The Olympic Star, Shining Bright

The two ancient Greek city-states - Athens and Sparta - were always rivals, went to great lengths to challenge one another, and went to war against one another as well. Their ideologies differed but they met yearly at Olympia, near Athens, in a challenge of sport, each with their champions in the arena of human physical achievement, pushing the body perfect, the physiognomy of grace and beauty, able to accomplish outstanding feats of physical performance and endurance.

The ancient Olympics dated from 776 B.C.; competing nations were as critical then of one another's values and social mores, political values and international prominence as they are now, in the modern world, where the modern Olympics represent an international sport event meant to highlight the heights to which human endeavour can achieve in sport performance.

Jacques Rogge, head of the International Olympics Committee, emphases that the Olympics transcend politics. The sites are conferred on various countries on the basis of the venues they can provide in accommodating the various sport performance activities, and the funds they are prepared to commit to ensuring those accommodation reflects Olympics standards, world standards.

The very purpose of the International Olympics, to bring together at one site the outstanding athletes of each country in a competitive process designed to eliminate the runners-up and illuminate the performances of the elite, is a world-recognized event of great international significance. And, just incidentally, a premier opportunity for the host country to shine a spotlight on its own singular accomplishments in a world of interrelated economies yet political estrangement.

The Olympics also represents a huge business enterprise, where business interests in host countries reap great economic windfalls. And for those fortunate gold-medal winners who bring lustre to the reputations of the countries they represent, a personal opportunity to win opportunities to enrich themselves through the solicitations of sport equipment manufacturers to have the creme de la creme of the sport world endorse their products to a sport-gullible world.

The selection of Beijing as the site for the 2008 Summer Olympics has always been fraught with controversy. Not only because of China's singularly awful human rights record, but because of the country's environmental backwardness, its dreadful atmospheric pollution, inimical to the health of its population and no less so to visitors to the Olympic performances, much less that of the competing sport figures.

China pledged to clean up its environmental mess, to take firm steps to ensure that the degraded atmosphere in Beijing would see a huge improvement before the Games proceeded. That's now seen as a highly unlikely accomplishment. But in China's haste to ensure that all the infrastructure is in place well before the Summer Games, building of appropriate Games sites in the capital has been frenzied, non-stop and deplorable.

Deplorable in the quality of the work experience offered to the great hordes of desperately poor Chinese who flocked to building sites in Beijing from the countryside, eager to earn badly needed funds. But the salaries paid these people whose positions have turned into semi-indentured slave labour under dangerous working conditions, with inadequate food and shelter, and no medical assistance when accidents occur, have turned another ugly spotlight on China's failed promises.

Here's China, the world's pre-eminent Communist country, slipping heartily into the embrace of a capitalist economic engine, emerging as the fastest-growing economy in the world, absorbing much of the world's manufacturing through its industrious, ill-paid huge workforce, hoping to show the visiting world of Olympic fans how greatly she has prospered, how much her people have advanced, since the recent past.

The world is to overlook the arbitrary arrest of Falun Gong practitioners, their incarceration, torture, mysterious deaths. The quietly steadfast persecution of Chinese Christians, Buddhists and Muslims who must not demonstrate their devoutness overtly, who must pray in designated buildings, too must be overlooked. The hounding and imprisonment of news people, the strict monitoring and closures of news media is another unfortunate myth.

But the coming together of the international community in a highly respected ritual of sport performance at the highest level of Olympian prowess does in a sense transcend politics. It's an opportunity for people to meet face to face, individual to individual, to be able to absorb the reality that we are not different from one another. For the Chinese, it may also present as an opportunity to see themselves as they're seen from the world outside.

And then we're set to start the whole thing all over again. For Moscow, like Beijing, a capital and a governing body representative of a country in transition with a troubled past and an unclear future within the international community, is now beginning to prepare for the 2014 Winter Games. Beijing has its Tibet and its Taiwan, Moscow has its Chechnya, and its uneasy relationship with its former satellites.

The news media in Russia is carefully monitored; human-rights activists, former apparatchiks who turn against the state, news reporters who uncover uncomfortable and compromising truths face dire persecution, imprisonment - sometimes mysterious and unattributable early deaths. And then there are also awkward unmentionables like the country's predilection for taking authoritative measures against the helpless.

Thousands of Russians living in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, site of the 2014 Olympics who, when they first became aware that Sochi had won the Olympic bid were overjoyed about the potential job creation and investment for their area, now face an uncertain future. It is now abundantly clear to these residents of Sochi that fortunes will be made, but not by them. It will be the politically well-connected who will realize profit.

Ordinary people, people like them, who have lived on the land for generations are simply out of luck. Among them also families of refugees who had escaped war in a neighbouring republic and who have lived in Sochi for fifteen years will be evicted. With nowhere to go. The land owners themselves will face the outcome of a recently passed bill, called the "Olympic law", passed by Russia's lower house of parliament.

Meant to speed up the confiscation of property, the land-owners will be offered plots elsewhere, in remote and run-down areas in the mountains, not suitable for farming. The compensation they will be offered in a take-it-or-live-it proposition represents values far below market value of the appropriated property that has been in their families for generations.

Critics within Russia, in appraisal of the situation, warn of a rise in corruption. One of the authorized officials for the Winter Olympics in Sochi promised a local businessman protection from land confiscation in exchange for a $400,000 extortion. "We are being offered a far-away plot in the mountains and compensation that is 15 times lower than our land's market value", moaned one landowner.

Most unfortunate, is it not? This is how the Olympic Games manifest themselves as a world-class event highlighting the best, the brightest, the most accomplished and skilled athletes the world has on offer. Their performances reflect brightly on their countries of origin, the countries that have supported their endeavours, have championed their excellence. Excellence in human endeavour of the highest order of physical prowess and attainment.

Hand in hand with the human excess of exploiting the vulnerable. As we exalt ourselves, we also shame ourselves.