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THE NOT-SO-FRIGHTENING PARALLELS BETWEEN CORPORATE TERRORISM
AND OLYMPIC TERRORISM

by
Cliff McKenzie, Editor

OVERVIEW: Olympic team members are being singled out for being Olympic Terrorists. They are being banned one-by-one for purposefully destroying the sacred trust of the public by stimulating themselves with drugs so they can win at any cost. The penalty is expulsion from the games, sometimes for life. But what about Corporate Terrorists? When they commit egregious crimes against the public are they banned? No. At least, not yet. Find out the parallels between Olympic and Corporate Terrorism, and why our country needs Corporate Terrorism laws now!

GROUND ZERO PLUS 1058 DAYS, New York, NY, August 3, 2004--Corporate Terrorism is about as common as cough. Almost every citizen in America has been subjected to it in various forms and degrees--from being humiliated by a boss in front of other employees, to having some top executive of a major financial company stripmine the savings of people with barely two nickels to rub together. But Olympic Terrorism--now, that's a new twist.

Gold rules both forms of Terrorism.

In Corporate Terrorism, the end goal of the Terrorist is power and money, usually linked like Siamese Twins. A group of people in a company conspire to line their pockets with gold. In some cases it is just negligence--the utter mismanagement of finances and tasks. But, in most cases, it is conspiratorial. That is, a group of people in a company, by design or default, either set out purposefully or by default, to make decisions that abuse and harm those "below" them in an effort to fatten their own purses with gold.

Corporate raiders end up with more and consume more than anyone else
Corporate raiders end up with more and consume more than anyone else

The key to corporate abuse, or "Corporate Terrorism" is the attempt to look like everything is on the up-and-up to the outside world while cooking the books or setting about unfair and damaging policies internally that boost the company's stock or bloat executive's bonuses without detailing them in stock offerings or mergers. Skirting the law at the expense of the people is called Corporate Survival 101. The end result is that the corporate raiders of the people's assets end up with more piles of gold than anyone else...and sometimes, they consume it all.

Now, shift to the Olympics.

Here, the idea of pure competition for competition's sake is supposed to be sacrosanct. My younger daughter once was on her way to the Olympics, and was under intense Olympic training since she was ten years old. She won a Silver Medal at the Junior Olympics in volleyball, and then a terrible accident happened. She blew out her knee, dashing her goals for the Gold.

Long jump champion Mary Rand (Toomey) in 1964
Long jump champion Mary Rand (Toomey) was the first British woman to win the gold medal (Go To )

The children were taught to compete for competition's sake. Mary Rand Toomey, the first British woman to win an Olympic gold medal, was one of her coaches. There was a saying Mary drilled into the heads of the kids spoken by many before the Olympic events: "Let me be Victorious or my attempt Glorious!"

I thought that was as pure as you can get. The idea was the competition not necessarily the victory. When one sets out to "win" then one will see everyone and everything in the path to victory as obstacles and will do whatever to achieve the final result.

As a Marine, I was trained in that approach. My training was to "kill anything that moved." Mine was not Olympic training. I was trained as an Olympic Terrorist, that winning was the great victory, and death went to those who "just competed."

In corporate business I found myself applying the same skills I did as a Marine--"survival of the fittest." The goal was always money and power, and anyone or anything that stumbled into the cross fire was mowed down. I forced myself to leave that world despite the fact I was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, had unlimited power and was, by any measure of external success, "at the top."

What haunted me in my fall from "corporate elevation" were the words my daughter had learned and I had absorbed as her secondary coach: "Let me be Victorious or my attempt Glorious." I had been Victorious without any doubt, but my victory had not been Glorious. I was not proud of many things I did or had to do, or the games I played to maintain my position at the top of the corporate pile, or watching all the hungry wolves below me waiting for me to stumble so they could rip and shred me and take over the spot on the game board I occupied.

The Olympics always seemed to me that last bastion of purity--or innocence from the afflictions of money, power and prestige for their sake alone.

