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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

London Olympics 2012: Sponsor companies get set for 100 days of protest; El panorama de Londres a 100 días de los Juegos Olímpicos








A hundred days before the London Olympics, organizers of sport’s biggest event are stepping up preparations and publicity. So are groups that want to use the games as a stage for protest.
The 16 days of competition will draw athletes from more than 200 nations as well as protesters ranging from local residents to international activists campaigning against sponsors such as Dow Chemical Co., Coca-Cola Co. and BP Plc.
“This is the moment to seize,” Colin Toogood, who’s been raising funds for a campaign against Dow, said in an interview. “It’s going to start ramping up.”
London beat Paris, New York and Moscow to host the games, which start July 27. The U.K. government tripled its original budget to 9.3 billion pounds ($14.8 billion) after failing to get companies to finance and develop the main site in east London. The security budget doubled to 553 million pounds last year as a review found that an original estimate of 10,000 guards was short by nearly 14,000 people.
“People will use the Olympics as an excuse to very effectively get their point across,” Nigel Currie, director of London-based sports marketing agency brandRapport, said in an interview. “Any sort of baggage at all where they could be criticized, something like this will attract that sort of unwanted attention. The Olympics is just so big now.”
Toogood was among more than 40 campaigners at a meeting held last weekend near London’s financial district by a group calling itself the Counter Olympics Network. They were joined by U.S. opponents of BP, the oil producer that paid to be the official “sustainability” partner.
The Gulf Coast Fund, which supports victims of natural disasters and environmental accidents in the southern U.S., criticized the British oil company’s involvement after a 2010 accident in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and pumped oil into the water for 87 days. A spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on the actions of protest groups.
“BP as the sustainability sponsor is utterly ridiculous,” Derrick C. Evans, an adviser to the Gulf Coast Fund, said in an interview in London after traveling from Mississippi. “It’s a horrible mistake that you would have think had been written up by a satirist to lampoon either BP or London and the U.K. because it makes no sense.”
Activists will wear Olympic-themed gas masks at Rio Tinto Plc’s annual general meeting tomorrow in the British capital, the London Mining Network said by e-mail. They’re protesting air pollution at Bingham Canyon, Utah, where most of the Olympic medals are being produced.
Dow’s 10-year agreement with the International Olympic Committee has been targeted because the Midland, Michigan-based company bought Union Carbide Corp.
The purchase came 16 years after a leak at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, central India, killed more than 3,800 people, according to Bhopal.com, a website set up by the company. A study by Amnesty International, a human-rights group, showed 7,000 perished within days and another 15,000 died later from exposure to methyl isocyanate gas.
At Amnesty International’s U.K. headquarters on April 16, activists introduced “Greenwash Gold 2012 Campaign” to find, which of Dow, BP and Rio Tinto Plc had damaged the environment the most.
Dow acquired Union Carbide in 2001, about 10 years after the Indian Supreme Court approved a $470 million settlement paid by Union Carbide and Union Carbide India.
The opposition is “beyond belief” Dow Chief Executive Officer Andrew Liveris said in a Feb. 28 interview. Union paid a settlement and protestors are targeting Dow as it’s a “healthy company with deep pockets,” he said. They should talk to the Indian government, Liveris said.
London’s organizing committee has raised more than 700 million pounds from sponsors, which it says are crucial to funding the games. The organization didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
At their meeting, activists sat in a circle and brainstormed how their protests could hurt the games and sponsors. They didn’t clap for fear of interrupting someone and instead used sign language to show their approval of an idea before pausing for a lunch of baguette and soup.
Suggestions included occupying buildings, halting construction and blocking lanes designated for Olympic officials, as well as hacking websites and carrying out subversive poster and advertising campaigns. One activist was selling T-shirts showing five handcuffs interlinked like the Olympic rings logo.
The group included students, local residents, activists and Elizabeth Hogg, an 89-year-old Canadian who was handing over the “Poverty Olympic Torch” from Vancouver, which hosted the 2010 winter games, to London.
“I’m passing it on to younger people with bright ideas,” Hogg said in an interview. “I hope they’re not too confrontational. Being too radical can get people’s backs up.”
Nine thousand police officers will be deployed during the peak of the Olympics and 20,000 security staff will be needed overall, double the original estimate. Additional numbers will come from the private security sector, the military and volunteers.
The U.K. criticized previous Olympic host China for the way it dealt with protestors and “would look very hypocritical” if it tried to suppress legitimate protests, said Margaret Gilmore, a senior researcher in security at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.
“But if they become violent they are going to have to come down on them. It may be that we have to see some heavy-handed policing if those demonstrations and protests get out of hand,” she said. “They cannot be allowed to when you have such large numbers of sporting spectators moving around.”

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El panorama de Londres a 100 días de los Juegos Olímpicos

El impacto en la vida diaria es una de las mayores preocupaciones del Comité Organizador, que ha tenido que gastar más de lo previsto en algunos ítems.


Londres da hoy el pitazo de salida a la cuenta atrás de 100 días para los Juegos con las instalaciones deportivas concluidas pero con el reto de inculcar el espíritu olímpico a unos ciudadanos preocupados por el impacto de los Juegos en su vida diaria.
En la capital británica se suceden los actos para subrayar la cercanía de los trigésimos Juegos Olímpicos de la era moderna, que se celebrarán del 27 de julio al 12 de agosto y que suponen un desafío para el transporte y la seguridad de una metrópoli de ocho millones de personas.
En cuanto a lo deportivo, las autoridades respiran tranquilas: la joya del plan olímpico londinense, el estadio de atletismo de Stratford, quedó concluido en marzo de 2011 y supuso un gasto de 468 millones de libras (556 millones de euros), algo por debajo del presupuesto inicial.
También lucen terminados el resto de instalaciones del Parque Olímpico, al este de Londres, con el Centro Acuático de la anglo-iraquí Zaha Hadid como eje de gravedad del proyecto arquitectónico del Comité Organizador de los Juegos (LOCOG).
El interior del recinto, un espacio diáfano de color blanco, más parecido a un museo de arte contemporáneo que a una piscina de competición, ha causado admiración en los medios británicos, a pesar de que ha costado 269 millones de libras (320 millones de euros), tres veces más de lo previsto.
El gasto público que suponen unos Juegos en tiempos de crisis es una de las principales losas que pesan sobre la organización de Londres 2012, después de que el Parlamento hiciera público en marzo que la factura de los Juegos rondará finalmente los 11.000 millones de libras (13.000 millones de euros).
La cifra es un 20 por ciento mayor que las últimas proyecciones de gasto que había hecho públicas el Gobierno del Reino Unido, que a finales de 2011 decidió doblar el presupuesto destinado al dispositivo de seguridad que blindará Londres durante este verano con la ayuda del ejército.
La capital británica ha buscado hasta el último momento fórmulas para rentabilizar la inversión en los Juegos, una de ellas la venta de los 2.818 apartamentos de la Villa Olímpica, cuyas obras finalizaron el pasado enero.
Más allá del impacto económico de los Juegos, los londinenses temen el caos en el transporte que algunos, incluida una comisión parlamentaria, han augurado para el próximo verano en la capital británica.
El envejecido suburbano de Londres lleva tiempo sufriendo cortes periódicos en su servicio para realizar mejoras destinadas a tratar de evitar el colapso de la red cuando deba hacer frente a cientos de miles de desplazamientos adicionales el próximo verano europeo.

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