A two-week TV sports extravaganza with no local spectators is leaving Japan in a huge pool of debt and with soaring Covid infections

THE GOOD, BAD AND THE UGLY AT TOKYO OLYMPICS

THE GOOD…

The athletes are all lined up at the starting line. The tension is high. The 400m hurdles Olympic gold is at stake.

“Ready, set… and the starting gun goes off”

Less than 50 seconds later, the finish line, two athletes break the world record to a deafening roar of an empty Olympic stadium. Empty, because of Covid, of course,. What a downer to arguably the best race ever run at the Olympic games.

Here’s how the London Guardian summed it up:

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Karsten Warholm (Norway) and Rai Benjamin (US) duked it out, breaking the 400m hurdles world record by a street in the midday Tokyo heat. (All who saw it) will remember it to their dying breath. There was barely a stride between them as they sprinted like cheetahs and jumped like stags over 10 hurdles. But, with the legs and lungs protesting, Warholm found just a little more.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics: 400m hurdles, the greatest race in history

As the Norwegian crossed the line, he looked at the clock and screamed. No wonder. He had obliterated his own world record by a staggering 0.76sec. No wonder he tore his track vest open like Superman.

“In the last 20 metres I couldn’t feel my legs,” he said. “I just ran for my life.”

What was the first thing you thought when you saw the results on the screen, he was asked. “I thought ‘this is sick’.”

Benjamin was second, in a time – 46.17 – that would have scarcely sounded believable a minute or two before. “There’s a lot to process,” he said. “I’m really happy to be part of history. It was probably the best race in Olympic history. I don’t even think Bolt’s 9.64 can beat that. I ran 46.1 and lost. That’s the nature of the beast.”

The Guardian, Aug 3, 2021

That was the thrill of it. That was the reason when I was young I watched every Olympics with bated breath. But not anymore.

THE BAD…

Five years ago, I published this editorial about why I no longer watch the Olympics. Here’s the opening paragraph.

“Before you get too caught up in the sports, remember that the Olympics have little to do with sports.  They’re mostly about money.” (Olympics, Inc: Inside The Secretive, $6 Billion World Of The International Olympic Committee – https://is.gd/bjBmM)

From Truth in Media “Why I No Longer Watch the Olympics,”2016)

Now, after the Tokyo Olympic Games have ended, one can only underscore the above sentiment in red ink. We can add to it the terrible legacy with which the Olympic Games have saddled the host country of Japan.

THE UGLY…

DEBT AND DISEASE

The great majority of Japanese people had a very cynical view of the Games to begin with. Now their greatest fears seem to be coming true. The legacies the Tokyo Olympics leave behind are debt and disease.

In an Asahi Shimbun survey, 55% were opposed to holding the Olympics with just 33% in support of it. In addition, 68% said they do not believe Suga’s pledge that the Olympics will be “safe and secure”. Only 21% said they felt it could be (see the London Guardian, July 23).

The Games’ skyrocketing price tag has also diminished public support for the event, which has now reached more than 3tn yen (£20bn, US$27bn) and has become the most expensive Summer Olympics in history. Japan’s government debt stands at 266% of GDP – the highest in the world and twice that of the US. Many fear the cost of implementing coronavirus countermeasures to ensure the Games are safe will add to a growing national deficit.

Another big reason why many Japanese were against the Games is that Japan is lagging significantly behind numerous other countries in vaccinating its population, which is the oldest in the world. Many feel strongly that the Japanese government should put its efforts into the vaccine rollout, instead of the Olympics. As of 22 July, Japan ranked only 69th in the world for those who’ve received two vaccines, with just 23.3% of the total population fully vaccinated.

The Guardian, July 23, 2021

No wonder, therefore, that the new cases of Covid have skyrocketed since the start of the Olympics . On July 4, Japan had only 1,458 new infections. On Aug 7, the day before the Olympics closed, the total had already soared more than ten-fold to 15,500 (see the chart below).

And there is no end of pandemic in sight, given such a low percentage of vaccinations in Japan, and the oldest population in the world.

In short, the government of Japan has sacrificed the health and financial well-being of its people so that the big multinational companies and TV networks could line their pockets from this fan-less media spectacle which the Olympic Games have become.

Shame on you, Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, for being such a loyal servant of the so-called New World Order globalist “elite” instead of that of your nation which elected you.

UPDATE AUG 10, 2021: OLYMPIC COVERUP

Tokyo Deliberately Left Deadly New COVID Variant Out of Press Briefings During Olympics (Daily Beast news)

On July 20, three days before the Olympics began, a woman in her 30s from Peru tested positive for COVID-19 at Haneda Airport in Tokyo and was immediately flagged as a probable carrier of the highly infectious Lambda variant of COVID-19.

However, The Daily Beast has learned that Japan’s Ministry of Health, after making a conclusive determination on the identity of the variant, omitted any mention of the new case from its regular press releases on July 30 and Aug. 6.

For more, check out… https://www.thedailybeast.com/tokyo-deliberately-left-deadly-new-lambda-covid-variant-out-of-press-briefings-during-olympics