But the Olympics has its own Beat of Terror, just as the corporations do. This one is called "doping," where an athlete injects into his or her body certain drugs to enhance performance for the sheer and ultimate purpose of being "Victorious" rather than "Glorious."

As the 2004 Athens Olympics nears, the news headlines are flooded with reports of "doping." The most current of them is today's report in the New York Times regarding the use of of the stimulant modafinil at the U.S. track and field championship in 2003 by Calvin Harrison, a sprinter for the U.S. Olympic team.

Calvin  Harrison has been knocked off the U.S. team for the Athens Olympics after repeatedly failing drug tests
Calvin Johnson repeatedly failed drug tests and is banned from the Athens 2004 Olympics(Go To and scroll down)

The athlete had a previous charge against him in 1993 at the U.S. junior indoor championships for using the stimulant pseudoephedrine. He received a three-month ban then, and the second charge supported under appeal, bans him for two years.

Ironically, Harrison was part of the 1,600-meter gold relay team at the Sydney Olympics. The relay team faces the loss of its gold medal at the 2000 Olympics because of a positive drug test by Jerome Young, a member of the current U.S. relay team with Harrison.

In dealing harshly with "Olympic Terrorism," the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) has nullified all of Harrison's results from the time of the positive drug test--two months before the world championships in Paris. The IAAF is considering stripping the entire team of its Gold Medal and awarding it to France, the Silver Medallist.

Sprinter Harrison's twin brother, Alvin, faces a lifetime ban after being charged by the USADA with steroid use.

Then there is Marion Jones, who won five Gold Medals in Sydney. She is facing doping charges also, despite the fact that in the long jump last week, she made the second longest jump in the world, 23 feet, 4 inches. She has been accused of using drugs by her ex-husband C.J. Hunter whom she defended from drug allegations during the Sydney Olympics.. She is under intense investigation. Whether she will compete or not in Athens is still in the air.

Montgomery, 100-yard dash world record holder, also faces doping charges, a lifetime ban from the Olympics, but failed to qualify.

Marion Jones is headed to Athens and hopes she will be cleared of the drug charges against her
Marion Jones is headed for the Athens 2004 Olympics hoping she will be allowed to run (Go To and scroll down)

Marion Jones is not alone in the finger pointing of "Olympic Terrorism." One of her fierce rivals for the 100 meter dash, Torri Edwards, is also under doping charges. If Jones escapes and Edwards is banned, then Jones will qualify for the 100-meter. She already has for the long-jump.

Then, there is the long arm of the past when Jim Thorpe, a Sac and Fox Native American, was stripped of his Olympic medals when he played semi-pro ball while a student at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Back then, an athlete couldn't be "commercial." That is, one could not compete for "money" and qualify for the Olympics. It was truly then a matter of being "Glorious" for professionals could not compete.

Thorpe's situation was vastly different from today in many respects. Thorpe wasn't trying to win an Olympic Medal by playing semi-pro ball. He was trying to pay his rent. Nevertheless, he was excommunicated from the sport--a warning to other athletes not to mix the "pure" of competition with the "impure" of commercializing it for money's sake.

IJim Thorpe's medals for the decathlon and pentathlon  in Stockholm he won in 1912 were returned to his daughter in 1982
In 1982, the International Olympic Committee returned Jim Thorpes's gold medals (to his daughter) - for the decathlon and pentathlon in Stockholm in 1912

Back then, a winning athlete stopped competing after getting so many Gold Medals and went directly to the Cheerios box. The "Breakfast of Champions" had the face of some great Olympic athlete on it, and all the money that went with it.

The big point of this all is that OLYMPIC TERRORISM is being dealt with harshly. Athletes are being banned for a lifetime. They are being branded "Olympic Terrorists" by the charges and convictions, shunned by their teammates, and serve as embarrassments to the world rather than heroes. They have violated the sacred trust of the people who count on them--they have sought to be "Victorious at any expense rather than Glorious at any expense."

