According to the folksy writer Matthew Engel, the glories of the Olympic Games have a cathartic effect on nations. The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles ‘helped the US regain the confidence it lost in Vietnam’.
He omitted to explain the benefits of this renewed confidence for the millions of bereaved, maimed and poisoned Vietnamese. As for the Sydney Olympics, he described a ‘glorious self-confidence’ that will ‘sustain Australia for years’.
There is no doubting the efficiency of the Sydney Olympics, the friendliness of the people, the beauty of the setting; but there was a political facade. Soon after the Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman won her gold medal, the cabinet of John Howard’s government met in Canberra to mount yet another attack on her people by planning to change the Land Rights Act.
In 1998, the Howard government enacted legislation that effectively took away the common-law rights that the High Court said belonged to Aborigines. Nothing like it has been
— source johnpilger.com | john pilger | 13 Oct 2000