The IOC cited two reasons: (1) MLB’s substandard doping policy and (2) its failure to send the best players. Just three days later, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig held a press conference in Chicago, where he pulled its plans for the WBC out of the top drawer. The WBC was launched as a plan to dominate world markets and athletic talent, the so-called “globalization of sport.” Initially the Bush regime even refused to allow Cuba, the reigning world champion, to participate. Nicaragua, the 5th ranked team in the Americans, was also excluded. Not only did the Cubans successfully blew up this farce, they launched a successful international campaign to reinstate baseball in the Olympics.
Next up: ice hockey where the U.S.-based National Hockey League is maneouvring to take hockey out of the Winter Olympics and replace it with its own world cup.
Dirty tricks and a propaganda campaign which is tantamount to psychological warfare are the instruments of reaction in international sport and reflect the acuteness of the savage rivalry between the imperialist powers. What this shows is that even the domain of sports is being brought under the liquidationist pressure, whereby the modern norms of a level playing field and sportsmanship in competition are being destroyed in order to achieve self-serving aims. Sports are added or subtracted by the big powers, according to winning is everything, the only thing. The “laws of the game” are manipulated according to the dictates of TV and sporting good monopolies. Even roller hockey was made a Pan Am sport, although it was played in but three countries: the US, Canada and Brazil. The rule of law means nothing without due process but it has been substituted by jungle law under the banner of high ideals. International agencies act as judge, prosecutor and hangman above the rule of law.
I congratulate the Canadian athletes who upheld the principles of competition and sportsmanship to speak out against both the WADA offensive and the IOC decision.
“To the very end of the games extremely strange and unexplained events occurred, including finding traces of cocaine in the urine sample of the Cuban track and field champion high jumper Javier Sotomayor whose reputation and integrity as a competitor were proven and beyond reproach. Furthermore, he had been tested for drug use 8 times in 1999 alone. The Cubans categorically denied any possibilities that Sotomayor himself took any prohibited substance. They have stood as one behind Sotomayor, taking a clear stand that attempts to sully the reputation of individuals like Sotomayor in order to demoralize the entire Cuban people would not be tolerated. (Once Sotomayor was stripped of the gold medal, it went to the two Canadians who tied for silver, Kwaku Boatang of Montreal and Mark Boswell of Brampton, Ontario.)
In that case, test B failed to provide results in the first place, which was unusual enough, and worthy of investigation. But the fact that test B failed to coincide with test A implied a much more serious fix, given that both tests were from the same urine, treated with the same instruments and techniques, and should have identical results.”
Why aren’t there more lawsuits when signs and evidence points to planting or tampering with the evidence and false accusations?
I am a Canadian as well, Tony; here’s my article on the subject:
https://marknesop.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/guilty-until-proven-guilty/
After the McLaren report came out, McLaren himself admitted he had no evidence of a state-sponsored doping program in Russia, but there must be…because there just must be, it’s such a big country.
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/trackandfield/richard-mclaren-russian-doping-wada-1.3314048
“Dmitry’s correct. We don’t have any evidence of a systematic, state-wide doping mechanism. If we did, we would have published it and so we have to go on the inference. But across a vast country [with] all sorts of different training camps, it has to be somehow state supported but we can’t actually describe for you how that operates.”
I echo your praise for this article, and hope that the legal repercussions from this grotesque and overt political opportunism will be, at a minimum, the moving of WADA out of Canada where it is completely at odds with Canadian values.
Allow me to paraphrase this Canadian Robespierre, this Cicero of London, Ontario, this Antonin Scalia of the Great White North:
“I have no evidence. But my gut feeling is, the Russkies did it.”
Good quote – says it all. But you dignify an obscure twit by the comparison! Cicero was a man of some mettle and craft!
Thanks kindly Mark. I am thinking to repost your article. The CBC and the powerful sports media, instrument of annexed private sports empires such as Rogers, Bell and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, for whom the sports played by the Canadian people simply do not exist, should be hit hard and repeatedly. Adrienne Arsenault seems to have personally adopted the so-called Russian “whistle blower”, who is “hiding” — though CBC seems to have a pipeline. It has published numerous articles highlighting “booing” of Russian athletes though it turned a blind eye to the booing of the Israeli delegation during the Opening Ceremony, something admitted even by the Haaretz newspaper.
Another thing I notice: more and more the phrase “Team North America” is being used. It seemed all so “innocent”, referring to the marriage of an American and a Canadian Olympian who first met at the (Nike) University of Oregon. I have begun documenting the number of Americans recruited to the Canadian Olympic team and discovered that it is now the official policy of Own The Podium, an agency of private capital to select and fund athletes on the basis of the criteria of being “winners”, and hence of the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Trudeau government.