Corporate Terrorism is not unlike the Olympics. When a top executive, or a group of them, conspire or allow the terrorization of the people who have invested great trust and confidence in their ability to compete in their behalf, and seek to be "Victorious" rather than "Glorious," they are like the Olympic Terrorist who uses drugs to enhance his or her performance.

Canada's Ben Johnson set the world record in his gold-medal-winning performance in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Johnson was stripped of his medal and record after testing positive for a banned steroid (GoTo and scroll down)

Top executives who use their power to enrich themselves at the expense of stockholders and clients--the fans who have vested their trust in their Olympic leadership--should be treated like Olympic competitors who use drugs. They should be banned from Corporate Olympic Competition.

There is little difference in the two. America's economy is based on the trust and confidence people have in the financial leadership of this nation, whether it be the CEO of the entire United States, George W. Bush at the present, or the CEO of a top insurance company with thousands of stockholders and clients.

At the highest level, the greatest "purity of purpose" is expected, not the least.

The purpose of leadership at the peak of success should be the preservation of principles that made success possible, not the destruction of them. The difference, for example between a politician, whom you cannot trust when his lips are moving, and a statesman is that the politician will do anything to get elected or reelected, whereas the statesman is more concerned with what is right for the future of the Children's Children's Children--that is, how to insure the company or country will be as strong tomorrow as it is today.

Statesmen do not compete for the Olympic Gold per se. They compete as Olympians be "Victorious or their attempt Glorious."

Corporate Terrorists laugh off this ideal, especially in today's climate where there is little penalty for their abuse of clients. At the best, they get a hand slap or a fraud conviction usually bargained down so that their worst penalty may be having to live in some country club federal prison, or, wear a leg bracelet around a 153-acre estate.

Corporate Terrorism is far worse a crime than Olympic Terrorism, and the penalty for such crimes should be that the "corporate athlete" ends up being banned from competition in a fair and just way.

Olympic athletes accused of Olympic Terrorism have the right to appeal and the right of representation. But the final word is the final word. Some are banned for short times; repeat offenders for life.

If we are to clean up our "trust and confidence" in our corporate leadership--especially those who run the biggest companies in America--we need to look at "banning them" when they violate the rights of the few or the many.

That's why I am in the process of preparing a major lawsuit and seeking criminal prosecution against a giant company that performed what I consider to be "Acts of Corporate Terrorism" against myself, my wife, my family and the legacy of the people who died on September 11, 2001.

My success in this case is not an issue of Victory. I seek, of course, to be "Victorious," but I hope and strive that my "attempt will be Glorious."

To me, our nation needs the legal label: "Corporate Terrorist," just as the Olympics have concluded that it needs to call those who dope or stimulate themselves in competition need to be labeled an "Olympic Terrorist."

Being charged with doping ones self is the lowest, most degrading crime an athlete can commit. It is an insult to the name of "athlete" for it violates the trust and belief that the individual alone is capable of the impossible and improbable. It also tells our children that they must rely on drugs or some outside force to make them capable of success, when the truth is, that competing to be your best is the best elixir of all.

Now is the time to change the laws and label a Corporate Terrorist a Corporate Terrorist
It is past time to change the laws and label a Corporate Terrorist a Corporate Terrorist

When companies, by design or default, employ terror tactics against the public, seeking to lace their pockets at the expense of those who have vested their trust and confidence in their Olympic business skills, are just like the Olympic competitor who uses drugs to win. The penalties should be equal.

By calling a Corporate Terrorist a Corporate Terrorist you remove the current mask violators wear when they get convicted of fraud or "bad faith" or some other mollycoddling, impotent conviction. Corporations, especially the big ones that juggle people's money under the auspices of "trust" should be held fiercely accountable for such crimes, especially the most meager of them.

The IAAF and Olympic Committee have taken a tough stand on culling out Olympic Terrorists.

Now it is time for us to change the laws, and label a Corporate Terrorist a Corporate Terrorist so the Olympic game of business can be played to the benefit of all, and not the few who seek to be "Victorious rather than Glorious."

 

Go To August 2 "Political Terrorists Plot To Bomb Nader's Camp"

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