greenwich park

sockpuppeteers

*********Open Letter:**********************

November 10, 2008

Academic Community Calls for Resignation of Dick Pound, Chancellor of McGill University

Recently, members of Indigenous communities in Canada have expressed outrage at racist comments made by Richard Pound, currently serving as Chancellor of McGill University, Canadian representative on the International Olympics Committee (IOC) and member of the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) for the 2010 Olympic Games. During an August 2008 interview with La Presse, Pound responded to criticism regarding this summer's Olympic presence in China by drawing the following comparison: "We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European descent, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization."

Despite the constant flow of reports from China of human rights abuses, evictions, beatings, arrests and the imprisonment of protestors in the run up to the 2008 Olympic Games Britain’s political and sports elites continue to fawn over the Beijing Olympics. Whereas the United States and the EU, along with human rights organisations, are reported to be protesting at the arrest of a prominent human rights activist, Hu Jia, the Chinese Xinhua Agency (see below) is delighted to be able to report the enthusiastic support offered by the likes of Coe, Brown and Livingstone.

If we don't engage young people..then frankly the project is unsustainable

A material difference may be observed in the games of antiquity: the most eminent of the Greeks were actors, the Romans were merely spectators.

The Olympic stadium was open to wealth, merit, and ambition; and if the candidates could depend on their personal skill and activity, they might pursue the footsteps of Diomede and Menelaus, and conduct their own horses in the rapid career.

DELAYS in cleaning up the heavily contaminated land on which the London Olympic Park will be built led to the resignation of the 2012 Games construction chief, The Times has learnt.

Mr Lemley, 71, insisted that his health was not connected to his resignation but he was “very, very concerned” about the extent of toxic material and hazardous waste on the 757-acre site, much of which was industrial land. The clean-up operation could also unearth unexploded bombs dropped during the Blitz. The American engineer was increasingly frustrated that the process of cleaning the land — known as remediation — had not begun, although contractors had been appointed to carry out the task in June.

Jack Lemley, who was chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), claims that in the 15 months since London won the Games, no remediation work has begun on the 757-acre site in east London.

Marc Hodler, the senior Swiss member of the International Olympic Committee, who in 1998 exposed widespread bribe-taking among the Olympic delegates who decided where the Games would take place, died Wednesday in Bern, Switzerland. He was 87.

London's Olympic project suffered a serious setback yesterday with the sudden resignation of the American building chief recruited to ensure the project was delivered on time and on budget.

London needs a 30-year overhaul of the rail system, less regulation and a surge in Asian investment to ensure its economic future, Mayor Ken Livingstone said.