Sure enough, the forthcoming NHL-organized and so-called world cup features an entry named “Team North America,” composed of an equal number of young American and Canadian hockey players, in addition to the US and Canadian teams. Then there is a “Team Europe.” It illustrates the attack on sports sovereignty by the Anglo-American financial oligarchy in its drive for world domination, including athletic supremacy.
Thank you Tony and Anon,
for pointing out how Corporatism has enabled the transformation of Canada into a Fascist State. The assault on civil society by Fascism is occurring across a broad front, from amateur and professional sports (mass media) to Parliamentary politics. I think it was Mussolini who opined: “I would say that Fascism is the marriage of the state and the corporation.”
Why ‘marriage’? – one of the Christian sacraments. And why is the obsessive idealization of ‘body’ such an integral part of Fascism? Is it about corporate commodification of the corporeal human being? Athletes bodies and advertising are certainly a marriage, but probably one made in hell. We have seen what is going on in Western athletes minds by their sycophantic falling in with authority in Rio. Booing any team seems to be in violation of the spirit and the charter of the Olympic movement. And we saw much worse. Including threats from Kiev against the Ukrainians for ‘fraternizing with the enemy’ in social media photos. The regimentation and narrow specialization (winning is all!) of Western athletes is a perfect model of mindless obedience. Ethics and empathy have clearly been banned from the corporatized Olympic environment.
These were the broader implications which I had to ignore in order to pull together and expose the banal mechanics of the quasi-legal attacks by CCES, WADA et al. The synchronicity of this attack against a ‘soft target’ like the Olympics, with the looming, sanction-driven departure of Russia from economic neo-liberalism is telling. The West cannot stand the competition either in athletics or trade. Now that the games are almost over it is clear that, without the dirty-tricks campaign, Russia would have won the medal count. That would have been a very bad bit of publicity for the vital, coming recruitment drives and maintenance of Western troop strength at the assault lines on land, sea and air.
The, admittedly imperfect, symmetry created by Russia, and International Grand Master Putin, of Rio 2016 – Turkey for Sochi 2012 – Ukraine has not yet fully registered. It may be touch-and-go and Erdogan is an unstable and unpredictable player but is the situation in Ukraine any different for the Washington Regime?
The picture I cannot get out of my head, after that of the ‘(Nike) Oregon University cross-border marriage’, is of all the marriages since 1945, actual and metaphorical, that must have occurred between the Banderists and other relocated Gehlenist SS Nazis and Corporate Canada. I see swastikas waving in the torchlight, like at the Nuremberg Rally, and speeches peppered with quotes and good wishes from Saint Stepan Bandera, Goebbels and Himmler. And an extra, profound meaning added to the cry at a Slavic wedding, demanding that the bride and groom kiss: ” Gor’ko! (Bitter)”
I wonder what Pierre Trudeau would say if he could see us now.
Two women raising the Spanish flag to the top:
Mireia Belmonte, swimmer, from Badalona, Catalonia, gold in 200 meter butterfly, and Maialen Chourraut, paddler, from Lasarte, Guipuzcoa, Basque Country, gold in whitewaters canoe K1 slalom. As a curiosity, Maialen decided to be a mom between the London Games and current edition of Rio Games.
Congratulations to both, for the deserved award and besides for your ease and simplicity. You are an example on what should be the Olympic spirit, which some, those same who are continually embittering the very life on earth, want to eliminate from the games.
Dedicated to all those men who always like to tell us what we should say or do, where we should be and how we should behave.
Cheers! :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7TgmuWdFFg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFIeg9gRAz0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7wyq7CWsXA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnhmkF0aPY
Same as with Eurovision. Used to be fun to watch. But since the US won this years Eurovision (they sent their singer Justin Timberlake to the contest, I remember and it is the only song in my country that you hear once in while on the radio) and we had to believe that the Ukraine… Enough of that. Not funny at all.
Excellent article detailing the true grubby and bullying nature of WADA and the cringeing of Richard McLaren. Thanks very much to Marcel Woland for writing this and to the Saker for posting it.
Am I ‘misremembering’ Dick Pound saying many years ago that he was sick of US athletes reaching for their lawyers whenever they were accused of doping? Anyone surprised that ‘I’ve never failed a drug test’ Serena was ‘surprisingly’ knocked out of the tournament? I’m sure she’s competing clean. David Walsh who wrote a great book about Lance Dopestrong in which he accused journalists of being lazy, penned a nasty piece shouting for punishment of damn Russkies in Murdoch’s Sunday Grimes just before the Olympics. No element of investigation in it of course. Just Cold War rhetoric from the crypt. Flo Jo’s record still stands! These are of course end days for the Empire. They can top the medal table and their vassal states’ media can worship their achievements ignoring the fact that most of their citizens are at home punching the air and yelling ‘Yes’ whenever a Yank is beaten, but in the long run (and this is always a marathon not a sprint) they will come undone. We all know it will be ugly. Just face the music and dance. It’s a nice song. A great Fred and Ginger routine too.
