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International Olympic Committee

Interview: Dave Zirin, The Nation sports editor and "Edge of Sports" host

Graham F. Scott

Today in Verbatim, This contributing editor Andrew Wallace interviews Dave Zirin, sports editor of U.S. progressive weekly The Nation and host of Edgeofsports.com, a blog and radio show that examines the collision of politics and sports. He’s the author of several canonical books on that topic, most recently of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, […] More »

This.org will be a 100% Olympics-free zone for the next two weeks

Graham F. Scott

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games open tonight with much fanfare, pomp, jollity, glee, grandeur, ceremony, flourish, and setting things on fire. We’ve spent, oh, about the last six weeks moaning about the whole thing, from the overblown budget to the bogus environmental claims, the sponsor bloat to the unsettled aboriginal land claims, the out-of-control […] More »
January-February 2010

The Olympics reveals our priorities as a nation. The news isn’t good.

Graham F. Scott

When Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, checks into his Vancouver hotel suite a few weeks from now, he will find (as he flops, exhausted, no doubt, from the strain of private jet travel) a “video wall,” paid for by the citizens of British Columbia. The bank of televisions are a requirement of […] More »

Interview with No 2010 Olympics activist Harsha Walia

Graham F. Scott

This edition of Verbatim is a transcript of Andrew Wallace in conversation with Harsha Walia of the No 2010 campaign. The original podcast of that interview is available here. Andrew is also joining us as a blog columnist, writing about the intersection of sport and society with Game Theory. The first column appeared yesterday. Be […] More »

Game Theory #1: Learning from 2010's Olympic protest movement

andrew wallace

[Editor’s Note: Today we introduce a new blog column by Andrew Wallace, called “Game Theory,” about the intersection of sports and society. The column will appear every other Monday. Andrew wrote about Toronto’s Africentric school for the January 2009 issue of This, and also contributed last week’s podcast.] On January 11, a coalition of advocates […] More »
January-February 2010

Olympic Countdown: Quick guide to Vancouver 2010 protest do’s and don’ts

Kim Hart MacneillWebsite

Why yes, officer, I can hand out this leaflet. Maybe. It’s no doubt that clashes between protesters and police will end up being the big story of the 2010 Olympics. There are new bylaws on the books, the usual International Olympic Committee rules, our own Canadian Charter rights, and official statements from the Vancouver Police […] More »
January-February 2010

Olympic Countdown: Pride House debuts, but will athletes come out?

Kim Hart MacneillWebsite

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered athletes will find the first-ever Olympic pavilion welcoming them in 2010, a place at the Games to hang out, chill out, or come out. “The whole purpose behind Pride House” — actually a conference room at Whistler, B.C.’s Pan Pacific Hotel—“was really to create a dialogue about homophobia within sport,” […] More »
January-February 2010

Olympic Countdown: Your at-a-glance guide to Vancouver 2010’s sponsors

Kim Hart MacneillWebsite

Want to be the official chewing gum of Vancouver 2010? At the Olympics, there’s nothing money can’t buy Our guide to some of the sponsors who want their name associated with the biggest, sportiest, Spandex-iest show on earth. Click to enlarge! More »
January-February 2010

Olympic Countdown: Adding up the real costs of Vancouver 2010

Jasmine Rezaee

Quebec spent 30 years paying off the debt it racked up for the 1976 Montreal Summer Games. There’s no reason so far to expect that Vancouver will be any different. British Columbian and Canadian taxpayers have already incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in rampant budget overruns—the Athlete’s Village and security budget are only two […] More »
January-February 2010

Olympic Countdown: Interview with 2010 Watch’s Christopher Shaw

Cate SimpsonWebsite

Christopher Shaw’s day job is professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia, but since Vancouver launched its bid for the Olympics more and more of his time has been spent campaigning against the Games—first as the founder of No Games 2010 and now as lead spokesperson for 2010 Watch. Shaw’s book, Five Ring […] More »