It's been 16 years since the Atlanta games where the IOC proved itself unable or unwilling to protect the integrity of the Olympic movement from its sponsors. You would think people would realise that by now.

ricky(unregistered). Thanks for your response. I agree with what you say and how you say it.

Oh and Ricky - you do not know how lucky you are to be a UK citizen. Free education up until the age of 18 and if you are really poor they will pay for you to go to university, free health care, a generous welfare state - if you have an accident and can't work your government will look after you for the rest of your life if needs be. The UK press is free, out of control sometimes but free all the same. You can vote not just in local but national elections, your police force (apart from the Met) are on the whole incorruptible. You don't even know you've been born. The Olympics were given to London on 6th July 2005 well before the recession hit I might add.

Oh for God's sake cheer up - the Olympics is wonderful event where the whole world can get together and celebrate something other than death, war and misery (and conspiracy theories!) I for one am really looking forward to the Olympics. I do agree however that Dow Chemicals should be kicked out I think it's quite disgraceful that they are involved and fully understand India's ire at their supporting of the Olympics in London. And CON remember the last Olympics were held in Beijing weren't they?? They have a great track record on Human Rights and Tibet don't they?! But I suppose the Chinese are ok cos they're 'Communist'

CON wrote in #1
The UK should should not have been awarded the Olympics in the first place. Having been involved in an illegal invasion of Iraq, as well as their continued hostility towrads Iran, they hardly live up the ethos of the games. It's just another means for big corporations and advertisers to make more cash from a hapless public. I had hoped the games would be boycotted, like the US and UK tried against the Soviet Union, so failing that, I would expect to see more protests on a host of issues. ----Being a UK citizen my whole life... i absolutely agree with you. But it's not as if it matters as of now, the reason for that is simply any event which is in control of a government entity will be plagiarised by corporate advertising to the extent that the whole event becomes one huge advert in itself.
I don't understand how other people in my country (england) can be "proud" that we are hosting the olympics... the reality is that even the UK olympic team's outfits are made in a foreign sweat shop, there's no end to the hypocrisy of the whole thing.
Personally i believe the olympics is a desperate straw for the UK gov to "replenish" money it has stolen from the economy by bailing out the banks, hoping for money to be generated from tourism during the event. It's also a nice excuse for them to put up even-more-cameras around London.
Just think if the ancient greek's were alive today, and seen what happened to their "legacy" of what they started... they would be absolutely disgusted at what it has become.
A great song that is still relevant today:
God save the queen, The fascist regime, They made you a moron, Potential H-bomb, God save the queen, She ain't no human being, There is no future, In England's dreaming.

Growing outrage at both environmental damage and the erosion of civil rights has bred a new type of Russian activist – one who wins votes. Several years ago, the name of Evgenia Chirikova, a resident of the Moscow Region town of Khimki, was known to few people outside her circle of friends and family. She was a thirtysomething, focused on her children and her career. Ambitious by nature, she earned three college degrees and ran a small business with her engineer husband, and had no interest in politics. “I didn’t think it was possible to change anything, so politics seemed a senseless endeavour,” she says. Ms Chirikova, now 34, could pass for a student in her jeans and T-shirt. She doesn’t look like a person who commands the attention of a broad spectrum of opposition parties and movements. Yet a metamorphosis from suburban working mother to one of Russia’s best-known activists occurred after Moscow city government decided to bulldoze the forest by her house to build a highway to St 
Petersburg. She became interested in the forest’s fate after the birth of her second daughter: “Suddenly I had time to look around, and I realized that while I was working and paying taxes, somebody else was using that money to destroy my habitat.”  Ms Chirikova gathered local residents together and spoke out in favor of rerouting the highway; ecologists later came up with 11 alternative routes. Bureaucrats reacted to this initiative with bewilderment, while many local residents were suspicious: an international multimillion-dollar project had never been stopped by a forest before. “The Khimki administration didn’t understand what we wanted,” she explains. “‘If you want to live in the woods,’ they said, ‘go to Siberia.’”

The UK should should not have been awarded the Olympics in the first place. Having been involved in an illegal invasion of Iraq, as well as their continued hostility towrads Iran, they hardly live up the ethos of the games. It's just another means for big corporations and advertisers to make more cash from a hapless public. I had hoped the games would be boycotted, like the US and UK tried against the Soviet Union, so failing that, I would expect to see more protests on a host of issues.