Showing posts with label Olympic Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympic Games. Show all posts

Thursday, August 12, 2021

Cuba's example shone in Tokyo Olympics with 15 medals

 By Nikos Mottas

The performance of the Cuban athletes who took part in the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo and achieved a total of 15 medals causes admiration and pride. 

Leaving behind much larger countries with rich tradition in sports, the small socialist Cuba with a population of 11 million people ranked 14th in the Olympic medal list, winning seven gold, three silver and five bronze medals.

Of course, this is not the first time that Cuba performs great in the Olympics; For many decades, despite the genocidal economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the United States, the Island of the Revolution has triumphed in multiple Olympiads.

Sunday, August 8, 2021

Tokyo Olympics: IOC's refusal to honor Hiroshima-Nagasaki bomb victims is a huge shame

The refusal of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to participate in the commemorative events for the 76th anniversary of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, consists an immense insult to the memory of the thousands of bomb's victims as well as to the Japanese people in general. 

Furthermore, the IOC decided not to call on athletes and officials to have a moment of silence during the Games at Olympic venues and elsewhere on August 6th, the day when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima 76 years ago. 

Sunday, August 1, 2021

A message from Tokyo: "Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!"

Photo: El Manifiesto

In one of the most promoted boxing duels of the Olympics, the multi-medalist Julio Cesar la Cruz defeated today 4-1 the Spanish nationalized Emmanuel Reyes. With this victory, Cuban boxing secured three podiums in the Tokyo Olympic Games.

At the close of Friday's bout, La Cruz landed punches in the short and medium distance and defended the attacks of Reyes, to merit the verdict of four of the five judges and thus continue on the road to the cruiserweight grand final.  The Cuban team captain will compete in the semifinals against Brazil's Abner Teixeira, who beat Jordan's Eishaish Hussein Iashaish 4-1.

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Russian athletes propose Soviet song 'Katyusha' to replace the national anthem

Despite the decades of anti-communist propaganda, the memories of the Soviet Union and the immense contribution of the Red Army to the victory against fascism in WWII are still alive in capitalist Russia. 

A recent example of this is the proposal by the Russian Athletes Commission to play the famous Soviet song 'Katyusha' at international sporting events for the next two years, while Russia's national anthem is banned over doping violations. 

Saturday, August 20, 2016

The Unbearable Truth behind the 2004 Athens Olympics

SPECIAL TO IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM.

Twelve years have passed since the glamorous and much celebrated XXVIII Olympiad in Athens. For more than a decade hundreds of articles have been written about the 2004 Olympics' cost- an immense total cost of billion euros- as well as about the abandonded venues. 

However, before going to these issues, we will refer to what we regard as the most significant issue: the cost in human lives. A cost which cannot be counted in euros or olympic medals. At least 13 workers were killed ("work accidents") during the construction works of the Olympic venues. 

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Olympic Games and Fascism- The Olympic Deceit of the ‘Divine Baron’ Pierre de Coubertin

Olympism and Fascism.
By Ljubodrag Simonović.
Source: Excerpt from the book “The Olympic Deceit of the ‘Divine Baron’ – Pierre de Coubertin”
Posters: Vanja Zakanji.

As early as 1929, at the time of the great recession, “father” of the modern Olympic Games Pierre de Coubertin expressed his inclination towards authoritarian regimes, namely his discontent with the inefficiency of the capitalist system in its dealing with the working class :

"First of all, it was necessary to establish the International Olympic Committee with its basic rights, that should have been acknowledged by all the nations. This was not easy, because the Constitution of the Committee was opposed to the ideas of the time. It discarded the principle of delegation, so dear to our parliamentary democracies - the principle which, having done some great good, seems to be less efficient every day". (1)

It should also be noted that Coubertin was cordially accepted and his works published in fascist Germany, in spite of being "a great French patriot", a fact important at the time of German revanchism. Theodor Lewald, the president of the Organizing Committee of the Berlin Olympics, wrote of Coubertin at the end of his Introduction to "Olympische Erinnerungen", published in Berlin in 1938:

"He understood and enthusiastically saluted the development of the
new Germany under her Great Führer". (2)

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Rio Olympic Games- A celebration for the capitalist elites and multinational corporations, not for the people

COMMENTARY:

These days, the beautiful city of Rio De Janeiro is divided by a wall- on one side are the new, luxurious Olympic venues which are ready to host athletes from all over the world; on the other side, there is a complex of multiple favelas where poverty, misery and gangs dominate. This divided face of Rio mirrors the immense class-based inequalities in Brazil; a capitalist country of over 200 million people which is the world's ninth largest economy by nominal GDP. 

More than 20% of Brazil's population lives below poverty line and less than 2 million brazilians (1% of the total population) owns 13% of the total household income. According to Forbes, the 15 richest families in Brazil are worth an estimated $122 billion- that means approximately 5% of the country's GDP. This is the social and economic framework of the country which hosts the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.