Watch your mouth!
Dear boys and girls who plan to play in this summer’s Paris Olympics, here is a heads up. The president of the Olympic movement is reminding you that good little Olympic athletes should be seen and never heard. Well, you can be heard but not during the opening and closing ceremonies, the medal ceremonies, during competition and during your stay in the Olympic Village. Athletes have to refrain from attacking individuals, organizations or countries. The International Olympic Committee and its President Thomas Bach said failure to comply with the rules may result in disciplinary action. It is time for Bach to be reminded of some Olympics history, particularly the Olympics history of his homeland Germany. In 1936, Adolf Hitler attempted to use the Berlin Games for propaganda purposes and legitimize his rule of the country. In 1972, there was the Munich Massacre where members of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s offshoot Black September killed 11 Israelis.
The Olympic movement threw South Africa out in 1964 because of apartheid. There was the African countries boycott of the 1976 Montréal Games. American President Jimmy Carter ordered a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games because the Soviet Union refused to leave Afghanistan. A good number of western countries followed Carter’s lead. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries did not go to the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. Bach has to remember the 1968 Mexico City podium protest by two Americans Thommie Smith and John Carlos along with Australian Peter Norman protesting among other things poverty both in the United States and around the world. Bach should be reminded that he took partial credit when North Korea and South Korea fielded a combined team in the 2018 South Korea Winter Olympics. The Olympics event is political. Countries use the Olympics for various reasons including raising their global profiles.
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