What is a favela, a slum or a 100 year old community without services? What happens when the police move in? Gentrification?

So, ever so slowly, slowly, slowly it's beginning to hit the public consciousness that certain of our civil liberties will be p*ssed upon from the great on high during the Olympics. And whether it's Collapsonomics-wrought inflation, or perhaps that the Summer Games attracts a higher premium than the Winter Games in any event, but those penalties have gone up markedly!

By Mike Wells , posted 29th December 2011, edited 11th January 2012Campaigners Against Dow

A recent sponsorship deal has seen the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games accept money from Dow Chemical. Dow will provide a fabric "wrap" which will be placed around London's Olympic stadium.

According to Britain's Guardian newspaper the wrap's purpose is to reduce wind inside the stadium.  But, as the metaphor says ...

From Labour Behind The Label

As part of the Playfair 2012 campaign we've been lobbying the London Games organisers (LOCOG) to ensure workers making garments and merchandise for the Olympics have their rights respected. And on paper we've had reasonable success. But problems arise when we dig deeper.

Ted Jeory, one of the few journalists to pick up on the radioactive contamination of the London Olympic Park, has reported that London 2012 is seriously concerned at the head of steam building up in India over the deal which allowed Dow to sponsor the Olympic stadium. 'Senior sources', not just 'sources', are reported as saying the deal was a 'mistake' which it seems they are finding it difficult to wriggle out of.

Another friend of the Olympics, 2012 Official Network Infrastructure partner Cisco joins the list of corporate dishonour, the murderous, the destructive, the obscene and the toxic. Cisco is being sued by three named Chinese political prisoners, Du Daobin, Zhou Yuanzhi, Liu Xianbin, and ten unnamed others and in a second case by the Human Rights Law Foundation. The prisoners' lawyer, Daniel Ward, said "Cisco has, for years now, knowingly aided and abetted the Chinese Communist Party's ongoing efforts to stifle the free speech and discourse of its citizenry."

The grim tale of Olympic evictions continues at Sochi. The IOC has praised Sochi’s preparations. Jean-Claude Killy said “We have organised Olympic Games all over the world – Norway, Japan, Italy… But I have never seen anything like what I saw in Sochi. I believe that after the Olympics, Sochi’s former history will seem pre-history. The city will turn into one of the world’s best resorts.”