The Disaster of the IOC

The Disaster of The IOC

The Rio Times Editorial Board

Deaths, sabotage, drugs, terror, and ever-growing international discord--the sheer absurdity of the crises in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics as well as the failures of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) have accumulated to an intensity no longer acceptable.

Foremost, the fatal bombing of the João Havelange Stadium should not have had even the plausibility of occurring. The terrorist attack was carried out in a ridiculously rudimentary fashion, with low-potential detonates in a rusty pick-up truck, the threat should have been easily detected and prevented if the IOC truly kept security in the increasingly hostile climate as a priority.

The lack of preemptive measures against the bomb threats in its advent is evidence enough of the insufficiencies of IOC president, Thomas Bach, whose former statement of the IOC taking “every measure possible to ensure the safety of athletes” run directly contrary to the outcomes catalyzed by their failures to do so.

Some of the incidents are just full-blown bizarre, including 16 soccer balls filled with illicit opiates, the skewering and shooting of two respective Venezuelan athletes, and the poisoning of the Guanabara Bay with bug spray--all of which could have been halted by an effective IOC.

Spiteful hostility between the IOC and the Brazilian government has prevented the much-needed effective communication in defending the vital human security during a time when millions of lives are at stake.

The lockdown of the Maracana Stadium Box is a borderline human rights violation. The corruption of the Brazilian government on all hierarchical levels made apparent by the arrest of the city’s mayor, Rio’s own Rob Ford, is despicable to say the least. The instability and perpetuating violence in the Olympic arena parallel the heightened international conflict involving heavy militarization and aggression.

The rising tensions and the wide range of security problems that follow the proliferation of international conflicts, internal unrest with protests from the ODP, and governmental deficiencies in responding to these problems all converge to the same epistemology with the weakness of the IOC as the source of all the Olympic-sized distress.