Who's your daddy Vanoc? LOL...... nuff said'
kreative kaur
- Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Einstein 

seems pretty telling 

Godwin's law invoked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law

This article loses. 

Mr. Spencer Herbert puts it just right. Use the footage, but don't obscure the history. How else can we (all humans) learn other than from acknowledging our mistakes.

Other than that, this isn't "pretty telling" as pleb puts it above. 

The dark period of the renewed Olympics pretty much covered its entire history characterised by blatant racism, fascism, corporatism, mass mind control and social exploitation. The Olympics is amateur sports (like pretty much everything else) placed in the service of the new global financial order designed to further the concentration of wealth and control of the global crime cartel that owns pretty much everything with a high and steady rate of return - weapons, security, oil, coffee, finance, media, real estate, industry, transportation, communications, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, narcotics, gambling, the sex slave trade, alcohol, cigarettes, pornography, prisons, etc. This is the real but largely invisible but highly corrosive power behind government, banks and the media. The Oympics is just another of their countless tools to fleece the mob and distract them with mindless spectacles of physical beauty, brute force, meaningless prowess. 

Michael Castanaveras - Wrong - VANOC loses: they mentioned Hitler first in the video, then tried to blur the reference. Godwin's law in effect already. 

Well... Godwin's Law is really no law at all. The likelihood that comparison to Nazis and/or Hitler will of course increase as a conversation progresses in all cases except for those where the originating topic is a comparison to Nazis and/or Hitler.  

This VANOC just admitting they'll never put on a show to match the '36 games, or the Nuremberg Rally.
Miguel 

So they used footage from the first Olympics that received widespread filming for distribution by TV broadcast.....ummm...that's telling how? Yes, Hitler was evil etc. etc. (I don't mean to sound flip, but if we have to recount how evil he was every time he was mentioned, we would NEVER get to the point). Funnily enough we don't always let that get in the way of us buying Volkswagons (or Ford or GM products, both having ties to Nazi's or the German war effort), or using aspirin's made by Bayer...try again, Charlie Smith. 

I can't get over how disturbed I am by this. I feel nauseous.  

Being a "bread not circus's" type person I am always bringing my jaded points into discussions with my pro Olympic friends. So hearing that some of Leni's footage got into the Vanoc promo I had to go to link and watch the video. I am surprised this is even newsworthy! The clip from Vanoc is so short ,nothing like what's above. It's a great video, well produced and it gives one a sense of achievement. It is historic footage that is an important link to that time and to the point of the film.
What's next banning Vaugner? People..we are all getting sucked into the media hype, it puts something out there and then regurgitates it until it has shriveled up and then we go on to the next one...and the next one..and the next one. I agree with Strategis and the like but I think you should be careful what battles you pick and how you want your ideas to relate to them. This to me is a no brainer. Sure the whole torch thing started dubiously but has been turned into something positive. If indeed we are the host country. Thanks for turning me on to Goodwins Law (very clever)
 

If you want to learn more about the 1936 Olympic Games, you should check out the exhibit "More than just games: Canada & the 1936 olympics", currently on display at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. In 1936, Nazi Germany camouflaged its racism and militarism while hosting the Winter and Summer Olympics. MORE THAN JUST GAMES offers insights into the Nazis' antisemitic and exclusionary policies, Canada's participation in the Games, its response to the international boycott debate and the experiences of individual athletes.
 

The 1936 olympics were the first to have a torch relay It was concocted by Karl Diem a high ranking Nazi who came up with the Idea to portray the image of the party by selecting athletic white males to run across western euorpe in hopes to get more followers.Some say they wanted to mesmerize people with the flame thier symbol for the illuminati.
The olympics are a discrace 

I highly recommend this exhibit at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which deals exactly with the 1936 Olympics - http://www.vhec.org/. Olympia, by Leni Riefenstahl, was one of Hitler's best propaganda films by a master filmmaker who truly believed she did no wrong.

This is one of the most disgraceful films in history, and VAOC should be ashamed of itself. They are a total disgrace !

