“Bread and Circuses”

PARIS (AP) — French authorities have foiled several plots to disrupt the 2024 Olympics, officials said Wednesday, two days before the opening ceremony of the Summer Games in Paris.

France has been on high alert over the past few weeks as preparations to host the Olympics hit the final stretch. The Games officially kick off with a lavish and high-security opening ceremony on the River Seine on Friday.

Paris prosecutors said Wednesday that they had arrested a 40-year-old Russian-born man Tuesday at his Paris apartment man on suspicion of planning to “destabilize the Olympic Games.”

The Games are at a crossroads after scandals, political controversies and two pandemic effects. Network executives and Olympic leaders are counting on a reboot.

For parts of three decades, Bob Costas was the television face of the Olympics in the United States, leading NBC’s coverage of 11 Games and talking Americans through celebration, scandal and even a bomb in Atlanta. Eight years after his last Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Costas believes the Games have lost some of the magic that once made them mandatory viewing.

Maybe it’s because the past three Olympics were held in distant Asian time zones while America slept. Or perhaps it’s the sense that the two most recent Games, held in pandemic Tokyo and Beijing, seemed to happen less because of sport and more to meet the contractual obligations of sponsors and television networks. Or it might be the uncomfortable stench of human rights abuse swirling about the Beijing Games in 2022, followed four days later by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Olympics, he said, need “to get their groove back.”

The Olympics are just another scam to fleece the poor and line the pockets of the elite.

Toronto’s ex-Mayor John Tory had to secretly offer to host some second rate World Cup games on behalf of his cronies knowing that citizens would have said no if given a chance.

Costs have already doubled for what is nothing more than the elite theft of tax payer dollars.

Their idiot children will have cool summer jobs though, so there’s that.

The Olympic Games return to Paris after a century’s absence, yet there is little excitement in the air. In Middle America, I really don’t hear anybody talking about them. Occasionally, some sports commercial reminds viewers about athletes whose names have largely been forgotten since their last appearance on the world stage. A few Big Box stores are selling Olympic-themed t-shirts, toys, dog leashes, drink mugs, and other sundries. Now and then, someone remarks that this would be a terrible time to visit the City of Light. Besides the knickknacks and small talk, though, few seem to care.

When Canada, the United States, and Mexico combined forces to bid on holding the 2026 version of the FIFA World Cup, many people were intrigued. When this united bid beat out Morocco by a vote of 134-65 at the 68th FIFA Congress in Moscow on June 13, 2018, their intrigue quickly turned into euphoria.

I was among them.

Depending on your perspective, Toronto and Vancouver hosting 13 FIFA Men’s World Cup games in 2026 is a gigantic waste of taxpayers’ money, or the best thing that could ever happen to these cities.

Maybe it’s both.

As we recently learned, the updated estimate for the cost of Vancouver to host seven games is now between $483-million and $581-million. In Toronto: $380-million to host six games.

What a scam. Tax payers paying for games they can’t afford to attend.

The federal government says it will provide $104 million to help Toronto host six matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The funding for capital and operational expenses was announced Friday morning at Toronto’s BMO Field, where the matches will be held.

“Today is a great day to be a soccer fan in the city of Toronto,” Mayor Olivia Chow said.

Police in the French capital, Paris, on Wednesday cleared a major migrant squat in the southern suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine with just 100 days to go before the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics.

The makeshift camp at the site of an abandoned bus company office had been home to roughly 450 migrants, mainly young men but including some mothers with small children as well.

Rights groups said most migrants there had documents and were awaiting social housing allotments.

France is trying to “hide poverty” ahead of the Paris Olympics, according to a new report that accuses it of “social cleansing”.

Authorities have resorted to clearing squares in Paris where homeless families congregate, according to Le Revers de la Medaille (The Other Side of the Coin) – a collective that includes leading charities.

The report claims that evictions are on the increase, and there will be more in the run up to July 26, the day the games begin.