A first-rate expose of the whole, filthy business.
But good to see the IOC hasn’t become entirely corrupted.
Must share.
I know this. If I’m an athlete and if I’m not in a western-approved country, at this point I abandon any goals of international competition. I’m sure something like a Russian national championship is a very hard goal to attain, and a worthy goal for any athlete. After that, if a chance at the Olympics or other World Championships was available, then its questionable if I even adjust my training to try to peak at such a time.
And, if I’m in any sport that relies on judges scores for results, I completely abandon all international competition as I’d have to assume its all rigged and not worth the trip.
At this point, as a sports-fan, or former sports-fan really, who lives in the West, I’ve generally come to the conclusion that most of the ‘sports’ on TV are seriously rigged anyways. There is way too much money out there that wants to rig it, and there are way too many people with jobs as officials who don’t make very much money. So, there are very few sports these days that seem ‘honest’, and they are mainly the ones that haven’t become ‘popular’ enough to be bought off by someone or some group.
When I lived in Atlanta, we got a very close look at the IOC.
For example, they made an ‘inspection’ visit while Atlanta was competing for the pain of hosting the games. They didn’t inspect sports facilities. Instead, they went to the ultra-high-end shopping district and toured the fur shops and the jewelry stores. Then, anything they’d indicated an interest in was quietly delivered to their hotel rooms later that night.
I remember one IOC official from Africa was more practical. The price for his vote to have Atlanta host the games was that a good private (and expensive) university in town was to give his son a free ride through the school.
Ever since, I’ve always viewed the IOC as a highly corrupt body.
Every time I see USADA and WADA pontificating about all of this, I remember one little inconvenient fact.
Lance Armstrong never failed a drug test.
By now, we all know that Lance cheated his way through 7 TDF wins and for years before as he was ‘coming up’. Yet, the USADA and the WADA and the officials associated with cycling never once caught him doping.
At the very least, one has to regard these officials as incompetent.
If the world had evidence that the RADA (or whatever the Russian agency was called) was cheating, then the thing to do would be to remove their power to test and monitor and have the WADA take over. If they did this say 6 to 9 months before the Olympics, then they could then assure that ‘clean’ athletes from Russia were participating in the games.
The way they instead handled it, as this media-based character assassination and smear campaign, just tells me that they are as crooked as everyone else in America.
Actually Russian athletes were tested by UK labs for the seven months preceding the olympics
I wish to thank The Saker for accepting my article and to thank everyone for their high-caliber, and passionate, comments – usually both at the same time.
Some of the facts I wish I had incorporated in my article.
It is so gratifying to know that one is not alone.
If I had any doubts about following my sense of smell to the lair of the Foul Yeatsian Beast that launched this despicable and unforgivable attack on Russia, the Olympics, Justice, Truth and anything that may still be good about the West, this fresh wind at my back has reinforced me.
Truly, one might say that though “… the race is not yet to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,” a large posse is on the trail of the Jabberwock.
Tom Hickey, the Irish Olympic president, was arrested in Rio a few days ago for alleged involvement in a ticketing scam. Due to heart problems, he was hospitalized.
A huge picture of him with Vladimir and Ludmilla Putin (social, all three smiling) at the Sochi Olympics was plastered across the Evening Herald accompanying the story.
Back in July, Hickey came out strongly against the Russian Olympic ban, and questioned the ‘authority’ of WADA, and the ‘integrity’ of the so-called investigation:
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/other-sports/pat-hickey-slams-report-calling-for-outright-russian-olympic-ban-1.2725073
Draw your own conclusions.
So who’s next?
My ‘conclusion’ is that the failure of the Western Jabberwock to achieve collective punishment for Russia has now morphed into a quest for individual reprisals. Pettiness expands to fit the available vacuum.
I have no reason to doubt that the entire spectrum of trawled material and real-time data at the disposal of the NSA was, and will continue to be, made available to the co-conspirators of USADA, WADA and CCES. And to anyone who is ready to further the Cold-into-Hot war agenda of the Anglozionist Empire.
After all, the same kind of ‘consortium’ got John O’Neill, head of the FBI’s Osama Bin Laden counter terrorism Unit just prior to the WTC ‘event’ – for stealing a pencil. He was fired/resigned, but several weeks before the WTC demolition, got a job as Head of Security at the WTC. He died in the basement trying to save people. Whoever said that spooks have no sense of humor?
(The story of John O’Neil is told in the French best-seller Forbidden Truth, in a lengthy New Yorker magazine feature, in an hour-long PBS Frontline documentary as well as in an article in Harpers Magazine).
Luckily for Mr Hickey, he will likely retire to safety, if he survives the medical problems this attack brought with it. Hats off to him. I did not know that he was in that early, loudly and clearly calling the conspirators on their shabby actions.