 

You're right -- the only conclusion we can draw here is that VANOC is almost as bad as Hitler. Why didn't we all see that before? Thank-you, Georgia Straight, for your always unbiased coverage. 

VANOC is beyond salvation and terminally clueless.

I have no idea how the dark ages of the Olympics could ever end.

http://politicsrespun.org/category/olympic-games/ 

i find the olympics have learned a lot from the nazis .the olympic fammily is ran much in the same way as nazi germany no accountability no body elected bribes are accepted and the biggest thing they have learned is propaganda joseph goebells would be proud of how the olympics are presented to the mass's 

Appropriate. The IOC is the soft-arm of the fascist new world order movement that's popular with the the UN and the Bilderburgs. It's all about control, money, and corporatism. Hitler was of the same mind and relished the idea of a central world government. Would you expect any different from VANOC who's trying to soften the idea that Hitler wasn't all that bad because he loved sport but hated freedom of speach. Fascists hate freedom because when people are free to speak they post opinionated signs on their their property, wear sarcastic tee shirts, or scream words from bullhorns.  

Sooooo typical of VANOC morons to pluck only what they "feel" like revealing.  

this article reeks of sensationalism 

This is such a ridiculous article.

Had VANOC NOT blurred out the Heil Hitler salutes, I bet the straight.com would write an article indicting VANOC for somehow propagating the Neo-Nazi agenda.

I think any logical (READ: not a reactionary, leftist always on the look out for a bandwagon to ride) person looks at this situation and realizes VANOC was not aiming to revise history, but was attempting to avoid being caught up in a political quagmire of hate rhetoric.

 

Seig Heil Fuhrer Furlong!

thanks for giving yourself and cronies million dollar raises...

thanks for having Canada pavilion designed by Americans

thanks for having Speed skating oval design by American firm Cannon Design

thanks for giving major bus services contract to American firm

thanks for inviting American soldiers to stand guard over thee

You do me proud baby.

your pal,
the UGLY Chinese Canadian
 

Macktown you are a putz and an apologist, anyone isn't willing to acknowledge the stupidity of Vanoc's choice to include Nazi propaganda in their promo is seriously delusional. Get some perspective, this debacle was not necessary.  

This is iconic Olympic footage. If you did not study WWII history, Nazi propaganda or Leni Reifenstahl, you would not know that this footage is suspect. It is a piece of history tied to a horrible legacy, but IS Olympic footage. It is undeniably insensitive to ignore the context, but one can not deny it's place in history. The Olympic torch has become a unifying symbol of human excellence--a trait the Nazi's had a tragic, evil and misguided slant on.

In the context of the modern Olympics, hopefully we can transcend racial claims to excellence and celebrate the achievement of many exceptional humans from across our shared planet.  

Dave_M,

How am I an apologist? I am not defending Nazism, or antisemitism. I'm not saying if it was right or wrong for Vanoc to include the footage in their montage.

My point is very clear: people are using the inclusion of the footage to further their own agenda, ie anti-Vanoc sentiment. I think that a certain segment of the audience (ie the author of this article, the NDP critic, some people who have commented on this thread) would just as easily rant against Vanoc if the footage was included in its original unedited form.

As to whether it was appropriate to include the footage in any form, I remain undecided.

Furthermore, when you resort to name calling (ie calling me a putz) you degrade the caliber of this debate and make it easier for your opponents to disregard your opinions. If you can not engage in public discourse without resorting to emotional outbursts you should stay silent. 

If you look at Olympia from a film historic perspective it is a pretty amazing piece of film making. If WWII and the Holocaust wouldn't have happened people would have looked at it differently, I can understand why Vanoc "borrowed" some frames of it for their own marketing material.

BTW, if you're so seriously outraged over the use of the images you may want to watch the whole film (as well as her other works) and realize just how influential her filmingstyle is even today, be it in advertising, marketing, propaganda or just "news" reporting.  

This is hardly news worthy. People who are up in arms over this really have nothing else going on in their lives to be concerned with this footage.

