Dddd

de Nelson Mandela (favorable à Londres) sur l'Afrique,... Enfin, je note des points communs (implication de Chirac, consensus entre beaucoup de politiques, de médias, de stars ou de milieux d'affaires) entre l'échec : - du Référendum sur la Constitution Européenne, le 29 mai, et, - de la candidature de Paris aux Jeux Olympiques 2012, le 6 juillet.

france tv.fr

What is the London 2012 Olympics?

The International Olympic Committee voted in July 2005 for London to hold the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, with the majority of facilities centred in the capital but many other locations hosting events, training villages and support facilities.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for the bid was seen as a major boost for London and a significant factor in it beating Paris, New York, Madrid and Moscow, as was the support of Nelson Mandela.

The key message behind the London 2012 bid was that the Games would provide Britain with a legacy: transforming people's lives through the regeneration of one of the poorest areas of London; inspiring a new generation to greater sporting activity and achievement; and supporting the Olympic movement of the future.

A 500-acre Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, will form the centre of the Games. It will include the main 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies will be held as well as the athletics events, and the Aquatics Centre, which will include two 50m swimming pools and a diving pool.

Existing facilities at Wimbledon and Lord's Cricket Ground, the lake at Eton Dorney and the historic Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich will all be used, as will the Dome in Greenwich.

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) promises to carry a high-speed shuttle service between central London and the Olympic Park in just seven minutes. This will also link up to the Eurostar and carry on to continental Europe. When combined with improved Underground services, the Olympic team intends to have a train arriving at the Olympic Park once every 15 seconds.

The entire delivery of the 2012 project is being monitored by the Olympic Board which comprises Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan and London 2012 Organising Committee chair Sebastian Coe. Former Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell, Sir Menzies Campbell and Don Foster also sit on the Board as observers.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), chaired by John Armitt, is the public body responsible for developing and building the new venues and infrastructure for the Games and their use post-2012. The ODA is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Greater London Authority, the London Development Agency and the Olympic Lottery Distributor.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is the private sector company responsible for staging and hosting the 2012 Games. It has a £2bn budget, with almost all of it to be raised from the private sector.

The Olympic Games will be held from the 27 July-12 Aug 2012 and the Paralympic Games from 29 Aug-9 Sept 2012.

politiks.co.uk

When the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2012 Olympics would be in London many people were supportive of the decision. It would be a great boon to the city, and the local economy. That unhindered support, however, quickly changed. At the beginning it was just petty things like a terrible logo design that raised its fair share of crackpot conspiracy theories: its a modern form of the swastika, or that the the logo when read backwards reads Izzo, a nickname for the rapper Jay-Z. Most importantly is that things have started to turn political.

2012 London Olympics Logo. Photo by Nigel Chadwick.

In February of this year the National Olympic Committee of Iran called upon the IOC to change the £400,000 logo because they though it was a hidden pro-Israeli message. “As Internet documents have proved, using the word Zion in the logo of 2012 Olympic Games is a disgracing action and against Olympics’ valuable mottos,” the Iranian Olympic Committee said in an open letter.

The complaint notably was written four years after the publication of the 2012 logo. The IOC responded, “The London 2012 logo represents the figure 2012, nothing else.” Iran has called for a boycotting of the 2012 Olympics.

Most recently there has been a major controversy about one of the main sponsors for the event, Dow Chemical Company. Dow is sponsoring the stadium wrapping, a seven million dollar deal. Many environmentalists have questioned this deal because of an environmental disaster that happened in Bhopal India.

In 1984 the chemical company Union Carbide changed the city of Bhopal forever with possibly the worst industrial environmental catastrophe in history.. On the night of December 3rd at the Bhopal pesticide plant in India, water had leaked into the canisters containing methyl isocyanate, which then leaked in the form of a toxic gas across the city of Bhopal. About 3,000 people died from the incident and an estimated 8,000 have died from gas-related diseases. The general conditions of the plant were horrendous. With workers being told not to replace faulty parts, and there was no plan in place for knowing how to deal with such an incident. The alarms had not been functioning for four years, the boiler was not on for unknown reasons, but the few safety measures that were put into place, such as water sprayers to reduce the concentration of the gas were barely functioning; the list goes on and on.

The Indian government passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster Act, which granted the government the right to represent everyone who was affected by the disaster. Union Carbide offered to pay out a mere $350 million when the government demanded $3.3 billion dollars. They eventually decided on a $470 million compensation. Not long after Union Carbide decided to sell off their Indian subsidiary (UCIL), and were forced to finance a 500 bed hospital that would give free health care to all of those affected by the Bhopal disaster; that was in 1998.

Eventually the Dow chemical company acquired UCIL, and now they are experiencing the heat. The recent Olympic deal has angered many people who