This part is truly surreal. Sponsors get protection from competitors from the state, just like the Communist party does. In effect large foreign corporations have essentially paid to become part of the state, at least for the duration of the olympics.
[quote]Naturally, curious minds tend to wonder what’s under the tape. A few investigative journalists, bristling at all this control, have even removed pieces of tape.
Soon after a piece of tape is removed, however, a new one quickly appears – thanks to Chinese workers charged with tape replacement. “We assign workers in [the Main Press Center] to check and replace tape that has been peeled off to make sure the tape still works every day,” says a Chinese official in charge of that work at the MPC. The official, who would give only his surname, Yang, wouldn’t say how many people are involved in that work.[/quote]
In many ways it reminds me of Mussolini’s somewhat vague concept of a Corporate State.
What’s odd is that the Russian state seems to have a fuzzy boundary with large Russian corporations too. It’s almost like there’s a new competitor to the ‘Western Model’ on the block.
Western countries are of course not immune to this sort of thing - I read a story about a school in the US having a sponsored Coke day. Kids being kids, one of them turned up in a Pepsi shirt and was asked to remove it.
In fact Adam Smith warned about it -
The difference is that in a freeish society people will obviously object and that limits the scope of it. Obviously in China, everyone knows that objecting to anything the state does, even bits of tape, will bring ruthless force down on you so the process has no natural limits.
It’s the limp dicks. They also tried to ban Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat from the Sydney Olympics and threatened athletes who climbed the podium holding him instead of the official mascots.
He’s now memorialised outside the stadium.
Side view of “Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat” as he appears on top of a pole outside Sydney’s Stadium Australia.
[quote]Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat
Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat was an unofficial mascot of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics created by Sydney cartoonist Paul Newell with Roy and HG from the Australian Channel Seven sports/comedy television program The Dream with Roy and HG, which covered the event.[1][2] He took the form of a life-size stuffed toy wombat with a lazy, cheerful expression and comically pronounced rump, and usually appeared on The Dream broadcasts on Roy and HG’s desk.
Fatso was a spoof of the official Olympic mascots Syd, Ollie and Millie, whom Roy & HG disparaged as “Syd, Ollie and Dickhead”.[3] He was nicknamed “the battlers’ prince” and proved to be more popular among Australian fans (and some visitors who viewed the program) than the official mascots.[4] Fatso appeared with Gold Medalists Susie O’Neill, Grant Hackett and the Australian men’s 4×200 metre relay team on the winners’ dais.[1][2] He consequently appears on an official commemorative postage stamp of the Australian men’s 4×200 metre relay team in the arms of Michael Klim.[5]
During the Olympics the Australian Olympic Committee attempted to ban athletes appearing with Fatso to stop him upstaging their official mascots.[2] The impending public relations disaster forced the president of the AOC, John Coates, and the director general of the IOC, Francois Carrard, to distance their organisations from these attempts.[6][1]
At the end of the Olympics, Fatso was auctioned for the Olympic Aid charity, selling for AU$80,450 to Seven Network executive chairman Kerry Stokes. Fatso is currently housed in a glass box in Kerry Stokes’s North Sydney office.[6]
In keeping with Fatso’s role as a protest against the commercialization of Olympic mascots,[3] only two Fatsos were officially produced: one for use in the studio and the other for use in the athletes’ village.[1] A number of unofficial Fatso toys and memorabilia were sold by merchants without authorization from the producers of The Dream.[7][8] A statue of Fatso appears as part of an official Olympic memorial outside the Sydney Olympic Stadium.[6][/quote]
The difference being that the Aussie state won’t send people to prison* over Fatso. And if you build statues to non state approved mascots in China, the government will knock them over with tanks
I think under English law, large areas of Australia are still technically classed as prisons, so if you lived on one of those, evil PRC apologists could say that you were in prison. But, damnit, that’s not the point here.
In Holland they found a new solution … unwanted brand names on TV are made unreadable by mirror imaging the video footage … weird to see cars with steering wheels on the right, people wearing watches on the wrong side etc. …
[quote]AP Associated Press updated 5:46 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2006
TURIN, Italy - Samsung can’t put its name on its popular flat-screen televisions, even in its own VIP lounge. Workers at Winter Olympic venues are taping over the Dell logos on laptops in the press boxes. The Austrians had to cover up the spiders on their Spyder jackets.
The advertising police are out in force at the Turin Games, enforcing arcane rules with a vigor unmatched at Olympics past…
[/quote]
How odd, I thought Mussolini was dead a long time ago.
Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not giving any free advertising to non-sponsoring companies. I mean the Olympic sponsors did each pay a gazillion dollars and all.
