Olympia: No games on the backs of the people!

Already in autumn of last year the German Olympic Sports League (Deutsche Olympische Sportbund, DOSB) confirmed that the FRG will compete for the organisation of the 2024 and possibly even the 2028 Olympic Summer Games and is sending both Hamburg and Berlin into the race for the host city.The final decision on which of the two cities will be nominated as the official candidate for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will be decided by the DOSB on the 21st of March.

“Berlin can olympia”

While the ruling class disseminates their fairy tale of the “sustainable and democratic” games, they are trying, apparently via representative surveys (ca. 1500 people took part in Berlin), to convince the populace that they would have only the smallest chance of adding their voices to the theatre, much less take part in making the decision.

It is beyond hypocrisy and ludicrousness for the campaign of the Berlin Senate and the profiting business groups – whether tourism or transportation – to say to the people of this city that it is also in their interest for the Olympic games to take place there.

Even without the Olympic games, we Berliners feel every day, with our own bodies, how the billion-Euro transactions in tourism and the “upgrading” of our city destroys our neighbourhoods and provides for the deterioration of our living conditions in the interest of capital, whether its through lack of housing, increasing rents, or the permanent rise of prices in public transportation.

“The entire world in our city”

While the German Imperialism plunders and murders on all continents in its own interests, and treats those that have been driven from their home countries by German weapons like livestock, the ruling class wants to lead us to believe how cosmopolitan and hospitable we are.

Welcome are only those who can afford it and who have money in their pockets, but we want neither Olympia nor do we want its well-to-do guests in our city.

Just take a look at the consequences that, for example, the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, or the 2012 Games in London, or the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil, had for the people who lived there, especially for the poorest among them, and we see quite clearly that the great events of the bigwigs are carried on the backs of the people and paid in their blood.

The Senate has calculated 2.5 billion Euros for the cost to host the games; in London in 2012 the estimated 2.6 billion Pounds was at first more than five times that, and with further investigation it turned out to be almost ten times the planned amount. But apart from these immense sums of money, the direct impacts in the various cities in the form of thousands of social houses being torn down, several thousand compulsory evictions, and the far reaching upscaling and renovation of entire districts, in which everyday people from the working class simply could no longer afford housing due to the enormous rise in rent prices, speak volumes.

When in 2014 Oslo published several conditions of the “Host-City-Contract”, belonging to the host contract of the IOC and the Olympia candidates, the displeasure of the people of Oslo was stirred in such a way that the government found itself forced to rescind their candidacy. Specifically, next to the “olympic runways” that were to be constructed for the corrupt IOC band, which the populace would not be allowed to use, and the complete control over the advertising space in the entire city for the duration of the games, it was found, for instance, that the host city would pay for cars with chauffeurs for the IOC heads, IOC members and creditors, as well as for the latest Samsung mobile telephones for all members.

In Brazil there were months of giant and violent protests, which had their climax in the summer of 2013, as up to one million people in several cities simultaneously stood up, went onto the streets, and fought sometimes bitter battles with the police. The reason for this was the organisation of the 2014 Football World Cup and the accompanying ransacking and repression of the people in the form of heavy attacks on poor neighbourhoods, the displacement of indigenous peoples, massive armament of the state apparatus of oppression, as well as the rise of prices in public transportation and cuts in social spending. That it is worth it not to simply give in, but rather to rise and fight, had some confirmation in the fact that the bus ticket hikes in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo were finally retracted after the enormous resistance of the Brazilian people.

The consequences are the same everywhere, even in their varying dimensions according to the conditions on the ground. And so will we, should Olympia come to Berlin, not simply be confronted with rising rents and transportation costs, tonnes of advertising garbage, and a torrent of loathsome event tourists with bags full of money, but also with countless pigs, more severe laws and special rules, prohibited areas, arbitrary controls, and massive (video) surveillance. All of this stands in absolute contradiction to the interests of our class and the broad masses in this city.

At the last Olympic Summer Games in London, next to a total prohibition of demonstration, there was the deployment of thousands of soldiers in the interior. That is nothing more than a dry run between the military and the police for wide-ranging fights against uprisings.

Their legitimation offers therefore the same lies as always – they talk of “defence against terrorism” and “security in the interior”, but from experience we know very well that it means nothing more than oppression and terror against the people for the maintenance of their ramshackle order, their greed for even more profit and for a greater hold on power.

Piss off with your Olympia!

We want no games on the backs of the people!

Defend yourself and fight – for our interests and for the power of our class!

Source: https://jugendwiderstand.blogspot.nl/2015/03/olympia-keine-spiele-auf-dem-rucken-des.html