Lords of the Rings take over London

Lords of the Rings

When a café owner has to change its name, shops are banned from having a certain number of linked rings in their window, roads are barred to ordinary motorists and thousands of police and soldiers occupy a quarter of a major city, it can only mean one thing – the Olympics are here.

And when corporations are provided with a tax-free zone for the duration of the Games, you know that the shadowy International Olympic Committee is running the show. Tax exemptions were granted by UK tax authorities as part of a package of concessions demanded by the IOC. They apply to corporation and income tax for non-UK companies and individuals working on the Olympics between 30 March and 8 November this year.

The IOC’s charter states that their mission is “to promote Olympism throughout the world and to lead the Olympic movement” and “to oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes”. This is hypocrisy writ large from the owners of the Olympic rings logo.

London 2012 are the most commercialised Olympics of all time. From the organisation of the torch relay by three global corporations to the domination of the Olympic park by McDonalds et al, to the rule of Nike and Adidas on the track, it is one big profitable enterprise.

The promise of “regeneration” of East London, where some of the poorest communities in Britain live, was key to London winning the race for the Games in 2007. Local people are searching for the evidence.

Olympic Village housing has been sold to a Middle East-led consortium to be converted into luxury flats. Unemployment remains above the national average, with few jobs going to local people during the construction phase.

Civil liberties have gone out of the window in a self-declared Olympic Exclusion Zone. Protests are banned, encampments forbidden and activists barred from going anywhere near the Games. The area is an armed camp, complete with guided missiles, warships and fighter planes.

As for access to tickets for the events held in their midst, forget it. None were set aside for the local community who have endured years of disruption (national IOC officials, meanwhile, have been making money by selling their allocation on the black market). Ah, but the local community does have a massive new shopping centre which, symbolically, visitors to London 2012 events have to pass through to get to the Olympic park.

None of this of concern to the IOC, which holds the exclusive TV rights for the Olympics, selling them to the highest bidder. Eleven of the 2012 sponsors have paid the IOC $957 million, not only for international brand exposure over the course of the 19 days, but also for exclusivity in providing services and products.

They include the notorious Dow Chemicals, Visa, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Samsung and Panasonic. Then there’s Atos, the firm hired to reduce the number of people claiming disability benefits. Some 3,100 claimants had appeals upheld in May 2011, up from 900 in the same month in 2010, the latest figures show.

On average almost two in five, 38%, challenged decisions are overturned at tribunal, nearly one in 10 of all those made. Atos staff are threatening a strike over low pay during the Olympics.

These kinds of actions are considered unpatriotic by the government and the Labour “opposition”. Yesterday, both David Cameron and Ed Miliband condemned plans by Home Office and Border Agency staff to strike on the eve of the opening ceremony over pay and job losses. Nothing must be allowed to disrupt what is to all intents and purposes a massive, corporate, branding exercise. 

Fortunately, few people listen to the political elite any more. A protests was staged recently at a BP-backed Royal Shakespeare Company production against the oil corporation, which is  also an Olympic sponsor. And on July 28, the Counter-Olympics Network is planning to defy a ban and march through Bow. The march is taking place under the slogans “Whose Games? Whose City? No Limos! No Logos! No Launchers! Demonstrate Against the Corporate Olympics.”

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

 

John Carlos is the real Olympic spirit

As the Olympic flame makes its way around the country amidst scenes of celebration and excitement, it is an appropriate moment to welcome to Britain one of the two African-American athletes who gave the black power salute from the winners’ podium at the 1968 Olympics.

John Carlos, speaking tonight (Monday 21st May) in London at a meeting organised by Unite Against Fascism, and Tommy Smith reached an agreement before their 200 metre event to defy the authorities if they made it to the podium.

Smith won gold and Carlos a bronze medal. During the awards ceremony, each man raised a fist clad in a black glove while the American national anthem was played.

This revolutionary gesture was made in order to highlight the continuing oppression and racism endemic in the USA. For this stand they were victimised and vilified for years after their return.

They also wanted to make people aware of the degree of inequality generally and the struggles of ordinary working people trying to make a decent living in the richest country in the world. Of course, the racism that Carlos and Smith courageously drew the shocked spectators’ attention to, has still not been eradicated.

(The role of silver medallist Australian Peter Norman, has often been overlooked. Rather than being the unwitting innocent in the affair he has tended to be represented as, in fact supported their action and stood in solidarity with them. He opposed his country's White Australia policy.)

It is fitting that the corrupt Olympic movement and the increasingly overblown Games are finding numerous critics and drawing protests. From the dubious ethics of the main sponsors, Dow Chemicals among them, to the decidedly environmentally unfriendly, people have been speaking out and camping out to highlight the high handed behaviour of the Olympic Delivery Authority.

These actions included a last ditch attempt to prevent the building of a basketball facility over Leyton Marsh, now probably doomed to failure after eviction of the campers last month. That is apart from the £175 million being spent on staging the Security Olympics, complete with guided missiles, troops, warships and fighter planes. London will soon be a city under siege from the military-police complex.

The fact that the tradition of the Games and of the torch relay itself is meant apparently to demonstrate the coming together of the people of the world in a spirit of unity, peace and friendship, must have felt like a slap in the face to the Greek people when they handed the flame to London last week.

They are more or less being told to shape up, shut up and if they can't accept their orders to continue their downward slide into destitution, to get out of the eurozone altogether lest they contaminate the rest of us. No friendship or unity for them!

As well as intense commercialism the Games also frankly represent a poisonous nationalism and it is to the credit of Carlos that he has said as much in a recent interview to the BBC. Future international sporting fixtures should rid themselves of the politics of nationalism by abandoning national anthems in favour of, say, the Olympic anthem, he believes.

He has said also that the medallists should accept their medals at an individual rather than a national level - it would be the prowess of the athletes themselves that would be recognised and applauded, not their countries. That of course was how the ancient Games were organised.

The elimination of rampant nationalism and of politics, substituting in their stead some form of friendly rivalry, would surely not be beyond our capabilities to organise. A return to if not the “Austerity Olympics” of the post-war Games of 1948, then creating an event that people could genuinely be proud of.

While London 2012, on the other hand, is being faced a mixture of dread, cynicism and unreflective flag-waving. It will be a bloated spectacle, more than slightly totalitarian event, which combined with the other huge spectacle of the Queen's Jubilee, will render us totally passive recipients of summer of massive distraction. A terrific present, surely, for our beleaguered rulers!

Fiona Harrington