Hi!,
The real news is that Sydney's Olympics were declared a
"Green Games" by the sell-out Greenpeace, when Greens around the world, not
only in Olympics, decry Stadium Developments as unneccessary commercialism in
already over-crowded urban areas.
Sydney is being "trashed" all right, It has been for just over 200
years now, when us white people started pissing in the Tank Stream. Now it's
turning Sydney into a Toxic Waste Dump with the backing of several people who
should know better.
As far as Greenpeace's sell-out is concerned, and the real news
regarding what the establishment press call "public relations disasters",
there is a book John Pilger recommends on the influence of capitalist public
relations industries upon the popular social movements for better use of
natural resources. This book is called:
"Global Spin: The Corporate Assualt on Environmentalism", from Sharon
Beder, which has a section devoted to the manufactured mythology of
Greenpeace's "Green Olympics".
This "Green Marketing" phenomenon is doing no good for environmentalism
whatsoever. Any claim that Sydney's environment is going to be better after
the Games is a fabrication invented by public relations consultants, both in
the employ of Greenpeace and in the state.
As Pilger says of the book:
"Global Spin is outstanding. Sharon Beder has taken the taboo subjects of
propoganda and censorship in free societies and exposed their insidious
threat. This is such an important book that I would put in on every school
curriculum".
I've only read a chapter so far, but the growth of PR Consultancies
during the 1970's and 80's is postively frightening. Many environmental
consultancies, operating under assumed names like "Coalition for Clean and
Renewable Energy" and "The Foundation for Clean Air Progress", etc.. What
emerges is that many, if not most, are subsidised by corporations like Quebec
Canada, or by business organisations like the Business Council of Australia.
They pose as grassroots campaigners and claim to represent the genuine voice
of the Green social movement, when in fact they represnent nothing more than
the corporate bottom line. They are there to harass the genuine activists and
produce misleading data to get the development to proceed.
Predicatably, the book has been almost completely ignored by the
establishment press, but is actually selling quite well. I am reading the
latest, revised edition. I am, as they say, ahead of the news on this one,
and I was even before I brought the book; the whole claim that you can build a
big toxic Stadium out of plastics, turn land into parking lots, being Green
and public-use of finite resources was all just a load of hot air and slick
commercialism on the part of people who as I say, should know a lot better,
and socially contradict themselves in many ways.
The real debate's a whole lot more than Beach Volleyball. That's just the
tip of a very big iceberg. That's just challenging the corporate agenda in a
small way. Bondi Beach is only one potential disaster area. The other is the
use of PVC by the designers of the Olympics stadium, which is an environmental
disaster of the first magnitude, as it would have been completely preventable
if it weren't for Greenpeace's sell-out and the usual inertia of these
hang-overs from 1970's-trained and corporatised green movements anyway.
Cheers,
Matthew Davis
Trudy Bray wrote:
> CNN - Sports Illustrated
> Olympic Protests
>
> An Uproar Down Under
>
> By Gary Smith
>
> What host country wouldn't feel uneasy?
> They're arriving soon, those crotchety aunts
> who look under beds, sniff inside cupboards and just can't
> bear to keep a couple of cockroaches or hair balls to
> themselves. They're nearly here, the world media coming to
> cover the Summer Olympics -- 15,000 crotchety aunts always
> on the lookout for dirt.
>
> Five months before the start of the Summer Games, that
> uneasiness turned to pit-of-the-gut dread in Australia last
> week. Just when the country's house seemed nearly in order
> -- Olympic venues virtually completed, streets and sidewalks
> renovated, economy booming and dust finally settling over
> Games tickets covertly snatched from the public allotment so
> they could be quietly sold at fat prices to the rich -- damned if
> somebody didn't open the one closet jammed with Australia's
> most embarrassing skeletons.
>
> Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron made the blunder
> when he submitted to a Senate committee a report that
> debunked as myth the stolen generation, the term used for the
> legions of Aboriginal children taken from their parents and
> placed in white foster care and institutions from 1910 to '70.
> The report, which was supported by Prime Minister John
> Howard and reflected government wariness over potential
> compensation claims, stated that the numbers of those
> affected had been greatly exaggerated and had never exceeded
> 10% of the Aboriginal population, which currently stands at
> 300,000 in a nation of 19 million. "There was never a
> 'generation' of stolen children," the submission stated. "[T]he
> treatment of separated Aboriginal children was essentially
> lawful and benign in intent."
>
> Outrage was immediate and widespread, especially among a
> minority for whom the stolen generation stands as a symbol
> of so many thefts and so much pain since the arrival of whites
> in the late 1700s. Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins, who was
> taken from his family as a child, threatened violence during
> the Olympics: "Burning cars and burning buildings.
> Reconciliation is finished now. We are not going to lie down
> like a mongrel dog so people can come along and kick us. We
> are going to start biting."
>
> "All bets are off," declared Lyall Munro of the Metropolitan
> Aboriginal Land Council. "Aboriginal people will rise up and
> show the world how racist Australia is."
>
> The ill-timed Senate submission re-ignited smoldering
> Aboriginal fury over the recent suicide of a 15-year-old boy
> serving a 28-day sentence for stealing oil and paint worth $30,
> under mandatory sentencing laws that exist in the Northern
> Territories.
>
> It remains to be seen how effective Aborigines might be at
> trashing Australia's house during the Olympics, especially
> since the country's greatest hope for gold in track and field,
> 400-meter world champion Cathy Freeman, an Aborigine,
> voiced her view two months ago that politics should be left
> out of the Games. But recent events have hardened resolve to
> shame the Games with marches and the opening of a shadow
> embassy in Sydney to expose world media and VIPs to
> poverty-devastated indigenous communities and to statistics
> showing that Aborigines earn half as much and live an average
> of 20 years less than other Aussies.
>
> The threat of a public relations disaster, along with a possible
> fracture within his Liberal Party, had Howard racing around
> with bucket and broom last week. He persuaded the chief
> minister of the Northern Territories to end mandatory
> sentences for juveniles who commit minor crimes and issued
> a half-baked apology to those offended by the submission.
>
> Meanwhile, hundreds of Bondi Warriors threatened to chain
> themselves to bulldozers and prevent construction next month
> of the final Olympic venue, the temporary beach volleyball
> stadium planned for Sydney's most famous crescent of sand,
> Bondi Beach. Government and Games officials could only
> groan, look out their windows at Sydney's sparkling harbor
> and eccentric white-roofed building, and hope to distract the
> crotchety aunts with ferry rides and opera.
>
> Issue date: April 17, 2000
> Copyright � 2000
> CNN/Sports Illustrated
> A Time Warner Company.
> All Rights Reserved.
>
> *************************************************************************
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