Really as mentioned above, no matter if it was this footage or some other, a lot of you have already decided that VANOC is evil and ruining Vancouverites lives and robbing people of things they would not have had regardless of these olympics.

I bet some of your opinions would be different if you were employed by Vanoc or by some of the other 100s-1000s of jobs that were directly or indirectly created by these terrible games.

 

It was pretty obvious Nazi footage if you're familiar with film from that era, and the salutes are clear to see.

As for those that think we should layoff on VANOC - this is one of only a few venues wherein we are allowed to be critical of their strongarm tactics.
Miguel 

Of course Leni Riefenstahl will always be a controversial figure, but neither the extent of her personal nazi sympathies nor her artistic genius are really the issue here. What is undebatable is that Olympia was a nazi production, funded by the Hitler government for a national socialist games. As many of the other posts have indicated, what is interesting is that in trying to disguise this dark aspect of the film in the interest of presenting a vision of some kind of glorious legacy for the olympics, they have made all too apparent the repressive strategies and ideologies used to legitimate the games (now as much as ever). Depoliticizing Riefenstahl, turning Olympia into a vaguely kitschy exposure to a sterilized past with no regard for the terrifyingly real historical context of the footage, is just one more instance of a logic vanoc has made all too familiar: polish the surface, push the problem deeper. 

This makes so much sense!! VANOC is just exposing themselves for who they really are! Hilter's Final Solution was BASED on Canada's Indian Act. VANOC and the Canadian government are continuing the mass assimilation and displacement of Aboriginal peoples everywhere their dirty, slimy hands can get to. For example, Sun Peaks resort. This is SACRED territory for the Aboriginal people who have lived there since time immemorial! This land has been taken over by the said slimeballs, where they put a visually appealing ski-lodge for the Olympics and a sign convieniently stating "NO INDIANS!" These Natives are stewards to the land, which means protecting this sacred territory from being raped and pillaged any further and maintaing balance. Community members of all sorts are behind this, causing the biggest gang in Canada (the RCMP) to arrest our most important resource, our elders. One of whom died while in police sustody, but of course they shrugged it off as "old age". There's many opinions on the Olympics, but one underlying fact: your either protecting Mother Earth or your against it, trying to make as much money as possible by extracting resources and paving over our hearts with cement.  

How very fitting I hear Harper is attending the opening ceremonies not sure if he's wearing his uniform openly yet.  

Totally unacceptable and very unCanadian. 25 seconds or 5 minutes. Edited or not. - its the principal of the choice.

Who are the disrespectful that a) suggested its use, and b) authorized it. They need to be identified and held accountable.

They shouldn't be in the position they've been honoured with. 

This confirms a sneaking suspicion I always had about Van OC. I had a similar one about Mel Gibson when he made Passions of the Christ and later I again turned out to be right! 

I am not suggesting that vanoc is run by national socialists, but I am firmly stating that vanoc is infested with pompous, short-sighted buffoons who seem to feel that they have the right and ability to invalidate people's outrage at the inclusion of Nazi propaganda in an event which is going to 'show BC to the world.' It is outrageous, insensitive, anti-semitic, anti-everything good and decent, and without anything remotely resembling good artistic taste.
Michael K, vanoc & c. You are making a very dangerous assumption when you think that the nature of Nazi propoganda is somehow seperate from the aesthetic value of these pieces. Leni Riefenstahl was a genius, and that genius was purposefully manipulated by the Nazi state to push its racialist policies onto the people it ruled over. Some have stated that the video is about atheltic achievement, and you are correct: it is about the anticipated achievement of Aryan supremacy over its 'racially inferior' foes. The aesthetic itself is Nazi to the core, and its use for an event which claims to dignify all humanity and respect diversity is totally and completely inappropriate.
Put simply, the aesthetic is the message. And before you rebuttle me with Oscar Wilde, may I suggest you read Hannah Arendt. 

History lesson :

NAZI saute = right arm extended forward , above the shoulder .

Olympic salute was right arm , extended horizontally , sideways .

Contrary to recent propaganda , the Canadian team did not march in with the seig heil salute .