Tourism, peace and the olympics: the final countdown

It certainly does not feel like we have enjoyed 6 weeks of global peace, yet the end of the Olympic Truce is in sight. Writes Gordon Sillence

At this 11th hour, we will be bringing 25-30 youths from conflict zones to London to highlight the Truce with an opening day in the House of Lords this Friday 31st August, and hopefully signal to the world that we need to put an Olympic effort in to bring peace to all countries and neighborhoods around the world. 

During the para-Olympics these youths will train as UNESCO Olympic Youth Peace Ambassadors, working to build a global network of youth peace ambassadors that ties the Olympic Games to the UN Peace processes in a much closer, systematic fashion for Brazil 2016.

Right now I want to thank all who have helped put this together, and ask for one final support call – I have to take this group around London for 10 days, and would appreciate any tourism stakeholders coming forward to offer or sponsor an evening dinner or event with food? 

So all London tourism stakeholders, you will be hosting an Olympic effort to bring global peace in our lifetime. Please be a part and contact me.

Gordon SIllence  00351912373124 [email protected]
http://www.london2012olympicpeacecampaign.org  

THE STORY SO FAR:

Panem et Circenses! London 2012 Olympics! Give Them Bread and Games …

Silent for 16 days, I have watched the spectacle unfold. Anyone visiting the UK during the Olympic Games will have been blinded by the opening ceremony of the world’s greatest sports tourism spectacle.

On the opening night alone, £27 million was spent on mixing fairy-tale Britain with A grade celebrities and a pop music back-catalogue designed to sell GB PLC to the estimated 1 billion global TV audience.

27 UK Gold medal super human performances later, another celebrity circus closing ceremony to sell London as a party town whose residents and visitors have just experienced all the highs of mass stimulation during the greatest Bread and Games show on earth…

Masterful Manipulation of the Masses – Olympic X factor Masks the Military Truth. Bowing to the demands of corporate commercial interest the British and international public were dazzled by a masterful mega-show combining the best of the worlds’ sports and musical talent designed to produce the feel-good factor needed to rally consumers at a time when the country is sucking on that other media morsel, the double dip recession and …and … when Britain is at war in two countries, and looking for a third.

The great British public was caught up in it X factor style, such a charitable nation it is at its heart, if not at its head.

Who could not have enjoyed that feast of human excellence that the Olympics is? But what a missed opportunity, and, on deeper reflection, one that left me silent for more than a minute.

As the hype settles down in the next few days, and before we lose the opportunity entirely, can we salvage the real legacy that these Games have promised, a legacy that has all but been buried in modern Olympian commercialism, i.e. the legacy of the traditional Olympic Truce?

Of this ancient call for peace not one word was mentioned, in fact it must have been proactively erased from the Hollywood rhetoric that concealed the complete lack of meaningful action on making the Olympic peace a reality where it counts, ie in those Olympic countries participating at the Games who are suffering from violence as this moment- most of the Middle East, many parts of Africa and long-standing Asian/Latin American hostilities come to mind, and they were at the Olympics.
In ignoring the current violent realities of these countries – and erasing the news of two more British soldiers deaths in Helmund Province, Afghanistan, on the eve of the closing ceremony,

The media barons have orchestrated this Olympic fanfare on a scale not seen since the Olympic was first shown on TV – 1936.

But its only when you realise that it is not some leftie CND hippie conspiracy calling for the end to violence, but a global roll out of stakeholders from sports, peace and tourism NGOs, administrative officials, and all types of politician, working with EU and UN officials, officially supported by UNESCO and UNEP, and at its head.

Even Lord Michael Bates, a Conservative member of the House of Lords who has famously and selflessly walked from Athens to London, arriving this year to highlight the peace component of the Games, even he cannot get the Truce on the mainstream Agenda. Even that Herculean 300 day 3000 miles effort was not lauded by his own conservative fellow LOCOG Olympian in these opening and closing ceremonies. Then you have to believe that Bread and Games are being used by those at the very top to cover up war-business as usual.

In a phrase – deceitful on a grand scale – not to be compared with the Beijing 2008 state power display, but perhaps let’s say reminiscent of Berlin ’36 on the manipulation scale.

With a world in crisis, and with every gun and bullet sold increasing victim statistics, it’s surely worth asking whatever happened to the real Olympic spirit, the one which founded the tradition of the Olympic values of peaceful safe passage and sporting games to replace violence?

The UK government went to the UN last year and successfully passed a unanimous resolution calling for six weeks of global peace during the Games. We asked for a One Minute Silence at the opening ceremony to mark the Truce, which would have cost nothing yet broadcast the one message that the world really needs to hear.

Who needs action when you’ve got words’… I might have been dumbed down in my 50 years of British acculturation, but I still feel that are millions of other Brits and global citizens who can see though the scam of bread and games played out by our political and business elite.

I love the Olympics and what it should stand for, and reassert a conviction I know many others hold, and call again to mark this six week truce with a break in low level warfare and end to violence during this traditional time of global safe passage to celebrate our human best as brothers and sisters.

To mark this Truce, the effort to bring youths over to the UK to train as UNESCO Olympic Youth Peace Ambassadors is still underway. About 20 youths will come from conflict zones from around the world, and highlight the end of the Truce in London on the 9th September.

Getting visas and tickets, and finalizing the London welcome programme is really testing how difficult it is to travel from conflict zones and participate even as visitors to these Games – in Somalia you have to go to Kenya for visas, and UNICEF in South Sudan and students in Egypt are struggling with visa appointment timing difficulties… And finally, in London where the streets are paved with Olympic gold, there is no room at the Olympic Inn.

Despite the lack of mainstream attention on the Truce, I feel very excited about the prospect of having youth representatives from countries suffering from violence and conflict at this moment to come together and be trained buy UNESCO to be Olympic peace makers, then go back home feeling part of a true global race – a caring, human race for inner peace and global peace.

I still hope the powers behind the London Olympics can come up with practical support for this UN- backed Olympic youth ambassador peace legacy, and ask again if we can have a One Minute Silence, but this time at the closing ceremony of the Para-Olympic Games to mark the Truce legacy of London 2012 .’

Gordon Sillence London 2012 Olympic Peace Campaign Coordinator
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