American arrogance? An Olympic bid while Trump tells the rest of the world to get lost

American arrogance? An Olympic bid while Trump tells the rest of the world to get lost

It turns out, thankfully, that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will not tailor his conscience to suit the fascism of the times.

(Did I just write fascism instead of fashions?  Must have been a typo.)

In a statement about the Xenophobe-in-Chief’s travel and immigration bans on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, the most offensive but only the latest of the president’s unconscionable statements or orders, Mayor Garcetti said such action “only fans the flames of hatred that those who wish us harm seek to spread.”

So much for any worry that Garcetti would hold his tongue to curry the Madman-in-Chief’s support for the Los Angeles 2024 Summer Olympic bid.

The time also has come for the United States Olympic Committee to end its silence, no matter that the Third Grader-in-Chief might immediately give his usual “nyah, nyah” response on Twitter and do his best to undermine the Los Angeles bid (which he is doing already.)

And it is high time for the three International Olympic Committee members from the United States – including two women, one an African-American – to show they stand against intolerance. Neither of those two women, Olympians Anita DeFrantz and Angela Ruggiero, has replied to messages seeking comment.  DeFrantz once was courageous enough to defy the U.S. government by publicly criticizing the White House-mandated U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

And time for the IOC, which reaped such goodwill over its refugee team at the 2016 Olympics, to speak out rather than continue to hide behind the shibboleth of not interfering in the governance of sovereign nations.  That IOC already insists Olympic host cities – and by extension, their governments – play by its rules.

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Athletes should just say no to flawed anti-doping system

Athletes should just say no to flawed anti-doping system

Some thoughts while waiting for the lowlife Russian hackers whom Russian officials say have no ties to the government (hoo-hah!) to follow through on their announced intention to dump the next bunch of Olympians’ private medical records in an effort to convince people that athletes are doping even when they have violated no anti-doping rules...

...The overriding point in all this: as U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun has said repeatedly in recent months, the global anti-doping system is broken.

It includes unconscionable conflicts of interest, which included IOC vice-president Craig Reedie (whose IOC term ended in August) serving as WADA president.  And now the IOC dismay that the WADA-initiated McLaren report called for a ban on all Russian athletes in Rio.  Are they in this fight together or each defending a bailiwick?

The TUE regulations are just one of the many complicated, probably unworkable pieces in a well-intentioned but impossibly compromised and Sisyphean effort at doping control.

It is sad that this has led a group of ethically and morally bankrupt Russian hackers to pervert reasonable questions about flaws in the system by violating the privacy of individuals who have violated no rules.

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